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diff --git a/old/letda10.txt b/old/letda10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fcf36d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/letda10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4197 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to Dead Authors by Andrew Lang +#9 in our series by Andrew Lang + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1886 Longmans, Green, and Co. +edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS + + + + +Contents: + +Preface +To W. M. Thackeray +To Charles Dickens +To Pierre de Ronsard +To Herodotus +Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope +To Lucian of Samosata +To Maitre Francoys Rabelais +To Jane Austen +To Master Isaak Walton +To M. Chapelain +To Sir John Maundeville, Kt. +To Alexandre Dumas +To Theocritus +To Edgar Allan Poe +To Sir Walter Scott, Bart. +To Eusebius of Caesarea +To Percy Bysshe Shelley +To Monsieur de Moliere +To Robert Burns +To Lord Byron +To Omar Khayyam +To Q. Horatius Flaccus + + + +PREFACE + + + +Sixteen of these Letters, which were written at the suggestion of +the Editor of the "St. James's Gazette," appeared in that journal, +from which they are now reprinted, by the Editor's kind permission. +They have been somewhat emended, and a few additions have been made. +The Letters to Horace, Byron, Isaak Walton, Chapelain, Ronsard, and +Theocritus have not been published before. + +The gem on the title-page, now engraved for the first time, is a red +cornelian in the British Museum, probably Graeco-Roman, and treated +in an archaistic style. It represents Hermes Psychagogos, with a +Soul, and has some likeness to the Baptism of Our Lord, as usually +shown in art. Perhaps it may be post-Christian. The gem was +selected by Mr. A. S. Murray. + +It is, perhaps, superfluous to add that some of the Letters are +written rather to suit the Correspondent than to express the +writer's own taste or opinions. The Epistle to Lord Byron, +especially, is "writ in a manner which is my aversion." + + + +LETTER--To W. M. Thackeray + + + +Sir,--There are many things that stand in the way of the critic when +he has a mind to praise the living. He may dread the charge of +writing rather to vex a rival than to exalt the subject of his +applause. He shuns the appearance of seeking the favour of the +famous, and would not willingly be regarded as one of the many +parasites who now advertise each movement and action of contemporary +genius. "Such and such men of letters are passing their summer +holidays in the Val d'Aosta," or the Mountains of the Moon, or the +Suliman Range, as it may happen. So reports our literary "Court +Circular," and all our Precieuses read the tidings with enthusiasm. +Lastly, if the critic be quite new to the world of letters, he may +superfluously fear to vex a poet or a novelist by the abundance of +his eulogy. No such doubts perplex us when, with all our hearts, we +would commend the departed; for they have passed almost beyond the +reach even of envy; and to those pale cheeks of theirs no +commendation can bring the red. + +You, above all others, were and remain without a rival in your many- +sided excellence, and praise of you strikes at none of those who +have survived your day. The increase of time only mellows your +renown, and each year that passes and brings you no successor does +but sharpen the keenness of our sense of loss. In what other +novelist, since Scott was worn down by the burden of a forlorn +endeavour, and died for honour's sake, has the world found so many +of the fairest gifts combined? If we may not call you a poet (for +the first of English writers of light verse did not seek that +crown), who that was less than a poet ever saw life with a glance so +keen as yours, so steady, and so sane? Your pathos was never cheap, +your laughter never forced; your sigh was never the pulpit trick of +the preacher. Your funny people--your Costigans and Fokers--were +not mere characters of trick and catch-word, were not empty comic +masks. Behind each the human heart was beating; and ever and again +we were allowed to see the features of the man. + +Thus fiction in your hands was not simply a profession, like +another, but a constant reflection of the whole surface of life: a +repeated echo of its laughter and its complaint. Others have +written, and not written badly, with the stolid professional +regularity of the clerk at his desk; you, like the Scholar Gipsy, +might have said that "it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill." +There are, it will not surprise you, some honourable women and a few +men who call you a cynic; who speak of "the withered world of +Thackerayan satire;" who think your eyes were ever turned to the +sordid aspects of life--to the mother-in-law who threatens to "take +away her silver bread-basket;" to the intriguer, the sneak, the +termagant; to the Beckys, and Barnes Newcomes, and Mrs. Mackenzies +of this world. The quarrel of these sentimentalists is really with +life, not with you; they might as wisely blame Monsieur Buffon +because there are snakes in his Natural History. Had you not +impaled certain noxious human insects, you would have better pleased +Mr. Ruskin; had you confined yourself to such performances, you +would have been more dear to the Neo-Balzacian school in fiction. + +You are accused of never having drawn a good woman who was not a +doll, but the ladies that bring this charge seldom remind us either +of Lady Castlewood or of Theo or Hetty Lambert. The best women can +pardon you Becky Sharp and Blanche Amory; they find it harder to +forgive you Emmy Sedley and Helen Pendennis. Yet what man does not +know in his heart that the best women--God bless them--lean, in +their characters, either to the sweet passiveness of Emmy or to the +sensitive and jealous affections of Helen? 'Tis Heaven, not you, +that made them so; and they are easily pardoned, both for being a +very little lower than the angels and for their gentle ambition to +be painted, as by Guido or Guercino, with wings and harps and +haloes. So ladies have occasionally seen their own faces in the +glass of fancy, and, thus inspired, have drawn Romola and Consuelo. +Yet when these fair idealists, Mdme. Sand and George Eliot, designed +Rosamund Vincy and Horace, was there not a spice of malice in the +portraits which we miss in your least favourable studies? + +That the creator of Colonel Newcome and of Henry Esmond was a +snarling cynic; that he who designed Rachel Esmond could not draw a +good woman: these are the chief charges (all indifferent now to +you, who were once so sensitive) that your admirers have to contend +against. A French critic, M. Taine, also protests that you do +preach too much. Did any author but yourself so frequently break +the thread (seldom a strong thread) of his plot to converse with his +reader and moralise his tale, we also might be offended. But who +that loves Montaigne and Pascal, who that likes the wise trifling of +the one and can bear with the melancholy of the other, but prefers +your preaching to another's playing! + +Your thoughts come in, like the intervention of the Greek Chorus, as +an ornament and source of fresh delight. Like the songs of the +Chorus, they bid us pause a moment over the wider laws and actions +of human fate and human life, and we turn from your persons to +yourself, and again from yourself to your persons, as from the odes +of Sophocles or Aristophanes to the action of their characters on +the stage. Nor, to my taste, does the mere music and melancholy +dignity of your style in these passages of meditation fall far below +the highest efforts of poetry. I remember that scene where Clive, +at Barnes Newcome's Lecture on the Poetry of the Affections, sees +Ethel who is lost to him. "And the past and its dear histories, and +youth and its hopes and passions, and tones and looks for ever +echoing in the heart and present in the memory--these, no doubt, +poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time, +and parting and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many +years." + +FOR EVER ECHOING IN THE HEART AND PRESENT IN THE MEMORY: who has +not heard these tones, who does not hear them as he turns over your +books that, for so many years, have been his companions and +comforters? We have been young and old, we have been sad and merry +with you, we have listened to the mid-night chimes with Pen and +Warrington, have stood with you beside the death-bed, have mourned +at that yet more awful funeral of lost love, and with you have +prayed in the inmost chapel sacred to our old and immortal +affections, e leal souvenir! And whenever you speak for yourself, +and speak in earnest, how magical, how rare, how lonely in our +literature is the beauty of your sentences! "I can't express the +charm of them" (so you write of George Sand; so we may write of +you): "they seem to me like the sound of country bells, provoking I +don't know what vein of music and meditation, and falling sweetly +and sadly on the ear." Surely that style, so fresh, so rich, so +full of surprises--that style which stamps as classical your +fragments of slang, and perpetually astonishes and delights--would +alone give immortality to an author, even had he little to say. But +you, with your whole wide world of fops and fools, of good women and +brave men, of honest absurdities and cheery adventurers: you who +created the Steynes and Newcomes, the Beckys and Blanches, Captain +Costigan and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong--all that host of +friends imperishable--you must survive with Shakespeare and +Cervantes in the memory and affection of men. + + + +LETTER--To Charles Dickens + + + +Sir,--It has been said that every man is born a Platonist or an +Aristotelian, though the enormous majority of us, to be sure, live +and die without being conscious of any invidious philosophic +partiality whatever. With more truth (though that does not imply +very much) every Englishman who reads may be said to be a partisan +of yourself or of Mr. Thackeray. Why should there be any +partisanship in the matter; and why, having two such good things as +your novels and those of your contemporary, should we not be +silently happy in the possession? Well, men are made so, and must +needs fight and argue over their tastes in enjoyment. For myself, I +may say that in this matter I am what the Americans do NOT call a +"Mugwump," what English politicians dub a "superior person"--that +is, I take no side, and attempt to enjoy the best of both. + +It must be owned that this attitude is sometimes made a little +difficult by the vigour of your special devotees. They have ceased, +indeed, thank Heaven! to imitate you; and even in "descriptive +articles" the touch of Mr. Gigadibs, of him whom "we almost took for +the true Dickens," has disappeared. The young lions of the Press no +longer mimic your less admirable mannerisms--do not strain so much +after fantastic comparisons, do not (in your manner and Mr. +Carlyle's) give people nick-names derived from their teeth, or their +complexion; and, generally, we are spared second-hand copies of all +that in your style was least to be commended. But, though improved +by lapse of time in this respect, your devotees still put on little +conscious airs of virtue, robust manliness, and so forth, which +would have irritated you very much, and there survive some press men +who seem to have read you a little (especially your later works), +and never to have read anything else. Now familiarity with the +pages of "Our Mutual Friend" and "Dombey and Son" does not precisely +constitute a liberal education, and the assumption that it does is +apt (quite unreasonably) to prejudice people against the greatest +comic genius of modern times. + +On the other hand, Time is at last beginning to sift the true +admirers of Dickens from the false. Yours, Sir, in the best sense +of the word, is a popular success, a popular reputation. For +example, I know that, in a remote and even Pictish part of this +kingdom, a rural household, humble and under the shadow of a sorrow +inevitably approaching, has found in "David Copperfield" oblivion of +winter, of sorrow, and of sickness. On the other hand, people are +now picking up heart to say that "they cannot read Dickens," and +that they particularly detest "Pickwick." I believe it was young +ladies who first had the courage of their convictions in this +respect. "Tout sied aux belles," and the fair, in the confidence of +youth, often venture on remarkable confessions. In your "Natural +History of Young Ladies" I do not remember that you describe the +Humorous Young Lady. {1} She is a very rare bird indeed, and humour +generally is at a deplorably low level in England. + +Hence come all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and it +may be said that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with +Irish murder and arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric +Buddhism, and a score of other plagues, including what was once +called AEstheticism, are all, primarily, due to want of humour. +People discuss, with the gravest faces, matters which properly +should only be stated as the wildest paradoxes. It naturally +follows that, in a period almost destitute of humour, many +respectable persons "cannot read Dickens," and are not ashamed to +glory in their shame. We ought not to be angry with others for +their misfortunes; and yet when one meets the cretins who boast that +they cannot read Dickens, one certainly does feel much as Mr. Samuel +Weller felt when he encountered Mr. Job Trotter. + +How very singular has been the history of the decline of humour! Is +there any profound psychological truth to be gathered from +consideration of the fact that humour has gone out with cruelty? A +hundred years ago, eighty years ago--nay, fifty years ago--we were a +cruel but also a humorous people. We had bull-baitings, and badger- +drawings, and hustings, and prize-fights, and cock-fights; we went +to see men hanged; the pillory and the stocks were no empty "terrors +unto evil-doers," for there was commonly a malefactor occupying each +of these institutions. With all this we had a broad-blown comic +sense. We had Hogarth, and Bunbury, and George Cruikshank, and +Gilray; we had Leech and Surtees, and the creator of Tittlebat +Titmouse; we had the Shepherd of the "Noctes," and, above all, we +had YOU. + +From the old giants of English fun--burly persons delighting in +broad caricature, in decided colours, in cockney jokes, in swashing +blows at the more prominent and obvious human follies--from these +you derived the splendid high spirits and unhesitating mirth of your +earlier works. Mr. Squeers, and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and all +the Pickwickians, and Mr. Dowler, and John Browdie--these and their +immortal companions were reared, so to speak, on the beef and beer +of that naughty, fox-hunting, badger-baiting old England, which we +have improved out of existence. And these characters, assuredly, +are your best; by them, though stupid people cannot read about them, +you will live while there is a laugh left among us. Perhaps that +does not assure you a very prolonged existence, but only the future +can show. + +The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last for +ever and a day. Honest old Laughter, the true LUTIN of your +inspiration, must have life left in him yet, and cannot die; though +it is true that the taste for your pathos, and your melodrama, and +plots constructed after your favourite fashion ("Great Expectations" +and the "Tale of Two Cities" are exceptions) may go by and never be +regretted. Were people simpler, or only less clear-sighted, as far +as your pathos is concerned, a generation ago? Jeffrey, the hard- +headed shallow critic, who declared that Wordsworth "would never +do," cried, "wept like anything," over your Little Nell. One still +laughs as heartily as ever with Dick Swiveller; but who can cry over +Little Nell? + +Ah, Sir, how could you--who knew so intimately, who remembered so +strangely well the fancies, the dreams, the sufferings of childhood- +-how could you "wallow naked in the pathetic," and massacre +holocausts of the Innocents? To draw tears by gloating over a +child's death-bed, was it worthy of you? Was it the kind of work +over which our hearts should melt? I confess that Little Nell might +die a dozen times, and be welcomed by whole legions of Angels, and I +(like the bereaved fowl mentioned by Pet Marjory) would remain +unmoved. + + +She was more than usual calm, +She did not give a single dam, + + +wrote the astonishing child who diverted the leisure of Scott. Over +your Little Nell and your Little Dombey I remain more than usual +calm; and probably so do thousands of your most sincere admirers. +But about matter of this kind, and the unseating of the fountains of +tears, who can argue? Where is taste? where is truth? What tears +are "manly, Sir, manly," as Fred Bayham has it; and of what +lamentations ought we rather to be ashamed? Sunt lacrymae rerum; +one has been moved in the cell where Socrates tasted the hemlock; or +by the river-banks where Syracusan arrows slew the parched Athenians +among the mire and blood; or, in fiction, when Colonel Newcome says +Adsum, or over the diary of Clare Doria Forey, or where Aramis +laments, with strange tears, the death of Porthos. But over Dombey +(the Son), or Little Nell, one declines to snivel. + +When an author deliberately sits down and says, "Now, let us have a +good cry," he poisons the wells of sensibility and chokes, at least +in many breasts, the fountain of tears. Out of "Dombey and Son" +there is little we care to remember except the deathless Mr. Toots; +just as we forget the melodramatics of "Martin Chuzzlewit." I have +read in that book a score of times; I never see it but I revel in +it--in Pecksniff, and Mrs. Gamp, and the Americans. But what the +plot is all about, what Jonas did, what Montagu Tigg had to make in +the matter, what all the pictures with plenty of shading illustrate, +I have never been able to comprehend. In the same way, one of your +most thorough-going admirers has allowed (in the licence of private +conversation) that "Ralph Nickleby and Monk are too steep;" and +probably a cultivated taste will always find them a little +precipitous. + +"Too steep:"--the slang expresses that defect of an ardent genius, +carried above itself, and out of the air we breathe, both in its +grotesque and in its gloomy imaginations. To force the note, to +press fantasy too hard, to deepen the gloom with black over the +indigo, that was the failing which proved you mortal. To take an +instance in little: when Pip went to Mr. Pumblechook's, the boy +thought the seedsman "a very happy man to have so many little +drawers in his shop." The reflection is thoroughly boyish; but then +you add, "I wondered whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted +of a fine day to break out of those jails and bloom." That is not +boyish at all; that is the hard-driven, jaded literary fancy at +work. + +"So we arraign her; but she," the Genius of Charles Dickens, how +brilliant, how kindly, how beneficent she is! dwelling by a fountain +of laughter imperishable; though there is something of an alien salt +in the neighbouring fountain of tears. How poor the world of fancy +would be, how "dispeopled of her dreams," if, in some ruin of the +social system, the books of Dickens were lost; and if The Dodger, +and Charley Bates, and Mr. Crinkle, and Miss Squeers and Sam Weller, +and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish with +Menander's men and women! We cannot think of our world without +them; and, children of dreams as they are, they seem more essential +than great statesmen, artists, soldiers, who have actually worn +flesh and blood, ribbons and orders, gowns and uniforms. May we not +almost welcome "Free Education"? for every Englishman who can read, +unless he be an Ass, is a reader the more for you. + +P.S.--Alas, how strangely are we tempered, and how strong is the +national bias! I have been saying things of you that I would not +hear an enemy say. When I read, in the criticism of an American +novelist, about your "hysterical emotionality" (for he writes in +American), and your "waste of verbiage," I am almost tempted to deny +that our Dickens has a single fault, to deem you impeccable! + + + +LETTER--To Pierre de Ronsard (Prince of Poets) + + + +Master And Prince of Poets,--As we know what choice thou madest of a +sepulchre (a choice how ill fulfilled by the jealousy of Fate), so +we know well the manner of thy chosen immortality. In the Plains +Elysian, among the heroes and the ladies of old song, there was thy +Love with thee to enjoy her paradise in an eternal spring. + + +Le du plaisant Avril la saison immortelle +Sans eschange le suit, +La terre sans labour, de sa grasse mamelle, +Toute chose y produit; +D'enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse, +Nous honorant sur tous, +Viendra nous saluer, s'estimant bien-heureuse +De s'accointer de nous. + + +There thou dwellest, with the learned lovers of old days, with +Belleau, and Du Bellay, and Baif, and the flower of the maidens of +Anjou. Surely no rumour reaches thee, in that happy place of +reconciled affections, no rumour of the rudeness of Time, the +despite of men, and the change which stole from thy locks, so early +grey, the crown of laurels and of thine own roses. How different +from thy choice of a sepulchre have been the fortunes of thy tomb! + + +I will that none should break +The marble for my sake, +Wishful to make more fair +My sepulchre! + + +So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English. +Wearied of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside +thine own Loire, not remote from + + +The caves, the founts that fall +From the high mountain wall, +That fall and flash and fleet, +With silver feet. + +Only a laurel tree +Shall guard the grave of me; +Only Apollo's bough +Shall shade me now! + + +Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the +field flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a +monument, and no green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in +thy life; thy dust was not to be restful in thy death. The +Huguenots, ces nouveaux Chretiens qui la France ont pillee, +destroyed thy tomb, and the warning of the later monument, + + +ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCUS HUMU< SACRA EST, + + +has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over +France a hundred years ago, more terrible than the religious wars +that thou didst weep for, has swept the column from the tomb. The +marble was broken by violent hands, and the shattered sepulchre of +the Prince of Poets gained a dusty hospitality from the museum of a +country town. Better had been the laurel of thy desire, the +creeping vine, and the ivy tree. + +Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory. +Thou hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, +Messieurs Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau-- Boileau who spoke of +thee as Ce poete orgueilleux trebuche de si haut! + +These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own +fashion, backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. +In their time they wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou +wrotest in Greek and Latin (of which tongues certain of them had but +little skill), and blaming thy many lyric melodies and the free flow +of thy lines. What said M. de Balzac to M. Chapelain? "M. de +Malherbe, M. de Grasse, and yourself must be very little poets, if +Ronsard be a great one." Time has brought in his revenges, and +Messieurs Chapelain and De Grasse are as well forgotten as thou art +well remembered. Men could not always be deaf to thy sweet old +songs, nor blind to the beauty of thy roses and thy loves. When +they took the wax out of their ears that M. Boileau had given them +lest they should hear the singing of thy Sirens, then they were deaf +no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet singing and made answer +to his lays. Hast thou not heard these sounds? have they not +reached thee, the voices and the lyres of Theophile Gautier and +Alfred de Musset? Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad +that the old notes were ringing again and the old French lyric +measures tripping to thine ancient harmonies, echoing and replying +to the Muses of Horace and Catullus. Returning to Nature, poets +returned to thee. Thy monument has perished, but not thy music, and +the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a glorious +Restoration. + +Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of +wars we strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, +in thy good days, when the Muses walked with thee. We seem to mark +thee wandering silent through some little village, or dreaming in +the woods, or loitering among thy lonely places, or in gardens where +the roses blossom among wilder flowers, or on river banks where the +whispering poplars and sighing reeds make answer to the murmur of +the waters. Such a picture hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer +afternoons. + + +Je m'en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine, +Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois, +Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois. +J'aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage, +J'aime le flot de l'eau qui gazouille au rivage. + + +Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and +learned poet; still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy +Theocritus, through the gem-like weather of the Renouveau, when the +woods were enamelled with flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, +like a wandering prince, in his great palaces hung with green: + + +Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enfle de sa jeunesse, +Loge comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons! + + +Thou sawest, in these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old +religion, Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard'st in the +nightingale's music the plaint of Philomel. The ancient poets came +back in the train of thyself and of the Spring, and learning was +scarce less dear to thee than love; and thy ladies seemed fairer for +the names they borrowed from the beauties of forgotten days, Helen +and Cassandra. How sweetly didst thou sing to them thine old +morality, and how gravely didst thou teach the lesson of the Roses! +Well didst thou know it, well didst thou love the Rose, since thy +nurse, carrying thee, an infant, to the holy font, let fall on thee +the sacred water brimmed with floating blossoms of the Rose! + + +Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose, +Qui ce matin avoit desclose +Sa robe de pourpre au soleil, +A point perdu ceste vespree +Les plis de sa robe pourpree, +Et son teint au votre pareil. + + +And again, + + +La belle Rose du Printemps, +Aubert, admoneste les hommes +Passer joyeusement le temps, +Et pendant que jeunes nous sommes, +Esbattre la fleur de nos ans. + + +In the same mood, looking far down the future, thou sangest of thy +lady's age, the most sad, the most beautiful of thy sad and +beautiful lays; for if thy bees gathered much honey 'twas somewhat +bitter to taste, like that of the Sardinian yews. How clearly we +see the great hall, the grey lady spinning and humming among her +drowsy maids, and how they waken at the word, and she sees her +spring in their eyes, and they forecast their winter in her face, +when she murmurs "'Twas Ronsard sang of me." + +Winter, and summer, and spring, how swiftly they pass, and how early +time brought thee his sorrows, and grief cast her dust upon thy +head. + + +Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes, +Jadis mes douces amourettes, +Adieu, je sens venir ma fin, +Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse +Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse, +Que le feu, le lict et le vin. + + +Wine, and a soft bed, and a bright fire: to this trinity of poor +pleasures we come soon, if, indeed, wine be left to us. Poetry +herself deserts us; is it not said that Bacchus never forgives a +renegade? and most of us turn recreants to Bacchus. Even the bright +fire, I fear, was not always there to warm thine old blood, Master, +or, if fire there were, the wood was not bought with thy book- +seller's money. When autumn was drawing in during thine early old +age, in 1584, didst thou not write that thou hadst never received a +sou at the hands of all the publishers who vended thy books? And as +thou wert about putting forth thy folio edition of 1584, thou didst +pray Buon, the bookseller, to give thee sixty crowns to buy wood +withal, and make thee a bright fire in winter weather, and comfort +thine old age with thy friend Gallandius. And if Buon will not pay, +then to try the other booksellers, "that wish to take everything and +give nothing." + +Was it knowledge of this passage, Master, or ignorance of everything +else, that made certain of the common steadfast dunces of our days +speak of thee as if thou hadst been a starveling, neglected +poetaster, jealous forsooth of Maitre Francoys Rabelais? See how +ignorantly M. Fleury writes, who teaches French literature withal to +them of Muscovy, and hath indited a Life of Rabelais. "Rabelais +etait revetu d'un emploi honorable; Ronsard etait traite en +subalterne," quoth this wondrous professor. What! Pierre de +Ronsard, a gentleman of a noble house, holding the revenue of many +abbeys, the friend of Mary Stuart, of the Duc d'Orleans, of Charles +IX., HE is traite en subalterne, and is jealous of a frocked or +unfrocked manant like Maitre Francoys! And then this amazing Fleury +falls foul of thine epitaph on Maitre Francoys and cries, "Ronsard a +voulu faire des vers mechants; il n'a fait que de mechants vers." +More truly saith M. Sainte-Beuve, "If the good Rabelais had returned +to Meudon on the day when this epitaph was made over the wine, he +would, methinks, have laughed heartily." But what shall be said of +a Professor like the egregious M. Fleury, who holds that Ronsard was +despised at Court? Was there a party at tennis when the king would +not fain have had thee on his side, declaring that he ever won when +Ronsard was his partner? Did he not give thee benefices, and many +priories, and call thee his father in Apollo, and even, so they say, +bid thee sit down beside him on his throne? Away, ye scandalous +folk, who tell us that there was strife between the Prince of Poets +and the King of Mirth. Naught have ye by way of proof of your +slander but the talk of Jean Bernier, a scurrilous, starveling +apothecary, who put forth his fables in 1697, a century and a half +after Maitre Francoys died. Bayle quoted this fellow in a note, and +ye all steal the tattle one from another in your dull manner, and +know not whence it comes, nor even that Bayle would none of it and +mocked its author. With so little knowledge is history written, and +thus doth each chattering brook of a "Life" swell with its tribute +"that great Mississippi of falsehood," Biography. + + + +LETTER--To Herodotus + + + +To Herodotus of Halicarnassus, greeting.--Concerning the matters set +forth in your histories, and the tales you tell about both Greeks +and Barbarians, whether they be true, or whether they be false, men +dispute not little but a great deal. Wherefore I, being concerned +to know the verity, did set forth to make search in every manner, +and came in my quest even unto the ends of the earth. For there is +an island of the Cimmerians beyond the Straits of Heracles, some +three days' voyage to a ship that hath a fair following wind in her +sails; and there it is said that men know many things from of old: +thither, then, I came in my inquiry. Now, the island is not small, +but large, greater than the whole of Hellas; and they call it +Britain. In that island the east wind blows for ten parts of the +year, and the people know not how to cover themselves from the cold. +But for the other two months of the year the sun shines fiercely, so +that some of them die thereof, and others die of the frozen mixed +drinks; for they have ice even in the summer, and this ice they put +to their liquor. Through the whole of this island, from the west +even to the east, there flows a river called Thames: a great river +and a laborious, but not to be likened to the River of Egypt. + +The mouth of this river, where I stepped out from my ship, is +exceedingly foul and of an evil savour by reason of the city on the +banks. Now this city is several hundred parasangs in circumference. +Yet a man that needed not to breathe the air might go round it in +one hour, in chariots that run under the earth; and these chariots +are drawn by creatures that breathe smoke and sulphur, such as +Orpheus mentions in his "Argonautica," if it be by Orpheus. The +people of the town, when I inquired of them concerning Herodotus of +Halicarnassus, looked on me with amazement, and went straightway +about their business--namely, to seek out whatsoever new thing is +coming to pass all over the whole inhabited world, and as for things +old, they take no keep of them. + +Nevertheless, by diligence I learned that he who in this land knew +most concerning Herodotus was a priest, and dwelt in the priests' +city on the river which is called the City of the Ford of the Ox. +But whether Io, when she wore a cow's shape, had passed by that way +in her wanderings, and thence comes the name of that city, I could +not (though I asked all men I met) learn aught with certainty. But +to me, considering this, it seemed that Io must have come thither. +And now farewell to Io. + +To the City of the Priests there are two roads: one by land; and +one by water, following the river. To a well-girdled man, the land +journey is but one day's travel; by the river it is longer but more +pleasant. Now that river flows, as I said, from the west to the +east. And there is in it a fish called chub, which they catch; but +they do not eat it, for a certain sacred reason. Also there is a +fish called trout, and this is the manner of his catching. They +build for this purpose great dams of wood, which they call weirs. +Having built the weir they sit upon it with rods in their hands, and +a line on the rod, and at the end of the line a little fish. There +then they "sit and spin in the sun," as one of their poets says, not +for a short time but for many days, having rods in their hands and +eating and drinking. In this wise they angle for the fish called +trout; but whether they ever catch him or not, not having seen it, I +cannot say; for it is not pleasant to me to speak things concerning +which I know not the truth. + +Now, after sailing and rowing against the stream for certain days, I +came to the City of the Ford of the Ox. Here the river changes his +name, and is called Isis, after the name of the goddess of the +Egyptians. But whether the Britons brought the name from Egypt or +whether the Egyptians took it from the Britons, not knowing I prefer +not to say. But to me it seems that the Britons are a colony of the +Egyptians, or the Egyptians a colony of the Britons. Moreover, when +I was in Egypt I saw certain soldiers in white helmets, who were +certainly British. But what they did there (as Egypt neither +belongs to Britain nor Britain to Egypt) I know not, neither could +they tell me. But one of them replied to me in that line of Homer +(if the Odyssey be Homer's), "We have come to a sorry Cyprus, and a +sad Egypt." Others told me that they once marched against the +Ethiopians, and having defeated them several times, then came back +again, leaving their property to the Ethiopians. But as to the +truth of this I leave it to every man to form his own opinion. + +Having come into the City of the Priests, I went forth into the +street, and found a priest of the baser sort, who for a piece of +silver led me hither and thither among the temples, discoursing of +many things. + +Now it seemed to me a strange thing that the city was empty, and no +man dwelling therein, save a few priests only, and their wives, and +their children, who are drawn to and fro in little carriages dragged +by women. But the priest told me that during half the year the city +was desolate, for that there came somewhat called "The Long," or +"The Vac," and drave out the young priests. And he said that these +did no other thing but row boats, and throw balls from one to the +other, and this they were made to do, he said, that the young +priests might learn to be humble, for they are the proudest of men. +But whether he spoke truth or not I know not, only I set down what +he told me. But to anyone considering it, this appears rather to +jump with his story--namely, that the young priests have houses on +the river, painted of divers colours, all of them empty. + +Then the priest, at my desire, brought me to one of the temples, +that I might seek out all things concerning Herodotus the +Halicarnassian, from one who knew. Now this temple is not the +fairest in the city, but less fair and goodly than the old temples, +yet goodlier and more fair than the new temples; and over the roof +there is the image of an eagle made of stone--no small marvel, but a +great one, how men came to fashion him; and that temple is called +the House of Queens. Here they sacrifice a boar once every year; +and concerning this they tell a certain sacred story which I know +but will not utter. + +Then I was brought to the priest who had a name for knowing most +about Egypt, and the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, and the +Cappadocians, and all the kingdoms of the Great King. He came out +to me, being attired in a black robe, and wearing on his head a +square cap. But why the priests have square caps I know, and he who +has been initiated into the mysteries which they call "Matric" +knows, but I prefer not to tell. Concerning the square cap, then, +let this be sufficient. Now, the priest received me courteously, +and when I asked him, concerning Herodotus, whether he were a true +man or not, he smiled and answered "Abu Goosh," which, in the tongue +of the Arabians, means "The Father of Liars." Then he went on to +speak concerning Herodotus, and he said in his discourse that +Herodotus not only told the thing which was not, but that he did so +wilfully, as one knowing the truth but concealing it. For example, +quoth he, "Solon never went to see Croesus, as Herodotus avers; nor +did those about Xerxes ever dream dreams; but Herodotus, out of his +abundant wickedness, invented these things." + +"Now behold," he went on, "how the curse of the Gods falls upon +Herodotus. For he pretends that he saw Cadmeian inscriptions at +Thebes. Now I do not believe there were any Cadmeian inscriptions +there: therefore Herodotus is most manifestly lying. Moreover, +this Herodotus never speaks of Sophocles the Athenian, and why not? +Because he, being a child at school, did not learn Sophocles by +heart: for the tragedies of Sophocles could not have been learned +at school before they were written, nor can any man quote a poet +whom he never learned at school. Moreover, as all those about +Herodotus knew Sophocles well, he could not appear to them to be +learned by showing that he knew what they knew also." Then I +thought the priest was making game and sport, saying first that +Herodotus could know no poet whom he had not learned at school, and +then saying that all the men of his time well knew this poet, "about +whom everyone was talking." But the priest seemed not to know that +Herodotus and Sophocles were friends, which is proved by this, that +Sophocles wrote an ode in praise of Herodotus. + +Then he went on, and though I were to write with a hundred hands +(like Briareus, of whom Homer makes mention) I could not tell you +all the things that the priest said against Herodotus, speaking +truly, or not truly, or sometimes correctly and sometimes not, as +often befalls mortal men. For Herodotus, he said, was chiefly +concerned to steal the lore of those who came before him, such as +Hecataeus, and then to escape notice as having stolen it. Also he +said that, being himself cunning and deceitful, Herodotus was easily +beguiled by the cunning of others, and believed in things manifestly +false, such as the story of the Phoenix-bird. + +Then I spoke, and said that Herodotus himself declared that he could +not believe that story; but the priest regarded me not. And he said +that Herodotus had never caught a crocodile with cold pig, nor did +he ever visit Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Elephantine; but, saying +that he had been in these lands, said that which was not true. He +also declared that Herodotus, when he travelled, knew none of the +Fat Ones of the Egyptians, but only those of the baser sort. And he +called Herodotus a thief and a beguiler, and "the same with intent +to deceive," as one of their own poets writes. And, to be short, +Herodotus, I could not tell you in one day all the charges which are +now brought against you; but concerning the truth of these things, +YOU know, not least, but most, as to yourself being guilty or +innocent. Wherefore, if you have anything to show or set forth +whereby you may be relieved from the burden of these accusations, +now is the time. Be no longer silent; but, whether through the +Oracle of the Dead, or the Oracle of Branchidae, or that in Delphi, +or Dodona, or of Amphiaraus at Oropus, speak to your friends and +lovers (whereof I am one from of old) and let men know the very +truth. + +Now, concerning the priests in the City of the Ford of the Ox, it is +to be said that of all men whom we know they receive strangers most +gladly, feasting them all day. Moreover, they have many drinks, +cunningly mixed, and of these the best is that they call Archdeacon, +naming it from one of the priests' offices. Truly, as Homer says +(if the Odyssey be Homer's), "when that draught is poured into the +bowl then it is no pleasure to refrain." + +Drinking of this wine, or nectar, Herodotus, I pledge you, and pour +forth some deal on the ground, to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in the +House of Hades. + +And I wish you farewell, and good be with you. Whether the priest +spoke truly, or not truly, even so may such good things betide you +as befall dead men. + + + +LETTER--Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope + + + +From mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope, +Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? +Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, +Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, +Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance, +Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, +Pursue the Poet, like Actaeon's Hounds, +Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, +Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem, +Rend from the laurel'd Brows the Diadem, +And, if one Rag of Character they spare, +Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare! + +Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. +Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet's Tomb, +With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, +Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! +Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends +To INTERVIEW the Drudges of your Friends. +Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high, +And still proclaims your Poems POETRY, +Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, +And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared! + +They say, "what say they?" Not in vain You ask; +To tell you what they say, behold my Task! +"Methinks already I your Tears survey" +As I repeat "the horrid Things they say." {2} + +Comes El-n first: I fancy you'll agree +Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; +For El-n's Introduction, crabbed and dry, +Like Churchill's Cudgel's {3} marked with LIE, and LIE! + +"Too dull to know what his own System meant, +Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent; +A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends, +Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends; + +His mind, like Flesh inflamed, {4} was raw and sore, +And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more! +Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right, +His Spirit sank when he was called to fight. +Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole, +Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole, +And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel, +Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele! +Still he denied the Letters he had writ, +And still mistook Indecency for Wit. +His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries, +"Detains the Reader, and at times defies!'" + +Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage, +And furious Foot-notes growl 'neath every Page: +See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, +Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail! +"Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South, +But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; {5} +Affected, hypocritical, and vain, +A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain; +A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour, +The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power, +Pope yet possessed"--(the Praise will make you start) - +"Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart! +And still we marvel at the Man, and still +Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: +Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form, +Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, +Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line +That from the Noble separates the Fine!" + +The Learned thus, and who can quite reply, +Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie? +You reap, in armed Hates that haunt your Name, +Reap what you sowed, the Dragon's Teeth of Fame: +You could not write, and from unenvious Time +Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme, +You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend, +And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend! + +The Pity of it! And the changing Taste +Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste! +My Childhood fled your Couplet's clarion tone, +And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn. +Still through the Dust of that dim Prose appears +The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears; +Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel, +And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel! +But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence, +Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence, +And great Achilles' Eloquence doth show +As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau! + +Again, your Verse is orderly,--and more, - +"The Waves behind impel the Waves before;" +Monotonously musical they glide, +Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. +But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! +Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; +This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, +Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, +Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all +Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, +The next with silver Murmur dies away, +Like Tides that falter to Calypso's Bay! + +Thus Time, with sordid Alchemy and dread, +Turns half the Glory of your Gold to Lead; +Thus Time,--at Ronsard's wreath that vainly bit, - +Has marred the Poet to preserve the Wit, +Who almost left on Addison a stain, +Whose Knife cut cleanest with a poisoned pain, - +Yet Thou (strange Fate that clings to all of Thine!) +When most a Wit dost most a Poet shine. +In Poetry thy Dunciad expires, +When Wit has shot "her momentary Fires." +'Tis Tragedy that watches by the Bed +"Where tawdry Yellow strove with dirty Red," +And Men, remembering all, can scarce deny +To lay the Laurel where thine Ashes lie! + + + +LETTER--To Lucian of Samosata + + + +In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are +you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty, +and the brave? In that clear and tranquil climate, whose air +breathes of "violet and lily, myrtle, and the flower of the vine," + + +Where the daisies are rose-scented, +And the Rose herself has got +Perfume which on earth is not, + + +among the music of all birds, and the wind-blown notes of flutes +hanging on the trees, methinks that your laughter sounds most +silvery sweet, and that Helen and fair Charmides are still of your +company. Master of mirth, and Soul the best contented of all that +have seen the world's ways clearly, most clear-sighted of all that +have made tranquillity their bride, what other laughers dwell with +you, where the crystal and fragrant waters wander round the shining +palaces and the temples of amethyst? + +Heine surely is with you; if, indeed, it was not one Syrian soul +that dwelt among alien men, Germans and Romans, in the bodily +tabernacles of Heine and of Lucian. But he was fallen on evil times +and evil tongues; while Lucian, as witty as he, as bitter in +mockery, as happily dowered with the magic of words, lived long and +happily and honoured, imprisoned in no "mattress-grave." Without +Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, +even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless +Plato came by your way, none of the ancients could meet you in the +lists of sportive dialogue. + +There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more +excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds +bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the +Blessed come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; +there, in a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor +autumn, nor noon, where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is +perennial, where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my +Lucian, you are crowned the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth. + +Who would bring you, if he had the power, from the banquet where +Homer sings: Homer, who, in mockery of commentators, past and to +come, German and Greek, informed you that he was by birth a +Babylonian? Yet, if you, who first wrote Dialogues of the Dead, +could hear the prayer of an epistle wafted to "lands indiscoverable +in the unheard-of West," you might visit once more a world so worthy +of such a mocker, so like the world you knew so well of old. + +Ah, Lucian, we have need of you, of your sense and of your mockery! +Here, where faith is sick and superstition is waking afresh; where +gods come rarely, and spectres appear at five shillings an +interview; where science is popular, and philosophy cries aloud in +the market-place, and clamour does duty for government, and Thais +and Lais are names of power--here, Lucian, is room and scope for +you. Can I not imagine a new "Auction of Philosophers," and what +wealth might be made by him who bought these popular sages and +lecturers at his estimate, and vended them at their own? + +HERMES: Whom shall we put first up to auction? + +ZEUS: That German in spectacles; he seems a highly respectable man. + +HERMES: Ho, Pessimist, come down and let the public view you. + +ZEUS: Go on, put him up and have done with him. + +HERMES: Who bids for the Life Miserable, for extreme, complete, +perfect, unredeemable perdition? What offers for the universal +extinction of the species, and the collapse of the Conscious? + +A PURCHASER: He does not look at all a bad lot. May one put him +through his paces? + +HERMES: Certainly; try your luck. + +PURCHASER: What is your name? + +PESSIMIST: Hartmann. + +PURCHASER: What can you teach me? + +PESSIMIST: That Life is not worth Living. + +PURCHASER: Wonderful Most edifying! How much for this lot? + +HERMES: Two hundred pounds. + +PURCHASER: I will write you a cheque for the money. Come home, +Pessimist, and begin your lessons without more ado. + +HERMES: Attention! Here is a magnificent article--the Positive +Life, the Scientific Life, the Enthusiastic Life. Who bids for a +possible place in the Calendar of the Future? + +PURCHASER: What does he call himself? he has a very French air. + +HERMES: Put your own questions. + +PURCHASER: What's your pedigree, my Philosopher, and previous +performances? + +POSITIVIST: I am by Rousseau out of Catholicism, with a strain of +the Evolution blood. + +PURCHASER: What do you believe in? + +POSITIVIST: In Man, with a large M. + +PURCHASER: Not in individual Man? + +POSITIVIST: By no means; not even always in Mr. Gladstone. All +men, all Churches, all parties, all philosophies, and even the other +sect of our own Church, are perpetually in the wrong. Buy me, and +listen to me, and you will always be in the right. + +PURCHASER: And, after this life, what have you to offer me? + +POSITIVIST: A distinguished position in the Choir Invisible; but +not, of course, conscious immortality. + +PURCHASER: Take him away, and put up another lot. + +Then the Hegelian, with his Notion, and the Darwinian, with his +notions, and the Lotzian, with his Broad Church mixture of Religion +and Evolution, and the Spencerian, with that Absolute which is a +sort of a something, might all be offered with their divers wares; +and cheaply enough, Lucian, you would value them in this auction of +Sects. "There is but one way to Corinth," as of old; but which that +way may be, oh master of Hermotimus, we know no more than he did of +old; and still we find, of all philosophies, that the Stoic route is +most to be recommended. But we have our Cyrenaics too, though they +are no longer "clothed in purple, and crowned with flowers, and fond +of drink and of female flute-players." Ah, here too, you might +laugh, and fail to see where the Pleasure lies, when the Cyrenaics +are no "judges of cakes" (nor of ale, for that matter), and are +strangers in the Courts of Princes. "To despise all things, to make +use of all things, in all things to follow pleasure only:" that is +not the manner of the new, if it were the secret of the older +Hedonism. + +Then, turning from the philosophers to the seekers after a sign, +what change, Lucian, would you find in them and their ways? None; +they are quite unaltered. Still our Peregrinus, and our Peregrina +too, come to us from the East, or, if from the West, they take India +on their way--India, that secular home of drivelling creeds, and of +religion in its sacerdotage. Still they prattle of Brahmins and +Buddhism; though, unlike Peregrinus, they do not publicly burn +themselves on pyres, at Epsom Downs, after the Derby. We are not so +fortunate in the demise of our Theosophists; and our police, less +wise than the Hellenodicae, would probably not permit the Immolation +of the Quack. Like your Alexander, they deal in marvels and +miracles, oracles and warnings. All such bogy stories as those of +your "Philopseudes," and the ghost of the lady who took to table- +rapping because one of her best slippers had not been burned with +her body, are gravely investigated by the Psychical Society. + +Even your ignorant Bibliophile is still with us--the man without a +tinge of letters, who buys up old manuscripts "because they are +stained and gnawed, and who goes, for proof of valued antiquity, to +the testimony of the book-worms." And the rich Bibliophile now, as +in your satire, clothes his volumes in purple morocco and gay +dorures, while their contents are sealed to him. + +As to the topics of satire and gay curiosity which occupy the lady +known as "Gyp," and M. Halevy in his "Les Petites Cardinal," if you +had not exhausted the matter in your "Dialogues of Hetairai," you +would be amused to find the same old traits surviving without a +touch of change. One reads, in Halevy's French, of Madame Cardinal, +and, in your Greek, of the mother of Philinna, and marvels that +eighteen hundred years have not in one single trifle altered the +mould. Still the old shabby light-loves, the old greed, the old +luxury and squalor. Still the unconquerable superstition that now +seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your time, resorted to +the sorceress with her magical "bull-roarer" or turndun. {6} + +Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of +unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and +at whom you smiled. Nay, our very "social question" is not altered. +Do you not write, in "The Runaways," "The artisans will abandon +their workshops, and leave their trades, when they see that, with +all the labour that bows their bodies from dawn to dark, they make a +petty and starveling pittance, while men that toil not nor spin are +floating in Pactolus"? + +They begin to see this again as of yore; but whether the end of +their vision will be a laughing matter, you, fortunate Lucian, do +not need to care. Hail to you, and farewell! + + + +LETTER--To Maitre Francoys Rabelais. Of the coming of the +Coqcigrues. + + + +Master,--In the Boreal and Septentrional lands, turned aside from +the noonday and the sun, there dwelt of old (as thou knowest, and as +Olaus voucheth) a race of men, brave, strong, nimble, and +adventurous, who had no other care but to fight and drink. There, +by reason of the cold (as Virgil witnesseth), men break wine with +axes. To their minds, when once they were dead and gotten to +Valhalla, or the place of their Gods, there would be no other +pleasure but to swig, tipple, drink, and boose till the coming of +that last darkness and Twilight, wherein they, with their deities, +should do battle against the enemies of all mankind; which day they +rather desired than dreaded. + +So chanced it also with Pantagruel and Brother John and their +company, after they had once partaken of the secret of the Dive +Bouteille. Thereafter they searched no longer; but, abiding at +their ease, were merry, frolic, jolly, gay, glad, and wise; only +that they always and ever did expect the awful Coming of the +Coqcigrues. Now concerning the day of that coming, and the nature +of them that should come, they knew nothing; and for his part +Panurge was all the more adread, as Aristotle testifieth that men +(and Panurge above others) most fear that which they know least. +Now it chanced one day, as they sat at meat, with viands rare, +dainty, and precious as ever Apicius dreamed of, that there +fluttered on the air a faint sound as of sermons, speeches, +orations, addresses, discourses, lectures, and the like; whereat +Panurge, pricking up his ears, cried, "Methinks this wind bloweth +from Midlothian," and so fell a trembling. + +Next, to their aural orifices, and the avenues audient of the brain, +was borne a very melancholy sound as of harmoniums, hymns, organ- +pianos, psalteries, and the like, all playing different airs, in a +kind most hateful to the Muses. Then said Panurge, as well as he +might for the chattering of his teeth: "May I never drink if here +come not the Coqcigrues!" and this saying and prophecy of his was +true and inspired. But thereon the others began to mock, flout, and +gird at Panurge for his cowardice. "Here am I!" cried Brother John, +"well-armed and ready to stand a siege; being entrenched, fortified, +hemmed-in and surrounded with great pasties, huge pieces of salted +beef, salads, fricassees, hams, tongues, pies, and a wilderness of +pleasant little tarts, jellies, pastries, trifles, and fruits of all +kinds, and I shall not thirst while I have good wells, founts, +springs, and sources of Bordeaux wine, Burgundy, wine of the +Champagne country, sack and Canary. A fig for thy Coqcigrues!" + +But even as he spoke there ran up suddenly a whole legion, or rather +army, of physicians, each armed with laryngoscopes, stethoscopes, +horoscopes, microscopes, weighing machines, and such other tools, +engines, and arms as they had who, after thy time, persecuted +Monsieur de Pourceaugnac! And they all, rushing on Brother John, +cried out to him, "Abstain! Abstain!" And one said, "I have well +diagnosed thee, and thou art in a fair way to have the gout." "I +never did better in my days," said Brother John. "Away with thy +meats and drinks!" they cried. And one said, "He must to Royat;" +and another, "Hence with him to Aix;" and a third, "Banish him to +Wiesbaden;" and a fourth, "Hale him to Gastein;" and yet another, +"To Barbouille with him in chains!" + +And while others felt his pulse and looked at his tongue, they all +wrote prescriptions for him like men mad. "For thy eating," cried +he that seemed to be their leader, "No soup!" "No soup!" quoth +Brother John; and those cheeks of his, whereat you might have warmed +your two hands in the winter solstice, grew white as lilies. "Nay! +and no salmon, nor any beef nor mutton! A little chicken by times, +pericolo tuo! Nor any game, such as grouse, partridge, pheasant, +capercailzie, wild duck; nor any cheese, nor fruit, nor pastry, nor +coffee, nor eau de vie; and avoid all sweets. No veal, pork, nor +made dishes of any kind." "Then what may I eat?" quoth the good +Brother, whose valour had oozed out of the soles of his sandals. "A +little cold bacon at breakfast--no eggs," quoth the leader of the +strange folk, "and a slice of toast without butter." "And for thy +drink"--("What?" gasped Brother John)--"one dessert-spoonful of +whisky, with a pint of the water of Apollinaris at luncheon and +dinner. No more!" At this Brother John fainted, falling like a +great buttress of a hill, such as Taygetus or Erymanthus. + +While they were busy with him, others of the frantic folk had built +great platforms of wood, whereon they all stood and spoke at once, +both men and women. And of these some wore red crosses on their +garments, which meaneth "Salvation;" and others wore white crosses, +with a little black button of crape, to signify "Purity;" and others +bits of blue to mean "Abstinence." While some of these pursued +Panurge others did beset Pantagruel; asking him very long questions, +whereunto he gave but short answers. Thus they asked:- + +Have ye Local Option here?--Pan.: What? + +May one man drink if his neighbour be not athirst?--Pan.: Yea! + +Have ye Free Education?--Pan.: What? + +Must they that have, pay to school them that have not?--Pan.: Nay! + +Have ye free land?--Pan.: What? + +Have ye taken the land from the farmer, and given it to the tailor +out of work and the candlemaker masterless?--Pan.: Nay! + +Have your women folk votes?--Pan.: Bosh! + +Have ye got religion?--Pan.: How? + +Do you go about the streets at night, brawling, blowing a trumpet +before you, and making long prayers?--Pan.: Nay! + +Have you manhood suffrage?--Pan.: Eh? + +Is Jack as good as his master?--Pan.: Nay! + +Have you joined the Arbitration Society?--Pan.: Quoy? + +Will you let another kick you, and will you ask his neighbour if you +deserve the same?--Pan.: Nay! + +Do you eat what you list?--Pan.: Ay! + +Do you drink when you are athirst?--Pan.: Ay! + +Are you governed by the free expression of the popular will?--Pan.: +How? + +Are you servants of priests, pulpits, and penny papers?--Pan.: NO! + +Now, when they heard these answers of Pantagruel they all fell, some +a weeping, some a praying, some a swearing, some an arbitrating, +some a lecturing, some a caucussing, some a preaching, some a faith- +healing, some a miracle-working, some a hypnotising, some a writing +to the daily press; and while they were thus busy, like folk +distraught, "reforming the island," Pantagruel burst out a laughing; +whereat they were greatly dismayed; for laughter killeth the whole +race of Coqcigrues, and they may not endure it. + +Then Pantagruel and his company stole aboard a barque that Panurge +had ready in the harbour. And having provisioned her well with +store of meat and good drink, they set sail for the kingdom of +Entelechy, where, having landed, they were kindly entreated; and +there abide to this day; drinking of the sweet and eating of the +fat, under the protection of that intellectual sphere which hath in +all places its centre and nowhere its circumference. + +Such was their destiny; there was their end appointed, and thither +the Coqcigrues can never come. For all the air of that land is full +of laughter, which killeth Coqcigrues; and there aboundeth the herb +Pantagruelion. But for thee, Master Francoys, thou art not well +liked in this island of ours, where the Coqcigrues are abundant, +very fierce, cruel, and tyrannical. Yet thou hast thy friends, that +meet and drink to thee, and wish thee well wheresoever thou hast +found thy grand peut-etre. + + + +LETTER--To Jane Austen + + + +Madam,--If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view +of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were +the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. +Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled +with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion +of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of +our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt +to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable +art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection. + +As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little +that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was +almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a +very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on +every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the +Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow +was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character +as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The +editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your +witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own. +While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your +exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced +of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you +gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; +for your books you reserved matter and expression which are +imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all +persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the +rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but +temperate laudation. + +'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes +of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the +manners of to-day, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott +"slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you +return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of +the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the +general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters, +especially your favourite heroines! how limited the life which you +knew and described! how narrow the range of your incidents! how +correct your grammar! + +As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, +and Catherine: women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for +the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and +the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and +unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can +engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their +affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and +solicit his regard? + +Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden +fleurs-de-lys --ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who +count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and +even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical +importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant +Italian musicians--maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the +contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art +of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more +admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the +inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the +corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of Dukes, where +are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor +satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific +fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as +well as in France and at home. + +You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia +and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost +insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have +gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your +time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even +now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of +the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he +climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung +on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and +finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a +jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been +less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the +whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over +the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and +the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a +romance still dear to young ladies. + +Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you +concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry +Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield +Park." But you timidly decline to tackle Passion. "Let other +pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious +subjects as soon as I can." Ah, THERE is the secret of your +failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social +circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more +than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these +unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in +society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and +we get lords (and very queer lords) even from Republican authors, +born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its +literature. I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of +fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give +each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to +dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your +acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements. +How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep +his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were +superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being +invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law +established. The Dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides +from Esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the Higher +Pantheism to the Higher Paganism, we look for in vain among your +studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown +sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's +travailings? + +You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; +proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the +duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your +works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our +attention--the great controversy on Creation or Evolution. Your +Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much Design in +the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty +social question, the Land Laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a +Land Reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling +an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man +whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly +unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay, +you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had been flogged, +without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But you +formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with +solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the +story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were +born before Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, +or Irreverence, or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope +to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed +generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not see their +red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled in the manner of our frank +young Maenads. What says your best successor, a lady who adds fresh +lustre to a name that in fiction equals yours? She says of Miss +Austen: "Her heroines have a stamp of their own. THEY HAVE A +CERTAIN GENTLE SELF-RESPECT AND HUMOUR AND HARDNESS OF HEART . . . +Love with them does not mean a passion as much as an interest, deep +and silent." I think one prefers them so, and that Englishwomen +should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the +privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when +existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on +a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a +relief it is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the +follies of to-day in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How +fine, nay, how noble is your art in its delicate reserve, never +insisting, never forcing the note, never pushing the sketch into the +caricature! You worked, without thinking of it, in the spirit of +Greece, on a labour happily limited, and exquisitely organised. +"Dear books," we say, with Miss Thackeray--"dear books, bright, +sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines +charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting." + + + +LETTER--To Master Isaak Walton + + + +Father Isaac,--When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom +to carry in my wallet thy pretty book, "The Compleat Angler." Here, +methinks, if I find not trout I shall find content, and good +company, and sweet songs, fair milkmaids, and country mirth. For +you are to know that trout be now scarce and whereas he was ever a +fearful fish, he hath of late become so wary that none but the +cunningest anglers may be even with him. + +It is not as it was in your time, Father, when a man might leave his +shop in Fleet Street, of a holiday, and, when he had stretched his +legs up Tottenham Hill, come lightly to meadows chequered with +waterlilies and lady-smocks, and so fall to his sport. Nay, now +have the houses so much increased, like a spreading sore (through +the breaking of that excellent law of the Conscientious King and +blessed Martyr, whereby building beyond the walls was forbidden), +that the meadows are all swallowed up in streets. And as to the +River Lea, wherein you took many a good trout, I read in the news +sheets that "its bed is many inches thick in horrible filth, and the +air for more than half a mile on each side of it is polluted with a +horrible, sickening stench," so that we stand in dread of a new +Plague, called the Cholera. And so it is all about London for many +miles, and if a man, at heavy charges, betake himself to the fields, +lo you, folk are grown so greedy that none will suffer a stranger to +fish in his water. + +So poor anglers are in sore straits. Unless a man be rich and can +pay great rents, he may not fish in England, and hence spring the +discontents of the times, for the angler is full of content, if he +do but take trout, but if he be driven from the waterside, he falls, +perchance, into evil company, and cries out to divide the property +of the gentle folk. As many now do, even among Parliament-men, whom +you loved not, Father Isaak, neither do I love them more than Reason +and Scripture bid each of us be kindly to his neighbour. But, +behold, the causes of the ill content are not yet all expressed, for +even where a man hath licence to fish, he will hardly take trout in +our age, unless he be all the more cunning. For the fish, harried +this way and that by so many of your disciples, is exceeding shy and +artful, nor will he bite at a fly unless it falleth lightly, just +above his mouth, and floateth dry over him, for all the world like +the natural ephemeris. And we may no longer angle with worm for +him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the natural fly, as was your +manner, but only with the artificial, for the more difficulty the +more diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator in your book, +"Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second Angle: I +have no fortune." + +So we fare in England, but somewhat better north of the Tweed, where +trout are less wary, but for the most part small, except in the +extreme rough north, among horrid hills and lakes. Thither, Master, +as methinks you may remember, went Richard Franck, that called +himself Philanthropus, and was, as it were, the Columbus of anglers, +discovering for them a new Hyperborean world. But Franck, +doubtless, is now an angler in the Lake of Darkness, with Nero and +other tyrants, for he followed after Cromwell, the man of blood, in +the old riding days. How wickedly doth Franck boast of that leader +of the giddy multitude, "when they raged, and became restless to +find out misery for themselves and others, and the rabble would herd +themselves together," as you said, "and endeavour to govern and act +in spite of authority." So you wrote; and what said Franck, that +recreant angler? Doth he not praise "Ireton, Vane, Nevill, and +Martin, and the most renowned, valorous, and victorious conqueror, +Oliver Cromwell"? Natheless, with all his sins on his head, this +Franck discovered Scotland for anglers, and my heart turns to him +when he praises "the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed." + +In those wilds of Assynt and Loch Rannoch, Father, we, thy +followers, may yet take trout, and forget the evils of the times. +But, to be done with Franck, how harshly he speaks of thee and thy +book. "For you may dedicate your opinion to what scribbling +putationer you please; the Compleat Angler if you will, who tells +you of a tedious fly story, extravagantly collected from antiquated +authors, such as Gesner and Dubravius." Again he speaks of "Isaac +Walton, whose authority to me seems alike authentick, as is the +general opinion of the vulgar prophet," &c. + +Certain I am that Franck, if a better angler than thou, was a worse +man, who, writing his "Dialogues Piscatorial" or "Northern Memoirs" +five years after the world welcomed thy "Compleat Angler," was +jealous of thy favour with the people, and, may be, hated thee for +thy loyalty and sound faith. But, Master, like a peaceful man +avoiding contention, thou didst never answer this blustering Franck, +but wentest quietly about thy quiet Lea, and left him his roaring +Brora and windy Assynt. How could this noisy man know thee--and +know thee he did, having argued with thee in Stafford--and not love +Isaak Walton? A pedant angler, I call him, a plaguy angler, so let +him huff away, and turn we to thee and to thy sweet charm in fishing +for men. + +How often, studying in thy book, have I hummed to myself that of +Horace - + + +Laudis amore tumes? Sunt certa piacula quae te +Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello. + + +So healing a book for the frenzy of fame is thy discourse on +meadows, and pure streams, and the country life. How peaceful, men +say, and blessed must have been the life of this old man, how lapped +in content, and hedged about by his own humility from the world! +They forget, who speak thus, that thy years, which were many, were +also evil, or would have seemed evil to divers that had tasted of +thy fortunes. Thou wert poor, but that, to thee, was no sorrow, for +greed of money was thy detestation. Thou wert of lowly rank, in an +age when gentle blood was alone held in regard; yet thy virtues made +thee hosts of friends, and chiefly among religious men, bishops, and +doctors of the Church. Thy private life was not unacquainted with +sorrow; thy first wife and all her fair children were taken from +thee like flowers in spring, though, in thine age, new love and new +offspring comforted thee like "the primrose of the later year." Thy +private griefs might have made thee bitter, or melancholy, so might +the sorrows of the State and of the Church, which were deprived of +their heads by cruel men, despoiled of their wealth, the pious +driven, like thee, from their homes; fear everywhere, everywhere +robbery and confusion: all this ruin might have angered another +temper. But thou, Father, didst bear all with so much sweetness as +perhaps neither natural temperament, nor a firm faith, nor the love +of angling could alone have displayed. For we see many anglers (as +witness Richard Franck aforesaid) who are angry men, and myself, +when I get my hooks entangled at every cast in a tree, have come +nigh to swear prophane. + +Also we see religious men that are sour and fanatical, no rare thing +in the party that professes godliness. But neither private sorrow +nor public grief could abate thy natural kindliness, nor shake a +religion which was not untried, but had, indeed, passed through the +furnace like fine gold. For if we find not Faith at all times easy, +because of the oppositions of Science, and the searching curiosity +of men's minds, neither was Faith a matter of course in thy day. +For the learned and pious were greatly tossed about, like worthy Mr. +Chillingworth, by doubts wavering between the Church of Rome and the +Reformed Church of England. The humbler folk, also, were invited, +now here, now there, by the clamours of fanatical Nonconformists, +who gave themselves out to be somebody, while Atheism itself was not +without many to witness to it. Therefore, such a religion as thine +was not, so to say, a mere innocence of evil in the things of our +Belief, but a reasonable and grounded faith, strong in despite of +oppositions. Happy was the man in whom temper, and religion, and +the love of the sweet country and an angler's pastime so +conveniently combined; happy the long life which held in its hand +that threefold clue through the labyrinth of human fortunes! Around +thee Church and State might fall in ruins, and might be rebuilded, +and thy tears would not be bitter, nor thy triumph cruel. + +Thus, by God's blessing, it befell thee + + +Nec turpem senectam +Degere, nec cithara carentem. + + +I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems. +Those recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of +Dr. Donne and others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of +thy kind heart than thy fancy. But what or whose was the pastoral +poem of "Thealma and Clearchus," which thou didst set about printing +in 1678, and gavest to the world in 1683? Thou gavest John +Chalkhill for the author's name, and a John Chalkhill of thy kindred +died at Winchester, being eighty years of his age, in 1679. Now +thou speakest of John Chalkhill as "a friend of Edmund Spenser's," +and how could this be? + +Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a +friend, borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to +cover poetry of thine own inditing? When Mr. Flatman writes of +Chalkhill, 'tis in words well fitted to thine own merit: + + +Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows +Except himself, who charitably shows +The ready road to virtue and to praise, +The road to many long and happy days. + + +However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green +pastures, thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, +who stray into thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold +thy hand, and listen to thy cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, +may our content be equal, and our praise, therefore, none the less. +Father, if Master Stoddard, the great fisher of Tweedside, be with +thee, greet him for me, and thank him for those songs of his, and +perchance he will troll thee a catch of our dear River. + + +Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound, +They know not, they dream not, who linger around, +How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin +From thee--the bliss withered within. + + +Or perhaps thou wilt better love, + + +The lanesome Tala and the Lyne, +And Manor wi' its mountain rills, +An' Etterick, whose waters twine +Wi' Yarrow frae the forest hills; +An' Gala, too, and Teviot bright, +An' mony a stream o' playfu' speed, +Their kindred valleys a' unite +Amang the braes o' bonnie Tweed! + + +So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old +anglers, like Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age. + + + +LETTER--To M. Chapelain + + + +Monsieur,--You were a popular poet, and an honourable, over- +educated, upright gentleman. Of the latter character you can never +be deprived, and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you +are, than the laurels which flourished so gaily, and faded so soon. + + +Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day, +But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May. + + +I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but YOUR +laurel certainly outlived not May, nor can we hope that you dwell +where Orpheus and where Homer are. Some other crown, some other +Paradise, we cannot doubt it, awaited un si bon homme. But the +moral excellence that even Boileau admitted, la foi, l'honneur, la +probite, do not in Parnassus avail the popular poet, and some +luckless Glatigny or Theophile, Regnier or Gilbert, attains a kind +of immortality denied to the man of many contemporary editions, and +of a great commercial success. + +If ever, for the confusion of Horace, any Poet was Made, you, Sir, +should have been that fortunately manufactured article. You were, +in matters of the Muses, the child of many prayers. Never, since +Adam's day, have any parents but yours prayed for a poet-child. +Then Destiny, that mocks the desires of men in general, and fathers +in particular, heard the appeal, and presented M. Chapelain and +Jeanne Corbiere his wife with the future author of "La Pucelle." Oh +futile hopes of men, O pectora caeca! All was done that education +could do for a genius which, among other qualities, "especially +lacked fire and imagination," and an ear for verse--sad defects +these in a child of the Muses. Your training in all the mechanics +and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim, like +Rasselas, "Enough! Thou hast convinced me that no human being can +ever be a Poet." Unhappily, you succeeded in convincing Cardinal +Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your powers, you +received a pension of one thousand crowns, and were made Captain of +the Cardinal's Minstrels, as M. de Treville was Captain of the +King's Musketeers. + +Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were +more richly endowed than ever is Research, even Research in +Prehistoric English, among us niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a +Cardinal, or even, as you did, a Prime Minister, who would praise +and pension ME; but envy be still! Your existence was made happy +indeed; you constructed odes, corrected sonnets, presided at the +Hotel Rambouillet, while the learned ladies were still young and +fair, and you enjoyed a prodigious celebrity on the score of your +yet unpublished Epic. "Who, indeed," says a sympathetic author, M. +Theophile Gautier, "who could expect less than a miracle from a man +so deeply learned in the laws of art--a perfect Turk in the science +of poetry, a person so well pensioned, and so favoured by the +great?" Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good faith to +advertise your merits. Hard must have been the heart that could +resist the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc +de Montausier, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and +Monseigneur Godeau, Bishop of Vence, and M. Colbert, who had such a +genius for finance. + +If bishops and politicians and Prime Ministers skilled in finance, +and some critics (Menage and Sarrazin and Vaugelas), if ladies of +birth and taste, if all the world in fact, combined to tell you that +you were a great poet, how can we blame you for taking yourself +seriously, and appraising yourself at the public estimate? + +It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops +especially, and when every minor poet believes in himself on the +testimony of his own conceit, you may be acquitted of vanity if you +listened to the plaudits of your friends. Nay, you ventured to +pronounce judgment on contemporaries--whom Posterity has preferred +to your perfections. "Moliere," said you, "understands the genius +of comedy, and presents it in a natural style. The plot of his best +pieces is borrowed, but not without judgment; his morale is fair, +and he has only to avoid scurrility." + +Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain! + +Of yourself you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature, +that your "courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work +not absolutely good." And yet you regarded "La Pucelle" with some +complacency. + +On the "Pucelle" you were occupied during a generation of mortal +men. I marvel not at the length of your labours, as you received a +yearly pension till the Epic was finished, but your Muse was no +Alcmena, and no Hercules was the result of that prolonged night of +creation. First you gravely wrote out all the composition in prose: +the task occupied you for five whole years. Ah, why did you not +leave it in that commonplace but appropriate medium? What says the +Precieuse about you in Boileau's satire? + + +In Chapelain, for all his foes have said, +She finds but one defect, he can't be read; +Yet thinks the world might taste his Maiden's woes, +If only he would turn his verse to prose! + + +The verse had been prose, and prose, perhaps, it should have +remained. Yet for this precious "Pucelle," in the age when +"Paradise Lost" was sold for five pounds, you are believed to have +received about four thousand. Horace was wrong, mediocre poets may +exist (now and then), and he was a wise man who first spoke of aurea +mediocritas. At length the great work was achieved, a work thrice +blessed in its theme, that divine Maiden to whom France owes all, +and whom you and Voltaire have recompensed so strangely. In folio, +in italics, with a score of portraits and engravings, and culs de +lampe, the great work was given to the world, and had a success. +Six editions in eighteen months are figures which fill the poetic +heart with envy and admiration. And then, alas! the bubble burst. +A great lady, Madame de Longueville, hearing the "Pucelle" read +aloud, murmured that it was "perfect indeed, but perfectly +wearisome." Then the satires began, and the satirists never left +you till your poetic reputation was a rag, till the mildest Abbe at +Menage's had his cheap sneer for Chapelain. + +I make no doubt, Sir, that envy and jealousy had much to do with the +onslaught on your "Pucelle." These qualities, alas! are not strange +to literary minds; does not even Hesiod tell us that "potter hates +potter, and poet hates poet"? But contemporary spites do not harm +true genius. Who suffered more than Moliere from cabals? Yet +neither the court nor the town ever deserted him, and he is still +the joy of the world. I admit that his adversaries were weaker than +yours. What were Boursault and Le Boulanger, and Thomas Corneille +and De Vise, what were they all compared to your enemy, Boileau? +Brossette tells a story which really makes a man pity you. You +remember M. de Puimorin, who, to be in the fashion, laughed at your +once popular Epic. "It is all very well," said you, "for a man to +laugh who cannot even read." Whereon M. de Puimorin replied: +"Qu'il n'avoit que trop su lire, depuis que Chapelain s'etoit avise +de faire imprimer." A new horror had been added to the +accomplishment of reading since Chapelain had published. This +repartee was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried to turn it into an +epigram. He did complete the last couplet, + + +Helas! pour mes peches, je n'ai su que trop lire +Depuis que tu fais imprimer. + + +But by no labour would M. de Puimorin achieve the first two lines of +his epigram. Then you remember what great allies came to his +assistance. I almost blush to think that M. Despreaux, M. Racine, +and M. de Moliere, the three most renowned wits of the time, +conspired to complete the poor jest, and assail you. Well, bubble +as your poetry was, you may be proud that it needed all these +sharpest of pens to prick the bubble. Other poets, as popular as +you, have been annihilated by an article. Macaulay put forth his +hand, and "Satan Montgomery" was no more. It did not need a +Macaulay, the laughter of a mob of little critics was enough to blow +him into space; but you probably have met Montgomery, and of +contemporary failures or successes I do not speak. + +I wonder, sometimes, whether the consensus of criticism ever made +you doubt for a moment whether, after all, you were not a false +child of Apollo? Was your complacency tortured, as the complacency +of true poets has occasionally been, by doubts? Did you expect +posterity to reverse the verdict of the satirists, and to do you +justice? You answered your earliest assailant, Liniere, and, by a +few changes of words, turned his epigrams into flattery. But I +fancy, on the whole, you remained calm, unmoved, wrapped up in +admiration of yourself. According to M. de Marivaux, who reviewed, +as I am doing, the spirits of the mighty dead, you "conceived, on +the strength of your reputation, a great and serious veneration for +yourself and your genius." Probably you were protected by the +invulnerable armour of an honest vanity, probably you declared that +mere jealousy dictated the lines of Boileau, and that Chapelain's +real fault was his popularity, and his pecuniary success, + + +Qu'il soit le mieux rente de tous les beaux-esprits. + + +This, you would avow, was your offence, and perhaps you were not +altogether mistaken. Yet posterity declines to read a line of +yours, and, as we think of you, we are again set face to face with +that eternal problem, how far is popularity a test of poetry? Burns +was a poet: and popular. Byron was a popular poet, and the world +agrees in the verdict of their own generations. But Montgomery, +though he sold so well, was no poet, nor, Sir, I fear, was your +verse made of the stuff of immortality. Criticism cannot hurt what +is truly great; the Cardinal and the Academy left Chimene as fair as +ever, and as adorable. It is only pinchbeck that perishes under the +acids of satire: gold defies them. Yet I sometimes ask myself, +does the existence of popularity like yours justify the malignity of +satire, which blesses neither him who gives, nor him who takes? Are +poisoned arrows fair against a bad poet? I doubt it, Sir, holding +that, even unpricked, a poetic bubble must soon burst by its own +nature. Yet satire will assuredly be written so long as bad poets +are successful, and bad poets will assuredly reflect that their +assailants are merely envious, and (while their vogue lasts) that +the purchasing public is the only judge. After all, the bad poet +who is popular and "sells" is not a whit worse than the bad poets +who are unpopular, and who deride his songs. + +Monsieur, + +Votre tres-humble serviteur, &c. + + + +LETTER--To Sir John Maundeville, Kt. (OF THE WAYS INTO YNDE.) + + + +Sir John,--Wit you well that men holden you but light, and some +clepen you a Liar. And they say that you never were born in +Englond, in the town of Seynt Albones, nor have seen and gone +through manye diverse Londes. And there goeth an old knight at +arms, and one that connes Latyn, and hath been beyond the sea, and +hath seen Prester John's country. And he hath been in an Yle that +men clepen Burmah, and there bin women bearded. Now men call him +Colonel Henry Yule, and he hath writ of thee in his great booke, Sir +John, and he holds thee but lightly. For he saith that ye did pill +your tales out of Odoric his book, and that ye never saw snails with +shells as big as houses, nor never met no Devyls, but part of that +ye say, ye took it out of William of Boldensele his book, yet ye +took not his wisdom, withal, but put in thine own foolishness. +Nevertheless, Sir John, for the frailty of Mankynde, ye are held a +good fellow, and a merry; so now, come, let me tell you of the new +ways into Ynde. + +In that Lond they have a Queen that governeth all the Lond, and all +they ben obeyssant to her. And she is the Queen of Englond; for +Englishmen have taken all the Lond of Ynde. For they were right +good werryoures of old, and wyse, noble, and worthy. But of late +hath risen a new sort of Englishman very puny and fearful, and these +men clepen Radicals. And they go ever in fear, and they scream on +high for dread in the streets and the houses, and they fain would +flee away from all that their fathers gat them with the sword. And +this sort men call Scuttleres, but the mean folk and certain of the +baser sort hear them gladly, and they say ever that Englishmen +should flee out of Ynde. + +Fro Englond men gon to Ynde by many dyverse Contreyes. For +Englishmen ben very stirring and nymble. For they ben in the +seventh climate, that is of the Moon. And the Moon (ye have said it +yourself, Sir John, natheless, is it true) is of lightly moving, for +to go diverse ways, and see strange things, and other diversities of +the Worlde. Wherefore Englishmen be lightly moving, and far +wandering. And they gon to Ynde by the great Sea Ocean. First come +they to Gibraltar, that was the point of Spain, and builded upon a +rock; and there ben apes, and it is so strong that no man may take +it. Natheless did Englishmen take it fro the Spanyard, and all to +hold the way to Ynde. For ye may sail all about Africa, and past +the Cape men clepen of Good Hope, but that way unto Ynde is long and +the sea is weary. Wherefore men rather go by the Midland sea, and +Englishmen have taken many Yles in that sea. + +For first they have taken an Yle that is clept Malta; and therein +built they great castles, to hold it against them of Fraunce, and +Italy, and of Spain. And from this Ile of Malta Men gon to Cipre. +And Cipre is right a good Yle, and a fair, and a great, and it hath +4 principal Cytees within him. And at Famagost is one of the +principal Havens of the sea that is in the world, and Englishmen +have but a lytel while gone won that Yle from the Sarazynes. Yet +say that sort of Englishmen where of I told you, that is puny and +sore adread, that the Lond is poisonous and barren and of no avail, +for that Lond is much more hotter than it is here. Yet the +Englishmen that ben werryoures dwell there in tents, and the skill +is that they may ben the more fresh. + +From Cypre, Men gon to the Lond of Egypte, and in a Day and a Night +he that hath a good wind may come to the Haven of Alessandrie. Now +the Lond of Egypt longeth to the Soudan, yet the Soudan longeth not +to the Lond of Egypt. And when I say this, I do jape with words, +and may hap ye understond me not. Now Englishmen went in shippes to +Alessandrie, and brent it, and over ran the Lond, and their +soudyours warred agen the Bedoynes, and all to hold the way to Ynde. +For it is not long past since Frenchmen let dig a dyke, through the +narrow spit of lond, from the Midland sea to the Red sea, wherein +was Pharaoh drowned. So this is the shortest way to Ynde there may +be, to sail through that dyke, if men gon by sea. + +But all the Lond of Egypt is clepen the Vale enchaunted; for no man +may do his business well that goes thither, but always fares he +evil, and therefore clepen they Egypt the Vale perilous, and the +sepulchre of reputations. And men say there that is one of the +entrees of Helle. In that Vale is plentiful lack of Gold and +Silver, for many misbelieving men, and many Christian men also, have +gone often time for to take of the Thresoure that there was of old, +and have pilled the Thresoure, wherefore there is none left. And +Englishmen have let carry thither great store of our Thresoure, +9,000,000 of Pounds sterling, and whether they will see it agen I +misdoubt me. For that Vale is alle fulle of Develes and Fiendes +that men clepen Bondholderes, for that Egypt from of olde is the +Lond of Bondage. And whatsoever Thresoure cometh into the Lond, +these Devyls of Bondholders grabben the same. Natheless by that +Vale do Englishmen go unto Ynde, and they gon by Aden, even to +Kurrachee, at the mouth of the Flood of Ynde. Thereby they send +their souldyours, when they are adread of them of Muscovy. + +For, look you, there is another way into Ynde, and thereby the men +of Muscovy are fain to come, if the Englishmen let them not. That +way cometh by Desert and Wildernesse, from the sea that is clept +Caspian, even to Khiva, and so to Merv; and then come ye to Zulfikar +and Penjdeh, and anon to Herat, that is called the Key of the Gates +of Ynde. Then ye win the lond of the Emir of the Afghauns, a great +prince and a rich, and he hath in his Thresoure more crosses, and +stars, and coats that captains wearen, than any other man on earth. + +For all they of Muscovy, and all Englishmen maken him gifts, and he +keepeth the gifts, and he keepeth his own counsel. For his lond +lieth between Ynde and the folk of Muscovy, wherefore both +Englishmen and men of Muscovy would fain have him friendly, yea, and +independent. Wherefore they of both parties give him clocks, and +watches, and stars, and crosses, and culverins, and now and again +they let cut the throats of his men some deal, and pill his country. +Thereby they both set up their rest that the Emir will be +independent, yea, and friendly. But his men love him not, neither +love they the English, nor the Muscovy folk, for they are +worshippers of Mahound, and endure not Christian men. And they love +not them that cut their throats, and burn their country. + +Now they of Muscovy ben Devyls, and they ben subtle for to make a +thing seme otherwise than it is, for to deceive mankind. Wherefore +Englishmen putten no trust in them of Muscovy, save only the +Englishmen clept Radicals, for they make as if they loved these +Develes, out of the fear and dread of war wherein they go, and would +be slaves sooner than fight. But the folk of Ynde know not what +shall befall, nor whether they of Muscovy will take the Lond, or +Englishmen shall keep it, so that their hearts may not enduren for +drede. And methinks that soon shall Englishmen and Muscovy folk put +their bodies in adventure, and war one with another, and all for the +way to Ynde. + +But St. George for Englond, I say, and so enough; and may the +Seyntes hele thee, Sir John, of thy Gowtes Artetykes, that thee +tormenten. But to thy Boke I list not to give no credence. + + + +LETTER--To Alexandre Dumas + + + +Sir,--There are moments when the wheels of life, even of such a life +as yours, run slow, and when mistrust and doubt overshadow even the +most intrepid disposition. In such a moment, towards the ending of +your days, you said to your son, M. Alexandre Dumas, "I seem to see +myself set on a pedestal which trembles as if it were founded on the +sands." These sands, your uncounted volumes, are all of gold, and +make a foundation more solid than the rock. As well might the +singer of Odysseus, or the authors of the "Arabian Nights," or the +first inventors of the stories of Boccaccio, believe that their +works were perishable (their names, indeed, have perished), as the +creator of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" alarm himself with the thought +that the world could ever forget Alexandre Dumas. + +Than yours there has been no greater nor more kindly and beneficent +force in modern letters. To Scott, indeed, you owed the first +impulse of your genius; but, once set in motion, what miracles could +it not accomplish? Our dear Porthos was overcome, at last, by a +super-human burden; but your imaginative strength never found a task +too great for it. What an extraordinary vigour, what health, what +an overflow of force was yours! It is good, in a day of small and +laborious ingenuities, to breathe the free air of your books, and +dwell in the company of Dumas's men--so gallant, so frank, so +indomitable, such swordsmen, and such trenchermen. Like M. de +Rochefort in "Vingt Ans Apres," like that prisoner of the Bastille, +your genius "n'est que d'un parti, c'est du parti du grand air." + +There seems to radiate from you a still persistent energy and +enjoyment; in that current of strength not only your characters +live, frolic, kindly, and sane, but even your very collaborators +were animated by the virtue which went out of you. How else can we +explain it, the dreary charge which feeble and envious tongues have +brought against you, in England and at home? They say you employed +in your novels and dramas that vicarious aid which, in the slang of +the studio, the "sculptor's ghost" is fabled to afford. + +Well, let it be so; these ghosts, when uninspired by you, were faint +and impotent as "the strengthless tribes of the dead" in Homer's +Hades, before Odysseus had poured forth the blood that gave them a +momentary valour. It was from you and your inexhaustible vitality +that these collaborating spectres drew what life they possessed; and +when they parted from you they shuddered back into their +nothingness. Where are the plays, where the romances which Maquet +and the rest wrote in their own strength? They are forgotten with +last year's snows; they have passed into the wide waste-paper basket +of the world. You say of D'Artagnan, when severed from his three +friends--from Porthos, Athos, and Aramis--"he felt that he could do +nothing, save on the condition that each of these companions yielded +to him, if one may so speak, a share of that electric fluid which +was his gift from heaven." + +No man of letters ever had so great a measure of that gift as you; +none gave of it more freely to all who came--to the chance associate +of the hour, as to the characters, all so burly and full-blooded, +who flocked from your brain. Thus it was that you failed when you +approached the supernatural. Your ghosts had too much flesh and +blood, more than the living persons of feebler fancies. A writer so +fertile, so rapid, so masterly in the ease with which he worked, +could not escape the reproaches of barren envy. Because you +overflowed with wit, you could not be "serious;" because you created +with a word, you were said to scamp your work; because you were +never dull, never pedantic, incapable of greed, you were to be +censured as desultory, inaccurate, and prodigal. + +A generation suffering from mental and physical anaemia--a +generation devoted to the "chiselled phrase," to accumulated +"documents," to microscopic porings over human baseness, to minute +and disgustful records of what in humanity is least human--may +readily bring these unregarded and railing accusations. Like one of +the great and good-humoured Giants of Rabelais, you may hear the +murmurs from afar, and smile with disdain. To you, who can amuse +the world--to you who offer it the fresh air of the highway, the +battlefield, and the sea--the world must always return: escaping +gladly from the boudoirs and the bouges, from the surgeries and +hospitals, and dead rooms, of M. Daudet and M. Zola and of the +wearisome De Goncourt. + +With all your frankness, and with that queer morality of the Camp +which, if it swallows a camel now and again, never strains at a +gnat, how healthy and wholesome, and even pure, are your romances! +You never gloat over sin, nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the +corruptions of sense. The passions in your tales are honourable and +brave, the motives are clearly human. Honour, Love, Friendship make +the threefold cord, the clue your knights and dames follow through +how delightful a labyrinth of adventures! Your greatest books, I +take the liberty to maintain, are the Cycle of the Valois ("La Reine +Margot," "La Dame de Montsoreau," "Les Quarante-cinq"), and the +Cycle of Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze ("Les Trois Mousquetaires," +"Vingt Ans Apres," "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne"); and, beside these +two trilogies--a lonely monument, like the sphinx hard by the three +pyramids--"Monte Cristo." + +In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn +incense to that great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your +people worship. You had Brantome, you had Tallemant, you had Retif, +and a dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of +voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present +naturalistes. From these alcoves of "Les Dames Galantes," and from +the torture chambers (M. Zola would not have spared us one starting +sinew of brave La Mole on the rack) you turned, as Scott would have +turned, without a thought of their profitable literary uses. You +had other metal to work on: you gave us that superstitious and +tragical true love of La Mole's, that devotion--how tender and how +pure!--of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau. You gave us the valour +of D'Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the melancholy nobility of +Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters +are real people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the +end of "Bragelonne," and to part with them for ever. "Suppose +Porthos, Athos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, +curling their moustaches." How we would welcome them, forgiving +D'Artagnan even his hateful fourberie in the case of Milady. The +brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached: there is wit +everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink of +small-swords. Then what duels are yours! and what inimitable +battle-pieces! I know four good fights of one against a multitude, +in literature. These are the Death of Gretir the Strong, the Death +of Gunnar of Lithend, the Death of Hereward the Wake, the Death of +Bussy d'Amboise. We can compare the strokes of the heroic fighting- +times with those described in later days; and, upon my word, I do +not know that the short sword of Gretir, or the bill of Skarphedin, +or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the rapier of your +Bussy or the sword and shield of Kingsley's Hereward. + +They say your fencing is unhistorical; no doubt it is so, and you +knew it. La Mole could not have lunged on Coconnas "after deceiving +circle;" for the parry was not invented except by your immortal +Chicot, a genius in advance of his time. Even so Hamlet and Laertes +would have fought with shields and axes, not with small swords. But +what matters this pedantry? In your works we hear the Homeric Muse +again, rejoicing in the clash of steel; and even, at times, your +very phrases are unconsciously Homeric. + +Look at these men of murder, on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, who flee +in terror from the Queen's chamber, and "find the door too narrow +for their flight:" the very words were anticipated in a line of the +"Odyssey" concerning the massacre of the Wooers. And the picture of +Catherine de Medicis, prowling "like a wolf among the bodies and the +blood," in a passage of the Louvre--the picture is taken unwittingly +from the "Iliad." There was in you that reserve of primitive force, +that epic grandeur and simplicity of diction. This is the force +that animates "Monte Cristo," the earlier chapters, the prison, and +the escape. In later volumes of that romance, methinks, you stoop +your wing. Of your dramas I have little room, and less skill, to +speak. "Antony," they tell me, was "the greatest literary event of +its time," was a restoration of the stage. "While Victor Hugo needs +the cast-off clothes of history, the wardrobe and costume, the +sepulchre of Charlemagne, the ghost of Barbarossa, the coffins of +Lucretia Borgia, Alexandre Dumas requires no more than a room in an +inn, where people meet in riding cloaks, to move the soul with the +last degree of terror and of pity." + +The reproach of being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame--for a +moment. The shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast; and when +"La Curee" and "Pot-Bouille" are more forgotten than "Le Grand +Cyrus," men and women--and, above all, boys--will laugh and weep +over the page of Alexandre Dumas. Like Scott himself, you take us +captive in our childhood. I remember a very idle little boy who was +busy with the "Three Musketeers" when he should have been occupied +with "Wilkins's Latin Prose." "Twenty years after" (alas! and more) +he is still constant to that gallant company; and, at this very +moment, is breathlessly wondering whether Grimaud will steal M. de +Beaufort out of the Cardinal's prison. + + + +LETTER--To Theocritus + + + +"Sweet, methinks, is the whispering sound of yonder pine-tree," so, +Theocritus, with that sweet word [Greek text], didst thou begin and +strike the keynote of thy songs. "Sweet," and didst thou find aught +of sweet, when thou, like thy Daphnis, didst "go down the stream, +when the whirling wave closed over the man the Muses loved, the man +not hated of the Nymphs"? Perchance below those waters of death +thou didst find, like thine own Hylas, the lovely Nereids waiting +thee, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia with her April eyes. In the +House of Hades, Theocritus, doth there dwell aught that is fair, and +can the low light on the fields of asphodel make thee forget thy +Sicily? Nay, methinks thou hast not forgotten, and perchance for +poets dead there is prepared a place more beautiful than their +dreams. It was well for the later minstrels of another day, it was +well for Ronsard and Du Bellay to desire a dim Elysium of their own, +where the sunlight comes faintly through the shadow of the earth, +where the poplars are duskier, and the waters more pale than in the +meadows of Anjou. + +There, in that restful twilight, far remote from war and plot, from +sword and fire, and from religions that sharpened the steel and lit +the torch, there these learned singers would fain have wandered with +their learned ladies, satiated with life and in love with an +unearthly quiet. But to thee, Theocritus, no twilight of the Hollow +Land was dear, but the high suns of Sicily and the brown cheeks of +the country maidens were happiness enough. For thee, therefore, +methinks, surely is reserved an Elysium beneath the summer of a far- +off system, with stars not ours and alien seasons. There, as Bion +prayed, shall Spring, the thrice desirable, be with thee the whole +year through, where there is neither frost, nor is the heat so heavy +on men, but all is fruitful, and all sweet things blossom, and +evenly meted are darkness and dawn. Space is wide, and there be +many worlds, and suns enow, and the Sun-god surely has had a care of +his own. Little didst thou need, in thy native land, the isle of +the three capes, little didst thou need but sunlight on land and +sea. Death can have shown thee naught dearer than the fragrant +shadow of the pines, where the dry needles of the fir are strewn, or +glades where feathered ferns make "a couch more soft than Sleep." +The short grass of the cliffs, too, thou didst love, where thou +wouldst lie, and watch, with the tunny watcher till the deep blue +sea was broken by the burnished sides of the tunny shoal, and afoam +with their gambols in the brine. There the Muses met thee, and the +Nymphs, and there Apollo, remembering his old thraldom with Admetus, +would lead once more a mortal's flocks, and listen and learn, +Theocritus, while thou, like thine own Comatas, "didst sweetly +sing." + +There, methinks, I see thee as in thy happy days, "reclined on deep +beds of fragrant lentisk, lowly strewn, and rejoicing in new stript +leaves of the vine, while far above thy head waved many a poplar, +many an elm-tree, and close at hand the sacred waters sang from the +mouth of the cavern of the nymphs." And when night came, methinks +thou wouldst flee from the merry company and the dancing girls, from +the fading crowns of roses or white violets, from the cottabos, and +the minstrelsy, and the Bibline wine, from these thou wouldst slip +away into the summer night. Then the beauty of life and of the +summer would keep thee from thy couch, and wandering away from +Syracuse by the sandhills and the sea, thou wouldst watch the low +cabin, roofed with grass, where the fishing-rods of reed were +leaning against the door, while the Mediterranean floated up her +waves, and filled the waste with sound. There didst thou see thine +ancient fishermen rising ere the dawn from their bed of dry seaweed, +and heardst them stirring, drowsy, among their fishing gear, and +heardst them tell their dreams. + +Or again thou wouldst wander with dusty feet through the ways that +the dust makes silent, while the breath of the kine, as they were +driven forth with the morning, came fresh to thee, and the trailing +dewy branch of honeysuckle struck sudden on thy cheek. Thou wouldst +see the Dawn awake in rose and saffron across the waters, and Etna, +grey and pale against the sky, and the setting crescent would dip +strangely in the glow, on her way to the sea. Then, methinks, thou +wouldst murmur, like thine own Simaetha, the love-lorn witch, +"Farewell, Selene, bright and fair; farewell, ye other stars, that +follow the wheels of the quiet Night." Nay, surely it was in such +an hour that thou didst behold the girl as she burned the laurel +leaves and the barley grain, and melted the waxen image, and called +on Selene to bring her lover home. Even so, even now, in the +islands of Greece, the setting Moon may listen to the prayers of +maidens. "Bright golden Moon, that now art near the waters, go thou +and salute my lover, he that stole my love, and that kissed me, +saying "Never will I leave thee." And lo, he hath left me as men +leave a field reaped and gleaned, like a church where none cometh to +pray, like a city desolate." + +So the girls still sing in Greece, for though the Temples have +fallen, and the wandering shepherds sleep beneath the broken columns +of the god's house in Selinus, yet these ancient fires burn still to +the old divinities in the shrines of the hearths of the peasants. +It is none of the new creeds that cry, in the dirge of the Sicilian +shepherds of our time, "Ah, light of mine eyes, what gift shall I +send thee, what offering to the other world? The apple fadeth, the +quince decayeth, and one by one they perish, the petals of the rose. +I will send thee my tears shed on a napkin, and what though it +burneth in the flame, if my tears reach thee at the last." + +Yes, little is altered, Theocritus, on these shores beneath the sun, +where thou didst wear a tawny skin stripped from the roughest of he- +goats, and about thy breast an old cloak buckled with a plaited +belt. Thou wert happier there, in Sicily, methinks, and among vines +and shadowy lime-trees of Cos, than in the dust, and heat, and noise +of Alexandria. What love of fame, what lust of gold tempted thee +away from the red cliffs, and grey olives, and wells of black water +wreathed with maidenhair? + + +The music of thy rustic flute +Kept not for long its happy country tone; +Lost it too soon, and learned a stormy note +Of men contention tost, of men who groan, +Which tasked thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat - +It failed, and thou wast mute! + + +What hadst thou to make in cities, and what could Ptolemies and +Princes give thee better than the goat-milk cheese and the Ptelean +wine? Thy Muses were meant to be the delight of peaceful men, not +of tyrants and wealthy merchants, to whom they vainly went on a +begging errand. "Who will open his door and gladly receive our +Muses within his house, who is there that will not send them back +again without a gift? And they with naked feet and looks askance +come homewards, and sorely they upbraid me when they have gone on a +vain journey, and listless again in the bottom of their empty coffer +they dwell with heads bowed over their chilly knees, where is their +drear abode, when portionless they return." How far happier was the +prisoned goat-herd, Comatas, in the fragrant cedar chest where the +blunt-faced bees from the meadow fed him with food of tender +flowers, because still the Muse dropped sweet nectar on his lips! + +Thou didst leave the neat-herds and the kine, and the oaks of +Himera, the galingale hummed over by the bees, and the pine that +dropped her cones, and Amaryllis in her cave, and Bombyca with her +feet of carven ivory. Thou soughtest the City, and strife with +other singers, and the learned write still on thy quarrels with +Apollonius and Callimachus, and Antagoras of Rhodes. So ancient are +the hatreds of poets, envy, jealousy, and all unkindness. + +Not to the wits of Courts couldst thou teach thy rural song, though +all these centuries, more than two thousand years, they have +laboured to vie with thee. There has come no new pastoral poet, +though Virgil copied thee, and Pope, and Phillips, and all the +buckram band of the teacup time; and all the modish swains of France +have sung against thee, as the SOW CHALLENGED ATHENE. They never +knew the shepherd's life, the long winter nights on dried heather by +the fire, the long summer days, when over the parched grass all is +quiet, and only the insects hum, and the shrunken burn whispers a +silver tune. Swains in high-heeled shoon, and lace, shepherdesses +in rouge and diamonds, the world is weary of all concerning them, +save their images in porcelain, effigies how unlike thy golden +figures, dedicate to Aphrodite, of Bombyca and Battus! Somewhat, +Theocritus, thou hast to answer for, thou that first of men brought +the shepherd to Court, and made courtiers wild to go a Maying with +the shepherds. + + + +LETTER--To Edgar Allan Poe + + + +Sir,--Your English readers, better acquainted with your poems and +romances than with your criticisms, have long wondered at the +indefatigable hatred which pursues your memory. You, who knew the +men, will not marvel that certain microbes of letters, the survivors +of your own generation, still harass your name with their +malevolence, while old women twitter out their incredible and +unheeded slanders in the literary papers of New York. But their +persistent animosity does not quite suffice to explain the dislike +with which many American critics regard the greatest poet, perhaps +the greatest literary genius, of their country. With a commendable +patriotism, they are not apt to rate native merit too low; and you, +I think, are the only example of an American prophet almost without +honour in his own country. + +The recent publication of a cold, careful, and in many respects +admirable study of your career ("Edgar Allan Poe," by George +Woodberry: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston) reminds English +readers who have forgotten it, and teaches those who never knew it, +that you were, unfortunately, a Reviewer. How unhappy were the +necessities, how deplorable the vein, that compelled or seduced a +man of your eminence into the dusty and stony ways of contemporary +criticism! About the writers of his own generation a leader of that +generation should hold his peace. He should neither praise nor +blame nor defend his equals; he should not strike one blow at the +buzzing ephemerae of letters. The breath of their life is in the +columns of "Literary Gossip;" and they should be allowed to perish +with the weekly advertisements on which they pasture. Reviewing, of +course, there must needs be; but great minds should only criticise +the great who have passed beyond the reach of eulogy or fault- +finding. + +Unhappily, taste and circumstances combined to make you a censor; +you vexed a continent, and you are still unforgiven. What +"irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense +of wrong," drove you (in Mr. Longfellow's own words) to attack his +pure and beneficent Muse we may never ascertain. But Mr. Longfellow +forgave you easily; for pardon comes easily to the great. It was +the smaller men, the Daweses, Griswolds, and the like, that knew not +how to forget. "The New Yorkers never forgave him," says your +latest biographer; and one scarcely marvels at the inveteracy of +their malice. It was not individual vanity alone, but the whole +literary class that you assailed. "As a literary people," you +wrote, "we are one vast perambulating humbug." After that +declaration of war you died, and left your reputation to the +vanities yet writhing beneath your scorn. They are writhing and +writing still. He who knows them need not linger over the attacks +and defences of your personal character; he will not waste time on +calumnies, tale-bearing, private letters, and all the noisome dust +which takes so long in settling above your tomb. + +For us it is enough to know that you were compelled to live by your +pen, and that in an age when the author of "To Helen" and "The Cask +of Amontillado" was paid at the rate of a dollar a column. When +such poverty was the mate of such pride as yours, a misery more deep +than that of Burns, an agony longer than Chatterton's, were +inevitable and assured. No man was less fortunate than you in the +moment of his birth--infelix opportunitate vitae. Had you lived a +generation later, honour, wealth, applause, success in Europe and at +home, would all have been yours. Within thirty years so great a +change has passed over the profession of letters in America; and it +is impossible to estimate the rewards which would have fallen to +Edgar Poe, had chance made him the contemporary of Mark Twain and of +"Called Back." It may be that your criticisms helped to bring in +the new era, and to lift letters out of the reach of quite +unlettered scribblers. Though not a scholar, at least you had a +respect for scholarship. You might still marvel over such words as +"objectional" in the new biography of yourself, and might ask what +is meant by such a sentence as "his connection with it had inured to +his own benefit by the frequent puffs of himself," and so forth. + +Best known in your own day as a critic, it is as a poet and a writer +of short tales that you must live. But to discuss your few and +elaborate poems is a waste of time, so completely does your own +brief definition of poetry, "the rhythmic creation of the +beautiful," exhaust your theory, and so perfectly is the theory +illustrated by the poems. Natural bent, and reaction against the +example of Mr. Longfellow, combined to make you too intolerant of +what you call the "didactic" element in verse. Even if morality be +not seven-eighths of our life (the exact proportion as at present +estimated), there was a place even on the Hellenic Parnassus for +gnomic bards, and theirs in the nature of the case must always be +the largest public. + +"Music is the perfection of the soul or the idea of poetry," so you +wrote; "the vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air (which +should be indefinite and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely +what we should aim at in poetry." You aimed at that mark, and +struck it again and again, notably in "Helen, thy beauty is to me," +in "The Haunted Palace," "The Valley of Unrest," and "The City in +the Sea." But by some Nemesis which might, perhaps, have been +foreseen, you are, to the world, the poet of one poem--"The Raven:" +a piece in which the music is highly artificial, and the +"exaltation" (what there is of it) by no means particularly "vague." +So a portion of the public know little of Shelley but the "Skylark," +and those two incongruous birds, the lark and the raven, bear each +of them a poet's name, vivu' per ora virum. Your theory of poetry, +if accepted, would make you (after the author of "Kubla Khan") the +foremost of the poets of the world; at no long distance would come +Mr. William Morris as he was when he wrote "Golden Wings," "The Blue +Closet," and "The Sailing of the Sword;" and, close up, Mr. Lear, +the author of "The Yongi Bongi Bo," an the lay of the "Jumblies." + +On the other hand Homer would sink into the limbo to which you +consigned Moliere. If we may judge a theory by its results, when +compared with the deliberate verdict of the world, your aesthetic +does not seem to hold water. The "Odyssey" is not really inferior +to "Ulalume," as it ought to be if your doctrine of poetry were +correct, nor "Le Festin de Pierre" to "Undine." Yet you deserve the +praise of having been constant, in your poetic practice, to your +poetic principles--principles commonly deserted by poets who, like +Wordsworth, have published their aesthetic system. Your pieces are +few; and Dr. Johnson would have called you, like Fielding, "a barren +rascal." But how can a writer's verses be numerous if with him, as +with you, "poetry is not a pursuit but a passion . . . which cannot +at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations or the +more paltry commendations of mankind!" Of you it may be said, more +truly than Shelley said it of himself, that "to ask you for anything +human, is like asking at a gin-shop for a leg of mutton." + +Humanity must always be, to the majority of men, the true stuff of +poetry; and only a minority will thank you for that rare music which +(like the strains of the fiddler in the story) is touched on a +single string, and on an instrument fashioned from the spoils of the +grave. You chose, or you were destined + + +To vary from the kindly race of men; + + +and the consequences, which wasted your life, pursue your +reputation. + +For your stories has been reserved a boundless popularity, and that +highest success--the success of a perfectly sympathetic translation. +By this time, of course, you have made the acquaintance of your +translator, M. Charles Baudelaire, who so strenuously shared your +views about Mr. Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and who so +energetically resisted all those ideas of "progress" which "came +from Hell or Boston." On this point, however, the world continues +to differ from you and M. Baudelaire, and perhaps there is only the +choice between our optimism and universal suicide or universal +opium-eating. But to discuss your ultimate ideas is perhaps a +profitless digression from the topic of your prose romances. + +An English critic (probably a Northerner at heart) has described +them as "Hawthorne and delirium tremens." I am not aware that +extreme orderliness, masterly elaboration, and unchecked progress +towards a predetermined effect are characteristics of the visions of +delirium. If they be, then there is a deal of truth in the +criticism, and a good deal of delirium tremens in your style. But +your ingenuity, your completeness, your occasional luxuriance of +fancy and wealth of jewel-like words, are not, perhaps, gifts which +Mr. Hawthorne had at his command. He was a great writer--the +greatest writer in prose fiction whom America has produced. But you +and he have not much in common, except a certain mortuary turn of +mind and a taste for gloomy allegories about the workings of +conscience. + +I forbear to anticipate your verdict about the latest essays of +American fiction. These by no means follow in the lines which you +laid down about brevity and the steady working to one single effect. +Probably you would not be very tolerant (tolerance was not your +leading virtue) of Mr. Roe, now your countrymen's favourite +novelist. He is long, he is didactic, he is eminently uninspired. +In the works of one who is, what you were called yourself, a +Bostonian, you would admire, at least, the acute observation, the +subtlety, and the unfailing distinction. But, destitute of humour +as you unhappily but undeniably were, you would miss, I fear, the +charm of "Daisy Miller." You would admit the unity of effect +secured in "Washington Square," though that effect is as remote as +possible from the terror of "The House of Usher" or the vindictive +triumph of "The Cask of Amontillado." + +Farewell, farewell, thou sombre and solitary spirit: a genius +tethered to the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among canaille, +a poet among poetasters, dowered with a scholar's taste without a +scholar's training, embittered by his sensitive scorn, and all +unsupported by his consolations. + + + +LETTER--To Sir Walter Scott, Bart. + + + +Rodono, St. Mary's Loch: +Sept. 8, 1885. + +Sir,--In your biography it is recorded that you not only won the +favour of all men and women; but that a domestic fowl conceived an +affection for you, and that a pig, by his will, had never been +severed from your company. If some Circe had repeated in my case +her favourite miracle of turning mortals into swine, and had given +me a choice, into that fortunate pig, blessed among his race, would +I have been converted! You, almost alone among men of letters, +still, like a living friend, win and charm us out of the past; and +if one might call up a poet, as the scholiast tried to call Homer, +from the shades, who would not, out of all the rest, demand some +hours of your society? Who that ever meddled with letters, what +child of the irritable race, possessed even a tithe of your simple +manliness, of the heart that never knew a touch of jealousy, that +envied no man his laurels, that took honour and wealth as they came, +but never would have deplored them had you missed both and remained +but the Border sportsman and the Border antiquary? + +Were the word "genial" not so much profaned, were it not misused in +easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that +worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But +perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a +character so rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as +that of Walter Scott. Here, in the heart of your own country, among +your own grey round-shouldered hills (each so like the other that +the shadow of one falling on its neighbour exactly outlines that +neighbour's shape), it is of you and of your works that a native of +the Forest is most frequently brought in mind. All the spirits of +the river and the hill, all the dying refrains of ballad and the +fading echoes of story, all the memory of the wild past, each legend +of burn and loch, seem to have combined to inform your spirit, and +to secure themselves an immortal life in your song. It is through +you that we remember them; and in recalling them, as in treading +each hillside in this land, we again remember you and bless you. + +It is not, "Sixty Years Since" the echo of Tweed among his pebbles +fell for the last time on your ear; not sixty years since, and how +much is altered! But two generations have passed; the lad who used +to ride from Edinburgh to Abbotsford, carrying new books for you, +and old, is still vending, in George Street, old books and new. Of +politics I have not the heart to speak. Little joy would you have +had in most that has befallen since the Reform Bill was passed, to +the chivalrous cry of "burke Sir Walter." We are still very Radical +in the Forest, and you were taken away from many evils to come. How +would the cheek of Walter Scott, or of Leyden, have blushed at the +names of Majuba, The Soudan, Maiwand, and many others that recall +political cowardice or military incapacity! On the other hand, who +but you could have sung the dirge of Gordon, or wedded with immortal +verse the names of Hamilton (who fell with Cavagnari), of the two +Stewarts, of many another clansman, brave among the bravest! Only +he who told how + + +The stubborn spearmen still made good +Their dark impenetrable wood + + +could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as at +M'Neill's Zareba and at Abu Klea, + + +Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, +As fearlessly and well. + + +Ah, Sir, the hearts of the rulers may wax faint, and the voting +classes may forget that they are Britons; but when it comes to blows +our fighting men might cry, with Leyden, + + +My name is little Jock Elliot, +And wha daur meddle wi' me! + + +Much is changed, in the countryside as well as in the country; but +much remains. The little towns of your time are populous and +excessively black with the smoke of factories--not, I fear, at +present very flourishing. In Galashiels you still see the little +change-house and the cluster of cottages round the Laird's lodge, +like the clachan of Tully Veolan. But these plain remnants of the +old Scotch towns are almost buried in a multitude of "smoky dwarf +houses"--a living poet, Mr. Matthew Arnold, has found the fitting +phrase for these dwellings, once for all. All over the Forest the +waters are dirty and poisoned: I think they are filthiest below +Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in a Selkirk man. To +keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements are often +promised, I cannot see much change--for the better. Abbotsford, +luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes of +Selkirk, Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerleithen. On the other hand, +your ill-omened later dwelling, "the unhappy palace of your race," +is overlooked by villas that prick a cockney ear among their +larches, hotels of the future. Ah, Sir, Scotland is a strange +place. Whisky is exiled from some of our caravanserais, and they +have banished Sir John Barleycorn. It seems as if the views of the +excellent critic (who wrote your life lately, and said you had left +no descendants, le pauvre homme!) were beginning to prevail. This +pious biographer was greatly shocked by that capital story about the +keg of whisky that arrived at the Liddesdale farmer's during family +prayers. Your Toryism also was an offence to him. + +Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let +us be thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the +Border country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at +Ashiestiel some days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been +when you left it for Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on +the lawn, the hill on the opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to +the crest with turnips, and the burn did not sing below the little +bridge, for in this arid summer the burn was dry. But there was +still a grilse that rose to a big March brown in the shrunken stream +below Elibank. This may not interest you, who styled yourself + + +No fisher, +But a well-wisher +To the game! + + +Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have +"grand gallops among the hills"--those grave wastes of heather and +bent that sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered +pastures from Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the +Three Brethren Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes, +Teviotdale is pleasant still, and there is not a drop of dye in the +water, purior electro, of Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath me, +smitten with wind and rain--the St. Mary's of North and of the +Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a myriad of artificial flies, +are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could no longer fill a cart up +Meggat with trout so much of a size that the country people took +them for herrings. + +The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it +lies, within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone, +and the graven letters, and the sword and shield, sleep "Piers +Cockburn and Marjory his wife." Not a hundred yards off was the +castle-door where they hanged him; this is the tomb of the ballad, +and the lady that buried him rests now with her wild lord. + + +Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair, +When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair; +Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae, +When I turned about and went my way! {7} + + +Here too hearts have broken, and there is a sacredness in the shadow +and beneath these clustering berries of the rowan-trees. That +sacredness, that reverent memory of our old land, it is always and +inextricably blended with our memories, with our thoughts, with our +love of you. Scotchmen, methinks, who owe so much to you, owe you +most for the example you gave of the beauty of a life of honour, +showing them what, by heaven's blessing, a Scotchman still might be. + +Words, empty and unavailing--for what words of ours can speak our +thoughts or interpret our affections! From you first, as we +followed the deer with King James, or rode with William of Deloraine +on his midnight errand, did we learn what Poetry means and all the +happiness that is in the gift of song. This and more than may be +told you gave us, that are not forgetful, not ungrateful, though our +praise be unequal to our gratitude. Fungor inani munere! + + + +LETTER--To Eusebius of Caesarea (Concerning the gods of the heathen) + + + +Touching the Gods of the Heathen, most reverend Father, thou art not +ignorant that even now, as in the time of thy probation on earth, +there is great dissension. That these feigned Deities and idols, +the work of men's hands, are no longer worshipped thou knowest; +neither do men eat meat offered to idols. Even as spake that last +Oracle which murmured forth, the latest and the only true voice from +Delphi, even so "the fair-wrought court divine hath fallen; no more +hath Phoebus his home, no more his laurel-bough, nor the singing +well of water; nay, the sweet-voiced water is silent." The fane is +ruinous, and the images of men's idolatry are dust. + +Nevertheless, most worshipful, men do still dispute about the +beginnings of those sinful Gods: such as Zeus, Athene, and +Dionysus: and marvel how first they won their dominion over the +souls of the foolish peoples. Now, concerning these things there is +not one belief, but many; howbeit, there are two main kinds of +opinion. One sect of philosophers believes--as thyself, with +heavenly learning, didst not vainly persuade--that the Gods were the +inventions of wild and bestial folk, who, long before cities were +builded or life was honourably ordained, fashioned forth evil +spirits in their own savage likeness; ay, or in the likeness of the +very beasts that perish. To this judgment, as it is set forth in +thy Book of the Preparation for the Gospel, I, humble as I am, do +give my consent. But on the other side are many and learned men, +chiefly of the tribes of the Alemanni, who have almost conquered the +whole inhabited world. These, being unwilling to suppose that the +Hellenes were in bondage to superstitions handed down from times of +utter darkness and a bestial life, do chiefly hold with the heathen +philosophers, even with the writers whom thou, most venerable, didst +confound with thy wisdom and chasten with the scourge of small cords +of thy wit. + +Thus, like the heathen, our doctors and teachers maintain that the +gods of the nations were, in the beginning, such pure natural +creatures as the blue sky, the sun, the air, the bright dawn, and +the fire; but, as time went on, men, forgetting the meaning of their +own speech and no longer understanding the tongue of their own +fathers, were misled and beguiled into fashioning all those +lamentable tales: as that Zeus, for love of mortal women, took the +shape of a bull, a ram, a serpent, an ant, an eagle, and sinned in +such wise as it is a shame even to speak of. + +Behold, then, most worshipful, how these doctors and learned men +argue, even like the philosophers of the heathen whom thou didst +confound. For they declare the gods to have been natural elements, +sun and sky and storm, even as did thy opponents; and, like them, as +thou saidst, "they are nowise at one with each other in their +explanations." For of old some boasted that Hera was the Air; and +some that she signified the love of woman and man; and some that she +was the waters above the Earth; and others that she was the Earth +beneath the waters; and yet others that she was the Night, for that +Night is the shadow of Earth: as if, forsooth, the men who first +worshipped Hera had understanding of these things! And when Hera +and Zeus quarrel unseemly (as Homer declareth), this meant (said the +learned in thy days) no more than the strife and confusion of the +elements, and was not in the beginning an idle slanderous tale. + +To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying +that Hera could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air, +and the love of sexes, and the confusion of the elements; but that +all these opinions were vain dreams, and the guesses of the learned. +And why--thou saidst--even if the Gods were pure natural creatures, +are such foul things told of them in the Mysteries as it is not +fitting for me to declare. "These wanderings, and drinkings, and +loves, and seductions, that would be shameful in men, why," thou +saidst, "were they attributed to the natural elements; and wherefore +did the Gods constantly show themselves, like the sorcerers called +werewolves, in the shape of the perishable beasts?" But, mainly, +thou didst argue that, till the philosophers of the heathen were +agreed among themselves, not all contradicting each the other, they +had no semblance of a sure foundation for their doctrine. + +To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the +heathen answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand +to it that the heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements, +and that the nations, forgetting their first love and the +significance of their own speech, became confused and were betrayed +into foul stories about the pure Gods--these learned men, I say, +agree no whit among themselves. Nay, they differ one from another, +not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and Theagenes, and the rest +whom thou didst laugh to scorn. Bear with me, Father, while I tell +thee how the new Plutarchs and Porphyrys do contend among +themselves; and yet these differences of theirs they call "Science"! + +Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus, +even as--among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou +never knewest--goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or +feet of their fathers. Thou must know that what Plato, in the +"Cratylus," made Socrates say in jest, the learned among us practise +in sad earnest. For, when they wish to explain the nature of any +God, they first examine his name, and torment the letters thereof, +arranging and altering them according to their will, and flying off +to the speech of the Indians and Medes and Chaldeans, and other +Barbarians, if Greek will not serve their turn. How saith Socrates? +"I bethink me of a very new and ingenious idea that occurs to me; +and, if I do not mind, I shall be wiser than I should be by to- +morrow's dawn. My notion is that we may put in and pull out letters +at pleasure and alter the accents." + +Even so do the learned--not at pleasure, maybe, but according to +certain fixed laws (so they declare); yet none the more do they +agree among themselves. And I deny not that they discover many +things true and good to be known; but, as touching the names of the +Gods, their learning, as it standeth, is confusion. Look, then, at +the goddess Athene: taking one example out of hundreds. We have +dwelling in our coasts Muellerus, the most erudite of the doctors of +the Alemanni, and the most golden-mouthed. Concerning Athene, he +saith that her name is none other than, in the ancient tongue of the +Brachmanae, Ahana, which, being interpreted, means the Dawn. "And +that the morning light," saith he, "offers the best starting-point +for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond +the reach of doubt or even cavil." {8} + +Yet this same doctor candidly lets us know that another of his +nation, the witty Benfeius, hath devised another sense and origin of +Athene, taken from the speech of the old Medes. But Muellerus +declares to us that whosoever shall examine the contention of +Benfeius "will be bound, in common honesty, to confess that it is +untenable." This, Father, is "one for Benfeius," as the saying +goes. And as Muellerus holds that these matters "admit of almost +mathematical precision," it would seem that Benfeius is but a +Dummkopf, as the Alemanni say, in their own language, when they +would be pleasant among themselves. + +Now, wouldst thou credit it? despite the mathematical plainness of +the facts, other Alemanni agree neither with Muellerus, nor yet with +Benfeius, and will neither hear that Athene was the Dawn, nor yet +that she is "the feminine of the Zend Thraetana athwyana." Lo, you! +how Prellerus goes about to show that her name is drawn not from +Ahana and the old Brachmanae, nor athwyana and the old Medes, but +from "the root [Greek text], whence [Greek text], the air, or [Greek +text], whence [Greek text], a flower." Yea, and Prellerus will have +it that no man knows the verity of this matter. None the less he is +very bold, and will none of the Dawn; but holds to it that Athene +was, from the first, "the clear pure height of the Air, which is +exceeding pure in Attica." + +Now, Father, as if all this were not enough, comes one Roscherus in, +with a mighty great volume on the Gods, and Furtwaenglerus, among +others, for his ally. And these doctors will neither with +Rueckertus and Hermannus, take Athene for "wisdom in person;" nor +with Welckerus and Prellerus, for "the goddess of air;" nor even, +with Muellerus and mathematical certainty, for "the Morning-Red:" +but they say that Athene is the "black thunder-cloud, and the +lightning that leapeth therefrom"! I make no doubt that other +Alemanni are of other minds: quot Alemanni tot sententiae. + +Yea, as thou saidst of the learned heathen, [Greek text]. Yet these +disputes of theirs they call "Science"! But if any man says to the +learned: "Best of men, you are erudite, and laborious and witty; +but, till you are more of the same mind, your opinions cannot be +styled knowledge. Nay, they are at present of no avail whereon to +found any doctrine concerning the Gods"--that man is railed at for +his "mean" and "weak" arguments. + +Was it thus, Father, that the heathen railed against thee? But I +must still believe, with thee, that these evil tales of the Gods +were invented "when man's life was yet brutish and wandering" (as is +the life of many tribes that even now tell like tales), and were +maintained in honour by the later Greeks "because none dared alter +the ancient beliefs of his ancestors." Farewell, Father; and all +good be with thee, wishes thy well-wisher and thy disciple. + + + +LETTER--To Percy Bysshe Shelley + + + +Sir,--In your lifetime on earth you were not more than commonly +curious as to what was said by "the herd of mankind," if I may quote +your own phrase. It was that of one who loved his fellow-men, but +did not in his less enthusiastic moments overestimate their virtues +and their discretion. Removed so far away from our hubbub, and that +world where, as you say, we "pursue our serious folly as of old," +you are, one may guess, but moderately concerned about the fate of +your writings and your reputation. As to the first, you have +somewhere said, in one of your letters, that the final judgment on +your merits as a poet is in the hands of posterity, and that you +fear the verdict will be "Guilty," and the sentence "Death." Such +apprehensions cannot have been fixed or frequent in the mind of one +whose genius burned always with a clearer and steadier flame to the +last. The jury of which you spoke has met: a mixed jury and a +merciful. The verdict is "Well done," and the sentence Immortality +of Fame. There have been, there are, dissenters; yet probably they +will be less and less heard as the years go on. + +One judge, or juryman, has made up his mind that prose was your true +province, and that your letters will out-live your lays. I know not +whether it was the same or an equally well-inspired critic, who +spoke of your most perfect lyrics (so Beau Brummell spoke of his +ill-tied cravats) as "a gallery of your failures." But the general +voice does not echo these utterances of a too subtle intellect. At +a famous University (not your own) once existed a band of men known +as "The Trinity Sniffers." Perhaps the spirit of the sniffer may +still inspire some of the jurors who from time to time make +themselves heard in your case. The "Quarterly Review," I fear, is +still unreconciled. It regards your attempts as tainted by the +spirit of "The Liberal Movement in English Literature;" and it is +impossible, alas! to maintain with any success that you were a +Throne and Altar Tory. At Oxford you are forgiven; and the old +rooms where you let the oysters burn (was not your founder, King +Alfred, once guilty of similar negligence?) are now shown to pious +pilgrims. + +But Conservatives, 'tis rumoured, are still averse to your opinions, +and are believed to prefer to yours the works of the Reverend Mr. +Keble, and, indeed, of the clergy in general. But, in spite of all +this, your poems, like the affections of the true lovers in +Theocritus, are yet "in the mouths of all, and chiefly on the lips +of the young." It is in your lyrics that you live, and I do not +mean that every one could pass an examination in the plot of +"Prometheus Unbound." Talking of this piece, by the way, a +Cambridge critic finds that it reveals in you a hankering after life +in a cave--doubtless an unconsciously inherited memory from cave- +man. Speaking of cave-man reminds me that you once spoke of +deserting song for prose, and of producing a history of the moral, +intellectual, and political elements in human society, which, we now +agree, began, as Asia would fain have ended, in a cave. + +Fortunately you gave us "Adonais" and "Hellas" instead of this +treatise, and we have now successfully written the natural history +of Man for ourselves. Science tells us that before becoming a cave- +dweller he was a Brute; Experience daily proclaims that he +constantly reverts to his original condition. L'homme est un +mechant animal, in spite of your boyish efforts to add pretty girls +"to the list of the good, the disinterested, and the free." + +Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of +Politics, were "the haunts meet for thee." Watching the yellow bees +in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, +watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and +weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and +music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! "To ask you for +anything human," you said, "was like asking for a leg of mutton at a +gin-shop." Nay, rather, like asking Apollo and Hebe, in the +Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, and port for nectar. +Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; you spread +before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn away, +with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is +spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like +Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he +looks on the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of +Anchises, blind with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he +saw, what none saw but Shelley! + +Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of +things didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew. +This will disappoint you, who had "a passion for reforming it." +Kings and priests are very much where you left them. True, we have +a poet who assails them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet +Mr. Swinburne has never, like "kind Hunt," been in prison, nor do we +fear for him a charge of treason. Moreover, chemical science has +discovered new and ingenious ways of destroying principalities and +powers. You would be interested in the methods, but your peaceful +Revolutionism, which disdained physical force, would regret their +application. + +Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider +satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of +Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you +recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods +and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and +Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers; +and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a +peaceful millennium in twining buds and beams. + +In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been +carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything +else she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy; +her wounds unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have +enfranchised the paupers, and expect the most happy results. +Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone says) are "our own flesh and blood," and, +as we compel them to be vaccinated, so we should permit them to +vote. Is it a dream that Mr. Jesse Collings (how you would have +loved that man!) has a Bill for extending the priceless boon of the +vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic Asylums? This may prove that last +element in the Elixir of political happiness which we have long +sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to hear, are still +unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something for Mr. +Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in the +"Queen Mab" stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust +condition of intellectual development. + +As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as +much of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind +of ducdame to bring people of no very great sense into your circle. +This curious fascination has attracted round your memory a feeble +folk of commentators, biographers, anecdotists, and others of the +tribe. They swarm round you like carrion-flies round a sensitive +plant, like night-birds bewildered by the sun. Men of sense and +taste have written on you, indeed; but your weaker admirers are now +disputing as to whether it was your heart, or a less dignified and +most troublesome organ, which escaped the flames of the funeral +pyre. These biographers fight terribly among themselves, and vainly +prolong the memory of "old unhappy far-off things, and sorrows long +ago." Let us leave them and their squabbles over what is +unessential, their raking up of old letters and old stories. + +The town has lately yawned a weary laugh over an enemy of yours, who +has produced two heavy volumes, styled by him "The Real Shelley." +The real Shelley, it appears, was Shelley as conceived of by a +worthy gentleman so prejudiced and so skilled in taking up things by +the wrong handle that I wonder he has not made a name in the exact +science of Comparative Mythology. He criticises you in the spirit +of that Christian Apologist, the Englishman who called you "a damned +Atheist" in the post-office at Pisa. He finds that you had "a +little turned-up nose," a feature no less important in his system +than was the nose of Cleopatra (according to Pascal) in the history +of the world. To be in harmony with your nose, you were a +"phenomenal" liar, an ill-bred, ill-born, profligate, partly insane, +an evil-tempered monster, a self-righteous person, full of self- +approbation--in fact you were the Beast of this pious Apocalypse. +Your friend Dr. Lind was an embittered and scurrilous apothecary, "a +bad old man." But enough of this inopportune brawler. + +For Humanity, of which you hoped such great things, Science predicts +extinction in a night of Frost. The sun will grow cold, slowly--as +slowly as doom came on Jupiter in your "Prometheus," but as surely. +If this nightmare be fulfilled, perhaps the Last Man, in some fetid +hut on the ice-bound Equator, will read, by a fading lamp charged +with the dregs of the oil in his cruse, the poetry of Shelley. So +reading, he, the latest of his race, will not wholly be deprived of +those sights which alone (says the nameless Greek) make life worth +enduring. In your verse he will have sight of sky, and sea, and +cloud, the gold of dawn and the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. He +will be face to face, in fancy, with the great powers that are dead, +sun, and ocean, and the illimitable azure of the heavens. In +Shelley's poetry, while Man endures, all those will survive; for +your "voice is as the voice of winds and tides," and perhaps more +deathless than all of these, and only perishable with the perishing +of the human spirit. + + + +LETTER--To Monsieur de Moliere, Valet de Chambre du Roi + + + +Monsieur,--With what awe does a writer venture into the presence of +the great Moliere! As a courtier in your time would scratch humbly +(with his comb!) at the door of the Grand Monarch, so I presume to +draw near your dwelling among the Immortals. You, like the king +who, among all his titles, has now none so proud as that of the +friend of Moliere--you found your dominions small, humble, and +distracted; you raised them to the dignity of an empire: what Louis +XIV. did for France you achieved for French comedy; and the baton of +Scapin still wields its sway though the sword of Louis was broken at +Blenheim. For the King the Pyrenees, or so he fancied, ceased to +exist; by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If +England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that +France ferum victorem cepit, and restored the dynasty of Comedy to +the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden borrowed +"L'Etourdi," our tardy apish nation has lived (in matters +theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France. + +In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered. While +you lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was the +congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic +grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of +Moliere. Now they are diversely occupied; and it is their affair to +lend modesty where they borrow wit, and to spare a blush to the +cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. But still, as has ever been our wont +since Etherege saw, and envied, and imitated your successes--still +we pilfer the plays of France, and take our bien, as you said in +your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We are the privateers +of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that a comedy pleases +the town which has not first been "cut out" from the countrymen of +Moliere. Why this should be, and what "tenebriferous star" (as +Paracelsus, your companion in the "Dialogues des Morts," would have +believed) thus darkens the sun of English humour, we know not; but +certainly our dependence on France is the sincerest tribute to you. +Without you, neither Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor "a wilderness of +monkeys" like Scarron, could ever have given Comedy to France and +restored her to Europe. + +While we owe to you, Monsieur, the beautiful advent of Comedy, fair +and beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes, it is still to +you that we must turn when of comedies we desire the best. If you +studied with daily and nightly care the works of Plautus and +Terence, if you "let no musty bouquin escape you" (so your enemies +declared), it was to some purpose that you laboured. Shakespeare +excepted, you eclipsed all who came before you; and from those that +follow, however fresh, we turn: we turn from Regnard and +Beaumarchais, from Sheridan and Goldsmith, from Musset and Pailleron +and Labiche, to that crowded world of your creations. "Creations" +one may well say, for you anticipated Nature herself: you gave us, +before she did, in Alceste a Rousseau who was a gentleman not a +lacquey; in a mot of Don Juan's, the secret of the new Religion and +the watchword of Comte, l'amour de l'humanite. + +Before you where can we find, save in Rabelais, a Frenchman with +humour; and where, unless it be in Montaigne, the wise philosophy of +a secular civilisation? With a heart the most tender, delicate, +loving, and generous, a heart often in agony and torment, you had to +make life endurable (we cannot doubt it) without any whisper of +promise, or hope, or warning from Religion. Yes, in an age when the +greatest mind of all, the mind of Pascal, proclaimed that the only +help was in voluntary blindness, that the only chance was to hazard +all on a bet at evens, you, Monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to +pretend to see what you found invisible. + +In Religion you beheld no promise of help. When the Jesuits and +Jansenists of your time saw, each of them, in Tartufe the portrait +of their rivals (as each of the laughable Marquises in your play +conceived that you were girding at his neighbour), you all the while +were mocking every credulous excess of Faith. In the sermons +preached to Agnes we surely hear your private laughter; in the +arguments for credulity which are presented to Don Juan by his valet +we listen to the eternal self-defence of superstition. Thus, +desolate of belief, you sought for the permanent element of life-- +precisely where Pascal recognised all that was most fleeting and +unsubstantial--in divertissement; in the pleasure of looking on, a +spectator of the accidents of existence, an observer of the follies +of mankind. Like the Gods of the Epicurean, you seem to regard our +life as a play that is played, as a comedy; yet how often the tragic +note comes in! What pity, and in the laughter what an accent of +tears, as of rain in the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and +human as you; none has had a heart, like you, to feel for his butts, +and to leave them sometimes, in a sense, superior to their +tormentors. Sganarelle, M. de Pourceaugnac, George Dandin, and the +rest--our sympathy, somehow, is with them, after all; and M. de +Pourceaugnac is a gentleman, despite his misadventures. + +Though triumphant Youth and malicious Love in your plays may batter +and defeat Jealousy and Old Age, yet they have not all the victory, +or you did not mean that they should win it. They go off with +laughter, and their victim with a grimace; but in him we, that are +past our youth, behold an actor in an unending tragedy, the defeat +of a generation. Your sympathy is not wholly with the dogs that are +having their day; you can throw a bone or a crust to the dog that +has had his, and has been taught that it is over and ended. +Yourself not unlearned in shame, in jealousy, in endurance of the +wanton pride of men (how could the poor player and the husband of +Celimene be untaught in that experience?), you never sided quite +heartily, as other comedians have done, with young prosperity and +rank and power. + +I am not the first who has dared to approach you in the Shades; for +just after your own death the author of "Les Dialogues des Morts" +gave you Paracelsus as a companion, and the author of "Le Jugement +de Pluton" made the "mighty warder" decide that "Moliere should not +talk philosophy." These writers, like most of us, feel that, after +all, the comedies of the Contemplateur, of the translator of +Lucretius, are a philosophy of life in themselves, and that in them +we read the lessons of human experience writ small and clear. + +What comedian but Moliere has combined with such depths--with the +indignation of Alceste, the self-deception of Tartufe, the blasphemy +of Don Juan--such wildness of irresponsible mirth, such humour, such +wit! Even now, when more than two hundred years have sped by, when +so much water has flowed under the bridges and has borne away so +many trifles of contemporary mirth (cetera fluminis ritu feruntur), +even now we never laugh so well as when Mascarille and Vadius and M. +Jourdain tread the boards in the Maison de Moliere. Since those +mobile dark brows of yours ceased to make men laugh, since your +voice denounced the "demoniac" manner of contemporary tragedians, I +take leave to think that no player has been more worthy to wear the +canons of Mascarille or the gown of Vadius than M. Coquelin of the +Comedie Francaise. In him you have a successor to your Mascarille +so perfect, that the ghosts of playgoers of your date might cry, +could they see him, that Moliere had come again. But, with all +respect to the efforts of the fair, I doubt if Mdlle. Barthet, or +Mdme. Croizette herself, would reconcile the town to the loss of the +fair De Brie, and Madeleine, and the first, the true Celimene, +Armande. Yet had you ever so merry a soubrette as Mdme. Samary, so +exquisite a Nicole? + +Denounced, persecuted, and buried hugger-mugger two hundred years +ago, you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more +servility and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than +you may approve. Are not the Molieristes a body who carry adoration +to fanaticism? Any scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), +any anecdote even remotely touching on your life, any fact that may +prove your house was numbered 15 not 22, is eagerly seized and +discussed by your too minute historians. Concerning your private +life, these men often speak more like malicious enemies than +friends; repeating the fabulous scandals of Le Boulanger, and trying +vainly to support them by grubbing in dusty parish registers. It is +most necessary to defend you from your friends--from such friends as +the veteran and inveterate M. Arsene Houssaye, or the industrious +but puzzle-headed M. Loiseleur. Truly they seek the living among +the dead, and the immortal Moliere among the sweepings of attorneys' +offices. As I regard them (for I have tarried in their tents) and +as I behold their trivialities--the exercises of men who neglect +Moliere's works to gossip about Moliere's great-grand-mother's +second-best bed--I sometimes wish that Moliere were here to write on +his devotees a new comedy, "Les Molieristes." How fortunate were +they, Monsieur, who lived and worked with you, who saw you day by +day, who were attached, as Lagrange tells us, by the kindest loyalty +to the best and most honourable of men, the most open-handed in +friendship, in charity the most delicate, of the heartiest sympathy! +Ah, that for one day I could behold you, writing in the study, +rehearsing on the stage, musing in the lace-seller's shop, strolling +through the Palais, turning over the new books at Billaine's, +dusting your ruffles among the old volumes on the sunny stalls. +Would that, through the ages, we could hear you after supper, merry +with Boileau, and with Racine,--not yet a traitor,--laughing over +Chapelain, combining to gird at him in an epigram, or mocking at +Cotin, or talking your favourite philosophy, mindful of Descartes. +Surely of all the wits none was ever so good a man, none ever made +life so rich with humour and friendship. + + + +LETTER--To Robert Burns + + + +Sir,--Among men of Genius, and especially among Poets, there are +some to whom we turn with a peculiar and unfeigned affection; there +are others whom we admire rather than love. By some we are won with +our will, by others conquered against our desire. It has been your +peculiar fortune to capture the hearts of a whole people--a people +not usually prone to praise, but devoted with a personal and +patriotic loyalty to you and to your reputation. In you every Scot +who IS a Scot sees, admires, and compliments Himself, his ideal +self--independent, fond of whisky, fonder of the lassies; you are +the true representative of him and of his nation. Next year will be +the hundredth since the press of Kilmarnock brought to light its +solitary masterpiece, your Poems; and next year, therefore, +methinks, the revenue will receive a welcome accession from the +abundance of whisky drunk in your honour. It is a cruel thing for +any of your countrymen to feel that, where all the rest love, he can +only admire; where all the rest are idolators, he may not bend the +knee; but stands apart and beats upon his breast, observing, not +adoring--a critic. Yet to some of us--petty souls, perhaps, and +envious--that loud indiscriminating praise of "Robbie Burns" (for so +they style you in their Change-house familiarity) has long been +ungrateful; and, among the treasures of your songs, we venture to +select and even to reject. So it must be! We cannot all love +Haggis, nor "painch, tripe, and thairm," and all those rural +dainties which you celebrate as "warm-reekin, rich!" "Rather too +rich," as the Young Lady said on an occasion recorded by Sam Weller. + + +Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware +That jaups in luggies; +But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer, +Gie her a Haggis! + + +You HAVE given her a Haggis, with a vengeance, and her "gratefu' +prayer" is yours for ever. But if even an eternity of partridge may +pall on the epicure, so of Haggis too, as of all earthly delights, +cometh satiety at last. And yet what a glorious Haggis it is--the +more emphatically rustic and even Fescennine part of your verse! We +have had many a rural bard since Theocritus "watched the visionary +flocks," but you are the only one of them all who has spoken the +sincere Doric. Yours is the talk of the byre and the plough-tail; +yours is that large utterance of the early hinds. Even Theocritus +minces matters, save where Lacon and Comatas quite out-do the swains +of Ayrshire. "But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?" you ask, and +yourself out-match him in this wide rude region, trodden only by the +rural Muse. "THY rural loves are nature's sel';" and the wooer of +Jean Armour speaks more like a true shepherd than the elegant +Daphnis of the "Oaristys." + +Indeed it is with this that moral critics of your life reproach you, +forgetting, perhaps, that in your amours you were but as other +Scotch ploughmen and shepherds of the past and present. Ettrick may +still, with Afghanistan, offer matter for idylls, as Mr. Carlyle +(your antithesis, and the complement of the Scotch character) +supposed; but the morals of Ettrick are those of rural Sicily in old +days, or of Mossgiel in your days. Over these matters the Kirk, +with all her power, and the Free Kirk too, have had absolutely no +influence whatever. To leave so delicate a topic, you were but as +other swains, or, as "that Birkie ca'd a lord," Lord Byron; only you +combined (in certain of your letters) a libertine theory with your +practice; you poured out in song your audacious raptures, your half- +hearted repentance, your shame and your scorn. You spoke the truth +about rural lives and loves. We may like it or dislike it but we +cannot deny the verity. + +Was it not as unhappy a thing, Sir, for you, as it was fortunate for +Letters and for Scotland, that you were born at the meeting of two +ages and of two worlds--precisely in the moment when bookish +literature was beginning to reach the people, and when Society was +first learning to admit the low-born to her Minor Mysteries? Before +you how many singers not less truly poets than yourself--though less +versatile not less passionate, though less sensuous not less simple- +-had been born and had died in poor men's cottages! There abides +not even the shadow of a name of the old Scotch song-smiths, of the +old ballad-makers. The authors of "Clerk Saunders," of "The Wife of +Usher's Well," of "Fair Annie," and "Sir Patrick Spens," and "The +Bonny Hind," are as unknown to us as Homer, whom in their directness +and force they resemble. They never, perhaps, gave their poems to +writing; certainly they never gave them to the press. On the lips +and in the hearts of the people they have their lives; and the +singers, after a life obscure and untroubled by society or by fame, +are forgotten. "The Iniquity of Oblivion blindly scattereth his +Poppy." + +Had you been born some years earlier you would have been even as +these unnamed Immortals, leaving great verses to a little clan-- +verses retained only by Memory. You would have been but the +minstrel of your native valley: the wider world would not have +known you, nor you the world. Great thoughts of independence and +revolt would never have burned in you; indignation would not have +vexed you. Society would not have given and denied her caresses. +You would have been happy. Your songs would have lingered in all +"the circle of the summer hills;" and your scorn, your satire, your +narrative verse, would have been unwritten or unknown. To the world +what a loss! and what a gain to you! We should have possessed but a +few of your lyrics, as + + +When o'er the hill the eastern star +Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo; +And owsen frae the furrowed field, +Return sae dowf and wearie O! + + +How noble that is, how natural, how unconsciously Greek! You found, +oddly, in good Mrs. Barbauld, the merits of the Tenth Muse: + + +In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives +Even Sappho's flame! + + +But how unconsciously you remind us both of Sappho and of Homer in +these strains about the Evening Star and the hour when the Day +[Greek text]? Had you lived and died the pastoral poet of some +silent glen, such lyrics could not but have survived; free, too, of +all that in your songs reminds us of the Poet's Corner in the +"Kirkcudbright Advertiser." We should not have read how + + +Phoebus, gilding the brow o' morning, +Banishes ilk darksome shade! + + +Still we might keep a love-poem unexcelled by Catullus, + + +Had we never loved sae kindly, +Had we never loved sae blindly, +Never met--or never parted, +We had ne'er been broken-hearted. + + +But the letters to Clarinda would have been unwritten, and the +thrush would have been untaught in "the style of the Bird of +Paradise." + +A quiet life of song, fallentis semita vitae, was not to be yours. +Fate otherwise decreed it. The touch of a lettered society, the +strife with the Kirk, discontent with the State, poverty and pride, +neglect and success, were needed to make your Genius what it was, +and to endow the world with "Tam o' Shanter," the "Jolly Beggars," +and "Holy Willie's Prayer." Who can praise them too highly--who +admire in them too much the humour, the scorn, the wisdom, the +unsurpassed energy and courage? So powerful, so commanding, is the +movement of that Beggars' Chorus, that, methinks, it unconsciously +echoed in the brain of our greatest living poet when he conceived +the "Vision of Sin." You shall judge for yourself. Recall: + + +Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets! +Here's to all the wandering train! +Here's our ragged bairns and callets! +One and all cry out, Amen! + +A fig for those by law protected! +Liberty's a glorious feast! +Courts for cowards were erected! +Churches built to please the priest! + + +Then read this: + + +Drink to lofty hopes that cool - +Visions of a perfect state: +Drink we, last, the public fool, +Frantic love and frantic hate. + +* * * + +Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, +While we keep a little breath! +Drink to heavy Ignorance, +Hob and nob with brother Death! + + +Is not the movement the same, though the modern speaks a wilder +recklessness? + +So in the best company we leave you, who were the life and soul of +so much company, good and bad. No poet, since the Psalmist of +Israel, ever gave the world more assurance of a man; none lived a +life more strenuous, engaged in an eternal conflict of the passions, +and by them overcome--"mighty and mightily fallen." When we think +of you, Byron seems, as Plato would have said, remote by one degree +from actual truth, and Musset by a degree more remote than Byron. + + + +LETTER--To Lord Byron + + + +My Lord, + +(Do you remember how Leigh Hunt +Enraged you once by writing MY DEAR BYRON?) +Books have their fates,--as mortals have who punt, +And YOURS have entered on an age of iron. +Critics there be who think your satire blunt, +Your pathos, fudge; such perils must environ +Poets who in their time were quite the rage, +Though now there's not a soul to turn their page. +Yes, there is much dispute about your worth, +And much is said which you might like to know +By modern poets here upon the earth, +Where poets live, and love each other so; +And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth +To hear of bards that pitch your praises low, +Though there be some that for your credit stickle, +As--Glorious Mat,--and not inglorious Nichol. + +(This kind of writing is my pet aversion, +I hate the slang, I hate the personalities, +I loathe the aimless, reckless, loose dispersion, +Of every rhyme that in the singer's wallet is, +I hate it as you hated the EXCURSION, +But, while no man a hero to his valet is, +The hero's still the model; I indite +The kind of rhymes that Byron oft would write.) + +There's a Swiss critic whom I cannot rhyme to, +One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. +Of him there's much to say, if I had time to +Concern myself in any wise with HIM. +He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, +He thinks your poetry a coxcomb's whim, +A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on +Shakespeare, and Moliere, and you, and Milton. + +Ay, much his temper is like Vivien's mood, +Which found not Galahad pure, nor Lancelot brave; +Cold as a hailstorm on an April wood, +He buries poets in an icy grave, +His Essays--he of the Genevan hood! +Nothing so fine, but better doth he crave. +So stupid and so solemn in his spite +He dares to print that Moliere could not write! + +Enough of these excursions; I was saying +That half our English Bards are turned Reviewers, +And Arnold was discussing and assaying +The weight and value of that work of yours, +Examining and testing it and weighing, +And proved, the gems are pure, the gold endures. +While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy, +The stones are paste, and half the gold, alloy. + +In Byron, Arnold finds the greatest force, +Poetic, in this later age of ours; +His song, a torrent from a mountain source, +Clear as the crystal, singing with the showers, +Sweeps to the sea in unrestricted course +Through banks o'erhung with rocks and sweet with flowers; +None of your brooks that modestly meander, +But swift as Awe along the Pass of Brander. + +And when our century has clomb its crest, +And backward gazes o'er the plains of Time, +And counts its harvest, yours is still the best, +The richest garner in the field of rhyme +(The metaphoric mixture, 'tis comfest, +Is all my own, and is not quite sublime). +But fame's not yours alone; you must divide all +The plums and pudding with the Bard of Rydal! + +WORDSWORTH and BYRON, these the lordly names +And these the gods to whom most incense burns. +"Absurd!" cries Swinburne, and in anger flames, +And in an AEschylean fury spurns +With impious foot your altar, and exclaims +And wreathes his laurels on the golden urns +Where Coleridge's and Shelley's ashes lie, +Deaf to the din and heedless of the cry. + +For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven +One honest thread of life within his song; +As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven +So Byron is to Shelley (THIS is strong!), +And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven, +He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; +For Byron's rank (the examiner has reckoned) +Is in the third class or a feeble second. + +"A Bernesque poet" at the very most, +And "never earnest save in politics," +The Pegasus that he was wont to boast +A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, +A beast that must be driven to the post +By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, +A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute, +That any judge of Pegasi would shoot; + +In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone +In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. +And Byron's style is "jolter-headed jargon;" +His verse is "only bearable in prose." +So living poets write of those that ARE gone, +And o'er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; +And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, +By owning you "a very clever man." + +Or rather does not end: he still must utter +A quantity of the unkindest things. +Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter +O'er such a foe the tempest of your wings? +'Tis "rant and cant and glare and splash and splutter" +That rend the modest air when Byron sings. +There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery. +Animis caelestibus tantaene irae? + +But whether he or Arnold in the right is, +Long is the argument, the quarrel long; +Non nobis est to settle tantas lites; +No poet I, to judge of right or wrong: +But of all things I always think a fight is +The MOST unpleasant in the lists of song; +When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo +Set an example which we need not follow. + +The fashion changes! Maidens do not wear, +As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets +A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron's hair; +"Don Juan" is not always in our pockets - +Nay, a New Writer's readers do not care +Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its +Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies +To yours prefer the "Epic" called "of Hades"! + +I do not blame them; I'm inclined to think +That with the reigning taste 'tis vain to quarrel, +And Burns might teach his votaries to drink, +And Byron never meant to make them moral. +You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink +From lauding you and giving you the laurel; +The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, +Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron. + +Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods! +Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, +Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, +Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit; +Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies' rods, +Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; +Beholding whom, men think how fairer far +Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! {9} + + + +LETTER--To Omar Khayyam + + + +Wise Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling +Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring, +The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose, +The wild white Roses you were wont to sing? + +Far in the South I know a Land divine, {10} +And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine, +And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows +Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine. + +You were a Saint of unbelieving Days, +Liking your Life and happy in Men's Praise; +Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough, +Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways. + +Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell, +Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell, +Content to know not all thou knowest now, +What's Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well? + +The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill, +Shall He torment them if they chance to spill? +Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast +Forth and forgotten,--and what will be will! + +So still were we, before the Months began +That rounded us and shaped us into Man. +So still we SHALL be, surely, at the last, +Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban! + +Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought - +How all Things have been, ay, and shall be nought - +Was ancient Wisdom in thine ancient East, +In those old Days when Senlac Fight was fought, + +Which gave our England for a captive Land +To pious Chiefs of a believing Band, +A gift to the Believer from the Priest, +Tossed from the holy to the blood-red Hand! {11} + +Yea, thou wert singing when that Arrow clave +Through Helm and Brain of him who could not save +His England, even of Harold Godwin's son; +The high Tide murmurs by the Hero's Grave! {12} + +And THOU wert wreathing Roses--who can tell? - +Or chanting for some Girl that pleased thee well, +Or satst at Wine in Nashapur, when dun +The twilight veiled the Field where Harold fell! + +The salt Sea-waves above him rage and roam! +Along the white Walls of his guarded Home +No Zephyr stirs the Rose, but o'er the Wave +The wild Wind beats the Breakers into Foam! + +And dear to him, as Roses were to thee, +Rings the long Roar of Onset of the Sea; +The SWAN'S PATH of his Fathers is his Grave: +His Sleep, methinks, is sound as thine can be. + +His was the Age of Faith, when all the West +Looked to the Priest for Torment or for Rest; +And thou wert living then, and didst not heed +The Saint who banned thee or the Saint who blessed! + +Ages of Progress! These eight hundred Years +Hath Europe shuddered with her Hopes or Fears, +And now!--she listens in the Wilderness +To THEE, and half believeth what she hears! + +Hadst THOU THE SECRET? Ah, and who may tell? +"An Hour we have," thou saidst; "Ah, waste it well!" +An Hour we have, and yet Eternity +Looms o'er us, and the Thought of Heaven or Hell! + +Nay, we can never be as wise as thou, +O idle Singer 'neath the blossomed Bough. +Nay, and we cannot be content to die. +WE cannot shirk the Questions "Where?" and "How?" + +Ah, not from learned Peace and gay Content +Shall we of England go the way HE went - +The Singer of the Red Wine and the Rose - +Nay, otherwise than HIS our Day is spent! + +Serene he dwelt in fragrant Nashapur, +But we must wander while the Stars endure. +HE knew THE SECRET: we have none that knows, +No Man so sure as Omar once was sure! + + + +LETTER--To Q. Horatius Flaccus + + + +In what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are +dwelling, or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures +as this life afforded? The country and the town, nature and men, +who knew them so well as you, or who ever so wisely made the best of +those two worlds? Truly here you had good things, nor do you ever, +in all your poems, look for more delight in the life beyond; you +never expect consolation for present sorrow, and when you once have +shaken hands with a friend the parting seems to you eternal. + + +Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus +Tam cari capitis? + + +So you sing, for the dear head you mourn has sunk, for ever, beneath +the wave. Virgil might wander forth bearing the golden branch "the +Sibyl doth to singing men allow," and might visit, as one not wholly +without hope, the dim dwellings of the dead and the unborn. To him +was it permitted to see and sing "mothers and men, and the bodies +outworn of mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids, and young men +borne to the funeral fire before their parent's eyes." The endless +caravan swept past him--"many as fluttering leaves that drop and +fall in autumn woods when the first frost begins; many as birds that +flock landward from the great sea when now the chill year drives +them o'er the deep and leads them to sunnier lands." Such things +was it given to the sacred poet to behold, and "the happy seats and +sweet pleasances of fortunate souls, where the larger light clothes +all the plains and dips them in a rosier gleam, plains with their +own new sun and stars before unknown." Ah, not frustra pius was +Virgil, as you say, Horace, in your melancholy song. In him, we +fancy, there was a happier mood than your melancholy patience. +"Not, though thou wert sweeter of song than Thracian Orpheus, with +that lyre whose lay led the dancing trees, not so would the blood +return to the empty shade of him whom once with dread wand, the +inexorable God hath folded with his shadowy flocks; but patience +lighteneth what heaven forbids us to undo." + + +Durum, sed levius fit patietia! + + +It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are +pushed so often - + + +"With close-lipped Patience for our only friend, +Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair." + + +The Epicurean is at one with the Stoic at last, and Horace with +Marcus Aurelius. "To go away from among men, if there are Gods, is +not a thing to be afraid of; but if indeed they do not exist, or if +they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live +in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence?" + +An excellent philosophy, but easier to those for whom no Hope had +dawned or seemed to set. Yes! it is harder than common, Horace, for +us to think of YOU, still glad somewhere, among rivers like Liris +and plains and vine-clad hills, that + + +Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. + + +It is hard, for you looked for no such thing. + + +Omnes una manet nox +Et calcanda semel via leti. + + +You could not tell Maecenas that you would meet him again; you could +only promise to tread the dark path with him. + + +Ibimus, ibimus, +Utcunque praecedes, supremum +Carpere iter comites parati. + + +Enough, Horace, of these mortuary musings. You loved the lesson of +the roses, and now and again would speak somewhat like a death's +head over your temperate cups of Sabine ordinaire. Your melancholy +moral was but meant to heighten the joy of your pleasant life, when +wearied Italy, after all her wars and civic bloodshed, had won a +peaceful haven. The harbour might be treacherous; the prince might +turn to the tyrant; far away on the wide Roman marches might be +heard, as it were, the endless, ceaseless monotone of beating +horses' hoofs and marching feet of men. They were coming, they were +nearing, like footsteps heard on wool; there was a sound of +multitudes and millions of barbarians, all the North, officina +gentium, mustering and marshalling her peoples. But their coming +was not to be to-day, nor to-morrow, nor to-day was the budding +Empire to blossom into the blood-red flower of Nero. In the lull +between the two tempests of Republic and Empire your odes sound +"like linnets in the pauses of the wind." + +What joy there is in these songs! what delight of life, what an +exquisite Hellenic grace of art, what a manly nature to endure, what +tenderness and constancy of friendship, what a sense of all that is +fair in the glittering stream, the music of the waterfall, the hum +of bees, the silvery grey of the olive woods on the hillside! How +human are all your verses, Horace! what a pleasure is yours in the +straining poplars, swaying in the wind! what gladness you gain from +the white crest of Soracte, beheld through the fluttering snowflakes +while the logs are being piled higher on the hearth. You sing of +women and wine--not all wholehearted in your praise of them, +perhaps, for passion frightens you, and 'tis pleasure more than love +that you commend to the young. Lydia and Glycera, and the others, +are but passing guests of a heart at ease in itself, and happy +enough when their facile reign is ended. You seem to me like a man +who welcomes middle age, and is more glad than Sophocles was to +"flee from these hard masters" the passions. In the fallow leisure +of life you glance round contented, and find all very good save the +need to leave all behind. Even that you take with an Italian good- +humour, as the folk of your sunny country bear poverty and hunger. + + +Durum, sed levius fit patientia! + + +To them, to you, the loveliness of your land is, and was, a thing to +live for. None of the Latin poets your fellows, or none but Virgil, +seem to me to have known so well as you, Horace, how happy and +fortunate a thing it was to be born in Italy. You do not say so, +like your Virgil, in one splendid passage, numbering the glories of +the land as a lover might count the perfections of his mistress. +But the sentiment is ever in your heart and often on your lips. + + +Me nec tam patiens Lacedaemon, +Nec tam Larissae percussit campus opimae, +Quam domus Albuneae resonantis +Et praeceps Anio, ac Tiburni lucus, et uda +Mobilibus pomaria rivis. {13} + + +So a poet should speak, and to every singer his own land should be +dearest. Beautiful is Italy with the grave and delicate outlines of +her sacred hills, her dark groves, her little cities perched like +eyries on the crags, her rivers gliding under ancient walls; +beautiful is Italy, her seas, and her suns: but dearer to me the +long grey wave that bites the rock below the minster in the north; +dearer are the barren moor and black peat-water swirling in tauny +foam, and the scent of bog myrtle and the bloom of heather, and, +watching over the lochs, the green round-shouldered hills. + +In affection for your native land, Horace, certainly the pride in +great Romans dead and gone made part, and you were, in all senses, a +lover of your country, your country's heroes, your country's gods. +None but a patriot could have sung that ode on Regulus, who died, as +our own hero died on an evil day, for the honour of Rome, as Gordon +for the honour of England. + + +Fertur pudicae conjugis osculum, +Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor, +Ab se removisse, et virilem +Torvus humi posuisse voltum: + +Donec labantes consilio patres +Firmaret auctor nunquam alias dato, +Interque maerentes amicos +Egregius properaret exul. + +Atqui sciebat, quae sibi barbarus +Tortor pararet: non aliter tamen +Dimovit obstantes propinquos, +Et populum reditus morantem, + +Quam si clientum longa negotia +Dijudicata lite relinqueret, +Tendens Venafranos in agros +Aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum. {14} + + +We talk of the Greeks as your teachers. Your teachers they were, +but that poem could only have been written by a Roman! The +strength, the tenderness, the noble and monumental resolution and +resignation--these are the gifts of the lords of human things, the +masters of the world. + +Your country's heroes are dear to you, Horace, but you did not sing +them better than your country's Gods, the pious protecting spirits +of the hearth, the farm, the field; kindly ghosts, it may be, of +Latin fathers dead or Gods framed in the image of these. What you +actually believed we know not, YOU knew not. Who knows what he +believes? Parcus Deorum cultor you bowed not often, it may be, in +the temples of the state religion and before the statues of the +great Olympians; but the pure and pious worship of rustic tradition, +the faith handed down by the homely elders, with THAT you never +broke. Clean hands and a pure heart, these, with a sacred cake and +shining grains of salt, you could offer to the Lares. It was a +benignant religion, uniting old times and new, men living and men +long dead and gone, in a kind of service and sacrifice solemn yet +familiar. + + +Te nihil attinet +Tentare multa caede bidentium +Parvos coronantem marino +Rore deos fragilique myrto. + +Immunis aram si tetigit manus, +Non sumptuosa blandior hostia +Mellivit aversos Penates +Farre pio et saliente mica, {15} + + +Farewell, dear Horace; farewell, thou wise and kindly heathen; of +mortals the most human, the friend of my friends and of so many +generations of men, + +Ave atque Vale! + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} I am informed that the Natural History of Young Ladies is +attributed, by some writers, to another philosopher, the author of +The Art of Pluck. + +{2} Rape of the Lock. + +{3} In Mr. Hogarth's Caricatura. + +{4} Elwin's Pope, ii. 15. + +{5} "Poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar."--Pope, by Leslie +Stephen, 139. + +{6} The Greek [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], mentioned by +Lucian and Theocritus, was the magical weapon of the Australians-- +the turndun. + +{7} Lord Napier and Ettrick points out to me that, unluckily, the +tradition is erroneous. Piers was not executed at all. William +Cockburn suffered in Edinburgh. But the Border Minstrelsy overrides +history. + +Criminal Trials in Scotland, by Robert Pitcairn, Esq. Vol. i. part +i. p. 144, A.D. 1530. 17 Jac. V. + +May 16. William Cokburne of Henderland, convicted (in presence of +the King) of high treason committed by him in bringing Alexander +Forestare and his son, Englishmen, to the plundering of Archibald +Somervile; and for treasonably bringing certain Englishmen to the +lands of Glenquhome; and for common theft, common reset of theft, +out-putting and in-putting thereof. Sentence. For which causes and +crimes he has forfeited his life, lands, and goods, movable and +immovable; which shall be escheated to the King. Beheaded. + +{8} "The Lesson of Jupiter."--Nineteenth Century, October 1885. + +{9} Mr. Swinburne's and Mr. Arnold's diverse views of Byron will be +found in the Selections by Mr. Arnold and in the Nineteenth Century. + +{10} The hills above San Remo, where rose-bushes are planted by the +shrines. Omar desired that his grave might be where the wind would +scatter rose-leaves over it. + +{11} Omar was contemporary with the battle of Hastings. + +{12} Per mandata Ducis, Rex hic, Heralde, quiescis, +Ut custos maneas littoris et pelagi. + +{13} "Me neither resolute Sparta nor the rich Larissaean plain so +enraptures as the fane of echoing Albunea, the headlong Anio, the +grove of Tibur, the orchards watered by the wandering rills." + +{14} "They say he put aside from him the pure lips of his wife and +his little children, like a man unfree, and with his brave face +bowed earthward sternly he waited till with such counsel as never +mortal gave he might strengthen the hearts of the Fathers, and +through his mourning friends go forth, a hero, into exile. Yet well +he knew what things were being prepared for him at the hands of the +tormentors, who, none the less, put aside the kinsmen that barred +his path and the people that would fain have delayed his return, +passing through their midst as he might have done if, his retainers' +weary business ended and the suits adjudged, he were faring to his +Venafran lands or to Dorian Tarentum." + +{15} "Thou, Phidyle, hast no need to besiege the gods with +slaughter so great of sheep, thou who crownest thy tiny deities with +myrtle rare and rosemary. If but the hand be clean that touches the +altar, then richest sacrifice will not more appease the angered +Penates than the duteous cake and salt that crackles in the blaze." + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Letters to Dead Authors by Andrew Lang + |