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diff --git a/31034.txt b/31034.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..137f582 --- /dev/null +++ b/31034.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4786 @@ +Project Gutenberg's By-ways in Book-land, by William Davenport Adams + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: By-ways in Book-land + Short Essays on Literary Subjects + +Author: William Davenport Adams + +Release Date: January 21, 2010 [EBook #31034] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND *** + + + + +Produced by Julia Miller, Stephanie Eason, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + + +BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND. + + + + + BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND + + Short Essays on Literary Subjects + + BY + WM. DAVENPORT ADAMS + AUTHOR OF 'DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,' ETC. + + '_Excursusque breves tentat._' + 'GEORGICS,' iv. 194. + + LONDON + ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW + 1888 + + + + + TO MY FATHER, + W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS, + THIS LITTLE VOLUME + Is Affectionately Inscribed. + + + + +_In the following pages, the writer for the most part deals with small +subjects in an unelaborate manner. He leaves the highways of literature, +and strays into the fields and lanes, picking here a flower and there a +leaf, and not going far at any time. There is no endeavour to explore +with system, or to extend any excursion beyond a modest ramble. The +author wanders at haphazard into paths which have attracted him, and +along which, he hopes, the reader may be willing to bear him company._ + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE + + PAPER-KNIFE PLEASURES 1 + + RUSKIN AS POET 10 + + ELECTIONS IN LITERATURE 19 + + FAMILIAR VERSE 28 + + SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 36 + + HEREDITY IN SONG 44 + + STINGS FOR THE STINGY 51 + + DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD 59 + + SERMONS IN FLOWERS 66 + + 'DON QUIXOTE' IN ENGLAND 74 + + BEDSIDE BOOKS 83 + + THEIR MUCH SPEAKING 91 + + PEERS AND POETRY 99 + + THE PRAISE OF THAMES 107 + + ENGLISH EPIGRAPHS 114 + + THE 'SEASON' IN SONG 123 + + THE 'RECESS' IN RHYME 131 + + JAQUES IN LOVE 139 + + MOCKING AT MATRIMONY 148 + + PARSON POETS 156 + + THE OUTSIDES OF BOOKS 164 + + THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE 172 + + NONSENSE VERSES 180 + + SINGLE-SPEECH HAMILTONS 188 + + DRAMATIC NOMENCLATURE 196 + + PUNS AND PATRONYMICS 203 + + 'YOURS TRULY' 209 + + POSTSCRIPTS 217 + + + + +_BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND_ + + + + +PAPER-KNIFE PLEASURES. + + +One is for ever hearing enough and to spare about old books and those +who love them. There is a whole literature of the subject. The men +themselves, from Charles Lamb downwards, have over and over again +described their ecstasies--with what joy they have pounced upon some +rare edition, and with what reverence they have ever afterwards regarded +it. It is some time since Mr. Buchanan drew his quasi-pathetic picture +of the book-hunter, bargaining for his prize, + + 'With the odd sixpence in his hand, + And greed in his gray eyes;' + +having, moreover, in his mind's eye as he walked + + 'Vistas of dusty libraries + Prolonged eternally.' + +Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has sung to us of the man who 'book-hunts while +the loungers fly,' who 'book-hunts though December freeze,' for whom + + 'Each tract that flutters in the breeze + Is charged with hopes and fears,' + +while + + 'In mouldy novels fancy sees + Aldines, Bodonis, Elzevirs.' + +There are periodicals which cater solely for old-book adorers; and while +on the one hand your enthusiast will publish his 'Pleasures' and +'Diversions,' on the other a contemporary will devote a volume to the +subjects which attract and interest 'the Book Fancier.' + +Meanwhile, is there nothing to be said of, or by, the admirer of new +books--the man or woman who rejoices in the pleasant act of turning over +new leaves? At a time when volumes are issuing by the dozen from the +publishers' counters, shall not something be chronicled of the happiness +which lies in the contemplation, the perusal, of the literary product +which comes hot from the press? For, to begin with, the new books have +at least this great advantage over the old--that they are clean. It is +not everybody who can wax dithyrambic over the 'dusty' and the 'mouldy.' +It is possible for a volume to be too 'second-hand.' Your devotee, to be +sure, thinks fondly of the many hands, dead and gone, through which his +'find' has passed; he loves to imagine that it may have been held +between the fingers of some person or persons of distinction; he is in +the seventh heaven of exaltation if he can be quite certain it has had +that honour. But suppose this factitious charm is really wanting? +Suppose a volume is dirty, and ignobly so? Must one necessarily delight +in dogs' ears, bask in the shadow of beer-stains, and 'chortle' at the +sign of cheese-marks? Surely it is one of the merits of new leaves that +they come direct from the printer and the binder, though they, alas! +may have left occasional impressions of an inky thumb. + +It might possibly be argued that a new volume is, if anything, 'too +bright and good'--too beautiful and too resplendent--for 'base uses.' +There is undoubtedly an _amari aliquid_ about them. They certainly do +seem to say that we 'may look but must not touch.' Talk about the awe +with which your book-hunter gazes upon an ancient or infrequent tome; +what is it when compared with the respect which another class of +book-lover feels for a volume which reaches them 'clothed upon with' +virtual spotlessness? Who can have the heart to impair that innocent +freshness? Do but handle the book, and the harm is done--unless, indeed, +the handling be achieved with hands delicately gloved. The touch of the +finger is, in too many cases, fatal. On the smooth cloth or the vellum +or the parchment, some mark, alas! must needs be made. The lover of new +books will hasten, oftentimes, to enshrine them in paper covers; but a +book in such a guise is, for many, scarcely a book at all; it has lost +a great deal of its charm. Better, almost, the inevitable tarnishing. +All that's bright must fade; the new book cannot long maintain its +lustre. But it has had it, to begin with. And that is much. We feel at +least the first fine careless rapture. Whatever happens, no one can +deprive us of that--of the first fond glimpse of the immaculate. + +But the matter is not, of course, one of exterior only. Some interest, +at least, attaches to the contents, however dull the subject, however +obscure the author. A new book is a new birth, not only to the aesthetic +but to the literary sense. It contains within it boundless +possibilities. There are printed volumes which are books only in +form--which are mere collections of facts or figures, or what not, and +which do not count. But if a volume be a genuine specimen of the _belles +lettres_, the imagination loves to play upon it. What will it be like? +What treasures lie concealed in it? What delights has it in store for +us? In our curiosity we are like the boy in Mr. Pinero's farcical +comedy: 'It is the 'orrible uncertainty wot we craves after.' No one can +tell what may nestle in the recesses of new leaves. Not even in +reference to well-known writers can we be positively sure. They may +belie their reputation. The illustrious Smith may make a failure; the +obscurer Brown may score a hit. For once in a way Robinson may have +produced something we can read; to everybody's surprise, the great Jones +has dropped into the direst twaddle. And if this uncertainty exists in +respect to those we know, how much more auspicious is it in the case of +those who are quite new to us? What gems of purest ray serene may repose +within the pages of the unopened book before us! + +And, talking of unopened books, how much of the pleasure we derive from +newly-published volumes lies in the process by which we first make their +acquaintance. There are those who would have all books issued with the +edges of the pages cut. The reasons why are obvious. To begin with, some +labour is thereby saved to the purchaser; a certain measure of time, +too, is saved. The reviewer, who has no moments to spare, may +anathematize the leaves he has to separate with the paper-knife; the +traveller by rail may condemn to Hades the producers of the work which +he cannot cut open--because he has not the wherewithal about him. +Everywhere there are eager and hasty readers who chafe at the delay +which an uncut book imposes upon their impatient spirit. On the other +hand, your genuine book-adorer, your enthusiast, who loves to extract +from a volume all which it is capable of yielding, cannot but approve a +habit which enables him to linger delightedly over his new possession. +What special sweets may not be hidden within just those very pages which +are at present closed to him! _Omne ignotum_ is, for him, _pro +magnifico_--here may be the very cream of the cream. And so the adorer +dallies with his prize. First he peeps within the leaves, and gleans a +sentence here and there. And then he begins to use the cutter--slowly, +slowly--dwelling with enraptured tardiness upon each page which he +reveals. + +Who shall say that new leaves have no drawbacks? Verily, they have them. +It cannot be supposed, for instance, that they are always wholly +acceptable to the aforesaid professional censor. The reviewer, sitting +surrounded by them, tier on tier, may rail at the productiveness of the +age, and wish that there might not be more than one new book each week. +And the omnivorous reader, anxious to keep up with the literature of the +day, might fairly re-echo the aspiration. Who, indeed, can hope to turn +over a tithe of the new leaves which are issued daily? Nor can an +unlimited consumption of them be recommended. Mr. Lowell is to a certain +extent justified when he says that + + 'Reading new books is like eating new bread; + One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he + Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy.' + +Assuredly new books are so far like new bread, that we should not +consume them in too rapid succession. At the same time, let us be +thankful for them, inasmuch as they have the unquestionable gift of +novelty. Lord Beaconsfield's Lady Montfort said she preferred a new +book, even if bad, to a classic. That was a strong saying, but there are +points of view from which it is perfectly defensible. + + + + +RUSKIN AS POET. + + +It was lately rumoured that Mr. Ruskin was about to issue a volume of +poems, consisting mainly of pieces already published. The statement was +probably the first intimation received by many that the author of +'Modern Painters' had ever written anything in the shape of verse. That +he has always been, like Sidney, a 'warbler of poetic prose,' has lately +been emphasized by a magazine-writer; but it is not at all universally +known that between the years 1835 and 1845 Mr. Ruskin figured somewhat +largely as a poet, in the popular sense of that much abused word. During +that time he produced a good deal of verse, in addition to the prize +poem which has always been readily accessible by his admirers. + +Even if one had not known, it would not have been difficult to have +assumed, from the rhythmic character of Mr. Ruskin's prose, that he had +at one time 'dropped into poetry.' Such a master of rhetoric could +hardly have gone through life without wooing the Muse of Song, however +temporarily or unsuccessfully. It would not have been natural for him to +have done so. And, indeed, it is probable that no great prose +rhetorician has failed to pay the same homage to the charm of verbal +melody and cadence. In all the most sonorous prose turned out by English +authors there will be found a lilt and a swing which would without +difficulty translate themselves into verse. 'Most wretched men,' says +Shelley, 'are cradled into poetry by wrong.' Most literary men have been +cradled into it by their irresistible feeling and aptitude for rhythm, +together with that general poetic sensibility which is rarely absent +from the nature of the literary artist. Certain it is that practice in +verse has always been recognised as the best of all preparation for work +in prose, and no doubt much of Mr. Ruskin's success as prose-producer +has been owing to his early devotion to the Muse. + +He himself tells us, in the course of his tribute to his 'first editor' +(W. H. Harrison), that + + 'A certain capacity for rhythmic cadence (visible enough in all my + later writings), and the cheerfulness of a much-protected but not + foolishly-indulged childhood, made me early a rhymester.' + +And he adds--the tribute was paid in 1878-- + + 'A shelf of the little cabinet by which I am now writing is loaded + with poetical effusions which were the delight of my father and + mother, and which I have not got the heart to burn.' + +A much fuller account of the poetic stages through which he passed in +childhood is given by Mr. Ruskin in his 'Praeterita,' where he tells us +of the six 'poems' he brought forth in his seventh year (1826), one of +them being on the subject of the steam-engine, and rejoicing in such +couplets as: + + 'When furious up from mines the water pours, + And clears from rusty moisture all the ores.' + +Another, on the rainbow, was in blank verse and impressively didactic in +its tone. Then, when he was nine years old, he broke out with yet +another effusion, called 'Eudosia;' and when only eleven he began the +composition of an elaborate 'poetical' description of his various +journeyings, under the title of 'Iteriad.' + +It is easy to understand how this fondness for the rhythmical was +fostered by the aforesaid parental admiration, and how it was still +further increased by the boy's admiration, successively, for Scott and +Byron. Certain early friendships held out to the young versifier the +prospect of publication, and thus it is that we find him, in his +sixteenth year, figuring as a contributor to 'Friendship's Offering and +Winter's Wreath: a Christmas and New Year's Present' for 1835. This was +the era of the old-fashioned 'annuals,' and 'Friendship's Offering' was +one of the most notable of its kind. In the issue for the year named we +note Barry Cornwall, John Clare, William Howitt, and H. F. Chorley among +the writers of whom the youthful Ruskin was one. Here, by the side of +really excellent steel-engravings, portraying languishing ladies in +corkscrew curls, and illustrating literary matter not always unworthy of +the embellishment given to it, we discover Mr. Ruskin's first published +verses--'Salzburg' and some 'Fragments' of a poetical journal, kept on +tour. In the former we seem to detect the influence of Rogers, rather +than that of Scott or Byron. It opens thus: + + 'On Salza's quiet tide the westering sun + Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun, + Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof, + Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof; + Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil, + Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale.' + +A little further on we read: + + 'Sweet is the twilight hour by Salza's strand, + Though no Arcadian visions grace the land; + Wakes not a sound that floats not sweetly by, + While day's last beams upon the landscape die; + Low chants the fisher where the waters pour, + And murmuring voices melt along the shore; + The plash of waves comes softly from the side + Of passing barge slow gliding o'er the tide; + And there are sounds from city, field, and hill, + Shore, forest, flood; yet mellow all, and still.' + +Herein, it will be seen, is something of the power of description which +the writer was afterwards to exhibit so much more effectively in prose. + +Four years later Mr. Ruskin's initials were to be seen appended to a +couple of pieces in verse contributed to 'The Amaranth,' an annual of +much more imposing presence than the 'Offering'--edited by T. K. Hervey, +admirably illustrated, and happy in the practical support of such +literary lights as Horace Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Sheridan Knowles, +Thomas Hood, Praed, and Mrs. Browning. One of the two pieces in question +is 'The Wreck,' in which Mr. Ruskin's poetic capability, such as it is, +is visible in one of its most attractive moods. The last verse runs: + + 'The voices of the night are mute + Beneath the moon's eclipse; + The silence of the fitful flute + Is in the dying lips! + The silence of my lonely heart + Is kept for ever more + In the lull + Of the waves + Of a low lee shore.' + + +To the same year belong contributions to the _London Monthly Miscellany_ +and the prize poem ('Salsette and Elephanta') before-mentioned. In the +_Miscellany_ appeared some lines which, in certain respects, are a +species of anticipation of the Swinburnian manner; as, for example: + + 'We care not what skies are the clearest, + What scenes are the fairest of all; + The skies and the scenes that are dearest + For ever, are those that recall + To the thoughts of the hopelessly-hearted + The light of the dreams that deride, + With the form of the dear and departed, + Their loneliness, weary and wide.' + +It may be assumed that 'Salsette and Elephanta' has been read by all who +care about the undertaking. It was recited in the theatre at Oxford, +printed in the same year (1839), and reprinted exactly forty years +afterwards. It is a by no means unattractive piece of rhetoric. + +Another of the annuals to which Mr. Ruskin contributed in those days was +the _Keepsake_, in which he figured in 1845, under the editorship of +the Countess of Blessington, with Landor, Monckton Milnes, Lord John +Manners, and the future Lord Beaconsfield as fellow-contributors. He was +also welcomed to the pages of _Heath's Book of Beauty_. Five years later +he collected his fugitive pieces, and, adding a few new ones, included +the whole in a volume privately circulated in 1850. Copies of this book +are said to have been bought at sales, at different times, for L31 and +41 guineas. Six years ago, a selection from the 'Annual' verses was +published, together with the prize poem and other matter, in America. + +Glancing through Mr. Ruskin's verse, one is forced to admit that it has +no special individuality or charm. It deals with conventional subjects +in a more or less conventional manner. There is a classical element, and +a flavour of foreign scenery, and an occasional excursion in the +direction of such topics as 'Spring,' 'The Months,' 'The Old Water +Wheel,' 'The Old Seaman,' 'Remembrance,' 'The Last Smile,' and the like. +The rhythm is always regular and flowing, and the descriptive passages +have light and colour; but the 'lyric cry' has no particular tone that +could attract the public. The longest piece ever written by Mr. Ruskin +was, not the prize poem, but that entitled 'The Broken Chain,' with an +extract from which I may conclude this brief survey of a great +prose-writer's verse-production:-- + + 'Where the flower hath fairest hue, + Where the breeze hath balmiest breath, + Where the dawn hath softest dew, + Where the heaven hath deepest blue, + There is death. + + 'Where the gentle streams of thinking, + Through our hearts that flow so free, + Have the deepest, softest sinking, + And the fullest melody, + Where the crown of hope is nearest, + Where the voice of joy is clearest, + Where the heart of youth is lightest, + Where the light of love is brightest, + There is death.' + + + + +ELECTIONS IN LITERATURE. + + +It is not surprising that Parliamentary contests should have figured +largely in the English plays, stories, and poems of the past. That they +will hold so prominent a place in them in future is, of course, by no +means certain. If elections have been made purer than they were, they +have been made less picturesque. They have now but little romance about +them. Nearly everything in them is precise and practical. The literary +artist, therefore, is likely to find in them few things to attract him, +and will be, to that extent, at a disadvantage as compared with those +who have preceded him. There were days when the preliminary canvassing, +the nomination and the polling days, had features which invited +treatment on the stage or in print. The whole atmosphere of +electioneering was different to that which now exists. Those involved in +it went about their work with a reckless jollity productive of results +eminently interesting to students of character and manners. A battle at +the polls brought out all which was most characteristic in the +Englishmen of the times, and to describe such a conflict was naturally +the aim of many a man of letters. + +Several theatrical pieces have been based almost wholly upon the varied +incidents of such a contest. There was, for example, that 'musical +interlude,' 'The Election,' written by Miles Peter Andrews, and produced +at Drury Lane in 1774. In this, Trusty and Sir Courtly are candidates +for a seat, and, while one John, a baker, would fain vote for the +former, his wife is desirous that he should support the latter. As she +wheedlingly remarks, + + 'Sir Courtly says, if you'll but vote for him, + He'll fill your pockets to the very brim.' + +But John is not to be corrupted: + + 'Honest John no bribe can charm; + His heart is like his oven, warm; + Though poor as Job, + He will not rob, + Nor sell his truth to fill his fob.' + +Nay, not though by so doing he may secure a husband for his daughter +Sally. He votes for Trusty, and Sally's sweetheart respects him all the +more for it. As the lover says to the lady: + + 'Your father's merit sets him up to view, + And more enhances my esteem for you.' + +And, in truth, everybody is delighted, for, as they sing in chorus: + + 'What to a Briton so grateful can be, + As the triumph of Freedom and Virtue to see?' + + +Then there is that forgotten play of Joanna Baillie, also called 'The +Election,' printed in 1802, and turned into an opera in 1817. Here, +again, we have two candidates--one Baltimore, of ancient but decayed +family, and one Freeman, a _nouveau riche_ of equally familiar +type--neighbours, but not friends, and rivals for the representation of +the borough of Westown. Of Tom Taylor's 'Contested Election,' produced +in 1859, most people have heard, if they have not had an opportunity of +seeing it performed. It gives a fairly faithful picture of the +unreformed method of carrying on electoral warfare. There is an +attorney, originally played by Charles Mathews, who undertakes to secure +the success of Honeybun, and is quite prepared to pay for the votes +which may be promised to him. There is also one Peekover, President of +the Blue Lambs, who is equally prepared to accept the proffered payment +for himself and friends. Honeybun does not get in, but that is hardly +the fault of his attorney, or due to any general unwillingness to sell +votes to the highest bidder. Bribery, it will be remembered, is an +important element in Robertson's 'M.P.,' which dates no further back +than 1870, though the action of the comedy, if I remember rightly, +belongs also to pre-reforming times. Cecilia is willing to buy votes for +Talbot, and three typical electors are willing to dispose of her money +to the best advantage. The last scene is tolerably exciting. Talbot +addresses the crowd from his window, and there is much exhilaration +when the result of the contest is announced. To more recent +representations of elections on the stage, it is scarcely necessary to +allude. + +Turning from drama to song, one thinks at once of the poem 'in seven +books' which its author, Carlyle's John Sterling, dubbed 'The Election' +and published in 1841. Sterling had been anticipated, a few years +previously--in 1835--by the author of a satire called 'Election Day,' +which supplied quite an elaborate description of such a day under the +respective heads of 'The Inn,' 'The Hustings,' 'The Chairing,' and 'The +Dinner.' 'Although,' said the writer, in his preface, 'there are some +great improvements in the manner in which elections are now conducted, +still the immoral and degrading principles that accompany them appear to +remain nearly the same.' According to this earnest and depressed +observer-- + + 'Mud and stones and waving hats, + And broken heads and putrid cats, + Are offerings made to aid the cause + Of order, government, and laws.' + +But especially is he struck by the amount of eating and drinking that +appears inseparable from an election in his time: + + ''Tis strange how much a splendid larder + Lights up electioneering ardour; + You soon awake to _patriae amor_ + When stirred about with ale and clamour.' + + +Sterling, though singing of + + 'Those high days when Aleborough proudly sent + Her man to sit in England's Parliament,' + +makes the plot of his poem turn upon a love affair in which one of the +candidates embarks, and for the sake of which, indeed, he pretends to +solicit the votes of the electors. There are, however, a few passages +descriptive of electioneering phenomena. We are told, for instance, how +one of the candidates went out to canvass: + + 'With smiling look and word, and promise bold, + And dainty flatteries meet for young and old, + The tender kiss on squalling mouths impressed, + The glistening ribbon for the maiden's breast, + Grave talk with men how this poor Empire thrives, + The high-priced purchase for their prudent wives, + The sympathizing glance, the attentive ear, + The shake of hands laboriously sincere.' + +We have, too, a graphic picture of the nomination day, telling how + + 'Ten public-houses opening for the Blues + Their floods of moral influence diffuse, + And each of seven its blameless nectar sheds + To nerve the spirits of the valiant Reds.' + +By-and-by we read: + + 'And now the poll begins. The assessors sit + Sublimely sure that what is writ is writ. + The lawyers watch the votes. The skies look down + Unpardonably calm, nor heed the town.' + + +In how many novels elections figure, I need not say. The name of +political tales is legion, and merely to enumerate them would occupy a +fair amount of space. Who, for example, does not remember the contest +pictured by George Eliot in 'Felix Holt'--that which leads to the riot +in which Felix becomes unintentionally and unfortunately embroiled? 'The +nomination day,' says the novelist, 'was a great epoch of successful +trickery, or, to speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, +on the part of skilful agents.' And she goes on to describe + + 'the show of hands, and the cheering, the bustling and the pelting, + the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles and + the soft hits with small jokes.' + +Of the polling day, she writes: + + 'Every public-house in Treby was lively with changing and numerous + company. Not, of course, that there was any treating; treating + necessarily had stopped, from moral scruples, when once "the writs + were out;" but there was drinking, which did equally well under any + name.' + + +This was in 1832. In 1840 there was published at Dublin a tale, entitled +'The Election,' in which the author bluntly declared that 'bribery and +perjury are the returning officers.' He was, in truth, a very +'high-toned' writer, for we find him declaiming vigorously against that +which Sterling mentions as one of the canvassing weapons of a +candidate--'the practice of shaking hands with all and every person +whose vote is solicited, whether they be old friends or the acquaintance +of the moment.' There are, we are told, 'cases when such buxom +familiarity is out of place--when it assumes too much the appearance of +vulgar cajolery to be received as a compliment.' Elsewhere we come +across an instructive bit of talk between an Irish maiden lady of a +certain age, and one of the gentlemen who desires her 'vote and +interest.' The lady protests that she does not know the difference +between the Whigs, the Tories, and the Radicals: + + 'I know two of them are in the history of England, where they gave + trouble enough, whatever they were. But as for the Radicals, it is + a newspaper word that I can't say I'm well acquainted with.' + +Whereupon the candidate replies that all he can say for the Whigs is +that + + 'they are very fair spoken, when it suits their convenience. But + the Radicals are a foul-mouthed race, on all and every occasion, + and are the bitter enemies to Church and State.' + + +Nevertheless, the contest (of course an Irish one) which forms the main +feature of the tale, ends in the return of Sir Andrew Shrivel, the +Radical, together with Thaddeus O'Sullivan Gaffrey, Esq., representing +the Nationalists. + + + + +FAMILIAR VERSE. + + +There is a species of verse, hitherto not classified distinctively, for +which it seems desirable to find a name. In the first place, it may be +necessary, perhaps, to emphasize once more the simple distinction +between verse and poetry. There are, indeed, excellent and happy people +for whom there is no difference between the two--for whom all that is +not prose is poetry, and who recognise no other varieties in literature. +Fortunate are they, and great is their reward. They are not disturbed by +the necessity of distinguishing between this and that--of pronouncing +upon what is poetry, and what is not. And, no doubt, if the critic were +careful only for his individual comfort, he would adopt this +rough-and-ready classification, and say no more about it. Unluckily, +the distinction must be made. Rhythmical poetry must needs be in verse +of some sort, but verse need not be poetry. What rhythmical poetry is in +essence, the critics have not yet agreed to say; but, roughly speaking, +it may be described as the language of imagination and of passion, as +opposed to verse which is the vehicle, merely, of fancy and of feeling. +Many can attain to the latter; the former is open only to the few. The +one is the natural expression of poetic genius; the other is that of the +natures which can lay claim only to poetic sentiment. The one is +exceptional; the other, luckily, is tolerably widespread. The writers of +verse which is not poetry have been many and able, and much enjoyment is +derivable from their work. + +They must not, however, all be grouped together under one embracing +appellation. If there is poetry and verse, there is also verse and +verse. Poetry may be said to be a fixed quality; but that is not so with +the inferior article. There are many different sorts of verse. There is +that which is strongly sentimental, there is that which is broadly +comic, and there is that which is something between the two--neither +over-sentimental nor over-comic, but altogether light in tone, and +marked in the main by wit and humour. Now, to this last class of verse +has been given, in general, the name of _vers de societe_ or _vers +d'occasion_--verse of society or for the moment. Mr. Frederick Locker, +nearly twenty years ago, thus labelled his volume of 'Lyra +Elegantiarum'--still, even at this distance of time, the best available +collection of our lighter verse. But the label is not sufficiently +distinguishing; it is too haphazard and too narrow. The term _vers de +societe_ will not include all that is commonly ranged under it. For +what, in reality, is _vers de societe_? It is what it professes to +be--it is the verse of society, the verse which deals with the various +phenomena of the fashionable world. The writers of genuine _vers de +societe_ have themselves been men and women of society, who had caught +its tone and could reproduce it in their rhythmic exercises. Mr. +Locker's 'St. James's Street,' Mr. Dobson's 'Rotten Row,' Prior's lines +'To a Child of Quality,' and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's 'Ode to Miss +Harriet Bunbury'--these are the true _vers de societe_, the true +'poetry' of the ball-room and the _salon_. + +What, then, is to become of the large amount of verse which remains +unaccounted for--which is neither distinctively sentimental nor +distinctively comic, and yet has no right to the designation of +society-verse? Well, this is the class of verse which, as we have said, +has hitherto not been christened, and for which it is desirable to find +a name. It is a very delightful species of rhythmic work, and deserves a +denomination of its own. It has the tone, less of society and of the +Court, than of the familiar intercourse of every day--of the +intercourse, that is, which goes on between people of ordinary breeding +and education. It does not dabble in the phrase of drawing-rooms, nor +does it rise to the height of sentiment or sink to the depths of low +comedy. It is 'familiar, but by no means vulgar.' Its first quality is +ease--absence of effort, spontaneity, freedom, a _degage_ air. It is in +rhythm what the perfect prose letter should be and is--flowing and +unpremeditated without slovenliness--having the characteristics of the +best conversation, as differentiated from mere argument or harangue. Its +second quality is playfulness--a refusal to be too much in earnest in +any direction, and a determination not to go to any unwelcome extreme. +It has touches of sentiment and traces of wit and humour; but its +dominant note is one of tempered geniality. Sometimes it may lean to the +sentimental, sometimes to the witty, sometimes to the humorous; but +always the style and atmosphere are those of familiar life, of everyday +reunions; and hence the suggestion that it should be recognised as +'Familiar Verse.' + +I have said how numerous are its producers. Often it has been written by +those who were poets as well as verse-writers; often by those who are +well-known as wits and humourists. It has flourished, naturally, in, +periods of tolerance rather than in strenuous times, and has been at its +best, therefore, in the Caroline, Augustan, and Victorian ages of our +literature. There was not much of it in the Elizabethan days, though +some bears the signature of rare Ben Jonson. It came in, in full force, +with the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease--with Suckling, whose +'Prithee, why so pale, fond lover?' is in exactly the right tone; and +with Dorset, whose 'To all you ladies now on land' is another typical +specimen. By-and-by Dryden showed how well he could write in the +familiar style, when he composed the song about fair Iris: + + 'She's fickle and false, and there we agree, + For I am as false and as fickle as she; + We neither believe what either can say, + And neither believing, we neither betray.' + +Then came the reign of Pope, and Swift, and Prior, and +Peterborough--Pope, with his truly playful 'What is Prudery?' Swift, +with his charming lines to Stella; Prior, with his 'Dear Chloe, how +blubber'd is that pretty face!' and Peterborough, with that masterpiece +of the familiar _genre_: + + 'I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking, + Thou wild thing, that always art leaping and aching, + What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation, + By turns has not taught thee this pit-a-pat-ation?' + +Then there were the Lady Wortley Montagu, with her lines to Congreve; +and Chesterfield, with his 'Advice to a Lady in Autumn'; Fielding, with +his inimitable epistles to Walpole; and Goldsmith, with his incomparable +'Retaliation.' Later, again, came Cowper, with his 'Nose and Eyes' and +'Names of Little Note'; Byron, with his verses 'To Tom Moore'; Moore +himself, with his 'Time I've Lost in Wooing'; Barham, with his 'Lines +left at Hook's'; Peacock, Canning, James Smith, Praed, and Mahony; and, +still later, Hood, with his 'Clapham Academy'; Brough, with his +'Neighbour Nelly'; Mortimer Collins, with his tribute to his 'Old Coat'; +and a hundred others, all of whom could play delightfully on the +familiar string. + +And, happily, the manufacture of familiar verse still goes on +swimmingly. The Laureate has engaged in it, and even Mr. Browning has +condescended to it. It has never, in the whole course of its career, +been written better than by Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lowell, and, among +ourselves, by Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson. No age, +indeed, was ever more favourable than our own for the composition of +verse which should, above all things, never be betrayed into +exaggeration--which may have, if it please, a _soupcon_ of wit and +humour, and even of sentiment, but which should, in particular, be +tolerant and urbane. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. + + +It was with true instinct that one of our most vigorous orators, +desiring the other day to emphasize by quotation an appeal to the +patriotic sentiments of his audience, went to a play of Shakespeare's +for the passage. For the bard of Avon is _par excellence_ the poet of +England. Keen as, in later years, has been the love of country displayed +by such men as Thomson, Wordsworth, Lord Tennyson, and Mr. Swinburne, it +is in the pages of Shakespeare that we find the most magnificent +outbursts of national feeling. Let it be granted that the poet has not +hesitated to throw a few satiric pebbles at his countrymen. Everybody +will recall the amusing colloquy in 'Hamlet,' in which the Gravedigger +humorously reflects upon the sanity of the English people, declaring +that, if Hamlet be mad, it will not be noted in England, for there the +men are as mad as he is. And then there is that other diverting colloquy +in 'Othello,' wherein Iago stigmatizes Englishmen as 'most potent in +potting,' asserting that they 'drink with facility your Dane dead +drunk,' so expert is your Englishman in his drinking. + +But these be the gibes of Danes and Italians--not of the man Shakespeare +or of Englishmen speaking with his voice. True it is that if Shakespeare +was strongly patriotic, he was so only in common with the Englishmen of +his day. He lived in an age when the English people were consumed with a +spirit of burning affection for the isle which they inhabited--when the +great religious upheaval which we call the Reformation had set the blood +coursing through their veins, and infused new life into their heart and +brain--and when the fear of Spanish domination had joined all classes in +an indissoluble bond of love and loyalty. Probably the English nation +never was more thoroughly united, more profoundedly in earnest, more +closely attached to its traditions and its soil, than in those spacious +times of great Elizabeth. And if Shakespeare produced play after play +dealing with the history of his country, and presenting on the boards +many of the most famous Englishmen of the past, he was led to do so, no +doubt, not only because the topic had attractions for him, but because +the Englishmen of his day revelled in such reminders of the stirring +years gone by--of the great soldiers, statesmen, clerics, and the like, +who had shed lustre on the national name. There must have been a decided +and continuous demand for these elaborate chronicle-dramas, and it may +be argued that the poet, in supplying them, did but comply with the call +made upon him by his public patrons. + +The fact, however, that Shakespeare found historical plays a paying +product will not wholly account for the powerfully patriotic strain in +which they were composed. It is not only that the long series stretching +from 'King John' to 'Henry VIII.' pulses from beginning to end with +love of, and pride in, country; it is not only that the poet makes great +Englishmen speak greatly--that, placing them in positions in which +declarations of patriotism are natural and necessary, he makes those +declarations eloquent and thrilling;--it is that he charges all his +passages about England and the English with a passion of enthusiasm +which can be explained only on the hypothesis that he was throwing his +whole heart into the work, and sympathized deeply with the utterances of +his creations. There is, for instance, something more than mere +appropriateness to the character and the occasion in that marvellous +piece of eulogy of which, in 'Richard II.,' John of Gaunt is made the +spokesman. The poet seems unable to hold his admiration within bounds: + + 'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, + This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, + This other Eden--demi-paradise--.... + This happy breed of men, this little world, + This precious stone set in a silver sea,.... + This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, + This nurse, this teeming womb of Royal Kings... + This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, + Dear for her reputation through the world'-- + +on what other country has such magnificent praise been poured out by her +poets? One can see, too, how sincere Shakespeare was in his feelings as +an Englishman by the phrases and the epithets he everywhere bestows upon +his fatherland. There is Chorus's famous description of it in 'Henry V.' +as 'Little body with a mighty heart;' there is the Queen's allusion, in +'Henry VI.,' to its 'blessed shore.' Now it is called 'fair,' now +'fertile,' and now 'happy.' 'Dear mother England,' cries the Bastard in +'King John.' Bolingbroke rejoices that, though banished, he yet can +boast that he is 'a true-born Englishman;' and elsewhere we read of 'our +lusty English,' our 'noble English,' our 'hearts of England's +breed'--Rambures, the Frenchman, admitting that 'that island of England +breeds very valiant creatures.' + +And mark how Shakespeare causes one and all of his patriots to +congratulate themselves that Britain is an island. Tennyson has called +upon his countrymen to + + 'Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set + His Briton in blown seas and storming showers;' + +and elsewhere has made a 'Tory member's elder son' say-- + + 'God bless the narrow sea... + Which keeps our Britain whole within herself.' + +Thomson, too, tells how 'the rushing flood' turned 'this favoured isle' +'flashing from the continent aside,' 'its guardian she.' But Shakespeare +had been before both in these expressions of gratitude for our +insularity. The Archduke of Austria, in 'King John,' speaks of England +as + + 'That pale, that white-faced shore, + Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, + And coops from other lands her islanders... + That England, hedged in with the main, + That water-walled bulwark, still secure + And confident from foreign purposes.' + +So, in 'Richard II.,' John of Gaunt describes England as + + 'This fortress built by Nature for herself + Against infection and the hand of war. + +'The silver sea,' he says, serves it + + 'In the office of a wall, + Or, as a moat, defensive to a house, + Against the envy of less happier lands; + +while once again he refers to England as + + 'Bound in with the triumphant sea, + Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege + Of watery Neptune.' + + +There is one thing, however, without which, in Shakespeare's view, even +our lucky isolation cannot avail to save us, as a nation, from +destruction. 'If they (the English) were true within themselves they +need not to fear, although all nations were set against them.' So wrote +Andrew Borde, when Henry VIII. was King; and in the old play of 'John, +King of England' the author made one of his _personae_ say: + + 'Let England live but true within itself, + And all the world can never wrong her state.' + +So Shakespeare, when he came to treat of the same subject, made the +Bastard declare that + + 'This England never did, nor never shall + Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, + But when it first did help to wound itself... + Nought shall make us rue, + If England to itself do rest but true.' + +There is much virtue in an 'if,' and the poet repeats the warning in +another play. In '3 Henry VI.' Hastings says: + + 'Why, knows not Montague that of itself + England is safe, if true within itself?' + +That, again, which most troubles John of Gaunt, in the passage already +quoted, is the fact that England, which was wont to conquer others, +'Hath made a shameful conquest of itself;' while Chorus, in 'Henry V.,' +laments that France has found in England 'a nest of hollow bosoms, which +he fills with treacherous crowns,' adding, + + 'What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do, + Were all thy children kind and natural?' + +Here, then, is a lesson for our times. What Shakespeare felt to be true +in his own day is equally, nay more, true now--that England, 'set in a +silver sea,' is safe from all assaults, save those which she may suffer +at the hands of her own 'degenerate and ingrate' sons. + + + + +HEREDITY IN SONG. + + +It is said that the verses in a recent number of _Macmillan's Magazine_, +entitled 'In Capri,' and signed 'W. Wordsworth,' are from the pen of a +grandson of the famous author of 'The Excursion.' They are gracefully +written, in an agreeable rhythm, and with much command of felicitous +expression. If, therefore, the writer has indeed the relationship to the +great Wordsworth which rumour assigns him, the fact is interesting, and +suggests some considerations as to the transmission of the poetic +faculty from one generation to another. + +One might have thought that this transmission would have been tolerably +common; that the sons at least, if not the grandsons, of a genuine poet +could scarcely fail to inherit something of their progenitor's peculiar +powers. One might even have supposed that poetry would run--as other +things have run--in families, making the 'bards' almost a _gens_, or +class, by themselves. Poetry, after all, is an affair mainly of the +temperament--of fancy and imagination, of feeling and passion; and these +are qualities which one might have imagined would be handed down, not +greatly impaired, from father to son, and so on, for at least a fairly +prolonged period. + +There have, indeed, been instances in which literary capacity has been a +special characteristic of persons in close relationship to each other: +one thinks at once of the Sheridans, the Coleridges, the Wordsworths, +and others who have been notable for their productiveness in prose and +verse. But the cases in which the purely poetic gift--the vision and the +faculty divine--has been inherited and exercised are few indeed. A +certain intellectual power will mark the members of a family, and +exhibit itself in various attractive ways, but less in the domain of +poetry than any other. It would seem that sheer mental force can be +communicated, but that the higher qualities of the human spirit are not +so readily transmitted; are, in fact, hardly transmissible, at any rate +in quite the same degree. Not only are the examples of poetic heredity +rare, but there are still fewer, certainly in the history of English +literature, in which the son or the daughter has equalled the parent in +poetic capacity. + +The case of the Colmans and the Dibdins is one of literary rather than +poetic faculty. In each instance the father and son wrote verse, much of +it excellent in its way, but assuredly not of the first order. The one +name will always be associated with admirably humorous performances, +while the other will continue to shine resplendent on the roll of +writers of sea-songs. But work of that sort is a matter of knack rather +than of inspiration, and 'poetry' is a word hardly to be mentioned in +remote connection with it. Very different are the circumstances when we +come to the children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge--to Hartley and to +Sara, and to Hartley in particular. Sara had less than a half share of +the poetic patrimony. She penned very pleasant rhymes for children, and +some still linger in the collections; but they are not of singular +merit. Much better than these are the lyrics which are to be found +scattered through her prose romance, 'Phantasmion'--lyrics which +undoubtedly have imaginative value. They are much less known than they +deserve to be, though a few of them have recently been reprinted. They +are not, however, to be compared with the best that Hartley furnished. +Sara had ideas, but her mode of expression inclined to the turgid. +Hartley was clearer and smoother in his style, and now and then, as in +some of his sonnets, and especially in the lines beginning, + + 'She is not fair to outward view, + As many maidens be,' + +he actually attained perfection. The last-named gem is likely to last as +long as anything written by the elder Coleridge. + +Mrs. Norton and Lady Dufferin are instances of ability descending from +grandfather to granddaughters, and of ability, moreover, which, as +regards poetical writing, grew and improved in the process of descent. +The author of 'The Duenna' produced a number of neat and lively rhymes, +but, great as Sheridan was as a dramatist, he was certainly not a poet. +Now, his granddaughters were really poets, though by no means of the +front rank. Scarcely any of Mrs. Norton's verse is now habitually read, +but some of it is well worth reading. On the other hand, Lady Dufferin, +who published much less than her sister did, is much better remembered, +if only because she was the author of 'Katie's Letter' and 'The Irish +Emigrant's Lament.' These pieces are distinguished by true human +feeling, and hence their continued popularity. Of Adelaide Anne Procter, +daughter of 'Barry Cornwall,' it is not necessary to say much, for +certain of her lyrics are familiar (in feminine mouths, at any rate) as +household words. Everyone, alas! knows 'The Lost Chord;' many of us +wish that we did not. That the 'Legends and Lyrics' of Adelaide are +considerably more widely known than anything produced by her father is, +it is to be feared, only too true; and yet, full as they are of +tenderness and grace, they have not the claims to attention possessed by +the songs and dramatic fragments of 'Barry Cornwall.' The latter are +unduly neglected; while the songs are among the most virile and vigorous +in the language. The father's was altogether the stronger nature; the +daughter set an example of gentle lachrymoseness, which has been +followed, unfortunately, by too many female rhymers. + +Of more recent years, several examples of heredity in song have been +vouchsafed to us. The younger Hood had his father's fluency, but, +apparently, very little of his imaginative power. Philip Bourke Marston +was, in the lyric vein, as successful, perhaps, as Dr. Westland Marston +had been in the dramatic, and it is probable that he will always be more +largely read, 'sicklied o'er' though his poetic outcome be 'with the +pale cast of thought.' The works of the present Lord Lytton and of Mr. +Aubrey de Vere are too well appreciated to need much characterization. +These writers would no doubt deprecate any comparison of their products +with those of the first Lord Lytton and Sir Aubrey de Vere, but it is +one from which, on the score of absolute merit, they would have no +occasion to shrink. Mr. Oscar Wilde and Mr. Eric Mackay have written +verse, no doubt, because Lady Wilde and Dr. Charles Mackay wrote verse +before them; and the Hon. Hallam Tennyson has shown, in a rhythmical +version of a nursery tale, that some measure of poetic faculty has been +meted out to him. + + + + +STINGS FOR THE STINGY. + + +Few frailties of mankind have been more bitterly scouted than that of +meanness in money matters. Of the two, prodigality has been thought the +better. The man who is poor has not been censured for being careful; +rather has he been praised for not being ashamed to own his poverty. But +the spectacle of the rich man hoarding his wealth and not living +according to his means has always excited the displeasure of +mankind--not only, perhaps, because money kept in store seems for the +time useless, but because if expended it would be very acceptable to its +recipients. The world has commended the man who gives out of his +superfluity, but it has condemned him who keeps too much to himself. All +literature, from the earliest times, is full of denunciation of such a +character. The miserly and the stingy have been impaled over and over +again on the sword of the satirist. + +Meanness has not been confined to the obscure; it has had some +distinguished votaries--as, for example, his Gracious Majesty King James +I., whose economical propensities were notorious. Of him it was +admirably written that + + 'At Christ Church "Marriage," done before the King, + Lest those learn'd mates should want an offering, + The King himself did offer--What, I pray? + He offer'd, twice or thrice, to go away.' + +Take, again, the great Duke of Marlborough, whose two chief qualities of +mind were very happily hit off in the couplet 'On a High Bridge over a +Small Stream at Blenheim': + + 'The lofty arch his high ambition shows, + The stream an emblem of his bounty flows.' + +Garrick was accused of money-grubbing, and his weakness in that respect +was the subject of more than one smart jest by Foote. When somebody, +_apropos_ of a remark made by Garrick on the parsimony of others, +asked, 'Why on earth doesn't Garrick take the beam out of his own eye +before attacking the mote in other people's?'--Foote replied, 'He is not +sure of selling the timber.' And again, when Garrick, after dropping a +guinea and failing to find it, said it had 'gone to the devil, he +thought,' Foote remarked, 'Well, David, let you alone for making a +guinea go farther than anybody else'--a repartee which was perhaps in +the mind of Shirley Brooks when, referring to the excellence of Scotch +shooting at long distances, he wrote: + + 'But this we all knew + That a Scotchman can do-- + Make a small piece of metal go awfully far.' + + +Then there was Lord Eldon, whose nearness was proverbial, and whose +unwillingness to spend displayed itself markedly in his commissariat +department. An anonymous epigram professed to record an 'Inquest +Extraordinary': + + 'Found dead, a rat--no case could sure be harder: + Verdict--Confined a week in Eldon's larder.' + +We are also told that, when Eldon and Sir Arthur Pigott quarrelled over +the proper pronunciation of the legal term 'lien'--the former calling it +'lion,' and the latter 'lean'--Jekyll produced the following: + + 'Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you mean + By saying the Chancellor's _lion_ is _lean_? + D'ye think that his kitchen's so bad as all that, + That nothing within it can ever get fat?' + +Of Lord Kenyon, another judge of like inhospitable tendencies, someone +said that in his house it was always Lent in the kitchen and Passion +Week in the parlour. On another occasion it was remarked that 'in his +lordship's kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;' +to which Jekyll, pretending to be angry, replied, 'Spits! in the name of +common-sense, don't talk about his spits--for nothing turns on them!' +When his lordship died, the words 'Mors Janua _Vita_' were by an error +of the undertaker painted on the coffin; but, someone commenting on the +substitution of 'Vita' for 'Vitae,' Lord Ellenborough protested that +there was no mistake. Kenyon, he declared, had directed that it should +be 'Vita,' so that his estate might be saved the expense of a diphthong. + +Most people know the story of Foote and Lord Stormont, the latter of +whom had asked the former to dinner, and had placed before him wine +served in the smallest of decanters and dispensed in the smallest of +glasses. The peer enlarged upon the growth and age of the liquor; +whereupon the player, holding up one of the glasses, demurely said, 'It +is very little of its age!' This recalls an experience of Theodore Hook, +when invited to dine with an unnamed nobleman, at the Star and Garter, +Richmond. There were four of the party, and when covers were removed it +was found that the fare consisted of four loin chops, four mealy +potatoes, and a pint of sherry. These things despatched, the peer asked +Hook for a song, and the wit responded with, of all things in the world, +the National Anthem, which he gave correctly until, arriving at the line +'Happy and glorious,' he added--as if under the influence of drink--'A +pint between four of us--God save the King!' A different form of +stinginess, it would seem, was shown by Brigham Young, when (if we may +believe the tale) he gave as a reason for marrying a certain male-garbed +lady-doctor, that he would be able to have her clothes 'made down' for +his boys. + +The mean host has always been a special target for the scorn of his +fellows. It was a Greek satirist who related how + + 'A miser in his chamber saw a mouse, + And cry'd, dismay'd, "What dost thou in my house?" + She, with a laugh, "Good landlord, have no fear, + 'Tis not for board, but lodging, I came here."' + +And since then the flood of banter has rolled on. Herrick complains of +an unknown person that he invited him home to eat, and showed him there +much plate but little meat. Garrick (who had evidently again forgotten +the mote and the beam) wrote of a certain nobleman who had built a big +mansion: + + 'A little house would best accord + With you, my very little lord! + And then exactly matched would be + Your house and hospitality!' + +Much in the same way, Richard Graves wrote of the master of a house +which was well kept but not open to company: + + 'If one may judge by rooms so neat, + It costs you more in mops than meat!' + +Note, again, Egerton Warburton's versification of a remark attributed to +Lord Alvanley. A gentleman had drawn attention to the fact that his +house was furnished _a la_ Louis Quatorze: + + '"Then I wish," said a guest, "when you ask us to eat, + You would furnish your board _a la_ Louis Dixhuit. + The eye, can it feast when the stomach is starving? + Pray less of your gilding and more of your carving."' + +John Headley, describing dinner at one Lady Anne's, tells us that + + 'A silver service loads the board, + Of eatables a slender hoard;' + +and the sarcasm reminds one of the address with which Theodore Hook once +bore himself under somewhat similar circumstances. Invited to dine with +an old lady, he was horrified when the servant, lifting the cover, +displayed a couple of chops. 'Mr. Hook,' said the hostess, 'you see your +dinner.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' observed Hook; 'but where's yours?' + +The niggardliness which displays itself in smaller subscriptions to +public or private objects than the donor's means will justify has +naturally met with keen reproach. Herrick has a quatrain directed +against the failing; and everyone remembers the lines about the man who +declared that at the sound of woe his hand was always open: + + 'Your hand is open, to be sure, + But there is nothing in it.' + +Perhaps the happiest satire on meanness of this sort is contained in the +anonymous couplet 'On Close-fist's Subscription': + + 'The charity of Close-fist, give to fame: + He has at last subscribed--how much?--his name.' + + + + +DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD. + + +A leading Review lately contained a contribution entitled 'The Old +School of Classics and the New.' It was, as regards its literary form, a +'Dialogue of the Dead'--a discussion supposed to take place between the +famous scholars Bentley and Madvig, with a brief intervention on the +part of Euripides and Shakespeare. It was written with much smartness, +and one could wish that such lucubrations were more common nowadays than +they are. Not that they are by any means rare. It was only the other day +that Mr. Marion Crawford published a work which had the conventional +shape of fiction, but which was really little more than a series of +colloquies in which some famous men of the past took part, talking +throughout with a characteristic flavour which did the author +considerable credit. Dialogues of the dead, pure and simple, have also +been written of recent years by Mr. H. D. Traill, some of the best of +whose efforts were republished in a volume called 'The New Lucian.' + +In the less immediate past, dialogue-writing after the fashion of the +witty and audacious Syrian was not very frequently adventured. Just +twenty years ago some writer or writers supplied to a weekly miscellany +a few imaginative conversations between deceased worthies; but these +were not particularly brilliant. They were in verse--in the heroic +couplet, to which a good deal of point might have been imparted; but +advantage was not taken of the opportunity. There was one 'dialogue' in +which Shakespeare, Thackeray, and a critic were supposed to be engaged, +and in the course of which Thackeray was made to say to the critic: + + 'Don't crack your jokes, but flit.' + +To which the critic: + + 'Your pardon, sir; I took you for a wit.' + +To which Thackeray again: + + 'Did you, indeed? Then, compliments to pass, + I took you just for what you are--an ass.' + +But this, which one hesitates to pronounce Thackerayan, was surely even +trite. However, these dialogues at least remind us of what English +society was saying and doing in the year of grace 1868. Thus, Thackeray +tells Shakespeare that his dramas are played but scarcely acted: + + 'For I won't deny + That people now are tickled through the eye. + No one to thought a deep attention lends, + And if a play's successful it depends + Far less upon the language than the scene.' + +Again, in another colloquy, Meyerbeer informs Mozart that + + 'The "Traviata" and the "Trovatore" + Of "Il Barbiere" have eclipsed the glory. + As Margarita Patti fills the stage, + And Marta sung by Nilsson is the rage.' + + +He who dips into _Colburn's New Monthly_ for the year 1822 or +thereabouts will be rewarded (or otherwise) by coming across a +'Dialogue of the Dead' in prose, and there may be other such fugitive +lucubrations. But so far as the English literature of the past is +concerned, 'dialogues of the dead' were written by only two persons +worthy of celebration--Walter Savage Landor and George, Lord Lyttelton, +the author of 'Letters from a Persian in England to his friend in +Ispahan.' Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations' are among those numerous +works which everybody is supposed to have read, and, having read them, +to admire. And unfortunate indeed would be he who could not recognise +and appreciate the varied beauty and charm of these prose masterpieces. +Here Menelaus and Helen, AEsop and Rhodope, Tiberius and Vipsania, +Leofric and Godiva, Roger Ascham and Jane Grey, and a hundred other +heroes and heroines of the past, converse not only with dramatic +appropriateness, but with rhetorical force--with amplitude of thought +and spontaneity of image. By the side of such a wonderful flower-show +(as one of our poets said of a selection from a brother poet's lyrics), +Lyttelton's trim parterre shows, no doubt, but dimly; nevertheless, to +that accomplished nobleman there is due something more than the small +credit of having been Landor's predecessor in this form of English +composition. Of that form Lyttelton says, in the preface to his +'Dialogues,' that + + 'It sets before us the history of all times and all nations, + presents to the choice of a writer all characters of remarkable + persons which may be best opposed to, or compared with, each other; + and is, perhaps, one of the most agreeable methods that can be + employed of conveying to the mind any critical, moral, or political + observations.' + + +Lyttelton brings together in his work such people as Plato and Fenelon, +Lucian and Rabelais, Addison and Swift, Boileau and Pope; and, if he +scarcely has the power to make these masters talk as we know they wrote, +still he puts into their mouths much which it might be worth the while +of the modern reader to assimilate. + +Early in the eighteenth century there appeared a little _brochure_ +called 'English Lucian,' but it proved to be nothing more edifying than +a few 'modern dialogues' between a vintner and his wife, between 'a +reformer of manners,' his wife and a captain of the guards, and between +a Master of Arts and 'a lady's woman.' Of the humorous satire of Lucian +himself there was no jot or tittle. + +The works of Lucian have, in various ways, found many translators in +England--notably Dr. Thomas Francklin, who prefaced his version with a +dialogue (in prose) in which Lucian and Lyttelton, after an exchange of +compliments, proceed to discuss the writings of the former at some +length and with much dulness. Dulness is certainly not the +characteristic of the rhyming paraphrases of certain dialogues of Lucian +which Charles Cotton wrote and published late in the seventeenth century +under the title of 'Burlesque upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoft.' 'We +bring you here,' said Cotton, 'a fustian-piece, Writ by a merry Wag of +Greece'--'a piece of raillery writ,' as he went on to say, 'when +Paganism was in fashion': + + 'Wherein his meaning further is + To take away th' authorities + Of lies and fables, which did pigeon + The rabble into false religion.' + +Herein the mission and the achievement of Lucian--first and greatest of +the writers of 'Dialogues of the Dead'--are not inaptly stated. +Fontenelle and Fenelon both derived inspiration for their 'Dialogues' +from the brilliant pages of the Syrian, and within recent years his +abounding merits have been sung in eloquent prose by Mr. Froude. There +is yet room, however, for someone who shall prove himself the 'new +Lucian' indeed, by writing dialogues in which the illustrious dead shall +be made to express themselves (as they have not yet been made to do in +English colloquy) with superlative sarcasm and inimitable scorn. + + + + +SERMONS IN FLOWERS. + + +Every year a 'flower-sermon' is preached in London, in accordance with +an admirable custom; and the orator, we may be sure, has no difficulty +in 'improving the occasion.' The materials lie rich and ready to his +hand. The Laureate, indeed, has asked to what uses we shall put the +wildweed flower which simply blows, and has inquired further if there be +any moral shut within the bosom of the rose. He was answered long ago by +Horace Smith: + + 'Your voiceless lips, O Flowers! are living preachers, + Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book;' + +and a living poetess has assured us, likewise, that flowers will preach +to us if we will hear, the rose telling us that all her loveliness is +born upon a thorn, and the poppy urging that, though her scarlet head +is held in scorn, + + 'Yet juice of subtle virtues lies + Within my cup of curious dyes.' + + +There is one lesson which the flowers have been made to teach with +rather wearisome iteration. The poets have never been tired of dwelling +upon their brief existence and seeing in it a reflection of our own. +This rather trite melody has been sounded from the earliest to the +latest times. Drummond of Hawthornden draws attention to the flower +'which lingeringly doth fade,' and sees in it a type of his own life, +which 'scarce shows now what it hath been.' Herrick, apostrophizing +blossoms, deduces from them the fact that all things have their end, +though ne'er so brave. 'Fade, flowers, fade!' cries Waller; ''Tis but +what we must in our autumn do.' And so Dryden: + + 'The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time... + Such is your blooming youth, and withering so.' + +'Youth's withered flowers' made John Clare sigh to think that in him +they would never bloom again. + +But this, which may be said to be the orthodox teaching of the flowers, +has found many influential questioners, who have dwelt upon the brighter +side of the contention. And it is pleasant to listen to their more +cheerful voices. 'Not an opening blossom breathes in vain,' wrote +Thomson; and the sentiment is heartily corroborated by Mr. Lowell: + + 'There never yet was flower fair in vain; + Let classic poets rhyme it as they will.' + +If the flowers have a short career, they make no complaint of it, says +Landor: + + 'Fast fall the leaves; this never says + To that, "Alas! how brief our days!" + All have alike enjoyed the sun, + And each repeats, "So much is won."' + +They enjoy life, and they help to make it enjoyable for others. + + 'Gay without toil and lovely without art, + They spring to clear the sense and glad the heart.' + +So Mrs. Barbauld; while Mrs. Howitt similarly proclaims it to be their +business as well as pleasure to minister delight to man, to beautify the +earth. + +The present Lord Lytton has remarked of flowers that their scent +outlives their bloom, and has expressed the aspiration that, in like +manner, his mortal hours may 'grow sweeter towards the tomb.' But the +main point made by the more optimistic observers of Nature is that, +though blossoms fade, they revive again, in equal beauty, by-and-by. 'Ye +are to me,' wrote Horace Smith, 'a type of resurrection and second +birth.' To W. C. Bryant the delicate flower, arising from the shapeless +mould, seemed + + 'An emanation of the indwelling Life, + A visible token of the upholding Love, + That are the soul of this wide universe.' + +Mrs. Hemans--a little unnecessarily, perhaps--dwells upon the fact that +though the flowers sleep in dust through the wintry hours, they break +forth in glory in the spring. For Longfellow, as for Horace Smith, they +are 'emblems of our own great resurrection.' George Morine, in verses +little known, reminds us that while cities fall away, and arts flourish +and decay, these 'frailer things' will continue to adorn the world +'unchangingly the same.' Though covered for a time by 'the wee white +fairies of the snow,' they come back, says Gerald Massey, 'with their +fragrant news,' and tell in a thousand hues their dream of beauty. For +their annual disappearance from our midst, Thomas Westwood gives a +poetical explanation: + + 'Wearied out with shine and shade, + It rejoiced them, one and all, + To escape from daylight's ken + To their chambers subterrain, + There to rest awhile, and then + Weave them fresh, and weave them fair, + And their fragrant spells prepare.' + +Alas! there are those who must needs draw a melancholy moral from the +most consolatory phenomena. And so Charlotte Smith, while admitting that + + 'Another May new buds and flowers shall bring,' + +must needs exclaim, + + 'Ah! why has happiness no second Spring?' + +And the dismal reflection finds an echo in the heart of D. M. Moir: + + 'Green Spring again shall bid + Your boughs with bloom be crown'd; + But alas! to Man, + In earth's brief span, + No second Spring comes round!' + + +The truth is, the imagination derives from Nature precisely what the +former's capacity and quality admit of. As the Laureate said, years ago, +any man may find in bud, or blade, or bloom, a meaning suited to his +mind. Spenser, pondering on the rose and its thorns, and other such +floral combinations, was led to remark that + + 'Every sweet with sour is tempered still.' + +Equally impressed was he by the bounteous ease with which Nature +scatters flowers all over the world. In Barry Cornwall's view, this +facile profusion is Earth's expression of gratitude for the effulgence +of the Sun: + + 'When on earth he smileth, she bursts forth + In beauty like a bride, and gives him back, + In sweet repayment for his warm bright love, + A world of flowers.' + +Beddoes had a quaint and curious fancy that 'when the dead awake or talk +in sleep' the flowers 'hear their thoughts, and write them on their +leaves, for heaven to look on.' Campbell seems to have loved flowers +most for the associations they called up. 'I dote upon you,' he wrote, +in an address to them, 'for ye waft me to summers of old;' + + 'I love you for lulling me back into dreams + Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams.' + +And we find another Scotchman, William Anderson, giving utterance to a +similar expression of feeling. + +There is a lesson which the flowers have taught to at least two of our +poets, which, though it may have sympathizers, will scarcely find many +practical adherents. It is embodied in a little lyric by Mrs. Webster, +in which that lady, celebrating the beauty of a solitary blossom, +describes how it is seen and gathered, and adds, ironically: + + 'Why should a flower be fair for its own? + Choose it, pluck it to die.' + +But the moral has been pointed even more effectively by the Rev. Gerard +Lewis in some excellent verses. 'A gathered flower,' he says, 'is but a +fading thing': + + 'Let woman's beauty wear the sterling gold, + The imperishable gem. + They give to her a brightness manifold, + She adds a charm to them. + + 'But flowers that strew the earth with fragrant grace, + As stars the welkin fill, + Look loveliest, live the longest, in their place; + To pluck them is to kill.' + +That is true, and yet the gathering of flowers will go on. And, after +all, what more can a blossom desire than to 'exist beautifully' and +exhale its sweetness, whether it lies hidden by the wayside hedge, or +decks the bosom of a woman as sweet and beautiful as itself? + + + + +'DON QUIXOTE' IN ENGLAND. + + +The announcement that Mr. W. G. Wills had completed his dramatic version +of 'Don Quixote' naturally excited much interest, and no doubt set many +minds at play upon the general subject of the history of 'Don Quixote' +in this country. That the renowned romance has appeared in many prose +translations, from that of Shelton in 1620 to that of Mr. Ormsby only +two or three years ago, is known to most people. It will be remembered +that an early English version was prepared by the nephew of Milton; the +once-famous Peter Motteux made himself responsible for one 'by several +hands'; that by Jarvis, which dates from the middle of last century, has +lately been reproduced by Professor Morley; and then there are those by +Smollett, the novelist, and Mr. A. J. Duffield. There is no lack of +them, any more than there has been of pictorial illustrations. Shelton's +translation, revised by Stevens, was republished with 'cuts' by Coypel. +When Lockhart prefixed his well-known essay to Motteux's version, the +work was accompanied by etchings by De Los Rios. Jarvis's rendering +exercised successively the skill of Westall, Cruickshank, Johannot, +Dore, and Mr. A. B. Houghton; another was illuminated by R. Smirke, +R.A.; and in later years there have been the drawings contributed by Sir +John Gilbert and by Kenny Meadows. + +So much for the story as it has been read in English and adorned by +English (and other) artists. But how about Mr. Wills's predecessors? How +about 'Don Quixote's' previous connection with the English stage? Well, +it was scarcely to be expected that so popular a tale would never excite +the attention of the playwright or the musician. Sooner or later, +everything which has vogue finds its way, somehow, to the boards, and +it is a little surprising that seventy-four years should have elapsed, +after the publication of the first English translation, before 'Don +Quixote' received the distinction of dramatization. Was it, indeed, a +distinction? There's the rub. The dramatist was Thomas d'Urfey; and what +could be looked for from that free-speaking worthy? The original is not +without a certain breadth in certain passages, and what Cervantes made +broad D'Urfey might be trusted to make broader. That, again, was only +according to the practice of the day; and if the virtuous Collier +fulminated against the trilogy which D'Urfey wrought out of the epical +extravaganza--if some ladies of the time were found to object to the +coarser humours of Mary the Buxom (a creation on which D'Urfey prided +himself)--there can be no doubt of the success of the venture. The third +of the three plays had not, it seems, quite the acceptability of the +other two, but the author's explanation of its virtual failure--that the +piece was not adequately presented--was possibly, for once, well +founded, and the fact that the third play was produced at all speaks +volumes for the triumphs of its precursors. + +A 'Don Quixote'--probably D'Urfey's 'second part'--held the stage, more +or less firmly, till the eighteenth century was well upon its way; and +then there suddenly appeared a rival, in the shape of a farce or +vaudeville by Fielding, entitled 'Don Quixote in England,' and bringing +both the Don and Sancho upon English soil. The author was well aware of +his temerity, and, indeed, apologized for it. The piece, he pleaded, was + + 'originally writ for his private amusement, as it would, indeed, + have been little less than Quixotism itself to hope any other + fruits from attempting characters wherein the inimitable Cervantes + so far excelled.' + +He found it, he says, infinitely more difficult than he imagined to give +his knight an opportunity of displaying himself in a different manner +from that wherein he appears in the romance. However, he was induced to +allow his work to be performed, and then it was seen that he had +brought the Don and Sancho to an English inn, where the landlord, +Guzzle, tries in vain to get the former to pay his bill, and whither +comes one Dorothea Loveland to meet her sweetheart, Fairlove, spending +the interval between her coming and his arrival in persuading the Don +that she is a persecuted princess and that her maid Jezebel is Dulcinea. +Dorothea is promised by her father to one Squire Badger, but the squire +proves to be a sot, and at the Don's especial request the lady and her +lover are united. The piece is by no means without humour, and it would +deserve to live in remembrance if only because it was for 'Don Quixote +in England' that Fielding wrote the song of 'The Roast Beef of Old +England,' which consisted of two verses only until Richard Leveridge +added five more and wrote the music for the whole. + +'Don Quixote' has made other appearances on the English boards, but none +of any very great importance. There was an entertainment written in +verse, and 'sung at Marybone Gardens,' for which Dr. Arnold wrote the +music, and in which the Don, Sancho, Nicholas, Teresa, and Maritornes +figure. There was a pantomime at Covent Garden, 'Harlequin and Quixote; +or, The Magic Arm,' for which Reeve composed the melodies, and in which +Harlequin, the son of Inca, carries off Columbine, the daughter of a +Spanish grandee, to whom Don Quixote is affianced. There was, too, a +'ballad-farce' called 'Don Quixote in Barcelona; or, The Beautiful +Moor,' which, however, was never represented; and there were at least +two other efforts of the kind, an 'opera-comedy' and a 'farce-comedy,' +which had the illustrious Sancho for their hero, portraying him in the +character of 'the mock Governor' of Barataria. + +It was, no doubt, inevitable that 'Don Quixote,' having been translated +into English prose, should make its appearance also in English verse. +And so it did--early in the eighteenth century--in the form of 'The +Life and Notable Adventures of that Renown'd Knight, Don Quixote de la +Mancha, Merrily translated into Hudibrastick Verse.' Mr. Edward Ward was +the perpetrator of this work, in which various episodes of the original +were reproduced with a vulgarity, not to say a coarseness, not unworthy +of the great D'Urfey himself. The bard was tolerable enough in such +passages as this, descriptive of the knight's appearance: + + 'The Don himself that rul'd the Roast + (Whose Fame we are about to Boast), + Did by his solid Looks appear + Not much behind his Fiftieth year. + In Stature he was Lean and Tall, + Big Bon'd, and very Strong withall; + Sound Wind and Limb, of healthful Body, + Fresh of Complection, somewhat Ruddy; + Built for a Champion ev'ry way, + But turn'd with Age a little Grey.' + +But, as a whole, 'Don Quixote,' as rendered into rhyme by Mr. Ward, +cannot be recommended for general perusal. + +There is, however, a 'Quixote' literature apart from 'Don Quixote' +itself. The great romance suggested more than one English counterpart, +such as 'The Spiritual Quixote,' by Richard Graves, and 'The Female +Quixote,' by Mrs. Lennox. The latter, published in the middle of last +century, was devoted to the adventures of one Arabella. Of her we read +that, supposing the fictions of the Scuderi school to be 'real pictures +of life,' 'from them she drew all her notions and expectations.' She +became, in fact, quite a monomaniac upon the subject, and, as a sample, +is for ever expecting that her lover, Glanville, will speak and act like +the heroes of her favourite tales. In the end she throws herself into a +river, gets brain-fever, and is brought back to sanity by a benevolent +divine. Then there is 'The Amiable Quixote; or, The Enthusiasm of +Friendship,' a novel issued later in the century, and having for central +figure a young gentleman named Bruce, who + + 'found in the slightest acquaintance some virtue or some + recommendation. As soon as the enthusiasm of friendship was + excited, it overwhelmed his discretion and clouded his + perspicacity.' + +But this work owed very little to 'Don Quixote'--not more than did +'Tarrataria; or, Don Quixote the Second,' a romantic poetical medley in +two cantos, which appeared in the interval between the two stories just +noticed. Early in this century there was issued, for a short space, a +literary miscellany, called _The Knight Errant_, edited by 'Sir Hercules +Quixote, K.E.,' who, said the prospectus, + + 'following the example of his illustrious namesake and ancestor of + La Mancha, has, with the assistance of his friends, commenced an + era of Civil Knight Errantry, and zealously devoted himself to the + comforting of distressed Damsels and disconsolate Widows, the + fathering of wronged and destitute Orphans, the promotion of Virtue + and chivalrous feeling generally'-- + +and so on, and so on. To 'Don Quixote,' in some form or other, there +will, of course, be literary allusions to the end of time. + + + + +BEDSIDE BOOKS. + + +To begin with, ought there to be any such things? Ought we to accustom +ourselves to having books by our bedside? Ought not 'early to bed and +early to rise' to be the motto of every well-conducted person, and is +not reading in bed calculated to render the carrying out of that axiom +virtually impossible? This is the problem we have first to solve, and it +may be said at once that this discourse does not apply _virginibus +puerisque_. Girls and boys, young men and young women, are hereby +solemnly exhorted to abjure all nocturnal or matutinal reading of the +kind suggested. To them all the lines in the copybooks apply +unreservedly. Nay, even for those of mature years it may be allowed that +bed is not the proper place for intellectual study. Let the hours for +reading and for repose be kept rigidly apart, if the reading is to be +systematic and prolonged. So far, everybody is agreed. To make a habit +of perusing books in bed is to encourage laziness, and to encourage +laziness is (we all know) to sap the foundations of the moral nature. +That way destruction lies. + +And I am bound to say that habitual, sustained reading in bed is quite +as uncomfortable for the human frame as it is dangerous to the human +character. It cannot be undertaken with entire success. It looks easy to +do, but it is not. If you are sceptical, try it. You begin swimmingly +enough. You lie down, say, on your back, settle your head cosily on to +the pillow, and perhaps, to start with, hold the book before you in both +hands: For a time all goes well, but not for long. The position of the +arms becomes fatiguing. You withdraw one from the book and commence +again. But the utilized arm speedily grows weary, and the chances are +that you drop the volume and go off to sleep, leaving gas, lamp, or +candle alight--which is not very safe and not very healthy--nay, is +positively unhealthy and unsafe. Perchance you try the effect of +reclining on one side, leaning on one arm, and holding the book by means +of the other. That, also, is charming for the moment, but has a similar +tendency to tire very readily. Your elbow--the one on which your weight +is thrown--soon gives signs of boredom. 'I don't like this at all,' it +says virtually; and perhaps you turn round and try the other for a +spell. But in these matters one elbow is very like its brother, and +before long you are on the look-out for another attitude. + +What may be called the last infirmity of the determined reader in bed is +his final decision to sit up and read in that fashion. Nothing could be +better--for a certain more or less brief period. At the expiration of a +few minutes, you realize that you are getting a sort of cramp in the +knees; moreover, there is a disagreeable strain on your head; you are +stooping too much, and bending your spine, and altogether making a toil +of pleasure. The situation, it need hardly be said, is still less +attractive when the weather is cold, and the effort to keep warm is +added to the endeavour to read. You have wrapped yourself up, but +apparently not to much purpose. You are conscious of growing chillier +and chillier every moment. And, indeed, a very low temperature is +usually fatal to the cultivation of bedside books. Even if you lie down, +and almost smother yourself in the clothes, you are bound to obtrude one +hand out of shelter, or how is the book to be held up? And how quickly +that hand gets cold--and how often one's two hands have to be alternated +for the purpose in view--and what a nuisance it is to have to make the +continual change! One begins to think that, under the circumstances, +reading is not so pleasant as one fancied, and that sleep (as the poet +says) is the only certain knot of peace. + +One thing is incontrovertible, and that is, that bedside books, if they +are to be acceptable, must be, in the first place, small in size and, +therefore, not very weighty. The hand must be asked to hold as little as +possible. Bed is not the place for heavy tomes; it is the appropriate +_locale_ of the duodecimo. And yet the type must not be too small, or +the eyesight will suffer, unless the reader can command plenty of +illumination--which is not always the case. And the book must be not +only fairly diminutive, but bound and stitched in such a way as to allow +the hand to clutch it and hold it with ease. There must be no +unnecessary extension of the palm and fingers, for it adds so much to +the fatigue. Unhappily, every volume does not fulfil this requirement, +and the requisite selection must be made with care. Moreover, the ideal +bedside book should be not only small, and light, and agreeable to the +touch, but distinguished by special internal characteristics. Not only +must the print be legible; the matter it furnishes must be in brief +instalments. What is wanted is a series of short somethings which the +mind can readily grasp and as easily retain. Sustained reading is for +the library or the study; the last thing at night and the first thing in +the morning, what you desire is simply a number of brevities, at any one +of which you can glance with the certainty of being interested. + +Wherefore, such works as novels must be discouraged in the bedside +library. There is nothing to be gained by perusing a romance, by bits, +in such fragments of time as the intending sleeper is inclined or able +to accord to it. Keep a novel beside you, if you like, to turn to if the +night should prove an obstinately sleepless one, and to that end let the +tale be by 'Miss Braddon or Gaboriau'--one which shall really fix your +imagination fast, and finish, perhaps, by sending you to rest. But for +ordinary uses let the book which you take up be one of 'Jewels, five +words long,' or thereabouts! Let it be a volume of short essays--let it +be, for instance, Bacon's, or the 'Roundabout Papers,' now accessible in +a handy form. Let it be a volume of brief verse, such as Mr. Gilbert's +'Bab Ballads,' or Mr. Lang's 'Ballades in Blue China,' or Calverley's +immortal 'Fly Leaves;' or let it be a collection of more serious +lyrics--say, Mr. Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury,' or the selections from +Lord Tennyson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. Or, if you like, let it be a +treasury of maxims, such as those by Vauvenargues or Chamfort; or a +series of select passages, such as those from the works of Lord +Beaconsfield or Heine: or let it be a casquet of choice anecdotes, of +which happily the supply is large--that incomparable volume of Dean +Ramsay's, for example, or even the triter production by Mark Lemon. +There is a whole world from which to choose. + +Only, take care that, whatever the literature is, it is not disturbing. +The mission of the bedside book is to soothe the mind, not irritate it. +When one lies down after a hard day's work, one's desire is not that the +brain should be stimulated, but that it should be refreshed. It needs, +not exercise, but diversion. It wants to be prepared for sleep. And if a +book will effect that object, while at the same time adding to the stock +of one's ideas--humorous or sentimental, it does not matter which--that +volume is to be thanked and cherished. The difficulty of putting down +one's book and extinguishing the light before the exposition of sleep +comes upon one, must be left to be dealt with by the individual man. I +have heard of a popular vocalist who was wont, when he had read +sufficiently, to extinguish the candle by plumping down upon it whatever +book he happened to have in his hand. But this is a rough and ready mode +which cannot be generally recommended--at any rate, not in those cases +where the book is one's own! Some other means must be discovered. And +let them be efficacious, for when any element of danger or unhealthiness +is allowed to attend the use of bedside books, the sooner that use is +discontinued the better. + + + + +THEIR MUCH SPEAKING. + + +The 'dreary drip of dilatory declamation' to which Lord Salisbury, in +one of his happiest phrases, once drew attention, shows no sign of +exhaustion, or even of diminution; and the Conservative chief has +followed up his admirable epigram by picturing the time when, all +rational discussion and all beneficial legislation being out of the +question, the House of Commons may become a mere mechanical puppet-show, +and may present the spectacle of 'a steam Irish Party, an electric +Ministry, and a clockwork Speaker.' It is certain that there never was +so much talk in the Lower House as at the present moment; but it is also +certain that the complaint of 'much speaking' has before now been +frequently preferred against both Chambers. Politicians have always been +a wordy race, and many a sharp shaft has been aimed at their besetting +weakness. A last-century satirist once wrote: + + '"Do this," cries one side of St. Stephen's great hall; + "Do just the reverse," the minority bawl.... + And what is the end of this mighty tongue-war? + --Nothing's done for the State till the State is done for!' + +And, unfortunately, the quality of the talk has often been as poor as +the quantity was considerable. It was, we believe, a pre-Victorian pen +which perpetrated this couplet on the House of Commons: + + 'To wonder now at Balaam's ass were weak: + Is there a night that asses do not speak?' + + +Fun has constantly been made of the typical drawbacks of political +oratory--of the dull men, of the heavy, of the shallow, of the +unintelligible, and what not. We have been told how 'a lord of +senatorial fame' was known at once by his portrait, because the painter +had so 'play'd his game' that it 'made one even yawn at sight.' It has +been said of an M.P., that his speeches 'possessed such remarkable +weight' that it was 'really a trouble to bear them.' Of a third it was +written that his discourses had some resemblance to an hour-glass, +because, the longer time they ran, the shallower they grew. Of yet +another orator we read that his reasoning was really deep, his argument +profound, 'for deuce a bit could anybody see the ground.' Nor have +certain historical personages been able to escape the lash. When Admiral +Vernon was appointed to take charge of the herring fishery, Horace +Walpole wrote: + + 'Long in the Senate had brave Vernon rail'd, + And all mankind with bitter tongue assail'd; + Sick of his noise, we wearied Heav'n with pray'r + In his own element to place the tar. + The gods at length have yielded to our wish, + And bade him rule o'er Billingsgate and fish.' + +From which it will be gathered anew that a somewhat bitter style of +debate is no novelty in this country--that strong language has been +heard in the House of Commons _ante Agamemnona_. + +Within living memory a member has dared to suggest that certain of his +opponents had come into the House not wholly sober. Who does not +remember the epigrams which were based on Pitt's addiction, real or +supposed, to intoxicating liquors? Porson is said to have composed one +hundred such 'paper pellets' in one night, as, for example: + + '"Who's up?" inquired Burke of a friend at the door; + "Oh, no one," said Paddy, "tho' Pitt's on the floor."' + +After this, most other insinuations become almost harmless; and the +accusation of mere twaddling, such as that which was brought against Mr. +Urquhart in the following lines, seems, by comparison, trivial: + + 'When Palmerston begins to speak, + He moves the House--as facts can prove. + Let Urquhart rise, with accents weak, + The House itself begins to move.' + +By the side of twaddling, again, mere rambling grows venial. One of H. +J. Byron's burlesque heroes says of Cerberus: + + 'My dog, who picks up everything one teaches, + Has got "three heads," like Mr. Gladstone's speeches. + But, as might naturally be expected, + His are considerably more connected.' + + +But it is against Parliamentary long-windedness, in particular, that +most sarcasm, whether in verse or in prose, has been directed. Everybody +remembers Moore's comparison of the Lord Castlereagh of his time to a +pump, which up and down its awkward arm doth sway, + + 'And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away, + In one weak, washy, everlasting flood.' + +This has always been a stock quotation to use against oratory of the +'dreary' and 'dilatory' order. Then, Brougham had the good sense to +recognise his own sins in respect to 'much speaking.' _Punch_ made +someone ask himself 'if Brougham thinks as much as he talks;' but the +Lord Chancellor removed the pungency from gibes of that sort by writing +his own epitaph, in which he declares that + + 'My fate a moral teaches, + The ark in which my body lies + Would not contain one-half my speeches.' + +It was asserted of Lord George Bentinck that true sportsmen 'loved his +prate,' because his speech recalled the 'four-mile course,' his +arguments the 'feather-weight.' One is reminded, in this connection, of +the preacher of whom it was observed that he 'so lengthily his subject +did pursue,' that it was feared 'he had, indeed, eternity in view.' And, +perhaps, a long discourse is none the more acceptable when it is +palpable to the hearers that the discourser has committed it to memory, +and is bound to go on to the bitter end. Possibly this adds to the +feeling of exasperation. Nevertheless, there are those who must learn +their speeches by heart, or else not speak at all. As Luttrell contended +that Lord Dudley had said of himself: + + 'In vain my affections the ladies are seeking; + If I give up my heart, there's an end to my speaking.' + + +However, it is, perhaps, scarcely fair of laymen to dwell too sternly on +the joy which so many legislators seem to feel in hearing their own +voices. Man is a talking animal, and can 'hold forth' outside the Houses +of Parliament as well as in. And though in the term 'man' we may include +woman, let us give no countenance to the old calumny, that the fairer +and weaker is also the more talkative sex. There are some old lines to +the effect that Nature wisely forbade a beard to grow on woman's chin, + + 'For how could she be shaved, whate'er the skill, + Whose tongue would never let her chin be still?' + +There is also a certain epitaph on an old maid, + + 'Who from her cradle talk'd till death, + And ne'er before was out of breath,' + +and of whom it was opined that in heaven she'd be unblest, because she +loathed a place of rest. But these flouts and sneers are as cheap as +they are venerable. Let the ladies take heart. Men have been censured +for their 'much speaking' at least as frequently as women. Prior +declared of one Lysander that he ought to possess the art of talk, if he +did not, for he practised 'full fourteen hours in four-and-twenty.' And +we owe to a more recent writer this paraphrase of an epigram by +Macentinus: + + 'Black locks hath Gabriel, beard that's white-- + The reason, sir, is plain: + Gabriel works hard from morn till night, + More with his jaw than brain.' + +It is well that satire should go that way for a change. All the talking +is not done by women or by Parliament. There is, at times, as much +chatter in the smoking-room as in the boudoir and the Senate. Tongues, +as well as beards, 'wag all,' when we are 'merry in hall.' + + + + +PEERS AND POETRY. + + +The succession of the Hon. J. Leicester Warren to the barony of De +Tabley was something more than a change in the _personnel_ of the House +of Lords; it amounted to a conspicuous addition to the Chamber's +intellectual power, and especially to the number of its poetic votaries. +The author of 'Philoctetes' and 'Orestes,' of 'Rehearsals' and +'Searching the Net,' is no mere versifier. He has felt the influence of +the old Greek dramatists, and apparently also that of Mr. Swinburne; +but, for all that, his work has undoubted individuality, as well as +solid interest. + +It must be admitted that the House of Lords does not at this moment +contain many hereditary peers who are also poets. Lord Tennyson, of +course, is an ennobled commoner, and the Bishop of Derry (Dr. +Alexander), who has written so much excellent verse, both in the +thoughtful and in the imaginative vein, is no longer one of the +spiritual lords. But there is Lord Lytton, there is Lord Southesk, and +there is Lord Rosslyn; and by all of these Lord de Tabley will be +welcomed as a brother in the literary art. What Lord Lytton has done in +poetry, need scarcely be recapitulated. He would be remembered as 'Owen +Meredith' if, since his accession to the peerage, he had not made a new +reputation as the author of 'Fables in Song,' 'Glenaveril,' and other +performances. As 'Owen Meredith' he was, no doubt, more fresh and +spontaneous than he has ever been as Lord Lytton; but his poetic work, +as a whole, is of good quality, and some of it will find its way down +the stream of time. Equally certain may we be that the 'Jonas Fisher' of +Lord Southesk, with its unquestionable vigour, both of satire and of +sentiment, will remain alive, whatever may be the fate of the author's +'Greenwood's Farewell' and 'Meda Maiden.' Lord Rosslyn, it will be +remembered, was one of the most successful of the Jubilee Laureates; +but, even before that, he had made himself esteemed by many trustworthy +judges as the producer of numerous good sonnets. + +''Tis ridiculous,' says Selden, 'for a lord to print verses; 'tis well +enough to make them to please himself, but to make them public is +foolish.' He goes on to add that + + 'If a man in his private chamber twists his band-strings, or plays + with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough; but if he should + go into Fleet Street, and sit upon a stall, and twist a + band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street + would laugh at him.' + +No doubt they would have done so in Selden's time; and much more readily +would they do so now. But that is scarcely to the point. _Pace_ Master +Selden, there is nothing ridiculous in a lord printing his verses--if +they be but good enough for the process. A peer is not necessarily a +poet, but a poet is none the worse for being a peer. Nay, there are even +certain kinds of verse in which a peer may, other things being equal, +be actually expected to excel. There is nothing to prevent his being--as +Byron was--a poet of passion; there is every reason why, if he have the +requisite literary capacity, he should shine in the poetry of the +library, the _salon_, and the boudoir. He has usually the education for +the first, and the leisure for the other two. He generally has culture, +he always has breeding, he often has gallantry; and, with these +endowments, the poetry _par excellence_ of the peerage is well within +his reach. + +Considerable, indeed, would be the loss to English literature if by any +chance the productions of our noble poets should disappear. Apart from +Byron, who, of course, stands a head and shoulders above all his +brethren, there is that Henry, Earl of Surrey, who ranks highest of all +poets between Chaucer and Spenser, and who did so much to popularize in +England both blank verse and the sonnet. But for Surrey both those +accomplishments, since so popular among us, might have been long in +establishing themselves in English poetry. The other poet-peers of the +sixteenth century were admittedly not of the first class. Yet +Buckhurst's share in 'The Mirror for Magistrates' and in the tragedy of +'Gorboduc' was of undoubted value, both intrinsic and relative; and the +world of letters would not willingly let die the work, slight as it was, +of Lord Vaux, the Earls of Essex and Oxford, the Earls of Ancrum and +Stirling, Lord Brooke, and Francis Bacon, although the great Chancellor +wrote but one lyric of any moment--the well-known lines upon 'The +World.' Lord Vaux's 'Of a Contented Mind,' Lord Essex's 'There is None, +O None but You,' Lord Oxford's 'If Woman could be Fair and yet not +Fond,' are among the treasures of our verse; while the tragedies of Lord +Stirling and Lord Brooke, and the sonnets of Lord Ancrum, are at least +curious and interesting, if they are not substantively great. + +And when we come to the noble poets of the Stuart and the early Georgian +period, we find that the national indebtedness is not less marked. Who +would be prepared to surrender the spirited effusions of Montrose? And +is there not much to be said for the outcome, flimsy and over-free as it +often was, of that mob of noblemen who wrote with ease--including the +Earls of Roscommon, Dorset, and Rochester, and the Duke of +Buckinghamshire? Had these writers not at least the virtues of lightness +and of brightness? Did not Dorset pen the lines, 'To all you ladies now +on land?' Did not Buckinghamshire produce 'The Election of the +Laureat'--the prototype of Leigh Hunt's 'Feast of the Poets,' and of a +still more recent _jeu d'esprit_ by Mr. Robert Buchanan? The great Lord +Peterborough is even now less remembered for his military triumphs than +for his 'Song by a Person of Quality;' while Chesterfield, if thought of +most frequently in connection with his letters and his essays, still +lives in poetry as the author of some admirable society verses. Horace +Walpole claims mention in the list as Earl of Orford, and room must +fairly be made, too, for Lords Lansdowne, Halifax, Nugent, Lyttelton, +Egremont, and De la Warre, most of whom left behind them a few fugitive +pieces which deserve to be embalmed in poetical collections. + +The annals of nineteenth-century song will commemorate, besides Byron, +those agreeable versifiers--Lord Holland, Lord Melbourne, and Lord +Winchilsea, and those cultured translators--Lord Strangford, Lord +Ellesmere, and Lord Derby. It would scarcely be fair to include among +noble poets Lord Macaulay, Lord Houghton, or the first Lord Lytton, for +they, like Lord Tennyson, were created peers, and won their +laurel-wreaths in the character of commoners. In the same way, I have +taken no account of the poetical peeresses, or I should have had to +dwell upon the achievements of such ladies as Sidney's sister, Lady +Pembroke; the Duchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Winchilsea, the +Baroness Nairne, and so on. Enough, indeed, has been said to show how +prominent a part the peerage has played in the history of English +poetry--not, indeed, in the front rank, in which (omitting Lord +Tennyson) it is represented only by Byron, but in the second, where +Montrose (for example) is eminent, and wherever, in short, the +rhetorical, the amatory, and the witty elements are in the ascendant. + + + + + +THE PRAISE OF THAMES. + + +Afluent versifier of to-day has complained that, though many a poet has +'dearer made the names' of Tweed and Nith and Doon, and what not, no one +has 'sung our Thames;' and he goes on especially to rate 'green Kent and +Oxfordshire and Middlesex,' because those counties have offered, he +says, no rhythmical tribute to our premier stream. Now, the Thames has +not, perhaps, found many laureates of late. The glories of Henley may be +celebrated annually in the comic or 'society' press, but in these times +we hear more, no doubt, of sewage and steam-launches than of any other +phenomena of the Thames. We are a practical generation, with a keen eye +to business, and disposed to take not only as read, but as written, the +praises which might well be bestowed upon the river even as it is. + +If, however, the Thames does not often or greatly inspire the rhymers of +to-day, it cannot, certainly, be described as songless. On the contrary, +it has received from the poets more magnificent and more frequent +eulogium than any of its compeers. If one goes back even so far as +Spenser, one finds that writer picturing it in one poem as 'noble +Thamis'--a 'lovely bridegroom,' 'full, fresh and jolly,' 'all decked in +a robe of watchet hew,' and adorned by a coronet 'in which were many +towres and castels set;' while, in another work from the same hand, it +figures as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and +is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his +'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis +that hastes to greet The brackish coast of old Oceanus': + + 'And as by London's bosom she doth fleet, + Casts herself proudly through the bridge's twists, + Where, as she takes again her crystal feet, + She curls her silver hair like amourists, + Smooths her bright cheeks, adorns her brow with ships, + And, empress-like, along the coast she trips'-- + +a description almost as impressive as the thing described. Among the +lovers of the Thames must be ranked, too, Herrick, who, in one of his +pieces, sends to his 'silver-footed Thamasis' his 'supremest kiss.' 'No +more,' he regrets, will he 'reiterate' its strand, whereon so many +stately structures stand; no more, in the summer's sweeter evenings, +will he go to bathe in it, as thousand others do: + + 'No more shall I along thy christall glide, + The barge with boughes and rushes beautifi'd.... + To Richmond, Kingstone, and to Hampton Court. + Never againe shall I with finnie ore + Cut from or draw unto the faithfull shore, + And landing here, or safely landing there, + Make way to my beloved Westminster.' + + +Milton, in his 'Vacation Exercise,' bestows upon the Thames the epithet +of 'Royal-towered.' How Denham celebrated it is well known to most. In +his view it was 'the most loved of all the Ocean's sons,' and he +commended it especially for its freedom from sudden and impetuous wave, +from the unexpected inundations which spoil the mower's hopes and mock +the ploughman's toil. + + 'Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, + Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full'-- + +such was the famous panegyric he passed upon it. From Denham, too, came +an early poetical recognition of the growth of London's commerce. The +Thames, he says, brings home to us, and makes the Indies ours; his fair +bosom is the world's exchange. To Pope, in his 'Windsor Forest,' the +Thames appears as the 'great father of the British floods,' on whose +shores figure future navies. + + 'No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear, + No lakes so gentle, and no spring so clear.' + +And the poet ends by prophesying the time when 'unbounded Thames shall +flow for all mankind,' whole nations entering with each swelling tide. +Elsewhere he assures us that 'blest Thames's shores the brightest +beauties yield.' Thomson, again, dwells on the extent of the trade +fostered by the river. Commerce, he says, has chosen for his grand +resort 'Thy stream, O Thames, large, gentle, deep, majestic, King of +floods!' And he describes how, on either hand, + + 'Like a long wintry forest, groves of masts + Shot up their spires.' + +Then, as now, 'the sooty hulk steered sluggish on,' while + + 'The splendid barge + Row'd, regular, to harmony; around, + The boat, light-skimming, stretched its oary wings.' + + +Up to this time, the river had been called 'clear' and 'crystal,' in +spite of 'sooty hulks;' but, with the advent of Cowper, another note is +struck. With him the Thames is + + 'The finest stream + That wavers to the noon-day beam,' + +but it is not, alas! absolutely pure: + + 'Nor yet, my Delia, to the main + Runs the sweet tide without a stain, + Unsullied as it seems; + The nymphs of many a sable flood + Deform with streaks of oozy mud + The bosom of the Thames.' + +Happily, this is about the only word of depreciation which the poets +have permitted themselves. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge in +1803, notes that 'the river glideth at its own sweet will,' and if his +olfactory nerves were at all distressed he has not said so in verse. Of +later singers, none has been more enthusiastic about the Thames than +Eliza Cook, who has told us that, though it bears no azure wave and +rejoices in no leaping cascades, yet she ever loved to dwell where she +heard its gushing swell--in which expression, we may be sure, there is +no allusion to the British 'dude.' Another lady--Mrs. Isa Craig +Knox--has supplied a very pretty description of the Thames in its more +idyllic phases, pointing out how + + 'It glimmers + Through the stems of the beeches; + Through the screen of the willows it shimmers + In long-winding reaches; + Flowing so softly that scarcely + It seems to be flowing; + But the reeds of the low little island + Are bent to its going; + And soft as the breath of a sleeper + Its heaving and sighing, + In the coves where the fleets of the lilies + At anchor are lying.' + +Finally, there is that austere teacher, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, who, +addressing the Thames, exhorts it to go on soothing, + + 'With murmur low and ceaseless cheer, + The Imperial City's agitated ear,' + +but beseeches it also to add a warning voice, telling her, to whom the +pomp of gold is dear, of 'Tyre that fell, of Fortune's perfidy.' + +Other poetic celebrations--such as those of Mr. Ernest Myers, Mr. +Ashby-Sterry, and 'C. C. R.'--might be recorded; but the above will +suffice to show how prominent a place the Thames has always held in the +heart and mind of those poets who have come within the sphere of its +influence. Even if it were never made the subject of a future song, it +would still figure largely and conspicuously in the British _corpus +poetarum_. + + + + + +ENGLISH EPIGRAPHS. + + +The student of English poetry must often have been struck by its +richness in that form of verse which may best be called the +Epigraph--the brief sententious effort, answering somewhat to the +epigram as understood and practised by the Greeks, but unlike the Latin, +French, and English epigram in being sentimental instead of witty, and +aiming rather at all-round neatness than at pungency or point. Our +language abounds, of course, in examples of short lyrical compositions, +such (to name familiar instances) as Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Lay a +garland on my hearse,' Congreve's 'False though she be to me and love,' +Goldsmith's 'When lovely woman stoops to folly,' Shelley's 'Music, when +soft voices die,' and MacDonald's 'Alas, how easily things go +wrong!'--all of these being only eight lines long. There are, indeed, +plenty of lyrical performances even more brief than this; such as Mr. +Marzials' 'tragedy' in quatrain: + + 'She reach'd a rosebud from the tree, + And bit the tip and threw it by; + My little rose, for you and me + The worst is over when we die!' + +But, then, the epigraph is never lyrical. It belongs to the order of +reflective poetry, and consists of a single thought, expressed with as +much brevity and grace as possible. A common form of it is the epitaph; +another is the inscription; while at other times the poets have used it +for the purpose of enshrining some occasional or isolated utterance. + +The thoroughly successful epitaphs--at once short, and wholly poetical +in expression--are among the most famous and popular things in +literature. Who does not remember the admirable tribute to 'Sidney's +sister, Pembroke's mother'--usually ascribed to Ben Jonson, but +sometimes attributed to Browne? Jonson penned an epitaph on 'Elizabeth +L. H.,' which would have been exquisite had it consisted only of the +following: + + 'Underneath this stone doth lie + As much beauty as could die; + Which, in life, did harbour give + To more virtue than doth live.' + +Even as they stand, the lines, as a whole, may fairly compare with those +on Lady Pembroke. How happy Pope was in his epitaphs is familiarly +known. The art was just that in which he might naturally be expected to +excel. The time-honoured couplet on Newton need not be quoted: the +'octave' on Sir Godfrey Kneller is most notable for the final bit of +hyperbole: + + 'Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie + Her works, and, dying, fears herself may die.' + +And, talking of epitaphs, one is reminded of the quaint comment by Sir +Henry Wotton 'On the Death of Sir A. Morton's Wife': + + 'He first deceased; she, for a little, tried + To live without him, liked it not, and died'-- + +surely a piece of work as nearly as possible perfect in its way. In the +matter of inscriptions, we have, of course, that by Ben Jonson on +Shakespeare's portrait, and that by Dryden under Milton's picture--the +last-named being by no means deserving of its reputation. We have also +the well-known lines by Pope, 'written on glass with Lord Chesterfield's +diamond pencil;' the equally well-known sentence on Rogers by Lord +Holland; and the less-hackneyed and even more flattering couplet +composed by Lord Lyttelton for Lady Suffolk's bust (erected in a wood at +Stowe): + + 'Her wit and beauty for a Court were made, + But truth and goodness fit her for a shade.' + + +The writers of verse have naturally shone in such concentrated +testimonies to the merits of those whom they delighted to honour. Our +literature is full of eloquent and graceful summaries of individual +gifts and acquirements, apart altogether from the ordinary inscription +or epitaph. Pope celebrated Lady Wortley Montagu's beauty in a couple of +lines too frequently cited to need reproduction. Less often quoted is +David Graham's concise but sufficient criticism on Richardson's +'Clarissa': + + 'This work is Nature's; every tittle in't + She wrote, and gave it Richardson to print.' + +James Montgomery, in a well-turned quatrain, said of Burns that he +'pass'd through life ... a brilliant trembling northern light,' but that +'thro' years to come' he would shine from far 'a fix'd unsetting polar +star.' It will be remembered that, in another quatrain, Lord Erskine +besought his contemporaries to 'mourn not for Anacreon dead,' for they +rejoiced in the possession of 'an Anacreon Moore.' James Smith wrote of +Miss Edgeworth that her work could never be anonymous--'Thy writings ... +must bring forth the name of their author to light.' And so on, and so +on: the poetry of compliment presents many such conceits. + +A treatise, indeed, might be written on the epigraphs in which poets +have praised their lady-loves or their friends--from Herrick's Julia to, +say, Tennyson's General Gordon. Rather, however, let us turn to what the +bards have been at pains to say about themselves, recalling, for +example, Herrick's 'Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste,' and +Matthew Prior's triplet 'On Himself.' Colman the Younger wrote: + + 'My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled, + Sat up together many a night, no doubt; + But now I've sent the poor old lass to bed, + Simply because my fire is going out.' + +But how inferior is this, both in feeling and in expression, to the +dignified epigraph in which Landor celebrated the seventy-fifth +anniversary of his birthday: + + 'I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; + Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art; + I warmed both hands before the fire of life; + It sinks, and I am ready to depart.' + + +In the couplet and quatrain of pure sentiment and reflection, some of +the most delightful of our poetry is embodied. Herrick was conspicuously +fond of this species of verse, and his works abound in gems of style and +fancy, the difficulty being, not to find them, but to select from them. +The beauty of one is apt to be rivalled by that of its neighbour. Thus +we find on one page: + + 'When words we want, Love teaches to indite; + And what we blush to speak, she bids us write.' + +And on another: + + 'Love's of itself too sweet; the best of all + Is when love's honey has a dash of gall.' + +Then there is Lord Lyttelton's distich about 'Love can hope when reason +would despair;' there are Aaron Hill's famous lines on 'modest ease in +beauty,' which, though it 'means no mischief, does it all.' There are +Sir William Jones's 'To an Infant Newly Born;' Wolcot's 'To Sleep;' +Luttrell's 'On Death;' and many, many others. + +Of nineteenth-century writers, the most admirable composer of the +epigraph has been Landor, who in this, as in some other respects, may be +placed in the same category with Herrick. What, for instance, could be +prettier than this? + + 'Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass, + Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever; + From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass + Like little ripples in a sunny river.' + +How well-phrased, again, is this: + + 'Various the roads of life; in one + All terminate, one lonely way. + We go; and "Is he gone?" + Is all our best friends say.' + + +Among living authors, Mr. Aubrey de Vere can lay claim to a quatrain +which is entirely faultless: + + 'For me no roseate garlands twine, + But wear them, dearest, in my stead; + Time has a whiter hand than thine, + And lays it on my head.' + +To this, Sir Henry Taylor wrote a pendant scarcely less fortunate in +idea and wording. Lord Tennyson has in his day written several epitaphs, +inscriptions, and other trifles; but none of them have quite the +perfection which might have been looked for from so great a master of +poetic form. Mr. Matthew Arnold produced, with others, this excellent +epigraph: + + 'Though the Muse be gone away, + Though she move not earth to-day, + Souls erewhile who caught her word, + Ah! still harp on what they heard.' + + +Finally, the reader may be recommended to glance at Mr. William +Allingham's little book of 'Blackberries,' in which they will find a +large number of such 'snatches of song,' many of them fresh in +conception and finished in execution. + + + + + +THE 'SEASON' IN SONG. + + +'To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die,' and the Season, when +'dead,' yet speaks to many through the mouths of the men who have given +it perennial life in verse. Its first laureate, one may say, was +Mackworth Praed, whose 'Good-night' to it still remains the most +brilliant epitome of its characteristics ever written. Nothing was +omitted from that remarkable series of coruscating epigrams. From + + 'The breaches and battles and blunders + Performed by the Commons and Peers,' + +we are taken to 'the pleasures which fashion makes duties'--'the dances, +the fillings of hot little rooms,' 'the female diplomatists, planners of +matches for Laura and Jane,' 'the rages, led off by the chiefs of the +throng,' the ballet, the bazaar, the horticultural fete, and what not. +Of later years the Season, as a whole, has been celebrated only by Mr. +Alfred Austin, who published, more than a quarter of a century ago, a +satire which was indeed formidable in its tone. Mr. Austin was severe +about everybody--about the + + 'Unmarketable maidens of the mart, + Who, plumpness gone, fine delicacy feint, + And hide their sins in piety and paint;' + +about the Gardens, where + + 'The leafy glade + Prompts the proposal dalliance delayed;' + +about the ballrooms, where + + 'Panting damsels, dancing for their lives, + Are only maidens waltzing into wives;' + +about the theatre, where + + 'Toole or Compton, perfect in his part, + Touches each sense, except the head and heart;' + +and about a number of other things too censurable to be mentioned here. + +And, in truth, when one thinks of the Season in song, one thinks less of +the satire than of the sarcasm, less of the cynicism than of the +sympathy, with which it has been treated by its poets. Take, for +example, that most conspicuous feature of the Season--the walking, +riding, driving in the Row. It was Tickell who made a woman of fashion +of his day tell how she + + 'Mounted her palfrey as gay as a lark, + And, followed by John, took the dust in Hyde Park,' + +and how + + 'On the way she was met by some smart Macaroni, + Who rode by her side on a little bay pony.' + +In our own time the glories and the humours of the Row have been +described with geniality by Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Ashby-Sterry, +with point by Mr. Austin Dobson, and with smartness by H. S. Leigh. Says +Mr. Locker: + + 'Forsooth, and on a livelier spot + The sunbeam never shines; + Fair ladies here can talk and trot + With statesmen and divines. + + 'What grooms! what gallant gentlemen! + What well-appointed hacks! + What glory in their pace, and then, + What beauty on their backs!' + +Mr. Dobson, in a different mood, assures his Roman prototype that the +world to-day is very much what it was in the time of 'Q. H. F.': + + 'Walk in the Park--you'll seldom fail + To find a Sybaris on the rail + By Lydia's ponies; + Or hap on Barrus, wigged and stayed, + Ogling some unsuspecting maid. + + 'Fair Neobule, too! Is not + One Hebrus here--from Aldershot? + Aha, you colour! + Be wise. There old Canidia sits; + No doubt she's tearing you to bits.' + + +The Eton and Harrow match, like lawn-tennis, _caret vate sacro_; but the +delights of Henley and Hurlingham have been sung in verse, and the +Inter-University Boat-race was the subject of some admirable lines by +Mortimer Collins and G. J. Cayley: + + 'Sweet amid lime-trees' blossom, astir with the whispers of springtide, + Maiden speech to hear, eloquent murmur and sigh + Ah! but the joy of the Thames when, Cam with Isis contending, + Up the Imperial stream flash the impetuous Eights! + Sweeping and strong is the stroke, as they race from Putney to Mortlake, + Shying the Crab Tree bight, shooting through Hammersmith Bridge; + Onward elastic they strain to the deep low moan of the rowlock; + Louder the cheer from the bank, swifter the flash of the oar!' + +Pretty again, in its way, is the better-known 'Boat-race Sketch,' by Mr. +Ashby-Sterry, whose heroine + + 'Twines her fair hair with the colours of Isis, + Whilst those of the Cam glitter bright in her eyes.' + +The joys of Epsom and of Goodwood have not, I believe, been versified by +any prominent rhymer, and, concerning those of Ascot, I know of but one +elaborate celebration--that which describes, among other things, + + 'Tall bottles passing to and fro, + And clear-cut crystal's creamy flow, + Where vied with velvet Veuve Clicquot, + Moet and Chandon;' + +as well as + + 'The homeward drive that came too soon + By parks and lodges bright with June, + And how we mocked the afternoon + With lazy laughter.' + +Nothing, of course, is more peculiar to the Season than the devotion +displayed by Society at the shrine of Art. The Academy and the Grosvenor +are institutions without which the Season would not be itself. The +latter has not figured very conspicuously in song, but at least it has +managed to creep into one of the Gilbert-Sullivan operas, in the shape +of a rhyme to 'greenery-yallery.' Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has told us of +the critic who had + + 'Totter'd, since the dawn was red, + Through miles of Grosvenor Gallery;' + +and, in another of his 'verses vain,' has practically limned the Gallery +itself under the guise of 'Camelot': + + 'In Camelot, how gray and green + The damsels dwell, how sad their teen; + In Camelot, how green and gray + The melancholy poplars sway. + I wis I wot not what they mean, + Or wherefore, passionate and lean, + The maidens mope their loves between.' + +The character of Burne-Jonesian art is here very happily hit off. Happy, +too, is Mr. Lang's sketch of the Philistian features of the Academy: + + 'Philistia! Maids in muslin white + With flannelled oarsmen oft delight + To drift upon thy streams, and float + In Salter's most luxurious boat; + In buff and boots the cheery knight + Returns (quite safe) from Naseby fight.' + +But did not Praed long ago address 'The Portrait of a Lady at the +Exhibition of the Royal Academy'? Has not Mr. Ashby-Sterry addressed +'Number One' in the said exhibition--also 'the portrait of a lady'? And, +moreover, has not Mr. Austin Dobson made the Academy the scene of one of +his brightly-written dialogues?--that in which the lady says: + + 'From now until we go in June + I shall hear nothing but this tune: + Whether I like Long's "Vashti," or + Like Leslie's "Naughty Kitty" more; + With all that critics, right or wrong, + Have said of Leslie or of Long.' + + +Among the events of every season are the fashionable marriages, one of +which is described for us by Mr. Frederick Locker in his 'St. George's, +Hanover Square.' On the subject of the belles of the season I need not +dwell. Praed's 'Belle of the Ballroom' was a provincial beauty; but not +so, assuredly, was Pope's and Lord Peterborough's Mrs. Howard, +Congreve's Miss Temple, Lord Chesterfield's Duchess of Richmond, Fox's +Mrs. Crewe, Lord Lytton's La Marquise, Mr. Aide's Beauty Clare, or Mr. +Austin Dobson's Avice. Of London balls and routs the poets have been +many, including Edward Fitzgerald, C. S. Calverley, and Mr. Dobson +again. The opera, so far as I know, has had very few celebrants in +rhyme. The 'Monday Pops' figure in 'Patience' with the Grosvenor +Gallery, but have not otherwise, I fancy, been distinguished in song. On +the whole, however, the Season has received poetic tributes at once +numerous and interesting. + + + + + +THE 'RECESS' IN RHYME. + + +If the Season has had its laureates, so has the Recess. Why not? Of the +two, the latter has the more numerous elements of poetry. Town has its +charms for the versifier; there is much to say about its streets, its +parks, its belles, its balls, its many diversions. But there is even +more, surely, to say about the country, with its ancestral halls, its +watering-places, and its shootings, as well as about the seaside and the +various attractions _outre-mer_. Surely, of the two, life out of town +has even more delights, for the poet, at any rate, than life in town. +Sylvester is reported to have said that people, after tiring in town, go +to re-tire in the country. But the saying, if epigrammatic, is not +strictly true. No doubt some of us feel bored, wherever we may go, or +whatever we may do. But to most people, I imagine, the Recess, if spent +out of London, is a time of genuine enjoyment, and certainly it is a +time which deserves to be distinguished in song. + +The Recess, as spent in London, has been drawn by the rhymers in +depressing tints. The picture painted by Haynes Bayly remains--for the +fashionable world, at least--almost as true as it ever was. As he said: + + 'In town, in the month of September, + We find neither riches nor rank; + In vain we look out for a member + To give us a nod or a frank. + Each knocker in silence reposes, + In every mansion you find + One dirty old woman who dozes, + Or peeps through the dining-room blind.' + +This may be compared with the soliloquy put by H. S. Leigh in the mouth +of 'the last man' left in London: + + 'The Row is dull, as dull can be; + Deserted is the Drive; + The glass that stood at eighty-three, + Now stands at sixty-five. + The summer days are over, + The town, ah me! has flown, + Through Dover, or to clover-- + And I am all alone.' + +It has long been held, among a certain class, that to be seen in town +during the Recess is to forfeit all pretensions to _haut ton_. And so +'the last man' of the Season is naturally represented by Bayly as +somewhat ashamed of himself. 'He'll blush,' we are told, 'if you ask him +the reason Why he with the rest is not gone': + + 'He'll seek you with shame and with sorrow, + He'll smile with affected delight; + He'll swear he leaves London to-morrow, + And only came to it last night!' + +He will tell you that he is in general request--that the difficulty is +to know where not to go: + + 'So odd you should happen to meet him; + So strange, as he's just passing through.' + + +The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the +sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on 'the Twelfth,' the other on 'the +First.' The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges. +And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of +these facts. 'Don't talk of September,' she says; 'a lady + + 'Must think it of all months the worst; + The men are preparing already + To take themselves off on the First.' + + 'Last month, their attention to quicken, + A supper I knew was the thing; + But now, from my turkey and chicken, + They're tempted by birds on the wing! + They shoulder their terrible rifles + ('Tis really too much for my nerves!) + And, slighting my sweets and my trifles, + Prefer my Lord Harry's preserves!' + +And she goes on to say: + + 'Oh, marriage is hard of digestion, + The men are all sparing of words; + And now 'stead of popping the question, + They set off to pop at the birds.' + + +Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet. +Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left +town--how + + 'She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks, + Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks... + (To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, + Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire.' + +Lord Lyttelton's 'beauty in the country' complains that + + 'Now with mamma at tedious whist I play, + Now without scandal drink insipid tea;' + +while Lady Mary Montagu's 'bride in the country' deplores the fact that +she is + + 'Left in the lurch, + Forgot and secluded from view, + Unless when some bumpkin at church + Stares wistfully over the pew.' + +Agreeably descriptive of rural pleasures is Lord Chesterfield's 'Advice +to a Lady in Autumn.' Of recent years the subject has been treated by a +versifier who has at least a measure of the neatness of Praed, and who +enumerates among the typical guests at a country house + + 'A sporting parson, good at whist, + A preaching sportsman, good at gateways;' + +and, again: + + 'A lady who once wrote a book, + And one of whom a book's been written... + One blonde whose fortune is her face, + And one whose face caught her a fortune.' + +As for the daily round: + + 'We dance, we flirt, we shoot, we ride, + Our host's a veritable Nimrod: + We fish the river's silver tide,' + +and so on. There are, of course, the county balls, and the fancy balls, +and the private theatricals, and what not, all of them celebrated by the +inevitable Praed. It was at the county ball that he saw 'the belle of +the ballroom': + + 'There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle + Gave signal sweet in that old hall + Of hands across and down the middle.' + +It was to the county ball, as well as to the theatricals at Fustian +Hall, that Praed's 'Clarence' was so prettily invited. As for fancy +balls: + + 'Oh, a fancy ball's a strange affair! + Made up of silks and leathers, + Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair, + Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers.' + + +Of inland watering-places, Bath and Cheltenham have been perhaps most +often poetized. Bath found its _vates sacer_ in the author of the 'New +Bath Guide'; it has rarely found one since; its glories have virtually +departed. It was at Cheltenham-- + + 'Where one drinks one's fill + Of folly and cold water'-- + +that Praed met his 'Partner.' And C. S. Calverley has told us how + + 'Year by year do Beauty's daughters + In the sweetest gloves and shawls + Troop to taste the Chattenham waters, + And adorn the Chattenham balls. + + '_Nulla non donanda lauru_ + Is that city: you could not, + Placing England's map before you, + Light on a more favoured spot.' + + +Praed has a poem called 'Arrivals at a Watering-Place,' but it is not +one of the most successful of his efforts. Nor have seaside places in +general been made the subject of very excellent verse. Brighton is the +one exception. Of that 'favoured spot,' James Smith, of 'Rejected +Addresses' fame, was, perhaps, the first to write flatteringly. 'Long,' +he declared-- + + 'Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn, + Proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering-places! + Boys yet unbreech'd, and virgins yet unborn, + On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.' + +The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets +still conspire to sing the praises of 'Old Ocean's bauble, glittering +Brighton.' Everybody remembers the stirring exhortation of Mortimer +Collins: + + 'If you approve of flirtations, good dinners, + Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten; + Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners, + Winter at Brighton!' + +Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic. +Brighton in November, he says, 'is what one should remember': + + 'If spirits you would lighten, + Consult good Doctor Brighton, + And swallow his prescriptions and abide by his decree; + If nerves be weak or shaken, + Just try a week with Bacon; + His physic soon is taken at our London-by-the-Sea.' + + +Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the +Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr. +Locker's graceful 'Invitation to Rome' and 'The Reply' to it, from which +I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital: + + 'Some girls, who love to ride and race, + And live for dancing, like the Bruens, + Confess that Rome's a charming place-- + In spite of all the stupid ruins!' + + + + +JAQUES IN LOVE. + + +What Jaques is in Shakespeare's pages most people know. In the very +first reference made to him he is described as 'melancholy,' and as +'weeping and commenting' upon a stricken deer. He has 'sullen fits,' we +read. He himself tells us he 'can suck melancholy out of a song.' He +protests that the banished Duke is 'too disputable' for him--that he +(Jaques) thinks of as many matters, but makes no boast of them. The +Duke, on his side, speaks of Jaques as 'compact of jars' (made up of +discords), and when Jaques offers to 'cleanse the foul body of the +infected world,' retorts on him that it would be a case of 'most +mischievous foul sin chiding sin,' Jaques having been himself a +notorious evil liver. To Orlando Jaques suggests that they should rail +at the world and their misery, while to Rosalind he confesses that he +loves melancholy better than laughing. ''Tis good to be sad and say +nothing.' He has, he says, a melancholy of his own, the result of his +experience and reflection, which wraps him in a most humorous sadness. +Jaques, in fact, is a rake turned cynical philosopher. He regards man +and nature as only so much material for observation and for moralizing. + +Such is the Jaques of 'As You Like It'--a purely original creation, +embodying a familiar type of humanity, but nevertheless not good enough +for certain of Shakespeare's successors in the dramatic art. Jaques has +more than once been revised and edited, in common with other characters +in the sylvan comedy. He did not quite satisfy the fastidious taste of +Mr. Charles Johnson, the ingenious author of 'The Country Lasses' and +other pieces, who, as was said with more point than truth, was 'famous +for writing a play every year and being at Button's coffee-house every +day.' Still less did Shakespeare's Jaques commend himself to the 'J. +C.' who was so kind as not merely to adapt 'As You Like It,' but to +elaborate and paraphrase it. Nor did the 'melancholy' one prove +acceptable even to the judgment of Georges Sand, when that intellectual +lady set to work to 'arrange' the play for the French stage. +Shakespeare, it appeared to all these writers, had perpetrated an +unaccountable mistake. He had failed to make Jaques pair off with Celia. +That charming maiden is handed over to the converted Oliver, while +Jaques goes off to study the humours of the repentant Duke. Happy +thought! Transform Jaques and Celia into a species of minor Benedick and +Beatrice, and marry them in the end! + +Mr. Charles Johnson adopted this idea almost literally. His 'Love in a +Forest'--brought out at Drury Lane in 1723--is 'As You Like it' cut down +and altered, with scraps from 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Love's Labour's +Lost,' and other Shakespearean pieces, introduced at various points, the +whole welded together by means of wondrous emanations from the +compiler's fancy. To Jaques are assigned a number of lines spoken +elsewhere by Benedick or by Biron. We have the well-known gibing scene +between Jaques and Orlando up to a certain stage, when, commenting on +Jaques' questions about Rosalind, Orlando says: 'But why are you so +curious?--you who are an obstinate heretic in the despight of beauty and +the whole female world?' Then Jaques replies to this speech, which +belongs to Don Pedro in 'Much Ado,' in the familiar words of Benedick in +that play, asserting that he will 'live a bachelor,' and that if ever he +breaks that vow his friends may put round his neck the legend, 'Here you +may see Jaques, the married man.' At this juncture Rosalind and Celia +appear, and, while Rosalind as Ganymede has her first colloquy with +Orlando, 'Jaques talks with Celia--they walk in another glade of the +forest.' When they return it is at once evident that Jaques' celibate +intentions have already been shaken. He calls the lady 'destructively +handsome,' and says his heart 'gallops away in her praise most +dangerously.' She avers he will be in love if he does not take heed, and +he says, 'I doubt so--yet I hope not.' A moment or two after, encouraged +and fired by her words, he asks her plump to marry him, and she promises +so to do, 'two years hence, if my brother Ganymede consents.' Then he +admits, in soliloquy, that he is 'in love, horribly in love,' his +spirits 'caught at last by a pair of bugle eyeballs and a cheek of +cream.' And then come more quotations from Benedick, as well as an +annexation of Touchstone's remark about the honourableness of the +forehead of a married man. Celia by-and-by confesses to Rosalind that +'her heart doth incline a little to the philosopher,' whose love, she +allows, 'does not sit easy upon him,' but whose words are 'full of +sincerity.' Still later Jaques comes to Rosalind for her approval of the +match, speaking this time in language used by Biron. She, however, +refuses, declaring that he cannot be polished into a modern husband; and +he retires disconsolate. But with Orlando he is more successful. He is +promised that Ganymede shall give way, and that his wedding shall take +place to-morrow. And so all ends happily. + +The 'J. C.' who, in 1739, published 'The Modern Receipt, or a Cure for +Love,' as 'altered from Shakespeare,' went much farther than Johnson in +the way of embellishing the unhappy poet. He used his lines +occasionally, but in general either turned them into prose or expanded +them beyond all recognition. Virtually he supplies a comedy based, only, +on 'As You Like It.' Even the names of the characters are changed. +Jaques now figures as Marcellus, 'a sullen, morose lord, a great +woman-hater, but at length in love with Julia'--the Julia being, of +course, Celia. He is described by a shepherd as 'a melancholy sort of +fellow,' who 'reads much, thinks more, eats little, sleeps little, and +speaks least of all. And if he sees a woman he runs away, shuts himself +up in his cave, and prays for an hour or two after.' Julia, hearing +this, cries: 'Oh, the brute! I'm resolved to take a revenge upon him in +behalf of the whole sex.' Jaques, on his part, is struck by Julia's +charms as soon as he beholds them--'What can this mean? I'm wondrous ill +o' the sudden'--and is fain to sit down, lest he should fall. In the +scene which follows there is a great war of words. The lady talks, +purposely, at an agonizing speed, and the gentleman roundly tells her +that he would rather have her room than her company. At last the wrangle +is interrupted, and Julia, as a parting shot, calls Marcellus 'a bear in +breeches.' He himself is inclined, after all, to think her 'something +more than the rest of her detested sex--some being, perhaps, of a +superior order.' He praises her gay innocence and noble simplicity. +Julia, on her side, 'prays Heaven that she is not in love with the +brute,' but is afraid she must be. Then there is a scene in which, by +way of drawing him on, she pretends to love him, but afterwards says +that she was mocking him, and so covers him with confusion. +Nevertheless, he is not cured. He is still her slave, and, as he says, +what is love 'but an epidemic disease, and what all the world has, at +one time or other, been troubled with as well as myself? Why should I +endeavour to curb a passion the greatest heroes have with pride +indulged? No.... He alone is wise who nobly loves.' So he returns to the +charge, makes the lady admit the soft impeachment, and obtains the +Duke's consent to their union. He says, in the end, that he is afraid he +makes but an odd sort of figure--that he has acted a little out of +character, and a great deal below the dignity of a philosopher. But, +having the aforesaid disease, he has sought the remedy, and has found +it; for, in his view, 'Marriage is the surest cure of love.' + +Georges Sand, in her 'Comme il Vous Plaira'--a comedy in three acts, +'tiree de Shakespeare, et arrangee'--diverges still further from the +original text. Her work is, even more markedly than 'The Modern +Receipt,' founded, only, on 'As You Like It.' 'In dealing with this +uncurbed genius, which owned no restraint,' she thought herself +justified in 'condensing, abstracting, and modifying' his work. But, as +a matter of fact, her play is indebted to Shakespeare only in idea. +Jaques is introduced early in the piece as sent by the banished Duke +with a message to Rosalind. Of course, he meets Celia, and at first is +_brusquerie_ itself. But in the second act he comes to think there is +something in her name 'qui resonne autrement que dans tout nature. +Est-ce une douceur qui charme l'oreille?' Celia for a long time plays +with him, but in the end they arrive at a mutual declaration of +affection. 'I have always tenderly loved Jaques,' says Georges Sand in +her preface, and 'I have taken the great liberty of bringing him back to +love. Here is my own romance inserted in that of Shakespeare, and, +although romantic, it is not more improbable than the sudden conversion +of Oliver.' That may be; and yet one might have thought that Georges +Sand, of all people, would not have set herself the interesting but +somewhat futile task of improving upon 'As You Like It.' + + + + +MOCKING AT MATRIMONY. + + +The world has reason to be grateful to the writer who lately +demonstrated the possibility of being happy 'though married.' Some +exposition of the sort was sadly needed. Hitherto the estate of +matrimony has met with a long succession of jibes and sneers. It has had +its apologists, even its prophets and eulogists; but it has had many +more detractors. There is, indeed, no subject on which the satirists of +the world, both great and small, have so largely and so persistently +made merry. It has been a stock subject with them. It is as if they had +said to themselves, 'When at a loss, revile the connubial condition.' +Married life has been the sport of every wit, and, sorrowful to relate, +society has been well content to join in the pastime. There is nothing +so common as sarcasm on matrimony, and nothing, apparently, so welcome, +even to the married. + +The banter in question has been of all sorts--sometimes vague, sometimes +particular, in its import. A few censors have confined themselves to +simple condemnation. 'A fellow that's married's a _felo-de-se_,' wrote +the late Shirley Brooks; and he had been anticipated in the stricture. +An anonymous satirist had written: + + '"Wedlock's the end of life," one cried; + "Too true, alas!" said Jack, and sigh'd-- + "'Twill be the end of mine."' + +And if matrimony was not suicide, it was ruin. Old Sir Thomas More had +said of a student who had married that 'in knitting of himself so fast, +himself he had undone.' And a later rhymer, contrasting wedding with +hanging, had come to the conclusion that + + 'Hanging is better of the twain-- + Sooner done and shorter pain.' + +To the suggestion that a youth should not marry till he has more wisdom, +the Italian epigrammatist replies that if he waits till he has sense he +will not wed at all. Marriage, said the famous Marshal Saxe, in effect, +is a state of penance; Rome declares there are seven sacraments, but +there are really only six, because penance and matrimony are one. + +Hymen, says Chamfort, comes after love, like smoke after flame. It is +the high sea, observes Heine, for which no compass has yet been +invented. Its melancholy uncertainty is illustrated by the remark of +Samuel Rogers, that it does not matter whom you marry--she will be quite +another woman the next day. It was Rogers, too, who, when he heard of a +certain person's nuptials, declared that if his friends were pleased his +enemies were delighted. Selden's complaint against marriage was that it +is 'a desperate thing,' out of which it is impossible to extract one's +self; but then he lived before the era of Sir Cresswell Cresswell. And +the utmost that the conventional detractor will admit is, that the +institution gives to man two happy hours. 'Cursed be the hour I first +became your wife,' cries the lady in the well-known quotation; to which +her spouse replies that--'That's too bad; you've cursed the only happy +hour we've had.' But Palladas, the Greek, as translated by Mr. J. H. +Merivale, goes a little farther than this, declaring that + + 'All wives are bad; yet two blest hours they give: + When first they wed, and when they cease to live.' + + +A favourite notion with the satirists is that marriage is a state of +mutual recrimination. John Heywood has the couplet: + + '"Wife, I perceive thy tongue was made at Edgware." + "Yes, sir, and your's made at Rayly, hard by there."' + +And this is typical of many another utterance; for example, this: + + 'Know ye not all, the Scripture saith, + That man and wife are _one_ till death? + But Peter and his scolding wife + Wage such an endless war of strife, + You'd swear, on passing Peter's door, + That man and wife at least were _four_.' + +Doctor Johnson, too, draws attention to the fact--if it be one--that all +the reasons which a man and a woman have for remaining in the estate of +matrimony, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent +separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together. Or, as Mr. +William Allingham has, of recent years, more pithily put it: + + 'If any two can live together well, + 'Tis (and yet such things are) a miracle!' + + +If we are to believe the aforesaid satirists, this is all the fault of +the wives. Now and again one comes across a jest in which the lady has +the better of the gentleman, as in the following: + + '"Wife, from all evil, when shalt thou delivered be?" + "Sir, when I" (said she) "shall be delivered from thee."' + +But such things are rare. Usually the laugh is on the other side. As the +Frenchman wrote: + + 'While Adam slept, Eve from his side arose: + Strange! his first sleep should be his last repose!' + +Everybody knows the epitaph which Dryden intended for his wife; and side +by side with it may be placed the lines by an anonymous author: + + 'God has to me sufficiently been kind, + To take my wife, and leave me here behind.' + +So again: + + 'Brutus unmoved heard how his Portia fell; + Should Jack's wife die, he would behave as well.' + +The story of the man who, at his spouse's funeral, deprecated hurry, on +the ground that one should not make a toil of a pleasure, need only be +alluded to. + +The chief charge against the wives is that they will insist upon being +the heads of the households. That is the refrain of many a flout hurled +against them. To marry--such is the moral of some lines by Samuel +Bishop--is to lose your liberty. The lady will have everything her way: + + 'For ne'er heard I of woman, good or ill, + But always loved best her own sweet will.' + +So says a seventeenth-century writer; and the complaint is general. + + 'Men, dying, make their wills--why cannot wives? + Because wives have their wills during their lives.' + +'Here,' wrote Burns--'here lies a man a woman ruled; the Devil ruled +the woman.' And Landor makes someone say to a scholar about to marry: + + 'So wise thou art that I foresee + A wife will make a fool of thee.' + +That wives are talkative is a venerable commonplace. The historic +husband thought that the fact of his spouse's likeness not being a +'speaking' one was its principal merit. And Lessing makes a man excuse +himself for marrying a deaf woman on the ground that she was also dumb. +We all remember Hood's particular trouble: + + 'A wife who preaches in her gown, + And lectures in her night-dress.' + +And so with those who are more than merely talkative--who are positively +scolds; while sometimes the conventional helpmeet is as active with her +fists as with her tongue--as in the case of the lady whose picture, her +husband thought, would soon 'strike' him, it was so exceedingly like +her. + +It is, however, unnecessary to carry the tale further. This mocking at +matrimony has always been a feature of life and literature, and probably +will always remain so--partly because it is so easy of achievement; +partly because it is not less easy of comprehension; and also, perhaps, +because humanity has ever been inclined to chasten that which it loves. +It rails against marriage, but it marries all the same. Or is it that it +recognises the wedded life as a necessity, which cannot be put away, but +which it is a pleasure to ridicule? Perhaps that is the best explanation +one can offer. All this satire may be mankind's way of revenging itself +upon one of the laws of nature. + + + + + +PARSON POETS. + + +The publication of a memoir of Archbishop Trench has sufficed to recall +prominently to the public mind the virtues, endowments, and achievements +of one of the most notable of latter-day divines. Richard Chenevix +Trench was one of the most versatile of writers. He discoursed with +equal knowledge and effect on Biblical and philological topics, and his +prose work will always be respectfully regarded by the students alike of +divinity and of language. But though, on these subjects, his +pronouncements may in time grow stale or require correction, he will +ever hold an honourable place in English literature as one of the most +thoughtful and vigorous of those parson poets of whom this country has +always had so large and valuable a supply. + +There is, indeed, a natural connection between parsons and poetry. It is +precisely in the ranks of the clerical body in all civilized countries +that one would look for successful cultivators of the art of verse. For +what is, above all things, necessary for such cultivation? In the first +place, polite learning; in the second, sufficient leisure. It is in the +atmosphere of culture that good verse, as apart from high poetry, takes +its rise. There are probably few educated men who have not at one time +or another essayed to pen a stanza. The busy city clergyman may nowadays +have no time for such elegant diversions, but at all periods the +lettered country parson has been inclined to occupy some of his spare +moments in wooing the Muse of Song. There are other things than learning +and leisure which impel him to the task. There is the nature of his +profession, with the experience it brings him and the reflections it +induces. The most unliterary pastor cannot but be a meditative man. The +literary pastor cannot but be disposed to turn his meditations into +verse, often finding in that 'mechanic exercise' the means of 'numbing +pain.' + +Other things being equal, the modern cleric would take serious subjects +for his verse, and it is characteristic of the whole race of parson +poets that the first poetic effort in English literature should be the +Scriptural paraphrases supplied by Caedmon, monk of Whitby. But it was +not in the sphere of Bible history that the immediate successors of +Caedmon, monks (or friars) like himself, sought to disport themselves +most largely. Our early clerical versifiers set themselves rather to +give rhythmical renderings to the romances and chronicles of their time. +They were the secular as well as sacred teachers of the day; and so we +find the names of Wace, Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert of Brunne, +Archdeacon Barbour, Andrew of Wyntoun, and John Lydgate, all associated +with the recital of the deeds of ancient or modern heroes. Not that the +claims of religion or morality were forgotten: they were remembered by +Richard Rolle in his 'Prick of Conscience,' and indirectly recognised by +Barclay in his 'Ship of Fools.' The interests of the poor were served by +Langland in his 'Piers the Plowman,' and poetry, pure and simple, had +its devotees in the persons of the Bishop of Dunkeld and the Franciscan +friar who produced respectively 'The Palace of Honour' and 'The Golden +Terge.' + +When we come down to more recent times, we find even greater variety +than this in the writings of the parson poets. But the serious element +prevails. There have been clerical wits and humorists, but they have +been, of necessity, in the minority. A large proportion of the verse +composed by clergymen has been, as one would naturally expect, of a +distinctly didactic, not to say depressing, tendency. One thinks at once +of the 'Temple' of George Herbert, the 'Epigrammata Sacra' of Richard +Crashaw, the 'Night Thoughts' of Young, the 'Grave' of Blair, the +'Sabbath' of Grahame, the 'Course of Time' of Pollok, the 'Christian +Year' of Keble; the hymns of Wesley, Alford, and Stanley; the 'Dream of +Gerontius' of Newman, and a dozen others, differing very much indeed in +all the qualities of poetry, but alike in the earnestness of their +intention. Even Herrick, 'jocund' though his muse was, left behind him +some 'Noble Numbers.' And though clerical satire, as furnished by men +like John Bramston, Charles Churchill, Samuel Bishop, John Wolcot, and +Francis Mahoney, has frequently been flippant both in form and phrase, +it has at other times--and especially in the works of Bishop Hall, of +Norwich--been very vivid and uncompromising. Hall, indeed, was the +Juvenal of his century, filled with the spirit of righteous indignation. + +From Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, downwards, the clerical singers who have +not been markedly professional in their outcome have exhibited an +agreeable freedom from monotony. In Donne himself we see the sad +perfection of the metaphysic method, mitigated, however, by a few lapses +into the lucid and the simple. Pomfret gave us in 'The Choice' the +typical poem of the country parson, sounding the praises of rural scenes +and lettered ease. In Parnell we have a sample of the pleasing +versifier, touching nothing which he does not adorn, but making no very +particular impression. Bishop Percy is less celebrated for the ballads +which he wrote than for those which he collected. Logan is remembered +only by his verses on 'The Cuckoo.' To the reverend brothers Warton we +owe respectively 'The Pleasure of Melancholy' and some lines 'To Fancy'; +while of Thomas Blacklock, alas! the most remarkable feature was his +blindness. One would like to have forgotten Robert Montgomery, of +Satanic fame, but Macaulay will not let us do so. Blanco White lives on +the strength of one good sonnet, Lisle Bowles on that of many good ones; +and there is no need nowadays to distinguish the work of Crabbe, of +Moultrie, of John Sterling, and of Charles Kingsley, much as they +differed from each other. One of the latest additions to this choir of +voices is Mr. Stopford Brooke, and there are other living lyrists, +belonging to one or other of the Churches, who might be named if there +were no fear of making invidious selection. + +There is a certain department of verse-writing in which a cultivated +class like the clergy would of necessity make its mark--that of +rhythmical translation. In a body whose members are all more or less +scholarly, there will always be some, of special scholarship, who will +endeavour to put works of classic or foreign literature into an English +mould. Thus we have had Francis Fawkes, with his versions from the +Greek; Christopher Pitt, with his translation of the 'AEneid'; H. F. +Carey, with his Dante in blank verse; and more others than need be +specified. These clergymen followed the excellent instincts of their +cloth. But what are we to say of those otherwise estimable parsons who +have from time to time attempted, and occasionally with success, to win +fame as the authors of poetical drama? The connection between the +cassock and the buskin has, to this extent, always been fairly +intimate--from the time when Bishop Bale wrote mystery plays, to the +recent years in which Sheridan Knowles, after having been a dramatist +and an actor, closed his days as a preacher. Shirley, Mason, Home, +Milman, Croly, Maturin, White--these are names well known in the history +of the theatre, and they are all names of clerical association. Such has +been the fascination of the 'boards' even for those whose home has been +the pulpit and the cloister. + + + + +THE OUTSIDES OF BOOKS. + + +This may fairly be claimed as a popular subject. It is one in which +nearly everybody--perhaps everybody--is interested. There can surely be +few, if any, who do not care about the outside of a book. Even if a man +never opens a volume, he likes its exterior to be pleasing. Nay, there +are books which may be said to be produced and utilized only for their +outward garb. How often does one find a volume described as a charming +one 'for the table'! It is for the table that certain publications are +destined. Enter a drawing-room, and you will find a few books scattered +here and there 'with artful care.' I do not say they are intended never +to be opened, but their primary function is to look nice--to 'set off' +the table-cloth, and, generally, to give a bright appearance to the +room. And their adaptability for this purpose is so widely recognised +that you can scarcely go anywhere without coming across books of this +complexion. You find them exposed to view in your doctor's or your +dentist's ante-chamber; you find them placed before you, usually very +much the worse for wear, in hotel waiting-rooms. And the instinct which +prompts all this display is genuine enough. It is perfectly true--there +is no furniture so agreeable to the eye as books. Nothing makes a room +look at once so picturesque and home-like, if the volumes be but +sufficiently varied in size and hue. + +And that brings us in presence of a point of controversy. Ought there to +be so much variety in the exteriors of books? Ought they to be 'got up' +in so many different styles? Some people would answer these questions +with a decided negative. These are the persons who like uniformity in +their libraries, who would have one shelf look for all the world like +the facsimile of the other. These are the persons who, almost as soon as +they buy a book, are desirous to have it rebound after some fantastic +notion of their own. There is a class of purchaser which revels in long +lines of volumes in 'full calf gilt.' You see that sort of thing in most +old-fashioned collections. And the effect is not bad in some respects. +The rows look handsome enough. They have solidity and richness. Nor do I +say that for a certain species of publication 'full calf gilt' is not a +very judicious form of binding. One likes to see the quarterlies and +higher-class monthlies done up in that style. It befits the seriousness +of their contents. But do not let everything be put into 'full calf +gilt,' solid and rich though it appears. Let us give full play to the +element of variety. Let every book have an individuality, a character, +of its own. Let us be able to identify it easily. Let it retain its +original garb, so that we may always be able to distinguish it. Surely +it is one of the greatest charms of a row of volumes that each has its +special features, and can readily be found when wanted. + +It may be laid down as a general rule that the binding of a book should +have a distinct reference to the nature of its contents. It should be +appropriate to the author and to the subject. One sympathizes with +Posthumus in the play, when, apostrophizing the volume in his prison, he +says: + + 'O rare one! + Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment + Nobler than that it covers: let thy effects + So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers, + As good as promise.' + +Juliet, when she hears that Romeo has slain Tybalt, asks: + + 'Was ever book containing such vile matter + So fairly bound?' + +And in a like spirit Charles Lamb, in his well-known essay, complains of +the 'things in books' clothing' which, by reason of their inappropriate +exteriors, afford so much disappointment to the reader. 'To reach down a +well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it is some kind-hearted +play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a +withering population essay'--'to expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and +find--Adam Smith'--those, indeed, are doleful and dispiriting +experiences, to which the unsuspecting student ought not in enlightened +times to be subjected. If Mr. Gilbert's Mikado be right in the view that +the punishment ought to 'fit the crime,' so assuredly ought a book's +binding to fit the matter that is contained within it. It should be the +outward sign of the inward grace. + +I am ready to admit that, as a rule, this is so. In general, it is quite +easy to tell the nature of a volume from its cover. And for this the +publishers are greatly to be thanked. An amateur, publishing for +himself, may every now and then insist upon dressing up the product of +his brains incongruously; but, for the most part, the booksellers of +to-day have a very excellent sense of what is fitting. The result is +that those who care about books can differentiate them at a glance. They +know what is the approved style and line for biography and history, for +poetry and fiction, for sermons, for gift-books, and so _ad infinitum_. +The 'Life' of So-and-so, and the 'Annals' of Such-and-such, are +unmistakeable; they have respectability written on every corner and +angle of them. The dull brown or the dull green is sufficiently obvious +to everyone. And so with poetry. You know minor verse directly you see +it. It has a _cachet_ concerning which there can be no possible error. +Happily, a Tennyson, a Browning, or a Swinburne is equally recognisable. +A novel, of course, bears its character on its face. The three-volume +form is notorious. But it scarcely matters what shape fiction may take. +It can be identified by instinct, whether it be in yellow boards or in +some more quiet habit. Sermons cannot be misapprehended; there is no +fear of their being taken on a railway journey instead of the latest +book of memoirs. As for gift-books, whether for boy or girl, adult or +juvenile, they have their destination marked upon them in all the +colours of the rainbow. Some complain of this, and call it vulgar. No +doubt it often is so. But a gift-book is produced for a definite +purpose, and the public would be surprised, and probably annoyed, if it +were not as gorgeous in gold and colours as it was expected to be. Gold +and colours are what are wanted, and the publishers do well to supply +them. + +One thing, perhaps, is too little considered--that a book is, in most +cases, intended to be read and to be preserved. Certain books are not +issued for that purpose, but are deliberately manufactured to be thrown +away when read. The shilling novel, one may presume, is not designed for +a permanent existence. If it is, why is it so frequently brought out in +a paper cover, which either comes off altogether, or else curls up at +the edges in the most irritating fashion? It must be confessed that a +paper cover is an infliction, demanding the eventual destruction of the +book or its prompt rebinding in more durable style. But it is not +sufficient only that a volume should be bound. It should be bound so +that it can be opened and perused with comfort. It should not be in too +stiff a cover, or it will be awkward to hold. And the cover should not +be in white or in too delicate a colour, or one will not care to handle +it. Nor should a book be bound too limply, for the cover will soon begin +to look shapeless. A parchment binding is charming to gaze at for a +time, but how quickly its glory fades! I should say to the ordinary +bookbuyer, in metaphoric language, Avoid the kickshaws and stick to the +solids! In other words, leave the delicacies to the connoisseur, and +give your attention to the books so clothed that you can read and keep +them as you will. + + + + + +THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE. + + +I make no allusion here to the heroine of Mr. Haggard's well-known +romance. What I am thinking of at the moment is not the impossible 'She' +of recent fiction, but the 'not impossible She' of Master Richard +Crashaw--the 'perfect monster,' in female form, who was to 'command his +heart and him,' and whom he was good enough to sketch for us in advance +within the limits of some forty verses--the damsel whose beauty was to + + 'Owe not all its duty + To gaudy tire or glistering shoe-tye;' + +whose face was to be + + 'Made up + Out of no other shop + Than what Nature's white hand sets ope;' + +who was to have 'a well-tamed heart,' + + 'Sidneian showers + Of sweet discourse,' + +and so on, and of whom the poet was so kind as to say that, if Time knew +of anyone who answered the description, + + 'Her that dares be + What these lines wish to see-- + I seek no further--it is She.' + + +Master Crashaw is not the only man by many who in the past has been +seduced into putting into words and verse the aspirations, on this +subject, which filled his soul. It would probably be found, if anyone +had the requisite patience to go through with it, that there has been +scarcely a poet who has not thus given expression to his conception of +an ideal woman and to his desire for her companionship. Much more +numerous, to be sure, are the rapturous tributes which have been paid to +actual persons of the other sex: the poetry of praise, as written by men +of women, has not yet been exhausted, and probably never will be. But +the ideal description has generally come first, and very notable it has +usually been. Sir Thomas Wyatt declared that + + 'A face that should content me wondrous well + Should not be fair, but lovely to behold; + Of lively look, all grief for to repel; + With right good grace,' + +et caetera. He further asserted that 'her tress also should be of crisped +gold,' and intimated graciously that + + 'With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied, + And knit again with knot that should not slide.' + +His contemporary, Lord Surrey, included among 'the means to attain happy +life,' 'the faithful wife, without debate'--that is, I suppose, a lady +without forty-parson-power of talk--a not impossible, nay, fairly +common, She. + +In a lyric by Beaumont and Fletcher, we find the supposed speaker giving +utterance to a series of such wishes. 'May I,' he says, 'find a woman +fair, And her mind as clear as air!' + + 'May I find a woman rich, + And of not too high a pitch!... + May I find a woman wise, + And her falsehood not disguise!... + May I find a woman kind, + And not wavering like the wind!...' + +And, in truth, he talks throughout as if he did not expect to discover +any such rarity. Everyone knows the little poem in which Ben Jonson +details his preferences in women's dress, declaring that 'a sweet +disorder' does more bewitch him 'than when art Is too precise in every +part.' But elsewhere he paints for us, not a perfect feminine attire, +but the faultless maid herself, as he would have her: + + 'I would have her fair and witty, + Favouring more of Court than City, + A little proud, but full of pity, + Light and humorous in her toying, + Oft building hopes and soon destroying... + Neither too easy nor too hard, + All extremes I would have barr'd.' + +That, it would seem, was rare Ben's ideal. + +Carew, it is notorious, professed to despise 'lovely cheeks or lips or +eyes,' if they were not combined with 'A smooth and steadfast mind, +Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.' A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and even +star-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this +somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a +rival in the anonymous bard who declared that he did not demand + + 'A crystal brow, the moon's despair, + Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, + Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair,' + +and so on, but instead, + + 'A tender heart, a loyal mind, + Which with temptation I would trust, + Yet never link'd with error find-- + + 'One in whose gentle bosom I + Could pour my secret heart of woes, + Like the care-burthen'd honey-fly + That hides his murmurs in the rose.' + +So Bedingfield, conceding to friend Damon 'the nymph that sparkles in +her dress,' avows his own fondness for the maid 'whose cheeks the hand +of Nature paints.' Of this young person he says: + + 'No art she knows or seeks to know; + No charm to wealthy pride will owe; + No gems, no gold she needs to wear; + She shines intrinsically fair.' + + +Cowley, it will be remembered, in sketching his notion of true +happiness, included in it the picture of + + 'A mistress moderately fair, + And good as guardian angels are, + Only beloved and loving me!' + +With that 'one dear She'--and a few other things--he thought he could +get on pretty comfortably. But probably at once the most obliging and +most exigent of modern lovers was the sentimental gentleman to whose +feelings Mrs. Bowen-Graves ('Stella') gave appropriate voice in the +over-familiar 'My Queen.' + + 'I will not dream of her tall and stately-- + She that I love may be fairy light;' + +nay, more: + + 'I will not say she should walk sedately-- + Whatever she does, it will sure be right. + + 'And she may be humble or proud, my lady, + Or that sweet calm which is just between' + +(as if anyone could be a 'sweet calm'!); moreover: + + 'Whether her birth be noble or lowly, + I care no more than the spirit above;' + +but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists: + + 'She must be courteous, she must be holy, + Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love'-- + +and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels +weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen! + +Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring +his readers that + + 'No one is so utterly desolate, + But some heart, though unknown, + Responds unto his own;' + +and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that + + 'Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours + For one lone soul another lonely soul'-- + +et caetera, et caetera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such +encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of the _dimidium suae +animae_ whom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts +of beautiful ideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are 'not +impossible'--they may 'arrive;' but it is as well not to be too +sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a +picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you +see it. Corydon is too disposed to expect in Phyllis charms and virtues +for which he might find it difficult to show counterparts in himself. If +the lady is to be the pattern of beauty and of goodness, ought not the +gentleman to bring an equal amount of capital into the matrimonial firm? + + + + + +NONSENSE VERSES. + + +When Bunthorne has recited his 'wild, weird, fleshly thing,' called 'Oh, +Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!' the Duke of Dunstable remarks that it seems to +him to be nonsense. 'Nonsense, perhaps,' replies the Lady Saphir, 'but +oh, what precious nonsense!' And there really is a sense in which +nonsense--genuine, diverting nonsense--is precious indeed. There is so +little of it. The late Edward Lear bubbled over with true whimsicality. +His 'Book of Nonsense' is what it professes to be--the most delightful +non-sense possible. But of how much of that sort of thing does English +literature boast? There is plenty of unconscious nonsense, of course, +but it is not of the right quality. Dryden said of Shadwell that he +reigned, 'without dispute, throughout the realms of nonsense +absolute'--he 'never deviated into sense'--and yet he was the dullest of +dull dogs. The fact is, that nothing is more difficult than to write +amusing nonsense, and it is worth noting how few people, comparatively +speaking, have ever attempted to produce it. + +One of the earliest efforts of the kind in the language is a certain +passage in Udall's 'Ralph Roister Doister,' where Dame Christian +receives from the hero a letter which seems, on the face of it, +insulting: + + 'Sweete mistresse, where as I love you nothing at all, + Regarding your substance and richesse chief of all, + To your personage, beauty, demeanour, and wit, + I commend me unto you never a whit,' + +and so on--the joke lying, of course, in the incorrectness of the +punctuation adopted. In general, the Elizabethans were too much in +earnest to write absolute nonsense. Nonsense is to be found in +Shakespeare, but usually in parody of the euphemists of his time. Some +of the _personae_ are made to talk sad stuff, but it has not the merit of +being 'precious' in the Lady Saphir's sense. It is very tedious indeed, +and one likes to think that Shakespeare, perhaps, did not write it, +after all. Drummond, in his 'Polemo-Middinia,' gave an early example of +a kind of _jeu d'esprit_ which has since been frequently imitated--a +species of dog-Latin _in extremis_: + + 'Hic aderunt Geordy Akinhedius and little Johnus, + Et Jamy Richaeus, et stout Michel Hendersonus, + Qui jolly tryppas ante alios dansare solebat, + Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare boneas.' + +But though this is not wholly unamusing, it is hardly, as nonsense, up +to the standard instituted for us by Mr. Lear. + +The real thing is more nearly visible in Swift's macaronic lines about +Molly--'Mollis abuti, Hasan acuti,' etc.--another vein of fun which has +been exceedingly well worked out by successive writers. But such +inspirations as these have too much method in them to be quite +admissible. Much better was Swift's 'Love Song in the Modern Taste,' +beginning: + + 'Fluttering spread thy purple pinions, + Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart.' + +Even this, however, has too much sense for it to pass muster. Nor can +one receive Johnson's + + 'If a man who turnips cries, + Cry not when his father dies,' + +and so on, as sufficiently nonsensical. It is simply a _jeu de mots_, +and no more, though funny enough as it stands. One is better satisfied +when one comes to the 'Tom Thumb' of Henry Fielding and the +'Chrononhotonthologos' of Henry Carey, though even in those diverting +squibs it is rarely that the versifier surrenders himself wholly to +'Divine Nonsensia.' That charming goddess was saluted to more purpose in +'The Anti-Jacobin,' where she was invoked to make charming fun of 'The +Loves of the Plants.' In 'The Progress of Man' (in the same delectable +collection) occurs the inspired passage: + + 'Ah, who has seen the mailed lobster rise, + Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies + When did the owl, descending from her bower, + Crop, 'mid the fleecy flocks, the tender flower? + Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, + In the salt wave and, fish-like, strive to swim?' + +But even this is too consistent in its grotesqueness to be perfect +nonsense. + +One becomes acquainted with better nonsense the nearer one gets to one's +own times. How clever, for instance, was that well-known 'dream' of +Planche's, in which he fancied that he + + 'Was walking with Homer, and talking + The very best Greek I was able--was able-- + When Guy, Earl of Warwick, with Johnson and Garrick, + Would dance a Scotch-reel on the table--the table; + When Hannibal, rising, declared 'twas surprising + That gentlemen made such a riot--a riot-- + And sent in a bustle to beg Lord John Russell + Would hasten and make them all quiet--all quiet.' + +It may be that Mr. W. S. Gilbert had this in his mind when, in +'Patience,' he pictured the processes by which to manufacture a heavy +dragoon; but here, again, the design is too obvious, the incongruity a +little too apparent. The late Shirley Brooks extracted much fun out of a +mosaic of quotations from the poets, beginning: + + 'Full many a gem of purest ray serene, + That to be hated needs but to be seen, + Invites my lay; be present, sylvan maids, + And graceful deer reposing in the shades.' + +Very good nonsense is this, if not of the best; and it leads us up +naturally to the more consummate performances of Mr. Calverley, whose +exquisite mimicry of Mr. Browning and Miss Ingelow, in their most +incomprehensible or most affected moods, is too well known to need +description. Favourable mention may also be made of a certain ballad +composed by the late Professor Palmer, in illustration of his inability +to master nautical terms, which he furbishes up in mirth-provoking +fashion. + +But, putting aside Mr. Lear, the most successful, the most precious +nonsense ever written has been supplied by writers still, happily, in +our midst. And of these, of course, Mr. Lewis Carroll is obviously +_facile princeps_--not only by reason of the immortal 'Jabberwocky,' but +by reason, also, of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' in which there are some +very felicitous passages. + + 'They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care, + They pursued it with forks and hope; + They threatened its life with a railway share; + They charmed it with smiles and soap.' + +It requires genius, of a kind, to conceive and execute such lines as +these, easy as (no doubt) it seems to write them. Not that Mr. Carroll +is unapproachable. There are probably many who think that his +'Jabberwocky' is at least equalled by Mr. Gilbert's 'Sing for the Garish +Eye,' in which the invented words are truly 'Carrollian': + + 'Sing for the garish eye, + When moonless brandlings cling; + Let the froddering crooner cry, + And the braddled sapster sing!'-- + +though, to be sure, Mr. Gilbert could hardly be expected to do anything +better than that lovely quatrain of Bunthorne's about 'The dust of an +earthy to-day' and 'The earth of a dusty to-morrow.' + +The example set by Mr. Lear has been followed by many versifiers, who +have sought to create their effects after a manner now sufficiently +familiar. Thus, we have had multitudinous efforts like the following: + + 'There was an old priest in Peru + Who dreamt he'd converted a Jew: + He woke in the night + In a deuce of a fright, + And found it was perfectly true.' + +Performances of that sort are, however, easy; and more merit attaches to +such studies in unintelligibility as Bret Harte's 'Songs without Sense,' +of which the 'Swiss Air' is a good example: + + 'I'm a gay tra, la, la, + With my fal, lal, la, la, + And my bright-- + And my light-- + Tra, la, le. [_Repeat._] + Then laugh, ha, ha, ha, + And ring, ting, ling, ling, + And sing fal, la, la, + La, la, le.' [_Repeat._] + +Probably, however, the poetry of pure nonsense has never been better +represented than in these contemporary verses on the suitable topic of +'Blue Moonshine': + + 'Ay! for ever and for ever + Whilst the love-lorn censers sweep, + Whilst the jasper winds dissever, + Amber-like, the crystal deep; + Shall the soul's delirious slumber, + Sea-green vengeance of a kiss, + Teach despairing crags to number + Blue infinities of bliss.' + + + + +SINGLE-SPEECH HAMILTONS. + + +Most people have heard of that Mr. Gerard Hamilton who, suddenly and +unexpectedly making in the House of Commons an oration which 'threw into +the shade every other orator except Pitt,' was henceforth known by the +nickname of 'Single-Speech'--not because he never addressed the House +again, but because those who so nicknamed him chose to regard this +performance as the distinguishing feature of his career. He continued to +be known by that one discourse, and it is by virtue of it that he has a +place in history. The fact is notable, and yet by no means uncommon. The +world is, and always has been, full of Single-Speech Hamiltons--male and +female--who have gained and maintained their notoriety by one special +effort. Human nature is so constituted that the man or woman who is +unable to produce a series of successes may yet have the capacity to +compass one--may possess the energy and the ability to make at least one +strong impression before retiring wholly into the background. + +The truth of this is observable, for example, in the sphere of poetry. +How many are the excellent versifiers whose reputation is based wholly +upon a solitary effusion! They have been inspired once, and the outcome +is literary immortality. They cannot always be regarded strictly as +poets, and yet they have a vogue which any poet might envy. They reign +and shine by virtue of what may be called a happy accident. Thus, Lady +Ann Barnard is known, in the world of verse, only by her 'Auld Robin +Gray,' just as Miss Elliott and Mrs. Cockburn are known only by their +respective 'Flowers of the Forest.' We remember Oldys merely by his +'Busy, curious, thirsty fly,' Sir William Jones by his 'What constitutes +a State?' Blanco White by his one Sonnet upon Night, Charles Wolfe by +his 'Burial of Sir John Moore,' John Collins by his 'In the Downhill of +Life,' and Herbert Knowles by his 'Lines in a Churchyard.' As Artemus +Ward said of the oil-painting achieved by the Old Masters: 'They did +this, and then they expired.' Some of them wrote other things, but the +world received them not. It took count only of the single occasion on +which they had been influenced by the divine _afflatus_--of the one +thing which they had done 'supremely' well. + +Authors themselves are, no doubt, surprised at the caprices of the +public, and somewhat piqued by the preferences of their patrons. Some +are Single-Speech Hamiltons only because their readers have taken a +special fancy to particular performances--not always because the +achievements were obviously the best, but simply because circumstances +brought them to the fore. It is, one may assume, to the charm of Haydn's +musical setting that Mrs. Hunter owes the fame and popularity of 'My +mother bids me bind my hair': it is to the composer, in that case, that +the acceptance of the words are owing. Obvious causes, again, have given +precedence to Heber's 'From Greenland's icy mountains' over all his +other work in verse; just as the fact of having got into the extract +books has accorded to Blake's 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright' a +pre-eminence in the public mind over all his other efforts. In these +matters the world will have its own way. It still extends recognition to +Young's 'Night Thoughts,' but is apparently indifferent to his +'Universal Passion.' It thinks of Bloomfield only in connection with +'The Farmer's Boy,' and ignores the rest; just as it faintly recollects +'The Sabbath' of James Grahame, but has forgotten even the titles of +'Biblical Pictures' and 'The British Georgics.' + +This dependence of literary fame upon special public favourites is, +perhaps, most strikingly represented in the field of fiction and the +drama. Nothing is more common than that a novelist or a dramatist +should remain in the popular memory by virtue of a single production. +Beckford is for most people only the author of 'Vathek'; it is only the +bibliophile who troubles himself about 'Azemia' or 'The Elegant +Enthusiast.' Miss Porter is remembered by her 'Scottish +Chiefs'--scarcely at all, perhaps, by her 'Thaddeus of Warsaw.' +Everybody knows how strongly 'The Monk' took the fancy of the reading +world--so strongly that the writer was 'Monk' Lewis, and 'Monk' Lewis +only, ever after. Mackenzie's 'Man of Feeling' survives, but the 'Man of +the World' and 'Julia Roubigne' are as if they had never existed. And +look at the playwrights! 'She Stoops to Conquer' is a classic, but 'The +Good-Natured Man' is not even good-naturedly tolerated. 'The Road to +Ruin' has eclipsed 'Duplicity' and 'The Deserted Daughter.' We all know +'The Honeymoon,' but who has seen, how many have read, 'The Curfew' and +'The School for Authors'? We flock to 'Wild Oats,' but alas for 'The +Agreeable Surprise'! 'The Man of the World' keeps Macklin's name before +us, but we have said good-bye to 'Love a la Mode.' + +In truth, it is not a bad thing thus to be associated with one definite, +unmistakable success. Gerard Hamilton did more for himself by that +single brilliant speech than if he had delivered a whole multitude of +less striking orations. There is nothing more fatal to a man than +middlingness--a sort of dead level of mediocre performance. The world +loses count of merely respectable outcome. To obtain its regard you must +take its imagination captive at least once. You may be a very excellent +person, and do very useful work; but, if you desire to be kept in mind, +you must achieve something to which your name can be popularly attached. +It is thus that Beattie and 'The Minstrel,' Green and 'The Spleen,' +Somerville and 'The Chase,' Blair and 'The Grave,' Falconer and 'The +Shipwreck,' Pollok and 'The Course of Time'--to name no others--are +inseparably associated the one with the other. The works in question, +probably, are rarely opened, but their titles at any rate have stuck in +the general memory. Even in our own time, for the great majority of +people, Miss Braddon will always be the author of 'Lady Audley's +Secret,' Mrs. Oliphant always the author of 'The Chronicles of +Carlingford,' Mrs. Henry Wood always the author of 'East Lynne'--and so +on. That is the way in which they are remembered. + +Generally speaking, versatility is undesirable when reputation is the +object aimed at. The world has not a very good memory, or, rather, it +has so much to think about that it desires not to be more encumbered +than it can help. Such men as the late Lord Lytton, for example, are, in +one respect, a nuisance to it. Bulwer was about equally distinguished as +a novelist, as a dramatist, and as an essayist; and, ever since, the +average man has been puzzled whether to think of him as the author of +'Pelham,' the author of 'The Lady of Lyons,' or the author of +'Caxtoniana.' Bulwer tried hard to establish a position as a poet, but, +happily, there is no need to trouble one's self greatly about 'King +Arthur.' As it is, the fame of Bulwer's dramas appears likely, +by-and-by, to eclipse altogether the fame of his novels. And this, if it +ever happens, will prove once more that a man can be the worst enemy of +himself. Single-Speech Hamilton was not satisfied with his big success, +but spoke again. Nothing could have been more unwise. He should have +rested on his laurels--unless indeed, he could have been quite sure that +he would surpass his former triumph. Unless one can be perfectly certain +of that, it is, best, in general, to let well alone. + + + + +DRAMATIC NOMENCLATURE. + + +The production on the London stage of a piece called 'The +Schoolmistress' no doubt caused many lovers and students of the drama to +consider for a moment whether--and, if so, to what extent--the general +subject of school-life had been dealt with by preceding playwrights. + +Mr. Pinero was fortunate, to begin with, in the fact that he had hit +upon a title for his piece hitherto unused--so far as I am aware--by any +dramatist of whom history bears record. And this piece of originality is +in itself remarkable, seeing that novelty in title is nowadays +sufficiently rare. There is no official registry of such things, and, +where so many active pens have been at work, a playwright must be +self-confident indeed who can be sure that he has alighted upon a name +which has never been used by any other native dramatist. To give only a +few instances out of dozens:--Mr. Albery's play of 'The Spendthrift' had +been anticipated, so far as title was concerned, by 'The Spendthrift' of +Matthew Draper, acted in 1731, and by 'The Spendthrift' of Dr. Kenrick, +performed in 1758, to say nothing of two anonymous plays, each called +'The Spendthrift,' dating from 1680 and 1762 respectively. And to come +down to quite recent days, the 'Loyal Lovers' played lately at the +London Vaudeville had had a predecessor, in the matter of name, in the +'Loyal Lovers,' by Major Manuche, which saw the light so long ago as +1652. Similarly, the 'Woman of the World,' performed at the Haymarket in +1886, had had its prototype, so far as the title was concerned, in the +'Woman of the World' of Nelson Lee and Stirling Coyne. + +Exceptionally lucky, indeed, is the dramatic writer who can now discover +a wholly new name for his production. A wholly fresh subject is, of +course, even more difficult to achieve. Take what phase of life you +will--make what use of it you please--you cannot secure absolute +novelty. You cannot find a piece of ground which has not been trodden, +however slightly, however differently, by a predecessor. The author of +'The Schoolmistress' introduces his audiences to a very charming lady +pupil-teacher, and to three scarcely less charming lady pupils. But one +thinks at once of the still more delightful bevy of tutors and scholars +presented to us just nineteen years ago, by T. W. Robertson, who, +inspired by a German original, gave us not only Bella and Naomi Tighe, +but a 'rosebud garden of girls,' of which the attraction has by no means +yet departed. Mr. Ruskin has sneered at Bella as 'an amiable governess +who, for the general encouragement of virtue in governesses, is rewarded +by marrying a lord.' But for all that, she is a pleasant figure, and +Naomi is a piquant one, and the English stage has witnessed few more +agreeable scenes than those in which Dr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe's young +ladies take part in the course of 'School.' + +As everybody knows, there is an 'angry schoolboy' in 'The Alchemist,' +who is likely to survive not only in literature, but in history, by +reason of the effective use which Sheridan once made of him when +retorting upon Pitt in the House of Commons. Is there not, too, a comedy +of Brome's--'The Antipodes'--in which the fathers go to school instead +of their sons, and are made to ape the habits of the youthful scholar? +Richard Lovelace, we read, wrote a comedy called 'The Scholar,' but it +was never printed, and probably had reference to the adult rather than +the juvenile student. In the early years of last century, 'The +Schoolboy' was the title given to a farce played at Drury Lane, a piece +of which one Johnny was the hero--a Johnny who had the honour of being +impersonated by the great Roscius himself, and by actors, too, of the +calibre of Woodward, Shuter, and J. W. Dodd. Early, again, in the +present century, 'The Scholar' was the name of a play adapted from the +French by Buckstone; but in this case, as, no doubt, there was in +Lovelace's, there is more of the scholastic than of the school. The +subject and title of 'Schoolfellows' was taken by Douglas Jerrold, the +schoolfellows in it being, however, no longer under the tutelage of +their old master. A 'Schoolboy's Masque' was printed in 1742; a 'School +Moderator' was included in Garrick's collection; a 'School Play,' it is +recorded, was performed at a private grammar school in Middlesex, in +1663; and of recent years an extravaganza has been endowed with the +suggestive title of 'School Bored.' + +There is, of course, a sense in which the word 'school' can be used for +the larger opportunities of education given by contact with the world. +And in this sense the word has been used by English dramatists with +remarkable and characteristic frequency. In the second quarter of the +seventeenth century Shirley printed, as 'the firstfruits of his Muses,' +his comedy called 'The School of Compliment,' which had been played at +Drury Lane; and in the list of comedies of the nineteenth century will +be found 'The School of Reform,' by Thomas Morton, and the 'School of +Intrigue,' by Mr. Mortimer; the former devoted to instructing ladies +'how to rule a husband,' and the latter to a fresh treatment of the +world-famous story of the Count and Countess Almaviva. But the dramatic +pieces whose titles begin with 'The School of' are few indeed in +comparison with those whose names begin with 'The School for.' Of the +latter the most famous is, of course, 'The School for Scandal,' now just +111 years old. But Sheridan's work had been preceded, in the following +order, by 'The School for Lovers,' 'The School for Guardians,' 'The +School for Rakes,' 'The School for Fathers,' and 'The School for Wives.' +Nor is it surprising that, the fashion having once been set, Sheridan's +comedy should be followed successively by 'The School for Eloquence,' +'The School for Ladies,' 'The School for Vanity,' 'The School for +Greybeards,' 'The School for Widows,' 'The School for Arrogance,' 'The +School for Prejudice,' 'The School for Friends,' 'The School for +Authors,' 'The School for Grown Children,' 'The School for Grown +Gentlemen,' and 'The School for Scheming'--this last being one of the +numerous performances of Mr. Boucicault. + +Nor is this all. History relates that Steele began a comedy named 'The +School for Action,' and there are records of pieces called 'The School +for Husbands,' 'The School for Women,' 'The School for Coquettes,' 'The +School for Daughters,' and 'The School for Tigers.' Probably no word has +been so often utilized by the dramatists as 'School,' and probably, too, +no modern playwright would be disposed to add lightly to the number of +those who have 'annexed' it. + + + + + +PUNS AND PATRONYMICS. + + +Probably there are few things more common, and at the same time more +opposed to good taste, than punning upon people's names. Possibly the +impertinence of it has some attraction; for, of course, all such +'witticisms' are impertinent--unless, indeed, a man puns on his own +name, or, if he puns upon another's, takes care to make the observation +complimentary. No doubt, neither Mrs. Cuffe nor Mrs. Tighe was very +offended when Sydney Smith described one as 'the cuff that every one +would wear,' and the other as 'the tie that no one would loose.' These +are word-plays of the innocuous sort. Would that all such jests were +equally inoffensive! + +However, it is of little use to complain of a 'stream of tendency' which +cannot be diverted from its course. The most distinguished people have +had to tolerate the liberties taken with their names. Even the first of +men has had to suffer, Hood having long ago said what a pity it was +that, when Eve offered him the apple, poor Adam was not adam-ant. And +when one turns to the celebrities of one's own country, one finds that +many of them have had to endure attentions of the kind. There was, for +example, that distinguished Marquis of whom it was said on one occasion +that 'The nation's asleep, and the minister Rockingham.' There was also +that Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, of whom Byron declared that he +would return to the Whigs if they would re-Ward him. How hard, again, +was _Punch_ upon Sir Francis Head, for his well-known apologia for Louis +Napoleon: + + 'He wrote to the _Times_ + In defence of the crimes + Disgraceful to the heart and to the Head, Head, Head.' + +Hood pretended that, when he heard 'Those Evening Bells,' they did but +remind him of the statesman who had invented and established the +income-tax: + + 'Recalling only how a Peel + Has taxed the comings-in of Time!' + +That Mr. Disraeli's popular diminutive should suggest punning was +inevitable, and so we find Shirley Brooks proposing, in 1865, that, + + 'Having finished his Iliad and ceased to be busy, + Lord Derby should try and translate his Odd-Dizzy.' + + +The annals of the Church are no more free from jingles on names than +those of any other institution. Familiar to many is the laconic epitaph +on Archbishop Potter: + + 'Alack and well-a-day: + Potter himself is turned to clay!' + +Horace Walpole wrote bitterly of Thomas Secker, Archbishop of +Canterbury, that 'His grace signed his own proper name--Thomas _Cant._,' +which would certainly have read better as 'Thomas Cantuar.' But the +bishops' signatures have always been regarded as fair game. What puns +have been made on the unhappy, because so obvious, 'Oxon!' In 1848, +when Bishop Hampden was accused of heresy by the party headed by the +Bishop of Oxford, the would-be satirist wrote that + + 'As once the Pope with fury full, + When Luther laid his heavy knocks on, + At the Reformer loosed a Bull-- + So these at Hampden set an Ox-on.' + +Again, when Archdeacon Hale figured prominently in the old churchyard +controversy, _Punch_ observed: + + 'The intramural churchyard's reeking pale + Breathes health around it, says a reverend party; + But though the spot may keep a parson Hale, + Can people who in-hale its fumes be hearty?' + + +Turning to the records of the other professions, one finds a good deal +of the same sort of thing. Literature affords such examples as those +which are supplied in the well-known lines by John Henley on William +Broome and by Lord Byron on Tom Moore ('Now 'tis Moore that's Little'). +There were journal writers before Greville and Carlyle, and, when Lady +Bury published her 'Diary of the Times of George IV.,' Hood, no doubt, +was justified in crying, as he did: + + 'Oh, may I die without a Diary, + And be interred without a Bury-ing!' + +In a very different spirit were James Smith's lines on Miss Edgeworth's +works: + + 'Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth; + The bad own their _edge_, and the good own their _worth_.' + + +The vocal and histrionic arts have often had their victims. Who can +possibly have forgotten Luttrell's famous compliment to Miss Tree: + + 'On this Tree when a nightingale settles and sings, + The Tree will return her as good as she brings.' + +Here, if ever, was a pun on a name defensible. Less well known is this +quatrain on the famous actor, William Farren, who died in 1861: + + 'If Farren, cleverest of men, + Should go to right-about, + What part of town will he be then? + Why, "Farren-done-Without"!' + + +Those ladies of beauty and fashion whose names were susceptible at once +of pun and compliment have naturally inspired the wits of their +respective days. Thus, it was said of the charming sisters Gunning, +that Cupid, perceiving that the beaux of the time were proof against his +darts, had now laid down his bow and conquered by 'gunning.' But perhaps +the best thing of the sort ever composed was Lord Lyttelton's tribute to +Lady Brown: + + 'When I was young and debonair, + The brownest nymph to me was fair; + But now I'm old and wiser grown, + The fairest nymph to me is Brown.' + + +Other celebrities could be named who came off badly in their encounter +with the punsters. But, indeed, the list of such jests might be +indefinitely extended, for the habit of making puns on patronymics has +always been very widely spread, and has found many a sympathetic +historian. + + + + + +'YOURS TRULY.' + + +Nobody ever yet found very great difficulty in starting a letter. Young +lovers may have hesitated from time to time between such modes of +address as 'Dear,' 'Dearest,' 'Sweetest,' 'Darling,' and the like; but +only for a moment. Usually, the overburdened heart hits at once upon the +exact word or phrase which best expresses its ecstatic feeling. And so +with less impassioned matters. There is a well-recognised gradation in +the methods of epistolary salutation. The stranger is addressed as +'Sir,' the person of whom something is known as 'Dear Sir.' 'My Dear +Sir' accompanies a rather better acquaintance; 'Dear Mr. Brown' marks an +approach to intimacy; while 'Dear Brown' signifies the acme of +friendship and of _camaraderie_. Here, again, there may be a temporary +pause before passing from 'Sir' to 'Dear Sir,' and so forth, but in +general the transitions are sufficiently well emphasized to be obvious +to the average intelligence. + +Very different is it with the other end of the letter. There we find +opportunity for the widest divergence. Royal or official, pompous or +irate, people have been known to finish an epistle, abruptly, with the +simple appendix of their name; but these are the exceptions which prove +the rule. And the rule is certainly to preface the name by some +expression of feeling, however brief and perfunctory. The least you can +do is to describe yourself as 'yours.' We find Sterne thus describing +himself to Garrick; while, by way of slight variety, Cowper, writing to +Joseph Hill, ends with a 'Yours, dear Joe.' Still further variety is +secured when, as in the case of Lord Eglinton addressing his countess in +1619, the hackneyed 'I remain, yours' takes the form of 'I rest, +yours'--a phrase which is not, however, likely to be often used. And let +it not be supposed that plenty of meaning cannot be thrown into the +'yours' alone. Take, for instance, the reply made by 'The' Macdonald, +when Glengarry claimed the chieftainship of the clan. 'As soon,' said +the former, 'as you can prove yourself my chief I shall be ready to +acknowledge you as such, but in the meantime I am yours, Macdonald.' +There, for once in a way, the 'yours' meant something. + +When we go farther than the mere 'yours,' the possible variations are, +of course, endless. There is 'yours truly'--perhaps the most widely used +of all such combinations; but there are persons who rebel against its +tyranny, and who with daring originality substitute the heartier and +less conventional 'very truly,' 'most truly,' or 'right truly.' Second +only to 'yours truly' come 'yours faithfully' and 'yours sincerely,' +with their comparative 'very faithfully' and superlative 'most +sincerely;' and many people are well content to keep within the safe +borders of these wholly innocent and uncompromising forms. On the other +hand, less indifferent minds will go farther afield for their +qualifying adverbs, and say, with Sterne, 'very cordially yours,' or, +with Father Matthew, 'yours devotedly,' and so on. Whewell, asked once +for his autograph, signed himself 'yours autographically,' and of such +deviations there are abundant examples, mostly with a tendency to the +flippant. 'Yours ever' Byron declared himself to John Murray; 'yours +ever and evermore,' wrote Cowper to a friend; while Steele, in a letter +to his wife, protested that he was, with his whole heart, hers for +ever--which may be pronounced the best of the three. + +But there is no reason in the world, to be sure, why we should cling to +the 'yours' in any shape or modification. There are multitudinous other +ways of being valedictory with effect. There is the simple word 'Adieu.' +'And so, my dear madam, adieu,' writes Pepys to a lady. 'With all my +love, and those sort of pretty things, adieu!' wrote the future Mrs. +Scott to her sweetheart, the Great Magician. And then there is the +English equivalent of the word--surely not less available. 'I wish you +were at the devil,' wrote Sir Philip Francis to Burke, 'for giving me +all this trouble, and so farewell!' In the old days, as we read in the +'Paston Letters,' they had a sufficiently formal fashion of concluding +epistles. 'By your cousin, Dame Elizabeth Brews'--'By your man, Thomas +Kela;' such are two examples of the custom. 'Written at Norwich, on St. +Thomas's even, in great haste, by your mother, Agnes Paston'--there is +another. 'From your Russell,' is the end of a letter from the famous +Lady Russell to her husband; and it does not read or sound untenderly. +Junius signed himself to Woodfall, 'your friend.' Less cold was Mrs. +Maclehose to Burns: 'I may sign, for I am already sealed, your friend, +Clarinda.' + +The elaborate style of description has always largely obtained, as being +obviously suitable for so many occasions. Thus one is not surprised to +find the future Charles II. professing to be his father's 'most humble +and most obedient son and servant,' or to note how that very complete +letter-writer, James Howell, claimed to be the Countess of Sunderland's +'most dutiful servant.' Dr. Johnson did well to announce himself +haughtily as Chesterfield's 'most humble, most obedient servant;' while +what could Sir Walter Scott be to his Duke of Buccleuch other than 'your +Grace's truly obliged and grateful'? A similar sense of propriety +induced Hood, in a certain memorable epistle, to tell Sir Robert Peel +that he had the honour to be, Sir, his most grateful and obedient +servant. One cannot object, either, to the 'Your most obliged and +faithful friend' of Evelyn when addressed to Pepys, or to the 'Your very +faithful, humble servant' of Bishop Percy, when penned to Boswell. It +is, however, a little diverting to observe that Sir Simonds d'Ewes, +after addressing his ladylove as 'Fairest,' concludes with 'Your humble +servant,' and that the _Tatler_ of his time, rounding off a dedicatory +letter to his 'Prue,' says: 'I am, Madam, your most obliged husband, and +most obedient, humble servant, Richard Steele.' + +Over and over again have letter-writers made their final description of +themselves so wholly a part of their last sentence that the former +cannot be dissociated from the latter. 'I have not room to tell you any +more,' wrote Stephen Duck to Joseph Spence in 1751, 'than that I am, +Dear Sir, your most affectionate.' 'These,' said her royal mistress to +Mrs. Delany in 1785, 'are the true sentiments of my dear Mrs. Delany's +very affectionate Queen, Charlotte.' Hood once finished a charming +epistle to a child in this way: 'Give my love to everybody, from +yourself down to Willy, with which and a kiss, I remain, up hill and +down dale, your affectionate lover, Thomas Hood.' Most people remember +the pithy correspondence between Foote and his mother: 'Dear Sam,--I am +in prison for debt; come and assist your loving mother, E. +Foote.'--'Dear Mother,--So am I; which prevents his duty being paid to +his loving mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote.' Not everybody, +however, can wind up a letter so neatly as that. A certain commercial +house abroad was, perhaps, over-ingenious in its turn of phrase when, +writing to an English correspondent, and desiring to be very civil to +him, it said: 'Sugars are falling more and more every day; not so the +respect and esteem with which we are,' etc., etc. + + + + + +POSTSCRIPTS. + + +There is, and long has been, a prevalent impression that the penning of +postscripts is peculiarly characteristic of the feminine letter-writer. +Cynics have even gone so far as to assert that no woman can indite an +epistle without the addition of a 'P.S.,' and, in support of this +grievous aspersion, have been wont to trot out the venerable 'chestnut' +about the lady who accepted from her husband a bet that she would not +send him a letter without the inevitable addendum--the result being +that, after having composed the epistle and signed her name, she +artlessly appended the observation, 'You see I _have_ written you a +letter without a postscript,' capping it with 'Who has won the wager, +you or I?' + +It might be argued, even if it could not be proved, that, putting aside +mere business communications, and confining one's self to ordinary +social correspondence, men are guilty of as many postscripts as women +are. But even if the stereotyped charge against the ladies be really +well-founded, what of it? Does it convey any tangible reproach? What +harm is there in a 'P.S.,' or a 'P.P.S.'? It may be not only a +defensible, but positively a praiseworthy, thing. Often it proceeds from +nothing more condemnable than a genuine overflow of feeling--a stream of +sentiment which, checked by the signature of the writer, bursts its +bonds and reasserts its power in a final sentence or two. What could be +more charming, for example, than the instances of this afforded in so +many of the heroic Lady Russell's letters to her husband--as in that +particularly pleasing one in which, after assuring him that all the +household are well, and that as he is 'the most enduring husband in the +world,' so she is 'the most grateful wife,' she adds her signature, and +then recurs to the subject of her children--'Boy is asleep, girls +singing abed'--telling of the proposed kindness of a neighbour towards +them. + +Note, again, the superabundant playfulness of Cowper in one of his +epistles to Lady Hesketh, where, after a few lines of personal +description, he appears to conclude, but returns to the topic with a + + 'P.S.--That the view I give you of myself may be complete I add the + following items: That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.' + +Sometimes there will be pathos in a postscript, as in the case of +Beethoven's touching communication to his brothers Carl and Johann in +the matter of his deafness. In the body of the letter he has been +begging them not to think him hostile, morose, or misanthropical, and +making clear to them how little they know of the secret cause of his +apparent indifference. Then, on the outside of the packet, comes this +last melancholy outpouring: + + 'Thus, then, I take leave of you, and with sadness too. The fond + hope I brought with me here [to Heiligenstadt] of being to a + certain degree cured, now utterly forsakes me. As autumn leaves + fall and wither, so are my hopes blighted.' + +Of this spontaneous running-over from text into postscript, literature +has many specimens--none, perhaps, more effective in its way than the +kindly stanza with which Mr. Bret Harte makes Truthful James bring to a +close 'His Answer to Her Letter': + + 'P.S.--Which this same interfering + Into other folks' ways I despise, + Yet if it so be I was hearing + That it's just empty pockets as lies + Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers + That, having no family claims, + Here's my pile; which it's six hundred dollars, + As is yours, with respect, Truthful James.' + + +One might, indeed, say more for postscripts than that they are often +pardonable; they are often actually useful. They can be bent to the +service of the writer; and over and over again, I dare say, have been +appended with careful deliberation. They are invaluable as modes of +emphasizing matter contained within the limits of the letter proper. +They form 'last words' which can be charged with any measure of +significance. Many people remember the case of the sailor who, after +mentioning thrice in the course of one short epistle the desired +purchase of some pigtail, felt constrained to add yet another reminder +in the shape of a 'P.S.--Don't forget the pigtail.' Not less impressive, +probably, was Sir Hew Dalrymple when, writing in 1775 to a friend to +exhort him to give preferment to a worthy young cleric, he observed, in +a postscript: + + 'Think what an unspeakable pleasure it will be to look down from + heaven and see Rigby, Masterton, all the Campbells and Nabobs, + swimming in fire and brimstone, while you are sitting with + Whitefield and his old women, looking beautiful, frisking and + singing; all which you may have by settling this man!' + +There can be no question that a well-planted 'P.S.' is of great utility +in clinching an argument raised in the main portion of a communication. +Thus, when Artemus Ward wrote 'to the editor of ----,' asking for a line +concerning the state of the show business in his locality, he knew what +he was about. 'I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss,' he observed. +'Depend upon it. I want you should git my hanbills up in flamin' stile. +Also git up a tremenjus excitement in yr. paper 'bout my onparaleld +Show. We must fetch the public sumhow.' Then, at the end, came the +summing-up of the whole transaction: 'P.S.--You scratch my back and Ile +scratch your back.' There is at least one instance on record in which a +postscript was made to convey a smart reproof. Talleyrand, having one +day entrusted a valet with a letter to deliver, happened to look out of +the window, and saw the man reading the message _en route_. Next day he +despatched another letter to the same address by the same servant, +taking care to append to it the following: 'P.S.--You may send a verbal +answer by the bearer. He is perfectly acquainted with the whole affair, +having taken the precaution to read this previous to delivery.' + +On the whole, whether postscripts are defensible or not, it is clear +that their history is eminently interesting. Some valuable matter has +from time to time been put into them. There is at least one letter of +Thomas Gray's, written in 1764 to the Rev. Norton Nicholls, the 'P.S.' +of which is worth the whole of the remainder of the communication, so +charming a bit of descriptive writing is embodied in it. Then, how full +of good stuff are the epistolary addenda of Charles Lamb, with whom 'the +cream of the correspondence' (as Tony Lumpkin has it) was very often +rather in the postscript than in 'the inside of the letter,' in the +sense of its larger portion. It is in one of these addenda that one +finds the first record of a well-known sentence: 'Summer, as my friend +Coleridge waggishly observes, has set in with its usual severity.' +Elsewhere one comes across such tributes as: 'My friend Hood, a prime +genius and hearty fellow, brings this.' Always characteristic in thought +and in expression, Lamb was never more so than in the finales to his +letters. 'I do not think your handwriting at all like ----'s,' he says +to Southey; 'I do not think many things I did think.' He winds up a +dog-Latin epistle to Bernard Barton, in 1831, with: 'P.S.--Perdita in +toto est Billa Reformatura.' And to Coleridge he says, with delightful +frankness: + + 'Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct + itself. You know I am _homo unius linguae_: in English--illiterate, + a dunce, a ninny.' + +Sometimes a postscript is unconsciously full of humour, as in the case +of a note written by a certain Mr. O. to a recent Bishop of Norwich: + + 'Mr. O----'s private affairs turn out so sadly that he cannot have + the pleasure of waiting upon his lordship at his agreeable house on + Monday next.--N.B. His wife is dead.' + + +THE END. + +_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London._ + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. + +Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate +both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as +presented in the original text. + +The following misprint has been corrected: + "writting" corrected to "writing" (page 221) + +Printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been +retained. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's By-ways in Book-land, by William Davenport Adams + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY-WAYS IN BOOK-LAND *** + +***** This file should be named 31034.txt or 31034.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/0/3/31034/ + +Produced by Julia Miller, Stephanie Eason, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. 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