Part 5

Upon our book-shelves repose four volumes of the Cardinal's sermons, preached when a member of the Church of England, and Archdeacon of Chichester. They were bought at Bishop Wilberforce's sale, who was the Cardinal's brother-in-law, and contain the autograph of William Wilberforce, the bishop's eldest brother. Upon the same shelf will be found a copy of "Parochial Sermons" by John Henry Newman, Vicar of St. Mary the Virgin's, Oxford. This volume formerly belonged to Bishop Stanley, and came from the library of his celebrated son, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, sometime Dean of Westminster.

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A good book might be written by one who is duly qualified on "the Poets who are not read." It would not be flattering to the ghosts of many of the departed great, but there is so much assumption on the part of the general reader, that he knows them all, has read them all, and generally likes them all, which if examined into closely would prove a snare and a delusion, that one is tempted to administer some gentle interrogatories upon the subject. First and foremost, then, who now reads Byron? His works rest on the shelves, it is true, but are they ever opened, except to verify a quotation? Does the general reader of this time steadily go through "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," and his other splendid works. Not death but sleep prevails, from which perchance one day he may awake and again enjoy his share of fame and favour. It is the fashion with many persons to express the utmost sympathy with and acute knowledge of the work of Robert Browning, but we doubt if many of these could pass a Civil Service examination in the very poems they name so glibly. He is so hard to understand without time and close study, that few have the inclination to give either in these days of pressure, worry, and rush.

Upon neglected shelves Cowper and Crabbe lie dusty and unopened--the only person who read Crabbe in these days was the late Edward FitzGerald; and it is a small class apart that still looks up to Wordsworth. The stars of Keats and Shelley, it is true, are just now in the ascendant, and may so remain for a little while.

It is difficult and dangerous, we are told, to prophesy unless we know, but our private opinion is that Lord Tennyson's fame has been declining since his death, and that a large portion of his poems and all his plays will die, leaving a living residuum of such splendid work as "Maud," "In Memoriam," and some of his short poems.

America has furnished us with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose charm and finish is likely to continue its hold upon our imagination; then there is the Quaker poet Whittier, who will probably only live in a song or two; and Longfellow, whose popularity has a long time since declined. He once wrote a sort of novel or romance called "Hyperion," which showed his reading public for the first time that he was possessed of a gentle humour, which does not often appear in his poems. For instance, one of his characters, by name Berkley, wishing to console a jilted lover, says--

"'I was once as desperately in love as you are now; I adored, and was rejected.'

"'You are in love with certain attributes,' said the lady.

"'Damn your attributes, madam,' said I; 'I know nothing of attributes.'

"'Sir,' said she, with dignity, 'you have been drinking.'

"So we parted. She was married afterwards to another, who knew something about attributes, I suppose. I have seen her once since, and only once. She had a baby in a yellow gown. I hate a baby in a yellow gown. How glad I am she did not marry me."

The fate of most poets is to be cut up for Dictionaries of Quotations, for which amiable purpose they are often admirably adapted.

Chat No. 13.

_"She will return, I know she will, She will not leave me here alone._"

Staying many years ago in a pleasant country-house, whilst walking home after evening church my host remarked, as we passed in the growing darkness a house from which streamed a light down the path from the front door, "Ah! Jane has not yet returned." The phrase sounded odd, and when we were snugly ensconced in the smoking-room, he that evening told me the following story, which, however, then stopped midway, but to which I am now able to add the sequel.

A certain John Manson (the name is, of course, fictitious), an elderly wealthy City bachelor, married late in life a young girl of great beauty, and with no friends or relations.

She found her husband's country home, in which she was necessarily much alone, very dull, and she thought that he was hard and unsympathising when he was at home; whereas, although a curt, reserved manner gave this impression, he was really full of love for, and confidence in his young wife, and inwardly chafed at and deplored his want of power to show what his real feelings were.

The misunderstanding between them grew and widened, like the poetical "rift within the lute," and soon after the birth of her child, a girl, she left her home with her baby, merely leaving a few lines of curt farewell, and was henceforth lost to him. His belief in her honesty never wavered; and night after night, with his own hand, he lighted and placed in a certain hall-window a lamp which thus illuminated the path to the door, saying, "Jane will return, poor dear; and it's sure to be at night, and she'll like to see the light."

Years passed by, and Jane made no sign, the light each evening shining uselessly; and still a stranger to her home, she died, leaving her daughter, now a beautiful girl of twenty, and marvellously like what her mother was when she married.

The husband, unaware of the death of his wife, himself came to lay him for the last beneath his own roof-tree, and still his one cry was, "Jane will return." It seemed as if he could not pass in peace from this world's rack until it was accomplished--when, lo! a miracle came to pass; for the daughter arrived one evening with a letter from her mother, written when she was dying, and asking her husband's forgiveness, and the light still beamed from the beacon window.

The old man was only semi-conscious, and mistaking his child for her mother, with a strong voice cried out, "I knew you'd come back," and died in the moment of the joy of her supposed return.

By a curious coincidence, since writing this true story, which was told to me in 1865, some of the incidents, in an altered form, have found a place in Mr. Ian Maclaren's popular book, "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." It would be interesting to know from whence he drew his inspiration, and whether his story should perchance trace back to a common ancestor in mine.

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A few years ago Mr. Walter Hamilton published, in six volumes, the most complete collection of English parodies ever brought together. Amongst others, he gave a vast number upon the well-known poem by Charles Wolfe of "Not a drum was heard." Page after page is covered with them, upon every possible subject; but the following one, written by an "American cousin" many years ago, and which was not accessible to Mr. Hamilton, is perhaps worth repeating and preserving. He called it "The Mosquito Hunt," and it runs as follows, if my memory serves me faithfully, I having no written note of it:--

"Not a sound was heard, but a horrible hum, As around our chamber we hurried, In search of the insect whose trumpet and drum Our delectable slumber had worried.

We sought for him darkly at dead of night, Our coverlet carefully turning, By the shine of the moonbeam's misty light, And our candle dimly burning.

About an hour had seemed to elapse, Ere we met with the wretch that had bit us; And raising our shoe, gave some terrible slaps, Which made the mosquito's quietus.

Quickly and gladly we turned from the dead, And left him all smash'd and gory; We blew out the candle, and popped into bed, And determined to tell you the story!"

Chat No. 14.

"_The welcome news is in the letter found, The carrier's not commissioned to expound: It speaks itself._" --Dryden.

A pleasant hour may perhaps be passed in searching through the family autograph-box in the book-room. Its contents are varied and far-fetched. A capital series of letters from that best and most genial of correspondents, James Payn, are there to puzzle, by their very difficult calligraphy, the would-be reader. Mr. Payn, a dear friend to Foxwold, is now a great invalid, and a brave sufferer, keeping, despite his pain, the same bright spirit, the same brilliant wit, and delighting with the same enchanting conversation. Out of all his work, there is nothing so beautiful as his lay-sermons, published in a small volume called "Some Private Views;" and but a little while since he wrote, on his invalid couch, a most affecting study, called "The Backwater of Life;" it has only up to the present time appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, but will doubtless be soon collected with other work in a more permanent form. It is a pathetic picture of how suffering may be relieved by wit, wisdom, and courage.

As Mr. Leslie Stephen well says in his brother's life, "For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, it really loves a sermon, and is glad to hear preachers who are not bound by the proprieties of the religious pulpit. Some essayists, like Johnson, have been as solemn as the true clerical performer, and some have diverged into the humorous with Charles Lamb, or the cynical with Hazlitt."[2]

In Mr. Payn's lay-sermons we have the humour and the pathos, the tears being very close to the laughter; and they reflect in a peculiarly strong manner the tender wit and delicate fancy of their author.

But to return to our autograph-box. Here we find letters from such varied authors as Josef Israels, the Dutch painter, Hubert Herkomer, W. B. Richmond, Mrs. Carlyle, Wilkie Collins, Dean Stanley, and a host of other interesting people. Perhaps a few extracts, where judicious and inoffensive, may give an interest to this especial chat.

The late Mrs. Charles Fox of Trebah was in herself, both socially and intellectually, a very remarkable woman. Born in the Lake Country, and belonging to the Society of Friends, she formed, as a girl, many happy friendships with the Wordsworths, the Southeys, the Coleridges, and all that charmed circle of intellect, every scrap of whose sayings and doings are so full of interest, and so dearly cherished.

These friendships she continued to preserve after her marriage, and when she had exchanged her lovely lake home for an equally beautiful and interesting one on the Cornish coast, first at Perran and afterwards at Trebah.

One of her special friendships was with Hartley Coleridge, who indited several of his sonnets to his beautiful young friend.

The subjoined letter gives a pleasant picture of his friendly correspondence, and has not been included in the published papers by his brother, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, who edited his remains.

"Dear Sarah,

If a stranger to the fold Of happy innocents, where thou art one, May so address thee by a name he loves, Both for a mother's and a sister's sake, And surely loves it not the less for thine. Dear Sarah, strange it needs must seem to thee That I should choose the quaint disguise of verse, And, like a mimic masquer, come before thee To tell my simple tale of country news, Or,--sooth to tell thee,--I have nought to tell But what a most intelligencing gossip Would hardly mention on her morning rounds: Things that a newspaper would not record In the dead-blank recess of Parliament. Yet so it is,--my thoughts are so confused, My memory is so wild a wilderness, I need the order of the measured line To help me, whensoe'er I would attempt To methodise the random notices Of purblind observation. Easier far The minuet step of slippery sliding verse, Than the strong stately walk of steadfast prose.

Since you have left us, many a beauteous change Hath Nature wrought on the eternal hills; And not an hour hath past that hath not done Its work of beauty. When December winds, Hungry and fell, were chasing the dry leaves, Shrill o'er the valley at the dead of night, 'Twas sweet, for watchers such as I, to mark How bright, how very bright, the stars would shine Through the deep rifts of congregated clouds; How very distant seemed the azure sky; And when at morn the lazy, weeping fog, Long lingering, loath to leave the slumbrous lake, Whitened, diffusive, as the rising sun Shed on the western hills his rosiest beams, I thought of thee, and thought our peaceful vale Had lost one heart that could have felt its peace, One eye that saw its beauties, and one soul That made its peace and beauty all her own.

One morn there was a kindly boon of heaven, That made the leafless woods so beautiful, It was sore pity that one spirit lives, That owns the presence of Eternal God In all the world of Nature and of Mind, Who did not see it. Low the vapour hung On the flat fields, and streak'd with level layers The lower regions of the mountainous round; But every summit, and the lovely line Of mountain tops, stood in the pale blue sky Boldly defined. The cloudless sun dispelled The hazy masses, and a lucid veil But softened every charm it not concealed. Then every tree that climbs the steep fell-side-- Young oak, yet laden with sere foliage; Larch, springing upwards, with its spikey top And spiney garb of horizontal boughs; The veteran ash, strong-knotted, wreathed and twined, As if some Dæmon dwelt within its trunk, And shot forth branches, serpent-like; uprear'd The holly and the yew, that never fade And never smile; these, and whate'er beside, Or stubborn stump, or thin-arm'd underwood, Clothe the bleak strong girth of Silverhow (You know the place, and every stream and brook Is known to you) by ministry of Frost, Were turned to shapes of Orient adamant, As if the whitest crystals, new endow'd With vital or with vegetative power, Had burst from earth, to mimic every form Of curious beauty that the earth could boast, Or, like a tossing sea of curly plumes, Frozen in an instant----"

"So much for verse, which, being execrably bad, cannot be excused, except by friendship, therefore is the fitter for a friendly epistle. There's logic for you! In fact, my dear lady, I am so much delighted, not to say flattered, by your wish that I should write to you, that I can't help being rather silly. It will be a sad loss to me when your excellent mother leaves Grasmere; and to-morrow my friend Archer and I dine at Dale End, for our farewell. But so it must be. I am always happy to hear anything of your little ones, who are such very sweet creatures that one might almost think it a pity they should ever grow up to be big women, and know only better than they do now. Among all the anecdotes of childhood that have been recorded, I never heard of one so characteristic as Jenny-Kitty's wish to inform Lord Dunstanville of the miseries of the negroes. Bless its little soul! I am truly sorry to hear that you have been suffering bodily illness, though I know that it cannot disturb the serenity of your mind. I hope little Derwent did not disturb you with his crown; I am told he is a lovely little wretch, and you say he has eyes like mine. I hope he will see his way better with them. Derwent has never answered my letter, but I complain not; I dare say he has more than enough to do.[3] Thank you kindly for your kindness to him and his lady. I hope the friendship of Friends will not obstruct his rising in the Church, and that he will consult his own interest prudently, paying court to the powers that be, yet never so far committing himself as to miss an opportunity of ingratiating himself with the powers that may be. Let him not utter, far less write, any sentence that will not bear a twofold interpretation! For the present let his liberality go no further than a very liberal explanation of the words consistency and gratitude may carry him; let him always be honest when it is his interest to be so, and sometimes when it may appear not to be so; and never be a knave under a deanery or a rectory of five thousand a year! My best remembrances to your husband, and kisses for Juliet and Jenny-Kitty, though she did say she liked Mr. Barber far better than me. I can't say I agree with her in that particular, having a weak partiality for

Your affectionate friend, Hartley Coleridge."

Another friend of the Fox family was the late John Bright, and the following letter to the now well-known Caroline Fox of Penjerrick will be read with interest:--

Torquay, 10 _mo._ 13, 1868.

"My dear Friend,

I hope the 'one cloud' has passed away. I was much pleased with the earnestness and feeling of the poem, and wished to ask thee for a copy of it, but was afraid to give thee the trouble of writing it out for me.

"For myself, I have endeavoured only to speak when I have had something to say which it seemed to me ought to be said, and I did not feel that the sentiment of the poem condemned me.

"We had a pleasant visit to Kynance Cove. It is a charming place, and we were delighted with it. We went on through Helston to Penzance: the day following we visited the Logan Rock and the Land's End, and in the afternoon the celebrated Mount--the weather all we could wish for. We were greatly pleased with the Mount, and I shall not read 'Lycidas' with less interest now that I have seen the place of the 'great vision.' We found the hotel to which you kindly directed us perfect in all respects. On Friday we came from Penzance to Truro, and posted to St. Columb, where we spent a night at Mr. Northy's--the day and night were very wet. Next day we posted to Tintagel, and back to Launceston, taking the train there for Torquay.

"We were pressed for time at Tintagel, but were pleased with what we saw.

"Here, we are in a land of beauty and of summer, the beauty beyond my expectation, and the climate like that of Nice. Yesterday we drove round to see the sights, and W. Pengelly and Mr. Vivian went with us to Kent's Cavern, Anstey's Cove, and the round of exquisite views. We are at Cash's Hotel, but visit our friend Susan Midgley in the day and evening. To-morrow we start for Street, to stay a day or two with my daughter Helen, and are to spend Sunday at Bath. We have seen much and enjoyed much in our excursion, but we shall remember nothing with more pleasure than your kindness and our stay at Penjerrick.

"Elizabeth joins me in kind and affectionate remembrance of you, and in the hope that thy dear father did not suffer from the 'long hours' to which my talk subjected him. When we get back to our bleak region and home of cold and smoke, we shall often think of your pleasant retreat, and of the wonderful gardens at Penjerrick.

Believe me,

Always sincerely thy friend, John Bright."

_To_ Caroline Fox, Penjerrick, Falmouth.

There are few men whose every uttered word is regarded with greater respect and interest than Mr. Ruskin. It is well known that he has always been a wide and careful collector of minerals, gems, and fine specimens of the art and nature world. One of his various agents, through whom at one time he made many such purchases, both for himself and his Oxford and Sheffield museums, was Mr. Bryce Wright, the mineralogist, and to him are addressed the following five letters:--

Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, _22nd May '81_.

"My dear Wright,

I am very greatly obliged to you for letting me see these opals, quite unexampled, as you rightly say, from that locality--but from that locality _I_ never buy--my kind is the opal formed in pores and cavities, throughout the mass of that compact brown jasper--this, which is merely a superficial crust of jelly on the surface of a nasty brown sandstone, I do not myself value in the least. I wish you could get at some of the geology of the two sorts, but I suppose everything is kept close by the diggers and the Jews at present.

"As for the cameos, the best of the two, 'supposed' (by whom?) to represent Isis, represents neither Egyptian nor Oxonian Isis, but only an ill-made French woman of the town bathing at Boulogne, and the other is only a 'Minerve' of the Halles, a _petroleuse_ in a mob-cap, sulphur-fire colour.

"I don't depreciate what I want to buy, as you know well, but it is not safe to send me things in the set way 'supposed' to be this or that! If you ever get any more nice little cranes, or cockatoos, looking like what they're supposed to be meant for, they shall at least be returned with compliments.

"I send back the box by to-day's rail; put down all expenses to my account, as I am always amused and interested by a parcel from you.

"You needn't print this letter as an advertisement, unless you like!

Ever faithfully yours,

J. Ruskin." Brantwood, _23rd May_.

"My dear Wright,

The silver's safe here, and I want to buy it for Sheffield, but the price seems to me awful. It must always be attached to it at the museum, and I fear great displeasure from the public for giving you such a price. What is there in the specimen to make it so valuable? I have not anything like it, nor do I recollect its like (or I shouldn't want it), but if so rare, why does not the British Museum take it.

Ever truly yours,

J. Ruskin." Brantwood, _Wednesday_.

"My dear Wright,

I am very glad of your long and interesting letter, and can perfectly understand all your difficulties, and have always observed your activity and attention to your business with much sympathy, but of late certainly I have been frightened at your prices, and, before I saw the golds, was rather uneasy at having so soon to pay for them. But you are quite right in your estimate of the interest and value of the collection, and I hope to be able to be of considerable service to you yet, though I fear it cannot be in buying specimens at seventy guineas, unless there is something to be shown for the money, like that great native silver!

"I have really not been able to examine the red ones yet--the golds alone were more than I could judge of till I got a quiet hour this morning. I might possibly offer to change some of the locally interesting ones for a proustite, but I can't afford any more cash just now.

Ever very heartily yours,

J. Ruskin." Brantwood, _3rd Nov. or 4th (?), Friday_.

"Dear Wright,

My telegram will, I hope, enable you to act with promptness about the golds, which will be of extreme value to me; and its short saying about the proustites will, I hope, not be construed by you as meaning that I will buy them also. You don't really suppose that you are to be paid interest of money on minerals, merely because they have lain long in your hands.