Chapter 4

"_Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus_ Ridet." --Hor. ii. 6.

It was an elm-tree root of yore, With lordly trunk, before they lopped it, And weighty, said those five who bore Its bulk across the lawn, and dropped it Not once or twice, before it lay. With two young pear-trees to protect it, Safe where the Poet hoped some day The curious pilgrim would inspect it.

He saw him with his Poet's eye, The stately Maori, turned from etching The ruin of St. Paul's, to try Some object better worth the sketching:-- He saw him, and it nerved his strength What time he hacked and hewed and scraped it, Until the monster grew at length The Master-piece to which he shaped it.

To wit--a goodly garden seat, And fit alike for Shah or Sophy, With shelf for cigarettes complete, And one, but lower down, for coffee; He planted pansies 'round its foot,-- "Pansies for thoughts!" and rose and arum; The Motto (that he meant to put) Was "_Ille angulus terrarum._"

But "Oh! the change" (as Milton sings)-- "The heavy change!" When May departed, When June with its "delightful things" Had come and gone, the rough bark started,-- Began to lose its sylvan brown, Grew parched, and powdery, and spotted; And, though the Poet nailed it down, It still flapped up, and dropped, and rotted.

Nor was this all. 'Twas next the scene Of vague (and viscous) vegetations; Queer fissures gaped, with oozings green, And moist, unsavoury exhalations,-- Faint wafts of wood decayed and sick, Till, where he meant to carve his Motto, Strange leathery fungi sprouted thick, And made it like an oyster grotto.

Briefly, it grew a seat of scorn, Bare,--shameless,--till, for fresh disaster, From end to end, one April morn, 'Twas riddled like a pepper caster,-- Drilled like a vellum of old time; And musing on this final mystery, The Poet left off scribbling rhyme, And took to studying Natural History.

This was the turning of the tide; His five-act play is still unwritten; The dreams that now his soul divide Are more of Lubbock than of Lytton; "_Ballades_" are "verses vain" to him Whose first ambition is to lecture (So much is man the sport of whim!) On "Insects and their Architecture."

THE LOST ELIXIR.

"_One drop of ruddy human blood puts more life into the veins of a poem than all the delusive 'aurum potabile' that can be distilled out of the choicest library._"--Lowell.

Ah, yes, that "drop of human blood!"-- We had it once, may be, When our young song's impetuous flood First poured its ecstasy; But now the shrunk poetic vein Yields not that priceless drop again.

We toil,--as toiled we not of old; Our patient hands distil The shining spheres of chemic gold With hard-won, fruitless skill; But that red drop still seems to be Beyond our utmost alchemy.

Perchance, but most in later age, Time's after-gift, a tear, Will strike a pathos on the page Beyond all art sincere; But that "one drop of human blood" Has gone with life's first leaf and bud.

MEMORIAL VERSES.

A DIALOGUE

TO THE MEMORY OF MR. ALEXANDER POPE.

"_Non injussa cano._" Virg.

POET. I sing of POPE--

FRIEND. What, POPE, the _Twitnam_ Bard, Whom _Dennis_, _Cibber_, _Tibbald_ push'd so hard! POPE of the _Dunciad_! POPE who dar'd to woo, And then to libel, _Wortley-Montagu_! POPE of the _Ham-walks_ story--

P. Scandals all! Scandals that now I care not to recall. Surely a little, in two hundred Years, One may neglect Contemporary Sneers:-- Surely Allowance for the Man may make That had all _Grub-street_ yelping in his Wake! And who (I ask you) has been never Mean, When urged by Envy, Anger or the Spleen? No: I prefer to look on POPE as one Not rightly happy till his Life was done; Whose whole Career, romance it as you please, Was (what he call'd it) but a "long Disease:" Think of his Lot,--his Pilgrimage of Pain, His "crazy Carcass" and his restless Brain; Think of his Night-Hours with their Feet of Lead, His dreary Vigil and his aching Head; Think of all this, and marvel then to find The "crooked Body with a crooked Mind!" Nay rather, marvel that, in Fate's Despite, You find so much to solace and delight,-- So much of Courage, and of Purpose high In that unequal Struggle _not_ to die. I grant you freely that POPE played his Part Sometimes ignobly--but he lov'd his Art; I grant you freely that he sought his Ends Not always wisely--but he lov'd his Friends; And who of Friends a nobler Roll could show-- _Swift_, _St. John_, _Bathurst_, _Marchmont_, _Peterb'ro'_, _Arbuthnot_--

FR. ATTICUS?

P. Well (_entre nous_), Most that he said of _Addison_ was _true_. Plain Truth, you know--

FR. Is often not polite (So _Hamlet_ thought)--

P. And _Hamlet_ (Sir) was right. But leave POPE'S Life. To-day, methinks, we touch The Work too little and the Man too much. Take up the _Lock_, the _Satires_, _Eloise_-- What Art supreme, what Elegance, what Ease! How keen the Irony, the Wit how bright, The Style how rapid, and the Verse how light! Then read once more, and you shall wonder yet At Skill, at Turn, at Point, at Epithet. "True Wit is Nature to Advantage dress'd"-- Was ever Thought so pithily express'd? "And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line"-- Ah, what a Homily on Yours ... and Mine! Or take--to choose at Random--take but This-- "Ten censure wrong for one that writes amiss."

FR. Pack'd and precise, no Doubt. Yet surely those Are but the Qualities we ask of Prose, Was he a POET?

P. Yes: if that be what _Byron_ was certainly and _Bowles_ was not; Or say you grant him, to come nearer Date, What _Dryden_ had, that was denied to _Tate_--

FR. Which means, you claim for him the Spark divine, Yet scarce would place him on the highest Line--

P. True, there are Classes. POPE was most of all Akin to _Horace_, _Persius_, _Juvenal_; POPE was, like them, the Censor of his Age, An Age more suited to Repose than Rage; When Rhyming turn'd from Freedom to the Schools, And shock'd with Licence, shudder'd into Rules; When _Phoebus_ touch'd the Poet's trembling Ear With one supreme Commandment _Be thou Clear_; When Thought meant less to reason than compile, And the _Muse_ labour'd ... chiefly with the File. Beneath full Wigs no Lyric drew its Breath As in the Days of great ELIZABETH; And to the Bards of ANNA was denied The Note that _Wordsworth_ heard on _Duddon_-side. But POPE took up his Parable, and knit The Woof of Wisdom with the Warp of Wit; He trimm'd the Measure on its equal Feet, And smooth'd and fitted till the Line was neat; He taught the Pause with due Effect to fall; He taught the Epigram to come at Call; He wrote----

FR. His _Iliad_!

P. Well, suppose you own You like your _Iliad_ in the Prose of _Bohn_,-- Tho' if you'd learn in Prose how _Homer_ sang, 'Twere best to learn of _Butcher_ and of _Lang_,-- Suppose you say your Worst of POPE, declare His Jewels Paste, his Nature a Parterre, His Art but Artifice--I ask once more Where have you seen such Artifice before? Where have you seen a Parterre better grac'd, Or gems that glitter like his Gems of Paste? Where can you show, among your Names of Note, So much to copy and so much to quote? And where, in Fine, in all our English Verse, A Style more trenchant and a Sense more terse?

So I, that love the old _Augustan_ Days Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase; That like along the finish'd Line to feel The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel; That like my Couplet as compact as clear; That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe, Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope, I fling my Cap for Polish--and for POPE!

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE

_To * * Esq. of * * with a Life of the late Ingenious M^r. W^m. Hogarth._

Dear Cosmopolitan,--I know I should address you a _Rondeau_, Or else announce what I've to say At least _en Ballade fratrisée_; But No: for once I leave Gymnasticks, And take to simple _Hudibrasticks_; Why should I choose another Way, When this was good enough for GAY?

You love, my FRIEND, with me, I think, That Age of Lustre and of Link; Of _Chelsea_ China and long "s"es, Of Bag-wigs and of flowered Dresses; That Age of Folly and of Cards, Of Hackney Chairs and Hackney Bards; --No H--LTS, no K--G--N P--LS were then Dispensing Competence to Men; The gentle Trade was left to Churls, Your frowsy TONSONS and your CURLLS; Mere Wolves in Ambush to attack The AUTHOR in a Sheep-skin Back; Then SAVAGE and his Brother-Sinners In _Porridge-Island_ div'd for Dinners; Or doz'd on _Covent Garden_ Bulks, And liken'd Letters to the Hulks;-- You know that by-gone Time, I say, That aimless easy-moral'd Day, When rosy Morn found MADAM still Wrangling at _Ombre_ or _Quadrille_, When good Sir JOHN reel'd Home to Bed, From _Pontack's_ or the _Shakespear's Head_; When TRIP _convey'd_ his Master's Cloaths, And took his Titles and his Oaths; While BETTY, in a cast _Brocade_, Ogled MY LORD at Masquerade; When GARRICK play'd the guilty _Richard_, Or mouth'd _Macbeth_ with Mrs. PRITCHARD; When FOOTE grimac'd his snarling Wit; When CHURCHILL bullied in the Pit; When the CUZZONI sang-- But there! The further Catalogue I spare, Having no Purpose to eclipse That tedious Tale of HOMER'S Ships;-- This is the MAN that drew it all From _Pannier Alley_ to the _Mall_, Then turn'd and drew it once again From _Bird-Cage Walk_ to _Lewknor's Lane_;-- Its Rakes and Fools, its Rogues and Sots; Its brawling Quacks, its starveling Scots; Its Ups and Downs, its Rags and Garters, Its HENLEYS, LOVATS, MALCOLMS, CHARTRES; Its Splendour, Squalor, Shame, Disease; Its _quicquid agunt Homines_;-- Nor yet omitted to pourtray _Furens quid possit Foemina_;-- In short, held up to ev'ry Class NATURE'S unflatt'ring looking-Glass; And, from his Canvass, spoke to All The Message of a JUVENAL.

Take Him. His Merits most aver: His weak Point is--his Chronicler!

Nov^r. 1, 1879.

HENRY FIELDING.

(To James Russell Lowell.)

Not from the ranks of those we call Philosopher or Admiral,-- Neither as LOCKE was, nor as BLAKE, Is that Great Genius for whose sake We keep this Autumn festival.

And yet in one sense, too, was he A soldier--of humanity; And, surely, philosophic mind Belonged to him whose brain designed That teeming COMIC EPOS where, As in CERVANTES and MOLIÈRE, Jostles the medley of Mankind.

Our ENGLISH NOVEL'S pioneer! His was the eye that first saw clear How, not in natures half-effaced By cant of Fashion and of Taste,-- Not in the circles of the Great, Faint-blooded and exanimate,-- Lay the true field of Jest and Whim, Which we to-day reap after him. No:--he stepped lower down and took The piebald PEOPLE for his Book!

Ah, what a wealth of Life there is In that large-laughing page of his! What store and stock of Common-Sense, Wit, Wisdom, Books, Experience! How his keen Satire flashes through, And cuts a sophistry in two! How his ironic lightning plays Around a rogue and all his ways! Ah, how he knots his lash to see That ancient cloak, Hypocrisy!

Whose are the characters that give Such round reality?--that live With such full pulse? Fair SOPHY yet Sings _Bobbing Joan_ at the spinet; We see AMELIA cooking still That supper for the recreant WILL; We hear Squire WESTERN'S headlong tones Bawling "Wut ha?--wut ha?" to JONES. Are they not present now to us,-- The Parson with his _Æschylus_? SLIPSLOP the frail, and NORTHERTON, PARTRIDGE, and BATH, and HARRISON?-- Are they not breathing, moving,--all The motley, merry carnival That FIELDING kept, in days agone?

He was the first who dared to draw Mankind the mixture that he saw; Not wholly good nor ill, but both, With fine intricacies of growth. He pulled the wraps of flesh apart, And showed the working human heart; He scorned to drape the truthful nude With smooth, decorous platitude!

He was too frank, may be; and dared Too boldly. Those whose faults he bared, Writhed in the ruthless grasp that brought Into the light their secret thought. Therefore the TARTUFFE-throng who say "_Couvrez ce sein_," and look that way,-- Therefore the Priests of Sentiment Rose on him with their garments rent. Therefore the gadfly swarm whose sting Plies ever round some generous thing, Buzzed of old bills and tavern-scores, Old "might-have-beens" and "heretofores";-- Then, from that garbled record-list, Made him his own Apologist.

And was he? Nay,--let who has known Nor Youth nor Error, cast the stone! If to have sense of Joy and Pain Too keen,--to rise, to fall again, To live too much,--be sin, why then, This was no pattern among men. But those who turn that later page, The Journal of his middle-age, Watch him serene in either fate,-- Philanthropist and Magistrate; Watch him as Husband, Father, Friend, Faithful, and patient to the end; Grieving, as e'en the brave may grieve, But for the loved ones he must leave: These will admit--if any can-- That 'neath the green Estrella trees, No Artist merely, but a MAN, Wrought on our noblest island-plan, Sleeps with the alien Portuguese.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

"_Nec turpem senectam Degere, nec cithara carentem._" --Hor. i. 31.

"Not to be tuneless in old age!" Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage, Who, in his Winter's snow, Still sings with note as sweet and clear As in the morning of the year When the first violets blow!

Blest!--but more blest, whom Summer's heat, Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat, Have taught no feverish lure; Whose Muse, benignant and serene, Still keeps his Autumn chaplet green Because his verse is pure!

Lie calm, O white and laureate head! Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead, Since from the voiceless grave, Thy voice shall speak to old and young While song yet speaks an English tongue By Charles' or Thamis' wave!

CHARLES GEORGE GORDON.

"Rather be dead than praised," he said, That hero, like a hero dead, In this slack-sinewed age endued With more than antique fortitude!

"Rather be dead than praised!" Shall we, Who loved thee, now that Death sets free Thine eager soul, with word and line Profane that empty house of thine?

Nay,--let us hold, be mute. Our pain Will not be less that we refrain; And this our silence shall but be A larger monument to thee.

VICTOR HUGO.

He set the trumpet to his lips, and lo! The clash of waves, the roar of winds that blow, The strife and stress of Nature's warring things, Rose like a storm-cloud, upon angry wings.

He set the reed-pipe to his lips, and lo! The wreck of landscape took a rosy glow, And Life, and Love, and gladness that Love brings Laughed in the music, like a child that sings.

Master of each, Arch-Master! We that still Wait in the verge and outskirt of the Hill Look upward lonely--lonely to the height Where thou has climbed, for ever, out of sight!

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

EMIGRAVIT, OCTOBER VI., MDCCCXCII.

Grief there will be, and may, When King Apollo's bay Is cut midwise; Grief that a song is stilled, Grief for the unfulfilled Singer that dies.

Not so we mourn thee now, Not so we grieve that thou, MASTER, art passed, Since thou thy song didst raise, Through the full round of days, E'en to the last.

Grief there may be, and will, When that the Singer still Sinks in the song; When that the wingéd rhyme Fails of the promised prime, Ruined and wrong.

Not thus we mourn thee--we-- Not thus we grieve for thee, MASTER and Friend; Since, like a clearing flame, Clearer thy pure song came E'en to the end.

Nay--nor for thee we grieve E'en as for those that leave Life without name; Lost as the stars that set, Empty of men's regret, Empty of fame.

Rather we count thee one Who, when his race is run, Layeth him down, Calm--through all coming days, Filled with a nation's praise, Filled with renown.

FABLES OF LITERATURE AND ART.

THE POET AND THE CRITICS.

If those who wield the Rod forget, 'Tis truly--_Quis custodiet?_

A certain Bard (as Bards will do) Dressed up his Poems for Review. His Type was plain, his Title clear; His Frontispiece by FOURDRINIER. Moreover, he had on the Back A sort of sheepskin Zodiac;-- A Mask, a Harp, an Owl,--in fine, A neat and "classical" Design. But the _in_-Side?--Well, good or bad, The Inside was the best he had: Much Memory,--more Imitation;-- Some Accidents of Inspiration;-- Some Essays in that finer Fashion Where Fancy takes the place of Passion;-- And some (of course) more roughly wrought To catch the Advocates of Thought.

In the less-crowded Age of ANNE, Our Bard had been a favoured Man; Fortune, more chary with the Sickle, Had ranked him next to GARTH or TICKELL;-- He might have even dared to hope A Line's Malignity from POPE! But now, when Folks are hard to please, And Poets are as thick as--Peas, The Fates are not so prone to flatter, Unless, indeed, a Friend ... No Matter.

The Book, then, had a minor Credit: The Critics took, and doubtless read it. Said A.--_These little Songs display No lyric Gift; but still a Ray,-- A Promise. They will do no Harm._ 'Twas kindly, if not _very_ warm. Said B.--_The Author may, in Time, Acquire the Rudiments of Rhyme: His Efforts now are scarcely Verse._ This, certainly, could not be worse.

Sorely discomfited, our Bard Worked for another ten Years--hard. Meanwhile the World, unmoved, went on; New Stars shot up, shone out, were gone; Before his second Volume came His Critics had forgot his Name:

And who, forsooth, is bound to know Each Laureate _in embryo_! They tried and tested him, no less,- The sworn Assayers of the Press. Said A.--_The Author may, in Time...._ Or much what B. had said of Rhyme. Then B.--_These little Songs display...._ And so forth, in the sense of A. Over the Bard I throw a Veil.

There is no MORAL to this Tale.

THE TOYMAN.

With Verse, is Form the first, or Sense? Hereon men waste their Eloquence.

"Sense (cry the one Side), Sense, of course. How can you lend your Theme its Force? How can you be direct and clear, Concise, and (best of all) sincere, If you must pen your Strain sublime In Bonds of Measure and of Rhyme? Who ever heard true Grief relate Its heartfelt Woes in 'six' and 'eight'? Or felt his manly Bosom swell Beneath a French-made _Villanelle_? How can your _Mens divinior_ sing Within the Sonnet's scanty Ring, Where she must chant her Orphic Tale In just so many Lines, or fail?..."

"Form is the first (the Others bawl); If not, why write in Verse at all? Why not your throbbing Thoughts expose (If verse be such Restraint) in Prose? For surely if you speak your Soul Most freely where there's least Control, It follows you must speak it best By Rhyme (or Reason) unreprest. Blest Hour! be not delayed too long, When Britain frees her Slaves of Song; And barred no more by Lack of Skill, The Mob may crowd _Parnassus_ Hill!..."

Just at this Point--for you must know, All this was but the To-and-fro Of MATT and DICK who played with Thought, And lingered longer than they ought (So pleasant 'tis to tap one's Box And trifle round a Paradox!)-- There came--but I forgot to say, 'Twas in the Mall, the Month was May-- There came a Fellow where they sat, His Elf-locks peeping through his Hat, Who bore a Basket. Straight his Load He set upon the Ground, and showed His newest Toy--a Card with Strings. On this side was a Bird with Wings, On that, a Cage. You twirled, and lo! The Twain were one. Said MATT, "E'en so. Here's the Solution in a Word:-- Form is the Cage and Sense the Bird. The Poet twirls them in his Mind, And wins the Trick with both combined."

THE SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR.

When Fate presents us with the Bays, We prize the Praiser, not the Praise. We scarcely think our Fame eternal If vouched for by the _Farthing Journal_; But when the _Craftsman's_ self has spoken, We take it for a certain Token. This an Example best will show, Derived from DENNIS DIDEROT.

A hackney Author, who'd essayed All Hazards of the scribbling Trade; And failed to live by every Mode, From _Persian Tale_ to _Birthday Ode_; Embarked at last, thro' pure Starvation, In Theologic Speculation. 'Tis commonly affirmed his Pen Had been most orthodox till then; But oft, as SOCRATES has said, The Stomach's stronger than the Head; And, for a sudden Change of Creed, There is no _Jesuit_ like Need. Then, too, 'twas cheap; he took it all, By force of Habit, from the Gaul. He showed (the Trick is nowise new) That Nothing we believe is true; But chiefly that Mistake is rife Touching the point of _After-Life_; Here all were wrong from PLATO down: His Price (in Boards) was Half-a-Crown. The Thing created quite a Scare:-- He got a Letter from VOLTAIRE, Naming him _Ami_ and _Confrère_; Besides two most attractive Offers Of Chaplaincies from noted Scoffers. He fell forthwith his Head to lift, To talk of "I and DR. SW--FT;" And brag, at Clubs, as one who spoke, On equal Terms, with BOLINGBROKE. But, at the last, a Missive came That put the Copestone to his Fame. The Boy who brought it would not wait: It bore a _Covent-Garden_ Date;-- A woful Sheet with doubtful Ink. And Air of _Bridewell_ or the Clink, It ran in this wise:--_Learned Sir! We, whose Subscriptions follow here, Desire to state our Fellow-feeling In this Religion you're revealing. You make it plain that if so be_ _We 'scape on Earth from_ Tyburn Tree, _There's nothing left for us to fear In this--or any other Sphere. We offer you our Thanks; and hope Your Honor, too, may cheat the Rope!_ With that came all the Names beneath, As BLUESKIN, JERRY CLINCH, MACHEATH, BET CARELESS, and the Rest--a Score Of Rogues and _Bona Robas_ more.

This _Newgate Calendar_ he read: 'Tis not recorded what he said.

THE DILETTANT.

The most oppressive Form of Cant Is that of your Art-Dilettant:-- Or rather "was." The Race, I own, To-day is, happily, unknown.