Part 19

“If the cucumber be bitter, throw it away,” says Antoninus: do the same with a thought.... There is no cucumber so heavy that one cannot throw it over some wall.

OUIDA (_Tricotrin_).

Antoninus, 120-180 A.D., the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, usually known by his first two names Marcus Aurelius, is the author of the well-known _Meditations_. The quotation is from Bk. VIII., “The gourd is bitter; drop it, then! There are brambles in the path; then turn aside! It is enough. Do not go on to argue, Why pray have these things a place in the world?” etc.

These quotations from Ouida may serve to illustrate the saying of Pliny the Elder, “No book is so bad but some good may be got out of it” (Pliny’s Letters, III., 10)—a saying which was no doubt true until printing let loose on the world such a multitude of worthless writers.

* * * * *

WHEN WE ALL ARE ASLEEP

When He returns, and finds the World so drear— All sleeping,—young and old, unfair and fair, Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear, “Awaken!” or for pity’s sake forbear,— Saying, “How shall I meet their frozen stare Of wonder, and their eyes so full of fear? How shall I comfort them in their despair, If they cry out, ‘Too late! let us sleep here’?” Perchance He will not wake us up, but when He sees us look so happy in our rest, Will murmur, “Poor dead women and dead men! Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest. Wherefore awake them into life again? Let them sleep on untroubled—it is best.”

R. BUCHANAN.

* * * * *

CHORUS

Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears; Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite; Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea; And dust of the labouring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after And death beneath and above, For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, They filled his body with life; Eyesight and speech they wrought For the veils of the soul therein, A time for labour and thought, A time to serve and to sin; They gave him light in his ways, And love, and a space for delight, And beauty and length of days, And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire; With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap; His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep.

SWINBURNE (_Atalanta in Calydon_).

* * * * *

She (the ship of Odysseus) came to the limits of the world, to the deep flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared to us.

There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with sweet wine and for the third time with water.... When I had besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth, and lo, the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens with griefs yet fresh at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear gat hold on me.... I drew the sharp sword from my thigh and sat there, suffering not the strengthless heads of the dead to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias....

Anon came up the soul of my mother dead, Anticleia, the daughter of Autolycus, the great-hearted, whom I left alive when I departed for sacred Ilios. At the sight of her I wept, and was moved with compassion, yet even so, for all my sore grief, I suffered her not to draw nigh to the blood, ere I had word of Teiresias.

Anon came the soul of Theban Teiresias, with a golden sceptre in his hand, and he knew me and spake unto me: “Son of Laertes of the seed of Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, what seekest thou _now_, wretched man—wherefore hast thou left the sunlight and come hither to behold the dead and a land desolate of joy? Nay, hold off from the ditch and draw back thy sharp sword, that I may drink of the blood and tell thee sooth.” So spake he, and I put up my silver-studded sword into the sheath, and when he had drunk the dark blood, even then did the noble seer speak unto me....

ODYSSEY, Bk. XI. (_Butcher & Lang’s translation_).

In this weird scene Odysseus is summoning the shade of Teiresias from the under-world. He has with his sword to keep off the host of spirits, including that of his own mother, whom the spilt blood has attracted—and the hero is himself terrified at the awful spectacle.

What adds to the interest of such a passage is that to the ancient Greeks this was no imaginary picture but a statement of actual facts. It will be observed that the dead live in a dark land, “desolate of joy.”

To the little-travelled Greeks the ocean was a _river_.

* * * * *

For—see your cellarage! There are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand Some five or six are abroach: the rest Stand spigoted, fauceted. Try and test What yourselves call best of the very best! How comes it that still untouched they stand? Why don’t you try tap, advance a stage With the rest in cellarage? For—see your cellarage! There are four big butts of Milton’s brew, How comes it you make old drips and drops Do duty, and there devotion stops? Leave such an abyss of malt and hops Embellied in butts which bungs still glue? You hate your bard! A fig for your rage! Free him from cellarage!

R. BROWNING (_Epilogue to Pacchiarotto and other Poems_).

* * * * *

Though the seasons of man full of losses Make empty the years full of youth, If but one thing be constant in crosses, Change lays not her hand upon truth; Hopes die, and their tombs are for token That the grief as the joy of them ends Ere time that breaks all men has broken The faith between friends.

Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the heaven has one; Though the skies be discrowned of the sunlight And the earth dispossessed of the sun, They have moonlight and sleep for repayment, When, refreshed as a bride and set free, With stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sinks on the sea.

SWINBURNE (_Dedication, 1865_).

It is hardly possible for a younger generation to realize the almost intoxicating effect produced upon us by Swinburne’s new melodies. Although the _Poems and Ballads_ were largely erotic, the curious fact is that we were too much carried away by the beauty and swing of his verse to trouble about the sensual element in it. That element was in itself an _artificial_ production and not a reflection of the poet’s own emotions, for he was free from sensuality. It was with us more a question of _music_. Swinburne himself preferred a musical word or line to one that would more aptly express his meaning; and in the “Dedication,” from which the above verses are quoted, several lines will not bear analysis. However, this was one of our favourites among his poems.

O daughters of dreams and of stories That life is not wearied of yet, Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, Félise and Yolande and Juliette, Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you, When sleep, that is true or that seems, Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you, O daughters of dreams?

They are past as a slumber that passes, As the dew of a dawn of old time; More frail than the shadows on glasses, More fleet than a wave or a rhyme. As the waves after ebb drawing seaward, When their hollows are full of the night, So the birds that flew singing to me-ward Recede out of sight.

He asks that his wild “storm-birds of passion” may find a home in our calmer world:—

In their wings though the sea-wind yet quivers, Will you spare not a space for them there Made green with the running of rivers And gracious with temperate air; In the fields and the turreted cities, That cover from sunshine and rain Fair passions and bountiful pities And loves without stain?

In a land of clear colours and stories, In a region of shadowless hours, Where earth has a garment of glories And a murmur of musical flowers; In woods where the spring half uncovers The flush of her amorous face, By the waters that listen for lovers For these is there place?

Though the world of your hands be more gracious And lovelier in lordship of things Clothed round by sweet art with the spacious Warm heaven of her imminent wings, Let them enter, unfledged and nigh fainting, For the love of old loves and lost times; And receive in your palace of painting This revel of rhymes.

Then come the final verses quoted above. These are somewhat detached in meaning from the rest, and form a sort of _Envoi_: “Whatever changes or passes, there is always some beautiful thing that survives.”

As might be expected Swinburne was much parodied (and indeed in the _Heptalogia_ and in the poems lately published he parodied himself). The above poem has been cleverly parodied by a lawyer, Sir Frederick Pollock. (Although parodies go as far back as the Fifth Century B.C. I know of no other lawyer who, _qua_ lawyer, has successfully taken a hand in the game.) In his parody Pollock’s subject was the great changes effected by the Judicature Act, when the old Courts of Common Law, Chancery, and others were consolidated into one Supreme Court, and the various classes of business assigned to different “Divisions.” Also owing to changes in procedure, much of the old technical learning became obsolete. His last verse is as follows (compare with the second verse quoted above):

Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle To divers Divisions of one, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone, We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment, Not sinking the fees.

* * * * *

Wulf died, as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved all righteous and noble souls, had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked, ‘Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?’ “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw his bearskin cloak around him—“He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people.” And so he died unbaptized, and went to his own place.

CHARLES KINGSLEY (_Hypatia_).

This story appears in several old chronicles (_Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. X, 33_), but the name should be Radbod. He was Duke or Chief of the Frisians, and the episode probably occurred in Heligoland, from which island he ruled his people.

* * * * *

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.... In the morning I awake, and find the old world, wife, babes and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world, and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway.

R. W. EMERSON (Essay on _Experience_).

* * * * *

The bee draws forth from fruit and flower Sweet dews, that swell his golden dower; But never injures by his kiss Those who have made him rich in bliss.

The moth, though tortured by the flame, Still hovers round and loves the same: Nor is his fond attachment less: “Alas!” he whispers, “can it be, Spite of my ceaseless tenderness, That I am doomed to death by thee?”

AZY EDDIN ELMOGADESSI (_L. S. Costello’s translation_).

* * * * *

A pine-tree stands all lonely On a northern hill-top bare, And, wrapped in its snowy mantle, It slumbers peacefully there.

Its dreams are of a palm-tree, Far-off in the morning land, Which in lone silence sorrows On a burning, rocky strand.

HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856)

* * * * *

Many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake. ... Then in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake.

WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude_, Bk. V).

* * * * *

THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE GRINDER

FRIEND OF HUMANITY.

“Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order; Bleak blows the blast—your hat has got a hole in’t, So have your breeches!

“Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, what hard work ’tis crying all day ‘Knives and Scissors to grind O!’”

“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives? Did some rich man tyrannically use you? Was it the squire? or parson of the parish? Or the attorney?

“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining? Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little All in a lawsuit?

(“Have you not read the ‘Rights of Man,’ by Tom Paine?) Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids, Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your Pitiful story.”

KNIFE-GRINDER.

“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir, Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers, This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were Torn in a scuffle.

“Constables came up, for to take me into Custody; they took me before the justice; Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish- -stocks for a vagrant.

“I should be glad to drink your Honour’s health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir.”

FRIEND OF HUMANITY.

“_I_ give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn’d first— Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance— Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast!”

(_Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy._)

GEORGE CANNING (_The Anti-Jacobin_).

Written in Sapphics and said to be a parody of a poem of Southey’s, which was afterwards suppressed.

* * * * *

I loved him, but my reason bade prefer Duty to love, reject the tempter’s bribe Of rose and lily when each path diverged, And either I must pace to life’s far end As love should lead me, or, as duty urged, Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend.... But deep within my heart of hearts there hid Ever the confidence, amends for all, That heaven repairs what wrong earth’s journey did, When love from life-long exile comes at call.

R. BROWNING (_Bifurcation_, 1876)

The lady prefers Duty to Love, but she will remain constant to her lover, and reunion with him in heaven will make amends for all. (In the remainder of the poem Browning puts the case of the lover who, although deserted, is expected to remain constant through life—and who falls. The lady had disobeyed Love, because of the hardship and trouble that would follow, and Browning, whose own married life had been a most happy one, says this was no excuse.)

* * * * *

We are scratched, or we are bitten By the pets to whom we cling; Oh, my Love she is a kitten, And my heart’s a ball of string.

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

* * * * *

Some man of quality Who—breathing musk from lace-work and brocade, His solitaire amid the flow of frill, Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back, And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist.— Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase, ’Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon Where mirrors multiply the girandole.

R. BROWNING (_The Ring and the Book, I_).

This and the next five quotations are word-pictures (see p. 85).

* * * * *

“Oh, what are you waiting for here, young man? What are you looking for over the bridge?” A little straw hat with streaming blue ribbons; —And here it comes dancing over the bridge!

JAMES THOMSON (B.V.) (_Sunday up the River_).

* * * * *

Down in yonder greenè field There lies a knight slain under his shield; His hounds they lie down at his feet, So well do they their master keep.

ANON. (_The Three Ravens_).

* * * * *

When we cam’ in by Glasgow toun, We were a comely sight to see; My Love was clad in the black velvet, And I mysel’ in cramasie. crimson

ANON. (_O waly, waly, up the bank_).

* * * * *

They see the Heroes Sitting in the dark ship On the foamless, long-heaving, Violet sea, At sunset nearing The Happy Islands.

M. ARNOLD (_The Strayed Reveller_).

* * * * *

Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

COLERIDGE (_The Ancient Mariner_).

The above are from a series of word-pictures (see p. 85.)

* * * * *

We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom; and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man—not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability.

BACON.

* * * * *

Cunning, being the ape of wisdom, is the most distant from it that can be. And as an ape for the likeness it has to a man—wanting what really should make him so—is by so much the uglier, cunning is only the want of understanding, which, because it cannot compass its ends by direct ways, would do it by a trick and circumvention.

JOHN LOCKE (_Some Thoughts Concerning Education_, 1693).

* * * * *

A rogue is a roundabout fool; a fool _in circumbendibus_.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

* * * * *

It is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown men can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more supernal thunder.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Mill on the Floss_).

* * * * *

Let its teaching (the teaching of scientific and other books of information, the “literature of knowledge”) be even partially revised, let it be expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of power (poetry and what is generally known as _literature_), surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men.... The Iliad, the Prometheus of Æschylus—the Othello or King Lear—the Hamlet or Macbeth—and the Paradise Lost, are triumphant for ever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never _can_ transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce _these_ in new forms, or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo.

DE QUINCEY (_Alexander Pope_).

De Quincey’s division of literature into “literature of power” and “literature of knowledge” still remains a useful classification.

* * * * *

A man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is in him.

SYDNEY SMITH.

* * * * *

How brew the brave drink, Life? Take of the herb hight morning joy, Take of the herb hight evening rest, Pour in pain, lest bliss should cloy, Shake in sin to give it zest— Then down with the brave drink, Life!

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

I had this attributed to Robert Burton, but cannot find it in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_. It may possibly be from Richard Brathwaite, whose works I think were at one time attributed to Burton; but I have no opportunity of consulting them.

* * * * *

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good work, therefore, I can do or show to any fellow creature, let me do it now! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

WILLIAM PENN.

I find that there has been much discussion in _Notes and Queries_ and elsewhere as to the origin of this quotation, and it is now usually attributed to the French-American Quaker, Stephen Grellet. As, however, Bartlett’s _Familiar Quotations_ gives “I shall not pass this way again” as a favourite saying of William Penn’s, it seems more reasonable to consider him the author of the above.

* * * * *

Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

DISRAELI (_Coningsby_).

* * * * *