Part 28

We come next to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Lovelace. Three short pieces of Lovelace’s have lived, and deserved to live: “To Lucasta from Prison,” “To Lucasta on going to the Wars,” and “The Grasshopper.” They are graceful, airy, and nicely finished. The last especially is a charming poem, delicate in expression, and full of quaint fancy, which only in the latter half is strained to conceit. As the verses of a gentleman they are among the best, though not of a very high order as poetry. He is to be classed with the _lucky_ authors who, without great powers, have written one or two pieces so facile in thought and fortunate in phrase as to be carried lightly in the memory, poems in which analysis finds little, but which are charming in their frail completeness. This faculty of hitting on the precise _lilt_ of thought and measure that shall catch the universal ear and sing themselves in everybody’s memory, is a rare gift. We have heard many ingenious persons try to explain the _cling_ of such a poem as “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” and the result of all seemed to be, that there were certain verses that were good, not because of their goodness, but because one could not forget them. They have the great merit of being portable, and we have to carry so much luggage through life, that we should be thankful for what will pack easily and take up no room.

All that Lovelace wrote beside these three poems is utterly worthless, mere chaff from the threshing of his wits. Take out the four pages on which they are printed, and we have two hundred and eighty-nine left of the sorriest stuff that ever spoiled paper. The poems are obscure, without anything in them to reward perseverance, dull without being moral, and full of conceits so far-fetched that we could wish the author no worse fate than to carry them back to where they came from. We are no enemies to what are commonly called conceits, but authors bear them, as heralds say, with a difference. And a terrible difference it is! With men like Earle, Donne, Fuller, Butler, Marvell, and even Quarles, conceit means wit; they would carve the merest cherry-stone of thought in the quaintest and delicatest fashion. But with duller and more painful writers, such as Gascoyne, Marston, Fe11tham, and a score of others, even with cleverer ones like Waller, Crashawe, and Suckling, where they insisted on being fine, their wit is conceit. Difficulty without success is perhaps the least tolerable kind of writing. Mere stupidity is a natural failing; we skip and pardon. But the other is Dulness in a domino, that travesties its familiar figure, and lures us only to disappoint. These unhappy verses of Lovelace’s had been dead and lapt in congenial lead these two hundred years;--what harm had they done Mr. Hazlitt that he should disinter them? There is no such disenchanter of peaceable reputations as one of these resurrectionmen of literature, who will not let mediocrities rest in the grave, where the kind sexton, Oblivion, had buried them, but dig them up to make a profit on their lead.

Of all Mr. Smith’s editors, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is the worst. He is at times positively incredible, worse even than Mr. Halliwell, and that is saying a good deal. Worthless as Lovelace’s poems were, they should have been edited correctly, if edited at all. Even dulness and dirtiness have a right to fair play, and to be dull and dirty in their own way. Mr. Hazlitt has allowed all the misprints of the original (or by far the greater part of them) to stand, but he has ventured on many emendations of the text, and in every important instance has blundered, and that, too, even where the habitual practice of his author in the use of words might have led him right. The misapprehension shown in some of his notes is beyond the belief of any not familiar with the way in which old books are edited in England by the job. We have brought a heavy indictment, and we proceed to our proof, choosing only cases where there can be no dispute. We should premise that Mr. Hazlitt professes to have corrected the punctuation.

“And though he sees it full of wounds, Cruel one, still he wounds it. (p. 34.)

Here the original reads, “Cruel still on,” and the only correction needed was a comma after “cruel.”

“And by the glorious light Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft, Only the jelly’s left.” (p. 41.)

The original has “of which,” and rightly, for “their spheres bereft” is parenthetic, and the sense is “of which only the jelly’s left.” Lovelace is speaking of the eyes of a mistress who has grown old, and his image, confused as it is, is based on the belief that stars shooting from their spheres fell to the earth as jellies,--a belief, by the way, still to be met with in New England.

Lovelace, describing a cow (and it is one of the few pretty passages in the volume), says,--

“She was the largest, goodliest beast That ever mead or altar blest, Round as her udder, and more white Than is the Milky-Way in night.” (p. 64.)

Mr. Hazlitt changes to “Round was her udder,” thus making that white instead of the cow, as Lovelace intended. On the next page we read,--

“She takes her leave o’ th’ mournful neat, Who, by her toucht, now prizeth her life, Worthy alone the hollowed knife.”

Compare Chapman (Iliads, xviii. 480):--

“Slew all their white fleec’d sheep and _neat_.”

The original was “prize their life,” and the use of “neat” as a singular in this way is so uncommon, if not unprecedented, and the verse as corrected so halting, that we have no doubt Lovelace so wrote it. Of course “hollowed” should be “hallowed,” though the broader pronunciation still lingers in our country pulpits.

“What need she other bait or charm But look? or angle but her arm?” (p. 65.)

So the original, which Mr. Hazlitt, missing the sense, has changed to “what hook or angle.”

“Fly Joy on wings of Popinjays To courts of fools _where_ as your plays Die laught at and forgot.” (p. 67.)

The original has “there.” Read,--

“Fly, Joy, on wings of popinjays To courts of fools; there, as your plays, Die,” &c.

“Where as,” as then used, would make it the “plays” that were to die.

“As he Lucasta nam’d, a groan Strangles the fainting passing tone; But as she heard, Lucasta smiles, Posses her round; she’s slipt meanwhiles Behind the blind of a thick bush.” (p. 68.)

Mr. Hazlitt’s note on “posses” could hardly be matched by any member of the _posse comitatus_ taken at random:--

“This word does not appear to have any very exact meaning. See Halliwell’s _Dictionary of Archaic Words_, art. Posse, and Worcester’s Dict., _ibid._, &c. The context here requires _to turn sharply or quickly._”

The “_ibid._, &c.” is delightful; in other words, “find out the meaning of _posse_ for yourself.” Though dark to Mr. Hazlitt, the word has not the least obscurity in it. It is only another form of _push_, nearer the French _pousser_, from Latin _pulsare_, and “the context here requires” nothing more than that an editor should read a poem if he wish to understand it. The plain meaning is,--

“But, as she heard _Lucasta_, smiles Possess her round.”

That is, when she heard the name _Lucasta_,--for thus far in the poem she has passed under the pseudonyme of _Amarantha_. “Possess her round” is awkward, but mildly so for Lovelace, who also spells “commandress” in the same way with a single _s_. _Process_ is spelt _prosses_ in the report of those who absented themselves from Church in Stratford.

“O thou, that swing’st upon the waving eare, Of some well-filled oaten beard.” (p. 94.)

Mr. Hazlitt, for some inscrutable reason, has changed “haire” to “eare” in the first line, preferring the ear of a _beard_ to its hair!

Mr. Hazlitt prints,--

“Poor verdant foole! and now green ice, thy joys Large and as lasting as thy peirch of grass, Bid us lay in ’gainst winter raine and poize Their flouds with an o’erflowing glasse.” (p. 95.)

Surely we should read:--

“Poor verdant foole and now green ice, thy joys, Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass, _Bid_,” &c.

i. e. “Poor fool now frozen, the shortness of thy joys, who mad’st no provision against winter, warns us to do otherwise.”

“The radiant gemme was brightly set In as divine a carkanet; Of which the clearer was not knowne Her minde or her complexion.” (p. 101.)

The original reads rightly “for which,” &c., and, the passage being rightly pointed, we have,--

“For which the clearer was not known, Her mind or her complexion.”

Of course “complexion” had not its present limited meaning.

“ ... my future daring bayes Shall bow itself.” (p. 107.)

“We should read _themselves_,” says Mr. Hazlitt’s note authoritatively. Of course a noun ending in _s_ is plural! Not so fast. In spite of the dictionaries, _bays_ was often used in the singular.

“Do plant a sprig of cypress, not of bays,”

says Robert Randolph in verses prefixed to his brother’s poems; and Fe11tham in “Jonsonus Virbius,”

“A greener bays shall crown Ben Jonson’s name.”

But we will cite Mr. Bayes himself:--

“And, where he took _it_ up, resigns the _bays_.”

“But we (defend us!) are divine, [Not] female, but madam born, and come From a right-honorable wombe.” (p. 115.)

Here Mr. Hazlitt has ruined both sense and metre by his unhappy “not.” We should read “Female, but madam-born,” meaning clearly enough “we are women, it is true, but of another race.”

“In every hand [let] a cup be found That from all hearts a health may sound.” (p. 121.)

Wrong again, and the inserted “let” ruinous to the measure. Is it possible that Mr. Hazlitt does not understand so common an English construction as this?

“First told thee into th’ ayre, then to the ground.” (p. 141.)

Mr. Hazlitt inserts the “to,” which is not in the original, from another version. Lovelace wrote “ayër.” We have noted two other cases (pp. 203 and 248) where he makes the word a dissyllable. On the same page we have “shewe’s” changed to “shew” because Mr. Hazlitt did not know it meant “show us” and not “shows.” On page 170, “their” is substituted for “her,” which refers to Lucasta, and could refer to nothing else.

Mr. Hazlitt changes “quarrels _the_ student Mercury” to “quarrels _with_,” not knowing that _quarrels_ was once used as a transitive verb. (p. 189.)

Wherever he chances to notice it, Mr. Hazlitt changes the verb following two or more nouns connected by an “and” from singular to plural. For instance:--

“You, sir, alone, fame, and all conquering rhyme File the set teeth,” &c. (p. 224.)

for “files.” Lovelace commonly writes so;--on p. 181, where it escaped Mr. Hazlitt’s grammatical eye, we find,--

“But broken faith, and th’ cause of it, All damning gold, _was_ damned to the pit.”

Indeed, it was usual with writers of that day. Milton in one of his sonnets has,--

“Thy worth and skill _exempts_ thee from the throng,”--

and Leigh Hunt, for the sake of the archaism, in one of his, “Patience and Gentleness _is_ power.”

Weariness, and not want of matter, compels us to desist from further examples of Mr. Hazlitt’s emendations. But we must also give a few specimens of his notes, and of the care with which he has corrected the punctuation.

In a note on “flutes of canary” (p. 76) too long to quote, Mr. Hazlitt, after citing the glossary of Nares (edition of 1859, by Wright and Halliwell, a very careless book, to speak mildly), in which _flute_ is conjectured to mean _cask_, says that he is not satisfied, but adds, “I suspect that a flute _of canary_ was so called from the cask having several vent-holes.” But flute means simply a tall glass. Lassel, describing the glass-making at Murano, says, “For the High Dutch they have high glasses called _Flutes_, a full yard long.” So in Dryden’s _Sir Martin Mar-all_, “bring two flute-_glasses_ and some stools, ho! We’ll have the ladies’ health.” The origin of the word, though doubtful, is probably nearer to _flood_ than _flute_. But conceive of two gentlemen, members of one knows not how many learned societies, like Messrs. Wright and Halliwell, pretending to edit Nares, when they query a word which they could have found in any French or German dictionary!

On page 93 we have,--

“Hayle, holy cold! chaste temper, hayle! the fire Raved o’er my purer thoughts I feel t’ expire.”

Mr. Hazlitt annotates thus: “_Rav’d_ seems here to be equivalent to _reav’d_ or _bereav’d_. Perhaps the correct reading may be ’reav’d.’ See Worcester’s _Dictionary_, art. RAVE?, where Menage’s supposition of affinity between _rave_ and _bereave_ is perhaps a little too slightingly treated.”

The meaning of Lovelace was, “the fire _that_ raved.” But what Mr. Hazlitt would make with “reaved o’er my purer thoughts,” we cannot conceive. On the whole, we think he must have written the note merely to make his surprising glossological suggestion. All that Worcester does for the etymology, by the way, is to cite Richardson, no safe guide.

“Where now one _so so_ spatters, t’other: no!” (p. 112.)

The comma in this verse has, of course, no right there, but Mr. Hazlitt leaves the whole passage so corrupt that we cannot spend time in disinfecting it. We quote it only for the sake of his note on “_so so_.” It is marvellous.

“An exclamation of approval when an actor made a hit. The corruption seems to be somewhat akin to the Italian, ’_si, si_,’ a corruption of ’_sia, sia_.’”

That the editor of an English poet need not understand Italian we may grant, but that he should not know the meaning of a phrase so common in his own language as _so-so_ is intolerable. Lovelace has been saying that a certain play might have gained applause under certain circumstances, but that everybody calls it _so-so_,--something very different from “an exclamation of approval,” one should say. The phrase answers exactly to the Italian _così così_, while _sì_ (not _si_) is derived from _sic_, and is analogous with the affirmative use of the German so and the Yankee _jes’ so_.

“Oh, how he hast’ned death, burnt to be fryed!” (p. 141.)

The note on _fryed_ is,--

“I. e. freed. _Free_ and _freed_ were sometimes pronounced like _fry_ and _fryed_; for Lord North, in his _Forest of Varieties_, 1645, has these lines:--

’Birds that long have lived free, Caught and cag’d, but pine and die.’

Here evidently _free_ is intended to rhyme with _die_.”

“Evidently!” An instance of the unsafeness of rhyme as a guide to pronunciation. It was _die_ that had the sound of _dee_, as everybody (but Mr. Hazlitt) knows. Lovelace himself rhymes _die_ and _she_ on p. 269. But what shall we say to our editor’s not knowing that _fry_ was used formerly where we should say _burn_? Lovers used to _fry_ with love, whereas now they have got out of the frying-pan into the fire. In this case a martyr is represented as burning (i. e. longing) to be fried (i. e. burned).

“Her beams ne’er shed or change like th’ hair of day.” (p. 224.)

Mr. Hazlitt’s note is,--

“_Hair_ is here used in what has become quite an obsolete sense. The meaning is outward form, nature, or character. The word used to be by no means uncommon; but it is now, as was before remarked, out of fashion; and indeed I do not think that it is found even in any old writer used exactly in the way in which Lovelace has employed it.”

We should think not, as Mr. Hazlitt understands it! Did he never hear of the golden hair of Apollo,--of the _intonsum Cynthium_? Don Quixote was a better scholar where he speaks of _las doradas hebras de sus hermosos cabellos_. But _hair_ never meant what Mr. Hazlitt says it does, even when used as he supposes it to be here. It had nothing to do with “outward form, nature, or character,” but had a meaning much nearer what we express by temperament, which its color was and is thought to indicate.

On p. 232 “_wild_ ink” is explained to mean “_unrefined_.” It is a mere misprint for “_vild_.”

Page 237, Mr. Hazlitt, explaining an illusion of Lovelace to the “east and west” in speaking of George Sandys, mentions Sandys’s Oriental travels, but seems not to know that he translated Ovid in Virginia.

Pages 251, 252:--

“And as that soldier conquest doubted not, Who but one splinter had of Castriot, But would assault ev’n death, so strongly charmed, And naked oppose rocks, with this bone armed.”

Mr. Hazlitt reads _his_ for _this_ in the last verse, and his note on “bone” is:--

“And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. (Judges xv. 15.)”

Could the farce of “editing” go further? To make a “splinter of Castriot” an ass’s jawbone is a little too bad. We refer Mr. Hazlitt to “The Life of George Castriot, King of Epirus and Albania,” &c., &c., (Edinburgh, 1753,) p. 32, for an explanation of this profound difficulty. He will there find that the Turkish soldiers wore relics of Scanderbeg as charms.

Perhaps Mr. Hazlitt’s most astounding note is on the word _pickear_. (p. 203.)

“So within shot she doth pickear, Now gall’s [galls] the flank and now the rear.”

“In the sense in which it is here used this word seems to be peculiar to Lovelace. _To pickear_, or _pickeer_, means _to skirmish_.” And, pray, what other possible meaning can it have here?

Of his corrections of the press we will correct a few samples.

Page 34, for “Love _nee’re_ his standard,” read “_neere_.” Page 82, for “fall _too_,” read “fall _to_” (or, as we ought to print such words, “fall-to”). Page 83, for “star-made firmament,” read “star, made firmament.” Page 161, for “To look their enemies _in_ their hearse,” read, both for sense and metre, _into_. Page 176, for “the gods _have_ kneeled,” read _had_. Page 182, for “In beds they tumbled _off_ their own,” read _of_. Page 184, for “in mine one monument I lie,” read _owne_. Page 212, for “Deucalion’s _black_flung stone,” read “backflung.” Of the punctuation we shall give but one specimen, and that a fair average one:--

“Naso to his Tibullus flung the wreath, He to Catullus thus did each bequeath. This glorious circle, to another round, At last the temples of a god it bound.”

Our readers over ten years of age will easily correct this for themselves.

* * * * *

Time brings to obscure authors[30] an odd kind of reparation, an immortality, not of love and interest and admiration, but of curiosity merely. In proportion as their language was uncouth, provincial, or even barbarous, their value becomes the greater. A book of which only a single copy escaped its natural enemies, the pastry-cook and trunk-maker, may contain one word that makes daylight in some dark passage of a great author, and its name shall accordingly live forever in a note. Is not, then, a scholiastic athanasy better than none? And if literary vanity survive death, or even worse, as Brunetto Latini’s made him insensible for a moment to the rain of fire and the burning sand, the authors of such books as are not properly literature may still comfort themselves with a _non omnis moriar_, laying a mournful emphasis on the adjective, and feeling that they have not lived wholly in vain while they share with the dodo a fragmentary continuance on earth. To be sure, the immortality, such as it is, belongs less to themselves than to the famous men they help to illustrate. If they escape oblivion, it is by a back door, as it were, and they survive only in fine print at the page’s foot. At the banquet of fame they sit below the salt. After all, perhaps, the next best thing to being famous or infamous is to be utterly forgotten, for this also is to achieve a kind of definite result by living. To hang on the perilous edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any moment to drop into the fathomless ooze of oblivion, is at best a questionable beatitude. And yet sometimes the merest barnacles that have attached themselves to the stately keels of Dante or Shakespeare or Milton have an interest of their own by letting us know in what remote waters those hardy navigators went a pearl-fishing. Has not Mr. Dyce traced Shakespeare’s “dusty death” to Anthony Copley, and Milton’s “back resounded Death!” to Abraham Fraunce? Nay, is it not Bernard de Ventadour’s lark that sings forever in the diviner air of Dante’s Paradise?

“Quan vey laudeta mover De joi sas alas contra’l rai, Que s’oblida e s laissa cazer Per la doussor qu ’al cor li ’n vai.”

“Qual lodoletta che in aere si spazia, Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta Dell’ ultima dolcezza che la sazia.”

We are not sure that Bernard’s “Que s’oblida es laissa cazer” is not sweeter than Dante’s “tace contenta,” but it was plainly the _doussor_ that gave its cue to the greater poet’s memory, and he has improved on it with that exquisite _ultima_, as his master Virgil sometimes did on Homer.