t LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. $ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ GEOFFREY CHAUCER. [From a manuscript copy, in vellum, of the " Canterbury Tales," adorned with marginal paintings, in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford.] HOME PICTURES *jt/i..a^' OF ENGLISH POETS, FOE FIRESIDE AND SCHOOL-ROOM. xm*-. NEW YOKE: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 1869. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by D. APPLETON <& CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PEE FACE. The writer, in the following Sketches of our best English Poets, from old Father Chancer to the short- lived Burns, has attempted to interest the young stu- dent by making of each life a story as well as a lesson. It has been her aim to introduce these men of genius familiarly to her readers, that they may shake hands as good friends through the medium of a book. The style is intentionally informal and colloquial, in order to attract those who might neglect elaborate works on English Literature, and to lead them to a more thorough and extensive exploration in the same direction. K A. S. Hanover, N. H., September 10, 1868. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAUCER 7 SPENSER SO SHAKESPEARE . . .45 MILTON 64 DRYDEN 85 ADDISON . . 104 SWIFT . . .121 POPE 139 YOUNG 155 THOMSON 162 GRAY * .178 JOHNSON 192 GOLDSMITH . .218 COWPER 247 BURNS 267 OHAUOEE. " Dan Chancer, well of English undefyled, On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be fyled." Shining brightly in the twilight period of English literature, appears the name of Geoffrey Chaucer. - He is often called Dan Chaucer, as in the quotation"; a title of respect, originally " Don " * or Lord. Southey says, that the line of English poets begins with him, as that of English kings with William the Conqueror. He is styled the " Father of English poetry ; " " the loadstar of the language," and extolled as 11 The morning-star of song, who made His music heard below ; * From the Latin Dominus. b HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still." The poets before him are almost forgotten, and you could not even read their rhymes without some Study ; so much does the old English differ from our own. A short lyric from an unknown poet of the thirteenth century will show the state of the English language at that time. The theme is the uncertainty of life : " Winter wakeneth all my care ; Now these leaves waxeth bare. Oft I sigh and mourn sare, When it cometh in my thought. Of this world's joy, how it goth all to nought. Now it is and now it n'is (is not). All so it ne'er n'were I wis ; That many men saith sooth it is, All go'th but Godes will. All we shall die, though us like ill. All that grain me groweth green, Now it falloweth nil by-dene (fadeth presently), Jesu help that it be seen, And shield us from hell ; For I n'ot (know not) whither I shall, Ne how long here dwell." Those early days in " Merrie England " were the days of feudalism, which, you know, is the exact reverse of re- publicanism, the government of which we are now so proud. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the height of the feudal system, and the commencement of its decline. In our country the basis of honor and power is the people, but in theirs it was the king, from whom all classes took their power, and on whom they were de- pendent, while the common people were mere slaves, to do his bidding. CHAUCER. 9 Society was divided into nobles and serfs. Under the great barons were lesser barons, under these the yeomen, each owing military service to the class above them. The barons lived in strong castles, in plenty and wealth ; the poor in miserable hovels, often nothing but mud cottages, with rotten thatches. Very few houses had windows, only loopholes to look from, and chimneys were rare. The fire was usually placed in an iron grate in the centre of the room, the smoke escaping at the open, blackened roof. At meals, the family were seated before the table was laid, with hands carefully washed, as forks were unknown, and fingers had to be freely used. Travelling minstrels would often come in during the meal, and were well supplied with food and wine, for the songs they sung and the stories they told. They danced as well as sung, and were ex- perts in the art of legerdemain ; always welcome at the marriage feast, or other gay festivals. " Merry it is in halle to here the harpe, . The minstrelles synge, the jogelours carpe." f They often received handsome and costly gifts ; for instance, a certain earl gave to his host's minstrels, " gowns of cloth of gold, furred with ermyne, valued at 200 franks." Masques and brilliant pageants, tourna- ments, archery, hunting, and wrestling, were the amuse- ments of the age. A hawk was the symbol of nobility. Enormous prices were paid for these birds, and men of rank were seldom seen without one or more of them, taking them o even to war and to church. They bequeathed their favor- ite falcon, in their wills, to their dearest friend, <&nd a pathetic tale is told of a young nobleman, who, after sacri- ficing every thing in pursuit of a haughty dame, resolved to dress his hawk for her dinner, as the last and greatest 10 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. proof of his love. Chaucer's poems are full of allusions to the art of hawking ; one of them, indeed, " The Parlia- ment of Love" is quite devoted to that subject. Much cannot be said for the morality of the age. The monks were too often corrupt and gluttonous hypocrites ; the barons spent much of their time in feasting and fight- ing; and the poor, with their rough garments seldom changed by night or day, grew sullen and reckless. A writer of those times describes a poor ploughman and his half-starved family. The man is in rags from head to foot ; " his ton (toes) toteden (peeped) out," and his oxen are so starved that men might " reckon each a rib." Here is a touching picture, as we know the distress was real: " His wife walked him with With a long goad In a cutted coat, Cutted full high ; Wrapped in a winnow sheet To wearen her from weathers. Barefoot on the bare ice, That the blood followed. And at the land's end layeth A little crumb bowl. And thereon lay a little child Lapped in clouts ; And twins of two years' old, Upon another side. And all they sungen one song That sorrow was to hear ; — They crieden all one cry, A careful * note. The simple man sighed sore And said, " Children be still." Chaucer, though a close student of books (or rather manuscripts written on parchment, for books were then * Full of care. CHATTCEE. 11 almost unknown), was a great lover of nature, as may easily be seen from his writings. Early poetry, like ven- ison, has a flavor of the wild-woods ; its very words are redolent of nature. Bacon says, that what we call antiquity, was really the youth of the world, and Chaucer's poetry seems to breathe of a time when humanity was younger and more joyous-hearted than it now is. " The first great poet of any country has this advantage, that he converses with Nature directly, without an interpreter, and his utterances are not so much the echo of hers as in very deed her living voice ; carrying in them a spirit as original and divine, as the music of her running brooks, or of her breezes among the leaves." For this reason Chaucer's rhymes are still the freshest and greenest in our language, disfigured as they are by the coarseness of the times and obsolete spelling. Chaucer had a child's love for birds. Some of his best lines are descriptions of them and their sweet songs, and he could not bear to see them imprisoned. He says : " Where birds are fed in cages, Though you should day and night tend them like pages, And strew the bird's room fair and soft as silk, And give him sugar, honey, bread, and milk ; Yet had the bird, by twenty thousand-fold, Rather be in a forest, wild* and cold ; And right anon let but his door be up, And with his feet he spurneth down his cup, And to the woods will hie, and feed on worms. In that new college keepeth he his terms, And learneth love of his own proper kind — No gentleness of home his heart may bind." Like a child, too, he mourned over the decline of the charming illusions that, in his early days, had such power in the land. But the elf-haunted glades were so searched by the stern limitour (or friar licensed to beg within cer- 12 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. tain limits) that all the fairies were driven away, and danced no more at midnight on the moonlit greensward. There is something so comically pathetic in Chaucer's way of telling of this change, that I must give you his own words : u In olde dayes of the King Artour, All was this lond ful filled of faerie ; The elf-queen, with her jolly compaynie, Danced ful oft in many a grene mede, But now can no man see non elves mo, For the great charitee and prayeres Of limitoures, and other holy freres, That searchen every land and every streme. This maketh that there ben no faeries, For ther as wont to walken as an elf, Ther walketh now the limitour himself," He lived in stirring times and an illustrious age, the brightest ornament of the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., the one the ablest, and the other, perhaps, the weakest of all the English sovereigns. Wicexiffe, the first translator of the whole English Bible, was his contemporary, and I am sure a few words in regard to this great teacher and reformer will not be thought a useless digression. The Bible was to the mass of the people a sealed book, locked up in a dead and foreign tongue. Wickliife com- menced his " Apology " for his noble work in this way : " Oh Lord God ! sithin at the beginning of faith so many men translated into Latin, and to great profit of Latin men, let one simple creature of God translate into English for profit of Englishmen." Of course, the priests raged at this innovation, and abused him without mercy. They complained that " the Gospel is made vul- gar, and laid more open to the laity, and even to women who could read, than it used to be to the most learned of the clergy and those of the best understanding. And so CHAUCER. 13 the Gospel jewel or evangelical pearl is thrown about and trodden under foot of swine." They openly rejoiced at his death, which occurred in 1384, and the far-famed Council of Constance, which also condemned Huss and Jerome to the stake, determined, thirty years later, to wreak their vengeance on his bones, which by their decree were taken up and burned, and the ashes thrown into the waters of a brook which runs into the Avon. A poet of a later day thus alludes to this sacrilege : " The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea, And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad Wide as those waters be." " Quaint old Thomas Fuller " also remarks that " the ashes of "Wickliffe are the emblems of his doctrine, which are now dispersed all the world over." From this sturdy, unconquerable, outspoken, great- hearted reformer, our poet learned not only lessons of wisdom, but those religious doctrines which he ever after supported, though a Catholic by birth and education. There is much uncertainty about his early life, but we have good reason to believe that his father was a wealthy London merchant, and that his childhood was spent in that city. In the " Testament of Love," his longest prose work, we find these words : " Also the citye of London, that is to me so dere and swete, in which I was forth growen, and more kindly love have I to that place than to any other in yerth." He studied at Cambridge, and perhaps at Oxford also. His first poem, "The Court of Love," was written while at college, when only eighteen. An entry in some old register of the Inns of Court, stating that " Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscane friar in Fleet Street," is the only recorded event of his supposed law studies in the Inner Temple. 14 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. In some way he obtained the patronage of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and so well played the cour- tier's part, as to gain honor, preferment, position, and, above all, after eight years of faithful courtship, the hand of one of Queen Philippa's maids of honor, sister-in-law to the duke. In 1372, he was sent on an important mission to Genoa, and during this embassy visited Petrarch in Northern # Italy, who told him the story of " Patient Griselda," which he afterward wove into the " Canterbury Tales." " I woll tell a tale which that I Learned at Padowe of a worthy clerk, As preved by his wordes and his werk ; He is now dead and nailed in his chest ; I pray to God so yeve his soul rest. Francis Petrarch, the laureat poet, Highte this clerk, whose rhethoricke sweet Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie." How pleasant, in this prosy, matter-of-fact age, to look back to the fourteenth century, and picture the meeting of those master-minds ! Chaucer's path was now onward and upward, bright- ened by frequent tokens of royal favor ; not empty praise merely, but gold and silver, were generously given to the court poet by the brave old king. His cup was full of blessings, but, like other mortals, he was destined to trials and disappointment. When King Edward died, in 1377, Chaucer lost his best friend. For several years all went well ; but at last Richard quarrelled with the Duke of Lancaster, and Chau- cer nobly sided with his patron. He was accused of join- ing in a riot in London, and was obliged to flee to the Con- tinent. There he remained nearly two years, with his wife and children, "becoming at last almost penniless, through generosity to his fellow-exiles, and the failure of supplies from home, where his agents had treacherously CHAUCER. , 15 appropriated his rents." Perhaps it was at this time he addressed these verses to his purse : " TO MY PURSE. " To you, my purse, and to none other wight, Complain I, for ye be my lady dere ; I am sorry now that ye be light, For certes, now ye make me heavy chere : Me were as lefe be laid upon a bere, For which unto your mercy thus I crie, Be heavy again, or else mote I die. " Now vouchsafe this day, or it be night That I of you the blissful sound may here, Or see your color like the sunne bright ; That of yellownesse had never peere, Te are my life, ye be my herte's stere, I ween of comfort and good companie, Be heavy again, or else mote I die. u Now purse, thou art to me my live's light And saviour, as downe in this world here ; Out of this town helpe me by your might ; Sith that you will not be my treasure, For I am slave as nere as any frere, But I pray unto your curtesie, Be heavy again, or else mote I die." Literature had been confined to the monasteries, but Chaucer was a good-humored man of the world, a travel- ler, courtier, and scholar, and brought it to the market. The best part of his life was given to the translation of poems from the French and Italian, and it was not until the age of sixty that he commenced the " Canterbury- Tales," to which he owes his fame. They were never fin- ished, but the story-tellers are talking yet, and their voices, echoing from the past, tell us how the Englishman of the fourteenth century spoke, dressed, and acted, giving, with more fidelity than any painting, the follies, vices, and cus- toms of the age. 16 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. u Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay- As if they ne'er had died. He grouped and drew Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay, That still they live and breathe in fancy's view, Fresh beings, fraught with time's imperishable hue." Chaucer's plan was to describe in narrative poetry the men and manners of his day. This he does in his rugged tongue, with much quiet humor and keen satire, marred at times by the coarseness then too common. Lowell says of him : " His narrative flows on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes hastening a little in its eddies, seeming to run sunshine — sometimes gliding smoothly, while here and there a beautiful, quiet thought, a pure feeling, a golden-hearted verse, opens as quietly as a water-lily, and makes no ripple." He represents a company of pilgrims on a visit to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. They all hap- pen to lodge at the Tabard Inn, at Southwark — strangers to each other, thirty-two in number, if we include the story-teller himself, and the jolly, corpulent host of the Tabard, Harry Bailey, who, having often travelled the road before, proposes to go with them as guide, and at the same time suggests that the journey would seem less tedious if each were to tell a story as they ride — a supper to be given on their return to the one who had been most enter- taining. " In Southwark, at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury, with full devout corage, At night was come into that hostelrie, Wei nyne and twenty in a compayne Of sondry folks, by aventure i falle In felawschipe, and pilgrims were they alle, That toward Canterbury wolden ryde." This simple plot is the string upon which these pleas- ant stories are strung, and the number of personages in CHAUCER. 17 this motley but attractive cavalcade gave the poet a fine opportunity to describe the various classes of society. Every member of the party has a separate and individual interest, each character is a perfect picture in itself, each traveller represents a class, and in the entire company the whole society of that age stands again before us just as it was. The Tabard Inn, under the name of Talbot, is still pointed out in London, opposite Spurgeon's Tabernacle, as the very place where these pilgrims met five hundred years ago. But this seems rather improbable, as I write it, so I will add " they say," and a hope that you and I may some day see that venerable " hostelrie." As examples of our poet's humor, satire, and power, we have here a lawyer described as the busiest of mortals, with the sly addition, " And yet he seemed besier than he was ; " and, after an imposing list of the doctor's medical authori- ties, a droll line tells us that his study was but " litel on the Bible." But his severest satire is reserved for the monks and priests, with whom he is no more in love than when he beat the friar in Fleet Street, and their hypocrisy and lack of spirituality are described with zest. He tells us of a " gentil pardonere " or seller of indul- gences, who, brimful of pardons, came from Rome all hot, who carried in his wallet the Virgin Mary's veil, and a part of the sail of St. Peter's ship, and in a glass he* had " pigg es bones " for relics, and with these he made more money in a day than the poor parson did in two months. His description of the parson, a simple man of God, is considered one of the best : 11 A good man there was of religion, That was a poore parson of a town, But rich he was of holy thought and werk ; 18 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. He was also a learned man, a clerk, That Christe's gospel truly woulde preach : His parishens devoutly would he teach. Benign he was and wonder diligent, And in adversity full patient. Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder, But he ne left nought, for no rain nor thunder, In sickness and in mischief to visit The farthest in his parish much and lite, Upon his feet, and in his hands a staff; This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, That first he wrought and afterward he taught. To drawen folk to heaven with fairness, By good ensample, was his business ; But it were any person obstinate, "What so he were of high or low estate, Him would he snibben sharply for the nones ; A better priest I trow that no where none is. He waited after no pomp or reverence ; He maked him no spiced conscience ; But Christe's lore and his apostles twelve He taught, but first he followed it himselve." I would like to give you the whole description of the pretty Prioresse — " That of her smiling was full simple and coy." " Full well she sang the service divine, Entuned in her nose full sweetly. At meate was she well y-taught withal, She let no morsel from her lippes fall. But for to speaken of her conscience, She was so charitable and pitous, She would weep, if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled ; Of smale hownds, had she that she fed With wasted flesh and milk and wastel bread, But sore wept she if one of them were dead ; Or if men smote it with a yerde smart, And all was conscience and tender heart" CHAUCER. 19 Though she had renounced the world and its pleasures, she had not given up all womanly love for ornaments, for " Of smale corall about hire arm she bare A pair of bedes gauded all with grene, And thereon hung a broche of gold ful shene, On whiche was first y-written a crowned A, And after, Amor vincit omnia.' ' How different is his description of the wife of Bath, a plain, vulgar, full-faced, well-dressed dame, who rode her horse like a man ; had spurs on her feet, and a hat on her head as "broad as a buckler : " 11 In all the parish, wif ne was there none That to the offring bifore hire shulde gon ; And if there did, certain so wroth was she That she was out of alle charite. Her coverchiefs (head-dress) weren ful fine of ground, I dorse swere they weyden a pound, That on the Sonday were upon hire- hede ; Her hosen weren of fine scarlet rede. Full straite iteyed, and shoon ful moist and newe ; Bold was hire face, and fayre, and red of hew. She was a worthy woman all hire live, Husbands at chirche dore, had she had five." But of course I do no justice to these mental photo- graphs by clipping here and there, and you will enjoy looking up these shrewd and skilful pictures. The original plan of Chaucer would have required at least sixty tales, with prologues, interludes, local descriptions, and side- scenes. Only twenty-four stories were completed ; these contain 17,000 lines, and his other works exceed this num- ber. It may give a better idea to mention that " Paradise Lost" contains but 10,575 lines, and the whole of Virgil but 12,497. The Tales are written both in prose and poetry, are both serious and comic, to suit the person from whom they came. " The Clerke's Tale " is perhaps the best of all, which Chaucer owned he had taken from Petrarch, and 20 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Petrarch confessed that he had borrowed from Boccaccio, who remodelled it from some old legend. It deserves to be told in yet better language, by some poet of our own day. Dryden and Pope have modernized some parts of Chau- cer's great work, but not the best. The former says of him, "He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." Emerson accuses Chaucer of being a " huge borrower," using " poor Gower " (an author of that time) " as if he were only a brickkiln or stone quarry, out of which to build his house." This may be very true, but it is hard to criticise severely the genius who borrows indifferent material and makes it immortal. His Tales remained in manuscript form for seventy years, and were then published by Caxton, the first printer of England. In regard to the personal appearance of Chaucer him- self, but little is known. " His common dress consisted of red hose, horned shoes, and a loose frock of camlet reach- ing to the knee, with' wide sleeves, fastened at the wrist." A miniature introduced, as was the fashion of those times, into one of the most valuable manuscript copies of his works, gives him a pleasant, thoughtful, and somewhat abstracted countenance. As a young man, he was hand- some, elegant, and graceful, his mouth, especially noticed for its beauty of color and outline. But, toward the end of his life, he grew rather corpulent, and always walked with downcast face, as if absorbed in meditation. When called on in his turn to amuse the pilgrims by a story, he is rallied by honest Harry Bailey, who was not a slender man himself, on his obesity and studious air; and the amiability with which the poet receives these jokes, proves him a true gentleman as well as a fine writer. Listen for a moment to the burly landlord : "What roan art thou ? quod he, Thou lookest as thou woldest find a hare ; CHAUCER. 21 For ever on the ground I see thee stare. Approach near, and loke merrily. Now ware you sires, and let this man have room, He in wast is shape as well as I. This were a popet in an arm to embrace For any woman and fair of face ; He seemeth elveisch by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he dalliance." Crowned with plenty and content, enjoying a quiet, happy old age, warmed once more by the sunshine of royal favor, Chaucer spent his last and best days writing his greatest work in a pleasant home at Woodstock, receiving a liberal pension and a pitcher of wine daily from the cellar of the king. He died in 1400, and was buried in "Westminster Abbey, in what is now called the " Poet's Corner." It is said that he repeated in his last moments the " Balade made by Geoffrey Chaucer upon his dethe bed, lying in his great anguisse." Here is a portion of it, with the modern spelling : "Fly from the crowd, and be to virtue true, Content with what thou hast though it be small ; To hoard brings hate, nor lofty thoughts pursue,. He who climbs high endangers many a fall. Envy's a shade that ever waits on fame, And oft the sun that rises it will hide ; Trace not in life a vast expansive scheme, But be thy wishes to thy state allied. Be mild to others, to thyself severe, So truth shall shield thee or from want or fear." Chaucer was the type of his age, a connecting link between the days of chivalry and the great Reformation, uniting in his character the knight and the Christian. The first poet, like the snow-drop, the harbinger of spring, attracts all eyes and wins all hearts. Those who followed Chaucer admired and imitated him. They called his words " the gold dew-drops of speech," and himself 22 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " superlative in eloquence," " the chief poet of Britain," " the first finder of our fair language." Wordsworth speaks of " That noble Chaucer, in those former times, Who first enriched our English with his rhymes ; And was the first of ours that ever broke Into the Muses' treasures, and first spoke In mighty numbers, delving in the mine Of perfect knowledge." He first introduced the heroic metre into our language, and his vigorous Anglo-Saxon was inlaid with such a number of Norman-French words, that contemporaries complained that he imported a " wagon-load of foreign words." A French accent is often necessary to make the rhythm perfect. His principal works, besides the " Canterbury Tales," are " The Flower and the Leaf," " Troilus and Creseide," " Romaunt of the Rose," and " The House of Fame." Pope, in his " Temple of Fame," has imitated the last poem to some extent. His poetry exhibits a rare combination of opposite excellences — " the sportive fancy, painting and gilding every thing with the keen, observant, matter-of-fact spirit, that looks through whatever it glances at ; the soaring and creative imagination,. with the homely sagacity and healthy relish for all the realities of things ; the unrivalled tenderness and pathos, with the quaintest humor and the most exuberant merriment ; the wisdom at once and the wit ; the all that is best, in short, both in poetry and prose at the same time." Henry Reed says : " You look at him in his gay mood, and it is so genial that that seems to be his very nature, an overflowing comic power, or rather that power touched with thoughtfulness and tenderness — i humor ' in its finest estate. And then you turn to another phase of his CHAUCER. 23 genius, and with something of wonder, and more of de- light, you find it shining with a light as true and natural and beautiful into the deeper places of the human soul — its woes, its anguish, and its strength of suffering and of heroism. In this, the harmonious union of true tragic and comic powers, Chaucer and Shakespeare stand alone in our literature ; it places them above all the other great poets of our language." Most persons have the idea that Chaucer was a remark-" able poet for the age in which he lived, but that now " he is dead and buried in a literary as well as a literal sense," regarding his works as relics of an almost barbarous age. But those who are willing to master the difficulties of his style will be amply rewarded. " It will conduct you," to use the beautiful words of Milton, " to a hill-side ; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming." Leigh Hunt has given us the story in exquisite prose of the " glorious, sainted Griselda." He says : " The whole heart of Christendom has embraced her. She has passed into a proverb ; ladies of quality have called their children after her, the name surviving (we believe) among them to this day, in spite of its griesly sound ; and we defy the manliest man of any feeling to read it in Chaucer's own consecutive stanzas (whatever he may do here) without feeling his eyes moisten." And then follows his ver- sion: " At Saluzzo, in Piedmont, under the Alps — 1 Down at the root of Yesulus the cold ' — there reigned a feudal lord, a marquis, who was beloved by his people, but too much given to his amusement, and an enemy of marriage ; which alarmed them, lest he 2 24 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. should die childless, and leave his inheritance in the hands of strangers. They, therefore, at last sent him a deputa- tion which addressed him on the subject ; and he agreed to take a wife, on condition that they should respect his choice wheresoever it might fall. " Now, among the poorest of the marquis's people — 1 There dwelt a man Which that was holden poorest of them all : But highe God sometime senden can His grace unto a little ox's stall ; Janicola, men of that thorp him call ; A daughter had he fair enough to sight, And Grisildis this younge maiden night.' Tender of age was ' Grisildis ' or ( Grisilda ' (for the poet calls her both) ; but she was a maiden of a thoughtful and steady nature, and as excellent a daughter as could be, thinking of nothing but her sheep, her spinning, and her ' old poor father,' whom she supported by her labor, and waited upon with the greatest duty and obedience. * Upon Griseld', this poore creature, Full often sith this marquis set his eye, As he on hunting rode peraventure ; And, when it fell that he might her espy, He not with wanton looking of folly His eyen cast on her, but in sad wise Upon her cheer he would him oft avise.' " The marquis announced to his people that he had chosen a wife, and the wedding-day arrived : but nobody saw the lady ; at which there was great wonder. Clothes and jewels were prepared, and the feast too ; and the mar- quis, with a great retinue, and accompanied by music, took his way to the village where Gri&elda lived. " Griselda had heard of his coming, and said to her- self, that she would get her work done faster than usual, on purpose to stand at the door, like other maidens, and see CHAUCER. 25 *the sight; but, just as she was going to look out, she heard the marquis call her ; and she set down a water-pot she had in her hand, and knelt down before him with her usual steady countenance. " The marquis asked for her father ; and, going in-doors to him, took him by the hand, and said, with many cour- teous words and leave-asking, that he had come to mar- ry his daughter. The poor man turned red, and stood abashed and quaking, but begged his lord to do as seemed good to him ; and then the marquis asked Griselda if she would have him, and vow to obey him in all things, be they what they might ; and she answered trembling, but in like manner ; and he led her forth, and presented her to the people as his wife. " The ladies, now Griselda' s attendants, took off her old peasant's clothes, not much pleased to handle them, and dressed her anew in fine clothes, so that the people hardly knew her again for her beauty. 1 Her haires have they combed that lay untressed Full rudely, and with their fingers small A coroune on her head they have ydressed, And set her full of nouches * great and small. Thus Walter lowly, nay but royally, Wedded with fortunate honesty ; ' and Griselda behaved so well and discreetly, and behaved so kindly to every one, making up disputes, and speaking such gentle and sensible words — * And coulde so the people's heart embrace, TJiat each her lovHh that looketh on her face? " In due time the marchioness had a daughter, and the marquis had always treated his consort well, and behaved like a man of sense and reflection ; but now he informed her that his people were dissatisfied at his having raised * Nouches— nuts ?— "buttons in that shape made of gold or jewelry. f 26 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. her to be his wife ; and, reminding her of her vow to obey him in all things, told her that she must agree to let him do with the little child whatsoever he pleased*. Griselda kept her vow to the letter, not even changing counte- nance ; and shortly afterward an ill-looking fellow came, and took the child from her, intimating that he was to kill it. Griselda asked permission to kiss her child ere it died ; and she took it in her bosom, and blessed and kissed it with a sad face, and prayed the man to bury its ' little body ' in some place where the birds and beasts could not get it. But the man said nothing. He took the child, and went his way ; and the marquis bade him carry it to the Countess of Pa via, his sister, with directions to bring it up in secret. " Griselda lived on, behaving like an excellent wife ; and four years afterward she had another child, a son, which the marquis demanded of her, as he had done the daughter, laying his injunctions on dier at the same .time to be patient. Griselda said she would ; adding — as a proof, nevertheless, what bitter feelings she had to control — ' I have not had no part of children twain ; But first, sickness ; and after, woe and pain.' The same c ugly sergeant' now came again, and took away the second child, carrying it like the former to Bologna ; and twelve years after, to the astonishment and indignation of the poet, and the people too, but making no alteration whatsoever in the obedience of the wife, the marquis informs her, that his subjects are dissatisfied at his having her for a wife at all, and that he had got a dis- pensation from the pope to marry another, for whom she must make way, and be divorced, and return home ; add- ing, insultingly, that she might take back with her the dowry which she brought him. Woefully, but ever patiently, does Griselda consent ; not, however, without a tendex exclamation at the difference between her marriage- CHArCEB. 27 day and this : and as she receives the instruction about the dowry as a hint that she is to give up her fine clothes, and resume her old ones, which she says it would be im- possible to find, she makes him an exquisite prayer and remonstrance, in which she says : ' Let me not like a worm go by the way. Remember you, mine owen lord so dear, I was your wife, though I unworthy were.' " She leaves her beautiful home in the simplest garb possible, without one word of complaint for her tyran- nical husband, who is thus testing her love. "The people follow her weeping and wailing; but she went ever as usual, with staid eyes, nor all the while did she speak a word. As to her poor father, he cursed the day he was born. And so with her fathei, for a space, dwelt ' this flower of wifely patience ; ' nor .showed any sense of offence, nor remembrance of .her high estate. " At length arrives news of the coming of the new marchioness, with, such array of pomp as had never been seen in all Lombardy ; and the marquis, who has, in the mean time, sent to Bologna for his son and daughter, once more desires Griselda to come to him, and tells her that as he has not women enough in his household to wait upon his new wife, and set every thing in order for her, he must request her to do it ; which she does with all ready obedi- ence, and then goes forth with the rest to meet the new lady. At dinner, the marquis again calls her, and asks her what she thinks of his . choice. She commends it heartily, and prays God to give him prosperity; only adding, that she hopes he will not try the nature of so young a creature as he tried hers, since she has been brought up more tenderly, and perhaps could not bear it. 1 And when this TTalter saw her patience, Her gladde cheer, and no malice at all, 28 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. And he so often had her done offence, And she aye sad * and constant as a wall, Continuing aye her innocence over all, This sturdy marquis 'gan his hearte dress To rue upon her wifely stedfastness.' He gathers her in his arms, and kisses her ; but she takes no heed of it, out of astonishment, nor hears any thing he says : upon which he exclaims, that, as sure as Christ died for him, she is his wife, and he will have no other, nor ever had ; and with that he introduces his supposed bride to her as her own daughter, with his son by her side ; and Griselda, overcome at last, faints away. * When she this heard, aswoone down she falleth For piteous joy ; and, after her swooning, She both her younge children to her calleth, And in her armes, piteously weeping, Embraceth them, and tenderly kissing Fall like a mother with her salte tears She bathed both their visage and their hairs. 1 Oh ! such a piteous thing it was to see Her swooning, and her humble voi.ce to hear ! " Grand mercy / Lord, God thank it you (quoth she), That ye have saved me my children dear : Now reck f I never to be dead right here, Since I stand in your love and in your grace, No force of death, \ nor when my spirit pace. " tender, dear, younge children mine ! Your woful mother weened steadfastly, That cruel houndes or some foul vermin Had eaten you : but God of his mercy And your benigne father, tenderly Hath done you keep ; " and in that same stound All suddenly she swapped adown to ground. 1 And in her swoon so sadly holdeth she Her children two when she ''gan them embrace, * Sad ; composed in manner ; unaltered. t Beck ; care. % No force of death; no matter for death. CHAUCER. 29 That with great sleight and great difficulty The children from her arm they ^gan arrace,* Oh ! many a tear on many a piteous face Down ran of them that stooden her beside ; Unnethe abouten her might they abide" That is, they could scarcely remain to look at her, or stand still. " And so, with feasting and joy, ends this divine cruel story of Patient Griselda ; the happiness of which is superior to the pain, not only because it ends so well, but because there is ever present in it, like that of a saint in a picture, the sweet, sad face of the fortitude of woman." *Arrace (French, arraclier); "pluck.'" THE TABARD INN. SPE-tfSEK. " That gentle bard, Chosen "by the Muses for their page of state, Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven, With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft face." Aftee the " Morning-Star " came a long, dark night, instead of the bright dawn, and for more than one hundred and fifty years no great poet appeared. With Chaucer, our literature and language had made a "burst" which they were not able to maintain. He has, by Warton, been well compared to some warm, bright day in the very early spring, which seems to say that the winter is over and gone. But its promise is deceitful ; the full bursting and blossoming are yet far off : " Old Chaucer, like the morning-star, To us discovers day from far ; His light those mists and clouds dissolved, Which our dark nation long involved ; SPENSES. 31 But he, descending to the shades, Darkness again the age invades." It was, indeed, a dark and stormy period, an age of change and revolution, without progress, a desert-tract of time, a blank in our literary history. No form of govern- ment, no creed was safe ; life and property were nowhere protected. Yet England was in a better condition than any other country in this respect. How could men improve in such dreadful days ? the crown claimed by rival kings, the people divided into factions, causing that civil war " Which sent, between. the red rose and the white, A thousand souls to death and deadly night ! " How could men be merry or wise, when the bells in the church-steeples were not heard for the sound of drums and trumpets, and their voices were daily hushed by battle-cries and the crackling of fagots? for the best men of the day were burned for heresy. But at last there came a blessed change. The dark ages, with all their gloom and horror, passed away, and the dawn came on. Henry VII. ascended the throne in 1485, and from that time the people began to enjoy peace and prosperity. Spenser now appeared, to clasp hands with Chaucer over the black abyss that parted them, uniting the four- teenth and sixteenth centuries by their sweet minstrelsy. That was the " golden age " of English literature, in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. The great men of the world, its lights and teachers, come in clusters, and it is a well-known fact that a period of peculiar literary glory often succeeds a great national revolution. Lowell says " the world is only so many great men old," and we find so many men of genius and wisdom in this century, that the " ball or sphere " (as the geographies 32 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. say) on which we are revolving so swiftly, yet so quietly, must have added several years to its life during those brilliant days when Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Raleigh, Coke, and Sidney, were . busy with tongue and pen at court, the bar, and pulpit. Queen Bess was very fond of mythology ', which, of course, made it popular with her subjects ; and fables, fic- tion, strange concerts, and whimsical pageants, were the order of the day. When she passed through a town every display in her honor consulted this fancy. Mercury was her herald, Cupid her special attendant, and the Penates, or household gods, guarded her abode. "Tis even said that the cooks learned to b£ expert mythologists, and tempted her dainty palate with Ovid's wondrous metamor- phoses, done in confectionery, and immense loaves of plum-cake, on which were embossed, in elaborate icing, the destruction of Troy and other historical events. Hand- some pages, dressed like wood-nymphs, peeped from every bower to pay their obeisance to their virgin queen, and stupid footmen gambolled over the lawns, arrayed like satyrs. Though chivalry, as a political or social system, had ceased to exist at this period, though the joust and tourna- ment had lost their ancient splendor, yet the chivalrio character, " high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy," still modified the manners of the higher classes. Such were the influences surrounding Edmund Spenser, the greatest poet between Chaucer and Shakespeare. He was born in London, in 1553, and speaks in one of his poems of 11 Merry London, my most kindly nurse, That to me gave this life's first native source."' His parents were poor, though his father belonged to an old and honorable family, and he was obliged to enter SPENSEE. 33 Cambridge as a " sizar," or charity student, the name de- rived from the size of the portion of bread and meat allowed to them. Chancer, you remember, did not develop his best powers until late in life, resembling " The aloe-flower, That blooms and blossoms at fourscore ; " but Spenser was a poet from his boyhood — " at home in the temple of the Muses, as the child Samuel was in the temple of God" — and, like the young prophet, he conse- crated his youth with religious exercises to letters and poesy. His intimate companion at Cambridge was Gabriel Harvey, who was his firm friend through life, exerting no small influence upon his fortunes. After taking his degree, he went to the north of Eng- land, whether to visit a friend or in the capacity of a tutor is not certain. He remained, at any rate, long enough to fail in love, and be rejected. Poets have often been compared to the nightingale, " singing with a thorn in her breast," and Spenser's fame, like so many others, .had its root in a deep sorrow. " A lady, whom he calls Rosalind, made a plaything of his heart, and, when tired of her sport, cast it from her. She little knew the worth of the jewel she had flung away. \ The sad, mechanic exercise of verse ' was balm to the wounded poet, who poured forth his tender soul in ' The Shepherd's Calendar.' " The name at once suggests scenes of rural life, where " Every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale," or pipes his tender song, " In shadow of a green oak-tree," marking with red letters those days made bright by the 34: HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. smiles of his true-love. But instead, we have a series of twelve long and rather prosy eclogues,* named after the twelve months of the year, written in such an antiquated style, that even then an explanation of the obsolete words followed each eclogue, and the shepherds, instead of sigh- ing over the charms of some Chloe or Phyllis, discuss, in a solemn way, the comparative merits of the Protestant and Romish Churches. He aimed at originality in the form of his work and its language, and the change from the beaten path was no improvement ; but, notwithstanding these faults, the " Cal- endar " was considered an extraordinary production, pla- cing Spenser among the highest poetical names of the day, and attracting for him the notice and patronage of the great. Through his friend Harvey he had been introduced to Sir Philip Sidney, and, under the grand old oaks in the beautiful park at Penhurst, the ancestral mansion of the Sidneys, Spenser is said to have completed this poem. He seemed to fear the criticism of envious or evil tongues, and dedicated it to his young patron, " Maister Philip Sidney — worthy of all titles, both of learning and chivalry " — under a feigned name : " Goe, little booke, thyself present, As childe whose parent is unkent, To him that is the president Of noblenesse and ehivalrie. And if that Envie bark at thee — As sure it will — for succour flee, Under the shadow of his wing.' 1 A life of Spenser, however brief, would be incomplete without some notice of this accomplished friend, the em- * Pastoral poems. SPEX5ER. 35 bodiment of so many graces and virtues, whom Elizabeth considered " the jewel of her court " — " The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eve, tongue, sword : The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers." Noble, brave, beautiful, good, learned, and generous, his life on .earth was far too short to show half- his worth, but he will ever be remembered with tenderness, pride, and regret. He was killed in a skirmish near Zutphen in 1586, while assisting Holland to throw off the Spanish yoke. Riding to the field of battle, he met an old general, the marshal of the camp, too lightly equipped for safety, and with his usual generosity insisted that he should take all his armor but his breastplate. His kindness killed him, for, unpro- tected himself, he soon received a fatal wound. Overcome with thirst from excessive bleeding, he called for drink. It was brought to him immediately; but the moment he was lifting it to his mouth, a poor soldier was carried by mortally wounded, who fixed his eyes eagerly upon it. Sidney, seeing this, instantly delivered it to him, with these memorable words, " Thy necessity is greater than mine." His last hours were spent in serious conversation upon the immortality of the soul, in sending kind wishes and keepsakes to his friends, and in the enjoyment of music. All England wore mourning for his death, and volumes of laments and elegies were poured forth in all languages. His whole life was a poem. Lord Brooke, his most inti- mate friend, said of him : " Though I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man with such steadiness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater 36 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. years. His talk was ever of knowledge, and his very play tended to enrich the mind." Lord Buckhurst said, " He hath had as great love in this life and as many tears for his death, as ever any had." Cowper calls him " a warbler of poetic prose," and al- though he wrote a few pretty sonnets, his literary reputa- tion rests on his prose works ; the " Arcadia," a mixture of the heroic and pastoral romance, much admired at that time, and the " Defence of Poesy," a short treatise written in 1581, "to combat certain notions of the Elizabethan Puritans, who would fain, in their well-meant but mistaken ^eal, have swept away the brightest blossoms of our lit- erature, along with pictures, statues, holidays, wedding- rings, and other pleasant things." I will give a short extract from the "Defence of Poesy : " " Now therein — (that is to say, the power of at once teaching and enticing to do well) — now therein, of all sciences — I speak still of human and according to human conceit — is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness ; but he cometh to you with words set in delightful propor- tion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well- enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner ; and pretend- ing no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue, even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding them in such other SPENSER. 37 as have a pleasant taste. For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but indulgere genio, and therefore despise the austere admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they stand upon, yet will be content to be delighted; which is all the good-fellow poet seems to promise ; and so steal to see the form of goodness — which, seen, they cannot but love ere themselves be aware, as if they had taken a medicine of cherries. By these, there- fore, examples and reasons, I think it may be manifest that the poet, with that same hand of delight, doth draw the mind more effectually than any other art doth. And so a conclusion not unfitly ensues, that as virtue is the most excellent resting-place for all worldly learning to make an end of, so poetry, being the most familiar to teach it, and most princely to move toward it, in the most excellent work is the most excellent workman." But to return to Spenser. Sidney urged him to try something higher and better than this pastoral, but ten years passed before his great work, the " Faerie Queene," appeared. In 1582 he received a grant of land in Ireland from the queen, having previously spent two years there as secretary to Lord Grey ; but this was no great gift, as by the conditions he was obliged to live on it, which really banished him from England. Neither Queen Bess, nor her treasurer, Lord Burleigh, were ever very generous in their treatment of this poet, of whom they should have been so proud. Spenser had in some way given offence to Burleigh, and his best friends were of the opposite party, so his powerful influence was constantly against him. The queen once promised Spenser one hundred pounds for a poem, but when it was done Burleigh said " that sum was beyond all reason." " Give him reason then," said her majesty. But the ill-used bard received just nothing at all, as this stanza will show: 38 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " It pleased your grace, upon a time, To grant me reason, for my ryme, But from that time until this season I've heard of neither ryme nor reason." He grew nervous and sad oyer this lack of kindness, and in one of his poems, called" Mother Hubbard's Tale," complains of the miseries of a courtier's life : • " Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride, What hell it is, in sueing long to bide ; To lose good days, that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow ; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her Peeres ; To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeares ; To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires ; To fawn, to crouche, to waite, to ride, to ronne, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone." Sir Walter Raleigh, who you remember was so polite or politic as to throw his rich plush cloak over a muddy- spot for the queen to pass over (by which he gained many good suits), visited Spenser at Kilcolman Castle, in the summer of 1589. Charmed by his rhymes, he per- suaded him to go with him to England, and soon the first three books of the " Faerie Queene " saw the light, the noblest allegorical poem in our language. Every one was delighted with what he modestly calls " a simple song." It is said that Spenser sent to Sidney the ninth canto of his poem. On reading a part of the allegory of despair, he ordered his steward to give the writer fifty pounds ; as he read further he doubled it ; and with another stanza he added another fifty pounds, and bade the messenger depart, lest his gifts should exhaust his treasury. The queen, to whom he had dedicated his work, rewarded him with an annuity of fifty pounds. SPENSER. 39 I hardly know how to give a clear idea of the poem in a few words. It is a long fable, full cf hidden meaning, and the scene is laid in an imaginary land of chivalry. His pur- pose was "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in ver- tuous and gentle discipline." Each book of the poem is allegorical of some virtue, such as temperance, friendship, courtesy ; each defended by its own knight. TTe read of brave knights, captive ladies, guarded by dragons, besieged castles, witches, enchanters, and fairies. It is a " dark con- ceit," as the poet says ; and is not read with great interest now, as we do not care much for the perfect knights and fair damsels of so long ago. TTe do not read it with pleasure, because it is not natural, it is not real life, and he might have chosen a better theme. Spenser's imagina- tion was wonderful, and as a descriptive poet he has never been excelled. His style was vivid, earnest, clear, but without one bit of humor ; he failed, when he tried to be amusino*. " TTe look in vain in the ' Faerie Queen ' for flashes of wit and humor, for profound observations on life and manners, for the varied lights and shades of character, or the pun- gent flavor of satire. Xor has he that vivid energy of pas- sion which concentrates a world of meaning into a few burning words, and penetrates to the heart's core with the quick, irresistible energy of lightning. His poetry is a pure creation of the fancy. He transports us into an ideal world, in which shapes of perfect beauty and grace are con- trasted with forms of hideous or loathsome deformity. "We walk upon a new earth and beneath a new heaven, where the light that shines is a ' light that never was on sea or land.'" His genius was "pictorial." Campbell calls him the "Rubens " of English poetry. I will quote a little from this poem, that you may have a better idea of his style. In describing Una, a beautiful maiden, he says : 4:0 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven shined bright And made sunshine in the shady place, Did never mortall eye, beholde such heavenly grace ? " He uses a fine metaphor to depict fear : " And troubled blood, through his pale face was seen, To come and goe with tidings from the heart, As it a running messenger had been." His description of repose is also beautiful : " Sleepe after toyle, port after stormy seas, Ease after pain, death after life, doth greatly please." Spenser sometimes describes a landscape which might adorn Paradise itself: " It was a chosen spot of fertile land, Emongst wide waves sett a little nest, As if it had by nature's cunning hand Been choycely pickt out from all the rest, And laid forth for ensample of the best. No dainty flowre or herb that growes on ground ; No arborett with painted blossomes drest, And smelling sweete, but there it might be found, To bud out fair and her sweet smels thro we all arounde ; No tree, whose branches did not bravely spring, No branch, whereon a fine bird did not bravely sit, No bird but did her shrill notes bravely sing, No song, but did contain a lovely ditt, Trees, branches, birds and songs, were framed fitt For to allure fraile mind to careless ease." Two stanzas on the ministry of angels are too beautiful to be omitted : " And is there care in heaven ? And is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures bace, That may compassion of their evils move ? There is : else much more wretched were the case Of men then beasts : But ! th' exceeding grace Of Highest God that loves his creatures so, SPENSER. 41 And all his workes with mercy doth embrace, That blessed Angels he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe ! " How oft do they their silver bowers leave To come to succour us that succour want ! How oft do they with golden pineons cleave The flitting skyes, like flying pursuivant, Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant ! They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant ; And all for love and nothing for reward : 0, why should Hevenly God to men have such regard ! " Spenser was not merely a great poet, but a Christian philosopher, who never omitted, in glowing picture or fanciful allegory, the lessons of morality and holy living which, like the hidden meaning in our Saviour's parables, pervade and glorify the whole. " Great injustice is done to Spenser, when, bewildered with the mazes of his inexhaustible creation, or by the brightness of his exuberant fancy, we see in the i Faerie Queene ' nothing more than a wondrous fairy tale, or a gorgeous pageant of chivalry. Beyond all this, far within it, is an inner life, and that is breathed into it from the Bible. It is the great sacred poem of English literature." " I dare be known to think," said Milton (addressing the Parliament of England), " our sage and serious Spen- ser a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." John Wes- ley, in giving directions for .the clerical studies of his Methodist disciples, advised them to combine with the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament the reading of the " Faerie Queene." And Keble, the poet of the " Christian Tear," described this poem as " a contin- ued, deliberate endeavor to enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feeling of an inquiring and romantic age on the side of goodness and faith, of purity and justice." It 42 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. is written in a peculiar versification, which Spenser first used, and which has since been styled the "Spenserian stanza." He added a ninth line to the " ottava rima," or eight-lined Italian stanza, a measure full of music and rhythm, in that flowing language, but very difficult to write with pleasant effect in English. But Spenser has wielded this complicated instrument with such consummate mastery and grace, that the rich, abundant melody almost oppresses the ear with its over- whelming sweetness. Like the soft undulation of a tropic sea, it bears us onward dreamily, with easy swell and falls, by wizard islands of sunshine and of rest, by bright phan- tom-peopled realms, and old enchanted cities. We will now return to his private life. He married at about the same period of life as Chaucer — forty-one or two. His wife was the fair " Elizabeth " to whom he ad- dressed one hundred sonnets, rather too artificial to be pleasing, and for whom his most melodious notes were sung in his " Epithalamion," " the sweetest marriage-song our language boasts." Let me give you her picture : " Loe ! where she comes along with portly pace, Like Phoebe, from her chamber of the East, Arysing forth to run her mighty race, Clad all in white that seems a virgin best, So well it her beseemes, that you might weene Some angell she had beene. Her long loose yellow locks, like golden wyre, Sprinckled with perles and perling flowers atweene, Doe like a golden mantle her attyre, And being crowned with a garland greene, Seeme like some mayden queene. Her modest eyes abashed to behold So many gazers as on her do stare Upon the lowly ground affixed are. Ne dare lift up her countenance too bold, But blush to hear her prayses sung so loud, So farre from being proud. SPENSER. 43 Nathless doe ye still loud her prayses sing, That all the woods may answer, and your echo sing. Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, And blesseth her with his happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheeks, And the pure snows, with goodly vernieill staine Like crimson dyde in grayne ; That even the angels, which continually About the sacred altar doe remaine, Forget their service, and about her fly, Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fayre The more they on it stare. But her sad eyes still fastened on the ground, Are governed with goodly modesty, That suffers not one look to glaunce awry, Which may let in a little thought unsound. Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand ? The pledge" of all our band — Sing ye sweet angels, Alleluya sing.! That all the woods may answer and your echo ring ! " The next few years were full of happiness, in his Irish castle, now made bright by the love of wife and children. It was a beautiful home by the shaded banks of the river Mulla. " Soft woodland and savage hill, shadowy river- glade and rolling plough-land, were all there to gladden the poet's heart with their changeful beauty, and tinge his verse with their glowing colors." But alas ! how soon the dark cloufls of sorrow and death swept over this lovely scene ! In 1598 he was driven from his home by the Irish rebellion, and, his castle being burned by the mob, one of his children perished in the names. Crushed by grief and poverty, he died soon after in London at the early age of forty-five, on the 16th of Jan- uary, 1599. He was buried by the side of Chaucer, with great pomp, in Westminster Abbey. His pall was borne U HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. by poets, and mournful elegies, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his grave. Lowell says, " The rare nature of Spenser was, like a Venice glass, meant only to mantle with the wine of sun- niest poesy. The first drop of poisonous sorrow shattered him." In character he was gentle, sensitive, affectionate, and good as well as great, one of the few whose life needs no apology. " More sweet than odors caught by him who sails, Near spicy shores of Araby the blest, ^ A thousand times more exquisitely sweet The freight of holy feeling which we meet In thoughtful moments, wafted on the gales From fields where good men walk, And bowers wherein they rest." DESTRUCTION OF SPENSER'S CASTLE. c i## t^cJ/Ui*' SHAKESPEAEE. " In Stratford-upon-Avon, Where the silent waters flow, The immortal drama woke from sleep, Three hundred years ago." You remember that before Spenser appeared, the country was disturbed with civil wars ; the times were out of joint, and all was darkness and ignorance. But with time came light, and the age of Queen Elizabeth, made famous by its many great men, is considered the most brilliant in English history. High above all other names that adorn this period stands that of Shakespeare, the greatest literary genius the world has ever known. 46 HOME PICTURES OE ENGLISH POETS. Very little can be learned with any certainty of this wonderful man — so little, that some have tried to prove that no such person ever lived — and one or two books have been published lately, endeavoring to prove that what are called Shakespeare's plays were really written by Lord Bacon. But we cannot believe this, and although it is indeed strange that few of his contemporaries ever mentioned him, and that he never alluded to any of the events which occurred during his lifetime, we still cling with faith to the few names, dates, traditions, and anec- dotes, which may or may not be true, but are all we have to tell us of the personal Shakespeare we love to believe in. Rev. James Freeman Clarke, in his address at the tercentenary celebration of Shakespeare's birth, shows us how easily critics might do away with the little evidence we have on this subject. He says: "If it should be thought desirable to treat Shakespeare as critics have treated Homer, Moses, and Christ, and deny his existence, they have an excellent opportunity and ample means for their destructive analysis. As they have proved to their satisfaction that the books of Moses are composed of innumerable independent historical fragments, carefully joined together, and so are a Mosaic work only in the artistic sense ; as they have taken away Homer, and left in his place a company of anonymous ballad-singers, so that we are able to settle the dispute between the seven cities which claimed to be his birthplace by giving them a Homer apiece, and having several Homers left ; as these able chemical critics have analyzed the Gospels, reducing them to their elements of legend, myth, and falsehood, with the smallest residuum of actual history, so much more easily can they dispose of the historic Shakespeare. " See, for example, how they might proceed. They might say, How can Shakespeare have been a real per- SHAKESPEARE. 47 son, when his very name is spelled at least in two different ways in manuscripts professing to be his own autograph, and when it is found in the manuscripts of the period spelled in every form, and with every combination of letters w^hich express its sound or the semblance thereof ? One writer of his time calls him Shake-scene^ showing plainly the mythical origin of the word. " He is said to have married, at eighteen, a woman of twenty-six, which is not likely, and her name also has a mythical character — 'Anne Hathaway' — and was prob- ably derived from a Shakespeare song, addressed to a lady named Anne, the first line of which is- — 1 Anne hath a way, Anne hath a way.' " If he were a living person, living in London in the midst of writers, poets, actors, and eminent men, is it credible that no allusion should be made to him by most of them ? He was contemporary with Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Lord Bacon, Coke, Burleigh, Hooker, Queen Elizabeth, Henry IV. of France, Montaigne, Tasso, Cervantes, Galileo, Grotius, and not one of these, though so many of them were voluminous writers, refers to any such person, and no allusion to any of them appears in all his plays. He is referred to, to be sure, with excessive admira- tion by the group of play- writers, among whom he is sup- posed to move, but as there is not in all his works the least allusion in return»to any of them, we may presume that the name Shakespeare was a sort of nom de plume to which were referred all anonymous plays. " If such a man existed, why did not others out of this circle say something about his circumstances and life? Milton was eight years old when Shakespeare died, and might have seen him, as he took pains to go and see Galileo, who was born in the same year with Shakespeare. Oliver Cromwell was seventeen years old when Shake- 3 48 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. speare died; Descartes twenty years old; Rubens, the artist, thirty-nine years old. None of them have heard of him, though Rubens resided in England, and painted numerous portraits there. " The critic might add that there is something quite suspicious in his being said to have been bo*rn and to have died on the same day of the month — April 23d — and in the fact that Cervantes was said to have died on the same day as Shakespeare, and Michael Angelo in the same year. The year of his birth, he might add, seems to have some mythical significance, since Calvin is said to have died, and Galileo to have been born, each in 1564. " Many great events occurred in his supposed lifetime, to none of which he has alluded, as the battle of Lepanto, the Bartholomew massacre, the defeat of the Spanish armada, the first circumnavigation of the world, the gun- powder plot, the deliverance of Holland from Spain, the invention of the telescope, and the discovery thereby of Jupiter's satellites. In an era of the great controversy between the Roman and Protestant religions, no one can tell from his works whether he was Catholic or Protestant. Unlike Dante, Milton, and Goethe, he left no trace on the political or even social life of his time." I have quoted thus at length that you may gain, in a general way, some idea of the age, its great men and great events, and also see how plausible arguments can be brought to bear on the wrong sidsof any subject. Whately reasons in this fallacious way (merely for the sake of the argument), and makes it very evident that such a man as Napoleon never existed ; while Froude de- fends the character of Henry VHI. in good earnest, making him a high-toned patriot, a noble monarch, an ex- emplary father and husband, instead of the bloody tyrant, the modern Blue-beard, that he has appeared to our preju- diced minds, and De Quincey, going further yet, honestly SHAKESPEARE. 49 tries to prove .that Judas Iscariot was a well-meaning man, a loyal, though mistaken, subject of his Divine Master. But, in spite of all this eloquent logic, the name of Judas Iscariot will still be the Slackest upon the page of human history; Henry Vill. will still be branded as the bad hus- band, the pseudo-Protestant ; Napoleon will still be the hero of Marengo and Austerlitz, and, with due deference to Miss Bacon and Judge Holmes, every one will still pre- fer to believe that Shakespeare was himself \ and not some- body else. He was born at Stratford-upon-Avon on the 23d of April, 1564, the oldest of six children. It has been dis- covered that his father's name was John, and that he was either a glover, a farmer, a butcher, or a dealer in wool ! How little thought that rustic sire, whose business is such a matter of doubt, as he gazed upon his baby-boy, " Mewling and puking in his mother's arms," that devotees from every clime, through every age, would make pilgrimages, as to a sacred shrine, to that homely chamber where "the .sweet bard of Avon" first saw the light ! Of his mother we only know that her name was Mary Arden, and that she possessed, when married, a pretty little fortune, which soon disappeared. Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, says : " His fam- ily, as appears by the register and public writings relating to the town, were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen." His father, up to the year 1574, was a man of consider- able estate and position. But in 1578 he had by some misfortune become so poor that he was not obliged to pay taxes, and William, after the age of fourteen, was obliged to earn his own bread. We are told that he attended the grammar-school in his native town, and, as usual, there are various stories of his rank there. But alas ! we know 50 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. nothing certainly. No merit-roll was kept, no record of his jokes and frolics. Equally various and unsatisfactory are the stories of the way in which the next few years were employed. One author says, " He understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his younger days a schoolmaster in the country." Another represents him as assisting his father in slaughtering animals, and says that when William killed a calf he would do it in a high style,, and make a speech. But I do not believe the young poet ever wasted any eloquence in an elegy on a dying calf. Some wise critics think that his dramas furnish abun- dant proof that he was a lawyer's clerk. But if we judge from this, we may as well say that he pursued all the learned professions, besides working occasionally at every other occupation in life. Married at the early age of eigh- teen, he could have had but little time to devote to learn- ing or labor. He is said to have been driven from his home, by a prosecution for deer-stealing, by Sir Thomas Lacy, but his friends deny the charge. One writer proves, first, that the offence was too mild to compel flight ; second, if he did steal the deer, it was not a moral offence ; and third, Lacy never kept deer ! This is too much like the famous case of the borrowed iron " kettle, which was found broken when returned. The defendant's counsel maintained, first, that the kettle was cracked when it was borrowed ; second, that it was used with the greatest care ; third, that he never had the kettle ! The early history of Shakespeare reveals a rollicking, frolicking, passionate, and headstrong boy, and the morals of the people among whom he was brought up did not tend to his sobriety. Bedford, a neighboring village, was famed for its beer. The people of the surrounding towns were divided into classes, known as topers and sippers, SHAKESPEARE. 51 and used to challenge each other to drinking-bouts. Shakespeare was at the head of the Stratford party, and the crab-tree underneath which the tired revellers bivou- acked for the night, on their return from their tipsy frolics, was for a long time after known as " Shakespeare's Tree." At the age of twenty or twenty-three he went to Lon- don. Some say that, on his arrival in that great city, he held gentlemen's horses at the door of the theatre for a small fee ; others, that he filled the lowest place among Ihe actors, being merely the call-boy or prompter's attend- ant. We hear of him as an actor in 1589, and, soon after, he commenced writing, remodelling old dramas. The suc- cess of his plays was immediate and great, filling the theatres to overflowing. In England, at this time, the drama took the place now filled by the newspaper and novel, or, as Emerson says, it was " ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, punch, and library, at the same time." The land swarmed with strolling players, ordinary carts carrying stage and actors about the country. There were fourteen theatres in and near London. The top was open to sun and rain, and the people sat on benches. There was but little scenery, but placards would be hung up on which were written, " A Castle," " A Country House," " A Temple," and the audience were obliged to imagine these objects. His talent as an actor was not remarkable ; the ghost in " Hamlet " and Adam in " As You Like It " were his favor- ite parts. " But his magic pen has taught us almost to for- get that he ever was an actor, nor can we, without a violent stretch of fancy, realize our greatest poet stalking slowly with whitened cheeks across the boards, or tottering in old- fashioned livery through a rudely-painted forest of Arden." He also owned shares in two theatres, and was con- stantly adapting and altering old plays, and writing new ones. He soon became known, and gained wealth and 52 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. troops of friends. The wits of that day used to meet at some public house to enjoy each other's company, and drink wine and ale. Ben Jonson and Shakespeare had many brilliant word-combats, which set the table in a roar. The famous " Mermaid Tavern " was the favorite re- sort of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and other great spirits of the time. Beaumont speaks of these merry meetings in a sonnet to Jonson : " What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if they every one from whence they came, Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life." Jonson, who appreciated Shakespeare both as friend and antagonist, said of him, " He was not for an age, but for all time." In writing for the stage, he borrowed in all directions, using freely whatever suited his purpose. For instance, Malone has computed that out of 6,043 lines in Henry VI., only 1,899 are entirely his own. But (to quote from Emerson's essay) "Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any in- vention can. If he lost any credit of design, he augment- ed his resources; and at that day our petulant demand for originality was not so much pressed. There was no literature for the million. The universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. A great poet, who appears in illiter- ate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is any- where radiating. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people ; and he comes to value his memory equally withh is inven- tion. He is therefore little solicitous whence his thoughts SHAKESPEARE. 53 have been derived ; whether through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, whether by inspiration ; from whatever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. Nay, he bor- rows very near home. Often men say wise things as well as he ; only they say a good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken wiseiy. He knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place wher- ever he finds it." You may like to see a few stanzas from the old ballad where Shakespeare undoubtedly found the story on which he built his great drama of " The Merchant of Venice." It is called " GERNUTUS, THE JEW OF VENICE. " The bloudie Jew now ready is With whetted blade in hand, To spoyle the bloud of innocent, By forfeit of his bond. " And as he was about to strike, In him, the deadly blow ; * Stay/ quoth the Judge, ' thy crueltie, I charge thee to do so. " '^ith needs thou will thy forfeit have, Which is of flesh a pound ; See that thou shed no drop of bloud, Nor yet the man confound. " ; For if thou do, like murderer Thou here shalt hanged be ; Likewise of flesh see that thou cut No more than 'longs to thee. " ' For if thou take either more or lesse To the value of a mite, Thou shalt be hanged presently, As is both law and ri^ht.' 54 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " At the last he doth demand But for to have his owne : 1 No,' quoth the judge, * doe as you list, Thy judgement shall be showne. " ' Either take your pound of flesh/ quoth he, ' Or cancell me your bond.' 1 Cruell judge,' then quoth the Jew, i That doth against me stand ! ' " And so with griping, grieved mind He biddeth them farewell : Then all the people praysed the Lord, That ever this heard tell. " Good people, that doe heare this song, For trueth I dare well say, That many a wretch as ill as hee Doth live now at this day, " That seeketh nothing but the spoyle Of many a wealthy man, And for to trap the innocent, Deviseth what they can. " From whome the Lord deliver me, And every Christian too, And send to them like sentence eke, That meaneth so to do." No wonder that his brother actors were jealous and envious of the man who had the genius to transform this old ballad of thirty verses into the " Merchant of Venice," and whose plays were " most singularly liked " by Queen Elizabeth. The complaint of one of them has been pre- served. He said, " There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country ! " SHAKESPEARE. 55 While Shakespeare was thus living in London, charm- ing the public, enraging his rivals, and astonishing all, his family remained quietly at Stratford, in the old home with his parents. His marriage does not seem to have been a happy one. Mistress Anne probably had-a-way that was neither sooth- ing nor agreeable to the poet, who used to run away from his gay and busy life for a few days each summer to pet his favorite child Susanna, and have a romp with the twins, Hamnet and Judith. His son died at the age of twelve, and in the next year, 1597, he purchased the finest house and grounds in the town, called New Place, and fitted them up handsomely, that he might have a comfort- able home to which he could retire when weary of the excitements of a city. It was in this garden he planted the mulberry-tree of which Garrick has sung so enthusi- astically : " Behold this fair goblet ! 'Twas carved from the tree, Which, my sweet Shakespeare, was planted by thee I As a relic I kiss it, and bow at thy shrine, What comes from thy hand must be ever divine. All shall yield to the mulberry-tree; Bend to thee Blest mulberry ! Matchless was he Who planted thee, * . And thou like him, immortal shalt be. " The oak is held royal, is Britain's great boast, Preserved once our king, and will always our coast ; But of fir we make ships, we have thousands that fight, While one, only one, like our Shakespeare can write. " Then each take a relic of this hallowed tree ; From folly and fashion a charm let it be ; Fill, fill to the planter the cup to the brim — To honor the country, do honor to Aim." Irving tells us, in his own delightful style, of the 56 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. various relics he found at the birthplace of Shakespeare; "There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which Shakespeare shot the deer, on his poaching exploits. There, too, was his tobacco-box ; which proves that he was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh ; the sword also with which he played Hamlet ; and the identi- cal lantern with which Friar Lawrence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb ! There was an ample supply also of Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross; of which there is enough extant to build a ship-of-the-line. . " The most favorite object of curiosity, however, is Shakespeare's chair. It stands in the chimney-nook of a small gloomy chamber, just behind what was his father's shop. Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, watching the slowly-revolving spit with all the longing of an urchin ; or of an evening, listening to the cronies and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England. In this chair it is the custom of every one that visits the house to sit ; whether this be done with the hope of imbibing any of the inspirations of the bard, I am at a loss to say, I merely mention the fact ; and mine hostess privately assured me, that though built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair had to be new-bottomed at least once in three years. It is worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraor- dinary chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto, or the flying chair of the Arabian enchanter; for, although sold some few years since to a northern princess, yet, strange to tell, it has found its way back again to the old chimney corner." An old minister, who afterward lived at "New Place," actually cut down that "blest mulberry!" be- SHAKESPEARE. 57 cause it attracted so many visitors. I wonder if Garrick's ghost did not haunt him after that act of vandalism ! The year 1612 is given as the date of Shakespeare's return to his Stratford home. Perhaps failing health led him to seek repose, for he lived only a few years after the change, having died on the 23d of April, 1616, his fifty- second birthday. He was buried in Stratford church, and his grave was at first marked by a plain stone, with an in- scription, said to be written by himself. Here is a fac- simile of the inscription : " Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, to digg he dvst encloased ieare : BLES'E be y .man y spares ties stones, AND CYRST BE EE Y MOVES MY BONES." This singular epitaph has prevented his remains from being placed in Westminster Abbey, and reveals, it is thought, his belief in the resurrection of the body. Some unknown artist executed a statue of the poet, sitting beneath an arch, with a desk before him, and a pen in his hand. This was colored to the life, eyes light hazel; hair and beard of an auburn tinge, with a scarlet doublet and black gown. All the busts of Shakespeare are said to be taken from this. * In his will, written a short time before his death, we find a careful, loving remembrance of many of his old comrades, to each of whom he gave some token of his regard, generally a ring. But to his wife there was noth- ing left but the " second best bed, with the hangings " ! Poor Anne ! termagant and virago though she may have been, one cannot help pitying a woman handed down to immortality in that fashion. She would certainly have been " more honored in the breach than the observance." You notice that one of the pictures illustrating this sketch represents the great dramatist reading one of his 58 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. plays to Elizabeth. This is not an historic fact, but one of those traditions that have been created by later writers to embellish his life. Yet he was undoubtedly popular with Elizabeth and James, who attended the theatre where his plays were acted. Some writer says, that Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with the admirable charac- ter of Falstaff in the two parts of " Henry IV." that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing the " Merry Wives of Windsor," but there is no proof of this. We are certain, however, that Queen Bess, true to her sex, was not averse to receiving a graceful compliment, and, among her wily, flatterering train of courtiers, there was not one who could compete successfully in this respect with the once obscure playwright, who, by the might of his unaided genius, eclipsed them'all. As a proof of this, read Cranmer's prophecy at the christening of the infant Elizabeth, in " King Henry VIII. : " " Let me speak, sir, For Heaven now bids me ; and the words I utter Let none think flattery, for they'll find them truth. This royal infant (Heaven still move about her ! ) Though in her cradle, yet now promises Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings, Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be (But few now living can behold that goodness) A pattern to all princes living with her, And all that shall succeed : Sheba was never More covetous of wisdom, and fair virtue, Than this pure soul shall be ; all princely graces That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, With all the virtues that attend the good, Shall still be doubled on her ; truth shall nurse her ; Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her : She shall be loved and feared ; Her own shall bless her ; Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, SHAKESPEARE. 59 And hang their heads with sorrow ; good grows with her; In her days, every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine, what he plants ; and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors ; God shall be truly known ; and those about her From her shall read the perfect ways of honor, And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. She shall be, to the happiness of England, An aged princess ; many days shall see her, And yet no day without a deed to crown it. Would I had known no more ! but she must die ; She must ; the saints must have her — yet a virgin ; A most unspotted lily shall she pass To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her." Richard Grant White, the most thorough Shakesperian scholar and critic in this country, tells us that he has found but o^e passage in praise of woman, in the whole of Shakespeare's writings, and this he calls "cold and conceitish." You will find the passage in "Love's Labor's Lost : " 11 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive, They sparkle still, the right Promethean fire ; They are the books, the arts, the academies That show, contain, and nourish all the world." Praises of particular women are numerous, but not of the sex ; and, on the other hand, there is no lack of sharp censure. Yet Shakespeare's women are at once the noblest, loveliest, and truest to nature, that have ever been de- scribed. This incongruity is owing partly to the influence which his unhappy marriage had upon his mind, and part- ly to the state of society at the time. He never indulged in the impossible, and judged of women as they were judged by the world in his day. Henry Giles says : " Shakespeare's women are no fic- tions, no coinage of a heated brain, drunk with the fumes of reverie, when the realities of society are lost in the 60 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. loneliness of woods, or the realities of day forgotten in the fantasies of midnight. They are no such attenuated illu- sions as are thus created — mixture of sunshine and vapor, shapes of mist and moonlight — that play for a moment on the feelings, gleam dimly across the imagination, then leave no trace on the memory or affections. Shakespeare's women are drawn from life — drawn as nature makes them in substance, soul, and form. Each has the individualism of reality — the distinctness of personal existence." Freeman Clarke says that "this creative, unifying power of imagination also causes Shakespeare's characters to differ from those of all other writers. Sis unfold from a living centre ; theirs are moulded from without. His grow like a plant from its seed ; theirs are carved like a statue from a block of marble. Therefore, Shakespeare's charac- ters are like so many real human beings added to mankind. We refer to them as illustrations of human nature, as ex- amples of human conduct, just as we should to real beings. It is not so with the creations of any other writer. Take the characters of Scott, of Schiller, of Goethe ; they are not quite persons. They are abstractions ; they owe something to costume, to circumstances. Take an every- day man, and educate him in the middle ages as a knight, and you have Ivanhoe ; take the same man, and let him be brought up in Scotland, in the days of John Knox, and you have Halbert Glendinning. In all Goethe's characters you get a glimpse of Goethe himself; in all of Scott's you catch the twinkle of the sheriff's eye. But each one of Shakespeare's men and women is as distinctly, though often as slightly, individualized as the two leaves of neigh- boring trees — almost the same, yet forever immutably different." Collier says that " so true and subtile an interpreter of the human soul, in its myriad moods, has never written novel, play, or poem. The door of his fancy opened «as if SHAKESPEARE. 61 of its own accord, and out trooped such a procession as the world had never seen. The bloodiest crimes and the broadest fun were there ; the fresh, silvery laughter of girls and the maniac shriekings of a wretched old man; the stern music of war, and the roar of tavern rioters, mingled with a thousand other various sounds, yet no discordant note was heard in the manifold chorus." Most great writers show themselves in their works, but Shakespeare has painted all faces, from the king to the beggar ; sages and sots ; saints and sinners ; heroes and villains ; yet we cannot say that the poet himself sat for a single picture in the whole gallery. No other English writer has been so often reviewed, so often quoted, so closely criticised, so highly commended. Voltaire gives the following account of " Hamlet :" " It is a gross and barbarous piece, which would not be en- dured by the vilest populace of France or Italy. Hamlet goes crazy in the second act ; his mistress goes crazy in the third. The prince kills the father of his mistress, pre- tending to kill a rat. They dig a grave on the stage. The grave-diggers say abominably gross things, holding the skulls of the dead in their hands. Hamlet replies in answers no less disgusting and silly than theirs. During this time Poland is conquered by one of the actors. Hamlet, his mother, and father-in-law, drink together on the stage ; they sing, quarrel, fight, and kill each other. One would think this play the work of the imagination of a drunken savage" Hume and the critics of his school undervalued Shake- speare, because they judged every work by classic rules. They put Nature into a strait-jacket, because, in her wild- est freaks, she seemed to them a lunatic, and they put Nature's children into a treadmill, because they forgot the strict laws of art. " But human nature is a vagabond itself, maugre the six thousand years of it, and it is this 62 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. vagabond feeling in the blood which draws one so strong- ly to Shakespeare. That sweet and liberal nature blos- somed with all human generosities." And now what can I tell you, in a few lines, of his won- derful plays, except to read, re-read, and study them, begin- ning, perhaps, with the five tragedies — " Hamlet," " Lear," " Othello," " Macbeth," " Romeo and Juliet." His thirty- seven dramas are classed as tragedies, comedies, and his- tories. Dr. Johnson says, in his preface to Shakespeare's works : " He that tries to recommend him by select quota- tions, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen." So I will not attempt the impossibility of giving a few extracts to show his style. You should be as familiar with his characters as with those of your home friends, and the more you read, the more you will find to admire. He has furnished maxims for every condition of life, and seems to have known and felt all joys and sorrows. He has a good moral influence, for he always makes us love goodness and hate sin. He stands so far above common mortals, that, judging Shakespeare, is really judging one's self, and he who can find no charm in his writings must be very deficient in both head and heart. The influence of his plays in England and the United States has ex- ceeded that of all other writings, except the Bible ; and his words will thrill the hearts of future generations down to the " last syllable of recorded time." Hazlitt says : " The characteristic of Chaucer is in- tensity ; of Spenser, remoteness ; of Milton, elevation ; of Shakespeare, every thing" Many adjectives and epithets have been used to praise or describe him — such as " honey-tongued," " gentle," "ju- dicious," " myriad-minded," " pleasant Willy," " Nature's darling," " Fancy's child ; " but, as Whipple says, " these fond but belittling phrases and pet epithets, which other SHAKESPEARE. 63 authors have condescended to shower upon him, are as little appropriate as would be the patronizing chatter of the planet Venus about the dear darling little Sun" and nothing can ennoble the name of Shakespeare. " Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven ; No pyramid set off his memories But the eternal substance of his greatness.'' Let me give, in closing, a few words from Henry Giles : " Some writers we are willing to associate with an age, to associate with a country; with others we will not do this, and we cannot Let Athens have Aristophanes ; but even all Greece shall not keep Homer : we give Calderon to Spain; but every nation owns Cervantes: Dante belongs to Italy ; Milton belongs to England ; but Shake- speare belongs to man" SHAKESPEARE READING HIS PLAYS TO QUEEN ELIZABETH. MILTON. " Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart ; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea, Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. So didst thou travel on life's common way To cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on thyself did lay." As Shakespeare was walking down Broad Street, Lon- don, to the Mermaid Tavern, where he used to meet his friends and make merry over cups of canary, his attention was attracted by a child of six, seated on a doorway, singing a melody, and upon an old-fashioned instrument stretching his tiny fingers in search of pleasing chords. It was a little Puritan boy, with closely-cropped hair, large lace frill about his neck, and closely-fitting black MILTON. 65 coat; be who, in after-years, was to sing in sublimer strains — " Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe." If any precise critic should ask how I know that this pretty, sweet-voiced boy was ever seen by Shakespeare, I shall have to confess that the scene is but a picture in my own mind, one of the many things that " might have been." John" Mllton was born in London, December 9, 1608. His father, who had been disinherited for adopting the Protestant faith, was an educated man, with a great deal of musical ability, a " scrivener " by profession, his business being very much like that of the modern at- torney. Before the invention of printing, the scriveners were penmen of all kinds of writing, often copying literary manuscripts as well as charters and law papers. Chaucer has an epigram, in which he lampoons his scrivener Adam for doing his work badly. At this time the profession was an honorable one. The general aspect of their "shops " was like the offices of modern lawyers ; a chief desk for the master, side desks for the apprentices, pigeon- holes and drawers for parchments, and seats for customers. They often lent money at a profitable interest. In. the " Taming of the Shrew," a boy is sent for the scrivener to draw up a marriage settlement : " We'll pass the business privately and well. Send for your daughter by your servant here ; My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently." Like most great men, Milton had a good mother, who was famed for her charity, and his home was a happy one, though sobered by the grave Puritanic piety which was then the order of the day. Music took a high place in his 66 HOME PICTUKES OF ENGLISH POETS. father's plan of education, who was himself " a voluminous composer, equal in science, if not in genius, to the best musicians of his age," and under his skilful tuition Milton became an accomplished organist. " Often, as a child, he must have bent over his father, while composing, or lis- tened to him as he played ; often at evening, when two or three musical acquaintances would call, the voices in the Spread-Eagle would suffice for a little household concert." Their house took its name from the family coat-of-arms. In his boyhood he studied at home, with a private tutor, whom he loved very much. At ten years of age he was a poet; at eleven, he was a prodigy in the house, as a writer of verses. A portrait of the child at that time still exists. It represents the youthful poet in a striped jacket and richly-embroidered collar ; the auburn hair cut close round the head, and the face sweet, amiable, and serious. How proud and fond his parents were of their bright and handsome boy ! I imagine that he was sober, dignified, and earnest, with little love of fun or roguery. He is thought to have described himself in this passage from " Paradise Regained : " " When I was a child, no childish play- To me was pleasing, all my mind was set Serious to learn, and know, and then to do What might be public good. Myself I thought Born to that end, to promote all truth And righteous things.' , At the early age of twelve he often studied until mid- night, and, with the imperfect lights then in use, injured his eyes, whose sight he afterward lost, by overtasking them. His great knowledge of the Bible is due to his father and his Puritan teachers. English authors did not, of course, escape his notice. At fifteen he was admitted to St. Paul's school, there also studying too hard, bring- ing on frequent headaches and increasing the weakness of MTLTOX. 67 his eyes. There was much to tempt a mind, so eager for knowledge, in the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jon- son, and Shakespeare, which graced the booksellers' shops where he rambled, and were eagerly conned by him, little dreaming that his writings would one day be placed with theirs. While at this school he wrote a little poetry, and translated the 114th and 136th Psalms into English verse, in a way that won high praise. In his seventeenth year he went to Cambridge, where he spent seven years, studying hard as ever, and showing great skill in Latin verses. He was at this time extremely handsome, and was, no doubt, raved about by the young ladies of the town. From his beautiful face and slender, elegant form, he was called " the lady of the college," though, I am sure, there was nothing unmanly about him. He says himself that he did not neglect daily practice with the sword, and, when armed with it, as he generally was, he was in the habit of thinking himself quite a match for any one, even though much more robust, and of being perfectly at his ease as to any injury that any one could offer him, "man to man." His complexion was fresh and fair as a girl's, and^ his dark-gray eyes were full of expression, while his long auburn hair, beautiful and curling, flowed to his ruff on both sides his oval face. It Is said that, in a long walk one summer's day, he became so tired and heated that, lying down under a tree to rest, he soon fell asleep. Two ladies, foreigners, happened to pass in a carriage, and, charmed by his lovely appearance, alighted for a nearer view. The younger lady, a beautiful girl, drew a pen- cil from her pocket, and, writing a few lines, placed them in the hand of the handsome youth, her own dainty fingers trembling with emotion. One of his friends, walk- ing by, saw the adventure, and waking him told him the story. Milton opened the paper, and read with surprise a verse from an Italian poet, which said — 68 HOME PICTUBES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Ye eyes ! ye human stars ! Ye authors of my liveliest pangs ! If thus when shut ye wound me, What must have proved the Consequeuce had ye been open ? " He tried long and eagerly to find out his fair admirer, but in vain. He could not be called particularly modest ; indeed, his self-esteem amounted almost to vanity. He was not, as some one quaintly observes, " ignorant of his own parts." And he had reason to be a little vain. But a boy in years, he was already familiar with the Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew tongues, and was marvellously learned in many directions, besides being well read in all the current literature of the day. In fact, he proved rather a disagreeable pupil for the " fossil profess- ors " at Christ College. He dared to criticise their time- honored methods of teaching as superficial and hackneyed, and they at first treated him harshly, " as a presumptuous and conceited upstart," but learned in the end to appre- ciate and admire his genius. Speaking of the young men sent to the colleges for education, he says : " Their honest and ingenuous natures, coming to the university to feed themselves with good and solid learning, are there unfor- tunately fed with notEing else but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry. They are sent home again with such a scholastic bur in their throats as hath stopped and hindered all true and generous phi- losophy from entering ; cracked their voices forever with metaphysical gaggarisms ; hath made them admire a sort of formal outside men, prelatically addicted, whose un- chastened and overwrought minds were never yet immuted nor subdued under the law of moral or religious virtue, which two are the greatest and best points of learning." " The conflict between rotten formalism and scoffing infidelity on one side, and earnest living and sincere devo- MILTON". 69 tion on the other, which ere long lighted the flames of civil war throughout Great Britain, seems to have already commenced at the university when Milton entered it." And you see that he was already too frank and fearless in expressing his views to be popular. Before he was of age, he had commenced his career as a controversialist. But his whole time was not given to discussions with the " Dons." Christ's College was one of the largest and most comfortable in the university, with a spacious garden, bowling-green, a beautiful pond, and shady walks, in true academic style. Milton's rooms were on the first floor, looking out on the court, and there he read and studied, with very little regard to the usual course. There, too, he wrote, at the age of twenty-one, his grand hymn on the Nativity. In the garden there still stands, preserved with the greatest care, a mulberry-tree, which he planted in 1633, the year in which he entered. Every spring it puts forth its leaves, in all the vigor of youth, and bears deli- cious fruit in autumn. Its wide-spreading branches are supported by props, and this precious memento is guarded so reverently that it will no doubt send out its sweet blos- soms many years longer. Milton's father had now retired to a quiet parish, about seventeen miles west of London; and, leaving, the univer- sity at twenty-four, the young poet passed five, years in the country in pleasant repose, studying and composing, with no idea that in the future he was to be a leader in reform and a valiant champion of liberty. One of his biographers has given a pleasant description of his new home : " The little village, containing at that time but few families, was quiet, and very beautiful — one of those sweet old English towns in which we desire to. lie down and dream — precisely the nook for a speculative thinker or a poet. It was scatteringly built, the houses playing at hide-and-seek among the trees and intervening foliage, 70 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. with no continuous streets, but only a great tree in the centre of an open space, where three roads met, and sug- gested that there might be more habitations about the spot than at first appeared, which suggestion was con- firmed on looking down one of the roads by the sight of an old church-tower, ivy-covered, and with a cemetery in front, which you entered between two extremely old yew- trees. Here it was that Milton, together with other mem- bers of his family, worshipped regularly for five years, during his residence in the hamlet. One could lie under the elm-trees in the lawn, saunter through the green mead- ows, by the rippling streamlet, from a rustic bridge watch the lazy mill-wheel, or walk along quiet roads, well hedged, deviate into by-paths leading past farm-yards and or- chards, or through rich pastures, where horses, cows, and sheep, were wont to graze — an elysium, indeed, for the weary Londoner — a c Paradise regained ' for the younger Milton." Don't you suppose that the steady old farmers about Horton parish thought this pale-faced, serious student, who spent his time in scribbling poems, or reading dull books, never caring to swing a scythe or guide the plough, rather a good-for-nothing fellow ? No doubt they thanked their stars, as they saw him wandering with book in hand through the shady lanes, or sitting with pen and paper under his father's elms, that their boys were hard workers and had no such nonsense in their heads. Though he says he " spent a complete holiday in turn- ing over the Greek and Latin writers " while at Horton, jet Milton -was far from idle, for it was during the first three years of his life there that he composed five of his finest poems — the " Sonnet to a Nightingale," " Arcadles," " Comus " and " L' Allegro," and " II Penseroso." These poems are unique, and have no seconds of their kind. If he had done nothing else, he would have been immortal. MILTON. 71 It is impossible to do the least justice to them by quoting a few lines here and there ; and yet I cannot pass them by without a few extracts. The " Masque of Comus " was suggested by the following facts : The Earl of Bridge- water was spending the summer months in his castle near Horton, and it happened that his two sons and his daugh- ter, the Lady Alice Egerton 9 were benighted and be- wildered in Haywood Forest, where the brothers, seeking a homeward path, left the sister alone awhile, in a tract of country inhabited by boorish peasantry. " Such was all the story, simpler than the ballad of the i Children in the Wood ; ' and yet it is transfigured into a poem of a thou- sand lines — a moral drama, showing the communion of natural and supernatural life, the mysterious society of human beings, and the guardian and tempting spirits hovering round their paths ; it teaches, with a poet's teach- ing, how the spiritual and intellectual nature may be in peril from the charms of worldly pleasure, and how the philosophic faith and the Heaven-assisted virtue are seen at last to triumph. The guardianship of ministering angels — their encampment round the dwellings of the just — is finely announced in the opening lines, spoken by the attendant spirit alighting in the wood when the human footsteps are astray : " " Before the starry threshold of Jove's court My mansion is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live insphered, In regions mild, of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, Which men call earth, and with low-thoughted care, Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives After this mortal change to her true servants, Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. Yet some there be, that by due steps aspire 4 72 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of eternity ; To such, my errand is, and but for such, I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds With the rank vapors of this sin-worn mould.'' Here are a few more lines, which are most quoted : " He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day ; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun ; Himself is his own dungeon." " So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried, angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants, Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And tunes it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal." " How charming is divine philosophy ! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose/ But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns." When the fair maiden is at last secured from the wicked magic which failed to harm her, the good spirit which guarded her speeds away, with these words : " Now my task is smoothly done, I can fly or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. MILTON. 73 Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue ; she alone is free ; Sh© can teach ye how to climb ; Higher than the sphery chime ; Or if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her." " L' Allegro " can easily be committed to memory, and is so full of beauty, sunshine, and frolic, and pleasant sights and sounds, that its recitation will prove a good recipe for making a sad heart merry. Milton had at this time no settled plans for the future. He was designed by his father for the church, but he could not sign the articles and indorse the doctrines of the English Church, which was at this time reviving the horrors of the Inquisition, to punish and silence the free speech of the Dissenters. " The church," he says, " to whose service, by the in- tention of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and in my own resolutions, till, coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had in- vaded in the church — that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either perjure, or split his faith — I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." He had also some thoughts of studying law, but at last decided that his brother Christopher should be the lawyer of the family, and gave himself up to a " ceaseless round of study and reading," with the purpose of doing what he could with pen and tongue to enrich the literature and improve the morals of his age. He said at this time, that he " cared not how late he came into life, only that . he came fit," and " perhaps leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let it die." 74 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. In 1637 he lost his good mother, a woman of rare talents and virtues, and, without her saintly presence, the home at Horton seemed sad and deflate. Very soon after this great sorrow, he learned of the death of one of his old college-friends, Edward King, who was drowned while on his way to Ireland. It was for him that " Lycidas," that beautiful pastoral elegy, was written : " Yet once more, ye laurels ! and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude ; And, with forced fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due : For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime — Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer : Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear." Depressed by this twofold affliction, and worn by con- stant study, Milton now felt a longing for travel, and determined to go abroad. Leaving his aged father in the care of his younger brother, who had just been married, he bade adieu to his friends, and to the quiet rural scenes where he had passed his happiest years, and sailed from England in April, 1638. After a brief stay in Paris, Milton journeyed leisurely through Southern France to Italy, carrying with him letters of recommendation, which secured for him the distinguished attention which he so well deserved. His whole journey was one con- tinued ovation. There is enough in Italy to waken the most prosaic soul ; think, then, of Milton, who was as familiar with its language as his own, who had learned its glorious legends by heart, and studied its history from his MILTON. 75 boyhood ! How he revelled in the treasures of art to be found there ! They doubtless affected his style in later years, for the arts depend beautifully upon each other, and, feasting on these rare gems in marble and on the canvas, he gained many subjects, for his pen. The thought of writing an epic poem first came to him while there. The frescoes of Michael Augeio, then fresh in the Sistine Chapel, the milder beauties of Raphael, the marble of Bandinelli, who had executed statues of Adam and Eve, had probably great influence in directing his mind to the study of those early scenes of the creation which he has grouped for immortality in the " Paradise Lost." There is much in Milton that is like Michael Angelo, who was the painter of the Old Testament. The style of both was severe and sublime. Both loved to deal with the primeval forms of nature, inanimate and human. At Florence he passed an hour at Galileo's villa, received with cordial kindness by the blind old sage. To use his own words : " There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than as the Franciscan and Domini- can licensers thought." While at Rome, the Cardinal Barbesini gave a mag- nificent concert in his honor, bringing him into the assembly by his own hand. He was introduced at Naples to Manso, the Marquis of Villa, the patron and biographer of Tasso, who enter- tained him most hospitably in his own palace, and declared that he had no fault but that of heresy. When he was leaving, Manso gave him this Latin distich : " With mind, mien, temper, face, did faith agree, Not Anglic, but an Angel, wouldst thou be." The struggle in England, between Prelate and Puritan, was but a picket-skirmish compared with the great battle 76 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. that was raging fiercely over all Christendom, called the " Thirty Years' War " — a conflict caused by the same ques- tion — the freedom of religious thought for the people. Milton made no secret of his opinions, speaking as boldly at Rome as elsewhere. He was told that snares were laid for him in that city, by the English Jesuits, and hints were thrown out of the Inquisition, with advice not to return. But this warning made no difference in his fear- lessness of speech. He says : " I had made this resolution with myself — not indeed of my own accord — to introduce in those places conversation about religion ; but, if inter- rogated respecting the faith, then, whatever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing. To Rome, therefore, I did return, notwithstanding what I had been told ; what I * was, if any one asked, I concealed from no one ; if any one, in the very city of the Pope, attacked the orthodox religion, I, as before, for a second space of nearly two months, defended it most freely." He was certainly treated, as he said, with " singular politeness," for it would have been dangerous for any other person to have upheld a different faith from the passionate Italians. He wished to pursue his travels farther, but duty called him home. In his own words : " While I was desirous to cross into Sicily and Greece, the sad news of the civil war coming from England called me back ; for I considered it disgraceful that, while my fellow-countrymen were fight- ing at home for liberty, I should be travelling at ease for intellectual purposes." So he retraced his former route through France, arriv- ing in England early in August, 1639, after an absence of fifteen months. He was* now in the prime of life, the full bloom of manly beauty and accomplishments ; unstained by the vices and license of the Continent. He concludes his account of his tour in this way : " I again take God to witness that, in all those places where so many things are MILTON. 77 considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice ; having this thought perpetually with me, that, though I might escape the eyes of men, I cer- tainly could not the eyes of God" His father had always supported him most generously, but he felt that he should now do something for himself. He therefore took a handsome house in London, where he received his nephews and a few other pupils, " to teach them both knowledge and virtue." These boys were given hard study and spare diet, but had a great affection for their teacher. At this time he began his work as a reformer. No one can read his writings or study his life, without feeling that his first desire was the freedom, and through that, the happiness of his country. There was at this time a contest between Charles I. and his people, the one to extend his power, the other to enlarge their privileges. Milton wished for, worked for, and prayed for, a republic. His reading of the Bible taught him to defend the op- pressed and assail the oppressor, and he wrote boldly in a way that made him many enemies. He also aided the Puritans in their war against the Established Church, which added to his unpopularity. His " Treatise on the Reformation " was published in 1641, which abounds in stirring passages and attempts to prove that the prelates of the English Church had ever been the foes of liberty, and " that, though at the begin- ning they had renounced the Pope, yet they had hugged the Popedom, and shared the authority among themselves ; by their six bloody articles persecuting the Protestants no slacker than the pope would have done." In his prose writings there are passages of great poetic splendor, and a fiery, fervid spirit breathed through all. Macaulay describes his prose as " a perfect field of cloth of gold, stiff with gorgeous embroidery." 78 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. He said himself that in prose he always felt that he was writing with his left hand. He was at times too fierce and severe, and needed the music of verse to bring out all that was bright and beautiful in his nature. But. these eloquent sentences do not betray any left- handed awkwardness : " How the bright and glorious Reformation, by Divine power, shone through the black and settled night of igno- rance and anti-Christian tyranny ; methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odor imbue his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible brought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it ; the schools opened, Divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues ; princes and cities trooping apace to the new- erected banner of salvation ; the martyrs, with the irre- sistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of dark- ness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon. " Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her dazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam ; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosti- cate a year of sects and schisms." The " Areopagitica " is Milton's greatest prose work ; its theme, the benefits of a free press. In his thirty-fifth year he married Mary Powell, the daughter of a Cavalier, after a very short courtship, and brought her to London. But the young bride, accustomed to gay beaux and a house full of people, found her new Hilton 79 life rather irksome. She did not fancy the spare diet and the house filled with pupils, and could not endure the dulness and restraints of a scholar's life. So, in a few weeks after their marriage, she went home on a visit and did not return. Milton sent letters and messengers, but in vain, until at last he refused to call her his wife any- more, and, to defend his conduct, published four treatises on the subject of " Divorce." In these he argued in favor of polygamy, as allowed in the Old Testament, and no- where absolutely forbidden in the New. I wonder that he should wish additional vexation, after finding one pretty little woman so unruly; but possibly he saw a chance of happiness with one tractable spouse among the half dozen ! At the close of a year his wife came back, and, kneeling in tears at his feet, begged forgiveness, which he at last granted, and they managed to live com- fortably together. By her he had three daughters, his only children that lived. He had three wives (not all at one time, however !), the last one surviving him several years. His eyes grew more and more diseased, and at last came total blindness. His enemies regarded this as a punishment for writing against the king. He bore this great trial with rare fortitude and cheerfulness, as his beautiful sonnet on his own blindness will show : " When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide : 1 Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? ' I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, ' God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts ; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state 80 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest : They also serve who only stand and wait." But though he had lost his sight, he retained that fear- less spirit which never trembled before pope or king. It is said that the Duke of York, in the heyday of his honors and greatness, went to satisfy a malignant curiosity by visiting Milton, and asked him if he did not regard the loss of his sight as a judgment for his writing as he had done. Milton replied, calmly : " If your highness thinks calamity is an indication of Heaven's wrath, how do you account for the fate of the king your father ? I have lost but my eyes — he lost his head." On the duke's return to court, he said to the king, " Brother, you are greatly to blame that you don't have that old rogue, Milton, hanged." " What ! " said' the king, " have you seen Milton ? " " Yes," answered the duke, " I have seen him." " In what condition did you find him ? " " Condition ! Why he is old, and very poor." "Old and poor," said the king — "and blind, too? You are a fool, James, to have him hanged — it would be doing him a service. No; if he is poor, and old, and blind, he is already miserable enough, in all conscience. Let him live on." Milton taught his daughters to pronounce half a dozen languages, without understanding the meaning of a word, and they read much to him. But, I fear, his home-life was far from pleasant. He had very little sympathy with his family. His daughters thought it great drudgery to read to him, and did not hesitate to say so, and he really suf- fered in other ways from their ill-treatment. They would sell his books, and advise the servants to cheat him, and one of them, when told of her father's intention to marry MILTON". 81 again, said, " that was no news, but if she could hear of his death, that would be something.'" I can give you a very minute account of the manner in which he divided his time during the day : " In his latter years he retired every night at nine o'clock, and lay till four in summer, till five in winter; and, if not disposed then to rise, he had some one to sit at his bedside and read to him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read for him ; and then, with of course the intervention of breakfast, he studied till twelve. He then dined, took some exercise for an hour— generally in a chair, in which he used to swing himself — and afterward played on the organ or the bass-viol, and either sang himself or made his wife sing, who, as he said, had a good voice, but no ear. He then resumed his studies till six, from which hour till eight he conversed with those who came to visit him. He finally took a light supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank a glass of water, after -which he retired to rest:" His public work was now done; his cause had been defeated, he had been traduced and persecuted. The King's power has increased, and he was living in poverty, desertion, and disgrace. Yet his voice was unchanged " To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days ; On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with danger compassed round, And solitude ; " — the. noble champion of the people's liberty lost not " one jot of heart or hope," but forgetting his own wrongs, losses, and woes, devoted his time and talents to writing his last and greatest poems. Whipple says : " No one can fully reverence Milton who has not studied the character of the age of Charles II., in which his later fortunes were cast. He was Dryden's contemporary in time, but not his 82 HOME PICTTJEES OF ENGLISH POETS. master or disciple in slavishness. He was under the anathema of power ; a republican in days of abject servility; a Christian among men whom it would be charity to call infidels ; a man of pure life and high prin- ciple, among sensualists and renegades. On nothing ex- ternal could he lean for support. In his own domain of imagination perhaps the greatest poet that ever lived, he was still doomed to see such pitiful and stupid poetasters as Shadwell and Settle bear away the shining rewards of letters. Well might he declare that he had fallen on evil times ! He was among his opposites, a despised and high- souled Puritan poet, surrounded by a horde of desperate and dissolute scribblers." It is pleasant to know that this sad and blind old man, had the consolation of music left him, and to think of him, as playing the organ at twilight, adding to its rich tones, the music of his own sweet voice. Very peacefully, at midnight, on the 8th of November, 1674, the great Milton closed his tired, sightless eyes, to open them in the light of heave*n. He was buried near his father, in the chancel of St. Giles. " Over his grave, civil and religious liberty clasp hands ; science, poesy, and divine philosophy, strew upon it garlands as immortal as his name ; while the muse of history, dipping her pencil in the sunlight, sculptures, through proud tears, the scriptural benediction, 'Well done, good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' " " Paradise Lost," the great Christian epic of our lan- guage, was chanted at first to but few hearers. Indeed, Milton had some difficulty in finding a publisher. The poet Waller said : " The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man ; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other." It is now acknowledged by all to be one of the sub- MILTON. 83 limest monuments of human genius. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, are the four great evangelists of the human mind, each being in some measure the type of his age. Homer expresses the mythic epoch ; Virgil sings of the State ; Dante is the embodiment of mediaeval Christi- anity; Milton, the poet of Protestantism. The "Inferno" and " Paradise Lost " are often compared and contrasted. It is enough for me to say, that, while Dante describes minutely and often repulsively the horrors of the lower world, Milton delights in generalizations. He produces effect often by what he leaves unsaid, and merely sug- gested. " Paradise Regained," an inferior epic written in the same style, was suggested by the question of a Quaker friend, who, after reading the first, said, " Thou hast said much here of c Paradise Lost,' but what hast thou to say of 'Paradise Found?'" I might as well try to give you an idea of the gran- deur of Mont Blanc, by showing a few rocks from its base, as to hope to impress you with the sublimity of these epics by a few quotations. No one can read them carefully without being amply repaid. To those who, in studying an author's life, like to see what were the outward circumstances that influenced his character and writings, these remarks of Reed's in regard to Milton may be interesting : " The first part of Milton's literary life is full of beautiful reflection of the age that had gone before ; his genius is then glowing with tints of glory cast upon it by the Elizabethan poetry ; the merid- ian of it is in close correspondence with the season of the power of the Parliament and Protector, when Milton stood side by side with Cromwell; and the latter period of it has that of sublime and solitary contrast with the times of Charles the Second. The first was the genial season of youth, studious, pure, and happy ; the second was of ma- 84 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. ture manhood, strenuous in civil strife, and the dubious dynasty of the Protectorate ; the third was old age dark- ened, disappointed, but indomitable." Milton's enemies are now forgotten, or at best remem- bered like the dim shadows of a dream, while his name and fame as a poet, scholar, and reformer, will endure until all kingdoms and republics have passed away. milton's cottage at chalfont. DETDEK " Dryden, in immortal strain, Had raised the table-round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, to make them sport ; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay ; The world, defrauded of the high design, Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line." Joirtf Drydex, who, after Milton's death, was con- sidered the first poet of his time, was born at the parsonage- house of Oldwinkle, All-Saints, August 9, 1631. Now I could tell you just what Milton liked best for 86 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. breakfast, and how he often sat, with one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, when composing ; but of Dryden's daily life we know but little. He belonged to a respect- able Puritan family, and was the eldest of fourteen chil- dren ; was fitted for college at Westminster, under Dr. Busby, of "birchen memory," who, for fifty-five years, was at the head of that famous school ; then spent seven years at Cambridge, distinguishing himself in no special way at either place. These meagre facts are all we have to tell of his early days at home, at school, and at college. His first poem, written when only seventeen, appeared in book form, in 1650, with nearly a hundred other elegies, called forth by the sad death of Lord Hastings, " a young nobleman of great learning, and much beloved," who was a victim of the small-pox on the very eve of his intended marriage. This juvenile effort was absurd and affected, and showed the young poet had but little heart. He raves about the pustules, calling them rose-buds and jewels, and at last exalts them into stars — " No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation," apparently forgetting the sorrow of the mourners, in de- light at his own fine verses. But poetry was in a low state at this time, and the public taste was " detestable." Alliterations, poor puns, and strained allegories, were con- sidered fine writing ; it was only natural that Dry den should follow the general fashion. His family and friends were all stanch Puritans, and on his going to London, from the university, he was made secretary to Sir Gilbert Pickering, his kinsman, who was at that time Lord-Chamberlain of the Protector's house- hold. His dress of plain drugget, and his manners, home- ly and serious, plainly proved his parentage, and the in- DRYDEX. 87 fluences that surrounded him. As Hannay expresses it, " These sable leading-strings were still perceptible in his walk." But, with all these, Dryden was not a Puritan at heart. To be sure, when Cromwell died, he lamented the event in some heroic stanzas ; but only two years after, when the merry monarch, Charles II., was welcomed back to London, after a disagreeable and rather dangerous ex- perience, hiding in haylofts and stable-yards, disguised as a servant, to save his worthless life, Dryden approved the re- joicings, the big dinners, flags and trumpets, and wrote another poem, in the same fulsome strain, celebrating his return. For this sudden change he has been called a trimmer and turn-coat, but has, perhaps, been too severely criti- cised. One of his defenders exonerates him in these words : " Puritanism is one way of looking at nature, and, when sincere, of course, a right worshipful one ; and the artistic and literary view of life is' a different one ! A man of wit and social sympathies, a lover of the beautiful, and a humorist, could not be expected to remain a Puritan. There are sacred birds and singing-birds ; trees that utter oracles, and trees that produce blossoms and fruit for sum- mer afternoons. Young John Dryden followed his bent." The next few "years were spent in writing plays, which were not especially good, but had just made " a hit," as they say, with his drama of the " Indian Emperor," dedi- cated to his beautiful patroness, the Duchess of Monmouth, when the " Great Plague " broke out in London, and put a stop to all theatre-going. Ah ! what a sad, sad time in that great city ! More than one hundred thousand died from that terrible disease. Fires were kept burning night and day in the streets to stop the infection, but for four months the pestilence raged. In September of the next year, 1666, a fire broke out in a baker's shop near London Bridge, which spread and 88 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. spread, and burned and burned for three days. Dryden describes this, and the desperate engagement between the Dutch and English fleets. This poem, full of flattery to the king, and which boasts of his countrymen's prowess, gave him his place among the best poets of the day, but caused Milton to decide that Dryden was a rhymer, and little more. In 1670 he was made poet-laureate and historian to the king, which gave him a handsome income. This may be considered the most prosperous part of his life. His " Essay on Dramatic Poesy," published about this time, proves that he could not only write plays, but defend them when written. In fact, it was his habit all through life to write an elaborate argument in prose or verse to explain his position, telling the world what good reasons he had for thinking as he did. Having given his time and talents to the composing of heroic plays, he assumed that the drama was the highest department of poetry ; and, because he chose to write in rhyme, he argued that blank verse was inappropriate for the drama. Of course, this Essay caused a great deal of discussion, few of the poets or critics of the time agreeing with Dryden. He, too, after- ward changed his mind, and went back to the style sanc- tioned by the great dramatists of the Elizabethan era. He now engaged to write three plays each year for the king's company of players, and they evidently appreciated his tal- ents, for, although he really wrote but one instead of three, they readily paid him the promised sum. But these plays, twenty-eight in all, were written for pay, and to please a wicked court, and are now considered coarse and con- temptible. There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles II., and Dryden lowered him- self by following the public taste. He wanted popularity and pay, and for this dipped his pen in pollution, and lost his self-respect. DRYDE^. 89 Whipple says that poverty has been the most fertile source of literary crimes. " Poets are by no means wing- less angels, fed with ambrosia plucked from Olympus, or manna rained down from heaven ; and men of letters have ever displayed the same strange indisposition to starve common to other descendants of Adam. The law of sup- ply and demand operates in literature as in trade. For instance, if a poor poet, rich only in the riches of thought, be placed in an age which demands intellectual monstrosi- ties, he is tempted to pervert his powers to please the general taste. This he must do, or die, and this he should rather die than do ; but still, if he hopes to live by his products, he must produce what people will buy — and it is already supposed that nothing will be bought except what is brainless or debasing." This is more briefly expressed in the old couplet — " The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, And they who live to please, must please to live." He then mentions Dryden as a pertinent example of this truth. " The time in which he lived was one of great depravity of taste, and greater depravity of manners. Authors seemed banded in an insane crusade to exalt blasphemy and profligacy to the vacant throne of piety and virtue. Books were valuable according to the wicked- ness blended with their talent. Mental power was lucra- tive only in its perversion. The public was ravenous for the witty iniquities of the brain ; and, to use the energetic invective of South, laid hold of brilliant morsels of sin, with ' fire and brimstone flaming round them, and thus, as it were, digested death itself, and made a meal upon perdi- tion.' ISTow it is evident, in such a period as this, a needy author was compelled to choose between virtue, attended by neglect, and vice, lackeyed by popularity. One of Sir Charles Sedley's profligate comedies, one of Lord Roches- 90 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. ter's ribald lampoons, possessed more mercantile value than the ' Paradise Lost.' In such a period as this the poet should have descended upon his time, like Schiller's ideal artist, ' not to delight it with his presence, but terri- ble, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify it.' Dry den was placed in this age, and, for a long period of his life, was its pander and parasite. Yet, had he lived in the reign of George III., he would not have been more im- moral than Churchill ; had he lived in our day, his muse would have been as pure as that of Campbell. He could not, or would not, learn that it is better to starve on hon- esty than thrive on baseness. It is hard, says an old English divine, to maintain truth, but still harder to be maintained by it." Ridiculed by some of the wits at court, in a way that cut him keenly, he turned upon them, with all the terrible power of his fierce satire, proving to them and the world that his pen could wound as well as flatter. It was in 1681 that he published his great satirical poem of "Absa- lom and Achitophel," in which, under the thin veil of a Scriptual story, his enemies, the Duke of Monmouth and Shaftesbury, were held up to be ridiculed and scorned. It had a most rapid sale, and even the sufferers themselves had to own his power. " MacFlecknoe " and the " Medal " soon followed. His skill in this kind of " moral portrait- painting " is wonderful, and yet every one must regret that he wasted his great powers in abusing his envious contemporaries. It is sad, too, to think of him selling himself to the theatre for so many plays a year, when he longed to be writing something better ; working for the king, in return for a small pension, irregularly paid ; writing any thing for pay, prologues, dedications, translations ; yet seldom in comfortable circumstances. Listen to his affecting memorial addressed at this time to the Earl of Rochester : DRYDEN. 91 "I would plead a little merit, and some hazards -of my life from the common enemies; my refusing advantages offered by them and neglecting my beneficial studies, for the king's service ; but I only think I merit not to starve. I never applied myself to any interest contrary to your lord- ship's ; and on some occasions, perhaps not known to you, have not been unserviceable to the memory and reputation of my lord, your father. After this, my lord, my con- science assures me, I may write boldly, though I cannot speak to you. I have three sons, growing to man's estate. I breed them all up to learning, beyond my fortune, but they are too hopeful to be neglected, though I want. Be pleased to look on me with an eye of compassion. Some small employment would render my condition easy. The king is not unsatisfied of me; the duke has often prom- ised me his assistance ; and your lordship is the conduit through which their favors pass. Either in the customs or the appeals of the excise, or some other way, means cannot be wanting, if you please to have the will. It is enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler ; but neither of them had the happi- ness to live till your lordship's ministry. In the mean time, be pleased to give me a gracious and a speedy answer to my present request of half a year's pension for my necessities. I am going to write somewhat by his ma- jesty's command, and cannot stir into the country for my health and studies till I secure my family from want." Butler's life of penury and neglect, in contrast with the honors paid him after his death, suggested one of the best epigrams we have : ft Whilst Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give. See him, when starved to death and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown : He asked for bread, nnd he received — a stone." 92 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. The work to which Diyden alludes was the translation of a pamphlet written in defence of the English Church against the Dissenters, call the "Religio Laici." In 1685, King Charles died, and James II., a bigoted papist, took his place ; and all who had any thing to hope from the new monarch, "hastened in sugared addresses to lament the sun which had set, and hail the beams of that which had arisen." Dryden, especially, was anxious to secure the royal favor. He had received little from the reckless, ex- travagant Charles but " the pension of a prince's praise" and had no reason to sorrow immoderately. He at once wrote his " Threnodia Augustalis," in which, after having said all that was decently mournful over the bier of the dead, he tuned his lyre to sing in joyful praise of James. Now the new sovereign, the most cruel of all the Eng- lish kings, cared little for verses and much for money, and the poet-laureate suffered the loss of his butt of sack, which had been given him many years. Dryden knew little and cared little about religion, probably being rather skeptical at this time ; he did care for the wine, and did not wish to lose his pension, so he thought it prudent to become a papist. This was considered more politic than pious, by his enemies at least. As usual, he defended his opinions, this time in a poetical fable, which exhibited the beasts talking theology in a very able way. This he called "The Hind and the Panther." The Church of England is represented by the Panther, beautiful, but spotted, and the milk-white Hind is the Church of Rome. He speaks thus of the Church he had so lately defended : " The Panther, sure the noblest next the Hind, The fairest creature of the spotted kind, Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away, She were too good to be a beast of prey, — How can I praise or blame, and not offend ; Or how divide the frailty from the friend ? DRYDEN. 93 Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she Nor wholly stands condemned, nor wholly free." The Bear and the Wolf figured as Presbyterians and Independents; and various other animals made up the assembly. These learned quadrupeds go to drink at the common brook, and, while wagging their tails and licking their jaws, have long discussions over the merits of their 'different faiths. But this very singular plot is atoned for by the beauty of the verse, and affords a fine specimen of Dryden's most prominent quality, his power of reasoning in rhyme. James was delighted with his new ally, and added one hundred pounds to his pension, besides restoring the wine ; but the revolution of 1688 robbed him of his place, and he was forced once more to write for bread. Hannay, his enthusiastic defender, says that "the cause of all his embarrassments was, that he took up litera- ture as a profession. He was a man of very good family and connections ; and if he had sold himself to making money, the way to do it was surely open enough. Only his instinct made him improve the English language. He would "jom The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march and energy divine " — and he would follow his intellectual instinct ! Of course he had a penalty to pay for his independence and his im- mortality." He now took some of Chaucer's charming tales, which were seldom read, because few cared to puzzle their brains over the old English, and translated them pleasantly, though increasing rather than diminishing the coarseness which clung to them. He also translated " Virgil," a work for which he was 91 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. not suited and which he did not enjoy, and this heavy task occupied three years. But, although he failed to transfuse into his version the life and soul of the great Latin epic, he has given us a translation still read and admired, as good as any that has ever been attempted. The "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day," one of the noblest lyrics in our language, was one of his last efforts, and in some respects the best. * Scott gives the following anec- dote in regard to the short time in which this ode was written : " Mr. St. John, afterward Lord Bolingbroke, happen- ing to pay a morning visit to Dryden, whom he always respected, found him in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to a trembling. On inquiring the cause, ' I have been up all night,' replied the old bard. ' My musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their feast of St. Cecilia ; I have been so struck with the sub- ject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had completed it ; here it is, finished at one sitting. And immediately he showed him this ode, which places the British lyric poetry above that of any other nation. ' " Handel, the great composer, set it to music, and it was performed in the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, with great applause. It is rare to find such talents combined. Dryden seemed to have no mean opinion of his own production. He says, in writing to his publisher : " I am glad to hear from all hands that my ode is esteemed the best of all my poetry, by all the town. I thought so myself when I writ it ; but being old I mistrusted my own judgment." And when a young friend congratulated him on having produced the finest ode ever written in any language, he replied, " You are right, young gentleman ; a nobler ode never teas produced, nor ever icill!" Some of its lines have almost become proverbs, such as : DRYDEST. 95 " None but the brave deserve the fair." " Sweet is pleasure after pain." " For pity melts the mind to love." " Take the goods the gods provide thee." " War, he sung, is toil and trouble ; Honor, but an empty bubble." " He raised a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down." He died a poor, 'neglected man, notwithstanding his many changes and abject flattery, leaving, this life on Wednesday morning, the 1st of May, 1700. He died in the Roman Catholic faith, to which he had ever been true, full of resignation to the divine will, " taking of his friends so tender and obliging a farewell as none but he himself could have expressed." " The death of a man like Dry den, especially in narrow and neglected circumstances, is usually an alarum-bell to the public. Unavailing and mutual reproaches, for un- thankful and pitiful negligence, waste themselves in news- paper paragraphs, elegies, and funeral processions; the debt to genius is then deemed discharged, and a new ac- count of neglect and commemoration is opened between the public and the next who rises to supply his room. It was thus with Dryden. His family were preparing to bury him with the decency becoming their limited circum- stances, when Charles Montagu, Lord Jeffries, and other men of quality, made a subscription for a public funeral. The body of the poet was then removed to the Physicians' Hall, where it was embalmed, and lay in state till the 13th day of May, twelve days after the decease. On that day the celebrated Dr. Garth pronounced a Latin oration over the remains of his departed friend, which were then, with considerable state, preceded by a band of music, and 5 96 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. attended by a numerous procession of carriages, trans- ported to Westminster Abbey, and deposited between the graves of Chaucer and Cowley." Let us now go back and look at his private life. We know that he was a shy, handsome boy, fond of history and the classics, a great reader, and devoted to the old English ballads. We see him next as a gallant at court, for whose sake " The blushing virgins died," or, giving up the hope of fascinating the gay Lothario, retired to a nunnery. This of course is poetical exaggera- tion, for, however handsome he may have been, he was always diffident and talked but little. I am glad he enjoyed those early days, for he soon learned the sad truth, that " life is a strife" in his own home, as well as with his literary rivals. At the age of thirty-two, he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. She was proud and odd and ill-tem- pered, quarrelling with his relations and her own, making him very wretched. Dryden was always very severe on matrimony, and no wonder. Here is an epitaph said to be his, written perhaps as a little relief to his feelings after one of their conjugal squabbles : " Here lies my wife, Here let her lie ; Now she's at rest, And so am Z" But we should have some sympathy for the poor woman, for her eccentricities terminated in insanity, and her last years were spent in an asylum. Dryden was never a great talker; one of his critics writes for him : " Nor wine nor love could ever see me gay ; To writing bred, I knew not what to say." • DRYDEN. 97 and he has himself very honestly told us : "My conver- sation is dull and slow ; my humor is saturnine and reserved ; in short, I am not one of those who endeavor to break jest in company or make repartees." Neither did he seem to be an epicure. Writing to a lady, declining her invitation to a handsome supper, he said : " If beggars might be chosers, a chine of honest bacon would please my appetite more than all the mar- row puddings — for I like them better plain, having a very vulgar stomach." Can't you imagine just how Madam Dryden, fault-finding and foolishly aristocratic, turned up her patrician nose, if she saw that note ? She must have been visiting some of her titled friends at that time, for, if she had been at home, no doubt her husband would have gone meekly to the fine dinner and the marrow pud- ding. His looks, in later years, belied his temperate tastes, for he grew so corpulent that his enemies called him the " Poet Squab ; " and his eyes', that had once done such execution among the court beauties, grew sleepy and sunken, while his whole face assumed a florid hue that did not add to his beauty. His happiest hours were spent at Will's Coffee-House, the great resort of the wits of the town, where he had the royal seat, and his snuffbox was "the fountain of honor." "He was the great literary lion of his day; and -no country stranger of any taste for letters, thought his round of London sights complete, unless he had been to Will's Coffee-House in Russell Street, where, ensconced in a snug arm-chair by the fire, or on the balcony, according to the season, old John sat, pipe in hand,* laying down the law upon disputed points in literature or poli- tics." I am afraid that Dryden grew weary of temperance in these days, and that his rubicund visage was owing to his habits, for, during the last ten years of his life, he used to 98 HOME PICTUEE8 OF ENGLISH POETS. drink to excess with Addison and others, shortening his days, it is said, in this way. When I think of his rare talents, and the way in which he wasted and degraded them, for the sake of popularity with that wicked court, which never repaid him, I cannot but wish his life had been more like that other " old John" who lived in the same city with him, for nearly fifty years ; that noble poet we talked of last, the blind Milton, neglected but unconquered, who would rather have gone to the stake than shown any sympathy with the follies and vices of his day. That Dry den admired and appreciated his genius, though he did not adopt his morals, is seen from the fol- lowing tribute, in which he places Milton above Homer and Virgil : " Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn : The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go — To make a third, she joined the other two." I think he saw his mistake when it was too late, and we are more ready to pity than blame when we read a sad strain like this, so full of vain regret : " If joys hereafter must be purchased here, With loss of all that mortals hold so dear, Then welcome infamy, and public shame, And last, a long farewell to worldly fame ! 'Tis said with ease ; but oh, how hardly tried, By haughty souls, to human honor tied ! Oh, sharp, convulsive pangs of agonizing pride ! Down then, thou rebel, never more to rise ! And what thou didst, and dost so dearly prize, That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice. 'Tis nothing thou hast given, then add thy tears For a long race of unrepenting years. DEYDEX. 99 'Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give, Then add those maybe years thou hast to live. 'Tis nothing still ; then poor and naked come, Thy Father will receive His unthrift home, And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sin." He once spoke very frankly of his strong desire for fame, adding: "For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study ? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame ? The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honors of the gown." His old age was far from happy ; he was desolate, poor, and obliged to write on distasteful subjects in a mechanical way for daily support. His habits of composing were very rapid, and he sel- dom pruned or corrected ; his complete works are greater than those of any English poet. When working hard over his translation of Virgil, he writes to his bookseller about his son, an invalid, who would soon return from Rome : " If it please God that I must die of over-study, I cannot spend my life better than in preserving his." But light mingled with the clouds in these sunset days, and here is a pleasant story to prove it : Dry den was sjDending the evening with some friends, when their conversation happened to be directed to the subject of the art of composition, elegant style, etc. So it was agreed that each should write something, and place it under the candlestick for the poet's criticism. Most of the company labored hard, while Lord Dorset, with much composure, wrote two or three lines, and carelessly threw them to the place agreed on. The rest having finished, the arbiter raised the candlestick and opened the leaves of their destiny. In going through the whole, he dis- covered strong marks of pleasure and satisfaction, but at 100 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. one, in particular, he seemed in raptures. "I must ac- knowledge," said he, "that there are abundance of fine things in my hands, and such as do honor to the person- ages who wrote them ; but I am under an indispensable necessity of giving the highest preference to my Lord Dorset. I must request that your lordships will hear it, and I believe all will be satisfied with my judgment : ' 1 promise to pay John Dryden or order, on demand, the sum of five hundred pounds. Dorset.' " Dryden's life cannot be considered a failure, though even his warmest friends must regard it with " respectful sorrow." Talents so great as his cannot be concealed by faults of character, or grossness of style. He was a fine reasoner, an able critic, and possessed a wonderful power over language. Johnson, who was always partial in his opinions, called him the " Father of Criticism," and said, in describing his style, that he did for the English language what Augustus did for Rome — " found it brick and left it marble." No one can help regretting that he did not carry out his favorite plan of composing an epic poem on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the same subject which Milton once thought of attempting. With such a theme, he would have given us something worthy of his genius. I must give you a few more lines from his works, just as they happen to gtrike me in running them over, that you may see how lavishly he scattered gems of thought before that good-for-nothing court — literally casting his " pearls before swine : " " Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide." " But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land." DETDE^. 101 " Beware the fury of a patient man." " He trudged along, unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.'' " Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow ; He who would search for pearls, must dive below." " Men are but children of a larger growth." " But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be ; Within that circle, none durst walk but he." " Forgiveness to the injured does belong ; But they ne'er pardon, who have done the wrong." " This is the porcelain clay of human kind." u Time gives himself and is not valued." u Death in itself is nothing ; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where," " Love either finds equality, or makes it" 41 That bad thing, gold, buys all good things." " The secret pleasure of the generous act, Is the great mind's great bribe." u Few know the use of life, before 'tis past." a When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat, Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit ; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day ; Lies worse ; and while it says, l We shall be blest With some new joys,' cuts off what we possessed, Strange courage ! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive . What the first sprightly running could not give." " Of no distemper, of no blast he died, But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long; Even wondered at, because he dropt no sooner. 102 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years, Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more ; Till, like a clock worn out with calling time, The wheels of weary life — at last stood still." He was very ready in extempore composition. Talk- ing one day at his friend's, Mrs. Creed's, upon the origin of names and their significance, he bowed to the good old lady, and recited this impromptu : " So much religion in your name doth dwell, Your soul must needs with piety excel. Thus names, like well-wrought pictures drawn of old, Their owner's nature and their story told. Your name but half expresses ; for in you Belief and practice do together -go. My prayers shall be, while this short life endures, These may go hand in hand, with you and yours ; Till faith hereafter is in vision drowned, And practice is with endless glory crowned." His assertion that he was not good at repartee, is certainly disproved by his witty reply to his wife, who, in a good-humored mood, wished that she might be a book, and so enjoy more of his com p any : " Be an almanac, then, my dear, That I may change you once a year ! " Lowell, in a recent North American, has an able criti- cism of Dryden, from which I will copy a few sentences : " In the second class of English poets, perhaps no one stands, on the whole, so high as he ; during his lifetime, in spite of jealousy, detraction, unpopular politics, and a suspicious change of faith, his preeminence was conceded ; he was the earliest complete type of the purely literary man, in the modern sense ; there is a singular unanimity in allowing him a certain claim to greatness^ which would be denied to men as famous and more read; to Pope or DRYDETtf. 103 Swift, for example ; he is supposed, in some way or other, to have reformed English poetry." I cannot better close this rambling talk than by quot- ing the words of his biographer, Scott, at the close of his work : " I have thus detailed the life and offered some remarks on the literary character of John Dryden, who, educated in a pedantic taste, and a fanatical religion, was destined, if not to give laws to the stage of England, at least to defend its liberties ; to improve burlesque into satire, to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase, and exclude it from the license of paraphrase; to teach posterity the powerful and varied harmony of which their language was capable ; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence ; and to leave to English literature a name second only to those of Milton and Shakespeare." BURLEIGH HOUSE. O^ c^^O^Z^ ADDISOK 11 He taught us how to live, and oh too high The price for knowledge I taught us how to die. 1 On the 1st of May, 1672, in the house of a Wiltshire dean, could be heard the cries of a little babe, so feeble and puny that it was christened on the day of its birth, no one daring to hope for its life. This delicate child be- came a man whom I want you all to love and admire, for his name, given in such sad haste by anxious friends, became one of the brightest and purest in English litera- ture. Joseph Addison's early life was passed at his father's rectory, and of those days we know but little. There is a story which makes him ringleader in a " barring ADDISON. 105 out," which was a mad, impudent frolic of the boys at the close of a term, when they thought it great fun to lock the doors and bar the windows of the school-room, and then jeer and sneer at the poor master standing outside. Another tradition assures us that he once ran away from school to escape a whipping, and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries,, and slept in a hollow tree, until, after a long search, he was discovered and brought home. BIRTHPLACE OF ADDISON. It is hard to believe that so gentle and retiring a man was ever a mutinous runaway, and, whatever his pranks may have been, he must have studied well, for at fifteen he was a fine Latin scholar, and fitted for the university. Tiekell says : " He employed his first years in the study of the old Greek and Roman writers, whose language and manner he caught at that time of life as strongly as other young people gain a French accent or a genteel air." It was at the Charter-house School in London that he met Richard Steele, " a good-hearted, mischief-loving Irish boy," with whom he ever after kept up a warm friendship. Addison's father also liked this frank and lively lad, and approved of the intimacy. Steele, in writing to Congreve, 106 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. says : " Were things of this nature to be exposed to public view, I could show, under the dean's own hand, in the warmest terms, his blessing on the friendship between his son and me ; nor had he a child who did not prefer me in the first place of kindness and esteem, as their father loved me like one of them." They were also together at Oxford, and no doubt their very opposite temperaments had a happy effect upon each other, Addison being as shy, studious, and quiet, as Steele was lazy, reckless, and uproarious. After two years of hard study, Addison gained a scholarship in Magdalen, from the superiority of his Latin verses. I have nothing to tell you of his life there, but that he was very nervous, that he kept late hours, and that most of his studies were after dinner, a circumstance which, as Miss Aiken observes, is pretty conclusive of the sobriety of his habits at this period. A grove at Magdalen still retains the name of " Addison's Walk," and some of its trees are said to have been planted by him. At the age of twenty-two he published his first poem, some verses addressed to Dryden, which won for him the friendship of that poet at the outset of his career. Dryden, now a poor old man, whose life was imbittered with keen disappointments and vain regret, was pleased by the ex- travagant flattery, which congratulated him on having " heightened the majesty of Virgil, given new charms to Horace, lent to Persius smoother numbers and a clearer style, and set a new edge on the satire of Juvenal." But the veteran poet fully reciprocated this fulsome praise in a postscript to the translation of " The iEneid," where he " affected to be afraid that his own performance w6uld not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth Geor- gic by the most ingenious Mr. Addison, of Oxford After his bees," said Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving." ADDISON. 107 Addison's father wished hini to be a clergyman, and he would have entered the clerical profession if Lords Somers and Montagu had not used their powerful influ- ence in another direction. They decided that talent and principle were sadly needed in the service of the country, too often disgraced by their diplomatists, and that the State could not spare such a young man to the Church. He was therefore given by his friends to the service of the crown. His second poem was on the king, and addressed to Lord Somers. His majesty and the keeper of the seals seemed gratified by this attention, and he soon received the solid reward of a pension of three hundred pounds, which enabled him to travel in Italy and France, and gain a knowledge of the French language, which was indispen- sable in the position for which he was destined. He made this foreign experience very useful to himself and pleasant to others by his notes of travel, and his habit of observing manners, society, scenery, etc., which made him so apt and attractive a critic at home. He travelled, as all should do, with eyes wide open, his mind ready to receive new impressions, and, pen in hand, to jot down all facts worthy of comment. He also became acquainted with many persons of rank and learning while on the Con- tinent, and really gained a very high reputation abroad before he was known or talked of in his own country. Such men as Boileau and Malebranche received him with distinguished favor, and he formed a delightful friendship with Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, who afterward mar- ried the witty and accomplished Lady Mary, whose letters you have no doubt enjoyed. But the Muses were the only ladies whose acquaintance he cultivated just then, and he devoted himself earnestly to study, feeling, as he said in his letter to his patron, that the only return he could make his lordship would be to apply himself entirely to his busi- ness, which was acquiring the French language. He ex- 108 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. presses the difficulties lie has met with in one of his letters home : " I should have went to Italy before now had not y e French tongue stopt me, which has bin a Rub in my way harder to get over than y e Alps ; but I hope y e next time I have y e honor to wait on you I shall be able to talk with you in y e language of y e place." He published an account of his tour, and his poetical epistle to his good friend Montagu, now Lord Halifax, is considered his best effort in verse. I will give you a few lines from this : "Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground ; For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung, " That not a mountain rears its head unsung ; Renowned in verse, each shady thicket grows, And every stream in heavenly numbers flows/' I believe the phrase "classic ground" made its debut in this poem, and it is by no means the only happy expres- sion which Addison has given us. Listen to the long sigh which follows his glowing description of Italy : " How has kind Heaven adorned the happy land, And scattered blessings with a wasteful hand ! But what avails her unexhausted stores, Her blooming mountains and her sunny shores, With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart, The smiles of Nature and the charms of art ; While proud Oppression in her valleys reigns, And Tyranny usurps her happy plains ? The poor inhabitants behold in vain The redd'ning orange and the swelling grain ; Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines ; Starves, in the midst of Nature's bounty curst, And in the loaded vineyard dies for thirst." With "William's death Addison's patron lost his office, and he lost his pension. Thrown upon hft own resources, he ADDISON. 109 determined to continue his travels as tutor to some young gentleman on the grand tour, and yery soon the pompous Duke of Somerset proposed that he should accompany his son in that capacity. This was a pleasant plan, but his grace seemed to consider the honor of such association sufficient remuneration, or at any rate offered a very small salary, which Mr. Addison declined, and the affair ended. The state of things at home was not encouraging — his promised position gone, his party unpopular, his pension taken away, and old debts still unpaid at Oxford. So our philosophic scholar did not hasten his return, and enjoyed a long and circuitous homeward route with a merry party of friends. He writes from Holland to Mr. Wyche, an accom- plished gentleman and diplomatist of some note, to thank him for some wine, the excellence of which he seemed to have fully tested : "Dear Sir: My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter,- so that y e properest use I can put it to is to thank y e honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a Rhime to Rummer. But tho' you have escaped for y e present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be im- possible for me to express y e deep sense I have of y e many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has bin the pleasantest stage I have met with in my Travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell 'em Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Ham- bourg agreeable, your wine has given us all y e satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. 110 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long-lived as Methuselah, or, to use a more familiar instance, as y e oldest Hoc in y e cellar ;" and so forth. You see there is too much of the air o± the " morn- ing after " in this grateful and complimentary note. Lack of funds at last drove him home, and he reached England in the summer of 1703. He was most cordially received on his return, and introduced at once to the famous " Kit-Cat Club," of which he soon became the pride and ornament. This club, a distinguished assemblage of the brightest stars of the Whig party, nobles, diplo- matists, and men of letters, originated in 1700, in rather an humble way. Mr. Jacob Tonson, a celebrated bookseller of London, was remarkably fond of certain nice dishes, prepared by a pastry cook in Gray's Inn's Lane — particu- larly of his mutton-pics. He induced him to move to the Fountain Tavern, in the Strand, with promises of better patronage. Tonson knew the authors of the day, and one day invited some of them to an entertainment at the pastry cook's. They, too, were charmed with the mutton- pies, and the bookseller offered to repeat the collation each week, if he might publish their productions. The cook's name was Christopher ; his sign, " The Cat and Fiddle," hence the quaint name of the club. Horace Walpole says that " its members included not only the wits of the time, but the patriots that saved Britain." There Addi- son was happy and at home. Reticent and reserved, he never appeared to such advantage as when " thawed by wine," and surrounded by a group of admiring friends. Coleridge says : " You know that some men are like mu- sical glasses ; to produce their finest tones, you must keep them wet" Thte bad habit of using wine to conquer his natural timidity, led him to excess in drinking, a fault all the more noticeable, because his character in every other respect was so pure and spotless. Macaulay says, in re- ADDISON. Ill gard to this failing, that " the smallest speck is seen on a white ground, and of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig and sword." I will not go into particulars of the many public offices held by Addison, which never agreed with his literary tastes, and for which he was not especially suited ; his fame being chiefly due to his charming essays, which were published in the Spectator, a little paper devoted to good-humored criticisms on the manners and morals of the day. In the spring of 1709, Addison's old school-fellow, the generous, genial, good-for-nothing Steele, had started a little sheet, called The Tailer, which, for one penny, gave a short article, and some scraps of news. Three times a week this paper appeared, something entirely new in England ; and Addison, who was then in Ireland, would occasionally write for it. But the Spectator soon took its place, a larger and more ambitious sheet. Here Steele and Addison worked together, determined to do some- thing to refine and correct the habits of the times. And, indeed, a reform was needed, for the state of society was very corrupt. Gambling, drunkenness, swearing, and indecency of language, were indulged in by too many of the so-called " fine gentlemen " of that reign. Bull-rings and cockpits were more attractive than books; and a reader must needs be a pedant, while any knowledge among women, excepting on the topics of dress and flir- tation, was ridiculed and censured. The plan of these friends succeeded wonderfully, and their paper, which came out two or three times a week, was eagerly looked for, and read by thousands — circulating through every part of the kingdom, the delight of the learned, the busy, the idle. It did not fail to reach those for whom it was especially intended. " On the tray, beside the delicate 112 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. porcelain cups, from which beauty and beau sipped their fragrant chocolate or tea, by the toilet-table in the late noonday, lay the welcome little sheet of sparkling wit, or elegant criticism, giving a new zest to the morning meal, and suggesting fresh topics for the afternoon chat in the toyshop or on the mall." These witty papers, over- flowing with good-natured satire, produced more effect than any amount of dull moral lectures. Ridicule is often better than a sermon, when reproof is needed. Although we owe the origin of this style of periodical literature to Steele, who wrote delightfully himself, yet Addison was the soul and life of the Spectator, and his style is still considered a model of pure, elegant English. Steele appreciated his friend, and was always grateful — never jealous. " I fared," he says, " like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid ; I was undone by my auxili- ary ; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him." And again : " I rejoiced in being excelled ; and made those little talents, whatever they are, which I have, give way and be subservient to the superior qualities of a friend whom I loved, and whose modesty would never have admitted them to come into daylight, but under such a shelter." Addison's papers are marked with one of the four let- ters, C. L. I. O., taken either from the Muse's name, or from the initial letters of Chelsea, London, Islington, and the Office where they were written. Among the articles most quoted to illustrate his delicate yet genuine humor, are those on " The Use of a Fan," " The Dissection of a Beau's Head," and a " Coquette's Heart." You will find them very amusing. I give you the first-mentioned, to tempt you to look up the others : " Mr. Spectator : " Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. To the end, ADDISON. 113 therefore, that ladies may be entire mistresses of the weap- on which they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practised at court. The ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in my great hall, where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the following words of command : Handle your fans, Un- furl your fans, Discharge your fans, Ground your fans, Recover your fans, Flutter your fans. By the right ob- servation of these few plain words of command, a woman of a tolerable genius, who will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the space of but one half-year, shall be able to give her fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that little modish machine. " But to the end that my readers may form to them- selves a right notion of this exercise, I beg leave to explain it to them in all its parts. When my female regiment is drawn up in array, with every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving the word to Handle their fans, each of them stakes her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right- hand woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses her lips with the extremity of her fan, then lets her arms fall in easy motion, and stands in readiness to receive the next word of command. All this is done with a close fan, and is generally learned in the first week. " The next motion is that of unfurling the fan, in which are comprehended several little flirts and vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings, with many volun- tary fallings asunder in the fan itself, that are seldom learned under a month's practice. This part of the exer- cise pleases the spectators more than any other, as it dis- covers, on a sudden, an infinite number of cupids, garlands, altars, birds, beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable 114 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. figures, that display themselves to view, whilst every one in the regiment holds a picture in her hand. " Upon my giving the word to Discharge their fans, they give one general crack, that may be heard at a con- siderable distance, when the wind sits fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the exercise, but I have several ladies with me, who at their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough to be heard at the farther end of the room, who can now discharge a fan in such a manner that it shall make a report like a pocket-pistol. I have likewise taken care (in order to hinder young women from letting off their fans in wrong places, or on unsuitable occasions) to show upon what subject the crack of a fan may come in properly : I have likewise invented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the help of a little wind, which is en- closed about one of the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a woman of fifty with an ordinary fan. " When the fans are thus discharged, the word of command, in course, is to Ground their fans. This teaches a lady to quit her fan gracefully when she throws it aside in order to take up a pack of cards, adjust a curl of hair, replace a falling pin, or apply herself to any other matter of importance. This part of the exercise, as it only con- sists in tossing a fan with an air upon a long table (which stands by for that purpose),- may be learned in two days' time as well as in a twelvemonth. " When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I gener- ally let them walk about the room for some time ; when, on a sudden (like ladies that look upon their watches after a long visit), they all of them hasten to, their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and place themselves in their proper stations upon my calling out, Recover your fans. This part of the exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies her thoughts to it. " The fluttering of the fan is the last, and indeed the ADDISOX. 115 master-piece of the whole exercise ; but if a lady does not mis-spend her time, she may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the exercise ; for as soon as ever I pronounce, Flutter your -fans, the place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tender con- stitution in any other. " There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan. There is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flut- ter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch . that, if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. I have seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come within the wind of it ; and at other times so very languishing, that I have been glad, for the lady's sake, the lover was at a sufficient distance from it. I need not add that a fan is either a prude or a coquette, according to the nature of the person who bears it. To conclude my letter, I must acquaint you that I have from my own observations com- piled a little treatise for the use of my scholars, entitled, ' The Passions of the Fan,' which I will communicate to you if you think it may be of use to the public. I shall have a general review on Thursday next, to which you shall be very welcome if you will honor it with your pres- ence. I am, etc. " P. S. I teach young gentlemen the whole art of gal- lanting a fan. " N". B. I have several little plain fans made for this use, to avoid expense." 116 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. But better than all is the character of " Sir Roger de Coverley" — a fine specimen of the old English gen- tleman, simple-hearted, generous, and eccentric. He was really attached to this creation of his own genius, saying, " We are born for each other," and, fearful that some other hand might treat the foibles of the worthy knight with less love and tenderness than his own, gently hurried him from the world. He deserves our praise for not only discerning Milton's genius in that age when pinch- beck was more valued than gold, but for compelling the public to agree with him. He says : " Milton's chief talent, and, indeed, his distinguishing excellence, lies in the sub- limity of his thoughts. There are others of the modern who rival him in every other part of poetry ; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books." In the spring of 1713, the play of "Cato," which had been lying in his desk since his return from Italy, because he shrank from the disgrace of a possible failure, was brought out at Drury Lane, with immense success, played without interruption for thirty-five nights, and only stop- ped then because one of the principal actors was ill. This tragedy was translated into most of the modern languages, but is not read now, being too stately and formal for popularity. The celebrated Booth, then a young man, made his fortune by his skilful rendition of the part of Cato. Though this play, as a whole, is forgotten, yet some of its lines are often quoted. For instance : " 'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."* ADDISON. 117 " A day, an hour of virtuous liberty, Is worth a whole eternity of bondage." " The woman that deliberates is lost." " 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us. 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man." In his forty-fifth year Addison married the Countess of Warwick, a gay, dashing, worldly, and thoroughly selfish woman, to whose son he had once been tutor. But they did not live happily, and he was often glad to escape from his magnificent home to his club, or some tavern, where he could have a pleasant talk with, or rather, at his friends, for he was a little too fond of monologues, drinking the healths of the absent ones to such an unnecessary ex- tent, that he soon lost his own. When in the mood, and with a few choice spirits, he would throw off all reserve and entertain them most delightfully. That brilliant 'woman, Lady Mary Montagu, said she had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best company in the world. Pope, the sharp, envious little critic, owned there was a charm in his talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift also said he had never known any talker so agree- able. Steele said : " He was above all men hi that talent we call humor, arid enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of convers- ing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catul- lus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humor more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed." He afterward speaks of that smiling mirth, that delicate satire, and genteel raillery, which ap- peared in Mr. Addison when he was free among intimates ; free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit : and his abilities were cov- 118 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. ered only by modesty which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are con- cealed." But these rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds, and to strangers he often appeared silent, if not stupid. He used to say there was no such thing as conversation but between two persons. In the first number of the Spectator, he writes of his timidity and gravity in his own quaint and charming style. He tells us that he threw away his rattle before he was two months old, and would not make use of his coral till the bells were taken from it. At the university, he dis- tinguished himself by a most profound silence. To quote his own words : " During the space of eight years, except- ing in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of a hundred words ; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life." His last days were saddened by suffer- ing, the venomous criticisms of his rivals, and political ' vexations, but he endured all these trials with cheerful- ness and fortitude, and his peaceful death was a fitting close to a life in which there was- so little to regret. Calling his wild and thoughtless son-in-law to his bedside, he grasped his hand, saying softly, " See how a Christian can die ! " and soon after breathed his last, on the 17th day of June, 1719. His body was borne, at dead of night, to the Abbey. Sweet music floated on the air, and torches shed their glimmering light over dark arches and silent graves as the accomplished scholar was laid to rest in the chapel of Henry IV. His integrity is without a stain, and, with all his power of ridicule and satire, he has not left a word that could be called ungenerous or unkind : " Whose humor, as gay as the fire-fly's light, Played round every subject, and shone as it played ; ADDISON. 119 Whose wit, in the combat as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade." His favorite psalm, was the twenty-third, ^hich he paraphrased in verse, and many of his hymns are well known. Thackeray says : " When this man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture ; a human intellect, thrilling with a purer love and adora- tion than Joseph Addison's. Listen to him ; from your childhood you have known the verses ; but who can hear their sacred music without love and awe ? * Soon as the evening shades prevail, The moon takes up the wondrous tale, And nightly to the listening earth Kepeats the story of her birth ; And all the stars that round her burn, And all the planets in their turn, Confirm the tidings as they roll, And spread the truth from pole to pole. * What though in solemn silence all Move round this dark terrestrial ball, What though no real voice nor sound Among their radiant orbs be found ? In reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice ; Forever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine.' It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. When he turns to heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind ; and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town ; looking at the birds in the trees, at the children in the streets ; in the morning or in the moonlight ; over his books in his own room ; in a happy party at a country merry-making, or a town 6 ' 120 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable — a life prosperous and beautiful— a calm death— an im- mense fame and affection afterward for his happy and spotless name." HOLLAND HOUSE. jcnat: fnifc. SWIFT. " I was an odd sort of man.'" I haye now to tell you of another satirist, one of the wittiest men that ever lived, but who was unhappy all his days, and succeeded in making his best friends miserable, when he did not kill them with outright cruelty — a man so different from the good and gentle Addison, that one cannot turn to him with any pleasure. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, on the 30th of November, 1667. But his parents were English, and he had nothing of the Irish character. His mother, being left a widow in very embarrassed circumstances, her little boy was given to the care of an uncle, with whom he lived 122 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. until he was twenty-one. Lack of means, and the want of a home and a father's protection and love, with a gall- ing sense of constant dependence, may have saddened and imbittered his life ; but he had the additional misfortune to be born without a heart, or, if he did possess that rather necessary organ, it was so cold, selfish, and unloving, as hardly to deserve the name. Speaking one day in a contemptuous way of his uncle, to whom he owed so much, a gentleman dared to rebuke him as he deserved. " Did he not give you an education ? " he asked. " Yes, v said Swift, gruffly, " the education of a dog." " Then, sir, you have not the gratitude of a dog ! " and, indeed, he had not. He must have been very lazy at school and academy, for, when he claimed the usual degree of Bachelor of Arts, he was considered too deficient for admission, and only gained it at last by " special favor," which meant special lack of merit. But this shamed him, and, determined to reform, he resolved to turn over a new leaf, and study eight hours a day. Some one says quaintly that good resolutions are like fainting ladies — they want to be carried out ! — and Swift, who had an iron will, did carry out this plan, and worked hard and steadily for several years. He was educated at Trinity College, through the kindness of his relatives. After his Uncle Goodwin's death, he was helped by another uncle, who .bestowed his benefactions in a more agreeable way, as Swift really acknowledged his kindness, and called him "the best of his relations." Scott tells us of a friendly cousin, who remembered him in these days : " Sitting one day in his chamber, ab- solutely penniless, he saw a seaman in the court below, who seemed inquiring for the apartment of one of the students. It occurred to Swift that this man might bring a message from his Cousin Willoughby, then settled as a SWIFT. 123 Lisbon merchant, and the thought had scarcely crossed his mind, when the door opened, and the stranger, ap- proaching him, produced a large leathern purse of silver coin, and poured the contents before him as a present from his cousin. Swift, in his ecstasy, offered the bearer a part of his treasure, which the honest sailor generously de- clined. And from that moment Swift, who had so deeply experienced the miseries of indigence, resolved so to man- age his scanty income as never again to be reduced to extremity." His mother advised him, after leaving college, to seek the patronage of Sir William Temple, a friend of his uncle's, and a distant relative. This gentleman consented to give him a home, and make him his private secretary, but the position was distasteful and humiliating. He was, to be sure, in an elegant house, with books all about him, but he was treated as an upper servant, while always ex- pected to fawn, and cringe, and flatter, or else lose the favor of a man decidedly his inferior. Here he became known to King William, who used* sometimes to visit Moor Park, when its owner, was laid up with the gout, and his majesty, walking round the fine garden, took con- siderable notice of the swarthy secretary, teaching him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion, and eat it with Dutch economy. The latter lesson Swift remembered and made use of. There is a funny story about an alderman whom the dean once invited to dinner : " Amongst other vegetables, asparagus formed one of the dishes. The dean helped his guest, who shortly again called upon his host to be helped a second time, when the dean, pointing to the alderman's plate, said, 'Sir, first finish what you have upon your plate.' ' What, sir, eat my stalks ? ' ' Ay, sir, King William always ate the stalks ! ' " ' And, George,' said one of his friends, after hearing 124 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. the story, c were you blockhead enough to obey him ? ' ' Yes, doctor, and if you had dined with Dean Swift, tete- d-tete — faith, you would have been obliged to eat your stalks, too ! ' " The king also offered to make Swift a captain of horse, which, as his own notions were all military, was intended as an honor; but, of course, the great genius inwardly scorned this proposition, while refusing with mock hu- mility, and went on in the life so irksome and galling to his proud nature, " feeling like a caged tiger, submit- ting to the keeper who brings him food." In the words of Collier : " Standing midway between the elegantly selfish Sir William, who wrote, and gar- dened, and quoted the classics, and the liveried sneerers of the servants' hall, poor Swift gnawed at his own heart in disdainful silence, writhing helplessly under the lofty chid- ings of his honor and the vulgar insolence of his honor's own man." Once, in a desperate mood, he rebelled, and went away, but, finding a recommendation from his patron was needed to gain him any other position, he asked pardon, and re- turned, to remain until the death of Sir William, in 1698. Thackeray says : " I don't know any thing more melan- choly than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously toward his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for orders : " i The particulars required of me are what relate to morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honor's family — that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are left entirely to your honor's mercy, though, in the first, I think I cannot reproach my- self for any thing further than for infirmities. This is all I dare at present beg from your honor, under circum- stances of life not worth your regard. What is left me to SWIFT. 125 wish, next to the health and prosperity of your honor and family, is that Heaven would one day allow me the oppor- tunity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet. I heg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your honor's lady and sister.' Can prostration fall deeper ? Could a slave bow lower ? " During these years of servile dependence and suffer- ing, he read almost constantly, wrote his famous treatise, •' The Battle of the Books," and won the undying love of Esther Johnson, the daughter of Temple's steward ; a pretty, black-eyed girl, who recited to him, and learned to think him a hero, almost a god. This acquaintance proved a blessing to Swift, the brightest thing in his dark life ; but to her it brought life- long sorrow. As apparent trifles often influence our whole lives, I shall have to add reality to romance, and say that he nearly killed himself one day by eating too many apples, and was troubled ever after, at times, with a dizzi- ness and deafness, which pursued him through life, and at last sent him to his grave. When I think of his oddity and cruelty, I try to believe that his brain was always diseased, which would be some excuse for his strange life. But I can tell you one good thing about him; he loved and respected his mother, and went to see her every year. Queer in this, as in every thing else, he would travel on foot, sleeping at night at some second-rate tavern, where he could get lodged for a penny and have clean sheets for sixpence. I don't really know whether he did this be- cause he wanted to see that sort of life — or to save a shilling. "Economy was with him the handmaid of Charity. He would save a sixpence by walking instead of riding, and send it at once to a poor neighbor. He always carried small coins in his pocket for charity, in his daily walks, never giving more than one at a time." He always kept an exact account of every penny that he 126 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. spent or received, and there seemed to be a constant struggle in his mind between economy and justice. His attempts to adjust these accurately led to very ridiculous results. If he happened to dine with a friend poorer than himself, he would insist upon paying for his dinner, as if at a public house, and give his own guest money in ad- vance, to choose their own entertainment. On one occa- sion, when Pope and Gay visited him after supper, he calculated narrowly what they would have cost him, and gave each half a crown. Pope, in describing this, said: "Doctor Swift has an odd, blunt way, that is mis- taken by strangers for ill-nature. It* is so odd, that there's no describing it but by facts. I will tell you one that first comes into my head. One evening Gay and I went to see him ; you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our coming in, ' Heyday, gentlemen,' says the doctor, 4 what's the meaning of this visit ? How came you to leave all the great lords you are so fond of, to come hither to see a poor dean ? ' " ' Because we would rather see you than any of them.' " ' Ay, any one, that did not know you as well as I do, might believe you. But since you are come, I must get some supper for you, I suppose.' " ' No, doctor, we have supped already.' " ' Supped already ? that's impossible ; why, it is not eight o'clock yet. That's very strange ! but if you had not supped, I must have got something for you. Let me see, c what should I have had ? a couple of lobsters ; ay, that would have done very well ; two shillings ; tarts a shilling. But you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time only to spare my pocket.' "'No, we had rather talk with you than drink with you.' " i But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you SWIFT. 127 ought to have done, you must then have drunk with me. A bottle of wine, two shillings — two and two is four, and one is five ; just two and sixpence apiece. There, Pope, there's half a crown for you, and there's another for you, sir; for I won't save any thing by you, I am determined.' " This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions ; and, in spite of every thing we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money ! " He began early to think he was a poet, and published some " Pindaric odes," but they made little impression. Dryden, who was a connection, told him plainly — " Coz, ' you will never make a poet," which caused Swift to hate him ever after. An irreligious divine, a heartless politi- cian, could not well be a true poet, but he could write verses in a very easy, natural way, and, as he said himself, in a poem on his own death : " The dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme." He excelled in humorous satire, though destitute of refinement and originality. But his power lay in his prose ; clear, concise, and strong, though, too often, coarse and unreasonably severe. After his patron's death, who left him a legacy and his papers, he went to Ireland, as chaplain and private secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, and, after many disappointments, obtained the living of Lara- cor, some years later. Here he seems to have been faithful to his duties, however unfitted for them, and preached regularly, for six years, to an audience of fifteen persons, reading prayers every Wednesday and Saturday ; the first time to his clerk alone, to whom he addressed the service thus: "Dearly-beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." Here, in his thirty-fifth year, he began his career as a 128 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. political writer, by a pamphlet on the side of the Whigs ; and three years later (1704) appeared his famous satiric allegory, "The Tale of a Tub." This extraordinary name was suggested by the fact that sailors are wont to fling out a tub in order to turn aside a whale from his threatened dash on the ship. So he threw out this satire, to prevent his opponents from injuring the ship of State. It ridicules the disputes between the different religious sects, and, although it established his fame as a brilliant satirist, yet it led good people to look on him with dis- trust. Here is the story, briefly told: "Three brothers — Peter, Martin, and Jack — receive from their dying father coats, which, if carefully kept clean, will last them all their lives. As the fashions change, they add to the simple coat shoulder-knots, gold lace, silver fringes, embroidery of Indian figures, twisting the meaning of their father's will so as to give a seeming sanction to these innovations. Peter " (evidently the apostle of that name, here taken to represent the Roman Catholic Church) " locks up the will, assumes the style of a lord, and wears his coat proudly, as it is. His brothers, stealing a copjr of the document, leave the great house, and begin to reform their coats. Martin " (Luther) " goes to work cautiously in stripping off the adornments, and leaves some of the embroidery alone, lest he may -injure the cloth. But Jack" (Calvin), " in his hot zeal, plucks off all at once, and in so doing splits the seams, and tears away great pieces of the coat. Thus does Swift depict the corruptions of early Christianity and the results of the Reformation, in a satire of uncommon power and strange, mad drollery. His sympathies are all with Martin, and Peter gets off better than Jack." He soon deserted the Whigs, failing to gain from them the preferment he desired, and several years were devoted to writing on political subjects in a fierce and bitter style, . SWIFT. , 129 attacking his old party in the most savage, caustic way. His great ambition was a bishopric in England ; but his new allien did not quite dare to put the sneering, cavilling author of the " Tale of a Tub " in that position. Hannay says, however, that the piety of that period was so extreme as to be odious and sickening cant. " The real reason was, that he had satirized a favorite — for this was the age of favorites and back-stairs influence — and Swift had scattered some of his terrible Greek fire over the sycophants of St. James." They did at last reward him with the deanery of St. Patrick's, in Dublin ; but, unfortunately for his prospects, the queen's death soon after brought the Whigs again into power, and he was forced to remain in Ireland, which was little better than exile. He became immensely popular in Ireland by a political pamphlet, urging the use of home manufactures, and by a series of letters, signed "M. B. Drapier," warning the people not to exchange their gold and silver for the bad money of a certain William Wood, who had obtained a patent for coining half-pence for the use of Ireland, to an immense extent. Swift proved that it was a gross fraud, certain to ruin the nation, and the patent was annulled. For this he had such a popularity with the rabble as to gain the title of " The King of the Mob." His influence over the people was unbounded. The eyes of the kingdom were now turned with one consent on the man by whose unbending fortitude and preeminent talents this triumph was achieved. The Drapier' s Head became a sign, his portrait was engraved, woven upon handkerchiefs, stuck upon medals, and displayed in every possible manner as the liberator of Ireland. And, like true Irishmen, they were all ready to fight for him. " If," said he to an arch- bishop who blamed him for kindling a riotous flame, " if I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to 130 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. «• pieces." When Walpole meditated his arrest, his proposal was checked by a prudent friend, who inquired if he could spare ten thousand soldiers to guard the messenger who should execute so perilous a commission. It is said that his grateful admirers even begged for locks of his. hair, until he feared he should have none left. All this grati- tude and glory would have been a bright spot in his dark life, which was a tragedy from beginning to end, if he had been a true patriot. But the good work sprang from hatred of England, rather than honest devotion to Green Erin. Still it may not be best to analyze too closely the motives of our greatest men, and, to be impartial, I will quote a few words from an Irish author : " On this gloom one luminary rose, and Ireland worshipped it with Persian idolatry; her true patriot — her first — almost her last. Sagacious and intrepid, he saw, he dared ; above suspicion, he was trusted ; above envy, he was beloved ; above rivalry, he was obeyed. His wisdom was practical and prophetic — remedial for the present, warning for the future. He first taught Ireland that she might cease to \>e a despot. But he was a churchman. His gown impeded his course and entangled his efforts — guiding a senate, or heading an army, he had been more than Cromwell, and Ireland not less than England. As it was, he saved her by his cour- age, improved her by his authority, adorned her by his talents, and exalted her by his fame. His mission was but of ten years ; and for ten years only did his personal power mitigate the government. But, though no longer feared by the great, he was not forgotten by the wise ; his influence, like his writings, has survived a century, and the foundations of whatever prosperity we have since erected are laid in the disinterested and magnanimous patriotism of Swift." In 1726 he published his most perfect satire, "Gulli- ver's Travels," in which he describes the wonderful and SWIFT. 131 amusing adventures of a commonplace and well-meaning surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver, who, after being shipwrecked, finds himself in the country of Liliput, where the inhabi- tants are about six inches high, and every other object in exact proportion. Afterward he visits the land of the gigantic Brobdingnagians, where the smallest dwarf is at least thirty feet high. The object of the allegory is to show how contemptible and foolish are the vices and passions of mankind, and how contemptible human nature appears to him. Every child is charmed with this story, and it never fails to entertain those who do not see, or do not care to see, the undercurrent of almost fiendish satire that runs through the whole. Here is a pleasant specimen of his grave irony, describing Gulliver's boating experiences in Brobdingnag: " The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. I an- swered, that I understood both very well ; for, although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often upon a pinch I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if *I would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, in ten days finished a pleasure- boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so de- lighted, that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water, with me in it 132 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. by way of trial ; where I could not manage my two sculls, or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep, which, being well pitched, to pre-' vent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale ; and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well en- tertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans ; and when they were weary, some of the pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard or larboard, as I pleased. When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry." I do not know but that his coolest irony is seen in his satire on the misgovernment of Ireland, in a pamphlet en- titled, " A Modest Proposal to the Public, for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Bur- den to their country, and for making them Beneficial to the Public." He suggests that these superfluous children be used for food, as they then might be changed from a public grievance into a source of pecuniary benefit. " I have been assured," says he, " by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, " that a young healthy child, well-nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ; and, I make no doubt, it will equally serve in a ragout." He goes on to argue in this way with such earnestness and gravity, that the pamphlet was SWIFT. 133 quoted by a French writer of the time, to illustrate the hopeless barbarity of the English. But do not imagine that the author of these burlesques was a happy man, for I cannot picture a more miserable being. He wrote to his friend Bolingbroke at this time : " It is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best — and not have to die here, like a poisoned rat, in a hole." His only consolation seemed to be his intimate ac- quaintance with the unfortunate Miss Johnson, who, at his request, had followed him to Dublin, and lived near him. All these years he had written her almost daily letters, full of love and tenderness ; told her he loved her better than his life, a thousand million times — but neither married her nor allowed her to marry any one else. At the same time he was keeping up a correspondence with another beautiful girl, who had also recited to him, and whose affections he trifled with in the most unprincipled way, permitting her to love him with all the power of a very intense nature. And the unfortunate denouement^ he tells us, was so unlooked for ! When he came one day to say adieu in a fatherly way, as was natural and proper, he was distressed to hear the maiden confess — her love ! In his own words : " Cadenus felt within him rise Shame, disappointment, and surprise, He knew not how to reconcile Such language with her usual style ; And yet her thoughts were so expressed, He could not hope she spoke in jest. His thoughts had wholly been confined To form and cultivate her mind ; He hardly knew, till he was told, Whether the nymph were young or old ; Had met her in a public place, Without distins-uishino; her face. 131 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Much less could bis declining age Yannessa's earliest thoughts engage And if her youth indifference met, His person must contempt beget. Or grant her passion be sincere, How shall his innocence be clear ; Appearances were all so strong, The world must think him in the wrong." Those last two lines have certainly the appearance of truth, and the world's verdict is not very far from his supposition. When the poor girl heard of Stella, she was wildly jealous, then almost crazy with grief, and at last died of a broken heart. It is said her death shocked the dean ; it did not make him more human in his treatment of Stella. She always lived in another house, but near enough to come when he was ill or suffering, and nurse him with untiring devotion. She arranged his table when he gave a dinner, but never took her proper place there. It is affirmed that he was at last privately married to her in the deanery garden, but this made no difference in their peculiar relations. She still remained in her own home. Crushed by this cruel, unnatural treatment, Stella sank into her grave in her forty-fourth year ; and Swift really mourned then, because he wanted her care, and missed her unselfish affection. He never mentioned her without a sigh. He preserved one of those dark, glossy curls in a paper, onwhich was written " Only a woman's hair." Scott interprets this cynical indifference as an attempt to hide his deep feeling. If that was his aim, his success was admirable. It is extraordinary that a man who was neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, should have inspired such love. His countenance was sour and severe, and his complexion muddy. Johnson says, in his stately way, that, although he washed his face with " Oriental scrupulosity" it would never look clean. Perhaps he SWIFT. 135 conquered with his eyes, which Pope said were " azure as the heavens, with a charming archness in them." After Stella's death he became crabbed, and stingy, and deaf, and cross, and miserable. His birthday, which was always celebrated with bonfires and great rejoicings, was to him the saddest day of the year. He had made a foolish vow not to wear glasses, so he could not read. He thus describes his own condition : " Deaf, giddy, helpless, left alone, To all my friends a burden grown ; No more I hear my church's bell Than if it rang out for my knell ; At thunder now no more I start Than at the rumbling of a cart ; Nay, what's incredible, alack ! I hardly hear a woman's clack." He lost reason and memory, and died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants, on the 19th of October, 1745. He bequeathed most of his property to an hospital for lunatics and idiots — " To show, by one satiric touch, No nation wanted it so much." Let us turn from this sad picture to some specimens of his wit : A pert young man once said to him, " Do you know, Mr. Dean, that I set up for a wit ? " "Do you so ? " an- swered Mr. Swift ; " take my advice and — sit down again." In travelling, he called at a hospitable house, where the good but garrulous lady asked him with great eager- ness what he would have for dinner. " Will you have an apple-pie, sir, or a cherry-pie, .sir, or a plum-pie, sir ? " " Any pie, madam, but a mag-pie." He disliked profuse apology, and, when a fanner's wife spoiled his dinner by saying " It is not good enough for 16b HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. his worship to sit down to," he exclaimed : " Then why didn't you get a better ? You knew I was coming. I've a great mind to go away and dine on a red herring." A gentleman, trying to persuade him to dine at his house, said, " I will send the bill of fare." Swift replied, "Send me your bill of company." The taxes were very severe in Ireland. Lady Carteret, wife of the lord-lieutenant, said to him : " The air of Ireland is very excellent and healthy." "For goodness' sake," said Swift, " don't say so in England, madam, for if you do, they will certainly tax it." His favorite barber, having decided to take a public house and yet keep up his old business, begged the dean to give him " a smart little touch of poetry, to clap under his sign." So he wrote this couplet, which remained for many years : " Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here, Where naught excels the shaving, but the beer." He was fond of making extempore proverbs, to suit the circumstances. Walking with some friends in a gentle- man's garden, who did not invite them to enjoy his tempt- ing fruit, Swift observed that it was a saying of his dear grandmother : " Always pull a peach, When it is within your reach ! " and at once helped himself, followed by the whole com- pany. His servants were truly attached to him, and would never leave him, yet his method of discipline was peculiar. One of them annoyed him by her carelessness — leaving doors open. She had once obtained permission to attend her sister's wedding, and had been gone some fifteen min- utes, when she was sent for to return. Back she came, SWIFT. 137 post-haste, to the dean's study, to know what he wanted. " Shut the door ! " was the laconic answer, with a long moral understood. He sometimes loved to impose upon the credulity of the Irish, especially their faith in him. When a large crowd had gathered one morning to see an eclipse, he gave a crier a shilling to announce, "that it was the pleasure of the dean that the eclipse should not come off till nine o'clock the next day." Whereupon they all quietly dispersed. There is a witty epigram, reporting a little sharp- shooting between the caustic dean and some unknown fair one, in which the lady certainly had the best of it : " Cries Sylvia to a reverend dean, 1 What reason can be given, Since marriage is a holy thing, That there are none in heaven ? ' 1 There are no women? he replied ; She quick returned the jest : 4 Women there are, but I'm afraid They cannot find a priesV " In judging the character and conduct of this unhappy man, we should remember his peculiar temperament and his disordered brain. He was loved and sincerely lamented by his friends, by the poor, by the whole Irish nation whom he helped so powerfully. He wanted a proper position in life, and was no more selfish than other men in his efforts to obtain it. He did much for England, and expected. England to do something for him. His faults were so prominent, that his virtues are apt to be •forgotten; and, no doubt, his memory has been treated with too much harshness. A man could not have been wholly bad whom Addison spoke of " as the most agree- able companion, the truest friend, the greatest genius of his times." 138 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Sir James Mackintosh said of him : " The distinguish- ing feature of his moral character was a strong sense of justice, which disposed him to exact with rigor, as well as in general scrupulously to observe, the duties of society. These powerful feelings, exasperated probably by some circumstances of his own life, were gradually formed into an habitual and painful indignation against triumphant wrong, which became the ruling principle of his character and writings. His hatred of hypocrisy sometimes drove him to a parade of harshness, which made his character appear less amiable than it really was. His friendships were faithful, if not tender, and his benefi- cence was active, though it rather sprang from principle than feeling. No stain could be discoverable in his private conduct, if we could forget his intercourse with one unfortunate and with one admirable woman." LARACOR CHURCH. POPE. " His whole nature was small, thin, and fine, rather than large or "broad. Like . a tongue of flame, however, thin and small as it was, it was high-aspiring." Among the brilliant wits of Queen Anne's reign, none stands higher than Alexander Pope, born in the memo- rable year of the revolution, May 22, 1688. But sad- ness mingled with joy in his mother's heart, for her child was both sickly and deformed. His face, in childhood, however, was remarkably pleasant, his temper mild and gentle, and his voice so sweet that he was called " the little nightingale." When this pretty, delicate boy be- came a famous poet, he used his powers of sarcasm so often and so freely, that he was feared and hated as well as ad- mired ; and gruff old Dr. Johnson said of him, that " the 140 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. weakness of his body continued through his life, but the mildness of his mind ended with his childhood." Play- ing in the yard one day, when not more than three years old, he came very near being killed by a mad cow, which had not the slighest respect for youthful genius. He was loading a little cart with stones and dirt, when the animal struck at him, wounded him in the throat, tossing off his hat and feather with her horns, and flung the poor little fellow down on the heap of stones he had been playing with. A kind aunt taught him to read, and he learned to write by carefully copying the printed charac- ters in books, diverting himself in that way as other children do with scrawling pictures. He began to compose poetry almost as soon as he could talk, and says of himself : " While yet a child and all unknown to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." Among his poems you will find an " Ode on Solitude," written before he was twelve, which is a wonderful pro- duction for a boy-poet — a true poem and perfect in its way. As it is short, I will give you the whole of it : " Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal arcres bound ; Content to breathe his native air, In his own ground. " Whose herds with milk, whose field with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. " Blessed who can unconcern' dly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away, In health of body, peace of mind, Quiet by day. POPE. 141 u Sound sleep by night : study and ease Together mixed, sweet recreation ; And innocence, which most does please With meditation. " Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie." This is a quiet, unambitious picture, but you can judge but little of one's true feelings by bis writings. This slender, sweet-faced boy had already built many a glowing air-castle for the future, and had revelled in wild dreams of coming fame. He was fond of copying the style of other authors, and in one of his early effusions imitated Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Homer, and Virgil; but Dryden was the poet whom he most admired, and he induced some friends to take him to Will's Coffee-house, that he might look at the great man, whose style he pro- posed to follow. How the heart of the ambitious, intellect- ual little hero-worshipper would have bounded and thrilled with joy could he have foreseen his future triumphs, and realized that he was not to be compared with, but considered superior to, this literary lion whom he was gazing at with such curiosity, admiration, and reverence ! About this time, his father, a Catholic, and wealthy linen- draper, gave up business in disgust at the shadow which the revolution had flung upon his church, and retired to Binfield, near Windsor Forest, where he owned a farm of twenty acres, and a small, cosy house, with a row of grace- ful elms before the # door. Here for several summers the young dreamer gave himself up to the study of books and Nature, becoming familiar with a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. " This I did," he says, "without any design except to amuse myself; and got the languages by hunting after the 142 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in my way. These five or six years I look upon as the happiest in my life." Thackeray speaks of this as " a beautiful holiday pic- ture. The forest and the!* fairy story-book — the boy spell- ing Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida's garden — peace and sunshine round about — the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him at his quiet home yonder, and Genius throbbing in his young heart, and whispering to him : c You shall be great — you shall be famous — you, too, shall love and sing — you will sing her so nobly, that some kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed.' " Pope never knew the toils and pleasures of college-life, and was decidedly a self-educated man. His father used to encourage his poetical tastes, carefully correcting what- ever he wrote, while his dear, simple-hearted mother and loving sister almost worshipped him. The latter says : " I think no man was ever so little fond of money ; " and again, " I think my brother, when he was young, read more books than any man in the world." Some people thought him half crazy in those days — were doubtful whether he would make a madman or a poet. But he kept on reading and writing, translating from the classic poets, paraphrasing Chaucer's tales, etc., and in 1711 appeared his " Essay on Criticism," finished be- fore he was twenty-one, which was received with universal admiration, and compelled all to own his power. In it you will find many true thoughts, dressed in language sparkling, pointed, elegant, and its pithy, witty couplets are often quoted. No other poet, always* excepting Shake- speare, has furnished more brief quotations, full of truth, 4 POPE. 143 yet tinged with worldly wisdom. Let me run through this Essay, giving some of the most familiar lines : " 'Tis with our judgment?, as with our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own." " A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." " True wit is nature, to advantage dressed, "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." " Words are like leaves, and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found." ' " To err is human — to forgive, divine." " For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." And those lines to illustrate his idea that " sound must seem an echo to the sense : " "When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow ; Xot so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Hies o'er the unbending corn and skims along the main." In the next year he published " The Rape of the Lock," which tells the story of a silken curl cut from a fair maiden's head by a gay and daring young nobleman. The affair caused a violent quarrel between the two families, and Pope wrote this miniature epic — airy, fanciful, ex- quisite — to laugh them to'gether again. Besides being the most brilliant specimen of the mock-heroic style ever attempted in English verse, it gives a more faithful and vivid idea of fashionable life in the reign of Queen Anne than we could gain from any sober history of the time. Listen to the description of Belinda's artificial charms : " And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, Each silver vase in mystic order laid : First robed in white, the nymph intent adores, With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers ; 7 144 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. A heavenly image in the glass appears, To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears ; The inferior priestess at her altar's side, Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride ; Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here The various offerings of the world appear ; From each she nicely culls with curious toil, And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. This casket India's glowing gems unlocks, And all Arabia breathes from yonder box ; The tortoise here and elephant unite, Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white. Here files of pins extend their shining rows, Puffs, powders, patches, Bibles, billet-doux. Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms ; The fair each moment rises in her charms, Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace, And calls forth all the wonders of her face ; Sees by degrees a purer blush arise, And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes. The busy Sylphs surround their darling care, These set the head, and those divide the hair ; Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the go\rti, And Betty's praised for labors not her own." The machinery of the poem, as critics call the intro- duction of supernatural beings into the action of the plot, was taken from the Rosicrucian doctrine that the four elements are filled with sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and sala- manders. These tiny, invisible * sprites, whfch give half the charm to the story, were added after it was finished. Belinda was surrounded by a body-guard of these aerial visitors — " Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend ; Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair, Some hang upon the pendants of her ear." And yet all their care was in vain — her " favorite lock " was stolen in spite of them all. I must give you the story of that daring theft : POPE. 145 " For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round : On shining altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, While China's earth receives the smoking tide ; At once they gratify their scent and taste, And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned ; Some o'er her lap their .careful plumes displayed, Trembling and conscious of the rich brocade. Coffee (which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) Sent up in vapors to the baron's brain New stratagems the radiant lock to gain. Ah ! cease, rash youth ; desist ere 'tis too late ; Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate ! Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, She dearly paid for Nisus' injured hair ! But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill ! Just then, Clarissa drew, with tempting grace, A two-edged weapon from her shining case ; So ladies, in romance, assist their knight, Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. He takes the gift with reverence, and extends The little engine on his fingers' ends ; This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, As o'er the fragrant steams she bent her head. Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair ! And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear.; Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought The close recesses of the virgin's thought: As on the nosegay in her breast reclined, He watched the ideas rising in her mind. Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art, An earthly lover lurking at her heart. Amazed, confused, he found his power expired, Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. 146 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide To enclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. E'en then, before the fatal engine closed, A wretched Sylph too fondly interposed ; Fate urged the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain (But airy substance soon unites again), The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever, and forever !" Soon after the appearance o*f this enchanting little poem, Pope published " The Temple of Fame," a revival of Chaucer's "House of Fame," and his descriptive poem of " Windsor Forest ; " but he had no real love for nature, excellino; in satiric sketching of the absurdities and affectations of artificial society. These poems, though so clever and charming, did not help very much to fill his purse; and poets, like ordinary mortals, find money a very necessary thing. So he went to work in earnest, and the next dozen years were spent in translating Homer's great epics, " The Iliad " and " The Odyssey," and from these he gained a comfortable fortune. But it was hard, uncongenial work. He said to a friend : " In the beginning of my translating Homer, I wished anybody would hang me, a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it, and even do, sometimes, still to this day. My dream usually was, that I had set out on a very long journey, puzzled which way to take, and full of fears that I should never get to the end of it. My time and eyes have been wholly em- ployed upon Homer, whom I almost fear I shall find but one way of imitating, which is in his blindness" As translations, they are very praiseworthy, but must not be compared with the original. " A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer," was the criticism of the great scholar, Bentley. "Like Dry den translating Virgil, Pope did little more than reproduce the sense of Homer's verse in smooth pope. 147 and neatly-balanced English couplets, leaving the spirit behind in the glorious rough old Greek, that tumbles on the ear like the roar of a winter sea." A large part of the money thus gained he spent very wisely in buying a house and garden at Twickenham, one of the most beautiful spots on the banks of the Thames. He made his home a little paradise, and the grounds, adorned with grottoes and fountains, were a miracle of beauty. Here he brought his parents, who lived with him till their death, and here he entertained the greatest, wit- tiest, and wisest men of his time, all of whom were proud to call themselves his friends. Like Swift, he loved and reverenced his mother, and it is touching to notice how all these famous wits and philosophers and divines have a kind word or thoughtful remembrance for that dear old lady. Swift mentioned him as one " whose filial piety excels Whatever Grecian story tells.'' He has himself written beautifully on this subject : " Me, let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death ; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep awhile one parent from the sky." Perhaps the life of this dutiful son, in such a beautiful home, may seem to you a happy one; but deformed, sensitive, dreading ridicule, and exasperated by cruel taunts, he suffered much more than he enjoyed. Every morning he had to be dressed like a child. His distorted figure was encased in stays of stiff canvas, and three pairs of stockings were needed to make his slender legs respectable. His stature was so low, that he was obliged 148 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. to use a high chair at table, and could neither go to bed nor rise without help. Do you wonder that he was often irritable, exacting, childish ? It is said that, though sometimes merry in company, he was never seen to laugh. His health was improved by his retirement from city life. He was not strong enough to endure the excitements there. Addison and his friends used often to sit until two o'clock in the morning with their pipes «and punch, and, unlike Pope, laughed and grew fat. Swift,* Addison, Steele, Gay, and Thomson, were all corpulent. As Thackeray puts it: "All that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age." Once in a while he would invite these jovial friends to Twickenham for a handsome dinner, but his general habits were a little stingy. He once placed a . pint of wine on his table, and, after drinking a glass him- self, left the room, saying to his guests : " Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine." This is almost worse than Swift's way of paying his friends for the food they had not eaten ! He was very economical in regard to paper, and most of his translations were written on the backs of envelopes and such odd scraps. He was rather a dis- agreeable visitor, keeping the servants in a constant state of impatience by his numerous calls. His best thoughts would often come at night, and then Betty was rung for, and a cup of coffee must be brought to aid the eccentric invalid in jotting them down. He was a great epicure, and would lie in bed for days together, unless told of some especial delicacy, when he would get up at once to enjoy it. His friendships with men were delightful, until some reason came for a quarrel ; but he had no honest regard for women, whom he always wrote of in the most spiteful, ungenerous way. Failing to gain their love, his stilted pope. 149 admiration changed to earnest hating. For instance, look at his acquaintance with Lady Mary Montagu, whom, at first, he praised excessively, and told her so in set phrases in many fine letters. Whenever he thought one particu- larly good, he would copy it, and send it to some o.ther lady, to produce effect. In one of these letters, so full of sham sentiment, addressed to Lady Mary, he says : " I think I love you as well as King Herod could Herodias (though I never had so much as one dance with you), and would as freely give you my head in a dish, as he did another's head." But Lady Mary was once so amused by his extravagant professions of regard as to laugh outright in her adorer's face, and from that time he pursued her not with honey, hut gall, until she gave him the sobri- quet of "The Wasp of Twickenham," and said that he . assumed the mask of a moralist in order to decry human nature, and to give vent to his hatred of man and woman kind. Gay, a brother poet, once sent him a touching story, very simply and sweetly told, of two country lovers, killed by a lightning-fiash during a summer shower. Pope thought it extremely well done — and at once sent it to Lady Montagu — as his own. His great and increasing fame caused him to be hated and attacked by a host of inferior writers. Some one says that " a poet should have the hide of a hippopotamus to be happy," and Pope was very thin skinned. They stung and exasperated him, until at length, like Dryden, he revenged himself by a bitter poem, "The Dunciad," in which he lashed his envious critics most unmercifully, giving many a fame they could have gained in no other way. These scribblers have gained immortality, though not exactly in the way they desired, preserved like straws in amber — "the trash of literature vitrified by the lightning of indignant genius." His life was really in danger after this fierce attack 150 ' HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. upon his enemies, but he still took his daily walk alone, and, though so feeble, would allow no one to go with him. " I had rather die at once," said he, " than live in fear of those rascals." ' Indeed, he felt a "keen delight in seeing how deeply his " scorn-winged arrows" had pierced the hearts of the " dunces," exclaiming : " I know I'm proud — I must be proud to see Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me." It is curious to trace this word " dunce " to its source, the great teacher of the Franciscan order, Duns Scotus, whom his followers called the " subtle doctor." But those who did not accept his theology would say to his disciples : " Oh, you are a Dunsman," or, more briefly, " You are a Duns," and, as his teaching and theories lost ground, the word became in time a synonyme for stupidity. In his "Essay on Man," Pope attempts to vindicate Providence, and to show the necessity of evil in the world, and that our finite capacities fail to see the wisdom of God's perfect plan. In short : " All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood ; All partial evil, universal good ; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." His own idea of this poem is well expressed in these lines : " Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise ; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man." Pope has been accused of being a fatalist, but he positively asserts man's free agency and responsibility: and though he did not look at life and life's realities from POPE. 151 the noblest stand-point, he certainly intended to write in favor of morality -and Christianity. The " Essay " is full of beautiful lines, but T will only make one extract : " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; As full as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns ; To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ; He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all." His style is pointed, precise, polished. Unlike his model, Dryden, he wrote with great care, and elaborated and pruned with untiring hand. He knew " The last and greatest art, the art to blot." Yet, with all his care, some of his lines are rather silly when criticised separately. For instance : " Why has not man a microscopic eye ? For this plain reason — man is not a fly." Sydney Smith, the witty English divine, has given us a parody of this : " Why has not man a collar and a log ? For this plain reason — man is not a dog." " Why is not man served up with sauce in dish ? For this plain reason — man is not a fish." Swift and Pope were good friends, and always corre- sponded. Both were morbid and misanthropic. Swift despised mankind, but liked individuals. Pope tolerated 152 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. the masses, but hated particular men and women. Their letters are sad to read, because there they showed their jealousies, and prejudices, and hates. Ci As good friends exchange jam, or turkeys, or oysters, these potentates occasionally sent each other little pots of gall, or prepara- tions of poison, as friendly gifts." Pope, when he first met Addison, was his warm ad- mirer and humble servant. It was he who wrote the pro- logue for " Cato," and he even went so far as to lampoon Addison's enemies, in a coarse way, which offended rather than pleased his patron. There were other reasons why they could not be friends. Addison did like to have all the atten- tions and all the praise, and was naturally jealous of the rising genius. Then, too, Tickell, his bosom friend, pub- lished a translation of " The Iliad " at the same time with Pope, which was thought by some to be more scholarly and exact, as Pope had never studied at a university. Pope accused Addison of helping Tickell in his work, which was not true ; but of course there could be no friendship in the future. Pope was too indignant to be silent, and the verses which he sent to Addison are known to all : " And were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires — Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease ? Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ? View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike ; Alike reserved to blame as to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; Dreading even fools, by flatteries besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; POPE. 153 Like Cato, gives his little senate laws, And sits attentive to his own applause ; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise ; Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? " There is venom in this description, and just enough truth to make the libel more effective. How much bet- ter and happier a man he might have been if iie had car- ried out in his life the beautiful sentiment found in his " Universal Prayer : " " Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see ; That mercy I to others show, That mercv show to me." TWICKENHAM. You observe the difference between the authors last described and Shakespeare? He wrote for all men, all 154 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. countries, and all time. Swift, Addison, Pope, wrote for their own time alone, to suit the artificial state of society; and you will find little true pathos, humanity, or humor. Pope was witty, ingenious, acute, sparkling, sarcastic; but he was not a natural poet, and never forgot himself. Through all his life he delighted in artifice, and hardly drank tea without a stratagem. But his misfortune leads us to overlook many faults. He died at Twickenham, on the 30th of May, 1744, after a life of incessant ill-health and incessant industry, adorned with a greater share of fame and honor than often falls to the lot of poets. TOU^G. "Whom dismal scenes delight, Frequent at tombs and in the realms of night." Edward Young, whose fame is chiefly due to his " Night Thoughts," now little read, but often quoted, was a very different man from either the "vitriolic Swift" or the sparkling poet we last spoke of. His father was an eloquent dean, and preached so well that he was appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and the little Edward, who was born in 1681, was honored by having the princess royal (afterward Queen Anne) for his god- mother. He was educated at All Souls College, Oxford, and, though he did not gain a scholarship, Oxford was certainly proud of him; for, only two years after his graduation, he was appointed to speak a Latin oration at the founding of a library there. 156 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Pope says that Young had much of a sublime genius, but lacked common-sense, and genius without that sturdy guide is apt to become mere bombast. So he was thought a little weak by his friends, who laughed at his foibles, while they acknowledged his talent. It is said that he was dissipated in his early days, and led a gay, worldly life, under the patronage of a notoriously bad man — the Duke of Wharton. He may have been badly influenced by his profligate friend, but it is also true that he was remarkably well read in the Bible, and powerful in answer- ing and refuting the arguments of his skeptical friends. Tindal, a noted atheist of those days, used to spend much of his time at All Souls, and enjoyed discussing points of religious controversy with the young men, and this is hi* testimony : " The other boys I can always answer, because I know where they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow, Young, is continually pestering me with something of his own." Even if Young did try that wicked life, he left it in disgust, and, to his praise of virtue, adds a personal expe- rience, which taught him to abhor all forms of vice. It makes him, perhaps, a better teacher of morality, for, as some one says, with great beauty of expression, " Experi- ence, like the stern-lights of a ship, only illumines the path over which we have passed." Young's great mistake in life was his desire to gain the patronage and friendship of royalty and the nobility by fawning flattery ; and this miserable ambition caused his whole life — and it was a long one — to be a series of disappointments and mortifica- tions. Thinking, perhaps, that Addison gained his good fortune by a complimentary poem addressed to the king, " he hoped to soar to wealth and honor on wings of the same kind." So his first poem was addressed to Queen Anne, praising her in the most extravagant and absurd YOUNG. 157 manner, and his next poem, " On the Last Day," was also dedicated to her. I believe he gained nothing by this fnlsome flattery but a pension from her majesty, as these lines seem to prove in speaking of the court : " Whence Gay was banished in disgrace, Where Pope could never show his face ; Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension." In 1717 he went to Ireland with his patron, the dis- solute Wharton, who was then really kind to him, giving him much material aid, but afterward deserted him most meanly. The greater part of Young's life was spent in an unsuccessful struggle for fame as a courtier and poet. At last he retired, disgusted and misanthropic. At the age of fifty, he took clerical orders, and passed the rest of his days in uneasy retirement, satirizing those things he had failed to gain, and to which he ever looked back with regret, still making an occasional effort to satisfy his darling ambition. These feelings he tried to hide in his poems by a veil of dignity and sublime indif- ference, which fails to deceive the careful reader. His first important work was a satire on the " Love of Fame," which he styles the " universal passion," as he might well do, if he judged the world by his own longings. This satire, divided into seven epistles, is often strong and vigorous, with many keen and happy hits ; but he was not sufficiently gay, playful, or good-natured, to make it quite satisfactory. As Swift remarked, " They should have either been more angry or more merry." But they were widely circulated, and brought the author more than three thousand pounds. Of course, the reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young — ever waiting for a favorable moment to advance his own claims — by a com- plimentary poem which he styled " Ocean ; an Ode." 158 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. King George, in his speech when he ascended the throne, had recommended the encouragement of the seamen ; and the anxious poet and would-be favorite took his cue from this circumstance. This ode concludes with a " wish," of which I will give you a specimen, quoting three of the thirteen stanzas, just to show how little we can know of an author's real feelings from what he gives to the world as such. The rhymes are very bad : " may I steal Along the vale Of humble life, secure from foes ; My friend sincere, My judgment cl*ear, And gentle business my repose. " Prophetic schemes, And golden dreams, May I, unsanguinc, cast away ! Have what I have, And live, not leave, Enamoured of the present day ! " My hours my own, My faults unknown ! My chief revenue in content ! Then leave one beam Of honest fame, And scorn the labored monument ! " He hoped to be rewarded by a bishopric, but this was withheld on the ground of the poet's extreme devotion to retirement, which he had so often expressed! Rather hard, wasn't it, for the disappointed man ? Nothing was left him, after all his efforts, but to ponder in solitude over the folly of writing romantic stuff in which was neither sincerity nor heart. Honesty seems the best policy, after all, with poets as well as common people. Whipple says : "A man of letters is often a man with YOUNG. 159 two natures — one a book nature, the other a human na- ture. These often clash sadly. Seneca wrote in praise of poverty, on a table formed of solid gold, with two millions of pounds let out at usury. Sterne was a very selfish man, according to TTarburton, an irreclaimable rascal, yet a writer unexcelled for pathos and charity. Sir Richard Steele wrote excellently well on temperance, when he was sober. Dr. Johnson's essays on politeness are admirable ; yet his ' You lie, sir,' and ' You don't un- derstand the question, sir,' were too common character- istics of his colloquies. He and Dr. Shebbeare were both pensioned at the same time. The report immediately flew that the king had pensioned two bears — a he-bear and a she-bear. Young, whose gloomy fancy cast such sombre tinges on life, was in society a brisk, lively man, continually pelting his hearers with puerile puns. Mrs. Carter, fresh from the stern, dark grandeur of the ' Xight Thoughts,' expressed her amazement at his flippancy. ' Madam,' said he, 'there is much difference between talking and writing.' The same poet's favorite theme was the nothingness of worldly things ; his favorite pursuit was rank and riches. Had Mrs. Carter noticed this incon- gruity, he might have added, 'Madam, there is much difference between writing didactic poems and living didactic poems.' " .In 1730 his college gave him the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, the only substantial favor he ever re- ceived, and that came unasked/ and in May of the next year he married a widow, Lady Elizabeth Lee, to whom and her two children the poet was tenderly attached. This beautiful and lovely lady inspired one of the hap- piest and most elegant impromptus ever uttered. Dr. Young (we must give him the only title he ever gained) was walking in his garden with two ladies, one of them Lady Lee. On being called away by a servant to 160 nOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. speak to a parishioner on some important business, he was very unwilling to leave the ladies, and, on being almost driven into the house by their gentle violence, he thus addressed them : *' Thus Adam once at God's command was driven From Paradise by angels sent from heaven ; Like him I go, and yet to go am loath ; Like him I go, for angels drove us both. Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind, His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind.' , His wife died in 1741, and this, with other domestic grief, induced him to write the " Night Thoughts," which have been so justly celebrated. In them you will find much to admire, and no doubt you have quoted from them without being aware of it ; but his style is so solemn, with a would-be sublimity that too often approaches bombastic unmeaningness, and there is such a lack of connection, and sometimes of common-sense, that you will never be likely to read it continuously. He has given us many proverbs and quotable lines, which are familiar to all. For instance : " Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep. " " Procrastination is the thief of time." " All men think all men mortal but themselves." " How blessings brighten as they take their flight ! " " That life is long which answers life's great end." " Death loves a shining mark — a signal blow." His last days, like those of too many of our great men, were sad and solitary. He is said to have been tyrannized over by a virago of a housekeeper, who drove his only son from his door, and kept him constantly unhappy. He died in 1765, at the age of eighty-four. young. 161 His life was a curious contrast of worldliness and piety, luxury and devotion. His affections seemed always di- vided between God and Mammon. His book would hardly make us happier or better ; his morality is often little bet- ter than prudence, and his gloomy truisms often sadden without improving. It is no? advisable to give full ex- pression to morbid feelings in prose or verse. When Young, whose very name seems incongruous, was composing his " Thoughts," he would either ramble alone among the tombs, or sit in a darkened room, dimly lighted by candles. Give me the author who loves to write in the sunshine among the flowers ; whose object is to soothe and cheer, as well as instruct. One of our own poets has spoken in a higher and more blessed strain, makiDg us feel that there are " Voices of the 2fight " which elevate and console : " holy Xight ! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before. Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more." Yet we should not be too severe, for we cannot fail to find much in the character and writings of Young worthy of our admiration, and will close this sketch with the words of his biographer, Johnson, who says:- "In spite of all his defects, he was a genius and a poet." THOMSON. 11 To him, who in, the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. 1 ' ArTER'Toung, comes the fat, lazy Scotchman, James Thomson, whom we always think of as author of " The Seasons." His father was a good minister of Ednam, in Rox- burghshire, and there, in 1700, James was born. The good man's family being rather large, nine children in all, he found it as much as he could do to feed and clothe them, without thinking much of education, and another minister, who lived near (perhaps not blessed with so many olive-branches), finding James a clever boy, offered to take him home, and provide him with all the books he THOMSON. 163 needed. At school, he was not thought a prodigy, excel- ling in no one study. But in those early days, he used to scribble poetry to amuse his kind friend and his playfel- lows ; yet never was quite satisfied with his rhymes, look- ing them over every New-Tear' s-Day, only to throw them all into the' fire. His friends wanted him to be a min- ister, and he was fitting for this profession at Edinburgh, with no other prospect for the future than the laborious life of a country parson, when he one day astonished his grave professor and charmed the class with a remarkably beautiful paraphrase of a psalm. His teacher blamed him for using language so fine as not to be understood by com- mon people, but he cared more for the applause of his young friends than the censure of the grave doctor, and, coming to the conclusion that he was, by nature, more of a poet than preacher, gave up his studies, and soon went to London to seek his fortune. This was rather a bold step for a green, awkward youth, with neither money nor friends, and success did not smile on him at first, as you shall see. He had secured several letters of recommendation to persons who could have helped him greatly, and had tied them carefully in the corner of his handkerchief, but London streets and London sights so dazzled and dazed the young Scotchman, that they were quietly taken from his pocket, with every thing else of value there, while he was gaping along, quite forgetting what had sent him to so wonderful a place. He was so poor, that he was not able to buy a pah* of shoes, which he really needed. " But, never mind," thought our raw countryman, " I have something in my head worthnnore than all the shoes in the city." But light did not come at once to- the young adventurer. He offered the manuscript of " Winter " to several publishers, but no one cared to take it ; at last he found one, who bought it at a ridiculously low price — and then regretted 161 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. that he had not refused it. It appeared in print in 1726. All that Thomson now needed was a patron. In those days it was not only politic, but absolutely necessary, for success, that the poets should cram some rich or powerful man with graceful, high-flown compliments, until (with very much the same effect as the flattery of the wily fox in iEsop's " Fables " had upon the- silly crow, who soon drops the coveted bit of cheese), they open the purse- strings of the delighted magnate, and climb rapidly into favor. Thomson received, in this easy way, twenty guineas for a dedication to Sir Spencer Compton, of the poem, for which his publisher had thought three guineas a good recompense. The appearance of " Winter " was a new sensation in the literary world. Dame Nature had been comparatively neglected for a long time. All the great poets, from Chaucer to Milton, had loved to commune with her, but, as Hare says, " When Milton lost his eyes, Poetry lost hers," and soon came the artificial school, where mountain and meadow and moonlight, and " all the forest music of an English landscape," were forgotten, and man and the town, the drawing-room and candle-light, usurped their place. Poets" looked at Nature through the spectacles of books. " It was as though a number of eyes had been set in a row, like boys playing at leap-frog, each hinder one having to look through all that stood before it, and, hence seeing Nature, not as it is in itself, but refracted and distorted by a number of more or less turbid media. Ever and anon, too, some one would be seized with the ambition of surpassing his predecessors, and would try by a feat at leap-eye, to get before them ; in so doing, how- ever, from ignorance of the ground, he mostly stumbled and fell. Making an impotent effort after originality, he would attempt to vary the combination of words in which THOMSON. 165 former writers had spoken of the same objects ; but as one is ever liable to trip and to violate idiom at least, if not grammar, when speaking a foreign language, so by these aliens to Nature, and sojourners in the. land of Poetry, images and expressions which belonged to partic- ular circumstances, or to particular phases of feeling, were often misapplied to circumstances and feelings with which they were wholly incongruous. ' When the jay spread gut his peacock's tail, many of the quills were sticking up in the air.' " But those whose opinions were contagious liked " Win- ter ; " amateurs sounded the praises of the new poet, who now, happy as well as hopeful, soon completed his pano- rama of the " varied year." It adds to the charm of these poems to know that their author was sincere in his praise of Nature, whom he really loved for her own sake. He" was in earnest when he wrote this noble stanza : "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave ; Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave." How well he sings the loves of the birds in spring : " When first the soul of love is sent abroad, Warm through the vital air, and on the heart Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin In gallant thought to plume the painted wing, And try again the long-forgotten strain, At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows The soft infusion prevalent and wide, Than, all alive, at once their joy overflows In music unconfined. Up springs the lark, 166 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Shrill ed-voiced and loud, the messenger of morn ; Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads Of the coy quiristers that lodge within, Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush And wood-lark, o'er the kind-contending throng Superior heard, run through the sweetest length Of notes ; when listening Philomela deigns To let them joy, and purposes, in thought Elate, to make her night excel their day. The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake ; The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove : Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze Poured out profusely, silent. Joined to these Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw, And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone, Aid the full concert : while the stock-dove breathes A melancholy murmur through the whole. 'Tis love creates their melody, and all This waste of music is the voice of love ; That e'en to birds, and beasts, the tender arts Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind Try every winning way inventive love Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates Pour forth their little souls." His description also of a man freezing in the winter snows is very graphic and pathetic : " As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darkened air ; In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disastered stands ; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow ; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain ; Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid THOMSON. 167 Beneath the formless wild ; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray ; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home ; the thoughts of home Eush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul ! What black despair, what horror fills his heart ! When for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track, and blest abode of man : While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of covered pits, unfathomably deep, A dire descent ! beyond the power of frost ; Of faithless bogs ; of precipices huge, Smoothed up with snow ; and, what is land unknown, What water of the still unfrozen spring, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, WTiere the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps ; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man — His wife, his children, and his friends unseen. In vain for him th' officious wife prepares . The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve The deadly Winter seizes ; shuts up sense ; And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snow, a stiffened corse — Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast." Thomson next tried his pen upon tragedy, but never pleased the public. One silly line in his first play — 8 168 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Sopkonisba ! Sophonisba ! " was parodied by some wicked wag, and " Jemmy Thomson ! Jemmy Thomson ! " was sung, and whistled, and echoed, till, from laughing at this one blunder, the town ridiculed the whole. This was particularly hard on Thomson, who was so intensely anx- ious and excited, whenever one of his dramas was put on the stage, that he could be heard in an upper gallery; reciting word for word with the players, and he said his wig actually became uncurled^ from " the sweat of his dis- tress ! " Not long after this, in 1731, he travelled over the Con- tinent, as tutor to the son of the distinguished lawyer, Chancellor Talbot, living in luxury, without any expense, enjoying, as few have the power to enjoy, all the delights and privileges of such a tour. After his return to Eng- land, he published a very long poem, in five parts, on " Liberty," upon which he had spent two years, which he thought his noblest work. But no one agreed with him ; few read it then ; it is hardly known now. So little can authors judge of the merits of their own works. In 1738, being obliged, by the death of his patron, to resume work, he wrote two more tragedies, which also proved failures. But the Prince of Wales gave him a yearly pension of one hundred pounds, and, through the influence of a friend, he gained the office of Surveyor- General of the Leeward Islands, which yielded him three hundred pounds each year — after he had paid some one else for doing the work ! He was the very " high-priest of indolence," and now, with an abundance of means, he spent the last years of his life in a thoroughly lazy way, in his pretty cottage at Richmond. " So intensely indolent was he, that he is said to have been in the habit, when lounging in his dressing-gown, along the sunny walks of THOMSON. 169 his garden, of biting a mouthfal out of the peaches ripen- ing on his wall, too lazy to lift his hand to pluck them." In this quiet home, with nothing in the world to do, he spent several years on his " Castle of Indolence," a dreamy, drowsy allegory, written in the style of Spenser, the very words of which seem to lull you to repose. " A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky ; There eke the soft delights, that witchingly Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh ; And whate'er smacked of 'noyance or unrest Was far, far off expelled from that delicious nest." "The good knight Industry breaks the magician's spell ; but (alas for the moral teaching of the allegory ! ) we have grown so delighted with the still and cushioned life, whose hours glide slumberously by, that we feel almost angry with the restless being who dissolves the i delicious charm." I will give a few verses from the open- ing of the poem : " mortal man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate ; That like an emmet thou must ever moil, Is a sad sentence of an ancient date ; And, certes, there is for it reason great ; For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail, And curse thy star, an early drudge and late, Withouten that would come a heavier bale, Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale. " In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground ; 170 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. And there, a season atween June and May, Half-pranked with spring, with summer half-imbrowned, A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared e'en for play. " Was naught around but images of rest ; Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ; And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest, From poppies breathed ; and beds of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played, And hurled everywhere their waters sheen ; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. 11 Joined to the prattle of the purling rills, Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale : And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep ; Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep. " Thither continual pilgrims crowded still, From all the roads of earth that pass thereby ; For, as they chanced to breathe on neighboring hill, The freshness of this valley smote their eye, And drew them ever and anon more nigh ; Till clustering round th' enchanter false they hung, Ymolten with his siren melody ; While o'er th' enfeebling lute his hand he flung, And to the trembling chords these tempting verses sung : " * Behold ! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold ! See all but man with unearned pleasure gay : See her bright robes the butterfly unfold, Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of May ! What youthful bride can equal her array ? Who can with her for easy pleasure vie ? From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray, From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly, Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky. THOMSON. 171 " ' Behold the merry minstrels of the morn, The swarming songsters of the careless grove, Ten thousand throats ! that from the flowering thorn, Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love, Such grateful kindly raptures them emove : They neither plough, nor sow, ne, fit for flail, E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove ; Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale, "Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale. " ' Come, ye who still the cumbrous load of life Push hard up hill ; but as the farthest steep You trust to gain, and put an end to strife, Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep, And hurls your labors to the valley deep, Forever vain ; come, and, withouten fee, I in oblivion will your sorrows steep, Your cares, your toils, will steep you in a sea Of fall delight ; oh come, ye weary wights, to me ! " ' With me you need not rise at early dawn, To pass the joyous day in various stounds; ^ Or, louting low, on upstart fortune fawn, And sell fair honor for some paltry pounds ; Or through the city take your dirty rounds, To cheat, and dun, and lie, and visit pay, Now flattering base, now giving secret wounds : Or prowl in courts of law for human prey, In venal senate thieve, or rob on broad highway. " ' No cocks, with me, to rustic labor call, From village on to village sounding clear : To tardy swain no shrill-voiced matron's squall ; No dogs, no babes, no wives, to stun your ear ; No hammers thump ; no horrid blacksmith fear ; No noisy tradesman your sweet slumbers start, With sounds that are a misery to hear : But all is calm, as would delight the heart Of Sybarite of old, all nature, and all art. " ' What, what is virtue, but repose of mind, A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm : Above the reach of wild ambition's wind, ■ 172 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Above the passions that this world deform, And torture man, a proud malignant worm ? But here, instead, soft gales of passion play, And gently stir the heart, thereby to form A quicker sense of joy ; as breezes stray Across th' enlivened skies, and make them still more gay. " ' The best of men have ever loved repose ; They hate to mingle in the filthy fray ; Where the soul sours, and gradual rancor grows, Imbittered more from peevish day to day. E'en those whom Fame has lent her fairest ray, The most renowned of worthy wights of yore, From a base world at last have stolen away : So Scipio, to the soft Cumaean shore Retiring, tasted joy he never knew before. " ' Oh, grievous folly ! to heap up estate, Losing the days you see beneath the sun ; When, sudden, comes blind unrelenting fate, And gives th' untasted portion you have won, With ruthless toil, and many a wretch undone, To those who mock you gone to Pluto's reign, There with sad ghosts to pine, and shadows dun : But sure it is of vanities most vain, To toil for what you here untoiling may obtain.' " Thomson's friend Lyttleton contributed one stanza to this poem, containing a portrait of its author : u A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems, Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain, On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes, Poured forth his unpremeditated strain ; The world forsaking with a calm disdain, Here laughed he careless in his easy seat ; Here quaffed,, encircled with the joyous train, Oft moralizing sage ; his ditty sweet, He loathed much to write, ne cared to repeat." Thomson wrote in various styles, but excelled in descrip- tion. He has given us many noble thoughts, beautifully THOMSON. 173 and vigorously expressed. In regard to the true end of life, he says : " Who, who would like, my Narva, just to breathe This idle air, and indolently run, Day after day, the still returning round Of life's mean offices and sickly joys ? But in the service of mankind to be A guardian god below ; still to employ The mind's brave ardor, in heroic arms, Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd, And make us shine forever — that- is life !" Of Providence : — " There is a power Unseen that rules the illimitable world, That guides its motions, from the brightest star To the least dust of this sin-tainted mould ; While man, who madly deems himself the lord Of all, is naught but weakness and dependence. This sacred truth, by sure experience taught, Thou must have learned when wandering all alone ; Each bird, each insect, flitting through the sky, Was more sufficient for itself than thou." He had at least one romance in life, being at one time deeply in love with a Miss Amanda Somebody, whose mother did not fancy him as a husband for her daughter, as he was " nothing but a poet ; " and he told his sorrows in several very sentimental songs : " For once, Fortune, hear my prayer, And I absolve thy future care ; All other blessings I resign, Make hut the dear Amanda mine I " But cruel Fortune and Amanda's mother paid no atten- tion to his sighs and sentiment. It is said that the young lady fainted when told of his death ; but, as she soon after married a gallant admiral, I presume she was not so sadly *in earnest as the poor poet. 174 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. I find one humorous poem, " The Barber's Nuptials," quite in the vein of Thomas Hood and the witty rhymers of our own day : "THE BARBER'S NUPTIALS. " In Liquor-pond Street, as is well known to many, An artist resided, who shaved for a penny; Cut hair for three-halfpence ; for three pence he bled, And would draw for a groat every tooth in your head. 11 What annoyed other folks never spoiled his repose, 'Twas the same thing to him whether stocks fell or rose ; For blast and for mildew he cared not a pin, His crops never failed, for they grew on the chin ! " Unvexed by the cares that ambition and state has, Contented he dined on his daily potatoes ; And the pence that he earned by excision of bristle, Were nightly devoted to wetting his whistle. " When copper ran low he made light of the matter, Drank his purl upon tick at the old Pewter Platter ; Read the news, and as deep in the secret appeared As .if he had lathered the minister's beard. " But Cupid, who trims men of every station, And 'twixt barbers and beaux makes no discrimination, Would not let this superlative shaver alone, Till he tried if his heart was as hard as his hone " The fair one whose charms did the barber inthrall, At the end of Fleet-market, of fish kept a stall ; As red as her cheek was no lobster e'er seen, Not an eel that she sold was so soft as her skin. " By love strange effects have been wrought, we are told, In all countries and climates, hot, temperate, or cold ; Thus the heart of our barber love scorched like a coal, Though 'tis very well known he lived under the pole. " First, he courted his charmer in sorrowful fashion, And lied like a lawyer to move her compassion ; THOMSON. 175 He should perish, he swore, did his suit not succeed, And a barber to slay was a barbarous deed. " Then he altered his tone, and was heard to declare, If valor deserved the regard of the fair, That his courage was tried, though he scorned to disclose How many brave fellows he'd took by the nose. " For his politics, too, they were thoroughly known, A patriot he was to the very backbone ; Wilkes he gratis had shaved for the good of the nation, And he held the Whig club in profound veneration. "'For his tenets religious — he could well expound Emanuel Swedenborg's myst'ries profound, And new doctrines could broach with the best of 'em all, For a periwig-maker ne'er wanted a caul. " Indignant she answered: 'No chin-scraping sot Shall be fastened to me by the conjugal knot ; No ! to Tyburn repair, if a noose you must tie, Other fish I have got, Mr. Tonsor, to fry: " { Holborn-bridge and Blackfriars my triumphs can tell, From Billingsgate beauties I've long borne the bell ; Nay, tripemen and fishmongers vie for my favor : Then d'ye think I'll take up with a two-penny shaver? " ' Let dory, or turbot the sov'reign of fish, Cheek by jowl with red-herring be served in one dish ; Let sturgeon and sprats in one pickle unite, When I angle for husbands, and barbers shall bite.' " But the barber persisted (ah, could I relate 'em !) To ply her with compliments soft as pomatum ; And took every occasion to flatter and praise her, Till she fancied his wit was as keen as his razor. " He protested, besides, if she'd grant his petition, She should live like a lady of rank and condition ; And to Billingsgate market no longer repair, But himself all her business would do to a hair. 8* 176 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Her smiles, he asserted, would melt even rocks, Nay, the fire of her eyes would consume barbers' blocks ; On insensible objects bestow animation, And give to old periwigs regeneration. " With fair speeches cajoled, as you'd tickle a trout, 'Gainst the barber the fish-wife no more could hold out; He applied the right bait, and with flattery he caught her, Without flattery a female's a fish out of water. " The state of her heart, when the barber once guessed, Love's siege with redoubled exertion he pressed, And as briskly bestirred him, the charmer embracing, As the wash-ball that dances and froths in bis basin. " The flame to allay that their bosoms did so burn, They set out for the church of St. Andrew in Holborn, Where tonsors and trulls, country Dicks and their cousins, In the halter of wedlock are tied up by dozens. " The nuptials to grace, came from every quarter, The worthies at Rag-fair, old caxons who barter, Who the coverings of judges' and counsellors' nobs Cut down into majors, queues, scratches, and bobs. " From their voices united such melody flowed, As the Abbey ne'er witnessed, nor Tott'nham Court-road ; While St. Andrew's brave bells did so loud and so clear ring, You'd have given ten pounds to 've been out of their hearing. " For his fee, when the parson*this couple had joined, As no cash was forthcoming, he took it in kind : So the bridegroom dismantled his rev'rence's chin, And the bride entertained him with pilchards and gin." Thomson was a wonderfully good-natured man, and so patient that, even when his friends bribed his servants to annoy him, he was never known to lose his temper. He did not live long to enjoy his peaceful home, for, taking cold from a boat-ride after a long walk one August after- THOMSON. 177 noon, a fever ensued, which proved fatal. The year of his death was 1748. It was of him that Lord Lyttleton said, he left "No line which, dying, he could wish to blot." THOMSON'S COTTAGE. ;llii!fciisi& Bfffl? 7a-£ ideas, and such laughable confusion in 231 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. expressing them," and was willing to exaggerate his de- fects. He avers that he was so eager to shine, so desir- ous of notice and approbation, that he seemed unhappy when travelling with two very beautiful young ladies, be- cause the/ received more attention than himself! — and that he even grew angry at the praise bestowed on a puppet, which tossed a pike with great dexterity, saying, " Pshaw! I can do that better myself!" He also adds, that, going home with Burke to supper, after the show, he broke his ankle in attempting to out-do the puppets ! I Goldsmith in his turn despised the fawning parasite, and disproved Boswell's assertion that " he talked carelessly, without knowledge of his subject," when he answered some one who inquired, " Who is this Scotch cur at John- son's heels ? " " He is not a cur" said Goldsmith, " you are too severe ; he is only a burr. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking ! " We find a double pleasure in a happy retort from him, because he so often blundered, and one instance of his success in this direction is positively exhilarating, for the " Great Cham " himself is the victim. They were enjoy- ing a cosy tete-d-tete supper one evening, and Johnson expatiated on a dish of rump and kidneys, which he was causing rapidly to disappear. " These," said he, " are pretty little things, but a man must eat a great manyof them before he is filled." " Ay, but how many of them," asked Goldsmith, with affected simplicity, " would reach to the moon ? " " To the moon ? Ah, sir, that, I fear, excels your cal culation." " Not at all, sir. I think I could tell." " Pray, then, sir, let us hear." " Why, sir — one, if it were long enough ! " Johnson growled for a time, at finding himself caught in such a "trite, school-boy trap." GOLDSMITH. 235 Through the influence of his new friend, Goldsmith was now admitted to the celebrated literary club which used to irieet every Monday night, at the Turk's Head, Gerard Street, Soho. The number was limited to nine, and among the original members were Sir Joshua Rey- nolds, the founder of the English school of painting ; and Burke, the orator and statesman, of whom Johnson said that " no man of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway to avoid a shower, without being con- vinced that he was the first man in England." The others, though not so well known, were all men of culture and wit. Goldsmith's appearance was against him ; he was, to most of them, a mere literary drudge, and must have suf- fered under their satirical supervision. Although no man of his age could surpass him in smooth, graceful, and attractive composition, he was vanquished in conversation by men who did not possess a tithe, of his genius, for he was blundering and illogical, seldom able to tell what he knew. Of course, he never did himself justice at these meet- ings, and was often the subject of ridicule. Johnson said of him that "no man was more foolish when he had not. his pen in hand, or more wise when he had ; " and Gar- rick, who never liked him, afterward paraphrased this idea in an epitaph, when, as -usual, he was the last to arrive at the club : " Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." But Goldsmith talked on, often laughed at, seldom lis- tened to, and yet, when in a happy mood, charming all by the thoughtless outpourings of a fertile fancy. He was busily writing, at this time, no one knew what. He was, as usual, in debt, and always in trouble, but he had a firm friend and sincere adviser in Johnson, who discerned his 236 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. real merit. He would scold him like a child, yet allow no one else to speak of him with disrespect, and was ever ready to help him out of his embarrassments. * " I received one morning," says Johnson, " a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it -was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accord- ingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." The novel was- " The Vicar of Wakefield," that capti- vating story many of whose phrases have passed into household words ; which has been translated into various languages, and is just as much read and admired now as ever. The first genuine novel of domestic life; like Goldy himself, full of contradictions, blunders, absurdi- ties, yet winning our hearts, and holding a place there. " No bad man could write a book so full of the soft sun- shine and tender beauty of domestic life — so sweetly wrought out of the gentle recollections of the old home at Lissoy." And this delightful story was actually kept by the stupid publisher for two years ! Let us be thankful that he did not lose it during the time. GOLDSMITH. 237 In December of 1764, "The Traveller" appeared, and the slow-witted public began to think that they had a genius among them. It had a remarkable success, and proved a rich prize to the publisher, who doled out twenty guineas to the author for his share of the profits. Even this seemed a golden windfall to the needy poet. He dis- trusted his power of verse-making, and had published this poem in fear and trembling. He said, "I fear I have come too late into the world ; Pope and other poets have taken up the places in the Temple of Fame." But Goldsmith's reputation was now rising rapidly, and he was one of the lions of the day. Charles Fox pro- nounced "The Traveller" to be one of the finest poems in the English language. Johnson declared it was better than any thing since the days of Pope. Everybody won- dered how the homely, dumpy Irishman, full of " brogue and blunder," could have produced such a gem. Some doubted whether it was really his work, he answered so stupidly when questioned as to the meaning of any partic- ular passage. Miss Reynolds, who had toasted him as the ugliest man she ever saw, exclaimed, after some one had finished reading the poem to her — " Well, I shall never think Dr. Goldsmith ugly any more ! " His presence was now courted in elegant drawing- rooms; but he made a sorry presence there. He- was now forty years of age — too old to adopt new manners, with his new mode of life, and he disappointed all who had their ideas ofthe man, from the ease and grace of his poetry. It was now considered safe to bring out " The Vicar of "Wakefield," which had been slumbering for two years in the hands of the publishers. It came out on the 27th of March, 1766 ; three editions were exhausted in as many months, and its popularity has never flagged. Goethe, 238 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. the greatest genius of Germany, said that this book had formed part of his education, influencing his taste and feelings through life, and that he read it at twenty and at eighty with the same delight. As an illustration of the humor which runs through the story, let me give you the description of the picture of the Primrose family : " My wife and daughters, happening to return a visit to neighbor Flamborough's, found that family had lately got their pictures drawn by a limner, who travelled the country, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head. As this family and ours had long a sort of rivalry in point of taste, our spirit took the alarm at this stolen march upon us, and notwithstanding all I could say, and I said much, it was resolved that we should have our pictures done too. Having, therefore, engaged the limner — for what could I do ? — our next deliberation was, to show the superiority of our tastes in the attitudes. As for our neighbor's family, there were seven of them, and they were drawn with seven oranges, a thing quite out of taste, no variety in life, no composition in the world. We de- sired to have something in a brighter style, and, after many debates, at length came to a unanimous resolution of being drawn together in one large historical family piece. This would be cheaper, since one frame would serve for all, and it would be infinitely more genteel ; for all families of taste were now drawn in the same manner. As we did not immediately recollect an historical subject to hit us, we were contented each wifh being drawn as independent historical figures. My wife desired to be represented as Venus, and the painter was desired not to be too frugal of his diamonds in her stomacher and hair. Her two little ones were to be as Cupids by her side ; while I, in my gown and band, was to present her with my books on the Whistonian controversy. Olivia would GOLDSMITH. 239 be drawn as an Amazon sitting upon a bank of flowers, dressed in a green Joseph, richly laced with gold, and a whip in her hand. Sophia was to be a shepherdess, with as many sheep as the painter could put in for nothing ; and Moses was to be dressed out with a hat and white feather. Our taste so much pleased tfie Squire, that he insisted as being put in as one of the family in the charac- ter of Alexander the Great, at Olivia's feet. This was considered by us all as an indication of his desire to be introduced into the family, nor could we refuse his re- quest. The painter was therefore set to work, and, as he wrought with assiduity and expedition, in less than four days the whole was completed. The piece was large, and it must be owned he did not spare his colors ; for which my wife gave him great encomiums. We were all per- fectly satisfied with his performance ; but an unfortunate circumstance had not occurred till the picture was finish- ed, which now struck us with dismay. It was so very large that we had no place in the house to iix it. How we all came to disregard so material a point is inconceiv- able; but certain it is, we had been all greatly remiss. The picture, therefore, instead of gratifying our vanity, as we hoped, leaned, in a most mortifying manner, against the kitchen wall, where the canvas was stretched and painted — much too large to be got through any of the doors, and the jest of all our neighbors. One compared it to Robinson Crusoe's long boat, too large to be removed ; another thought it more resembled a reel in a bottle; some wondered how it could be got out ; but still more were amazed how it ever got in ! " # Goldsmith next tried comedy. "The Good-natured Man," after much delay, was brought out at Covent Garden. Owing to mean wire-pulling by his enemies, it was in a measure a failure, though bringing five thousand 11 2i0 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. pounds to poor Goldy, who now dashed out into most ex- travagant expenditure. In the books of his tailor we see an entry of a suit — " Tyrian bloom, satin grain, and garter blue silk breeches," and of another " lined with silk, and furnished with gold buttons." He leased three rooms on the second floor of Brick Court, Middle Temple, and adorned them with mirrors, Wilton carpets, bookcases, and card-tables. Here he gave brilliant dinner-parties and jolly suppers, a thought- less spendthrift, enjoying in butterfly fashion his transient summer of prosperity. His purse was soon emptied, and then he ran deeply in debt, hoping soon to turn up another trump, and pay all he had borrowed. In 1769 he published his "History of Rome," for the use of schools and colleges. Though not a work that he enjoyed, it is compiled with taste and skill, and was well received. He also wrote a history of England, in the same style. About this time he made the acquaintance of two charming young ladies, the Misses Horneck, meeting them one evening at Joshua Reynolds's. The younger sister, Miss Mary, called by her friends " The Jessamy Bride," particularly fascinated him, and both were his firm friends through life. At the house of Mrs. Bunbury, the older sister, he spent many a happy week, leading the games at Christmas, and romping with the children during his summer holi- days. He always indulged in a gay suit when invited to Barton, doubtless hoping to make an impression on the fair Miss Horneck, who laughed, as did every one else, at his love of finery. He was not allowed to enjoy his silk coats, and dainty ruffles, and bag-wig, when with that merry party. They disarranged his beautiful curls, and GOLDSMITH. 241 daubed his bloom-colored coat with paint, which mortified him greatly. But they all appreciated his talent, and were really fond of him, and I think his happiest days were spent with this pleasant family, forgetting debts and duns, and re- joicing in the sweet smile of the Jessamy Bride. " The Deserted Village" appeared in May, 1770, and sold rapidly ; by the 16th of August the fifth edition was hurried through the press. It is his finest poem, written in the same measure and style as " The Traveller ; " like that, a mirror of his own heart, and .equally true to nature. Loitering among the green lanes and hedge-rows that are found in the environs of London, his mind went back to childish days, and the poem is a faithful pen-photograph of the dear old hamlet at; Lissoy, where he spent his care- less, happy boyhood. How touching the contrast between his feelings then and the yearnings of his solitary heart, as expressed in these pathetic lines : " In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs — and God has given my share — I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose : I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill — Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return — and die at home at last." The emphatic words of poor, dying Gray, who heard " The Deserted Village " read at Malvern, where he spent 11 242 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. his last summer in a vain search for health, must be echoed by every feeling heart : " That man is a poet." Many wondered why Goldsmith should ever write any thing but poetry, but stern necessity compelled him to devote himself to prose, which brought better pay. Poetry never satisfies an impatient creditor, and when Earl Lisburn asked Goldsmith why he waste.d his time compiling histories, he said : " My lord, by courting the Muses I shall starve, but by my other labors I shall eat, drink, have good clothes, and enjoy the luxuries of life." His affairs were now in a terrible condition ; he owed more than he dared to think of, and had spent money given in advance for what was not written. Distressed and heart-sick, he appeared at times unnaturally gay, and then completely down. Alarme # d at last, he began to re- trench, and went into the country for the summer, to work on a natural history he had undertaken at a hundred guin- eas a- volume, most of which he had already wasted. It would have seemed preposterous for Goldsmith to under- take this task, if he had not been blessed with the power that Stella said Swift possessed — " of writing well on a broomstick " — for he had no knowledge whatever of his subject, hardly knowing one animal from another, only able to distinguish a turkey from a goose, when they were cooked on the table ; but Johnson prophesied that the work would be as entertaining as a Persian tale, and so it is. In a letter to a friend, at this time, he mentions that he is writing a comedy, " trying these three months to do something to make the people laugh ; strolling about the hedges, studying jests, with a most tragical countenance." From various reasons this did not appear on the stage for some time after it was written ; but on the evening of the 15th of May, 1773, Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and a phalanx of tried and trusty friends, were seen at the Covent Garden Theatre, seated in different parts of the GOLDSMITH. 243 house, ready to applaud Goldy's new play. Many feared a failure, but Johnson was sure of success. He sat in the front row of a side box, where every one could see him, and it was arranged that, whenever he laughed, all the rest were to roar as heartily and naturally as possible. One Adam Drummond, who had a loud, rattling, and per- fectly contagious laugh, was placed in an upper box, just over the stage, but as he was something like a cannon, very noisy, but ignorant when to " go off," some one sat by him to give him &jog, as a signal to begin. The plan worked well; the ilite laughed when the lexicographer shook his clumsy sides over the jokes, and no one could resist the uproarious cackle of the good- natured Adam in the front box. The audience laughed till they cried, and "She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night," .was the " hit " of the season. You remember the plot of this popular play was sug- gested to the author by his own mistake so many years before, when he spent a night at the Featherstone man- sion, and ordered hot cakes for breakfast. • I told you of Garrick's epitaph on Goldsmith, which, containing more truth than epitaphs in general, was not relished by the subject, who had serious objections to being considered an inspired parrot. Some time after, he produced a little poem, one evening, at the club, which he begged to read for the pleasure of the members. This was "Retaliation," in which he retorted upon several of his friends, who had been in the habit of making him the butt of their jokes. His humor was always good-humor, his satire never caustic, but the account was now even. Garrick's epitaph is a perfect description of the man : " Here lies David Garrick, describe him who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man ; 244 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. As an actor, confessed without rival to shine ; As a wit, if not first, in the very first line : Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. Like an ill-judging beauty, his 'colors he spread, And beplastered with rouge his own natural red. On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ; 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. With no reason on earth to go out of his way, He turned and he varied full ten times a day : Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick, If they were not his own by finessing and trick : He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew, when he pleased, he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came, And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame ; Till his relish, gown callous almost to disease, Who peppered the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave ! How did Grub Street reecho the shouts that you raised, While he was be-Rosciused and you were be-praised ! But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies, To act as an angel and mix with the skies : Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill, Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will ; Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above." This poem was never finished ; the portraits are not complete, for Goldsmith, who had long been ill, both body and mind, was attacked by a nervous fever in the spring of 1774, which his constitution had not the power to resist, and he died on the 4th of April, in the forty-fifth year of his age. When Burke was told of his death, he burst into tears. Reynolds was in his painting-room when the sad news came to him. He at once laid his pencil aside, GOLDSMITH. 245 which, in times of great family distress, he had not been known to do, and left his work for the day. His faithful friend Johnson felt the blow deeply. On the stairs lead- ing to his chamber, sat the old and infirm, mourning their loss ; many poor women sobbing bitterly for their generous friend. After his coffin was closed, it was re- opened, and a lock of hair taken for a lady, who wished to preserve it as a remembrance. It was his old friend, the beautiful Jessamy Bride, who desired this token. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey, and his friends at first intended to honor his memory in that way. A public funeral was planned, Reynolds, Burke, and Gar- rick, among the bearers ; but when they discovered that he died very deeply in debt, owing more than two thou- sand pounds, such a display seemed inappropriate. Five days after his death, at twilight on Saturday evening, the 9th of April, 1774, he was quietly interred in the bury- ing ground of Temple Church. A fine bust of the poet was soon after placed in the abbey, by the club of which he had been a member, and Johnson wrote a Latin epitaph, which was inscribed on a- white marble tablet underneath. He wrote of Goldsmith as " a poet, naturalist, and historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn." He also spoke of his power to move us to smiles or tears, and this is as true of his life as his writings. Irving says that "he seemed from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one bright, the other blundering." Shy, awkward, sensitive, eager for praise, fond of display, always doing or saying the most ridicu- lous things, we cannot help laughing at his absurdities ; but he was so generous, so noble in his impulses, so for- giving and gentle, so sad-hearted and restless beneath all his merriment and foolish display, that a sigh of tender- 216 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. ness and pity involuntarily follows the smile. His very faults and foibles rather attract than repel, and I doubt if there is a writer in the whole range of English litera- ture who is regarded with more sympathy and affection than— "Poor Goldy." GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON. " And now what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story ; How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory. And how, when one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted." William Cowper, whom his best biographer, Southey, speaks of as " the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter- writers," was the son of Dr. John Cowper, a royal chaplain, rector of Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. . He could boast of his ancestry on both sides, as his father was the son of a judge, and nephew of a lord chancellor, and his mother was descended by four different lines from Henry III. of England. He was born at the parsonage, on the loth of November, 1731. His early days were made bright and happy by the tender love of his mother. " Her hand it was that wrapped his 24:8 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. little scarlet cloak around him, and filled his little bag with biscuits every morning, before he went to his first school. By her knee was his happiest place, where he often amused himself by marking out the flowered pattern of her dress on paper with a pin, taking a child's delight in this simple skill. He was only six years old when this fond mother died ; thus early upon the childish head a pitiless storm began to beat." The delicate, diffident boy was old enough to know his great loss, and has recorded his feelings at that sad time in one of his most beautiful poems, on the receipt of her picture more than fifty years after : ON THE RECEIPT OF HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE. 11 that those lips had language ! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last. Those lips are thine — thy own sweet smile I see, The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, * Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away ! ' The meek intelligence of those dear eyes (Blest be the art that can immortalize, The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim To quench it !) here shines on me still the same. Faithful remembrancer of one so dear, welcome guest, though unexpected here ! Who bidd'st me honor with an artless song, Affectionate, a mother lost so long. 1 will obey, not willingly alone, But gladly, as the precept were her own : And, while that face renews my filial grief, Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief ; Shall steep me in Elysian reverie, A momentary dream, that thou art she. My mother ! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? cowpek. 249 Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss : Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers — Yes. I heard the bell tolled on thy burial-day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! But was it such ? — It was. — Where thou art gone, Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! Thy maidens grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. What ardently I wished, I long believed, And, disappointed still, was still deceived. By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow, even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, I learned at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." He said, when quite an old man, in speaking of her : " Not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her ; such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short." He was at once taken from the nursery, and sent from home to a boarding-school, where the timid, homesick child suffered much from loneliness and the cruelty of a boy many years older, practised so secretly that no one sus- pected it for a long time, but it was at last found out, and the tyrant expelled. Cowper retained through life a painful recollection of the terror with which this boy inspired him. He says : " His savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoebuckles than by any other 11* 250 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. part of his clress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in glory." This experience gave him a lasting dislike for schools of all kinds, which he afterward forcibly expressed in a poem called " Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools." His eyes now troubled him so much that he was placed under the care of an eminent oculist, where he remained two years, and was much relieved, thfcugh not wholly cured. At the end of this time, at the age of ten, he was removed by his father to Westminster, where, though often morbid and low-spirited, he enjoyed a good deal. He was a fine scholar, a favorite with his teachers, and very fond of out-door games, excelling in cricket and foot-ball. He speaks of this period as one in which, if not thoroughly happy, he was never really sad. He has given us a pic- ture which proves that he looked back with pleasure on that part of his boyhood : " Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, We love the play-place of our early days ; The scene is touching, and the heart is stone That feels not at that sight, and feels at none. The wall, on which we tried our graving skill, The very name we carved subsisting still ; The bench on which we sat while deep employed, Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, yet not destroyed. The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot, Playing our games, and on the very spot, As happy as we onae to kneel, and draw The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw ; To pitch the ball into the grounded hat, Or drive it devious with a dext'rous pat ; The pleasing spectacle at once excites Such recollections of our own delights, That viewing it, we seem almost to obtain Our innocent, sweet, simple years again. This fond attachment to the well-known place, Where first we started into life's long race, COWPEE. 251 Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day." " At the age of eighteen," says Cowper, " being toler- ably well furnished with grammatical knowledge, but as ignorant of all kinds of religion as the satchel on my back, I was taken from Westminster, and, having spent about nine months at borne, was sent to acquire the practice of law with an attorney." And here comes a really sunny spot in the poet's life. With his fellow-apprentice, a refrac- tory but clever boy, afterward Lord-Chancellor Thurlow, he pretended to study, but accomplished very little. Writing to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, many years after- ward, he says : "I did actually live three, years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, that is to say, I slept three years in his house, but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton Row, as you very well remember. There was I and the future lord chancellor employed from morn- ing to night in giggling and making giggle, instead of studying the law. Oh, fie, cousin ! how eould you do so ? " This profession had been selected for him by his father, because his connections were such that he would, without doubt, be well provided for by them ; and he had given proof at Westminster of two qualifications for success — talent and application. Sometimes he attributed his fail- ure to lack of fitness for the study. He says :• " Whatever Nature expressly designed me for, I have never* been able to conjecture, I seem to myself so universally disqualified for the common and customary occupations and amuse- ments of mankind." Again, he would blame himself for his idleness ; and, writing to a young friend who was study- ing law, he says : " You do well, my dear sir, to improve your opportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is your sowing-time ; and the sheaves you look for can never be yours unless you make that use of it. The color of our whole life is greatly such as the first three or four 252 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society, and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. The only use I can make of myself now — at least the best — is to serve as a terror to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that they may escape (as far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate." Called to the bar in 1754, he lived rather an idle life in his Temple chambers ; more employed with literature than law ; writing often for the serials of the day : but more, perhaps, with love than literature ; for be was fas- cinated by one of those pretty cousins with whom he used to " giggle " in Southampton Row — Theodora, a younger sister of his constant friend, Lady Hesketh. The attach- ment was mutual ; but when the affair became more serious, her father refused his consent to the marriage, on the ground that they were too nearly related. Perhaps he might have seen in Cowper's moody, morbid temper- ament another reason -for breaking up the romance. At any rate, ]jis determination was unalterable, and the cous- ins soon parted, never to meet on earth. Cowper apparently conquered this unfortunate senti- ment, which at first threw a darker coloring over his life and spirits ; but neither time nor absence diminished Theodora's constancy to her first and only love. His life in those airy chambers in the Inner Temple was not probably as dissipated as his own words would lead us to think, but still misspent, wasted in frivolous amusements and desultory reading. In his thirty-second cowper. 253 year, he began to think seriously of his future. His father was dead, his patrimony nearly spent, and real poverty seemed before him. Major Cowper, a relative, who was anxious to help him, presented to him, in the year 1763, a valuable clerkship in the House of Lords, which required the holder to appear frequently before the House. The idea of thus appearing in public was, in his own words, " mortal poison." His friend then gave him a more pri- vate position, that of clerk of the journals, which he re- solved to accept, although he felt at the time as if he were receiving a " dagger in his heart." But, owing to some political and party opposition, the major's right of nomina- tion was called in question by his enemies, and a public examination of each candidate was demanded; and this future horror so preyed upon his morbidly-sensitive mind, that melancholy at last became madness, and death seemed better than the prospect before him. He tried to kill him- self in various ways, but was wonderfully preserved by God's mercy. His brother, terrified at his condition, placed him at once in a private asylum at St. Alban's, where he remained for eighteen months, enduring mental agonies which words fail to interpret. He felt that his soul was eternally lost, and describes himself as " in a strange and terrible darkness, my conscience scaring me, the avenger of blood pursuing me, and the city of refuge out of reach." Some verses composed in the asylum show his state of mind. They are so painfully sad, I will quote but two : " Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion, * Scarce can endure delay of execution ; Wait with impatient readiness to seize my Soul in a moment ! " Man disavows, and Deity disowns me, Hell might afford my miseries a shelter ; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me ! " 254 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. . At last there came a revulsion of feeling ; peace and happiness took the place of despair. In his own words : " Unless the Almighty arm had not been under me, I think I should have died of gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport ; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder." But the work of the Holy Spirit is best described in His own words : it was " joy unspeakable and full of glory. For many succeeding weeks tears were ready to flow, if I did but speak of the Gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To rejoice day and night was all my employment. Too happy to sleep much, I thought it was lost time that was spent in slumber. Oh, that the ardor of my first love had continued ! But I have known many a lifeless and unhallowed hour since — long intervals of darkness, interrupted by short returns of peace and joy in believing." How beautifully he describes the healing of his wound- ed spirit by the Saviour : " I was a stricken deer, that left the herd Long since. • With many an arrow deep infixed My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by One who had Himself Been hurt by the archers. In His side he bore, And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars. With gentle force soliciting the darts, He drew them forth, and healed and bade me live." In that hymn so familiar to us all— " Oh for a closer walk with God — " he alludes to that period of peaceful hope. After his re- covery he did not wish to return to London, and his friends thought his decision a wise one, and subscribed among themselves an annual allowance, on which he could live frugally in retirement. cowper. 255 " Far from the world, Lord, I flee, From strife and tumult far ; From scenes where Satan wages still His most successful war. " The calm retreat, the silent shade, With prayer and praise agree, And seem by Thy sweet bounty made For those who follow Thee." He soon found a quiet home, congenial and delightful, in the family of Rev. Mr. Unwin, clergyman at Hunting- don. He has given minute descriptions of the family and his life there. He says of Mrs. Unwin : " That woman is a blessing to me, and I never see her without being the better for her company. She has a very uncommon un- derstanding, has read much to excellent purpose, and is more polite than a duchess." Here is an account of the way in which he spent his time in that excellent 'household: "We breakfast com- monly between eight and nine ; till eleven, we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of these holy mysteries ; at eleven, we attend divine service, which is performed here twice every day; and, from twelve to three, we separate and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather per- mits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious conversa- tion till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse in-doors, or sing some hymns of Martin's collections, and, by the help of Mrs. Unwin' s harpsichord, make up a tolerable concert, in which our hearts are, I hope, the best and most musical performers. After tea, we sally forth to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally travelled about four miles, 256 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. before we see home again. When the days are short, we make this excursion in the former part of the day, be- tween church-time and dinner. At night, we read and converse as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either with hymns or a sermon." In July of 1767, this pleasant home was broken up by the sudden death of Mr. TJnwin, who was killed by a fall from his horse, while on his way to church. Cowper says : " The effect of this awful dispensation will only be a change of the place of my abode. For I shall still, by God's leave, continue with Mrs. TJnwin, whose behavior to me has always been that of a mother to her son." They decided upon a removal to Olney, where the Rev. John Newton was curate ; indeed, the only motive which directed them in their choice, was a wish to be under his pastoral care. But this was hardly the best atmosphere for Cowper, always inclined to religious mel- ancholy. The good doctor insisted on his taking an ac- tive part in the prayer-meetings, and going with him to the bed of the dying sinner. This kept him in a constant state of anxiety and trepidation, and more than balanced the benefit to be gained from his society, He also urged the poet to write those hymns which we all love to read and repeat ; and I fear that, brooding over his own experi- ences, indulging in introspection and retrospection, as he did when composing them, with the death of his brother, which occurred at this time, were the causes of a return of his insanity. It was a review of the interpositions of Providence to save him from committing suicide, which led him to write " God moves in a mysterious way," and, looking back on the ecstasy which followed the gloom, he imagined himself sadly changed. Lady Hesketh spoke her mind very frankly on this cowpee. 257 point: "Mr. [Newt on is an excellent man, I make no doubt," said she, " and to a strong-minded man like him- self, might be of great use, but to such a mind, such a tender mind, and to such a wounded, yet lively, imagina- tion as our cousin's, I am persuaded that eternal praying and preaching were too much ; nor could it, I think, be otherwise. I do not mean to give you my sentiments upon this conduct generally, but only as it might affect our cousin, and, indeed, for him, I think it could not be either proper or wholesome." In January, 1773, he was again decidedly insane, going over the dreary path he trod at St. Alban's, Mrs. Unwin devoting herself to him with unceasing vigilance and un- wearied devotion. Three years passed away before the cloud was removed. In his convalescence, he amused himself in various ways, petting pigeons, drawing land- scapes, making bird-cages, and taming three hares, one of which he has celebrated in " The Task " : " Well, one at last is safe. One sheltered hare Has never heard the sanguinary yell Of cruel man, exulting in her woes. Innocent partner of my peaceful home, Whom ten long years' experience of my care Has made at last familiar ; she has lost Much of her vigilant, instinctive dread, Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine. Yes, thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand That feeds thee ; thou mayst frolic on the floor At evening, and at night retire secure To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarmed. For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged All that is human in me to protect Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love. If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave, And when I place thee in it, sighing say, I knew at least one hare that had a friend." With returning health, the love of reading and writing 258 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. also came back to him, and Mrs. TTnwin now urged him to write a poem of some length, giving as his subject, " The Progress of Error." It was soon accomplished, and was speedily followed by three other poems of the same kind, "Truth," "Table Talk," and " Expostulation," all being done within three months. The volume was issued in 1782, but did not sell very well. Johnson, however, and Franklin, saw real merit in the modest volume, and proph- esied better things from the pen of the gentle recluse. He says of "Table Talk," in a letter to Dr. Newton: "It is a medley of many things, some that may be useful, and some that, for aught I know, may be very diverting. I am merry, that I may decoy people into my company ; and grave, that they may be the better for it. Now and then I put on the garb of a philosopher, and take the oppor- tunity, that disguise procures me, to drop a word in favor of religion. In short, there is some froth, and here - and there a bit of sweetmeat, which seems to entitle it justly to the name of a certain dish the ladies call a trifle. Whether all this management and contrivance be neces- sary, I do not know, but am inclined to suspect, that if my Muse was to go forth, clad in Quaker colors, without one bit of ribbon to enliven her appearance, she might walk from one end of London to the other, as little noticed as if she were one of the sisterhood indeed." In this same year Lady Austen came to Olney — a sparkling, witty, accomplished woman ; and to her we owe the warmest thanks for inspiring Cowper with a more cheerful spirit. Her conversation had as ' happy an effect upon him as the harp of David xfipon Saul. " Whenever the cloud seemed to be coming over him, her sprightly powers were exerted to dispel it. One afternoon, October, 1782, when he appeared more than usually depressed, she told him the story of John Gilpin, which had been told her in her childhood, and which in her relation tickled his cowper. 259 fancy as much as it has that of thousands and tens of thousands since in his. The next morning he said to her that he had been kept awake during the greater part of the night by thinking of the story and laughing at it,, and that he had turned it into a ballad. " I little thought," said Cowper, " when I was writing the history of John Gilpin, that he would appear in print. I intended to laugh, and to make two or three others laugh. Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous thing I ever wrote has been written in the saddest mood; and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been writ- ten at all." He also wrote verses for " Sister Anne," as he called his new friend, to suit some of her favorite airs for the harpsichord and guitar. His " Dirge for the Royal George " was composed in this way. Here is a playful song, celebrating a walk in muddy weather, taken by Mrs. Unwin and himself: " THE DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS ; OR, LABOR IX VAIN. " An excellent new Song to a Tune never mng before. " I sing of a journey to Clifton, We would have performed if we could, Without cart or barrow to lift on Poor Mary and me through the mud. Slee sla slud, Stuck in the mud ; Oh, it is pretty to wade through' a flood ! " So away we went, slipping and sliding — Hop, hop, a la mode de deux frogs ; • 'Tis near as good walking as riding, When ladies are dressed in their clogs. Wheels, no doubt. Go briskly about ; But they clatter, and rattle, and make such a rout ! 260 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. SHE. " Well ; now I protest it is charming ; How finely the weather improves ! That cloud, though, is rather alarming — How slowly and stately it moves ! HE. " Pshaw ! never mind, 'Tis not in the wind : We're travelling south, and shall leave it behind. SHE. " I am glad we are come for an airing, For folks may be pounded and penned, While they grow rusty, not caring To stir half a mile to the end. HE. " The longer we stay, The longer we may ; It's a folly to think about weather or way. SHE. " But now I begin to be frighted ; If I fall, what a way I should roll ! I am glad that the bridge was indicted. Stop ! stop ! I am sunk in a hole ! HE. " Nay, nfver care ! 'Tis a common affair ; You'll not be the last that will set a foot there. SHE. " Let me now breathe a little, and ponder On what it were better to do — That terrible lane I see yonder, I think we shall never get through ! HE. 11 So think I ; But, by-the-by, We never shall know if we never shall try. COWPER. 261 SHE. " But should we get there, how shall we get home ? What a terrible deal of bad road we have passed ! Slipping and sliding ; and if we should come To a difficult stile, I am ruined at last V Oh, this lane ! Now it is plain That struggling and striving is labor in vain ! HE. " Stick fast there, while I go and look. SHE. " Don't go away, for fear I should fall. HE. " I have examined it every nook ; And what you have here is a sample of all. Come, wheel around, The dirt we have found Would be an estate at a farthing, a pound. " Now, Sister Anne, the guitar you must take ; Set it, and sing it, and make it a song. I have varied the verse for variety's sake, And cut it off short, because it was long. 'Tis hobbling and lame, Which critics won't blame, For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same." His spirits were buoyant when not affected by the malady which influenced him in winter more than any other season. January was the hardest month for him : he always looked forward to it with dread. He loved the summer months, when he could write and lounge in the myrtle-shaded summer-house, and work in the garden. He says : " In summer-time, I am as giddy-headed as a boy, and can, settle to nothing. Winter condenses me, and makes me lumpish and sober, and then I can read all day long." 262 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. His letters were often written in rhyme ; and he said events were as rare at Olney as cucumbers in December. He had the rare power of investing the simplest topic with a charm. - Here is an example of this : "My 12, 1781. " To the Rev. John Newton — " My very dear Friend : I am going to send, what, when you have read, you may scratch your head, and say, I suppose, there's nobody knows, whether what I have got, be verse or not ; by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme ; but if it be, did you ever see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before ? The thought did occur, to me and to her, as madam and I, did walk and not fly, over the hills and dales, with spreading sails, before it was dark to Weston Park. " The news at Oney is little or noney ; but such as it is, I send it, viz. : Poor Mr. Peace cannot yet cease, ad- dling his head with what you said, and has left parish- church quite in the lurch, having almost swore to go there no more. " Page and his wife, that made such a strife, we met them twain in Dog-lane ; we gave them the wall, and that was all. For Mr. Scott, we have seen him not, except as he passed, in a wonderful haste, to see a friend in Silver End. Mrs. Jones proposes, ere July closes, that she and her sister, and her Jones mister, and we that are here, our course shall steer, to dine in the Spinney ; but for a guinea, if the weather should hold, so hot and so cold, we had better by far, stay where we are. For the grass there grows, while nobody mows (which is very wrong), so rank and long, that so to speak, 'tis at least a week, if it happens to rain, ere it dries again. " I have writ Charity, not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hopes to do good; and if the Reviewer should say c To be sure, the gentleman's Muse, wears cowper. 283 Methodist shoes ; you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard have little regard, for the taste and fashions, and ruling passions, and hoidening play, of the modern day ; and though she assume a bor- rowed plume, and here and there wear a tittering air, 'tis only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a. production on a new construction. She has baited her trap in hopes to snap all that may come, with a sugar-plum.' " His opinion in this, will not be amiss ; 'tis what I intend, my principal end ; and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid, for all I have said and all I have done, though I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence, to the end of my sense, and by hook or crook, write another book, if I live and am here another year. I have heard before, of a room with a floor, laid upon springs, and such-like things, with so much art, in every part, that when you went in, you was forced to be- gin a minuet pace, with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of state, in a fig- ure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing ; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of what I have penned ; which that you may do, ere madam and you are quite worn out with jig- ging about, I take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from your humble me, "W. C. " P. S. — When I concluded, doubtless you did think me right, as well you might, in saying what I said of Scott ; and then it was true, but now it is due to him to note, that since I wrote, himself and he has visited me." 12 264 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Soon after the publication of " John Gilpin," Lady- Austen begged him to try blank verse. "But," said he, " I have no subject." " Oh ! you can write on any thing," was the quick re- ply — " take this sofa." Hence the beginning of " The Task," which took all English hearts by storm. " I sing the sofa. — The theme though humble, yet august and proud The occasion — for the fair commands the song." The poem came out just at the right time, when the public mind was prepared to receive it, having been trained by Gray and Thomson to love Nature^ and sim- ple descriptions of common things. Then, too, there was no other distinguished poet on the field to compete with him. He says : " My descriptions are all from nature ; not one of them second-handed. My delineations of the heart are from my own experience." Southey says : " Were I to say, that a poet finds his best advisers among* his female friends, it would be speak- ing from my own experience, and the greatest poet of the age (Wordsworth) would confirm it by his. But never was poet more indebted to such friends than Cowper. Had it not been for Mrs. Unwin, he Avould probably never have appeared in his own person as an author; had it not been for Lady Austen, he would never have been a popu- lar poet." Cowper next undertook to translate Homer into Eng- lish verse, working regularly at the rate of forty lines a day. He was dissatisfied with Pope's version, saying he had failed to catch Homer's spirit. But his effort to in- terpret him more happily was not successful, although the translation was well received. In 1796 he lost his dearest friend, Mary Unwin, his cowper. 265 second mother, to whom he has written two beautiful poems. I will give you the sonnet — one can hardly read it without tears : " Mary, I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebasecl by praise of meaner things, That ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth, with honor due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes. whom it sings ; But thou hast little need. There is a Book, By seraph writ, with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look — A chronicle of actions, just and bright. There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine." A pension of three hundred pounds from the king comforted his declining days, which were clouded by the old sorrow. Kind friends drew around him in those last sad years, which he described as a " universal blank." On the morning of April 25, 1800, he expired — so peacefully that, though surrounded by friends, no one per- ceived the moment of his departure. The last expression on his countenance was that of calmness and composure, mingled with holy surprise. Death seemed a blessed release to the lifelong sufferer ; all doubts removed — safe home at last — " Secure in Jesus' love." I cannot close this sketch more appropriately than with these words from Collier : " If we compare our English literature to a beautiful garden, where Milton lifts his head to heaven in the spot- less chalice of the tall white lily, and Shakespeare scatters his dramas round him in beds of fragrant roses, blushing 266 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. with a thousand various shades — some stained to the core as if with blood, others unfolding their fair pink petals, with a lovely smile to the summer sun — what shall we find in shrub or flower so like the timid, shrinking spirit of William Cowper, as that delicate sensitive-plant, whose leaves, folding up at the slightest touch, cannot bear even the brighter rays of the cherishing sun ? " cowpee's cottage. BURNS. " Through all his tuneful heart how strong The human feeling gushes, The very moonlight of his song Is warm with smiles and blushes ! Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So ' Bonnie Doon' but tarry ; Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his ' Highland Mary.' " The greatest poet, beyond all comparison, that Scot- land has produced, was Robert Burns, born on the 25th of January, 1759, in a clay-built cottage, raised by his father's own hands, oft the banks of the Doon, at the ham- let of Alloway, in Ayrshire. His father, though a hard- handed peasant-farmer of the humblest class, was every inch a man, an earnest Christian, and fully impressed with the importance of an education for his children. Yet his life was not a sunny one ; cramped by poverty, and made despondent by ill-luck, there was an almost habitual gloom on his brow. 268 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Mighty events turn on a straw ; the crossing of a brook decides the conquest of the world. Had this Wil- liam Burns's small seven acres of nursery-ground any wise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to school, had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university ; come forth not a rustic wonder, but as a regu- lar, well-trained, intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British literature, for it lay in him to have done this ! But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank his whole family below the help of even our cheap school system ; Burns remained a hard- worked ploughboy, and British literature took its own course." He did, however, attend school for a few years, and made good use of his time. His teacher tells us that he excelled all boys of his own age, and took rank above several who were his seniors. The New Testament, the Bible, the English Grammar, and Mason's " Collection of Verse and Prose," laid the foundation of devotion and knowledge. He says of himself: "At those years I was by no means a favorite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for "a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar, and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were the ' Life of Hannibal,' and the ' History of Sir William Wallace.' Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures after the recruiting-drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier ; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along them, till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." burxs. 269 Those who are familiar with " Bruce' s Address " (and who is not ? ) will see how those early influences became a part of himself. Carlyle says : "Why should we speak of c Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled,' since all know it from the king to the meanest of his subjects ? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback, in riding in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Galloway moor, in company with a friend, who, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak— judiciously enough — for a man composing ' Bruce's Address ' might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself as he formed it, through the soul of Burns, but, to the external ear, it should be sung with the throat of the whirlwind. So long as there is warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will move in fierce thrills under this war-ode, the best, we be- lieve, that was ever written by any pen." But by far the greater part of Burns's education was gained at home. His mother, a truly religious woman, with a warm heart and remarkably even temper, was devoted to her son "Robbie," who inherited her large, lustrous eyes, black as the night and brilliant as its stars. The sweet old ballads she used to chant for him, all wore a religious hue, and from them he learned the art of adding a moral to his verses in a way unobtrusive and graceful. And an ignorant, superstitious old woman, who lived in their family, furnished him another school of poetry. He says : . " She had, I suppose, the largest col- lection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kel- pies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, can- traips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poesie, but had so strong an effect upon my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a look- out in suspicious places." 270 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Let us speak the name of Jenny Wilson with reverence, ignorant and credulous though she was, for there is no doubt that her wonderful tales gave color and character to many of Burns' s finest effusions. Edna Dean Proctor, whom Whittier, I think, pronounces the finest female poet in America, has given a very pretty version of his early associations : " With his head upon her bosom, In the firelight's ruddy glow, Plaintive songs his mother sung him, Airs of Scotland, long ago ; And he thrilled at tales of heroes, Or of ghosts and warlocks grim, Till he felt a chilly horror Creeping over every limb. And he shuddered as the tempest Shook the window with its moan, Lest the sobbing and the sighing Were a murdered victim's groan ; Now his name is linked with story, And his life is set to song — All that Scotland was of glory Floats with Robert Burns along. And King of Hearts he reigns to-day, While the noble throng around him ; God be praised that a man has sway, And the wide world's love has crowned him ! " The Scottish peasantry of that time were much better informed than you would suppose, and the father of Burns was unusually intelligent. Sitting in his easy-chair by the ingle-side, he taught his son, not lessons of morality alone, but the traditionary history of Scotland — all, in fact, that he was able to impart of useful knowledge. It was a recollection of his happy home, and his good father's domestic devotions, that enabled Burns to charm the world with those faithful, faultless pictures in the "Cotter's Saturday Night." Any sketch of this poet BURNS. 271 would be incomplete without the whole of this charming tribute to the pleasures found in the peasant's cottage, which I will copy from " Cleveland's Compendium," where the Scotch is explained in foot-notes : "THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 11 Inscribed to Robert Aiken, Esq, " My loved, my honored, much respected friend ! No mercenary bard his homage pays ; With honest pride I scorn each selfish end ; My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise : To yon I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequestered scene ; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; Ah ! though his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween. " November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; The shortening winter-day is near a close ; The miry beasts retreating frae l the pleugh ; The blackening trains o' craws to their repose ; The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes ; This night his weekly moil 2 is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. " At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; Th' expectant wee 3 things, toddlin, 4 stacher 5 through To meet their dad, wi' flicterin' 6 noise an' glee. His wee bit ingle, 7 blinkin 8 bonnily. His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a' 9 his weary carking 10 cares beguile, An' makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. " Belyve n the elder bairns come drappin in, At service out, amang the farmers roun' ; 1 From. 2 Labor. 3 Little. 4 Tottering in their walk. 5 Stagger. 6 Fluttering. 7 Fire. 8 Shining at intervals. 9 A11. 10 Consuming. "By-and-by. 12* 272 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Some ca' ! the pleugh, some herd, some tentie 2 rin A cannie 3 errand to a neebor town : Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw 4 new gown, Or deposit her sair-won 5 penny-fee, 6 To help their parents dear, if they in hardship be. ""WV joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers ; 7 The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet ; Each tells the unco 8 that he sees or hears ; The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; Anticipation forward points the view ; The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, Gars 9 auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ; The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 11 Their master's and their mistress's command, The younkers a' are warned to obey ; An' mind their labors wi' an eydent 10 hand, An' ne'er, though out o' sight, to jauk or play : * An', ! be sure to fear the Lord alway ! An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night ! Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, Implore His counsel and assisting might : They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright ! ' " But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, Tells how a neebor lad cam' o'er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, While Jenny hafnins u is afraid to speak ; Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild worthless rake. 1 Drive. 2 Cautious. 3 Kindly dexterous. 4 Fine, handsome. 5 Sorely won. 6 Wages. 7 Asks. 8 News. 9 Makes. 10 Diligent. " Partly. BTTKtfS. 273 " Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben ; 1 A strappan 2 youth, he taks the mother's eye ; Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill-ta'en ; The father cracks 3 of horses, pleughs, and kye. 4 The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate 5 an' laithfu', 6 scarce can weel behave ; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What maks the youth sae bashfu' and sae grave, Weel pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave. 7 " 0, happy love ! where love like this is found ! heartfelt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! I've paced much this weary, mortal round, And sage experience bids me this declare, — * If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.' "Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, — A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? Curse on his perjured arts ! dissembling smooth ! Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exiled ? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, 8 Points to the parents fondling o'er their child ? Then paints the ruined maid, and their distraction wild ? " But now the supper crowns their simple board ! The healsome parritch, 9 chief o' Scotia's food : The soupe 10 their only hawkie u does afford, That 'yont 12 the hallan 13 snugly chows her cood : The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, To grace the lad, her weel-hained u kebbuck, 15 fell, 16 An' aft he's pressed, an' aft he ca's it good ; 1 Into the parlor. 2 Tall and handsome. 3 Converses. * Kine, cow. 5 Bashful. 6 Reluctant. 7 The rest, the others. 8 Mercy, kind feeling. 9 Oatmeal pudding. 10 Sauce, milk. 11 A pet name for a cow. 12 Beyond. 13 A partition wall in a cottage. 14 Carefully preserved. 15 A cheese. 16 Biting to the taste. 12* 274 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How 'twas a towmond l auld, 2 sin 3 lint was i' the bell. 4 " The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, They round the ingle form a circle wide ; The sire 5 turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, The big Ha'-Bible, 6 ance his father's pride ; His bonnet reverently is laid aside, His lyart 7 haffets 8 wearin' thin an' bare ; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales 9 a portion with judicious care ; And c Let us worship God,' he says, wi' solemn air. " They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim ; Perhaps Dundee's 10 wild warbling measures rise, Or plaintive Martyrs, 10 worthy of the name ; Or noble Elgin 10 beats the heavenward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : Compared with these, Italian thrills are tame ; The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise ; Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. 1 Twelve months. 2 Old. 3 Since. 4 Flax was in blossom. 5 This picture, as all the world knows, he drew from his father. He was him- self, in imagination, again one of the " wee things " that ran to meet him ; and " the priest-like father " had long worn that aspect before the poet's eyes, though he died before he was threescore. "I have always considered William Burns •• (the father), says Murdoch, " as by far the best of the human race that I ever had the pleasure of being acquainted with, and many a worthy character I have known. He was a tender and affectionate father, and took pleasure in leading his children in the paths of virtue. I must not pretend to give you a description of all the manly qualities, the rational and Christian virtues of the venerable Burns. I shall only add, that he practised every known duty, and avoided every thing that was criminal. 1 ' The following is the " Epitaph " which the son wrote for him: " O ye, whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near, with pious reverence, and attend ! Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father, and the generous friend : The pitying heart that felt for human woe ; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride ; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe, ' For e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side.' " 6 The great Bible kept in the hall. 7 Gray. 8 The temples, the sides of the head. " 9 Chooses. 10 The names of Scottish psalm-tunes. burns. 275 " The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high ; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; Or, how the Royal Bard J did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; Or^ Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry ; Or, rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. " Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; How He, who bore in heaven the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay His head : How His first followers and servants sped, The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : How he, 2 who lone in Patmos 3 banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command. " Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays : Hope l springs exulting on triumphant wing,' That thus they all shall meet in future days ; There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear, While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. " Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method and of art, When men display to congregations wide Devotion's every grace, except the heart ! The power, incensed, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 4 But haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well-pleased, the language of the soul ; And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll. 1 David. 2 St. John. 3 An inland in the Archipelago, where John is supposed to have written the book of Revelation. 4 Priestly vestment. 276 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Then homeward all take, off their several way ; The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; The parent-pair their secret homage pay, And proffer up to Heaven the warm request That He, who stills the raven's clamorous nest, And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, For them and for their little ones provide ; But, chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside. " From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad ; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 'An honest man's the noblest work of God ; ' And certes, 1 in fair virtue's heavenly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind : What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refined ! " Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content ! And, ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand, a wall of fire, around their much-loved isle. " Thou ! who poured the patriotic tide That streamed through Wallace's 2 undaunted heart, Who dared to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride, Or nobly die, the second glorious part, (The patriot's God peculiarly Thou art, His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward ! ) never, never, Scotia's realm desert : But still the patriot, and the patriot bard, In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! 1 Certainly. 2 Sir William Wallace, the celebrated Scottish patriot. burns. 277 It is the true poet alone who finds such beauty and dignity in the humblest scenes of life, and Burns felt all that he expressed. His father had a choice though limited selection of books, all of which he read eagerly and thoroughly. These, with a fortnight's French, in which he advanced as far as Telemachus, gave him a better education than many young men possess when they enter the university. But he had yet other teachers : " Out on the fields of Moss- giel, amid the birds and wild-flowers of a Lowland farm, he learned his finest lessons, and conned them with all his earnest heart, as he held the handles of the plough. A little heap of leaves and stubble, torn to pieces by the ruthless ploughshare, one cold November day, exposes to the frosty wind a poor wee field-mouse, that starts fright- ened from the ruin. The tender heart of the poet- ploughman swells and bubbles into song. And again, when April is weeping on the field, the crushing of a crimson-tipped daisy beneath the up-turned furrow, draws from the same gentle heart a sweet, compassionate lament, and exquisite comparisons. Poems like those to the Mouse and the Daisy, are true wild-flowers, touched with a fairy grace, and breathing a delicate fragrance, such as the blossoms of no cultured garden can ever boast." I long to give you both of these, but must content my- self with the latter, which contains so sad, so truthful a prophecy of his own fate : " TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. " Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou's met me in an eyil hour ; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem : To spare them now is past my power, Thou bonnie crein. 278 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. " Alas ! it's no thy neibor sweet, The bonnie Lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckled breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east ! " Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth ; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. " The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield ; But thou beneath the random bield 0' clod or stane Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. " There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise ; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies ! " Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade ! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust. " Such is the fate of simple bard On life's rough ocean luckless starred ! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er. " Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, burns/ 279 By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink ! " Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, That fate is thine — no distant date ; Stern Kuin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom ! " It was Love's young dream which really roused the poetic fire. "For my own part," he observes, "I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet, till I once got heartily in love, and then rhyme and song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart. Tou know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together, as partners in the labors of harvest. In my fif- teenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English, de- nies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scottish idiom — 'she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lassie.' In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-house prudence^ and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below. How she caught the contagion, I cannot tell. Tou medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, etc., but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors ; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an iEolian harp, and, particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her 280 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH TOETS. little Land, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and it was her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. Thus with me began love and poetry." He owns that his heart was completely tinder, always lighted up by some goddess or other, and it would be no easy matter to count the "Marys, Bellas, and Elizas," the Peggys and the Nannies O, who, in turn, captiva- ted the susceptible poet, before he settled as a prosy Benedict. He had the same creed in love-affairs that we find in one of Moore's melodies : " Then, oil what pleasure, wherever we roam, To be doomed to find something still that is dear ; And when far away from the lips that we love, "We've but to make love to the lips that are near ! " " Highland Mary," however, who inspired several of his best songs, and Jean Armour, who afterward became , his dearly-loved wife, are the most prominent names in the long list. He was an awkward, ungainly youth, with no beauty but his eyes, which shone, as some one said, like coach- lamps in a dark night ; but his eloquence rarely failed to produce the desired effect. One of the many pretty maidens, upon whom he had tried his power, said : " Open your eyes and shut your ears wi' Rob Burns, and there's nae fear o' your heart ; but close your eyes and open your ears, and you'll lose it." He was now working on the farm with his father and his brother Gilbert, "toiling like a galley-slave," until both soul and body were in danger of being crushed (like the daisy he has immortalized) beneath the weight of the farrow. Gilbert touchingly describes those many anxious days : " My brother, at the age of fifteen, was the principal BURNS. 281 laborer on the farm, for -we had no hired servant, male or female. The anguish of mind we felt at our tender years, under these straits and difficulties, was very great. To think of our father growing old — for he was now above fifty, broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five children and in a declining state of circumstances — these reflections produced in my brother's mind and mine sensations of the deepest dis- tress." Burns was so ambitious to excel in every thing, that although this life was far from his taste, he used to love to outdo all his neighbors ; and it is said that he could draw the straightest furrow on his field, sow the largest quantity of seed-corn in a day, and mow the most rye-grass and clover of any farmer in the dale. If ever equalled, he would conquer by a witty repartee. After a hard strife on the harvest-field one day, his rival said, " Robert, I'm no sae far behind this time, I'm thinkin'." " John," said he, in a whisper, " you're behind in something yet. I made a sang while I was a stooJcin ! " But sadder experiences were in store for the poet- ploughman. His father, who had long been in ill-health, was deeply in debt and harassed by constant duns from merciless creditors, and it was the hand of death alone that saved him from the horrors of a jail. The old home passed at once into other hands, and the afflicted family leased a neighboring farm, hoping by their united efforts to at least make a comfortable living. But fortune did not smile. Frosty springs and late summers, for four years in succession, put them back sadly : the land itself was poor, and all went wrong. Burns worked well, and did not dislike a farmer's life ; but his soul was full of music that must have expression in words : so he com- posed while guiding the plough, or with the reaping-hook in his hand. Some of his best poems and songs were 282 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. produced in this way. Of course, this did not benefit the crops, or fill his empty purse. " He who pens an ode on his sheep, when he should be driving them forth to pasture ; who stops his plough in the half-drawn furrow, to rhyme about the flowers which he buries ; who sees visions on his way from market ; who writes an ode on the horse he is about to yoke, and a bal- lad on the girl who shows the whitest hands and brightest eyes among his reapers, has no chance of ever growing opulent, or of purchasing the fields on which he toils." Quite discouraged at last, Burns resolved to give up the farm, and try his fortune in the West Indies. To meet the expenses of the journey, he collected his poems, and they were published by subscription, many kind friends standing by him in this trying hour. Although the want of money induced him to make himself known as a poet, yet he appreciated the worth of his rhymes, and believed in their success. He said afterward to Moore : " I thought they had merit ; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears — a poor negro-driver, or per- haps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits." You see he took rather a blue view of life, as was but natural, with absolute want staring him in the face. He even suffered for food : a piece of oat-cake and a bottle of twopenny ale often made his dinner when correcting the proof-sheets of his volume. He had been long attached to Jean Armour; but her father, a rigidly devout man, disliked the connection ; and when he discovered that they had been privately married, without his sanction or that of the kirk, his anxiety changed to anger, and, tearing the marriage-certificate from his daughter's trembling hands, threw it into the fire. Jean obeyed her father, and refused to see her lover, bursts. % 283 who now became utterly despondent and wretched. He forgot how greatly he had sinned in deceiving her par- ents, forgot her distress, and indulged in the wildest grief. He said : " I have tried often to forget her ; I have run into all kinds of dissipations and riots, mason-meet- ings, drinking-matches, and other mischiefs, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain. And now for a grand cure : the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica ; and then farewell, dear old Scotland ! and farewell, dear, ungrateful Jean! for never, never, will I see you more ! His good-by to the " Bonnie Banks of Ayr " is very pathetic. You may like to recall the last verse : " Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales, Her heathy moors and winding vales ; The scenes where wretched fancy roves, Pursuing past, unhappy loves ! Farewell, my friends ! farewell my foes ! My peace with these, my love with those — The bursting tears my heart declare, Farewell the bonnie banks of Ayr." He was a mason, and addressed a farewell also to the brethren of his lodge, which produced a great effect upon them. An old farmer of Ayrshire, thus tells the story of that leave-taking : "He was quite late in coming that night — a thing quite uncommon wi' him. He came at last. I never in my life saw such an alteration in ony body. He looked bigger-like than usual and wild-like. His een seemed stern and his cheeks fa'n in. He sat down in the chair as master. He looked round at us. I thought that he looked through me, $nd I lost the grip of the beginning o' my speech ; and no, for the life o' me, could I get it again that night. He apologized for being late. He had been getting a' things 'ready for going abroad. * He could get 284 * HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. to us no sooner. He intended to say something to us, but it had gone from him. He had composed a song for the occasion, and would sing it. He looked round on us, and burst into a song, such as I never heard before or since. If ever a song was sung, it was that ane. Oh, man, when he came to the last verse, where he says : 4 A last request permit me here, When yearly ye assemble a* : One round, I ask it wi a tear, To him, the bard, that's far awa,' that last sight of him will never leave my mind. He arose and. burst into tears. They were na sham anes. It was a queer sight to see sae mony men burst out like bubbly boys and blubber in spite o' themsels. Soon after the song, he said he could stay no longer. Wishing us all well, he took his leave, as we thought, forever. We sat and looked at each other; full as we were, wi' great speeches, nane o' them came to the light that nicht. The greatness of Burns was not understood by ony body ; but there is a feeling remains, I wad no like to part wi'." There were additional reasons for Burns's sadness, in the thought that his good father died full of anxiety for his future. On his dying bed, as Robert and his sister were weeping near him, he gave him a few words of ear- nest Christian counsel, and then, after a pause, said " there was only one member of his family for whose conduct he feared." He repeated the expression, when the young poet said, " Oh, father, is it me you mean ? " The old man replied, "It was." Robert turned to the window, the tears streaming down his cheeks and his bosom swelling as if it would burst. I have given you these circumstances, as a key' to his conduct. His thoughts were* now turned toward Jamaica, and he was just about to take his passage, when his poems BrEXS. 285 appeared in print, and produced a perfect furore through all Scotland. " Old and young, high and low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, all were alike delighted, agita- ted, and transported." A kind letter from a gentleman in Edinburgh, who had enjoyed his book, and strongly advised a second edition, changed all his plans. He spent part of the money intended for his journey, for a new suit of clothes ; left as much as he could for his dear mother's support, and, with an almost empty purse, went at once to Edin- burgh, where he was most cordially received. His poems were a passport to the finest drawing-rooms, and earls and nobles were proud to know him. He was at once the lion of the day. It was the fashion to pet and flatter the poet-ploughman, and a subscription was soon raised for a second edition of his poems ; such men as Blair, Robert- son, and Dugald Stewart, carrying lists in their pockets, to obtain the names of their acquaintances. He bore the ordeal well ; was unaffected and manly ; was ready to listen or to talk, and his conversation, brilliant and power- ful, was considered by many even more wonderful than his poetry. Scotland could now boast of a national poet, and was glad to do him honor. He seldom blundered or lost his self-possession. His heavy boots and buckskin breeches were excused or forgotten by the fair ladies, listening with delight to his wonderful flow of language, and nobles and sages were alike charmed by his untrained eloquence. But, alas for him, and the honor of his country ! this was but a temporary enthusiasm, and he was soon pushed aside. Some were envious of his fame and popularity ; others preferred some new pet ; his politics were not those of the ruling party ; his habits were known to be irregular, and he* was absolutely shunned by those who had pursued and caressed him. He had expected this 286 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. "contemptuous neglect," but it was hard to bear! — all his high hopes crushed in two short years, and the fires of ambition were now too strongly kindled to be easily put out. He resolved to unite the farmer and the poet once more, and, remarrying his beloved Jean, he leased a fine farm and settled quietly at Ellisland, in 1788. The land was good, the scenery beautiful, but his home was little better than a hovel. Yet love was there, and, for a time, Burns was both busy and happy. He longed for the cultivated society, however, of which he had enjoyed such a brief taste — feeling that he was now at " the very elbow of existence," away from all congenial companion- ship — his visions of future glory fast disappearing. This made him restless and dissatisfied, and he was constantly on the move. " In the course* of a single day, he might be seen holding the plough, angling in the river, saunter- ing with his hands behind his back, on the banks, looking at the running water, of which he was very fond ; walk- ing round his buildings or over his fields ; and if you lost sight of him for an hour, perhaps you might see him re- turning from Friar's-Carse, or spurring his horse through the Nith, to spend an evening in some distant place, with such friends as chance threw in his way." During these solitary walks and rapid rides he com- posed some of his best songs. " Auld Lang Syne " was written about this time. He loved to read these heart- gems to his friends as old songs — the labors of forgotten bards, or lyrics that he had taken down from some old woman's song. A few years after, some friend obtained for him the office of exciseman for the district in which he lived, with a salary of seventy pounds a year, and much hard work — a pitiful position for the man whom his country should have delighted to honor. burns. 287 But he tried to make the best of his lot, saying: "I dare to be honest, and I fear no labor ; nor do I find my hurried life greatly inimical to my correspondence with the Muses. I meet them now and then as I jog among the hills of Mthsdale, just as I used to do on the banks of Ayr." He was occasionally remembered in these days by his Edinburgh acquaintances in some pleasant way. He had a few good friends among them with whom he correspond- ed, and many more visitors than he cared for found their way to his humble cottage. His farm did not prosper ; neither his wife nor himself knew how to manage it with thrift and skill. His excise duties took him often away ; and the gay companions he found on these frequent ex- cursions did him no good. In 1791 he relinquished the lease of the Ellisland property, and removed his family and their humble furni- ture to Dumfries, where they tried in earnest to econo- mize, but that was impossible. Friends and admirers must be fed and entertained; new books must be pur- chased ; even the wandering poor must be cared for : no one was ever turned from his door. In his family he was ever gentle and affectionate; helping his bright boys in their lessons ; listening to Jean's sweet voice as she tried his last song ; or writing in their midst, cheered rather than disturbed by their presence. A third edition of his poems, containing " Tarn O'Shan- ter," as a new delight for his admirers, now came out. But his end was near. Suspected by the government of unpatriotic sentiments, distressed for means, crushed by disappointments, injured by constant dissipation, he died of a nervous fever, on the 21st of July, 1796 — only thirty- seven. The question is yet to be answered — asked by some one when he heard of his death — " Who do you think will be our poet now ? " 13 288 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. Burns's great mistake in life was his lack of aim and principle. He drifted without helm or rudder — tossed about by passion and temptation — until dashed upon the cruel rocks. His short, sad life is a lesson in itself — no moralizing could increase its effect. In judging his character and conduct, there is a tendency toward extremes. He is either condemned too severely, or extolled to the skies. Let us pass lightly over his faults, except as they may injure those who read his poems, and dwell thankfully, lovingly, on the happiness *he has given to the world. The depths of one's heart are stirred by the very mention of his name. As Beecher says, in his own inimitable way : " If every man that, within these twenty-four hours the world around, should speak the name of Burns with fond admiration, were ranked as his subject, no king on earth would have such a realm ; and if such a one could change a feeling into a flower, and cast it down to his memory, a mountain would rise, and he should sit upon a throne of blossoms, now at lerigth without a thorn ! " Carlyle's wonderful essay on this poet closes with these words : " With our readers in general, with men of right feel- ing anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying admiration, he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; nei- ther will his works, even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye. For this also is of Nature's own and most cun- ning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day ; and BURNS. 289 often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! " A tourist, who writes very graphically in an Atlantic Monthly of 1860, on "Some of the Haunts of Burns," thus describes his grave and his early home : " There was a footpath through this crowded church- yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it appeared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian tem- ple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open to all the in- clemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and admitted us into the inte- rior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the grave- stone of Burns — the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Stuck against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the genius of Caledonia summon- ing the ploughman to turn poet. Methought it was not a very successful piece of work ; for the plough was better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the goddess. Our. guide informed us that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the original. " The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within those walls. It is now a public-house, 290 HOME PICTURES OF ENGLISH POETS. and of course we alighted, and entered its little sitting- room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much scribbled with the names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having re- ceived a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really BURNS AND HIS HIGHLAND MAKT. curious and interesting articles of furniture. On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture by Nasmyth. The floor of the apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary flag-stones of a peas- ant's cottage. There is but one room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns — it is the kitchen — BURNS. 291 into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shakespeare's house, though per- haps not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have trampled. A new window has been opened through the wall, toward the road ; but on the opposite side is the little original window of only four panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human life which mankind then had within its circumference." And now, dear reader, we must part, at the door of Burns's homely cottage. If you have enjoyed this brief excursion in the field of English literature half as much as your garrulous cicerone, we may take another ramble together some bright day in the future. THE END. D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. A STANDARD BOOK OF REFERENCE. HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF POETRY. Collected and Edited fey CHARLES A. DMA. Tenth Edition. Royal 8 vo. 798 pp. Beautifully printed. Half mor., gilt top, $ ; half calf, extra, $ ; mor. ant. , $ . "The purpose of this book is to comprise within the hounds of a single volume whatever is truly beautiful and admirable among the minor poems of the English language. * * * Especial care has also been taken to give every poem entire and unmutilated, as well as in the most authentic form which could be procured." — Extract from Preface. " This work is an immense improvement on all its predecessors. The editor, who is one of the most erudite of scholars, and a man of excellent taste, has arranged his selections under ten heads, namely : Poems of Nature, of Childhood, of Friend- ship, of Love, of Ambition, of Comedy, of Tragedy and Sorrow, of the Imagination, of Sentiment and Reflection, and of Eeligion. The entire number of poems given is about two thousand, taken from the writings of English and American poets, and including some of the finest versions of poems from ancient and modern languages. The selections appear to be admirably made, nor do we think that it would be possible for any one to improve upon this collection." — Boston Traveller. " Within a similar compass, there is no collection of poetry in the language that equals this in variety, in richness of thought and expression, and of poetic imagery." — Worcester Palladium. " This is a choice collection of the finest poems in the English language, and supplies in some measure the place of an extensive library. Mr. Dana has done a •capital service in bringing within the reach of all the richest thoughts that grace our standard poetical literature." — Chicago Press. 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