Читать книгу Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 - Various - Страница 2

My Dear Eusebius, – I have received yours from the hands of the bearer, and such hands! Why write to consult me about railroads, of all things? I know nothing about them, but that they all seem to tend to some Pandemonium or another; and when I see of a dark night their monster-engines, with eyes of flame and tongues of fire, licking up the blackness under them, and snuffing up, as it were, the airs from Hades, I could almost fancy the stoker a Mercury, conducting his hermetically sealed convicts down those terrible passages that lead direct to the abominable ferry. I said, "I know nothing of them;" but now I verily believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one – London and Falmouth Scheme – with very large promises. I was then living at W – , when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise stops at my door, out steps a very "smart man," and is ushered into my library. When I went into the room, he was examining, quite in a connoisseur attitude, Eusebius, a picture; he was very fond of pictures, he said; had a small but choice collection of his own, and I won't say that he did not speak of the Correggiosity of Correggio. I was upon the point of interrupting him, with the intimation that I did not mean to purchase any, when, having thus ingratiated himself with me by this reference to my taste, he suddenly turns round upon me with the most business-like air, draws from under his cloak an imposingly official portfolio, takes out his scrip, presenting me with a demand for fifty pounds, the deposit of so many shares, looking positively certain that in a few seconds the money would be in his pocket. People say, Eusebius, that the five minutes before a dinner is the worst time in the world to touch the heart, or to get any thing out of a man's pocket for affection; but I do not know if it be not the best time for an attack, if there be a speculation on foot which promises much to his interest, for at that time he is naturally greedy. Had Belisarius, with his dying boy in his arms, himself appeared at my gate, as seen in the French print, crying, "Date obolum Belsario," I should have pronounced him at once an impostor, and given him nothing, and, indeed, not pronounced wrongly, for the whole story is a fiction. But at this peculiar moment of hunger and of avarice, I confess I was too ready, and gave a check for the amount. I had no sooner, however, satisfied myself with what Homer calls εδητνος ηδε ποτητος, and we moderns, meat and potatoes – than I began to suspect the soundness of the scheme, or the company, who had gone to the expense of a chaise for eight miles merely to collect this subscription of mine; and I was curious the next day to trace the doings of this smart gentleman, when I found he had dined at the inn at B – on turtle, ducks, and green peas, and had recruited the weariness of his day's journey with exhilarating champagne. I knew my fate at once, and from that day to this have heard nothing of the London and Falmouth project. Now, Eusebius, as you publish my letters, if this should catch the eye of any of the directors of that company still possessing any atom of conscience, I beg to remind them that I am still minus fifty pounds; and as all claim seems to be quite out of the question, excepting on their "known and boundless generosity," I beg to wind up this little narrative of the transaction in the usual words of the beggar's petition, "The smallest donation will be thankfully received."

But the bearer, who was to consult me for your benefit – he hadn't a word to say to me on the subject, but that he would call and consult with me to-morrow. I found it in vain to question him, and I suspect it is a hoax. But what a rural monster you have sent me! "Cujum pecus? – an Melibei?" He cannot possibly herd with Eusebius; he had no modest bearing about him. I had just opened your letter, and found you called him a friend of yours, who had many observations to make about poetry – so, as we were just going to tea, he was invited. It was most fortunate I did not offer him a bed, for I should then have been bored with him at this moment, when I am sitting down to write to you some little account of his manners and conversation, which you know very well, or you would not have sent him to me. I only now hope I shall not see him to-morrow; and should I learn that he shall have departed in one of those Plutonian engines to the keeping of Charon himself, I should only regret that I had not put an obol into his hand, lest he should be presented with a return-ticket. What did he say, and what did he not say? He called my daughter "Miss," and said he should like music very well but for the noise of it; and as to his ideas of poetry, that you speak of, he treated it with the utmost contempt, and as a "very round-about-way of getting to matter of fact." What else could I have expected of him? – with his tight-drawn skin over his distended cheeks, from which his nose scarcely protruded, as defying a pinch, with a forehead like Caliban's, as villanously low, with his close-cut hair sticking to it, and his little chin retiring, lest a magnanimous thought should for a moment rest upon it. Such was never the image that Cassandra had in her mind's eye when she cried, "O, Apollo – O, Apollo!" And this was your friend, forsooth, with his novel ideas upon poetry! Yet this vulgar piece of human mechanism is not without a little cunning shrewdness, characteristically marked in his little pig-eye; and I must tell you one piece of criticism of his, and an emendation, not unworthy the great Bentley himself. Yet I know not why I tell you, for you know it well already, I suspect; for he told me he had been talking with you about a letter which you had published, and told him was written by me, and which he had read while waiting in your library till you could see him. He said he thought a little common sense, observation, and plain matter of fact, would often either throw light upon or amend many obscure passages of poets; for that even those of most name either made egregious blunders, or they were made for them. I could not deny that truth, Eusebius, and yet he wasn't a man to grant any thing to, if you could help it; but I saw there was something rich to come, so I encouraged him; and this remark of his, Eusebius, reminded me of a misery occasioned in the mind of a very sensitive and reverend poet, who preached weekly to a very particular congregation, by the printer's devil mistaking an erasure for a hyphen, which gave to his sonnet a most improper expression. It made him miserable then, and will ever give him a twinge lest he should have suffered in reputation. He has so much reason to be happy now, that to remind him of it, should he happen to read this, is only to make his happiness the greater, by somewhat reducing its quality; as the very atmosphere must be tempered for man's use and health, by somewhat of a noxious ingredient. But I must return to your friend. His cheeks seem ready to burst with common sense, and polished with ruddy conceit. "Do you remember," said I, "any particular passage upon which your observations will bear?" "Why," said he, "there was one in that paper which first struck me as utter nonsense; but a little alteration easily sets it to rights. There was a quotation from Milton: I wasn't very well acquainted with his poems, but I have read since, with much trouble to understand it, that whole scene and passage; it is in a play of his called 'Comus;' – and, by the by, all that part of the prose in the letter relating to the seashore and its treasures, is all stuff; all the roads about the country are made and mended with those pebbles – they are worth nothing. What Milton is supposed to have said, when they wrote down for him, that the billows of the Severn "roll ashore" – "the beryl and the golden ore" – never could have been written by any one who knew the Severn. A beryl is a clear crystal, isn't it? and if the billows should roll one ashore in the muddy Severn, I should like to know who could find it! There are no billows but from the Bristol Channel, and that's mud all the way, miles and miles up; – pretty shores for a beryl to be rolled on. Besides, now, what man of common sense would talk of rolling a bit of a thing, not half so big as a nutmeg, and that upon mud, in which it would sink like a bullet? He would have said 'washed ashore;' but I'll tell you what it was: I understand Milton was blind, and his daughters wrote what he dictated: they say, too, he had a good deal of knowledge of things, and, without doubt, knew very well the trade of the Bristol Channel, and from the Severn into the Avon; and certainly meant 'barrel and the golden ore,' and this word suggested the precious ornament which most women like to think of, and as she, his daughter, minced it in her own mouth, a beryl dropped from her pen. Now, only consider what was the great trade in those parts; the West India and the African trade were both at their height, and didn't one bring barrels of sugar, and the other gold dust – what can be clearer? There you see how proper the word rolling is, for you must have often seen them rolling their barrels from their ships upon planks, and so on their quays; and the golden ore speaks for itself, as plain as can be, gold dust; and there you have a reading that agrees with fact. I don't exactly know when Milton wrote; but I dare say it was at the very time of that notorious merchandize; and don't you think, sir, that the next edition of Milton ought to have this alteration? I do. I forgot to say that the gold dust came over in little barrels too; for no man in his senses would have thought of rolling or washing dust ashore, excepting in a keg or barrel, and so it was, I make no doubt."

I perfectly assented to every thing he said, Eusebius, by which happy concession on my part, having no food for an obstinate discussion, he soon withdrew. I sat awhile thinking, and now write to you. At least make a marginal note in your Milton of this criticism; and when posterity shall discover it, and forget that Comus was written when Milton was a young man, and had no daughters to write for him, then it will be adopted, and admired as a specimen of the critical acumen of the great and learned Eusebius.

It reminds me to tell you, that being the other day at the sea-side, and wanting a Horace, I borrowed one from a student of Cambridge. It was a Paris edition. I never should have dreamed of seeing an expurgated or emasculated edition from French quarters; but so it was. I looked for that beautiful little piece, the quarrel between Lydia and Horace. It was not there.

I suppose the offence lay in these lines, which appear no worse than that old song, (the lovers' quarrel too,)

"I've kiss'd and I've prattled with fifty fair maids."

An American lady must not be shocked with the word leg, and we are told they put flounces upon those pedestals of pianofortes; but that a lover throwing his arms around his mistress's neck should offend a Frenchman, is an outrageous prudery from a very unexpected quarter. We can imagine a scholar tutored to this affected purity, who should escape from it, and plunge into the opposite immoralities of our modern French novels, like him

"Qui frigidus Ætnam

Insiluit."

"Plunged cold into Ætnean fires."

There were many emendations, most of which I forget; but I could not help laughing at an absurdity in the following ode: —

"Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

The word puellis is altered to choreis, which nevertheless, as a mark of absurdity, ought to be supposed to contain the puellis; for to say,

"I lately lived for dances fit,"

surely implies that the sayer had some one to dance with; or is there any dancing sect of men in France so devoted to celibacy that they will only dance with each other? We are certainly improved in this country, where it should seem that once a not unsimilar practice was compulsory upon the benchers, as will be seen from the following quotation from The Revels at Lincoln's Inn: —

"The exercise of dancing was thought necessary, and much conducing to the making of gentlemen, more fit for their books at other times; for by an order (ex Registro Hosp. sine. vol. 71, 438 C) made 6th February, 7 Jac., it appears that the under barristers were, by decimation, put out of Commons for example sake, because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas-day preceding, according to the ancient order of this Society, when the judges were present; with this, that if the like fault was committed afterwards, they should be fined or disbarred." – (D, Revels at Lincoln's Inn, p. 15.) Eusebius, you would go on a pilgrimage, with unboiled peas, to Pump Court or more favourable locality, for these little "brief authorities."

Shame to him who does not agree with our own delightful Robert Burns, of glorious memory, who "dearly lo'ed the lasses O!" So only "Let the merry dance go round."

And now, as the dancers are off the stage, and it is the more proper time for gravity and decorum, I feel that irresistible desire to be as wicked as possible – a desire which I have heard you say tormented you in your childhood; for, whenever you were admonished to be remarkably good, you were invariably remarkably bad. So I yield to the temptation, and voluntarily, and with "malice prepense" throw myself into the wickedness of translating (somewhat modernizing I own) the "Tabooed" ode, in defiance of, and purposely to offend, the Parisian, or other editor or editors, who shall ever show themselves such incomparable ninnies as to omit that or any other ode of Horace. Accept the following.

"Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

Carmen, 26, lib. iii

Not a word, Eusebius, I know what you are going to say, – no shame at all. You have all your life acquitted Horace; and if he never intended Chloe to have a whipping, you may be quite sure the little turn that I have ventured to give the affair, won't bear that construction; and there will be no occasion to ask the dimensions of the rod, as the ladies at the assize-town did of Judge Buller, requesting of him, with their compliments, to send them the measure of his thumb.

Why should I not attempt this rejected ode? Here goes for the honour of Lydia. "Kiss and be friends" be ever the motto to lovers' quarrels.

"Donec gratus eram tibi."

So this is the offending ode! Was the proposition to be constant not quite agreeable to the French editor? Or was he in Horace's probable condition, getting a little up in years? See you, it is a youthful rival, Juvenis, who troubles him. And Lydia takes care to throw in this ingredient, the "sweet age." He is not old Ornytus – a hint of comparison with Horace himself – but his son; indeed, he is hardly Juvenis, for she soon calls him her dear boy, as much as to say, "You are old enough to be his father!" She carries out this idea, too, seeming to say, "You may love Chloe – I dare say you do; but, does Chloe love you? Whereas our passion is mutual."

Our poet, delightful and wise as he generally is, was not wise to match his wit against that of a woman, and an offended beauty. How miserably he comes off in every encounter! He would die, forsooth! once – she would die twice over! There is a hit in his very liver! And as to the survivorship of Chloe, that she suggests, considering their ages, might be very natural – but she doubts if her youth could survive should she die; though she even came to life again, a second time to die, it would be of no use. What could the foolish poet do after that? Nothing – but make up the quarrel in the best way he might. He drops his ears, is a little sulky still – most men are so in these affairs – seldom generous in love. To pretend to be so is only to encroach on woman's sweet and noble prerogative, and to assume her great virtue. No man could keep it up long; he would naturally fall into his virile sulks. So Horace does not at once open his arms that his Lydia may fall into them – but stands hesitatingly, rather foolish, his hands behind him, and puts forward the supposition If– that graceless peace-maker. Lydia, on the contrary – all love, all generosity, is in his arms at once; for he must at the moment bring them forward, whether he will for love or no, or Lydia would fall. It is now she looks into his very eyes, and only playfully, as quizzing his jealousy, reminds him of her Caläis, her star of beauty; thus sweetly reproving and as sweetly forgiving the temper of her Horace – for he is her Horace still – and who can wonder at that? She will bear with all – will live, will die with him. I look, Eusebius, upon this ode as a real consolation to your lovers of an ambiguous and querulous age. Seeing what we are daily becoming, it is a comfort to think that, should such untoward persons make themselves disagreeable to all else of human kind, there will be, nevertheless, to each, one confiding loving creature, to put them in conceit with themselves, and make them, notwithstanding their many perversities, believe that they are unoffending male angels, and die in the bewildering fancy that they are still loveable.

I have little more to say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity beyond the power of human sufferance; and who slur over their unexpected, and generally ill-contrived escape, as a matter of small importance; and with an envy of human happiness, like the fiend who sat scowling on the bliss of Eden, either leave them with sinister intentions, or absolutely drive them out of the Paradise which they have so lately prepared for them.

I have lately been reading a very interesting, well conceived in many respects, and pathetic novel, which, nevertheless, errs in this; and I even think the pathos is injured by the last page, which is too painful for tenderness, which appears the object of the able author. A monumental effigy is but the mockery of all life's doings, which are thus, with their sorrows and their joys, rendered nugatory; and all that we have been reading, and are interested about, is unnecessarily presented to us as dust and ashes. Such is the tale of Mount Sorrel.

Perhaps, too, I might say of this, and of other novels of the same kind, that there is in them an unhealthy egotism; a Byronism of personal feelings; an ingenious invention of labyrinth meandering into the mazes of the mind and of the affections, in which there is always bewilderment, and the escape is rather lucky than foreseen. Such was not the mode adopted heretofore by more vigorous writers, who preferred exhibiting the passions by action, and a few simple touches, which came at once to the heart, without the necessity of unravelling the mismazes of their course. If Achilles had made a long speech in Elysium about his feelings, and attempted to describe them, when his question, if his son excelled in glory, was happily answered, we should have thought less of him for his egotism, and had much less perfect knowledge of the real man's heart and soul. Homer simply tells us, that he walked away, with great strides, greatly rejoicing. I can remember, at this moment, but one tale in which this style of descriptive searchings into the feelings is altogether justifiable – Godwin's "Caleb Williams;" for there the ever instant terror, varying by the natural activity and ingenuity of the mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting fatalism, brought to sport with the daily incidents and characters of modern life.

I do not wish to be tempted by this course of thought into lengthened criticism; which I should not have touched upon, had I not thought it proper to tell you that I have added a conclusion to your tale. Ever wishing a continuation of the happiness of two human beings, beyond that location in the story, where most spiteful authors leave them, the Church door.

I have been reading, too, over again two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering" and "Ivanhoe." How different they are, both in design and execution! The former, in all respects perfect – the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated in the historic course. Then there are very ill-timed interruptions, and wearisome disquisitions, just where they should not be. Yet are there passages of perfect excellence, that prove the master-hand of the author. The novel of "Ivanhoe" seems to resemble some of those plays which, though doubtful, are called Shakspeare's, because it is evident that the master-hand has passed over them, and left touches both of thought and character which justify the position which they enjoy. Rebecca is all in all. The other characters somewhat fail to interest. Ivanhoe himself says but little, and is in fact not much developed. We are disgusted, and unnecessarily, at every turn with Athelstane – there was no occasion for making him this degraded glutton. It seems a clumsy contrivance to break off his marriage with Rowena; and surely the boast of his eating propensities, when he shows himself to his astonished mourners escaped from the death and tomb prepared for him, is unnatural, and throws a contempt and ridicule over the whole scene. Richard and Robin Hood (or Locksley) are not characters of Sir Walter's creation – Richard is, we may suppose, truly portrayed. My friend S – , Eusebius, who, while I was suffering under influenza, read these novels out to me, was offended at a little passage towards the end, where the author steps out of the action of his dramatic piece, to tell you that King Richard did not live to fulfil the benevolent promises he had a line or two before been making; and I entirely agree with S – , and felt the unseemly and untimely intelligence as he read it. This would scarcely be justifiable in a note, but in the body of the work it shocks as a plague-spot on the complexion of health. This practice, too common in novelists, especially the "historical," becoming their own marplots, deserves censure. To borrow from another art, it is like marring a composition, by an uncomfortable line or two running out of the picture, and destroying the completeness. I know not if that fine scene, perhaps the most masterly in Ivanhoe, has ever been painted, where, after the defeat of De Bois-Guilbert, and after that Richard had broken in upon the court, the Grand Master draws off in the repose of stern submission his haughty Knights Templars. The slow procession finely contrasts with the taunting violence of Richard; and what a background is offered to the painter – the variously moved multitude, the rescued Rebecca, and the dead (though scarcely defeated) Templar!

Sir Walter, although an antiquarian, was not perhaps aware that he was somewhat out in his chronology in connecting Robin Hood and his men with Richard the First. It is made very clear in an able essay in the Westminster Review, that Robin Hood's name and fame did not commence till after the defeat of Simon de Montfort in the battle of Evesham. In fact, Robin Hood was more of a political outlaw – one of the outlawed, after that defeat, than a mere sylvan robber. Sir Walter Scott has taken advantage of the general belief, gathered from many of our old ballads, in an intercourse between Robin Hood and England's king. But according to the oldest of the ballads, (or rather poems, for it is too long for a ballad, and composed of many parts,) The Lyttel Geste of Robin Hood, this king of England was Edward the First; so that the existence of the "bold outlaw" is antedated by the author of Ivanhoe upwards of seventy years. This, however, does not affect the story, excepting to those who entertain the fond fancy, that when they read an historical novel they read history.1 Do you wonder, Eusebius, at my chronological learning? You well may; it must appear to you a very unexpected commodity. The truth is, my attention has been directed to this very matter by my antiquarian friend M'Gutch of Worcester, who not only pointed out to me the essay in the Westminster, but, finding my curiosity excited, sent me many of the ballads, Robin Hood's garlands, and The Lyttel Geste, together with an able introduction of his own to a new edition of the collection he is about to produce, with which you will be delighted, and learn all that is to be known; and it is more than you would expect to meet with about this "gentle robber."

S – , to whom I read the foregoing remarks on Ivanhoe, said, I ought to do penance for the criticism. I left the penance to his choice; and, like a true friend, he imposed a pleasure; I do not say, Eusebius, that if left to myself I should have been a Franciscan. He took up Marmion, and read it from beginning to end. It is indeed a noble poem. Will not the day come, when Sir Walter's poems will be more read than his novels, good though they be?

In his poetry Scott always reminds me of Homer. There is the same energy ever working to the one simple purpose – the same spontaneity and belief in its own tale; and diversity of character for relief's sake is common to both. In reading Homer we must discard all our school notions; we began to read with difficulty; the task was a task, though it was true we warmed in it – the thread was broken a thousand times; and we too often pictured to ourselves the old bard in his gravity of beard and age – not in that vigour, that freshness of manhood, which is conspicuous in both poems, at whatever age they were composed.

I have had the curiosity, Eusebius, to enquire of very many real scholars, who have professed to keep up their Greek after leaving the universities, if they have re-read Homer in Greek, and almost all have confessed that they had not. They read him in Pope and Cowper. Let them read him offhand, and fluently, continuously, as they do Marmion, or the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and I cannot but think they will be struck with the Homeric resemblance in the poems of Sir Walter Scott. Both great poets had, too, the same relish for natural scenery, the same close observation; did we not pass over such passages lightly, we should, I am persuaded, find in both the same nice discriminations in characters of outward scenes, that we do in those of men. In both there is the same kind of secret predominance of female character the same delicacy, tenderness, (a wondrous thing in the age of Homer, or rather, perhaps, showing we know nothing about that age, not even so much as we do about those ages which we choose to call dark.) It must, however, be noted, that Sir Walter Scott has limited himself to more confined fields. There is not the same room for genius to work in – the production is, therefore, in degree less varied, and less complete; but is there not a likeness in kind? Is it too bold, is it merely fanciful, Eusebius, to say, too, that there is a something not dissimilar in the measures adopted by these ancient and modern poets. Homer possibly had no choice; but in the hexameter there is the greatest versative power. How different, for instance, are the first lines of the "Tale of Troy Divine," and the more familiar adventures of Ulysses. The ad libitum