Part 86 (1/2)
Perhaps, silently underlying all these motives, I may at this time already have begun to entertain one other project which was not so much a motive as a hope--not so much a hope as a half-seen possibility. I had written verses from time to time all my life long, and of late they had come to me more abundantly than ever. They flowed in upon me at times like an irresistible tide; at others they ebbed away for weeks, and seemed as if gone for ever. It was a power over which I had no control, and sought to have none. I never tried to make verses; but, when the inspiration was upon me, I made them, as it were, in spite of myself. My desk was full of them in time--sonnets, sc.r.a.ps of songs, fragments of blank verse, attempts in all sorts of queer and rugged metres--hexameters, pentameters, alcaics, and the like; with, here and there, a dialogue out of an imaginary tragedy, or a translation from some Italian or German poet. This taste grew by degrees, to be a rare and subtle pleasure to me. My rhymes became my companions, and when the interval of stagnation came, I was restless and lonely till it pa.s.sed away.
At length there came an hour (I was lying, I remember, on a ledge of turf on a mountain-side, overlooking one of the Italian valleys of the Alps), when I asked myself for the first time--
”Am I also a poet?”
I had never dreamed of it, never thought of it, never even hoped it, till that moment. I had scribbled on, idly, carelessly, out of what seemed a mere facile impulse, correcting nothing; seldom even reading what I had written, after it was committed to paper. I had sometimes been pleased with a melodious cadence or a happy image--sometimes amused with my own flow of thought and readiness of versification; but that I, simple Basil Arbuthnot, should be, after all, enriched with this splendid gift of song--was it mad presumption, or were these things proof? I knew not; but lying on the parched gra.s.s of the mountain-side, I tried the question over in my mind, this way and that, till ”my heart beat in my brain,” How should I come at the truth? How should I test whether this opening Paradise was indeed Eden, or only the mirage of my fancy--mere suns.h.i.+ne upon sand? We all write verses at some moment or other in our lives, even the most prosaic amongst us--some because they are happy; some because they are sad; some because the living fire of youth impels them, and they must be up and doing, let the work be what it may.
”Many fervent souls, Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel, If steel had offer'd.”
Was this case mine? Was I fancying myself a poet, only because I was an idle man, and had lost the woman I loved? To answer these questions myself was impossible. They could only be answered by the public voice, and before I dared question that oracle I had much to do. I resolved to discipline myself to the harness of rhythm. I resolved to go back to the fathers of poetry--to graduate once again in Homer and Dante, Chaucer and Shakespeare. I promised myself that, before I tried my wings in the sun, I would be my own severest critic. Nay, more--that I would never try them so long as it seemed possible a fall might come of it. Once come to this determination, I felt happier and more hopeful than I had felt for the last three years. I looked across the blue mists of the valley below, and up to the aerial peaks which rose, faint, and far, and glittering--mountain beyond mountain, range above range, as if painted on the thin, transparent air--and it seemed to me that they stood by, steadfast and silent, the witnesses of my resolve.
”I will be strong,” I said. ”I will be an idler and a dreamer no longer.
Books have been my world. I have taken all, and given nothing. Now I too will work, and work to prove that I was not unworthy of her love.”
Going down, by-and-by, into the valley as the shadows were lengthening, I met a traveller with an open book in his hand. He was an Englishman--small, sallow, wiry, and wore a gray, loose coat, with two large pockets full of books. I had met him once before at Milan, and again in a steamer on Lago Maggiore. He was always reading. He read in the diligence--he read when he was walking--he read all through dinner at the _tables-d'-hote_. He had a mania for reading; and, might, in fact, be said to be bound up in his own library.
Meeting thus on the mountain, we fell into conversation. He told me that he was on his way to Geneva, that he detested continental life, and that he was only waiting the arrival of certain letters before starting for England.
”But,” said I, ”you do not, perhaps, give continental life a trial. You are always absorbed in the pages of a book; and, as for the scenery, you appear not to observe it.”
”Deuce take the scenery!” he exclaimed, pettishly. ”I never look at it.
All scenery's alike. Trees, mountains, water--water, mountains, trees; the same thing over and over again, like the bits of colored gla.s.s in a kaleidoscope. I read about the scenery, and that is quite enough for me.”
”But no book can paint an Italian lake or an Alpine sunset; and when one is on the spot....”
”I beg your pardon,” interrupted the traveller in gray. ”Everything is much pleasanter and more picturesque in books than in reality--travelling especially. There are no bad smells in books. There are no long bills in books. Above all, there are no mosquitoes.
Travelling is the greatest mistake in the world, and I am going home as fast as I can.”
”And henceforth, I suppose, your travels will be confined to your library,” I said, smiling.
”Exactly so. I may say, with Hazlitt, that 'food, warmth, sleep, and a book,' are all I require. With those I may make the tour of the world, and incur neither expense nor fatigue.”
”Books, after all, are friends,” I said, with a sigh.
”Sir,” replied the traveller, waving his hand somewhat theatrically, ”books are our first real friends, and our last. I have no others. I wish for no others. I rely upon no others. They are the only a.s.sociates upon whom a sensible man may depend. They are always wise, and they are always witty. They never intrude upon us when we desire to be alone.
They never speak ill of us behind our backs. They are never capricious, and never surly; neither are they, like some clever folks, pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to s.h.i.+ne. Did Shakespeare ever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to be companionable? Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or Scott unentertaining?”
”You remind me,” said I, laughing, ”of the student in Chaucer, who desired for his only pleasure and society,
”'---at his bedde's head A'twenty bokes clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy!'”
”Ay,” replied my new acquaintance, ”but he preferred them expressly to 'robes riche, or fidel or sautrie,' whereas, I prefer them to men and women, and to Aristotle and his philosophy, into the bargain!”
”Your own philosophy, at least, is admirable,” said I. ”For many a year--I might almost say for most years of my life--I have been a disciple in the same school.”
”Sir, you cannot belong to a better. Think of the convenience of always carrying half a dozen intimate friends in your pocket! Good-afternoon.”