Part 21 (1/2)
B---- it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both--a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of his pen--
”Never so sure our rapture to create As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.”
Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common-place piece of business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and reasonable.
On the question being started, A---- said, ”I suppose the two first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?” In this A----, as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B----'s face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. ”Yes, the greatest names,” he stammered out hastily, ”but they were not persons--not persons.”--”Not persons?” said A----, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. ”That is,” rejoined B----, ”not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the _Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see any one _bodily_ for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?”--”Ay,” retorted A----, ”there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?”--”No,” said B----, ”neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantlepieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repet.i.tion: and as to Milton's face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian's band and gown.”--”I shall guess no more,” said A----. ”Who is it, then, you would like to see 'in his habit as he lived,' if you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?” B---- then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this A---- laughed outright, and conceived B---- was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. B---- then (as well as I can remember a conversation that pa.s.sed twenty years ago;--how time slips!) went on as follows. ”The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret of what pa.s.sed through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit: my friends, whose repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were it in my power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.
”And call up him who left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold.”
”When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition (the _Urn-burial_) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated like trees! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own 'Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus,' a truly formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and for the unravelling a pa.s.sage or two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so portentous a commentator!”--”I am afraid in that case,”
said A----, ”that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit might be lost;”--and turning to me, whispered a friendly apprehension, that while B---- continued to admire these old crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often quite as _uncomeatable_, without a personal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced; and while some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to the old edition, A---- got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming, ”What have we here?” read the following:--
”Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there, She gives the best light to his sphere, Or each is both and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe.”
There was no resisting this, till B----, seizing the volume, turned to the beautiful ”Lines to his Mistress,” dissuading her from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused features and a faltering tongue.
”By our first strange and fatal interview, By all desires which thereof did ensue, By our long starving hopes, by that remorse Which my words' masculine persuasive force Begot in thee, and by the memory Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me, I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath, By all pains which want and divorcement hath, I conjure thee; and all the oaths which I And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy Here I unswear, and overswear them thus.
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.
Temper, oh fair Love! love's impetuous rage, Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd Page; I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind Thee! only worthy to nurse it in my mind.
Thirst to come back; oh, if thou die before.
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.
Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness; thou hast read How roughly he in pieces s.h.i.+vered Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd Dangers unurg'd: Feed on this flattery, That absent lovers one with th' other be.
Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange To thyself only. All will spy in thy face A blus.h.i.+ng, womanly, discovering grace.
Richly cloth'd apes are called apes, and as soon Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon.
Men of France, changeable cameleons.
Spittles of diseases, shops of fas.h.i.+ons, Love's fuellers, and the rightest company Of players, which upon the world's stage be, Will quickly know thee.... O stay here! for thee England is only a worthy gallery, To walk in expectation; till from thence Our greatest King call thee to his presence.
When I am gone, dream me some happiness, Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess, Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor bless, nor curse Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse With midnight startings, crying out, Oh, oh, Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, a.s.sail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die, Augur me better chance, except dread Jove Think it enough for me to have had thy love.”
Some one then inquired of B---- if we could not see from the window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that there was a general sensation in his favour in all but A----, who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing every thing to its own trite level, and asked ”if he did not think it would be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English literature; to see the head, round which the visions of fancy must have played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those lips that ”lisped in numbers, for the numbers came”--as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears); but he was himself a n.o.ble, manly character, standing before his age and striving to advance it; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not only handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have heard them exchange their best stories together,--the Squire's Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and feelings which pa.s.sed through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an expression on their features, as different from the moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante,” I continued, ”is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Arios...o...b.. no less a hand than t.i.tian's; light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing with 'the mighty dead,' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic.” B---- put it to me if I should like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered without hesitation, ”No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our apprehensions) rather a ”creature of the element, that lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,”
than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pa.s.s by unquestioned like a dream or sound--
----”_That_ was Arion crown'd: So went he playing on the wat'ry plain!”
Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. C. hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.
”I should like,” said Miss D----, ”to have seen Pope talking with Patty Blount; and I _have_ seen Goldsmith.” Every one turned round to look at Miss D----, as if by so doing they too could get a sight of Goldsmith.
”Where,” asked a harsh croaking voice, ”was Dr. Johnson in the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? He seems to have pa.s.sed through the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell many years after 'with lack-l.u.s.tre eye,' yet as if they were familiar to him, or a.s.sociated in his mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional reason for my liking him; and I would give something to have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the legitimate Government.”
”I thought,” said A----, turning short round upon B----, ”that you of the Lake School did not like Pope?”--”Not like Pope! My dear sir, you must be under a mistake--I can read him over and over for ever!”--”Why certainly, the Essay on Man must be allowed to be a master-piece.”--”It may be so, but I seldom look into it.”--”Oh! then it's his Satires you admire?”--”No, not his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments.”--”Compliments! I did not know he ever made any.”--”The finest,” said B----, ”that were ever paid by the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life--nay, is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury:
”Despise low joys, low gains: Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.