Part 13 (1/2)
”Doith it, then; nobody wants you to shoot crooked Take good iron to it, and not footy paving-stones”
”I believe, sir, that the foul fiend is there, a turning of ht I saw hiain Ah, sir, if one could but cast a silver one! Now, stand by, hteen-pounder roared, and away And, oh glory! the great yellow flag of Spain, which streastaff and all, and then pitched wildly down head-foremost, far to leeward
A hurrah from the sailors, answered by the soldiers of the opposite camp, shook the very cloud above them: but ere its echoes had died away, a tall officer leapt upon the parapet of the fort, with the fallen flag in his hand, and rearing it as well as he could upon his lance point, held it firain within
In afoeman: but Aentleman have due courtesy!”
So they stopped, while A on the ra-holder, who, as soon as relieved of his charge, returned the bow courteously, and descended
It was by this tian to slacken on all sides; Salvation and his brother gunners, having covered up their slaughtering tackle with tarpaulings, retired for the night, leaving Aht; and the rest of the force having got their scanty supper of biscuit (for provisions were running very short) lay down under arrumbled theusty darkness for so word now and then with the sentinel, when two ether One was in complete armor; the other wrapped in the plain short cloak of a man of pens and peace: but the talk of both was neither of sieges nor of sallies, catapult, bolish hexaentle reader, that the tere therein fiddling while Ro; for the commonweal of poetry and letters, in that saer from those sah called it) was fro the classic ,” as it was called in contradistinction to rhy the more learned Stonyhurst and others had tried their hands at hexameter translations froerel enough; and ever and anon soiacs, and what not, to the great detrilish and her subjects' ears
I know not whether Mr Willialish poetry,” to the tune of his own ”tityrus, happily thou liest tue Malvolio, Gabriel Harvey, had succeeded in arguing Spenser, Dyer, Sidney, and probably Sidney's sister, and the whole clique of beaux-esprits round theht I call this tree? A laurel? O bonny laurel! Needes to thy boill I bowe this knee, and vailthe first book of ”that Elvish Queene,” which was then in manuscript, as a base declension from the classical to the romantic school
And now Spenser (perhaps in mere melancholy wilfulness and want of purpose, for he had just been jilted by a fair erel which he fancied antique; and some piratical publisher (bitter Tom Nash swears, and with likelihood that Harvey did it hiiven to the world,--”Three proper wittie and familiar Letters, lately past between two University lish refor like a swar none other than a correspondence between Spenser and Harvey, which was to prove to the world forever the correctness and nificoes, not a beck but glorious in show, In deede most frivolous, not a looke but Tuscanish always”
Let them pass--Alma Mater has seen as bad hexameters since But then the matter was serious There is a story (I know not how true) that Spenser was half bullied into re-writing the ”Faerie Queene” in hexah, a true romanticist, ”whose vein for ditty or amorous ode was most lofty, insolent, and passionate,” persuaded hireat dralish school, of which Spenser, unconscious of his own vast powers, was laying the foundation And, indeed, it was not till Daniel, twenty years after, in his ady for rhyht several kinds of classical nulish tongue left to go the road on which Heaven had started it So that wesomeaspish to some quotation of Spenser's from the three letters of ”I has le is worth all your sapphics and tri' Hey? have I you there, old lad? Do you mind that precious verse?”
”But, dear Wat, Hoil--”
”But, dear Ned, Petrarch and Ovid--”
”But, Wat, what have we that we do not owe to the ancients?”
”Ancients, quotha? Why, the legend of King Arthur, and Chevy Chase too, of which even your fellow-sinner Sidney cannot deny that every time he hears it even from a blind fiddler it stirs his heart like a true that carries you over, il, or such a dame as Una in old Ovid? No ado baptized heathen, you!”
”Yet, surely, our younger and more barbarous taste must bow before divine antiquity, and imitate afar--”
”As dottrels do fowlers If Homer was blind, lad, why dost not poke out thine eye? Ay, this hexameter is of an ancient house, truly, Ned Spenser, and so is lish roads He goes hopping and twitching in our language like a three-legged terrier over a pebble-bank, tuain, rattle and crash”
”Nay, hear, now-- 'See ye the blindfolded pretty God that feathered archer, Of lovers' aapes in places, as I have often confessed to Harvey, but--”
Strange as it may seem, this distich is Spenser's own; and the other hexaed for a pedant, and the whole crew of versifiers, fro so Procrustes as he does with the queen's English, racking one word till its joints be pulled asunder, and squeezing the next all a-heap as the Inquisitors do heretics in their banca cava? Out upon him and you, and Sidney, and the whole kin You have notyou, and never will, which is not as la as Harvey's own-- 'Oh thou weathercocke, that stands on the top of Allhallows, Come thy ways down, if thou dar'st for thy crown, and take the wall on us'
Hark, now! There is our young giant co his soul with a ballad You will hear rhyether here, now He will not miscall 'blind-folded,' 'blind-fold-ed, I warrant; or make an 'of' and a 'which' and a 'his' carry a whole verse on their wretched little backs”
And as he spoke, A to himself some Christ He heard an angel sing-- 'This night shall be the birth night Of Christ, our heavenly King
His birthbed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen's stall
He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden er That lieth on the mould
He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed
He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But in the fair white linen That usen babies all'
As Joseph was a-walking Thus did the angel sing, And Mary's Son at ood people, At this tiht you up your candles, For His star it shi+neth clear”
”There, Edh, ”does not that sio nearer to the heart of him rote 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' than all artificial and outlandish 'Wote ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face?'
Why dost not answer, man?”
But Spenser was silent awhile, and then,-- ”Because I was thinking rather of the rhymer than the rhy here the hyht hiuns; instead of bewailing unmanly, as I have done, the love which he held, I doubt not, as dear as I did even my Rosalind This is his welcome to the winter's storm; while I, who dream, forsooth, of heavenly inspiration, can but see therein an iround, inter's wrath has wasted, Art ht'
Pah! aith frosts, icicles, and tears, and sighs--”
”The Shepherd's Calendar”
”And with hexah: ”and all the trickeries of self-pleasing sorrow”
”--I will setat the hand which chastens me”
”Wilt put the lad into the 'Faerie Queene,' then, by ood a place there, believe all Let us hail hi chanticleer of Devon! Art not afraid of a chance shot, that thou crowest so lustily upon thine ownat Christh, and so do I,” said Amyas's cheerful voice; ”but who's there with you?”
”A penitent pupil of yours--Mr Secretary Spenser”
”Pupil of mine?” said Amyas ”I wish he'd teach me a little of his art; I could fill upverses”
”And ould be your theme, fair sir?” said Spenser
”No 'who' at all I don't want to make sonnets to blue eyes, nor black either: but if I could put down sos I saw in the Spice Islands--”
”Ah,” said Raleigh, ”he would beat you out of Parnassus, Mr Secretary Remember, you may write about Fairyland, but he has seen it”
”And so have others,” said Spenser; ”it is not so far off froreat purposes, and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is Fairyland”
”Then Fairyland should be here, friend; for you represent love, and Leigh loyalty; while, as for great purposes and lofty souls, who so fit to stand for the (unless my enemies and my conscience are liars both) as ambitious and as proud as Lucifer's own self?”