Part 4 (2/2)

I select this bit, faoes to prove that the Sibylline books (to which the Augustan poets had easy access) quoted Isaiah's prophecies of Christ and the Millenniu was quite extee memories in the literary line, I may just mention certain brochures or parodies, initialed or anonyuilty for the first tioy, Mr Rickard's ”African Desert,” and Garbet's pronounced and rather absurd aestheticism as an examiner Here are morsels of each in order:--

”Who praises Oxford?--soster on a tiny wing,-- (_NB_ They call the insect Bob, I know, I heard a printer's devil call it so)-- So fondly tells his admiration vast No one can call the chastened strains boh epitheted substantives immense Claim for each lofty sound the _caret_ sense,” &c &c

Next, a bit froht on St Mary's in the Ha part of ”The Oxford Controversy”:--

”Though vanquished oft, in falsehood undisry Don lifts high his injured head, Or 'stands between the living and the dead'

Still from St Mary's pulpit echoes wide Primo, beware of truth, whate'er betide; Deinde, from deep Charybdis while you steer Lest damned Socinus charm you with his sneer, Watch above all, so not _Saint_ Thomas spake, Lest upon Calvin, Scylla's rook, you break,” &c &c

These forgotten trivials, wherein the allusions do not no clear, are, I know, barely excusable even thus curtly: but I choose to save a touch or two from annihilation Here is another little bit; this time from a somewhat vicious parody on my rival Rickard's prize poeth first his serious conclusion to the normal fifty-liner, and then my less reverent imitation of it Here, then, is the end of Rickard's poeht was the doom which snatched her favourite son, Nor ca burned his restless spirit to explore That stream which eye had never tracked before, Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begun Flows on eternal to the rising sun!

Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way, And all save him shrunk backward in dismay, Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer To reach that streah dooer's mystic flood One rapturous day the speechless drea eyes he kept,-- The sun went down,--the anderer slept!”

So much for the prize-taker; the prize-loser vented his spleen as thus:--

”Bright was the dooo Park, Yet very palpably obscure and dark

Long burned his throat, for want of co'd and pray'd for wistfully, Whose course, 'tis said, that no one can tell where It flows eternal; guessing isn't fair

Though , And all, save hi, Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer He'd find that stream,--if it was anywhere!

That prayer was heard, of course, though no one knows Where this said Niger never flowed, or flows; All that is known is, that a dreamer stood In speechless transport by aeyes, The sun goes down, and so the dreamer dies!”

For the fourth promised specimen, the best excuse is that Garbet really did utter the words quoted,--and the answer he received about love is exact, and became famous:--

”'Didst e'er read Dante!'--Never 'Cruel man!

Take, take him, Williams,--I--I never can'”

_NB_--Williams was the other examiner Garbet went on with a further question nevertheless,--as he was affectedly fond of Italian:--

”'Dost know the language love delights in most?

If thou dost not, thy character is lost'

'Yes, sir!'--the youth retorts with just surprise, 'Love's language is the language of the eyes!'”

In those days, as perhaps also in these, like Pope, ”I spake in nu almost--well, not quite--easier than prose In fact, soement stumbled on the printed truth that he is little better than an improvisatore in rhyme And this word ”rhyme” reminds me now of a very curious question I raised soazine article, as to when rhy that intoning monks found out how easily the cases of Latin nouns and tenses of verbs, &c, jingled with each other, and that troubadours and trouveres carried thus the seeds of song all over Europe in about the ninth century, until which tinised forely escaped discovery for more than four thousand years Is it not a marvel (and another marvel that no one noticed it before) that not one of the old poets, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and I think Sanscrit, Arabic, and Celtic too, ever (except by nored) stu their metres with rhyme? Where is there any ode of Horace, or Anacreon,--where any psalil, or philosophic arguhtened by the now only too frequent orna my old archived papers, faded by nearly six decades of antiquity, a treatise which I wrote at nineteen, styled by me ”A Vindication of the Wisdom of Scripture in Matters of Natural Science” This has never seen the light, even in extracts; and probably never can attain to the dignity of print, seeing it is written against all compositor law on both sides up and down of a quarto paper book

Therein are treated, from both the scriptural and the scientific points of view, ony, miracles (in chief Joshua's sun and moon), the circulation of the blood revealed in Ecclesiastes, netism as mentioned by Job, ”He spreadeth out the north over the e,” the blood's innate vitality--”which is the life thereof,” the earth's centre, or orbit, and inclination, astronoration of our atlobe, and many other matters terrestrial and celestial Some day a patient scribe may be found to decipher this decayed manuscript and set out orderly its hteen, and finished it when at Oxford

There is also now before me another faded copybook ofparallel passages between Horace and Holy Writ; so very remarkable, as Hor _Sat_ i 8, and Isaiah xliv 13, &c, about ” a God of a tree whereof he burneth part:” also such well-known lines as ”Quid sit futurue quaerere,” and ”Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernae crastina suht for the morrow” and ”Boast not thyself of to- forth” With many more; in fact I collected nearly a hundred out of Horace, besides a few from others of the classics