Part 16 (2/2)

This didacticism seems not to have harmed his artistic welfare, for he has undoubtedly been the most popular poet that ever wrote. Consider the magnitude and the enthusiasm of his audience! He has been the personal chum of everyone that ever read Latinity. But Horace, when not exalted with his inspired preachments on the art of life and the arts of poetry and love, was a bitter cynic redeemed by great self-depreciation and joviality. The son of a slave, he was too fond of court life to talk democracy.

Bobby Burns was a thorough child of the people, and is more like Mr.

Riley in every way than any other poet. Yet he, too, had a vicious cynicism, and he never had the polished art that enriches some of Mr.

Riley's non-dialectic poetry, as in parts of his fairy fancy, ”The Flying Islands of the Night.”

Burns never had the versatility of sympathy that enables Mr. Riley to write such unpastoral masterpieces as ”Anselmo,” ”The Dead Lover,” ”A Scrawl,” ”The Home-going,” some of his sonnets, and the n.o.ble verses beginning

”A monument for the soldiers!

And what will ye build it of?”

Yet it must be owned that Burns is in general Mr. Riley's prototype. Mr.

Riley admits it himself in his charming verses ”To Robert Burns.”

”Sweet singer, that I lo'e the maist O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste I smacket bairn lips ower the taste O' hinnied sang.”

The cla.s.sic pastoral poets, Theokritos, Vergandil, the others, sang with an exquisite art, indeed, yet their farm-folk were really Dresden-china shepherds and shepherdesses speaking with affected simplicity or with impossible elegance. Theokritos, like Burns and Riley, wrote partly in dialect and partly in the standard speech, and to those who are never reconciled to anything that can quote no ”authority,” there should be sufficient justification for dialect poetry in this divine Sicilian musician of whom his own Goatherd might have said:

”Full of fine honey thy beautiful mouth was, Thyrsis, created Full of the honeycomb; figs aegilean, too, mayest thou nibble, Sweet as they are; for ev'n than the locust more bravely thou singest.”

I have no room to argue the _pro's_ of dialect here, but it always seems strange that those lazy critics who are unwilling to take the trouble to translate the occasional hard words in a dialect form of their own tongue, should be so inconsistent as ever to study a foreign language.

Then, too, dialect is necessary to truth, to local color, to intimacy with the character depicted. Besides, it is delicious. There is something mellow and soul-warming about a plebeian metathesis like ”congergation.” What orthoepy could replace lines like these?:

”Worter, shade and all so mixed, don't know which you'd orter Say, th' _worter_ in the shadder--_shadder_ in the _worter_!”

One thing about Mr. Riley's dialect that may puzzle those not familiar with the living speech of the Hoosiers, is his spelling, which is chiefly done as if by the illiterate speaker himself. Thus ”rostneer-time” and ”ornry” must be aeolic Greek to those barbarians who have never heard of ”roasting-ears” of corn or of that contemptuous synonym for ”vulgar,” ”common,” which is smoothly elided, ”or(di)n(a)ry.” Both of these words could be spelled with a suggestive and helpful use of apostrophes: ”roast'n'-ear,” and or'n'ry.

Jumbles like ”jevver” for ”did you ever?” and the like can hardly be spelled otherwise than phonetically, but a glossary should be appended as in Lowell's ”Biglow Papers,” for the poems are eminently worth even lexicon-thumbing. Another frequent fault of dialect writers is the spelling phonetically of words p.r.o.nounced everywhere alike. Thus ”enough” is spelled ”enuff,” and ”clamor,” ”clammer,” though Dr. Johnson himself would never have p.r.o.nounced them otherwise. In these misspellings, however, Mr. Riley excuses himself by impersonating an illiterate as well as a crude-speaking poet. But even then he is inconsistent, and ”hollowing” becomes ”hollerin',” with an apostrophe to mark the lost ”g”--that abominable imported harshness that ought to be generally exiled from our none too smooth language. Mr. Riley has written a good essay in defense of dialect, which enemies of this form of literature might read with advantage.

But Mr. Riley has written a deal of most excellent verse that is not in dialect. One whole volume is devoted to a fairy extravaganza called ”The Flying Islands of the Night,” a good addition to that quaint literature of lace to which ”The Midsummer Night's Dream,” Herrick's ”Oberon's Epithalamium,” or whatever it is called, Drake's ”Culprit Fay,” and other bits of most exquisite foolery belong. While hardly a complete success, this diminutive drama contains some curiously delightful conceits like this ”improvisation:”

”Her face--her brow--her hair unfurled!-- And O the oval chin below, Carved, like a cunning cameo, With one exquisite dimple, swirled With swimming s.h.i.+ne and shade, and whirled The daintiest vortex poets know-- The sweetest whirlpool ever twirled By Cupid's finger-tip--and so, The deadliest maelstrom in the world!”

It is a strange individuality that Mr. Riley has, suggesting numerous other masters--whose influence he acknowledges in special odes--and yet all digested and a.s.similated into a marked individuality of his own. He has studied the English poets profoundly and improved himself upon them, till one is chiefly impressed, in his non-dialectic verse, with his refinement, subtlety, and ease. He has a large vocabulary, and his felicity is at times startling. Thus he speaks of water ”chuckling,”

which is as good as Horace's ripples that ”gnaw” the sh.o.r.e. Note the mastery of such lines as

”And the dust of the road is like velvet.”

”Nothin' but green woods and clear Skies and unwrit poetry By the acre!”

”Then G.o.d smiled and it was morning!”

Life is ”A poor pale yesterday of Death.”

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