Part 3 (2/2)

I'd never heard that name before, But in due season it became To him who fondly brooded o'er Those pages a beloved name!

Adown the centuries I walked Mid pastoral scenes and royal show; With seigneurs and their dames I talked-- The crony of Boccaccio!

Those courtly knights and sprightly maids, Who really seemed disposed to s.h.i.+ne In gallantries and escapades, Anon became great friends of mine.

Yet was there sentiment with fun, And oftentimes my tears would flow At some quaint tale of valor done, As told by my Boccaccio.

In boyish dreams I saw again Bucolic belles and dames of court, The princely youths and monkish men Arrayed for sacrifice or sport.

Again I heard the nightingale Sing as she sang those years ago In his embowered Italian vale To my revered Boccaccio.

And still I love that brown old book I found upon the topmost shelf-- I love it so I let none look Upon the treasure but myself!

And yet I have a strapping boy Who (I have every cause to know) Would to its full extent enjoy The friends.h.i.+p of Boccaccio!

But boys are, oh! so different now From what they were when I was one!

I fear my boy would not know how To take that old raconteur's fun!

In your companions.h.i.+p, O friend, I think it wise alone to go Plucking the gracious fruits that bend Wheree'er you lead, Boccaccio.

So rest you there upon the shelf, Clad in your garb of faded brown; Perhaps, sometime, my boy himself Shall find you out and take you down.

Then may he feel the joy once more That thrilled me, filled me years ago When reverently I brooded o'er The glories of Boccaccio!

Out upon the vile brood of imitators, I say! Get ye gone, ye Bandellos and ye Straparolas and ye other charlatans who would fain possess yourselves of the empire which the genius of Boccaccio bequeathed to humanity. There is but one master, and to him we render grateful homage. He leads us down through the cloisters of time, and at his touch the dead become reanimate, and all the sweetness and the valor of antiquity recur; heroism, love, sacrifice, tears, laughter, wisdom, wit, philosophy, charity, and understanding are his auxiliaries; humanity is his inspiration, humanity his theme, humanity his audience, humanity his debtor.

Now it is of Tancred's daughter he tells, and now of Rossiglione's wife; anon of the cozening gardener he speaks and anon of Alibech; of what befell Gillette de Narbonne, of Iphigenia and Cymon, of Saladin, of Calandrino, of Dianora and Ansaldo we hear; and what subject soever he touches he quickens it into life, and he so subtly invests it with that indefinable quality of his genius as to attract thereunto not only our sympathies but also our enthusiasm.

Yes, truly, he should be read with understanding; what author should not? I would no more think of putting my Boccaccio into the hands of a dullard than I would think of leaving a bright and beautiful woman at the mercy of a blind mute.

I have hinted at the horror of the fate which befell Yseult Hardynge in the seclusion of Mr. Henry Boggs's Lincolns.h.i.+re estate. Mr. Henry Boggs knew nothing of romance, and he cared less; he was wholly incapable of appreciating a woman with dark, glorious eyes and an expanding soul; I'll warrant me that he would at any time gladly have traded a ”Decameron” for a copy of ”The Gentleman Poulterer,” or for a year's subscription to that grewsome monument to human imbecility, London ”Punch.”

Ah, Yseult! hadst thou but been a book!

VII

THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FIs.h.i.+NG

I should like to have met Izaak Walton. He is one of the few authors whom I know I should like to have met. For he was a wise man, and he had understanding. I should like to have gone angling with him, for I doubt not that like myself he was more of an angler theoretically than practically. My bookseller is a famous fisherman, as, indeed, booksellers generally are, since the methods employed by fishermen to deceive and to catch their finny prey are very similar to those employed by booksellers to attract and to entrap buyers.

As for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations, and although I have pursued it but little, I concede that doubtless had I practised it oftener I should have been a better man. How truly has Dame Juliana Berners said that ”at the least the angler hath his wholesome walk and merry at his ease, and a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers that maketh him hungry; he heareth the melodious harmony of fowls; he seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, cotes, and many other fowls with their broods, which meseemeth better than all the noise of hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And IF the angler take fish--surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit!”

My bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so enthusiastic a fisherman theoretically, I should at the same time indulge so seldom in the practice of fis.h.i.+ng, as if, forsooth, a man should be expected to engage continually and actively in every art and practice of which he may happen to approve. My young friend Edward Ayer has a n.o.ble collection of books relating to the history of American aboriginals and to the wars waged between those Indians and the settlers in this country; my other young friend Luther Mills has gathered together a mult.i.tude of books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer nor Mills hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find delectation in recitals of warlike prowess and personal valor. I love the night and all the poetic influences of that quiet time, but I do not sit up all night in order to hear the nightingale or to contemplate the astounding glories of the heavens.

For similar reasons, much as I appreciate and marvel at the beauties of early morning, I do not make a practice of early rising, and sensible as I am to the charms of the babbling brook and of the crystal lake, I am not addicted to the practice of wading about in either to the danger either to my own health or to the health of the finny denizens in those places.

The best anglers in the world are those who do not catch fish; the mere slaughter of fish is simply brutal, and it was with a view to keeping her excellent treatise out of the hands of the idle and the inappreciative that Dame Berners incorporated that treatise in a compendious book whose cost was so large that only ”gentyll and n.o.ble men” could possess it. What mind has he who loveth fis.h.i.+ng merely for the killing it involves--what mind has such a one to the beauty of the ever-changing panorama which nature unfolds to the appreciative eye, or what communion has he with those sweet and uplifting influences in which the meadows, the hillsides, the glades, the dells, the forests, and the marshes abound?

Out upon these vandals, I say--out upon the barbarians who would rob angling of its poesy, and reduce it to the level of the butcher's trade! It becomes a base and vicious avocation, does angling, when it ceases to be what Sir Henry Wotton loved to call it--”an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent; a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of pa.s.sions, a procurer of contentedness, and a begetter of habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it!”

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