Part 7 (2/2)
Seamen three! What men be ye?
Gotham's three wise men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth s.h.i.+ne, And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
Who art thou so fast adrift?
I am he they call Old Care.
Here on board we will thee lift.
No: I may not enter there.
Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree In a bowl Care may not be; In a bowl Care may not be.
Fear ye not the waves that roll?
No: in charmed bowl we swim.
What the charm that floats the bowl?
Water may not pa.s.s the brim.
The bowl goes trim, the moon doth s.h.i.+ne, And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
A third song sung by Marionetta, ”Why are thy looks so blank, Grey Friar?” is as good in another way; nor should it be forgotten that the said Marionetta, who has been thought to have some features of the luckless Harriet Sh.e.l.ley, is Peac.o.c.k's first lifelike study of a girl, and one of his pleasantest.
The book which came out four years after, _Maid Marian_, has, I believe, been much the most popular and the best known of Peac.o.c.k's short romances. It owed this popularity, in great part, doubtless, to the fact that the author has altered little in the well-known and delightful old story, and has not added very much to its facts, contenting himself with ill.u.s.trating the whole in his own satirical fas.h.i.+on. But there is also no doubt that the dramatisation of _Maid Marian_ by Planche and Bishop as an operetta helped, if it did not make, its fame. The s.n.a.t.c.hes of song through the novel are more frequent than in any other of the books, so that Mr. Planche must have had but little trouble with it. Some of these s.n.a.t.c.hes are among Peac.o.c.k's best verse, such as the famous ”Bramble Song,” the great hit of the operetta, the equally well-known ”Oh, bold Robin Hood,” and the charming s.n.a.t.c.h:--
For the tender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut down which you will;
But this you must know, that as long as they grow, Whatever change may be, You never can teach either oak or beech To be aught but a greenwood tree.
This s.n.a.t.c.h, which, in its mixture of sentiment, truth, and what may be excusably called ”rollick,” is very characteristic of its author, and is put in the mouth of Brother Michael, practically the hero of the piece, and the happiest of the various workings up of Friar Tuck, despite his considerable indebtedness to a certain older friar, whom we must not call ”of the funnels.” That Peac.o.c.k was a Pantagruelist to the heart's core is evident in all his work; but his following of Master Francis is nowhere clearer than in _Maid Marian_, and it no doubt helps us to understand why those who cannot relish Rabelais should look askance at Peac.o.c.k. For the rest, no book of Peac.o.c.k's requires such brief comment as this charming pastoral, which was probably little less in Thackeray's mind than _Ivanhoe_ itself when he wrote _Rebecca and Rowena_. The author draws in (it would be hardly fair to say drags in) some of his stock satire on courts, the clergy, the landed gentry, and so forth; but the very nature of the subject excludes the somewhat tedious digressions which mar _Melincourt_, and which once or twice menace, though they never actually succeed in spoiling, the unbroken fun of _Nightmare Abbey_.
_The Misfortunes of Elphin_, which followed after an interval of seven years, is, I believe, the least generally popular of Peac.o.c.k's works, though (not at all for that reason) it happens to be my own favourite.
The most curious instance of this general unpopularity is the entire omission, as far as I am aware, of any reference to it in any of the popular guide-books to Wales. One piece of verse, indeed, the ”War-song of Dinas Vawr,” a triumph of easy verse and covert sarcasm, has had some vogue, but the rest is only known to Peac.o.c.kians. The abundance of Welsh lore which, at any rate in appearance, it contains, may have had something to do with this; though the translations or adaptations, whether faithful or not, are the best literary renderings of Welsh known to me. Something also, and probably more, is due to the saturation of the whole from beginning to end with Peac.o.c.k's driest humour. Not only is the account of the sapping and destruction of the embankment of Gwaelod an open and continuous satire on the opposition to Reform, but the whole book is written in the spirit and manner of _Candide_--a spirit and manner which Englishmen have generally been readier to relish, when they relish them at all, in another language than in their own. The respectable domestic virtues of Elphin and his wife Angharad, the blameless loves of Taliesin and the Princess Melanghel, hardly serve even as a foil to the satiric treatment of the other characters. The careless incompetence of the poetical King Gwythno, the coa.r.s.er vices of other Welsh princes, the marital toleration or blindness of Arthur, the cynical frankness of the robber King Melvas, above all, the drunkenness of the immortal Seithenyn, give the humorist themes which he caresses with inexhaustible affection, but in a manner no doubt very puzzling, if not shocking, to matter-of-fact readers. Seithenyn, the drunken prince and d.y.k.e-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peac.o.c.k's most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fas.h.i.+on of argument, make Seithenyn one of the happiest, if not one of the greatest, results of whimsical imagination and study of human nature. ”They have not”--says the somewhile prince, now King Melvas's butler, when Taliesin discovers him twenty years after his supposed death--”they have not made it [his death] known to me, for the best of all reasons, that one can only know the truth. For if that which we think we know is not truth, it is something which we do not know. A man cannot know his own death. For while he knows anything he is alive; at least, I never heard of a dead man who knew anything, or pretended to know anything: if he had so pretended I should have told him to his face that he was no dead man.” How n.o.bly consistent is this with his other argument in the days of his princedom and his neglect of the embankment!
Elphin has just reproached him with the proverb, ”Wine speaks in the silence of reason.” ”I am very sorry,” said Seithenyn, ”that you see things in a wrong light. But we will not quarrel, for three reasons: first, because you are the son of the king, and may do and say what you please without any one having a right to be displeased; second, because I never quarrel with a guest, even if he grows riotous in his cups; third, because there is nothing to quarrel about. And perhaps that is the best reason of the three; or rather the first is the best, because you are the son of the king; and the third is the second, that is the second best, because there is nothing to quarrel about; and the second is nothing to the purpose, because, though guests will grow riotous in their cups in spite of my good orderly example, G.o.d forbid that I should say that is the case with you. And I completely agree in the truth of your remark that reason speaks in the silence of wine.”
_Crotchet Castle_, the last but one of the series, which was published two years after _Elphin_ and nearly thirty before _Gryll Grange_, has been already called the best; and the statement is not inconsistent with the description already given of _Nightmare Abbey_ and of _Elphin_. For _Nightmare Abbey_ is chiefly farce, and _The Misfortunes of Elphin_ is chiefly sardonic persiflage. _Crotchet Castle_ is comedy of a high and varied kind. Peac.o.c.k has returned in it to the machinery of a country house with its visitors, each of whom is more or less of a crotcheteer; and has thrown in a little romantic interest in the suit of a certain unmoneyed Captain Fitzchrome to a n.o.ble damsel who is expected to marry money, as well as in the desertion and subsequent rescue of Susannah Touchandgo, daughter of a levanting financier. The charm of the book, however, which distinguishes it from all its predecessors, is the introduction of characters neither ridiculous nor simply good in the persons of the Rev. Dr. Folliott and Lady Clarinda Bossnowl, Fitzchrome's beloved. ”Lady Clarinda,” says the captain, when the said Lady Clarinda has been playing off a certain not unladylike practical joke on him, ”is a very pleasant young lady;” and most a.s.suredly she is, a young lady (in the nineteenth century and in prose) of the tribe of Beatrice, if not even of Rosalind. As for Dr. Folliott, the author is said to have described him as his amends for his earlier clerical sketches, and the amends are ample. A stout Tory, a fellow of infinite jest, a lover of good living, an inveterate paradoxer, a pitiless exposer of current cants and fallacies, and, lastly, a tall man of his hands, Dr. Folliott is always delightful, whether he is knocking down thieves, or annihilating, in a rather Johnsonian manner, the economist, Mr. McQuedy, and the journalist, Mr. Eavesdrop, or laying down the law as to the composition of breakfast and supper, or using strong language as to ”the learned friend” (Brougham), or bringing out, partly by opposition and partly by irony, the follies of the transcendentalists, the fops, the doctrinaires, and the mediaevalists of the party. The book, moreover, contains the last and not the least of Peac.o.c.k's admirable drinking-songs:--
If I drink water while this doth last, May I never again drink wine; For how can a man, in his life of a span, Do anything better than dine?
We'll dine and drink, and say if we think That anything better can be; And when we have dined, wish all mankind May dine as well as we.
And though a good wish will fill no dish, And brim no cup with sack, Yet thoughts will spring as the gla.s.ses ring To illumine our studious track.
O'er the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes The light of the flask shall s.h.i.+ne; And we'll sit till day, but we'll find the way To drench the world with wine.
The song is good in itself, but it is even more interesting as being the last product of Peac.o.c.k's Anacreontic vein. Almost a generation pa.s.sed before the appearance of his next and last novel, and though there is plenty of good eating and drinking in _Gryll Grange_, the old fine rapture had disappeared in society meanwhile, and Peac.o.c.k obediently took note of the disappearance. It is considered, I believe, a mark of barbarian tastes to lament the change. But I am not certain that the Age of Apollinaris and lectures has yet produced anything that can vie as literature with the products of the ages of Wine and Song.
_Gryll Grange_, however, in no way deserves the name of a dry stick. It is, next to _Melincourt_, the longest of Peac.o.c.k's novels, and it is entirely free from the drawbacks of the forty-years-older book. Mr.
Falconer, the hero, who lives in a tower alone with seven lovely and discreet foster-sisters, has some resemblances to Mr. Forester, but he is much less of a prig. The life and the conversation bear, instead of the marks of a young man's writing, the marks of the writing of one who has seen the manners and cities of many other men, and the personages throughout are singularly lifelike. The loves of the second hero and heroine, Lord Curryfin and Miss Niphet, are much more interesting than their names would suggest. And the most loquacious person of the book, the Rev. Dr. Opimian, if he is somewhat less racy than Dr. Folliott, is not less agreeable. One main charm of the novel lies in its vigorous criticism of modern society in phases which have not yet pa.s.sed away.
”Progress” is attacked with curious ardour; and the battle between literature and science, which in our days even Mr. Matthew Arnold waged but as one _cauponans bellum_, is fought with a vigour that is a joy to see. It would be rather interesting to know whether Peac.o.c.k, in planning the central incident of the play (an ”Aristophanic comedy,” satirising modern ways), was aware of the existence of Mansel's delightful parody of the ”Clouds.” But ”Phrontisterion” has never been widely known out of Oxford, and the bearing of Peac.o.c.k's own performance is rather social than political. Not the least noteworthy thing in the book is the practical apology which is made in it to Scotchmen and political economists (two cla.s.ses whom Peac.o.c.k had earlier persecuted) in the personage of Mr. McBorrowdale, a candid friend of Liberalism, who is extremely refres.h.i.+ng. And besides the Aristophanic comedy, _Gryll Grange_ contains some of Peac.o.c.k's most delightful verse, notably the really exquisite stanzas on ”Love and Age.”
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