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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Ponkapog Papers
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: August, 1996 [eBook #625]
+[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Judith Boss and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+PONKAPOG PAPERS
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+
+
+TO FRANCIS BARTLETT
+
+
+
+THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called _Ponkapog Papers_ not
+simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within
+the limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is
+something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which
+Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts
+settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions
+concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound
+that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great
+centres of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting
+comparison between themselves and important pieces of literature.
+Therefore there seems something especially appropriate in the
+geographical title selected, and if the author's choice of name need
+further excuse, it is to be found in the alluring alliteration lying
+ready at his hand.
+
+REDMAN FARM, _Ponkapog_, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+TOM FOLIO
+
+FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON”
+
+PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+DECORATION DAY
+
+WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+ON EARLY RISING
+
+UN POETE MANQUE
+
+THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+POOR YORICK
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+
+IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of
+the Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from
+them when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive
+for a fantastic short story, in which the hero--an author in vogue or
+a popular actor--might be depicted as having all his good qualities
+gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of
+too prolonged indulgence in the effort to “look natural.” First the man
+loses his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual
+attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious,
+and finally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be
+brought about by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for
+the moment, no hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his
+enlarged requirement.
+
+THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging
+directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have
+been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori
+quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing
+more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better
+moon.
+
+I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of “The Two First Centuries
+of Florentine Literature,” by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not
+acquainted with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari
+makes it plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first.
+
+THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to
+divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation
+of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time
+will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The
+beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just
+at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome
+stride toward the longed-for millennium.
+
+SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we can guard against. The
+well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and
+several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied
+themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of “the first known
+forefather of the poet.” This lately turned up ancestor, who does not
+date very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on
+the mural marble as “formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of
+Corfe Castle.” Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou
+Ben Adhem himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love
+their fellow men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the
+matter he probably would have preferred not to have that particular
+footman exhumed. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir
+John Bankes would scarcely have been heard of in our young century if
+it had not been for his footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and
+solemn, behind his master's chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered
+into the head of Sir John that his highly respectable name would be
+served up to posterity--like a cold relish--by his own butler! By
+Robert!
+
+IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery
+district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to
+long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand
+clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and
+rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One
+could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that
+those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the
+doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you
+approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a
+most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here
+and there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you
+may become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion.
+
+POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not any too soon. If it only
+were practicable to kill him in real life! A story--to be called The
+Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a decree condemning to death
+every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank,
+and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects
+his own tediousness is yet to be born.
+
+WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically
+to his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre
+verse, he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our
+poets; but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can
+bear comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative
+quality and austere richness of diction what other verse of our period
+approaches it? The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael
+Drayton said of Marlowe, “those brave translunary things that the first
+poets had.”
+
+
+IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one
+man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine
+him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and
+hearing a ring at the door-bell!
+
+No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself
+in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about
+it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds
+superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the
+least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who
+accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end
+in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of
+his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his
+life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare
+his heart with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that
+inevitably colors premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those
+small octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected
+that he was adding a photographic portrait of himself to the world's
+gallery of immortals. We are more intimately acquainted with Mr.
+Samuel Pepys, the inner man--his little meannesses and his large
+generosities--then we are with half the persons we call our dear
+friends.
+
+THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is
+to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.
+
+IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced
+an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf,
+and his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I
+have no disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is
+as hearty as if he had not been dead and--otherwise provided for
+these last three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as
+merciless, but she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of
+heretics.
+
+Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news
+of the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it
+for the time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a
+maniac; but the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty
+pure and simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment
+of him stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially
+dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting
+Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I.
+gave the amiable Mr. Dick.
+
+AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an
+English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be
+preternaturally clever and amusing--“so very droll, don't you know.” He
+recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics public
+characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of the
+elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is
+capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last
+time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in
+spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of
+entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on
+“the English and American languages.” As there were two Americans on
+the back seat--it seems we term ourselves “Amurricans”--his choice
+of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in
+pronunciation from a gentleman who said _boult_ for bolt, called St.
+John _Sin' Jun_, and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of
+his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying _Maudlin_
+for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English
+folk who have resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or
+thereabouts.
+
+EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it.
+The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's _ex
+libris_ is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of
+indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is
+placed.
+
+WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most
+matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an
+alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists
+and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused
+through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in
+individual Englishmen.
+
+THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first
+person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
+memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always
+lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of
+nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to
+this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
+author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was
+also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses
+secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton,
+feeling that “they also serve who only stand and wait,” sat down and
+waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there
+spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he
+read: “Don't forget to see the binder,” “Don't forget to mail E----- his
+contract,” “Don't forget H-----'s proofs,” etc. An inspiration seized
+upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of
+“don't forgets” he wrote: “Don't forget to accept A 's poem.” He left
+his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon when the
+publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little astonished at
+the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he did accept
+the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the
+lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day unprinted. That
+kindly publisher was wise as well as kind.
+
+FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always
+certain to be particularly indecent.
+
+I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the
+priggish little boy in the story of “Sandford and Merton,” has a worthy
+American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through
+a seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of
+fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from
+infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely
+pursuing her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted
+didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter,
+who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with
+the same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her
+elders. An interesting instance of hereditary talent!
+
+H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender, graceful, and hollow.
+Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might have
+been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like
+an ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is
+ungrammatical.
+
+AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the
+spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on
+cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom
+at the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem.
+
+Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time.
+The current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as
+is also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed
+with the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into
+rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely.
+
+I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should
+involve the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment
+of a fresh censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in
+permanent absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to
+express his opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal
+danger, It is almost inevitable that he should come to overrate
+the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much
+seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility.
+The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious
+bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an
+exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings
+not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: “I am Sir Oracle,
+and when I ope my lips let no dog bark.” When the critic reaches this
+exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone.
+
+AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and
+signs it with a rainbow.
+
+I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every
+detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the
+desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which
+the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised
+knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely
+thought lovelier by sometimes half veiling it.
+
+I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick
+has handled twice in the “Hesperides.” The fancy, however, is not
+Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I
+have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it:
+
+UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER
+
+
+
+When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my
+lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day
+begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and
+wakes, Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the
+cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks!
+
+Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by
+anticipating everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell:
+
+But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and
+Juliet is the sun.
+
+THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable
+times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says:
+
+Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my
+heart's core, ay, in my _heart of heart_.
+
+The words italicized are invariably written “heart of hearts”--as if a
+person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with
+the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of
+Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural
+on two occasions in his recent novel, “The Mystery of the Sea.” Mrs.
+Humphry Ward also twice misquotes the passage in “Lady Rose's Daughter.”
+
+BOOKS that have become classics--books that ave had their day and now
+get more praise than perusal--always remind me of venerable colonels and
+majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves
+retired upon half pay.
+
+WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is
+a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother
+naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved
+points of theology. Up among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart
+of the region of porcupines, I happen to have a modest cottage. This
+retreat is called The Porcupine, and I ought by good rights to know
+something about the habits of the small animal from which it derives
+its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to return home on an average of
+three times a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose
+stuck full of quills, and _he_ ought to have some concrete ideas on the
+subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify that the porcupine in its
+moments of relaxation occasionally contracts itself into what might be
+taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to please in the matter
+of spheres. But neither Buster nor I--being unwilling to get into
+trouble--would like to assert that it is an actual ball. That it is a
+shape with which one had better not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction
+that my friend Buster stands ready to defend against all comers.
+
+WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as “a
+creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food” has
+always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets
+one to thinking of the South Sea islanders.
+
+THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a
+superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was
+wisdom itself--“Put money in thy purse.” Whoever disparages money
+disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened
+the other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of
+glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant
+of natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around
+immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold
+has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have
+been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of
+poverty the world will never know. “After the love of knowledge,” says
+Buckle, “there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind
+as the love of money.”
+
+DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication
+between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care
+for anything properly said.
+
+DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the
+way of pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest
+contrivances in this fashion--probably dropped down to him by the
+inventor angling for a nibble of commendation--were always making one
+another's acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: “I 'm
+waiting for somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any
+accident put into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of
+humiliation.”
+
+THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the
+pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated
+in modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist
+have ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the
+bearer strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names
+in contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum
+may be instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the
+memory of my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are
+individuals with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum
+& Cheetam, Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to
+be true. But it was once, if it is not now, an actuality.
+
+I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately
+becomes a great literary centre.
+
+THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.
+There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.
+
+EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that
+goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him
+among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he
+dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only
+in the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that
+the world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist,
+or the historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long
+time dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure.
+Up to that point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or
+underrated him, or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the
+eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily
+under its dominion. It invariably represents him as either a greater or
+a smaller personage than he actually is. Presently the simulacrum
+works no more spells, good or evil, and the deception is unveiled. The
+hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and the idol of yesterday,
+which seemed so important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and
+carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he
+chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is
+found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on
+a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks
+to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust
+may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation
+of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is
+ever a wide discrepancy.
+
+A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by
+Charles Brookfield, the English actor, in his “Random Recollections.”
+ Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and
+Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson,
+and others. “After dinner,” relates the random recollector, “the poet
+insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair
+_more Americano_. There were strangers in the room, and he was
+expostulated with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your
+feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very
+comfortable as I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another.
+'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father,
+'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet.” That _more
+Americano_ of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular
+flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the
+prince of courtesy--as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It
+will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor
+of it.
+
+GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct
+historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The
+spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of
+him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be
+made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care
+of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air
+surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible
+record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The
+tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works
+of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can
+picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that
+scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up
+the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical
+argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of
+government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art
+wither quickly.
+
+ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of
+the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do
+so, would I?
+
+SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs--putting in his oar, so
+to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other
+evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen
+present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a
+rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced
+by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece
+of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it
+imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special
+branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work
+requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing
+an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are
+employed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular
+indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application,
+finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve demanded by his task,
+he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in
+order that his hand may recover the requisite precision of touch. As
+I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of
+sensibility came drifting into my memory. “The hand of little employment
+hath the daintier sense,” says Shakespeare, who has left nothing unsaid.
+
+IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary
+deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and
+nights the streets of Tokio--where the squat little brown houses look
+for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture
+of the Japanese--were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made
+gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and
+mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into
+lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched
+across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha
+whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The
+spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that.
+
+     A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers,
+     Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers--
+     Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice
+     And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.
+
+     Each day has its fair or its festival there,
+     And life seems immune to all trouble and care--
+     Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,
+     Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
+
+     They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars,
+     And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars;
+     They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone,
+     As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
+
+     They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs,
+     And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs:
+     Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black,
+     And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
+
+     On roadside and street toddling images meet,
+     And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet;
+     Their obis are tied with particular pride,
+     Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.
+
+     With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat,
+     Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat;
+     A fan by its play whispers, “Go now!” or “Stay!”
+      “I hate you!”  “I love you!”--a fan can say that!
+     Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three
+     Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea;
+     They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear
+     Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.
+
+     At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight,
+     With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight--
+     Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead,
+     Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
+
+     Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume
+     Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom;
+     On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,
+     They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
+
+     At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near,
+     A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear;
+     Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings
+     The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
+
+THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the
+theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing.
+The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for
+deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds
+usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a
+facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for
+this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been
+indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors.
+
+AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French
+gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which
+always has the air of saying: “I have lived!”
+
+WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always
+instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory
+playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing
+the phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they
+remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single
+reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred
+lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good
+memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly
+the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons
+possessing it. The small boy who defined memory as “the thing you forget
+with” described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of
+men and women.
+
+THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong
+argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One
+publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a
+dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.
+
+THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets
+tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For
+many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and
+fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering
+she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender
+figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair.
+
+FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught
+“to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing”--especially the
+fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.
+
+The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would
+have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and
+been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly
+dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as “what
+song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself
+among women.” He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his
+breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker
+is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for
+such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where
+everybody knows everybody and what everybody has for lunch.
+
+I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying
+that “Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice.” I went rather
+confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light
+luggage of cynical maxims.
+
+THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to
+serve as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it
+logically might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of
+the _abattoir_, the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the
+victim or the criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious
+moment as to another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not,
+and cannot, read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors.
+Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a
+difference. There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In
+every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
+There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime music for the many.
+
+G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not
+accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his
+conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to
+the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one
+electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
+
+
+I HAVE thought of an essay to be called “On the Art of Short-Story
+Writing,” but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It
+would be too _intime_, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own
+ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of
+importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the
+last paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all
+digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told
+about the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will
+talk, and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over
+the dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy
+that makes my characters pretty mad.
+
+THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as
+a madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three
+centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his
+wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert
+Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man
+into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the
+boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times
+the pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of
+encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially
+practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it
+by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or
+a mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it.
+
+A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually
+with noble books, with “high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of
+courtesy,” teaches the soul good manners.
+
+THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of
+mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and
+women eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or
+chaotic. Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a
+sense of tolerant superiority when they say: “Of course this is not the
+kind of thing _you_ would like.” Sometimes these impressionable souls
+almost seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish.
+
+I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself buried on the edge of the
+pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating
+birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to
+become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: “Yes, B----- is a great
+sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his
+best friend in the Maine woods.”
+
+WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him
+bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not
+be in real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of
+real life would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable,
+and frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic
+novelist sometimes seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who
+perpetuated the old patch on the new trousers. True art selects and
+paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.
+
+THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at
+Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy
+of the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in
+bed, convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to
+prove fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture
+in aquarelle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the
+foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon
+sunlight, falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture,
+which was turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes
+rested thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just
+sent it to him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me
+since, that that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was
+waiting to bear his spirit away.
+
+CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If
+somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he
+causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw
+off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as
+in the Middle Ages.
+
+WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the
+purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not
+considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The
+word “brass” was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present,
+when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel
+circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like
+another word I have in mind--a word that has become slang, employed in
+the sense which once did not exclude it from very good society. A
+friend lately informed me that he had “fired” his housekeeper--that
+is, dismissed her. He little dreamed that he was speaking excellent
+Elizabethan.
+
+THE “Journal des Goncourt” is crowded with beautiful and hideous things,
+like a Japanese Museum.
+
+“AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw
+that she shuddered.” This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, “Can You
+Forgive Her?” Can you forgive him? is the next question.
+
+A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing.
+Possessing this quality, a trifle “no bigger than an agate-stone on the
+forefinger of an alderman” shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will
+have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets
+Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More
+durable than marble or bronze are the words, “I could not love thee,
+deare, so much, loved I not honor more.”
+
+I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall
+probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which
+I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff
+of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time
+cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece
+of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but
+he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world
+has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made
+card-catalogue of his library. “It was absurd of me to have it done,” he
+remarked. “What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two
+volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always
+find each book as fresh as if I never had read it.” This arraignment of
+his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like
+an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself,
+taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort
+of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he
+were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour
+with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there rather depressed,
+but I returned home leavened with his good spirits, which, I think, will
+never desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be
+hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.
+
+THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The
+thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is
+the sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr.
+Howells's blank-verse sketch called “Father and Mother: A Mystery”--a
+strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect
+to some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be
+standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own
+in a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to
+lie awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me.
+I should call the effect _weird_, if the word had not lately been worked
+to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch cold
+finger-tips in those three or four pages.
+
+FOR a character-study--a man made up entirely of limitations. His
+conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to
+attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it.
+
+A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer.
+During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no
+one at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on
+the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play,
+spoke “an infinite deal of nothing.” He made persistent and pathetic
+attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him “William
+the Silent”) into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor
+result--until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped
+at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish
+had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of
+excitement that morning at table. “Fresh fish!” he exclaimed; “actually
+fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can
+you tell me, sir,” he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, “what
+_kind_ of fish these are?” “Cork soles,” said the saturnine man, in a
+deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast.
+
+LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's
+line,
+
+“Her heart and morning broke together.”
+
+Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same
+platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to
+have its mischief-making bacilli. The late “incomparable and ingenious
+Dean of St. Paul's” says,
+
+“The day breaks not, it is my heart.”
+
+I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the
+malady in a milder form when he wrote:
+
+“Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.”
+
+The charming naivete of it!
+
+
+SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening
+during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt
+picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror--_Dearling_,
+mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance
+upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a
+more charming adjective than the one that has replaced it.
+
+A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely
+buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of
+matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded
+from the definitive edition of his collected writings.
+
+     He gave the people of his best;
+     His worst he kept, his best he gave.
+
+One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to
+any possible future publisher of his poems:
+
+     Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,
+     Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer!
+     But my anathema on thee and thine
+     If thou add'st aught to what is printed here.
+
+THE claim of this country to call itself “The Land of the Free” must be
+held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not
+belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his
+daily bread.
+
+THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish
+race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash,
+usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea.
+I had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who
+reigns over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear
+lawn. It was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to
+belong New England. “It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day,” she
+said, looking up at me. _“I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould
+mother's grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at
+Mullingar.”_ I have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.
+
+
+SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture
+bureau, an old client of his remarked: “He was a most capable manager,
+but it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five
+per cent. commission.” “Pond's Extract,” murmured one of the gentlemen
+present.
+
+EACH of our great towns has its “Little Italy,” with shops where nothing
+is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had
+better not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic
+communities seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little
+Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the
+ocean in order to visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older
+civilizations.
+
+POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are
+made possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious
+demand for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the
+atmosphere stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there
+been no Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely
+puts it,
+
+     Men became
+     Poets, for the air was fame.
+
+THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner
+opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human
+experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact.
+Now he takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the
+absconding bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question
+of distance, the man has positively no choice between a theatre and a
+graveyard. I met him this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity
+Church with a bridal party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing
+Cambridge Bridge, I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on his
+way to Mount Auburn. The wedding afforded him no pleasure, and the
+funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a factor in both. It is his odd
+destiny to be wholly detached from the vital part of his own acts. If
+the carriage itself could speak! The autobiography of a public hack
+written without reservation would be dramatic reading.
+
+IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for
+essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall
+write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves
+me, and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume
+has become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions,
+good and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection.
+
+A STAGE DIRECTION: _exit time; enter Eternity--with a soliloquy._
+
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+
+
+
+TOM FOLIO
+
+IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about
+town, furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a
+man of ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low,
+hesitating voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout
+worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking
+somewhat of his master's flavor--suggesting rather than imitating
+it--which he signed “Tom Folio.” I forget how he glided into my
+acquaintanceship; doubtless in some way too shy and elusive for
+remembrance. I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one did, but the
+intercourse between us was most cordial, and our chance meetings and
+bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen years.
+
+Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseudonym--was sparely built and under
+medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it seem so,
+with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not his.
+Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first
+glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left
+you doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and
+would have attracted your attention even in a crowd.
+
+During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him
+only out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his
+hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an
+eye he became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew
+had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an
+instant later, an almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of
+light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of
+his hat, had perpetrated an unintentional deception by leading one to
+suppose a head profusely covered with curly locks. “Tom Folio,” I said,
+“put on your hat and come back!” But after that day he never seemed young
+to me.
+
+I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and
+the book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is
+possible I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at
+the South End or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his
+coffee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or
+two fortuitous hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared,
+some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty
+or thirty at least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter
+pie, just as another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The
+only fireside companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was
+a Maltese cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to
+time. I suspected those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss
+Mowcher.
+
+If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of
+them, and not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more
+picturesque solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures
+introduced into the background of the canvas would have spoiled the
+artistic effect.
+
+Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a recluse even when he allowed
+himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of
+humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and
+its busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little
+real knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate
+environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen,
+they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded
+room I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty--the couch (a
+sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the
+litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings,
+among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and
+perhaps--nay, surely--an _editio princeps_ of the “Essays.”
+
+The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple
+than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part
+of the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important
+edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be,
+in spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles
+Lamb passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East
+India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still
+seated, quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon
+Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the
+“Essays,” describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities
+which occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible
+impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the “lean annuitant”
+ was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray
+scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known
+to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten
+magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles,
+yes--but Charles Lamb's! “The king's chaff is as good as other people's
+corn,” says Tom Folio.
+
+Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of
+a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of
+fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak
+Walton was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though
+he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of “Cato” contained some proper
+good lines. Our friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly
+preferring the literature of the earlier periods to that of the
+Victorian age. His smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various
+modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous
+pretty, but over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct
+with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been
+composed in the moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you
+wanted a sound mind in a sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's
+“Essay on Man.” There was something winsome and by-gone in the general
+make-up of Tom Folio. No man living in the world ever seemed to me to
+live so much out of it, or to live more comfortably.
+
+At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment.
+Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental
+journey, the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle
+sadness. It was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio
+had any love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy,
+platonic sort--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or
+Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa.
+
+Although Tom Folio was not a collector--that means dividends and bank
+balances--he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with
+a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare
+Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an
+undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling,
+though he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly
+have drunk any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's
+time. These things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense;
+in a spiritual sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned
+thus much of his tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the
+rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities.
+
+I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that
+I mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather
+steep staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which
+I have imagined for him--a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to
+believe, and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent
+moral of “The Industrious and Idle Apprentices” pinned against the
+chimney breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always the best of
+company, dropped in at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special
+chair reserved for him by the window, where he could catch a glimpse of
+the pretty housemaid over the way, chatting with the policeman at the
+area railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author of “The Deserted
+Village” were frequent visitors, sometimes appearing together
+arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, following
+obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastly more
+aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter or wholesomer.
+Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of the
+“Arcadia”), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others before
+whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to
+gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick
+Steele, Dean Swift--there was no end to them! On certain nights, when
+all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street
+stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with
+invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary
+glare of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither.
+A man so sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely.
+
+My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less
+insubstantial--that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ,
+to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the
+brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper
+when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday
+afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered
+woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market
+knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom
+Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of
+Dock Square. _Noblesse oblige!_ He was no stranger in those purlieus.
+Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a
+certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom
+Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the
+Cherwell at Oxford.
+
+I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a
+pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation,
+he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the
+squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses
+and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half
+consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful
+resignation of it all.
+
+Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was
+told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little
+heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old
+Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself--a
+personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen
+again!
+
+Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town,
+I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change,
+but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering
+the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down
+a musty volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on
+Cornhill.
+
+
+
+
+FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our
+countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable
+desire to present something typical in the way of names for his
+adopted characters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his
+nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls
+into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting
+some city directory, in which he would find more material than he could
+exhaust in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have secured in the pages
+of such a compendium a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee
+sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could
+have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young
+woman from “the States” in his novel called “Is He Popenjoy?”
+
+To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia
+Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than
+was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and
+manners was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English
+tourist's preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on
+the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his
+indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it
+was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as
+comical (just as Trollope strikes _us_ as comical), or, at least, as not
+serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish
+young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd
+to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and
+on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there.
+It is a notable circumstance that extraordinary names never seem
+extraordinary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were
+branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite
+unconscious of anything out of the common.
+
+I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but
+English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not
+thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or
+dead, can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for
+example--if the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as
+remarkable, in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British
+officer who was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of
+blessed memory 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished
+himself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine
+Coffin. I trust that the gallant major became a colonel later and is
+still alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to lose a man with a
+name like that.
+
+Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of “The Pall Mall
+Gazette” an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was
+arrested (it ought to have been by “a peeler”) for purloining money
+from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of
+Bradford--_des noms bien idylliques!_ What mortal could have a more
+ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled Onions?
+And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more incredible
+coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No story-writer
+would dare to present that fact or those names in his fiction; neither
+would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. Fleabody is _ben
+trovato_.
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON”
+
+THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in “L'Aiglon”--an episode
+whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the point
+of a rapier--bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque passage in
+Victor Hugo's “Les Miserables.” It is the one intense great moment in
+the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am aware none
+of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the resemblance
+mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of Wagram, but
+the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with contending
+armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the
+mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth chapter in
+the second part of “Les Miserables” (Cosette), and runs as follows:
+
+Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre,
+support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La
+nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque
+voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme
+Virgile dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de
+la catastrophe le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse
+colline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de
+bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la
+plaine, des galops furieux traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit
+l'eclair des sabres, l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des
+bombes, l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un
+rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces
+ombres, ce sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers;
+. . . tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins
+s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque
+dans les nuees, et, dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches,
+Mont-Saint Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit,
+apparaissent confusement couronnees de tourbillons de spectres
+s'exterminant. (1)
+
+Here is the whole battle scene in “L'Aiglon,” with scarcely a gruesome
+detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the
+ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only
+through the eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled
+shapes lying motionless in various postures of death upon the
+blood-stained sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by
+like vague wailings of the wind--all this might be taken for an artful
+appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though
+it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in
+early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If
+such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity
+of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it.
+
+     (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which
+     belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like
+     all other plains.  At night, however, a kind of visionary
+     mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and
+     watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful
+     plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe
+     takes possession of him.  The terrible June 18 relives; the
+     artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion
+     disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines
+     of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by
+     furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the
+     gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of
+     bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the
+     muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like
+     dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers,
+     these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really
+     exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with
+     purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds,
+     and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-Jean,
+     Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-pear
+     dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one
+     another.
+
+The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished
+hosts is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark
+hand on the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit
+of the past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was
+standing alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not
+being alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had
+a sudden vision of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard.
+Marshal Ney rose from the grave and again shouted those heroic words
+to Drouet d'Erlon: “Are you not going to get yourself killed?” For an
+instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that
+accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived
+dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a
+white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the
+rider's hand; his three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and
+his chin rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode
+away through the twilight, and nobody cried, _Vive l'Empereur!_
+
+The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon
+every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius,
+like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical.
+This sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette
+in “Les Miserables” and the battle of the ghosts in “L'Aiglon.” A muse
+so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of
+supernaturalness from anybody.
+
+
+
+
+PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope
+“had taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels
+of character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except
+that he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former
+class, inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no
+means character.” So neat an antithesis would surely never have found
+itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly
+lent it to him. Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have
+preached, his almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always
+had a _story_ to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and
+end--in short, a framework of some description.
+
+There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing;
+but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human
+action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That “character
+in itself is plot” is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive
+with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it
+is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in
+the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say
+that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform
+us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such
+persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those
+passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing
+is inadequate.
+
+Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike
+Achilles. “Plot is by no means character.” Strictly speaking, it is
+not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being
+character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action,
+and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever
+conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of
+looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction
+_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than
+anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that “we care
+what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.”
+ I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not
+know what happens to them.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals
+some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that
+
+     The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+     In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
+     As when a giant dies.
+
+I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though
+distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend
+that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to
+take into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for
+knowledge.
+
+Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the “London
+Lancet,” I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology
+delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association
+in London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper
+yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and
+palpitating.
+
+The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the
+point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited
+certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go
+very strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that
+the weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs.
+
+Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres
+with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the
+precise object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but
+probably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape.
+
+To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some
+slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded:
+
+I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a
+very decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch
+its toes? Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would
+rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a
+sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The
+spinal cord seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it
+will soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now
+_spontaneously_ drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its
+neck erect just as if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its
+toes, and you see the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the
+offending instrument. Does it still feel? and is the motion still the
+result of the volition?
+
+That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there
+seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that
+having once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the
+table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He
+then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its
+foot again, the frog again “resenting the stimulation.” He then thrust
+a needle down the spinal cord. “The limbs are now flaccid,” observed the
+experimenter; “we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes
+will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move.” Here is
+where congratulations can come in for _la grenouille_. That frog being
+concluded, the lecturer continued:
+
+I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the
+brain and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and
+hang the animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent
+legs without any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The
+leg of the same side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely.
+. . . Both legs are thrown into motion.
+
+Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still
+suffer acutely, the professor resumed:
+
+The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so
+I put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see,
+gives rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice
+particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same
+side for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole
+animal into water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all
+at rest again. . . . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar
+region of the spine. . . . Both feet are instantly raised to the
+irritated spot. The animal is able to localize the seat of irritation.
+. . . I wash the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the feet at
+the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of acid over the knee of the footless
+leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the leg towards the knee, as if to
+reach the irritated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now
+available. But watch the other foot. The _foot of the other leg_ is now
+being used to rub away the acid. The animal, finding that the object is
+not accomplished with the foot of the same side, uses the other one.
+
+I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced
+reader of these excerpts, namely--that any frog (with its head on or its
+head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of Professor
+Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit science may
+have derived from such association I am not qualified to pronounce upon.
+The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a peculiarly sensitive
+and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the genial professor, in
+the years which followed, did not frequently consider it necessary to
+demonstrate the fact.
+
+
+
+
+LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt
+as a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to
+Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor
+a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was
+a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe,
+optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
+singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who
+has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer.
+
+I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since
+his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as
+extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in
+this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist
+may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for
+inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist.
+Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than
+the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies,
+and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His
+chief claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic
+studies, his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives
+to reproduce the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner,
+he naturally sings much of rural English life, but his England is the
+England of two or three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about
+the “falcon,” but the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings
+against the bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished
+library was--if I may be pardoned a mixed image--the rock on which Barry
+Cornwall split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked
+into his books.
+
+A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world
+is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had
+better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The
+sea is one of these. The man who sang,
+
+     The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+     The blue, the fresh, _the ever free!_
+
+(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never
+have permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of
+Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly
+vapid poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever
+laid eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and
+in looking over Barry Cornwall's “Life and Letters” I am not so much
+surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land
+in the whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more
+positively than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he
+was hardly ever sick at sea.
+
+Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods,
+piping such thin feebleness as
+
+“The blue, the fresh, the ever free!”
+
+To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited
+to a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even
+frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and
+Turtle will not enable one to write sea poetry.
+
+Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement,
+
+     I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!
+     I am where I would ever be.
+
+The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor,
+but they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich
+ends with a striking piece of realism:
+
+     If a storm should come and awake the deep,
+     What matter?  I shall ride and sleep.
+
+This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale.
+The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each
+in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the
+storm is over.
+
+Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality,
+for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as
+Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of
+his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a
+glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an
+author does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is
+of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he
+had written more prose like his admirable “Recollections of Elia.”
+
+Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is
+extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
+
+     Touch us gently, Time!
+     Let us glide adown thy stream,
+was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without
+questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but
+infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities.
+He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how
+to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head.
+In “Hero and Leander” there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth
+any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
+
+     So might they now have lived, and so have died;
+     _The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side_.
+
+Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on
+everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of “Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel”
+ are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a
+handful.
+
+
+
+
+DECORATION DAY
+
+HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes
+to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she
+smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate
+flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery
+of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in
+unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the
+foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where
+the menacing shell described its curve through the air, a harmless crow
+flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing
+the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at
+last the once hotly contested battleground differs from none of its
+quiet surroundings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer
+tint and the grasses a deeper emerald.
+
+It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are
+left other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army
+sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over
+the mantel-piece of the “best room” of many a town and country house
+in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero
+is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from
+generation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us
+trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the
+resting-places of those who fell during the Civil War.
+
+     With the tears a Land hath shed
+     Their graves should ever be green.
+
+     Ever their fair, true glory
+     Fondly should fame rehearse--
+     Light of legend and story,
+     Flower of marble and verse.
+
+The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of
+our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our
+own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the
+generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall
+into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow,
+should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt.
+
+Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How
+different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through
+our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and
+greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim
+cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into
+peach blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains,
+except the presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and
+there an empty sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that
+empty sleeve is less in evidence.
+
+The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and
+confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The
+earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity.
+It quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the
+sequestered country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern
+cities were being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come
+to us that there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as
+tender and sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon
+those mounds. There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two
+years after the close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi,
+laid their offerings alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is
+said, the great Nation has but one heart.
+
+
+
+
+WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating
+and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial
+and entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable
+individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to
+meet him. The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your
+gripsack on your summer vacation--the poet whom you have so long desired
+to know personally--is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who
+fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the
+commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had
+painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young
+poets--the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never
+neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by
+appearing before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating
+glance, who stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when
+you ask him his opinion of “The Glees of the Gulches,” by Popocatepetl
+Jones. The slender, dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with
+epigrammatic points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a
+short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose conversation does not sparkle
+at all, and you were on the lookout for the most brilliant of verbal
+fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you have idealized. Fresh from
+witnessing his delightful comedy of manners, you meet him face to face
+only to discover that his own manners are anything but delightful.
+The play and the playwright are two very distinct entities. You grow
+skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that the style is the
+man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author in the flesh
+has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed?
+
+After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk
+as cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist
+necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a
+poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional
+dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as
+prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is.
+
+
+
+
+ON EARLY RISING
+
+A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years
+to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a
+case of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising;
+from which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie
+abed late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the
+majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple
+fact that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth
+milestone he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit
+to him. As the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily
+reached the conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep
+late, instead of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are
+old. He moreover failed to take into account the numberless young lives
+that have been shortened by matutinal habits.
+
+The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told
+that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate
+of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb,
+which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by
+showing how extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm,
+and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that
+has overslept himself.
+
+The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New
+England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort.
+It is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is
+directly the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned
+by Lafcadio Hearn in his enchanting “Two Years in the French West
+Indies”--a species of colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the
+creole tongue, _cabritt-bois_. This ingenious pest works a soothing,
+sleep-compelling chant from sundown until precisely half past four in
+the morning, when it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens everybody
+it has lulled into slumber with its insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with
+strange obtuseness to the enormity of the thing, blandly remarks: “For
+thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its
+song is the signal to get up.” I devoutly trust that none of the West
+India islands furnishing such satanic entomological specimens will
+ever be annexed to the United States. Some of our extreme advocates of
+territorial expansion might spend a profitable few weeks on one of those
+favored isles. A brief association with that _cabritt-bois_ would be
+likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist.
+
+An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon
+daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at
+mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than
+their precept--or their poetry. Thomson, the author of “The Castle of
+Indolence,” who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe,
+
+“Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,”
+
+was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed
+until noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be
+seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat
+pockets, eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English
+poets who at that epoch celebrated what they called “the effulgent orb
+of day” were denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven
+months out of the twelve.
+
+In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is
+there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even
+from a nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the
+shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when “the very houses seem asleep,”
+ as Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the
+milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at
+the seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though
+familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness
+or occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of
+his life has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may
+profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in
+the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to
+go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the
+sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him--a momentary
+Adam--the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the
+similitude of a three-pound trout.
+
+In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by
+candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no
+other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early
+riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the
+wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small
+things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his
+conceit in his bill.
+
+
+
+
+UN POETE MANQUE
+
+IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little
+poem which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to
+entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical
+intermezzo. I have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza:
+
+     I taste a liquor never brewed
+     In vats upon the Rhine;
+     No tankard ever held a draught
+     Of alcohol like mine.
+
+     Inebriate of air am I,
+     And debauchee of dew,
+     Reeling, through endless summer days,
+     From inns of molten blue.
+
+     When landlords turn the drunken bee
+     Out of the Foxglove's door,
+     When butterflies renounce their drams,
+     I shall but drink the more!
+     Till seraphs swing their snowy caps
+     And saints to windows run,
+     To see the little tippler
+     Leaning against the sun!
+
+Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets
+himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking
+matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less.
+This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in
+structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss
+Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The
+artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains
+unforgivable:
+
+     This is the land the sunset washes,
+     These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
+     Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
+     These are the western mystery!
+
+     Night after night her purple traffic
+     Strews the landing with opal bales;
+     Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
+     Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
+
+The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude
+Lorraine. One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of
+impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio.
+
+It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss
+Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of
+it in his preface to the volume: “In many cases these verses will seem
+to the reader _like poetry pulled up by the roots_, with rain and dew
+and earth clinging to them.” Possibly it might be objected that this is
+not the best way to gather either flowers or poetry.
+
+Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind.
+She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced
+by the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her
+bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden
+at Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had
+much fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent
+flashes of imagination.
+
+That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want
+of a more precise name, we term _quality_, is not to be denied. But
+the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are
+fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite
+line or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an
+isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says
+of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: “Donne is full of
+salient verses that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with
+their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us like charades and then
+delight us with the felicity of their solution; but these have not saved
+him. He is exiled to the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary.”
+
+Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say
+(it appears that he said it “in his earlier and better days”), and Mr.
+Higginson quotes it: “No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can
+outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.” This is a proposition to
+which one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately
+stated. A suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is
+furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty
+enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes
+the artist from the bungler--the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when
+writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or
+“in his earlier and better days.”
+
+Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved
+significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no
+continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager
+listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song,
+has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale.
+
+
+
+
+THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned
+English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The
+piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness,
+and obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a
+collection of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through.
+The one thing in it that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful
+costume of a certain player who looked like a fine old portrait--by
+Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say--that had come to life and kicked off
+its tarnished frame.
+
+I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play
+was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that
+the actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic
+periods. This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the
+special pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was
+not in himself interesting; he was like that Major Waters in “Pepys's
+Diary”--“a most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in
+love, which makes him bad company;” it was entirely Delorme's dress.
+
+I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The
+material was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some
+dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of
+a doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the
+gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description
+hanging negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat,
+showing a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full
+trousers reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft
+hat--not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear,
+one side jauntily fastened up with a jewel--completed the essential
+portions of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride
+in, to sit in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I
+will do Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe
+tests. But he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my
+countrymen would throw aside their present hideous habiliments and
+hasten to the measuring-room of Delorme's tailor.
+
+In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the
+monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck
+themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us,
+for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors
+in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are
+really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch
+a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four
+or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being
+something that had escaped from somewhere.
+
+Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made
+no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo
+themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own
+sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I
+wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to
+inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular
+swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird
+and gets him mistaken for the waiter. “As long as a man wears the modern
+coat,” says Leigh Hunt, “he has no right to despise any dress. What
+snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut
+about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button,
+and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of
+buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as
+indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits
+of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There is
+absolutely not one iota of sense, grace, or even economy in the modern
+coat.”
+
+Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a
+Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head
+shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal
+decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an
+Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first “marked-down”
+ article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to
+the eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the
+skull of a barbarian.
+
+It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our
+friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though
+there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to
+warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted
+only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a celluloid collar and
+a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an
+involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume of
+our own time.
+
+
+
+
+ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is
+no accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical
+temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise
+for themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may
+incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot
+help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their
+environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should
+openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family
+tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened
+to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to
+be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that
+resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting
+guest.
+
+The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a
+shadow lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under
+his desk are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would
+not be able to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect
+the integrity of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more
+recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow.
+
+The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled “Forsaken,” in which she
+addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes.
+He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent
+spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of
+lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem--a rose whose countless
+petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not
+have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform
+the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of
+happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but
+one) and darkly intimates that the end is “nigh” (rhyming affably with
+“sigh”), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in
+making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of
+the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of
+your sympathy.
+
+This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of
+David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance
+to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of
+health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success
+justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and
+played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in
+one of his sonnets.
+
+In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) “Life and Letters of John Keats”
+ it is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his
+lips after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: “I know the color
+of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop
+is my death-warrant. I must die.” Who that ever read the passage
+could forget it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as
+happening to himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment:
+
+     Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain,
+     There came arterial blood, and with a sigh
+     Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein,
+     That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
+
+The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment
+should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger
+things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's
+pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--_Here lies one whose name_ _was writ in
+water_--finds an echo in David Gray's _Below lies one whose name was
+traced in sand_. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
+
+
+
+
+WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me
+in many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of
+print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain
+readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem
+exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent,
+would have others share it.
+
+The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of
+unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in
+measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the
+method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a
+little town situated in the no-man's-land of “The Tempest” and “A
+Midsummer Night's Dream”--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the
+dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their
+various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness,
+the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages
+of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers,
+gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in
+turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the
+streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare
+of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place,
+and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm.
+A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many
+passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the
+curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this
+mimic drama of life.
+
+The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could
+name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an
+atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an
+imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in
+certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains
+one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an
+example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such
+exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly
+for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to “Wishmakers'
+Town,” not knowing better how to do it.
+
+     Myrtle, and eglantine,
+     For the old love and the new!
+     And the columbine,
+     With its cap and bells, for folly!
+     And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue,
+     For melancholy!
+     But of all the blossoms that blow,
+     Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may,
+     This gentle guest,
+     Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray,
+     Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low
+     Upon her breast.
+     For the orange flower
+     Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood
+     Is the love of maidenhood;
+     And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
+     He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
+     No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem
+     So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years,
+     At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
+     The past shall arise,
+     And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
+     And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise
+     Though he stand in the Shambles of death.
+In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is
+the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life:
+
+     Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame,
+     Plot, and plunder, and disagree!
+     O but the game is a royal game!
+     O but your tourneys are fair to see!
+
+     None too hopeful we found our lives;
+     Sore was labor from day to day;
+     Still we strove for our babes and wives--
+     Now, to the trumpet, we march away!
+
+     “Why?”--For some one hath will'd it so!
+     Nothing we know of the why or the where--
+     To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow--
+     Nothing we know, and little we care.
+
+     Give us to kill!--since this is the end
+     Of love and labor in Nature's plan;
+     Give us to kill and ravish and rend,
+     Yea, since this is the end of man.
+
+     States shall perish, and states be born:
+     Leaders, out of the throng, shall press;
+     Some to honor, and some to scorn:
+     We, that are little, shall yet be less.
+
+     Over our lines shall the vultures soar;
+     Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry;
+     And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore;
+     And daily the living shall pray to die.
+
+     Nay, what matter!--When all is said,
+     Prince and Bishop will plunder still:
+     Lord and Lady must dance and wed.
+     Pity us, pray for us, ye that will!
+
+It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents
+me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The
+Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World
+miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the
+thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of
+readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that
+it will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable
+rearrangement of present poetic values.
+
+The author of “Wishmakers' Town” is the child of his period, and has not
+escaped the _maladie du siecle_. The doubt and pessimism that marked
+the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes
+with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet
+who speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of
+hope. Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to
+sing
+
+     Of what the world shall be
+     When the years have died away.
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's
+“Hugh Wynne,” I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and
+principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of
+actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving
+shocks in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary
+realm--in the realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air of
+possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local
+color, having an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged.
+You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of the period in which his
+narrative is laid, since the period is as vague as the geography.
+He walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils that beset
+the story-teller who ventures to stray beyond the bounds of the
+make-believe. One peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting human
+nature.
+
+The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to
+reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether
+wonderfully and fearfully made--the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron
+characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory
+rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so
+unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is
+supposed to hold up to nature.
+
+In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father,
+mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually
+the anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold
+twenty swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them
+before he escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly
+behind him. How tired one gets of that door! The “caitiff” in these
+chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from
+“the highest battlement”--the second highest would not do at all; or
+else he is thrown into “the deepest dungeon of the castle”--the second
+deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero
+habitually “cleaves” his foeman “to the midriff,” the “midriff”
+ being what the properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain
+fictional historian of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim:
+“My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;” but that is an exceptionally
+lofty flight of diction. My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in
+the course of long interviews with her lover remains unrecognized--a
+diaphanous literary invention that must have been old when the Pyramids
+were young. The heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called
+“a springald,” puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for
+his sister or anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility
+that is not at home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen--a
+priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene:
+
+     \          The princess rose to her feet and
+     approached the priest.
+     \          “Father,” she said swiftly, “this
+     is not the Lady Joan, my brother's
+     wife, but a youth marvelously like
+     her, who hath offered himself in
+     her place that she might escape. . . .
+     He is the Count von Loen, a lord
+     of Kernsburg.  And I love him.  We
+     want you to marry us now, dear
+     Father--now, without a moment's
+     delay; for if you do not they will
+     kill him, and I shall have to marry
+     Prince Wasp!”
+
+This is from “Joan of the Sword Hand,” and if ever I read a more silly
+performance I have forgotten it.
+
+
+
+
+POOR YORICK
+
+THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac
+which I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a
+bracket in Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players--the apartment remains
+as he left it that solemn June day ten years ago--stands a sadly
+dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin,
+used to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act
+of “Hamlet.”
+
+A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant;
+it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull
+is especially a skull “with a past.”
+
+In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild
+West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly
+undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it
+seemed, was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman--in
+brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort
+of person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the
+course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily
+disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in
+the florid mind of his sometime benefactor.
+
+As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in
+Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier
+basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance
+of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it
+figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the
+actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features
+of that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard
+III. in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo
+usurped his seat at table.
+
+In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner,
+which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the
+tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary
+stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of
+“Hamlet.” “Take it away, you black imp!” thundered the actor to the
+equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him
+to investigate the dark nature of his burden.
+
+Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee,
+recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim
+humor of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the
+testator's whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure
+an engagement to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company
+of strolling players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind
+the footlights in the hands of his famous son.
+
+Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging
+the thing--the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the
+cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache
+counterfeit manufactured in the property-room of the theatre. During
+his subsequent wanderings in Australia and California, he carefully
+preserved the relic, which finally found repose on the bracket in
+question.
+
+How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth
+floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer
+twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull
+until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten,
+if ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order
+to establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was
+conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance
+not without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance
+really was.
+
+Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober
+enough now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of
+merriment “that were wont to set the table on a roar.” But I did not
+regret his evaporated hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial
+silence, and had learned to look upon his rather open countenance with
+the same friendliness as that with which I regarded the faces of
+less phantasmal members of the club. He had become to me a dramatic
+personality as distinct as that of any of the Thespians I met in the
+grillroom or the library.
+
+Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently
+speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in
+those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old
+experience had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had
+known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him
+into contact with a varied assortment of men and women, and extended
+his horizon. His more peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on
+lonely roads had surely not been without incident. It was inconceivable
+that all this had left no impressions. He must have had at least a faint
+recollection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick
+had formed his estimate of me, and probably not a flattering one, is
+something of which I am strongly convinced.
+
+At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal
+cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of
+the precious things I lost then.
+
+The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players
+has been, as I have said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from time to
+time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the
+centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory
+paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this
+chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull
+finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor
+Yorick had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had
+that happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner
+in my study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no
+more.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+     One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
+     --_King Lear._
+
+THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his
+manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal
+relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance
+to which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that
+might otherwise not seem becoming.
+
+No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his
+autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of
+books and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is
+importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who
+“collect” autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no
+interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as
+possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence,
+reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was “the
+buttonholes of all nations.”
+
+In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two
+hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the
+literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast
+a sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two
+hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some
+favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then,
+that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it
+embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to
+be regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile
+of unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis,
+he quickly finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile
+correspondence. Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to
+become facile prey.
+
+A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always
+studied the idiosyncrasies of his “subject” as carefully as another
+sort of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates
+a midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and
+adroit approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According
+to the revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and
+Mr. Gladstone had their respective point of easy access--their one
+unfastened door or window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man
+has his weak side.
+
+Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was
+perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for
+instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one
+day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the
+shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I
+handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription.
+“Oh, yes,” he said, smiling, “I know 'em by instinct.” Relieved of its
+envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began
+with the usual amusing solecism: “As one of the most famous of American
+authors I would like to possess your autograph.”
+
+Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding.
+Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson,
+always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps.
+
+Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a
+card; but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter
+addressed to him personally--“on any subject you please,” as an immature
+scribe lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous
+youth purposed to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate
+competitors, in order to show them that he was on familiar terms with
+the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many
+a collector. The stratagems he employs to compass his end are
+inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note to inquire in what year you
+first published your beautiful poem entitled “A Psalm of Life.” If you
+are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him that you are not the author
+of that poem, which he must have confused with your “Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner”--and there you are. Another expedient is to ask if your
+father's middle name was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably
+been dead many years, and as perhaps he was not a public man in his day,
+you are naturally touched that any one should have interest in him after
+this long flight of time. In the innocence of your heart you reply by
+the next mail that your father's middle name was not Hierophilus, but
+Epaminondas--and there you are again. It is humiliating to be caught
+swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch of one's genealogical
+tree.
+
+Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing
+parchment with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This
+document--I am relating an actual occurrence--announces with a flourish
+that you have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The
+Kalamazoo International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does
+not take away your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make
+an acknowledgment, and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging
+secretary of a literary organization which does not exist anywhere on
+earth.
+
+A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who
+advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed
+list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue,
+price, style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These
+interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher;
+but they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped “thanks in advance.”
+ The natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk
+commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or,
+possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant.
+Eight or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping
+you will not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list
+of your writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same
+words. The length of time it takes him to “replenish” his library (with
+your books) strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions
+sufficiently to pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this
+gentleman cares nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile
+point of view he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens,
+which he disposes of to dealers in such frail merchandise.
+
+The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and
+biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some
+slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a signed photograph and
+a copy of your bookplate are here in order--is also a character which
+periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions
+there are as many players as men have fancies.
+
+A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the
+book of his experience: “Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of
+a rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly
+a woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss
+of her little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a
+dozen lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of
+a child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing
+air of doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the
+entire poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am
+unable to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused
+when, two months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat
+price attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop.”
+
+Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very
+poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other
+class of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of
+confirmed invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection
+between incipient spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which
+superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that
+one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases
+his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which
+leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors
+for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole
+resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal
+to one's sympathy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, however,
+I have my suspicions, suspicions that are shared by several men of
+letters, who have come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the
+majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very old and familiar
+tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class,
+is excellent.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+I
+
+A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of
+the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for
+more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was
+aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in
+countless quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were
+not much regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world
+in this matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not
+arrived!
+
+Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family
+in Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was
+John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman
+in 1535, and afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or
+Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--had five sons, the second of
+which sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in
+December, 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a
+sister to Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the
+many children of this marriage was Robert Herrick.
+
+It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was
+the poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an
+unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage
+of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the
+slightest record.
+
+Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and
+baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had
+several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves.
+It would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the
+little we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without
+dragging in the rest of the family.
+
+When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas
+Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window.
+Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high
+almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to
+the estate, “all goods and chattels of suicides” becoming his by law.
+The circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the
+good bishop, after long litigation, consented to refer the case to
+arbitrators, who awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving
+the question at issue--whether or not Herrick's death had been his own
+premeditated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular
+law, which had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to
+encourage suicide among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle
+classes, was afterward rescinded.
+
+Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate
+amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand
+pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's
+two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the
+latter subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and
+money-lender to James I., were appointed guardians to the children.
+
+     (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial
+     Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item
+     from Win-wood's _Manorials of Affairs of State_: “On Easter
+     Tuesday [1605], one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in
+     Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great
+     Diamond the King cloth wear.  The party little expected the
+     honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an
+     extraordinary liking of it.”
+
+Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his
+fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned
+the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's
+indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have
+offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term
+expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge,
+which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two
+years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and
+the pursuit of the law--the two frequently go together. He received his
+degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the
+law for the arts.
+
+During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly
+allowance of ten pounds--a not illiberal provision, the pound being then
+five times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the
+master of arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his
+own share of his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for
+complaint; if otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance.
+
+The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few
+chance-preserved letters written to his “most careful uncle,” as he
+calls that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and
+dreary epistles, which are signed “R. Hearick,” the writer says: “The
+essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for
+my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the
+ordinarie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you
+maye.” He also indulges in the natural wish that his college bills
+“had leaden wings and tortice feet.” This was in 1617. The young man's
+patrimony, whatever it may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to
+“many a throe and pinches of the purse.” For the moment, at least, his
+prospects were not flattering.
+
+Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the
+university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he
+was not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his
+wits before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court
+circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful,
+allies in the persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master
+John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems,
+honored by the music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at
+Westminster, it is more than possible that Herrick was brought to the
+personal notice of Charles and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise
+of success, but not success itself. It has been thought probable that
+Herrick may have secured some minor office in the chapel at Whitehall.
+That would accord with his subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as
+chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle
+of Rhe.
+
+Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not
+ascertainable. If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he
+led meanwhile was not such as his “most careful uncle” would have warmly
+approved. The literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a
+free-lance like young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing
+in manuscript from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as
+a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship,
+unless it were to the worship of “rare Ben Jonson,” at whose feet
+Herrick now sat, with the other blossoming young poets of the season. He
+was a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to
+the master, of which not the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson:
+
+     When I a verse shall make,
+     Know I have praid thee
+     For old religion's sake,
+     Saint Ben, to aide me.
+
+     Make the way smooth for me,
+     When I, thy Herrick,
+     Honouring thee, on my knee
+     Offer my lyric.
+
+     Candles I'll give to thee,
+     And a new altar;
+     And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
+     Writ in my Psalter.
+
+On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of
+Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes,
+in Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of
+his life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away
+from London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway
+and telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a
+provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness
+of a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth
+century must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated
+throb of sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or
+unhappy he may have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may
+congratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far
+from the distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his
+Muse, for there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which
+were to make his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that
+we owe the cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural
+manners and customs--the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries,
+the morris-dances, and the May-day festivals.
+
+The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked
+by the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than “a ringe
+of twenty shillings.” Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between
+them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in
+epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of
+verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew.
+One of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying
+Brother, Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to
+have been two brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is
+supposed to be referred to here.
+
+The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of
+detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have
+been irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock
+lightly. As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and
+poetry; but presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to
+sack was in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted
+the vicarship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of
+horse--with an eye to present emolument and future promotion. The
+promotion never came, and the emolument was nearly as scant as that
+of Goldsmith's parson, who considered himself “passing rich with forty
+pounds a year”--a height of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with
+his expensive town wants and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of
+his benefice--and possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial
+fees would enable him to live for the time being. It was better than a
+possible nothing a year in London.
+
+Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of
+the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the
+subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense
+of his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick
+afterward gave to the world--those astonishing epigrams upon his rustic
+enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his personal
+friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written only
+in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic
+confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him.
+
+It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate
+to the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with
+the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some
+of the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces
+grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves
+with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are
+“born of the royal blood.” They lack the inspiration and magic of his
+secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to
+stir a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at
+all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may
+read Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness
+might have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. “For
+unconscious impiety,” remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) “this rivals the
+famous passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and
+think.'” Elsewhere, in an apostrophe to “Heaven,” Herrick says:
+
+     Let mercy be
+     So kind to set me free,
+     And I will straight
+     Come in, or force the gate.
+
+In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out!
+
+     (1) In _Seventeenth-Century Studies_. and the general
+     absence of arrangement in the “Hesperides,” Dr. Grosart
+     advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary
+     authority on these points.  Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick
+     kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books
+     separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a
+     too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this
+     slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the
+     publisher, “whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate
+     proceeded to intermix these additions with the others.  That
+     the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or
+     disarrangement lies on the surface.”  This is an amiable
+     supposition, but merely a supposition.
+
+Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed
+the “copy” in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and
+if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to
+observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is
+none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness
+was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed
+the fashion _malgre lui_. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly
+should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers,
+there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their
+manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly
+unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The “Hesperides” was
+his sole publication.
+
+Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance
+at this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the
+original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or
+not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet,
+it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on
+that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to
+note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the
+first collection of his miscellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume
+containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great
+offense to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it
+represented him as an elderly person, but because of certain minute
+figures of peasant lads and lassies who are very indistinctly seen
+dancing frivolously under the trees in the background. Herrick had more
+reason to protest. The aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist
+lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the vicar occasionally
+hurled the manuscript of his sermon at the heads of his drowsy
+parishioners, accompanying the missive with pregnant remarks. He has the
+aspect of one meditating assault and battery.
+
+To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability
+of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings.
+He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's
+imprisonment--a poem full of deference and tenderness for a person
+who had evidently injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some
+affair of church preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick “became much
+beloved by the gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise)
+discourses.” It appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet
+spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away without a couplet attached
+to him:
+
+     Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see
+     For shape and service spaniell like to thee.
+
+Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he
+also sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's
+disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of
+Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at
+Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had
+taught to drink out of a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admirably
+qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when she
+communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on
+Herrick published in the “Quarterly Review” for August, 1810, and in the
+Boston edition (1) of the “Hesperides” attributed to Southey.
+
+     (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The
+     British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and
+     chronologi-cally.  On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as
+     living “in habits of intimacy” with Ben Jonson in 1648.  If
+     that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters
+     in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years.
+
+What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick
+was Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five
+pieces entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical
+hints under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual
+side-lights on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A
+whimsical personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved
+from these fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with
+perhaps less quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the
+prince of gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place
+Herrick laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what
+would have been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another
+place he tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this
+latter catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's _concetti_:
+
+     One of the five straight branches of my hand
+     Is lopt already, and the rest but stand
+     Expecting when to fall, which soon will be:
+     First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree.
+
+With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of
+himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest--he understood
+and loved music. None but a lover could have said:
+
+     The mellow touch of musick most doth wound
+     The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound.
+
+Or this to Julia:
+
+     So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,
+     As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise,
+     But listen to thee walking in thy chamber
+     Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.
+
+     . . . Then let me lye
+     Entranc'd, and lost confusedly;
+     And by thy musick stricken mute,
+     Die, and be turn'd into a lute.
+
+Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed
+by a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. “Fate likes fine names,” says
+Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting
+of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be
+embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody:
+
+     In this little urne is laid
+     Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid;
+     From whose happy spark here let
+     Spring the purple violet.
+
+Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which
+seems to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a
+pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who
+says that “Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse.” She
+was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this
+octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him:
+
+     These summer birds did with thy master stay
+     The times of warmth, but then they flew away,
+     Leaving their poet, being now grown old,
+     Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold.
+     But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide
+     As well the winter's as the summer's tide:
+     For which thy love, live with thy master here
+     Not two, but all the seasons of the year.
+
+Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew!
+
+In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls “a rude
+river,” and his characterization of Devon folk as “a people currish,
+churlish as the seas,” the fullest and pleasantest days of his life
+were probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the
+gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations.
+How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events,
+is attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its
+compensation. “I confess,” he says,
+
+     I ne'er invented such
+     Ennobled numbers for the presse
+     Than where I loath'd so much.
+
+A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was
+firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of
+his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable
+regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The
+integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not
+given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the
+panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior,
+and installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with
+pronounced Cromwellian views.
+
+Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded
+his clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were
+left of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more
+he would drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the
+air breathed by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden,
+and the rest. “Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth
+too.” In the gladness of getting back “from the dull confines of the
+drooping west,” he writes a glowing apostrophe to London--that “stony
+stepmother to poets.” He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud
+to find himself a citizen again. According to his earlier biographers,
+Herrick had much ado not to starve in that same longed-for London, and
+fell into great misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with
+justness, that Herrick's family, which was wealthy and influential,
+would not have allowed him to come to abject want. With his royalistic
+tendencies he may not have breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of
+the Commonwealth, and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot, but
+among them was not poverty.
+
+The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few
+weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume
+with the title “Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of
+Robert Herrick, Esq.”
+
+The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned--the era of the
+commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie
+in a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had
+strayed by chance into an artificial and prosaic age--a sylvan singing
+creature alighting on an alien planet. “He was too natural,” says Mr.
+Palgrave in his Chrysomela, “too purely poetical; he had not the learned
+polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn,
+which were then and onward demanded from poetry.” Yet it is strange that
+a public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who
+was fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then,
+or in the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written
+Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and
+perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics?
+
+The “Hesperides” was received with chilling indifference. None of
+Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning
+it. The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for
+more than a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In
+1796 the “Gentleman's Magazine” copied a few of the poems, and two years
+later Dr. Nathan Drake published in his “Literary Hours” three critical
+papers on the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted
+him from the “Lives of the Poets,” though space was found for half a
+score of poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810
+Dr. Nott, a physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections.
+It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained
+for the taste of our own day to multiply editions of him.
+
+In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that
+some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man
+who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity
+presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful
+of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant;
+the men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun
+make no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his
+birth and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable
+in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material
+for profundity and ciphers!
+
+
+     (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses
+     in the _Musarum Deliciae_ (1656) who mentions
+
+     That old sack
+     Young Herrick took to entertain
+     The Muses in a sprightly vein.
+
+Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648
+and 1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for
+the instant when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further
+literary work there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to
+the “Lacrymae Musarum” in 1649.
+
+He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's,
+Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in
+the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early
+manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old
+haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller
+banished, and many another comrade “in disgrace with fortune and men's
+eyes.” As Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy
+river-bank in those years, his thought must have turned more than once
+to the little vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly.
+
+On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted
+Herrick back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious
+Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the
+seventy-first anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements
+after that, tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline.
+The only notable event concerning him is recorded twelve years later
+in the parish register: “Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day
+October, 1674.” He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave
+is unknown. In 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church.
+And this is all.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life
+are as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were
+they as ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant
+compared with the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world
+his “Hesperides.” The environments of the man were accidental and
+transitory. The significant part of him we have, and that is enduring so
+long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind.
+
+A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has
+henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said
+three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may
+have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been
+always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs,
+in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as
+they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in
+reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and
+there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.
+
+Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such
+message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this
+point he somewhere says:
+
+     Let others to the printing presse run fast;
+     Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste.
+
+He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by
+many of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the
+printer.
+
+Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the “Hesperides.”
+ It was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an
+unconscionable time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his
+pieces had been set to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and
+Laniers, and his court poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier
+party, Herrick cut but a small figure at the side of several of his
+rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. It sometimes happens
+that the light love-song, reaching few or no ears at its first singing,
+outlasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, dealing with some
+passing phase of thought, social or political, gains the instant
+applause of the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is somehow
+apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, and becomes the
+yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to get
+hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble poets laureate.
+
+Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as “a great little
+novelist.” Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his
+poems, for he wrote nothing _de longue haleine_, would place him among
+the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The
+Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The
+accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one
+of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as
+exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the
+line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu,
+and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who,
+borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as
+“wood-notes wild” showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full
+of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an
+antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his
+lady-love's “winter face”--and there a couplet that breaks into unfading
+daffodils and violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His
+amatory songs and catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to
+hang on the boughs in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily
+done, not even that portion of it we could wish had not been done at
+all. Be the motive grave or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form
+which distinguishes everything in literature that has survived its
+own period. There is no such thing as “form” alone; it is only the
+close-grained material that takes the highest finish. The structure
+of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of
+innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and
+Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it
+fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat.
+
+Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are
+no “tears from the depth of some divine despair,” no probings into the
+tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos
+of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to
+the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader
+who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads
+Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers.
+A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms.
+In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled.
+His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the
+sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any
+complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to
+duplicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl
+straying near its crystal. His is no troubled stream in which large
+trout are caught. He must be accepted on his own terms.
+
+The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted
+to their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been
+remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability
+is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is
+the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes
+into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The
+color of his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its
+affinities. A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of
+a hundred styles.
+
+Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been
+exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and
+there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting
+impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement
+on Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is
+inconsiderable.
+
+This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was
+doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell
+or Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his
+purely devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart.
+Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which
+Herrick frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any
+appreciable spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which
+finds no setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to
+brother poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for
+addressing four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in
+the main, obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth
+establishing. His London life, at two different periods, brought him
+into contact with many of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has
+helped to confer immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the
+secret of conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions.
+Shakespeare had not a finer confidence when he wrote,
+
+     Not marble nor the gilded monuments
+     Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
+
+than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by
+any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils.
+Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire
+village would have been unendurable.
+
+His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite,
+however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's
+themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it:
+
+     I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
+     Of April, May, of June, and July flowers;
+     I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
+     Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes;
+     I write of Youth, of Love, and have access
+     By these to sing of cleanly wantonness;
+     I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
+     Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris;
+     I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
+     How roses first came red and lilies white;
+     I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
+     The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King;
+     I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
+     Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.
+
+Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book
+the breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to
+exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender
+had been shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of
+hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half
+hidden with honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning
+home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should
+fall when fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English
+as Herrick. He painted the country life of his own time as no other has
+painted it at any time.
+
+It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as
+national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and
+period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece,
+Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for
+plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden
+and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian
+Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that
+have given Keats his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets.
+Shelley's two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong
+respectively to Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is
+Italian; Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the
+King, and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in
+dignity to none produced in the nineteenth century--is a Persian story.
+But Herrick's “golden apples” sprang from the soil in his own day, and
+reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island.
+
+Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not
+wanting in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable
+distance from that of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Puck and Titania
+are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have
+Devonshire manners and to live in a miniature England of their own. Like
+the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and
+perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts--from the
+cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is
+marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion
+or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in
+their winsome way, “part pagan, part papistical;” they have their
+pardons and indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and
+
+     An apple's-core is hung up dried,
+     With rattling kernels, which is rung
+     To call to Morn and Even-song;
+
+and very conveniently,
+
+     Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut,
+     The Holy-water there is put.
+
+It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the
+impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648
+seems never very far away.
+
+It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the
+Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and
+liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes,
+there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen
+from the lips of Posthumus in “Cymbeline.” This delicate epicede would
+have fitted Imogen:
+
+     Here a solemne fast we keepe
+     While all beauty lyes asleepe;
+     Husht be all things; no noyse here
+     But the toning of a teare,
+     Or a sigh of such as bring
+     Cowslips for her covering.
+
+Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song,
+for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A
+poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many
+_dramatis personae_. “Enter a Song singing” is the stage-direction in a
+seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized
+in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his
+couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are
+intended presentations of himself:
+
+     To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed--
+     Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste.
+
+In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one.
+Silvia, Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively
+ladies ending in _a_, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy
+phantoms dancing--as they should not have danced--through the brain of
+a sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church
+of England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite
+impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so
+numerous actual demands upon it.
+
+Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings
+that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's
+lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform
+smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded
+richness of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back
+to them again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught
+it, and insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of
+England the author of the “Hesperides” remains, and is likely to remain,
+unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick
+stands alone in his scanty plot of ground.
+
+
+“Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***
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+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich</title>
+<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify;}
+    p { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Ponkapog Papers</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August, 1996 [eBook #625]<br />
+[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Judith Boss and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
+</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      PONKAPOG PAPERS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      TO FRANCIS BARTLETT
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called <i>Ponkapog Papers</i> not
+      simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within the
+      limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is
+      something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which
+      Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts
+      settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions
+      concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound
+      that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great centres
+      of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting comparison
+      between themselves and important pieces of literature. Therefore there
+      seems something especially appropriate in the geographical title selected,
+      and if the author's choice of name need further excuse, it is to be found
+      in the alluring alliteration lying ready at his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REDMAN FARM, <i>Ponkapog</i>, 1903.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> ASIDES </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> TOM FOLIO </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> A NOTE ON &ldquo;L'AIGLON&rdquo; </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> PLOT AND CHARACTER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> DECORATION DAY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> WRITERS AND TALKERS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> ON EARLY RISING </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> UN POETE MANQUE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> WISHMAKERS' TOWN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> HISTORICAL NOVELS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> POOR YORICK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> ROBERT HERRICK </a>
+      </p>
+
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of the
+      Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from them
+      when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive for a
+      fantastic short story, in which the hero&mdash;an author in vogue or a
+      popular actor&mdash;might be depicted as having all his good qualities
+      gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of too
+      prolonged indulgence in the effort to &ldquo;look natural.&rdquo; First the man loses
+      his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual attitudes,
+      with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, and finally
+      ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be brought about
+      by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for the moment, no
+      hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his enlarged
+      requirement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging
+      directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have been
+      manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter. It
+      impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing more. Nammikawa,
+      the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of &ldquo;The Two First Centuries of
+      Florentine Literature,&rdquo; by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not acquainted
+      with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari makes it
+      plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to
+      divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation
+      of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will
+      come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law
+      which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period
+      when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the
+      longed-for millennium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SAVE US from our friends&mdash;our enemies we can guard against. The
+      well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and
+      several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied
+      themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of &ldquo;the first known
+      forefather of the poet.&rdquo; This lately turned up ancestor, who does not date
+      very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on the
+      mural marble as &ldquo;formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of Corfe
+      Castle.&rdquo; Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou Ben Adhem
+      himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love their fellow
+      men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the matter he probably
+      would have preferred not to have that particular footman exhumed. However,
+      it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir John Bankes would scarcely
+      have been heard of in our young century if it had not been for his
+      footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and solemn, behind his master's
+      chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered into the head of Sir John
+      that his highly respectable name would be served up to posterity&mdash;like
+      a cold relish&mdash;by his own butler! By Robert!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery
+      district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to
+      long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand
+      clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and
+      rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One
+      could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that
+      those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the
+      doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you approach
+      these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most
+      suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here and
+      there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you may
+      become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed&mdash;and not any too soon. If it only
+      were practicable to kill him in real life! A story&mdash;to be called The
+      Passing of Polonius&mdash;in which a king issues a decree condemning to
+      death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of
+      rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who
+      suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically to
+      his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre verse,
+      he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our poets;
+      but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can bear
+      comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative quality and
+      austere richness of diction what other verse of our period approaches it?
+      The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael Drayton said of
+      Marlowe, &ldquo;those brave translunary things that the first poets had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one
+      man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him
+      on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing
+      a ring at the door-bell!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself in
+      an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about it. In
+      spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds
+      superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the
+      least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who
+      accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end in
+      view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of his
+      comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his life,
+      and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare his heart
+      with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that inevitably colors
+      premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those small octavo pages
+      with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected that he was adding a
+      photographic portrait of himself to the world's gallery of immortals. We
+      are more intimately acquainted with Mr. Samuel Pepys, the inner man&mdash;his
+      little meannesses and his large generosities&mdash;then we are with half
+      the persons we call our dear friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is
+      to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced
+      an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf, and
+      his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I have no
+      disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is as hearty
+      as if he had not been dead and&mdash;otherwise provided for these last
+      three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as merciless, but
+      she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of heretics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news of
+      the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it for the
+      time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a maniac; but
+      the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty pure and
+      simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment of him stand
+      on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially dislike several
+      persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting Philip II. of Spain.
+      He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I. gave the amiable Mr.
+      Dick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an
+      English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be
+      preternaturally clever and amusing&mdash;&ldquo;so very droll, don't you know.&rdquo;
+       He recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics
+      public characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of
+      the elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is
+      capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last time
+      I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in spite of
+      what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of entertainment
+      at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on &ldquo;the English and
+      American languages.&rdquo; As there were two Americans on the back seat&mdash;it
+      seems we term ourselves &ldquo;Amurricans&rdquo;&mdash;his choice of subject was full
+      of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in pronunciation from a
+      gentleman who said <i>boult</i> for bolt, called St. John <i>Sin' Jun</i>,
+      and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of his own college at
+      Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying <i>Maudlin</i> for Magdalen!
+      Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English folk who have
+      resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or thereabouts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. The
+      fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's <i>ex libris</i>
+      is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of indicating the
+      past or present ownership of the volume in which it is placed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most
+      matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an
+      alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists and
+      the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused
+      through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in
+      individual Englishmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first person:
+      Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
+      memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always lay
+      open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of
+      nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to this
+      thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
+      author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was
+      also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses
+      secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton,
+      feeling that &ldquo;they also serve who only stand and wait,&rdquo; sat down and
+      waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there
+      spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he
+      read: &ldquo;Don't forget to see the binder,&rdquo; &ldquo;Don't forget to mail E&mdash;&mdash;-
+      his contract,&rdquo; &ldquo;Don't forget H&mdash;&mdash;-'s proofs,&rdquo; etc. An
+      inspiration seized upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of
+      this long list of &ldquo;don't forgets&rdquo; he wrote: &ldquo;Don't forget to accept A 's
+      poem.&rdquo; He left his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon
+      when the publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little
+      astonished at the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he
+      did accept the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and
+      sent the lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day
+      unprinted. That kindly publisher was wise as well as kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always
+      certain to be particularly indecent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the
+      priggish little boy in the story of &ldquo;Sandford and Merton,&rdquo; has a worthy
+      American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through a
+      seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of
+      fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from
+      infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely pursuing
+      her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted
+      didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter,
+      who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with the
+      same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her elders.
+      An interesting instance of hereditary talent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      H&mdash;&mdash;-'s intellect resembles a bamboo&mdash;slender, graceful,
+      and hollow. Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might
+      have been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like an
+      ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is
+      ungrammatical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the
+      spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on
+      cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom at
+      the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The
+      current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as is
+      also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed with
+      the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into rich
+      earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should involve
+      the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment of a fresh
+      censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in permanent
+      absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to express his
+      opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal danger, It is
+      almost inevitable that he should come to overrate the importance of those
+      opinions, to take himself with far too much seriousness, and in the end
+      adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. The liberty to summon this or
+      that man-of-letters to a supposititious bar of justice is apt to beget in
+      the self-appointed judge an exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes
+      impatient of any rulings not his, and says in effect, if not in so many
+      words: &ldquo;I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark.&rdquo; When the
+      critic reaches this exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs
+      it with a rainbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every
+      detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the
+      desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which
+      the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised
+      knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely thought
+      lovelier by sometimes half veiling it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick
+      has handled twice in the &ldquo;Hesperides.&rdquo; The fancy, however, is not
+      Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I
+      have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my
+      lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day
+      begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and wakes,
+      Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the
+      cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by anticipating
+      everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and
+      Juliet is the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable
+      times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my
+      heart's core, ay, in my <i>heart of heart</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words italicized are invariably written &ldquo;heart of hearts&rdquo;&mdash;as if
+      a person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with
+      the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of
+      Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural on
+      two occasions in his recent novel, &ldquo;The Mystery of the Sea.&rdquo; Mrs. Humphry
+      Ward also twice misquotes the passage in &ldquo;Lady Rose's Daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      BOOKS that have become classics&mdash;books that ave had their day and now
+      get more praise than perusal&mdash;always remind me of venerable colonels
+      and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves
+      retired upon half pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is a subject
+      over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother naturalists have
+      lately become as heated as if the question involved points of theology. Up
+      among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart of the region of porcupines,
+      I happen to have a modest cottage. This retreat is called The Porcupine,
+      and I ought by good rights to know something about the habits of the small
+      animal from which it derives its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to
+      return home on an average of three times a month from an excursion up Mt.
+      Pisgah with his nose stuck full of quills, and <i>he</i> ought to have
+      some concrete ideas on the subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify
+      that the porcupine in its moments of relaxation occasionally contracts
+      itself into what might be taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to
+      please in the matter of spheres. But neither Buster nor I&mdash;being
+      unwilling to get into trouble&mdash;would like to assert that it is an
+      actual ball. That it is a shape with which one had better not
+      thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction that my friend Buster stands ready to
+      defend against all comers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as &ldquo;a
+      creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food&rdquo; has always
+      appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets one to
+      thinking of the South Sea islanders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a
+      superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was
+      wisdom itself&mdash;&ldquo;Put money in thy purse.&rdquo; Whoever disparages money
+      disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened the
+      other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of
+      glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant of
+      natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around
+      immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold
+      has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been
+      checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the
+      world will never know. &ldquo;After the love of knowledge,&rdquo; says Buckle, &ldquo;there
+      is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of
+      money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication
+      between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for
+      anything properly said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the way of
+      pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest contrivances
+      in this fashion&mdash;probably dropped down to him by the inventor angling
+      for a nibble of commendation&mdash;were always making one another's
+      acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: &ldquo;I 'm waiting for
+      somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any accident put
+      into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of humiliation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the
+      pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated in
+      modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist have
+      ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the bearer
+      strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names in
+      contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum may be
+      instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the memory of
+      my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are individuals
+      with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum &amp; Cheetam,
+      Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to be true. But
+      it was once, if it is not now, an actuality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately
+      becomes a great literary centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.
+      There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that
+      goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him
+      among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he
+      dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only in
+      the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that the
+      world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist, or the
+      historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long time
+      dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure. Up to that
+      point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or underrated him,
+      or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the eidolon, which always
+      plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily under its dominion. It
+      invariably represents him as either a greater or a smaller personage than
+      he actually is. Presently the simulacrum works no more spells, good or
+      evil, and the deception is unveiled. The hitherto disregarded author is
+      recognized, and the idol of yesterday, which seemed so important, is taken
+      down from his too large pedestal and carted off to the dumping-ground of
+      inadequate things. To be sure, if he chances to have been not entirely
+      unworthy, and on cool examination is found to possess some appreciable
+      degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab of appropriate
+      dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On
+      the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenly become a revered
+      full-length figure. Between the reputation of the author living and the
+      reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by Charles
+      Brookfield, the English actor, in his &ldquo;Random Recollections.&rdquo; Mr.
+      Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and
+      Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson,
+      and others. &ldquo;After dinner,&rdquo; relates the random recollector, &ldquo;the poet
+      insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair <i>more
+      Americano</i>. There were strangers in the room, and he was expostulated
+      with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your feet!' pleaded
+      his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very comfortable as I
+      am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another. 'Let 'em stare,' replied
+      the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, 'people will think you're
+      Longfellow.' Down went the feet.&rdquo; That <i>more Americano</i> of Brookfield
+      the younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor, but the holding up
+      of Longfellow&mdash;the soul of gentleness, the prince of courtesy&mdash;as
+      a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It will take England years
+      and years to detect the full unconscious humor of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct
+      historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The
+      spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of
+      him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be
+      made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care
+      of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air
+      surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible
+      record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The
+      tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works of
+      enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can picture to
+      ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in
+      this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up the impassioned
+      orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical argument in favor of
+      or against some long-ago-exploded measure of government. The laurels of an
+      orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of
+      the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so,
+      would I?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs&mdash;putting in his oar,
+      so to speak&mdash;with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the
+      other evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the
+      gentlemen present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told
+      us a rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced
+      by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece of
+      mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it imperfectly.
+      Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special branch. When the
+      watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work requires a touch as
+      delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing an operation. Here the
+      most skilled and trustworthy artisans are employed; they receive high
+      wages, and have the benefit of a singular indulgence. In case the workman,
+      through too continuous application, finds himself lacking the steadiness
+      of nerve demanded by his task, he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to
+      remain idle temporarily, in order that his hand may recover the requisite
+      precision of touch. As I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the
+      grave-digger's want of sensibility came drifting into my memory. &ldquo;The hand
+      of little employment hath the daintier sense,&rdquo; says Shakespeare, who has
+      left nothing unsaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary
+      deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and
+      nights the streets of Tokio&mdash;where the squat little brown houses look
+      for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture
+      of the Japanese&mdash;were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made
+      gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and
+      mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into
+      lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched
+      across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha
+      whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The
+      spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers,
+     Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers&mdash;
+     Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice
+     And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.
+
+     Each day has its fair or its festival there,
+     And life seems immune to all trouble and care&mdash;
+     Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,
+     Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
+
+     They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars,
+     And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars;
+     They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone,
+     As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
+
+     They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs,
+     And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs:
+     Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black,
+     And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
+
+     On roadside and street toddling images meet,
+     And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet;
+     Their obis are tied with particular pride,
+     Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.
+
+     With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat,
+     Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat;
+     A fan by its play whispers, &ldquo;Go now!&rdquo; or &ldquo;Stay!&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;I hate you!&rdquo;  &ldquo;I love you!&rdquo;&mdash;a fan can say that!
+     Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three
+     Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea;
+     They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear
+     Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.
+
+     At night&mdash;ah, at night the long streets are a sight,
+     With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight&mdash;
+     Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead,
+     Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
+
+     Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume
+     Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom;
+     On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,
+     They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
+
+     At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near,
+     A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear;
+     Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings
+     The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the
+      theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing. The
+      Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for deliberate
+      aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds usually
+      precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a facetious turn
+      of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for this statement of
+      my personal observation, since it has recently been indorsed by one of
+      London's most eminent actors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French
+      gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which always
+      has the air of saying: &ldquo;I have lived!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always
+      instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory
+      playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing the
+      phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they remember.
+      To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single reading is no
+      proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred lines go. A man
+      might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good memory; by which
+      I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly the rarest of
+      gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons possessing it. The
+      small boy who defined memory as &ldquo;the thing you forget with&rdquo; described the
+      faculty as it exists and works in the majority of men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong argument
+      in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One publisher no
+      sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a dozen other
+      publishers fall to duplicating it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets tied
+      to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For many a
+      year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and fastened
+      these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering she was a
+      slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender figure still,
+      but there are threads of silver in the black hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught &ldquo;to
+      abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing&rdquo;&mdash;especially the
+      fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would have
+      worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and been
+      something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly dressed, but
+      where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as &ldquo;what song the Sirens
+      sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.&rdquo; He
+      is a man who apparently has no appointment with his breakfast and whose
+      dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker is the next person. A
+      great city like this is the only geography for such a character. He would
+      be impossible in a small country town, where everybody knows everybody and
+      what everybody has for lunch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying
+      that &ldquo;Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice.&rdquo; I went rather
+      confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light
+      luggage of cynical maxims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to serve
+      as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it logically
+      might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of the <i>abattoir</i>,
+      the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the victim or the
+      criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious moment as to
+      another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not, and cannot,
+      read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors. Some of our
+      popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a difference. There is
+      always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least
+      cultivated taste has the largest appetite. There is ragtime literature as
+      well as ragtime music for the many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      G&mdash;&mdash;- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not
+      accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his
+      conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death
+      penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one electrocuted who
+      disagreed with him on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HAVE thought of an essay to be called &ldquo;On the Art of Short-Story
+      Writing,&rdquo; but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It would
+      be too <i>intime</i>, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own
+      ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of
+      importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the last
+      paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all
+      digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told about
+      the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will talk,
+      and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over the
+      dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy that
+      makes my characters pretty mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as a
+      madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three
+      centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his
+      wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert
+      Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man
+      into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the
+      boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times the
+      pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of
+      encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially
+      practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it
+      by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or a
+      mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually with
+      noble books, with &ldquo;high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of courtesy,&rdquo;
+       teaches the soul good manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of
+      mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and women
+      eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or chaotic.
+      Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a sense of
+      tolerant superiority when they say: &ldquo;Of course this is not the kind of
+      thing <i>you</i> would like.&rdquo; Sometimes these impressionable souls almost
+      seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I HEAR that B&mdash;&mdash;- directed to have himself buried on the edge
+      of the pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of
+      migrating birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to
+      die, to become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: &ldquo;Yes, B&mdash;&mdash;-
+      is a great sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North
+      Dakota to his best friend in the Maine woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him
+      bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not be in
+      real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of real life
+      would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, and frequently
+      they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic novelist sometimes
+      seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who perpetuated the old patch on
+      the new trousers. True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a
+      verbatim translation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at
+      Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy of
+      the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in bed,
+      convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to prove
+      fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture in
+      aquarelle&mdash;a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the
+      foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon sunlight,
+      falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture, which was
+      turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes rested
+      thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just sent it to
+      him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me since, that
+      that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was waiting to bear
+      his spirit away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If
+      somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he causes
+      me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its
+      gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as in the
+      Middle Ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist
+      in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not considered
+      inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The word &ldquo;brass&rdquo;
+       was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, when it takes
+      on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel circles of language.
+      It may be said to have seen better days, like another word I have in mind&mdash;a
+      word that has become slang, employed in the sense which once did not
+      exclude it from very good society. A friend lately informed me that he had
+      &ldquo;fired&rdquo; his housekeeper&mdash;that is, dismissed her. He little dreamed
+      that he was speaking excellent Elizabethan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE &ldquo;Journal des Goncourt&rdquo; is crowded with beautiful and hideous things,
+      like a Japanese Museum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw that
+      she shuddered.&rdquo; This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, &ldquo;Can You Forgive
+      Her?&rdquo; Can you forgive him? is the next question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing.
+      Possessing this quality, a trifle &ldquo;no bigger than an agate-stone on the
+      forefinger of an alderman&rdquo; shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will have
+      forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets
+      Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More durable
+      than marble or bronze are the words, &ldquo;I could not love thee, deare, so
+      much, loved I not honor more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall
+      probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which I
+      have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff of
+      wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time cheerfulness,
+      that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece of twine. He has
+      perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but he was full of the
+      wise and radiant talk to which all the world has listened, and will miss.
+      I found him absorbed in a newly made card-catalogue of his library. &ldquo;It
+      was absurd of me to have it done,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;What I really require is
+      a little bookcase holding only two volumes; then I could go from one to
+      the other in alternation and always find each book as fresh as if I never
+      had read it.&rdquo; This arraignment of his memory was in pure jest, for the
+      doctor's mind was to the end like an unclouded crystal. It was interesting
+      to note how he studied himself, taking his own pulse, as it were, and
+      diagnosing his own case in a sort of scientific, impersonal way, as if it
+      were somebody else's case and he were the consulting specialist. I
+      intended to spend a quarter of an hour with him, and he kept me three
+      hours. I went there rather depressed, but I returned home leavened with
+      his good spirits, which, I think, will never desert him, here or
+      hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful,
+      reverent&mdash;that is to triumph over old age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The
+      thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the
+      sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr.
+      Howells's blank-verse sketch called &ldquo;Father and Mother: A Mystery&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect to
+      some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be
+      standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own in
+      a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to lie
+      awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me. I
+      should call the effect <i>weird</i>, if the word had not lately been
+      worked to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch
+      cold finger-tips in those three or four pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FOR a character-study&mdash;a man made up entirely of limitations. His
+      conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to
+      attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer.
+      During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no one
+      at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on the
+      right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, spoke
+      &ldquo;an infinite deal of nothing.&rdquo; He made persistent and pathetic attempts to
+      lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him &ldquo;William the Silent&rdquo;) into
+      conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor result&mdash;until
+      one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped at the entrance
+      to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish had been brought
+      aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of excitement that
+      morning at table. &ldquo;Fresh fish!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;actually fresh! They seem
+      quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can you tell me, sir,&rdquo;
+       he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, &ldquo;what <i>kind</i> of fish
+      these are?&rdquo; &ldquo;Cork soles,&rdquo; said the saturnine man, in a deep voice, and
+      then went on with his breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's
+      line,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her heart and morning broke together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same
+      platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to
+      have its mischief-making bacilli. The late &ldquo;incomparable and ingenious
+      Dean of St. Paul's&rdquo; says,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The day breaks not, it is my heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the
+      malady in a milder form when he wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The charming naivete of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening
+      during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt picked
+      up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror&mdash;<i>Dearling</i>,
+      mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance
+      upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a more
+      charming adjective than the one that has replaced it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely
+      buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of
+      matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded
+      from the definitive edition of his collected writings.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     He gave the people of his best;
+     His worst he kept, his best he gave.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to any
+      possible future publisher of his poems:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,
+     Take all, take nothing&mdash;and God send thee cheer!
+     But my anathema on thee and thine
+     If thou add'st aught to what is printed here.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE claim of this country to call itself &ldquo;The Land of the Free&rdquo; must be
+      held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not
+      belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his daily
+      bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish
+      race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash,
+      usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea. I
+      had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who reigns
+      over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear lawn. It
+      was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to belong New
+      England. &ldquo;It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day,&rdquo; she said, looking up
+      at me. <i>&ldquo;I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould mother's grave in
+      the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at Mullingar.&rdquo;</i> I
+      have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture
+      bureau, an old client of his remarked: &ldquo;He was a most capable manager, but
+      it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five per cent.
+      commission.&rdquo; &ldquo;Pond's Extract,&rdquo; murmured one of the gentlemen present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EACH of our great towns has its &ldquo;Little Italy,&rdquo; with shops where nothing
+      is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had better
+      not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic communities
+      seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little Italys and
+      Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the ocean in order to
+      visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older civilizations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are made
+      possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious demand
+      for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the atmosphere
+      stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there been no
+      Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely puts it,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Men became
+     Poets, for the air was fame.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner
+      opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human
+      experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact. Now he
+      takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the absconding
+      bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question of distance, the
+      man has positively no choice between a theatre and a graveyard. I met him
+      this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity Church with a bridal
+      party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing Cambridge Bridge, I saw him
+      creeping along next to the hearse, on his way to Mount Auburn. The wedding
+      afforded him no pleasure, and the funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a
+      factor in both. It is his odd destiny to be wholly detached from the vital
+      part of his own acts. If the carriage itself could speak! The
+      autobiography of a public hack written without reservation would be
+      dramatic reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for
+      essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall
+      write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves me,
+      and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume has
+      become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions, good
+      and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A STAGE DIRECTION: <i>exit time; enter Eternity&mdash;with a soliloquy.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ASIDES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TOM FOLIO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about town,
+      furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a man of
+      ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low, hesitating
+      voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout worshiper of Elia,
+      and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking somewhat of his master's
+      flavor&mdash;suggesting rather than imitating it&mdash;which he signed
+      &ldquo;Tom Folio.&rdquo; I forget how he glided into my acquaintanceship; doubtless in
+      some way too shy and elusive for remembrance. I never knew him intimately,
+      perhaps no one did, but the intercourse between us was most cordial, and
+      our chance meetings and bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom Folio&mdash;I cling to the winning pseudonym&mdash;was sparely built
+      and under medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it
+      seem so, with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not
+      his. Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first
+      glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left you
+      doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and would have
+      attracted your attention even in a crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him only
+      out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his hat
+      off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an eye he
+      became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew had virtually
+      vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an instant later, an
+      almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of light-colored hair,
+      extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of his hat, had perpetrated
+      an unintentional deception by leading one to suppose a head profusely
+      covered with curly locks. &ldquo;Tom Folio,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;put on your hat and come
+      back!&rdquo; But after that day he never seemed young to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and the
+      book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is possible
+      I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at the South End
+      or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his coffee and
+      boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or two fortuitous
+      hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared, some relative,
+      far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty or thirty at
+      least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter pie, just as
+      another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The only fireside
+      companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was a Maltese cat,
+      whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to time. I suspected
+      those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss Mowcher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of them, and
+      not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more picturesque
+      solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures introduced into the
+      background of the canvas would have spoiled the artistic effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man&mdash;a recluse even when he allowed
+      himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of
+      humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and its
+      busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little real
+      knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate
+      environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen,
+      they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded room
+      I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty&mdash;the couch (a
+      sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the
+      litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings,
+      among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and perhaps&mdash;nay,
+      surely&mdash;an <i>editio princeps</i> of the &ldquo;Essays.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple
+      than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part of
+      the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important
+      edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be, in
+      spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles Lamb
+      passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East India
+      Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still seated,
+      quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon Threadneedle
+      Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the &ldquo;Essays,&rdquo;
+       describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities which
+      occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible
+      impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the &ldquo;lean annuitant&rdquo; was
+      as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray scraps,
+      which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known to him, and it
+      was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a handful
+      of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, yes&mdash;but Charles
+      Lamb's! &ldquo;The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn,&rdquo; says Tom
+      Folio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of
+      a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of fine
+      thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak Walton
+      was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though he thought
+      Mr. Addison's tragedy of &ldquo;Cato&rdquo; contained some proper good lines. Our
+      friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly preferring the
+      literature of the earlier periods to that of the Victorian age. His
+      smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various modern authors was
+      enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous pretty, but
+      over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct with cinnamon, don't
+      you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been composed in the moon by a
+      slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you wanted a sound mind in a
+      sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's &ldquo;Essay on Man.&rdquo; There was
+      something winsome and by-gone in the general make-up of Tom Folio. No man
+      living in the world ever seemed to me to live so much out of it, or to
+      live more comfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment.
+      Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental journey,
+      the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle sadness. It
+      was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio had any
+      love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy, platonic sort&mdash;a
+      chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or Nell Gwyn, or
+      possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Tom Folio was not a collector&mdash;that means dividends and bank
+      balances&mdash;he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with
+      a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare
+      Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an
+      undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling, though
+      he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly have drunk
+      any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's time. These
+      things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense; in a spiritual
+      sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned thus much of his
+      tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the rear showroom of a
+      dealer in antiquities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that I
+      mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather steep
+      staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which I have
+      imagined for him&mdash;a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to believe,
+      and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent moral of &ldquo;The
+      Industrious and Idle Apprentices&rdquo; pinned against the chimney breast. Young
+      Chatterton, who was not always the best of company, dropped in at
+      intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special chair reserved for him by
+      the window, where he could catch a glimpse of the pretty housemaid over
+      the way, chatting with the policeman at the area railing. Dr. Johnson and
+      the unworldly author of &ldquo;The Deserted Village&rdquo; were frequent visitors,
+      sometimes appearing together arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of
+      Auchinleck, following obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have
+      callers vastly more aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter
+      or wholesomer. Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of
+      the &ldquo;Arcadia&rdquo;), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others
+      before whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain
+      to gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick
+      Steele, Dean Swift&mdash;there was no end to them! On certain nights, when
+      all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street
+      stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with
+      invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary glare
+      of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither. A man so
+      sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less
+      insubstantial&mdash;that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a
+      hand-organ, to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and
+      the brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a
+      copper when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a
+      Saturday afternoon&mdash;Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day.
+      The withered woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil
+      Hall Market knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil
+      merchant, whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy
+      traffic of Dock Square. <i>Noblesse oblige!</i> He was no stranger in
+      those purlieus. Without designing to confuse small things with great, I
+      may say that a certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed
+      out as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the
+      banks of the Cherwell at Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a
+      pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation,
+      he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the squalid,
+      ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses and
+      teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half consciously, a
+      sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful resignation of it
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was
+      told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little
+      heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston&mdash;as
+      genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself&mdash;a personality
+      not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, I
+      miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, but
+      I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering the
+      doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down a musty
+      volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on Cornhill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our
+      countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable desire to
+      present something typical in the way of names for his adopted characters&mdash;to
+      give a dash of local color, as it were, with his nomenclature. His success
+      is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls into the error of appealing
+      to his invention, instead of consulting some city directory, in which he
+      would find more material than he could exhaust in ten centuries. Charles
+      Reade might have secured in the pages of such a compendium a happier title
+      than Fullalove for his Yankee sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole,
+      if Anthony Trollope could have discovered anything better than Olivia Q.
+      Fleabody for the young woman from &ldquo;the States&rdquo; in his novel called &ldquo;Is He
+      Popenjoy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia Q.
+      Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than was
+      usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and manners
+      was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English tourist's
+      preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on the steamer
+      and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his indispensable
+      impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it was probably
+      suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just
+      as Trollope strikes <i>us</i> as comical), or, at least, as not serious.
+      What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish young woman
+      in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd to the alien. I
+      remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and on the Continent
+      used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there. It is a notable
+      circumstance that extraordinary names never seem extraordinary to the
+      persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were branded Ebenezer
+      Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite unconscious of
+      anything out of the common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but
+      English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not
+      thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or dead,
+      can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for example&mdash;if
+      the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as remarkable,
+      in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British officer who
+      was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of blessed memory
+      1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished himself on the field,
+      was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine Coffin. I trust that the
+      gallant major became a colonel later and is still alive. It would eclipse
+      the gayety of nations to lose a man with a name like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of &ldquo;The Pall Mall
+      Gazette&rdquo; an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was
+      arrested (it ought to have been by &ldquo;a peeler&rdquo;) for purloining money from
+      his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles &amp; Son, stuff merchants, of
+      Bradford&mdash;<i>des noms bien idylliques!</i> What mortal could have a
+      more ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled
+      Onions? And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more
+      incredible coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No
+      story-writer would dare to present that fact or those names in his
+      fiction; neither would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q.
+      Fleabody is <i>ben trovato</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A NOTE ON &ldquo;L'AIGLON&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in &ldquo;L'Aiglon&rdquo;&mdash;an
+      episode whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the
+      point of a rapier&mdash;bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque
+      passage in Victor Hugo's &ldquo;Les Miserables.&rdquo; It is the one intense great
+      moment in the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am
+      aware none of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the
+      resemblance mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of
+      Wagram, but the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with
+      contending armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made
+      vivid to the mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth
+      chapter in the second part of &ldquo;Les Miserables&rdquo; (Cosette), and runs as
+      follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre,
+      support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La
+      nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque
+      voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme Virgile
+      dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de la catastrophe
+      le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse colline-monument s'efface,
+      ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de bataille reprend sa realite;
+      des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la plaine, des galops furieux
+      traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit l'eclair des sabres,
+      l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des bombes,
+      l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un rale au
+      fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces ombres, ce
+      sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; . . . tout cela
+      n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins s'empourprent, et
+      les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque dans les nuees, et,
+      dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, Mont-Saint Jean,
+      Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, apparaissent confusement
+      couronnees de tourbillons de spectres s'exterminant. (1)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is the whole battle scene in &ldquo;L'Aiglon,&rdquo; with scarcely a gruesome
+      detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the ghostly
+      squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only through the
+      eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled shapes lying
+      motionless in various postures of death upon the blood-stained sward; the
+      moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by like vague wailings of the
+      wind&mdash;all this might be taken for an artful appropriation of Victor
+      Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though it is possible that a faint
+      reflection of a brilliant page, read in early youth, still lingered on the
+      retina of M. Rostand's memory. If such were the case, it does not
+      necessarily detract from the integrity of the conception or the
+      playwright's presentment of it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which
+     belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like
+     all other plains.  At night, however, a kind of visionary
+     mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and
+     watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful
+     plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe
+     takes possession of him.  The terrible June 18 relives; the
+     artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion
+     disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines
+     of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by
+     furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the
+     gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of
+     bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the
+     muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like
+     dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers,
+     these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really
+     exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with
+     purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds,
+     and in the obscurity the sombre heights&mdash;Mont Saint-Jean,
+     Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit&mdash;ap-pear
+     dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one
+     another.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished hosts
+      is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark hand on
+      the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit of the
+      past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was standing
+      alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not being alone
+      which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had a sudden vision
+      of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard. Marshal Ney rose
+      from the grave and again shouted those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon:
+      &ldquo;Are you not going to get yourself killed?&rdquo; For an instant a thousand
+      sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that accompanied the
+      ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived dream. A moment
+      later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a white horse with
+      housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the rider's hand; his
+      three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and his chin rested on the
+      breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode away through the twilight,
+      and nobody cried, <i>Vive l'Empereur!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon
+      every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius,
+      like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical. This
+      sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette in
+      &ldquo;Les Miserables&rdquo; and the battle of the ghosts in &ldquo;L'Aiglon.&rdquo; A muse so
+      rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of
+      supernaturalness from anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PLOT AND CHARACTER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope &ldquo;had
+      taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels of
+      character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except that
+      he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former class,
+      inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no means
+      character.&rdquo; So neat an antithesis would surely never have found itself
+      between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly lent it to him.
+      Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have preached, his
+      almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always had a <i>story</i>
+      to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and end&mdash;in short, a
+      framework of some description.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing; but
+      they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human action
+      as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That &ldquo;character in itself
+      is plot&rdquo; is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive with a logical
+      conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it is to a drama. A
+      group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in the green-room or at
+      the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say that this is Romeo and
+      that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform us that certain passions are
+      supposed to be embodied in such and such persons: these persons should be
+      placed in situations developing those passions. A series of unrelated
+      scenes and dialogues leading to nothing is inadequate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends&mdash;unlike
+      Achilles. &ldquo;Plot is by no means character.&rdquo; Strictly speaking, it is not.
+      It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being character
+      than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action, and it is
+      impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever conditions, without
+      revealing something of his character, his way of looking at things, his
+      moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction <i>does</i> paints him
+      better than what he <i>says</i>, and vastly better than anything his
+      creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that &ldquo;we care what happens to
+      people only in proportion as we know what people are.&rdquo; I think we care
+      very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not know what happens
+      to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals some
+      anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+     In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
+     As when a giant dies.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though
+      distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend
+      that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to take
+      into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the &ldquo;London
+      Lancet,&rdquo; I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology
+      delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association in
+      London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper yellowed in
+      the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and palpitating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the
+      point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited
+      certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go very
+      strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that the
+      weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres
+      with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the precise
+      object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but probably it
+      regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some
+      slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a very
+      decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch its toes?
+      Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would rather not
+      have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a sharp chisel.
+      . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The spinal cord
+      seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it will soon recover
+      from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now <i>spontaneously</i>
+      drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its neck erect just as
+      if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its toes, and you see the leg
+      is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the offending instrument. Does
+      it still feel? and is the motion still the result of the volition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there
+      seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that having
+      once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the table, a
+      movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He then
+      returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its foot
+      again, the frog again &ldquo;resenting the stimulation.&rdquo; He then thrust a needle
+      down the spinal cord. &ldquo;The limbs are now flaccid,&rdquo; observed the
+      experimenter; &ldquo;we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes
+      will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move.&rdquo; Here is where
+      congratulations can come in for <i>la grenouille</i>. That frog being
+      concluded, the lecturer continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the brain
+      and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and hang the
+      animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent legs without
+      any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The leg of the same
+      side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely. . . . Both legs
+      are thrown into motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still
+      suffer acutely, the professor resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so I
+      put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see, gives
+      rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice
+      particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same side
+      for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole animal into
+      water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all at rest again. . .
+      . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar region of the spine. .
+      . . Both feet are instantly raised to the irritated spot. The animal is
+      able to localize the seat of irritation. . . . I wash the acid from the
+      back, and I amputate one of the feet at the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of
+      acid over the knee of the footless leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the
+      leg towards the knee, as if to reach the irritated spot with the toes;
+      these, however, are not now available. But watch the other foot. The <i>foot
+      of the other leg</i> is now being used to rub away the acid. The animal,
+      finding that the object is not accomplished with the foot of the same
+      side, uses the other one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced
+      reader of these excerpts, namely&mdash;that any frog (with its head on or
+      its head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of
+      Professor Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit
+      science may have derived from such association I am not qualified to
+      pronounce upon. The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a
+      peculiarly sensitive and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the
+      genial professor, in the years which followed, did not frequently consider
+      it necessary to demonstrate the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt as
+      a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to
+      Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor a
+      Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was a
+      delightful essayist&mdash;quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe,
+      optimistic way&mdash;and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
+      singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who has
+      not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since his
+      death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as
+      extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in
+      this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist may
+      find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for
+      inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist.
+      Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than the
+      composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies, and a
+      tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His chief
+      claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic studies,
+      his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives to reproduce
+      the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner, he naturally
+      sings much of rural English life, but his England is the England of two or
+      three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about the &ldquo;falcon,&rdquo; but
+      the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings against the
+      bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished library was&mdash;if
+      I may be pardoned a mixed image&mdash;the rock on which Barry Cornwall
+      split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked into his
+      books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world
+      is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had
+      better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The sea
+      is one of these. The man who sang,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+     The blue, the fresh, <i>the ever free!</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      (a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never have
+      permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of Barry
+      Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly vapid
+      poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever laid
+      eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and in
+      looking over Barry Cornwall's &ldquo;Life and Letters&rdquo; I am not so much
+      surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land in the
+      whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more positively
+      than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he was hardly
+      ever sick at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods,
+      piping such thin feebleness as
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The blue, the fresh, the ever free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited to
+      a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even frequent
+      dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and Turtle will
+      not enable one to write sea poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!
+     I am where I would ever be.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor, but
+      they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich ends
+      with a striking piece of realism:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     If a storm should come and awake the deep,
+     What matter?  I shall ride and sleep.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. The
+      first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each in
+      his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the storm
+      is over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality, for he
+      drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as Thackeray,
+      Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of his time, from
+      Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a glimpse of the aged
+      poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an author does not extend
+      far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not of
+      the man I am speaking here. One could wish he had written more prose like
+      his admirable &ldquo;Recollections of Elia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is
+      extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Touch us gently, Time!
+     Let us glide adown thy stream,
+was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without
+questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but
+infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities.
+He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how
+to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head.
+In &ldquo;Hero and Leander&rdquo; there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth
+any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
+
+     So might they now have lived, and so have died;
+     <i>The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side</i>.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on
+      everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of &ldquo;Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel&rdquo; are
+      spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a handful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DECORATION DAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes to
+      work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she smooths
+      the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and
+      wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery of tendrils. Soon
+      the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. Where
+      the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the foliage, the robin or the
+      thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where the menacing shell described
+      its curve through the air, a harmless crow flies in circles. Season after
+      season the gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and rents made by the
+      merciless enginery of war, until at last the once hotly contested
+      battleground differs from none of its quiet surroundings, except, perhaps,
+      that here the flowers take a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are left
+      other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army sabre,
+      with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over the
+      mantel-piece of the &ldquo;best room&rdquo; of many a town and country house in these
+      States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero is another.
+      The old swords will be treasured and handed down from generation to
+      generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us trust, will be
+      cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the resting-places of
+      those who fell during the Civil War.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     With the tears a Land hath shed
+     Their graves should ever be green.
+
+     Ever their fair, true glory
+     Fondly should fame rehearse&mdash;
+     Light of legend and story,
+     Flower of marble and verse.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of
+      our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our own
+      time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the
+      generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall
+      into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow,
+      should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How
+      different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through
+      our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and
+      greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim cannon
+      have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach
+      blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, except the
+      presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and there an empty
+      sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that empty sleeve is
+      less in evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and
+      confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The
+      earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity. It
+      quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the sequestered
+      country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern cities were
+      being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come to us that
+      there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as tender and
+      sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon those mounds.
+      There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two years after the
+      close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi, laid their offerings
+      alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is said, the great Nation
+      has but one heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WRITERS AND TALKERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating
+      and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial and
+      entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable
+      individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to meet him.
+      The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your gripsack on
+      your summer vacation&mdash;the poet whom you have so long desired to know
+      personally&mdash;is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who
+      fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the
+      commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had painted as
+      a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young poets&mdash;the
+      writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never neglect to
+      read&mdash;destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by appearing
+      before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating glance, who
+      stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when you ask him his
+      opinion of &ldquo;The Glees of the Gulches,&rdquo; by Popocatepetl Jones. The slender,
+      dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with epigrammatic points to his
+      mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a short, smoothly-shaven blond man,
+      whose conversation does not sparkle at all, and you were on the lookout
+      for the most brilliant of verbal fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you
+      have idealized. Fresh from witnessing his delightful comedy of manners,
+      you meet him face to face only to discover that his own manners are
+      anything but delightful. The play and the playwright are two very distinct
+      entities. You grow skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that
+      the style is the man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author
+      in the flesh has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk as
+      cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist
+      necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a
+      poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional
+      dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as
+      prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON EARLY RISING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years
+      to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a case
+      of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising; from
+      which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie abed
+      late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the
+      majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple fact
+      that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth milestone
+      he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit to him. As
+      the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily reached the
+      conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep late, instead
+      of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are old. He moreover
+      failed to take into account the numberless young lives that have been
+      shortened by matutinal habits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told that
+      the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate of the
+      worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes
+      to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how
+      extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm, and when I
+      rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that has overslept
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New
+      England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort. It
+      is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is directly
+      the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned by Lafcadio Hearn in
+      his enchanting &ldquo;Two Years in the French West Indies&rdquo;&mdash;a species of
+      colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the creole tongue, <i>cabritt-bois</i>.
+      This ingenious pest works a soothing, sleep-compelling chant from sundown
+      until precisely half past four in the morning, when it suddenly stops and
+      by its silence awakens everybody it has lulled into slumber with its
+      insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with strange obtuseness to the enormity of the
+      thing, blandly remarks: &ldquo;For thousands of early risers too poor to own a
+      clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.&rdquo; I devoutly
+      trust that none of the West India islands furnishing such satanic
+      entomological specimens will ever be annexed to the United States. Some of
+      our extreme advocates of territorial expansion might spend a profitable
+      few weeks on one of those favored isles. A brief association with that <i>cabritt-bois</i>
+      would be likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon
+      daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at
+      mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than
+      their precept&mdash;or their poetry. Thomson, the author of &ldquo;The Castle of
+      Indolence,&rdquo; who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed until
+      noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be seen in
+      his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat pockets,
+      eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English poets who at
+      that epoch celebrated what they called &ldquo;the effulgent orb of day&rdquo; were
+      denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven months out of
+      the twelve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is
+      there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even from a
+      nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the
+      shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when &ldquo;the very houses seem asleep,&rdquo; as
+      Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the
+      milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at the
+      seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though
+      familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness or
+      occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of his life
+      has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may profess to
+      relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full
+      flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing.
+      He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness
+      of earth and stream and sky. For him&mdash;a momentary Adam&mdash;the
+      world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the similitude
+      of a three-pound trout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by
+      candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no
+      other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early
+      riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the
+      wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small things
+      more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his conceit in his
+      bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      UN POETE MANQUE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little poem
+      which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to entitle it to
+      rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical intermezzo. I
+      have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I taste a liquor never brewed
+     In vats upon the Rhine;
+     No tankard ever held a draught
+     Of alcohol like mine.
+
+     Inebriate of air am I,
+     And debauchee of dew,
+     Reeling, through endless summer days,
+     From inns of molten blue.
+
+     When landlords turn the drunken bee
+     Out of the Foxglove's door,
+     When butterflies renounce their drams,
+     I shall but drink the more!
+     Till seraphs swing their snowy caps
+     And saints to windows run,
+     To see the little tippler
+     Leaning against the sun!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets
+      himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking
+      matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less.
+      This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in
+      structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss
+      Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The
+      artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains
+      unforgivable:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     This is the land the sunset washes,
+     These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
+     Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
+     These are the western mystery!
+
+     Night after night her purple traffic
+     Strews the landing with opal bales;
+     Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
+     Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude Lorraine.
+      One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of
+      impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss
+      Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of it
+      in his preface to the volume: &ldquo;In many cases these verses will seem to the
+      reader <i>like poetry pulled up by the roots</i>, with rain and dew and
+      earth clinging to them.&rdquo; Possibly it might be objected that this is not
+      the best way to gather either flowers or poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind. She
+      was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by
+      the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her
+      bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden at
+      Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had much
+      fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent
+      flashes of imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want
+      of a more precise name, we term <i>quality</i>, is not to be denied. But
+      the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are
+      fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite line
+      or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an isolated
+      exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says of Dr. Donne
+      applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: &ldquo;Donne is full of salient verses
+      that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with their beauty, of
+      thoughts that first tease us like charades and then delight us with the
+      felicity of their solution; but these have not saved him. He is exiled to
+      the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say (it
+      appears that he said it &ldquo;in his earlier and better days&rdquo;), and Mr.
+      Higginson quotes it: &ldquo;No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can
+      outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.&rdquo; This is a proposition to which
+      one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately stated. A
+      suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is furnished by
+      his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty enough, but the
+      workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes the artist from the
+      bungler&mdash;the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing prose,
+      appears not much to have regarded either in his later or &ldquo;in his earlier
+      and better days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved
+      significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no
+      continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager
+      listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song,
+      has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned
+      English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The
+      piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness, and
+      obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a collection
+      of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through. The one thing in it
+      that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful costume of a certain
+      player who looked like a fine old portrait&mdash;by Vandyke or Velasquez,
+      let us say&mdash;that had come to life and kicked off its tarnished frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play
+      was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that the
+      actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic periods.
+      This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the special
+      pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was not in himself
+      interesting; he was like that Major Waters in &ldquo;Pepys's Diary&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;a
+      most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in love, which
+      makes him bad company;&rdquo; it was entirely Delorme's dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The material
+      was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some dark
+      cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of a
+      doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the gentleman
+      wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description hanging
+      negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat, showing a
+      tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full trousers
+      reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft hat&mdash;not
+      a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear, one side
+      jauntily fastened up with a jewel&mdash;completed the essential portions
+      of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride in, to sit
+      in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I will do
+      Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe tests. But
+      he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my countrymen would
+      throw aside their present hideous habiliments and hasten to the
+      measuring-room of Delorme's tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the
+      monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck
+      themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us, for
+      in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors in their
+      knee-breeches, pig-tail and <i>chapeau de bras</i>. In fact we are really
+      more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch a single
+      glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four or five
+      generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being something
+      that had escaped from somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made no
+      advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo themselves,
+      and do go fully clad&mdash;I am speaking exclusively of my own sex&mdash;is
+      about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I wish I had
+      the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to inveigh against the
+      dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular swallow-tailed coat that
+      makes a man look like a poor species of bird and gets him mistaken for the
+      waiter. &ldquo;As long as a man wears the modern coat,&rdquo; says Leigh Hunt, &ldquo;he has
+      no right to despise any dress. What snips at the collar and lapels! What a
+      mechanical and ridiculous cut about the flaps! What buttons in front that
+      are never meant to button, and yet are no ornament! And what an
+      exquisitely absurd pair of buttons at the back! gravely regarded,
+      nevertheless, and thought as indispensably necessary to every
+      well-conditioned coat, as other bits of metal or bone are to the bodies of
+      savages whom we laugh at. There is absolutely not one iota of sense,
+      grace, or even economy in the modern coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a
+      Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head
+      shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal
+      decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an
+      Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first &ldquo;marked-down&rdquo;
+       article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to the
+      eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the skull
+      of a barbarian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our
+      friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though there
+      was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to warrant it, I
+      broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted only at the scowl of
+      an usher&mdash;an object in a celluloid collar and a claw-hammer coat. My
+      solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an involuntary and, I think,
+      pardonable protest against the male costume of our own time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is no
+      accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical
+      temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise for
+      themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may
+      incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot
+      help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their
+      environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should openly
+      announce their intention of retiring at once into the family tomb, is a
+      problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened to these
+      funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to be gone were
+      to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that resigned speeding
+      which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a shadow
+      lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under his desk
+      are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would not be able
+      to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect the integrity
+      of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than
+      that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled &ldquo;Forsaken,&rdquo; in which she
+      addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes.
+      He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent
+      spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of
+      lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem&mdash;a rose whose
+      countless petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she
+      would not have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to
+      inform the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of <i>terze rime</i> that the
+      cup of happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have
+      but one) and darkly intimates that the end is &ldquo;nigh&rdquo; (rhyming affably with
+      &ldquo;sigh&rdquo;), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in
+      making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of
+      the past&mdash;reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel
+      of your sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of David
+      Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance to the
+      contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of health just as
+      he was on the verge of achieving something like success justified his
+      profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and played upon it,
+      as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in one of his sonnets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) &ldquo;Life and Letters of John Keats&rdquo; it
+      is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his lips
+      after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: &ldquo;I know the color of
+      that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop is my
+      death-warrant. I must die.&rdquo; Who that ever read the passage could forget
+      it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as happening to
+      himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain,
+     There came arterial blood, and with a sigh
+     Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein,
+     That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment
+      should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things
+      in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even
+      Keats's epitaph&mdash;<i>Here lies one whose name</i> <i>was writ in water</i>&mdash;finds
+      an echo in David Gray's <i>Below lies one whose name was traced in sand</i>.
+      Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me in
+      many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of print.
+      The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain readers
+      who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem exercised upon
+      them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, would have others
+      share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of
+      unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in
+      measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the method
+      of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town&mdash;a little
+      town situated in the no-man's-land of &ldquo;The Tempest&rdquo; and &ldquo;A Midsummer
+      Night's Dream&rdquo;&mdash;is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the dawn.
+      The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their various
+      avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the miser
+      to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages of the
+      Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips,
+      soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their
+      word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the streets; we hear
+      the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the
+      whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are
+      let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage,
+      indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest
+      hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to
+      sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic drama of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could name
+      it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an atmosphere
+      too evasive for measurement&mdash;an atmosphere that stipulates an
+      imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in
+      certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains
+      one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an
+      example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such
+      exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly
+      for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to &ldquo;Wishmakers'
+      Town,&rdquo; not knowing better how to do it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Myrtle, and eglantine,
+     For the old love and the new!
+     And the columbine,
+     With its cap and bells, for folly!
+     And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue,
+     For melancholy!
+     But of all the blossoms that blow,
+     Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may,
+     This gentle guest,
+     Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray,
+     Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low
+     Upon her breast.
+     For the orange flower
+     Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood
+     Is the love of maidenhood;
+     And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
+     He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
+     No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem
+     So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years,
+     At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
+     The past shall arise,
+     And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
+     And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise
+     Though he stand in the Shambles of death.
+In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is
+the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life:
+
+     Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame,
+     Plot, and plunder, and disagree!
+     O but the game is a royal game!
+     O but your tourneys are fair to see!
+
+     None too hopeful we found our lives;
+     Sore was labor from day to day;
+     Still we strove for our babes and wives&mdash;
+     Now, to the trumpet, we march away!
+
+     &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;&mdash;For some one hath will'd it so!
+     Nothing we know of the why or the where&mdash;
+     To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow&mdash;
+     Nothing we know, and little we care.
+
+     Give us to kill!&mdash;since this is the end
+     Of love and labor in Nature's plan;
+     Give us to kill and ravish and rend,
+     Yea, since this is the end of man.
+
+     States shall perish, and states be born:
+     Leaders, out of the throng, shall press;
+     Some to honor, and some to scorn:
+     We, that are little, shall yet be less.
+
+     Over our lines shall the vultures soar;
+     Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry;
+     And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore;
+     And daily the living shall pray to die.
+
+     Nay, what matter!&mdash;When all is said,
+     Prince and Bishop will plunder still:
+     Lord and Lady must dance and wed.
+     Pity us, pray for us, ye that will!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me
+      reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The
+      Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World
+      miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the
+      thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of
+      readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that it
+      will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable
+      rearrangement of present poetic values.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author of &ldquo;Wishmakers' Town&rdquo; is the child of his period, and has not
+      escaped the <i>maladie du siecle</i>. The doubt and pessimism that marked
+      the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes
+      with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet who
+      speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of hope.
+      Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to sing
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Of what the world shall be
+     When the years have died away.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HISTORICAL NOVELS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's &ldquo;Hugh
+      Wynne,&rdquo; I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and
+      principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of
+      actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving shocks
+      in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary realm&mdash;in
+      the realm of Ruritania, for illustration&mdash;has an air of possibility,
+      at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local color, having
+      an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged. You cannot charge
+      the writer with ignorance of the period in which his narrative is laid,
+      since the period is as vague as the geography. He walks on safe ground,
+      eluding many of the perils that beset the story-teller who ventures to
+      stray beyond the bounds of the make-believe. One peril he cannot escape&mdash;that
+      of misrepresenting human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to reflect
+      history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether wonderfully
+      and fearfully made&mdash;the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron characters,
+      the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory rhetoric forever at
+      charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so unreal. Here art has
+      broken into smithereens the mirror which she is supposed to hold up to
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father,
+      mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually the
+      anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold twenty
+      swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them before he
+      escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly behind him.
+      How tired one gets of that door! The &ldquo;caitiff&rdquo; in these chronicles of when
+      knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from &ldquo;the highest
+      battlement&rdquo;&mdash;the second highest would not do at all; or else he is
+      thrown into &ldquo;the deepest dungeon of the castle&rdquo;&mdash;the second deepest
+      dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero habitually
+      &ldquo;cleaves&rdquo; his foeman &ldquo;to the midriff,&rdquo; the &ldquo;midriff&rdquo; being what the
+      properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain fictional historian
+      of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim: &ldquo;My sword will [shall]
+      kiss his midriff;&rdquo; but that is an exceptionally lofty flight of diction.
+      My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in the course of long
+      interviews with her lover remains unrecognized&mdash;a diaphanous literary
+      invention that must have been old when the Pyramids were young. The
+      heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called &ldquo;a springald,&rdquo;
+       puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for his sister or
+      anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility that is not at
+      home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen&mdash;a priest, a
+      princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     \          The princess rose to her feet and
+     approached the priest.
+     \          &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said swiftly, &ldquo;this
+     is not the Lady Joan, my brother's
+     wife, but a youth marvelously like
+     her, who hath offered himself in
+     her place that she might escape. . . .
+     He is the Count von Loen, a lord
+     of Kernsburg.  And I love him.  We
+     want you to marry us now, dear
+     Father&mdash;now, without a moment's
+     delay; for if you do not they will
+     kill him, and I shall have to marry
+     Prince Wasp!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This is from &ldquo;Joan of the Sword Hand,&rdquo; and if ever I read a more silly
+      performance I have forgotten it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POOR YORICK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac which
+      I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a bracket in
+      Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players&mdash;the apartment remains as he
+      left it that solemn June day ten years ago&mdash;stands a sadly
+      dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin, used
+      to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act of
+      &ldquo;Hamlet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant;
+      it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull
+      is especially a skull &ldquo;with a past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild
+      West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly
+      undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it seemed,
+      was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman&mdash;in
+      brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort of
+      person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the
+      course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily
+      disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in
+      the florid mind of his sometime benefactor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in
+      Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier
+      basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance
+      of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it
+      figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the
+      actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features of
+      that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard III.
+      in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo usurped
+      his seat at table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner,
+      which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the
+      tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary
+      stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of
+      &ldquo;Hamlet.&rdquo; &ldquo;Take it away, you black imp!&rdquo; thundered the actor to the
+      equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him to
+      investigate the dark nature of his burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee,
+      recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim humor
+      of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the testator's
+      whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure an engagement
+      to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company of strolling
+      players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind the footlights
+      in the hands of his famous son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging the
+      thing&mdash;the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the cranium&mdash;Edwin
+      Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache counterfeit manufactured
+      in the property-room of the theatre. During his subsequent wanderings in
+      Australia and California, he carefully preserved the relic, which finally
+      found repose on the bracket in question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth
+      floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer
+      twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull
+      until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten, if
+      ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order to
+      establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was
+      conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance not
+      without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance
+      really was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober enough
+      now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of merriment &ldquo;that
+      were wont to set the table on a roar.&rdquo; But I did not regret his evaporated
+      hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial silence, and had learned to
+      look upon his rather open countenance with the same friendliness as that
+      with which I regarded the faces of less phantasmal members of the club. He
+      had become to me a dramatic personality as distinct as that of any of the
+      Thespians I met in the grillroom or the library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently
+      speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in those
+      cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old experience
+      had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had known strange
+      vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him into contact with a
+      varied assortment of men and women, and extended his horizon. His more
+      peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on lonely roads had surely
+      not been without incident. It was inconceivable that all this had left no
+      impressions. He must have had at least a faint recollection of the
+      tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick had formed his estimate of
+      me, and probably not a flattering one, is something of which I am strongly
+      convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal
+      cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of the
+      precious things I lost then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players
+      has been, as I have said, kept unchanged&mdash;a shrine to which from time
+      to time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the
+      centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory
+      paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this
+      chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull finds
+      its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor Yorick
+      had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had that
+      happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner in my
+      study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
+     &mdash;<i>King Lear.</i>
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his
+      manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal
+      relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance to
+      which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that
+      might otherwise not seem becoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his
+      autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of books
+      and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is
+      importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who
+      &ldquo;collect&rdquo; autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no
+      interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as
+      possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence,
+      reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was &ldquo;the
+      buttonholes of all nations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two
+      hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the
+      literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast a
+      sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two
+      hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some
+      favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then,
+      that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it
+      embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to be
+      regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile of
+      unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis, he quickly
+      finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile correspondence.
+      Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to become facile prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always
+      studied the idiosyncrasies of his &ldquo;subject&rdquo; as carefully as another sort
+      of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates a
+      midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and adroit
+      approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According to the
+      revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and Mr. Gladstone had
+      their respective point of easy access&mdash;their one unfastened door or
+      window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man has his weak side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was
+      perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for
+      instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one
+      day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the
+      shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I
+      handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription.
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; he said, smiling, &ldquo;I know 'em by instinct.&rdquo; Relieved of its
+      envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began with
+      the usual amusing solecism: &ldquo;As one of the most famous of American authors
+      I would like to possess your autograph.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding.
+      Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson,
+      always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a card;
+      but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter addressed
+      to him personally&mdash;&ldquo;on any subject you please,&rdquo; as an immature scribe
+      lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous youth purposed
+      to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate competitors, in
+      order to show them that he was on familiar terms with the celebrated
+      So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many a collector. The
+      stratagems he employs to compass his end are inexhaustible. He drops you
+      an off-hand note to inquire in what year you first published your
+      beautiful poem entitled &ldquo;A Psalm of Life.&rdquo; If you are a simple soul, you
+      hasten to assure him that you are not the author of that poem, which he
+      must have confused with your &ldquo;Rime of the Ancient Mariner&rdquo;&mdash;and there
+      you are. Another expedient is to ask if your father's middle name was not
+      Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably been dead many years, and as
+      perhaps he was not a public man in his day, you are naturally touched that
+      any one should have interest in him after this long flight of time. In the
+      innocence of your heart you reply by the next mail that your father's
+      middle name was not Hierophilus, but Epaminondas&mdash;and there you are
+      again. It is humiliating to be caught swinging, like a simian ancestor, on
+      a branch of one's genealogical tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing parchment
+      with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This document&mdash;I
+      am relating an actual occurrence&mdash;announces with a flourish that you
+      have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The Kalamazoo
+      International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does not take away
+      your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make an acknowledgment,
+      and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging secretary of a
+      literary organization which does not exist anywhere on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who
+      advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed
+      list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue, price,
+      style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These
+      interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher; but
+      they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped &ldquo;thanks in advance.&rdquo; The
+      natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk
+      commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or,
+      possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant. Eight
+      or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping you will
+      not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list of your
+      writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same words. The
+      length of time it takes him to &ldquo;replenish&rdquo; his library (with your books)
+      strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions sufficiently to
+      pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this gentleman cares
+      nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile point of view he
+      cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens, which he disposes
+      of to dealers in such frail merchandise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and
+      biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some
+      slight hitherto unnoted event in your life&mdash;a signed photograph and a
+      copy of your bookplate are here in order&mdash;is also a character which
+      periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions
+      there are as many players as men have fancies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the book
+      of his experience: &ldquo;Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of a
+      rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly a
+      woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss of her
+      little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a dozen
+      lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of a
+      child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing air of
+      doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the entire
+      poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am unable
+      to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused when, two
+      months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat price
+      attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very
+      poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other class
+      of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of confirmed
+      invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection between incipient
+      spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which superinduces the
+      other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that one out of every
+      eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases his or her claim upon
+      the possession of some vertebral disability which leaves him or her
+      incapable of doing anything but write to authors for their autograph. Why
+      this particular diversion should be the sole resource remains undisclosed.
+      But so it appears to be, and the appeal to one's sympathy is most direct
+      and persuasive. Personally, however, I have my suspicions, suspicions that
+      are shared by several men of letters, who have come to regard this plea of
+      invalidism, in the majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very
+      old and familiar tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph
+      hunters, as a class, is excellent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ROBERT HERRICK
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of
+      the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for
+      more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was aware
+      of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in countless
+      quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were not much
+      regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world in this
+      matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not arrived!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family in
+      Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was John
+      Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman in 1535, and
+      afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or Heyricke&mdash;he
+      spelled his name recklessly&mdash;had five sons, the second of which
+      sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in December,
+      1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a sister to Anne,
+      Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the many children of
+      this marriage was Robert Herrick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was the
+      poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an
+      unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage
+      of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the
+      slightest record.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and
+      baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had
+      several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves. It
+      would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the little
+      we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without dragging
+      in the rest of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas
+      Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window.
+      Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high
+      almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to the
+      estate, &ldquo;all goods and chattels of suicides&rdquo; becoming his by law. The
+      circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the good bishop,
+      after long litigation, consented to refer the case to arbitrators, who
+      awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving the question at
+      issue&mdash;whether or not Herrick's death had been his own premeditated
+      act&mdash;still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular law, which
+      had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to encourage suicide
+      among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle classes, was afterward
+      rescinded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate
+      amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand
+      pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's
+      two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the latter
+      subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and money-lender
+      to James I., were appointed guardians to the children.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial
+     Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item
+     from Win-wood's <i>Manorials of Affairs of State</i>: &ldquo;On Easter
+     Tuesday 1605, one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in
+     Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great
+     Diamond the King cloth wear.  The party little expected the
+     honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an
+     extraordinary liking of it.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his
+      fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned
+      the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's
+      indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have
+      offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term expired,
+      to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, which he did
+      as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two years he
+      transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and the
+      pursuit of the law&mdash;the two frequently go together. He received his
+      degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the
+      law for the arts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly allowance
+      of ten pounds&mdash;a not illiberal provision, the pound being then five
+      times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the master of
+      arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his own share of
+      his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for complaint; if
+      otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few
+      chance-preserved letters written to his &ldquo;most careful uncle,&rdquo; as he calls
+      that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and dreary
+      epistles, which are signed &ldquo;R. Hearick,&rdquo; the writer says: &ldquo;The essence of
+      my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for my use to Mr.
+      Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the ordinarie sume of
+      tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you maye.&rdquo; He also
+      indulges in the natural wish that his college bills &ldquo;had leaden wings and
+      tortice feet.&rdquo; This was in 1617. The young man's patrimony, whatever it
+      may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to &ldquo;many a throe and pinches
+      of the purse.&rdquo; For the moment, at least, his prospects were not
+      flattering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the
+      university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he was
+      not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his wits
+      before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court circle
+      Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful, allies in the
+      persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master John Crofts,
+      cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems, honored by the
+      music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at Westminster, it is more
+      than possible that Herrick was brought to the personal notice of Charles
+      and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise of success, but not success
+      itself. It has been thought probable that Herrick may have secured some
+      minor office in the chapel at Whitehall. That would accord with his
+      subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as chaplain to the Duke of
+      Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle of Rhe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not ascertainable.
+      If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he led meanwhile was
+      not such as his &ldquo;most careful uncle&rdquo; would have warmly approved. The
+      literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a free-lance like
+      young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing in manuscript from
+      hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as a poet. The Dog and the
+      Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship, unless it were to the
+      worship of &ldquo;rare Ben Jonson,&rdquo; at whose feet Herrick now sat, with the
+      other blossoming young poets of the season. He was a faithful disciple to
+      the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to the master, of which not the
+      least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     When I a verse shall make,
+     Know I have praid thee
+     For old religion's sake,
+     Saint Ben, to aide me.
+
+     Make the way smooth for me,
+     When I, thy Herrick,
+     Honouring thee, on my knee
+     Offer my lyric.
+
+     Candles I'll give to thee,
+     And a new altar;
+     And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
+     Writ in my Psalter.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of
+      Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes, in
+      Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of his
+      life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away from
+      London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway and
+      telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a
+      provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness of
+      a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth century
+      must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated throb of
+      sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or unhappy he may
+      have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may congratulate
+      itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far from the
+      distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his Muse, for
+      there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which were to make
+      his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that we owe the
+      cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural manners and
+      customs&mdash;the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, the
+      morris-dances, and the May-day festivals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked by
+      the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than &ldquo;a ringe of
+      twenty shillings.&rdquo; Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between
+      them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in
+      epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of
+      verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew. One
+      of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying Brother,
+      Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to have been two
+      brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is supposed to be
+      referred to here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of
+      detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have been
+      irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock lightly.
+      As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and poetry; but
+      presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to sack was in a
+      strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted the vicarship as
+      he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of horse&mdash;with an eye
+      to present emolument and future promotion. The promotion never came, and
+      the emolument was nearly as scant as that of Goldsmith's parson, who
+      considered himself &ldquo;passing rich with forty pounds a year&rdquo;&mdash;a height
+      of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with his expensive town wants and
+      habits. But fifty pounds&mdash;the salary of his benefice&mdash;and
+      possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial fees would enable
+      him to live for the time being. It was better than a possible nothing a
+      year in London.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of
+      the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the
+      subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense of
+      his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick
+      afterward gave to the world&mdash;those astonishing epigrams upon his
+      rustic enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his
+      personal friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written
+      only in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic
+      confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate to
+      the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with the
+      exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some of
+      the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces
+      grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves
+      with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are
+      &ldquo;born of the royal blood.&rdquo; They lack the inspiration and magic of his
+      secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to stir
+      a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at all
+      times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may read
+      Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness might
+      have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. &ldquo;For unconscious
+      impiety,&rdquo; remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) &ldquo;this rivals the famous passage in
+      which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and think.'&rdquo; Elsewhere, in
+      an apostrophe to &ldquo;Heaven,&rdquo; Herrick says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Let mercy be
+     So kind to set me free,
+     And I will straight
+     Come in, or force the gate.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1) In <i>Seventeenth-Century Studies</i>. and the general
+     absence of arrangement in the &ldquo;Hesperides,&rdquo; Dr. Grosart
+     advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary
+     authority on these points.  Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick
+     kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books
+     separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a
+     too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this
+     slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the
+     publisher, &ldquo;whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate
+     proceeded to intermix these additions with the others.  That
+     the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or
+     disarrangement lies on the surface.&rdquo;  This is an amiable
+     supposition, but merely a supposition.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed
+      the &ldquo;copy&rdquo; in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and if he
+      were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to observe no
+      method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is none the
+      less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness was not
+      the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed the
+      fashion <i>malgre lui</i>. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly
+      should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers,
+      there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their
+      manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly
+      unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The &ldquo;Hesperides&rdquo; was his
+      sole publication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance at
+      this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the
+      original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or
+      not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet,
+      it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on
+      that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to
+      note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the first
+      collection of his miscellaneous poems&mdash;the precious 1645 volume
+      containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great offense
+      to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it represented him as
+      an elderly person, but because of certain minute figures of peasant lads
+      and lassies who are very indistinctly seen dancing frivolously under the
+      trees in the background. Herrick had more reason to protest. The
+      aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist lends a tone of veracity
+      to the tradition that the vicar occasionally hurled the manuscript of his
+      sermon at the heads of his drowsy parishioners, accompanying the missive
+      with pregnant remarks. He has the aspect of one meditating assault and
+      battery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability
+      of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings. He
+      exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's imprisonment&mdash;a
+      poem full of deference and tenderness for a person who had evidently
+      injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some affair of church
+      preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick &ldquo;became much beloved by the
+      gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise) discourses.&rdquo; It
+      appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet spaniel called Tracy,
+      which did not get away without a couplet attached to him:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see
+     For shape and service spaniell like to thee.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he also
+      sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's
+      disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of
+      Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at
+      Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had
+      taught to drink out of a tankard&mdash;a kind of instruction he was
+      admirably qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when
+      she communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on
+      Herrick published in the &ldquo;Quarterly Review&rdquo; for August, 1810, and in the
+      Boston edition (1) of the &ldquo;Hesperides&rdquo; attributed to Southey.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The
+     British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and
+     chronologi-cally.  On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as
+     living &ldquo;in habits of intimacy&rdquo; with Ben Jonson in 1648.  If
+     that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters
+     in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick was
+      Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five pieces
+      entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical hints
+      under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual side-lights
+      on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A whimsical
+      personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved from these
+      fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with perhaps less
+      quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the prince of
+      gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place Herrick
+      laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what would have
+      been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another place he
+      tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this latter
+      catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's <i>concetti</i>:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     One of the five straight branches of my hand
+     Is lopt already, and the rest but stand
+     Expecting when to fall, which soon will be:
+     First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of
+      himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest&mdash;he
+      understood and loved music. None but a lover could have said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The mellow touch of musick most doth wound
+     The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Or this to Julia:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,
+     As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise,
+     But listen to thee walking in thy chamber
+     Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.
+
+     . . . Then let me lye
+     Entranc'd, and lost confusedly;
+     And by thy musick stricken mute,
+     Die, and be turn'd into a lute.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed by
+      a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. &ldquo;Fate likes fine names,&rdquo; says
+      Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting
+      of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be
+      embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In this little urne is laid
+     Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid;
+     From whose happy spark here let
+     Spring the purple violet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which seems
+      to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a
+      pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who
+      says that &ldquo;Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse.&rdquo; She
+      was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this
+      octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     These summer birds did with thy master stay
+     The times of warmth, but then they flew away,
+     Leaving their poet, being now grown old,
+     Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold.
+     But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide
+     As well the winter's as the summer's tide:
+     For which thy love, live with thy master here
+     Not two, but all the seasons of the year.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls &ldquo;a rude
+      river,&rdquo; and his characterization of Devon folk as &ldquo;a people currish,
+      churlish as the seas,&rdquo; the fullest and pleasantest days of his life were
+      probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the
+      gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations.
+      How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events, is
+      attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its
+      compensation. &ldquo;I confess,&rdquo; he says,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I ne'er invented such
+     Ennobled numbers for the presse
+     Than where I loath'd so much.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was
+      firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of
+      his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable
+      regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The
+      integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not
+      given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the
+      panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, and
+      installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with
+      pronounced Cromwellian views.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded his
+      clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were left
+      of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more he would
+      drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the air breathed
+      by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, and the rest.
+      &ldquo;Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth too.&rdquo; In the
+      gladness of getting back &ldquo;from the dull confines of the drooping west,&rdquo; he
+      writes a glowing apostrophe to London&mdash;that &ldquo;stony stepmother to
+      poets.&rdquo; He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud to find himself a
+      citizen again. According to his earlier biographers, Herrick had much ado
+      not to starve in that same longed-for London, and fell into great misery;
+      but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with justness, that Herrick's
+      family, which was wealthy and influential, would not have allowed him to
+      come to abject want. With his royalistic tendencies he may not have
+      breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of the Commonwealth, and no doubt
+      many tribulations fell to his lot, but among them was not poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few
+      weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume
+      with the title &ldquo;Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of Robert
+      Herrick, Esq.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned&mdash;the era of the
+      commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie in
+      a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had strayed
+      by chance into an artificial and prosaic age&mdash;a sylvan singing
+      creature alighting on an alien planet. &ldquo;He was too natural,&rdquo; says Mr.
+      Palgrave in his Chrysomela, &ldquo;too purely poetical; he had not the learned
+      polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn,
+      which were then and onward demanded from poetry.&rdquo; Yet it is strange that a
+      public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who was
+      fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then, or in
+      the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written
+      Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and
+      perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Hesperides&rdquo; was received with chilling indifference. None of
+      Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning it.
+      The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for more than
+      a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In 1796 the
+      &ldquo;Gentleman's Magazine&rdquo; copied a few of the poems, and two years later Dr.
+      Nathan Drake published in his &ldquo;Literary Hours&rdquo; three critical papers on
+      the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted him from the
+      &ldquo;Lives of the Poets,&rdquo; though space was found for half a score of
+      poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810 Dr. Nott, a
+      physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections. It was not
+      until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained for the taste
+      of our own day to multiply editions of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that
+      some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man who
+      could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity presents
+      attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful of
+      Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant; the
+      men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun make
+      no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his birth
+      and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable in the
+      briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material for
+      profundity and ciphers!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses
+     in the <i>Musarum Deliciae</i> (1656) who mentions
+
+     That old sack
+     Young Herrick took to entertain
+     The Muses in a sprightly vein.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648 and
+      1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for the instant
+      when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further literary work
+      there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to the &ldquo;Lacrymae
+      Musarum&rdquo; in 1649.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's,
+      Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in the
+      seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early
+      manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old haunts
+      the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller banished,
+      and many another comrade &ldquo;in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.&rdquo; As
+      Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy river-bank in
+      those years, his thought must have turned more than once to the little
+      vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted Herrick
+      back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious Syms having been
+      turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the seventy-first
+      anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements after that,
+      tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline. The only notable
+      event concerning him is recorded twelve years later in the parish
+      register: &ldquo;Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day October, 1674.&rdquo;
+       He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave is unknown. In
+      1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church. And this is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life are
+      as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were they as
+      ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant compared with
+      the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world his &ldquo;Hesperides.&rdquo; The
+      environments of the man were accidental and transitory. The significant
+      part of him we have, and that is enduring so long as wit, fancy, and
+      melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has
+      henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said
+      three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may have
+      been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been always in
+      our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs, in a
+      striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as they were
+      on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in reading them in
+      their freshness, must surely have been aware here and there of the ageless
+      grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such message
+      as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this point he
+      somewhere says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Let others to the printing presse run fast;
+     Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by many
+      of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the printer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the &ldquo;Hesperides.&rdquo; It
+      was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an unconscionable
+      time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his pieces had been set
+      to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and Laniers, and his court
+      poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier party, Herrick cut but a
+      small figure at the side of several of his rhyming contemporaries who are
+      now forgotten. It sometimes happens that the light love-song, reaching few
+      or no ears at its first singing, outlasts the seemingly more prosperous
+      ode which, dealing with some passing phase of thought, social or
+      political, gains the instant applause of the multitude. In most cases the
+      timely ode is somehow apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it,
+      and becomes the yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes
+      especially to get hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble
+      poets laureate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as &ldquo;a great little
+      novelist.&rdquo; Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his
+      poems, for he wrote nothing <i>de longue haleine</i>, would place him
+      among the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The
+      Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The
+      accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one of the
+      gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as exquisite and
+      precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly
+      always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and is never the
+      result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, borrowing Milton's
+      words, described these carefully wrought poems as &ldquo;wood-notes wild&rdquo; showed
+      a singular lapse of penetration. They are full of subtle simplicity. Here
+      we come across a stanza as severely cut as an antique cameo&mdash;the
+      stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his lady-love's &ldquo;winter
+      face&rdquo;&mdash;and there a couplet that breaks into unfading daffodils and
+      violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His amatory songs and
+      catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to hang on the boughs
+      in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily done, not even that
+      portion of it we could wish had not been done at all. Be the motive grave
+      or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form which distinguishes
+      everything in literature that has survived its own period. There is no
+      such thing as &ldquo;form&rdquo; alone; it is only the close-grained material that
+      takes the highest finish. The structure of Herrick's verse, like that of
+      Blake, is simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as
+      those of Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his
+      manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as the cup of the acorn
+      fits its meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are no
+      &ldquo;tears from the depth of some divine despair,&rdquo; no probings into the tragic
+      heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos of a
+      cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to the
+      light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader who
+      does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads Herrick.
+      Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. A
+      pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. In
+      his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. His
+      limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the sunshine.
+      Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any complexity; both
+      are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to duplicate the osiers and
+      ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl straying near its crystal. His
+      is no troubled stream in which large trout are caught. He must be accepted
+      on his own terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted to
+      their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been
+      remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability
+      is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is
+      the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes
+      into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The color of
+      his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its affinities.
+      A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of a hundred
+      styles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been
+      exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and
+      there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting
+      impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement on
+      Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is
+      inconsiderable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was
+      doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell or
+      Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his purely
+      devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart. Shakespeare,
+      whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which Herrick
+      frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any appreciable
+      spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which finds no
+      setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to brother
+      poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for addressing
+      four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in the main,
+      obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth establishing. His
+      London life, at two different periods, brought him into contact with many
+      of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has helped to confer
+      immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the secret of
+      conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions. Shakespeare
+      had not a finer confidence when he wrote,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Not marble nor the gilded monuments
+     Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by
+      any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils.
+      Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire
+      village would have been unendurable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite,
+      however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's
+      themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
+     Of April, May, of June, and July flowers;
+     I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
+     Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes;
+     I write of Youth, of Love, and have access
+     By these to sing of cleanly wantonness;
+     I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
+     Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris;
+     I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
+     How roses first came red and lilies white;
+     I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
+     The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King;
+     I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
+     Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book the
+      breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to exhale
+      wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender had been
+      shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of hawthorn hedges
+      and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half hidden with
+      honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning home in the
+      rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should fall when
+      fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English as Herrick.
+      He painted the country life of his own time as no other has painted it at
+      any time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as
+      national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and
+      period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece,
+      Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for plot
+      and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden and the
+      celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The
+      Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that have given Keats
+      his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets. Shelley's two
+      masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong respectively to
+      Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian; Tennyson
+      wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the King, and Matthew
+      Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum&mdash;a narrative poem second in dignity to
+      none produced in the nineteenth century&mdash;is a Persian story. But
+      Herrick's &ldquo;golden apples&rdquo; sprang from the soil in his own day, and
+      reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not wanting
+      in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable distance from
+      that of &ldquo;A Midsummer Night's Dream.&rdquo; Puck and Titania are of finer breath
+      than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have Devonshire manners and
+      to live in a miniature England of their own. Like the magician who summons
+      them from nowhere, they are fond of color and perfume and substantial
+      feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts&mdash;from the cups of
+      morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is marvelously
+      adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out of
+      perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in their winsome
+      way, &ldquo;part pagan, part papistical;&rdquo; they have their pardons and
+      indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     An apple's-core is hung up dried,
+     With rattling kernels, which is rung
+     To call to Morn and Even-song;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and very conveniently,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut,
+     The Holy-water there is put.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the
+      impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648
+      seems never very far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the
+      Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and
+      liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes,
+      there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen
+      from the lips of Posthumus in &ldquo;Cymbeline.&rdquo; This delicate epicede would
+      have fitted Imogen:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Here a solemne fast we keepe
+     While all beauty lyes asleepe;
+     Husht be all things; no noyse here
+     But the toning of a teare,
+     Or a sigh of such as bring
+     Cowslips for her covering.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song,
+      for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A
+      poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many <i>dramatis
+      personae</i>. &ldquo;Enter a Song singing&rdquo; is the stage-direction in a
+      seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized
+      in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his
+      couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are
+      intended presentations of himself:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed&mdash;
+     Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one. Silvia,
+      Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively ladies
+      ending in <i>a</i>, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy phantoms
+      dancing&mdash;as they should not have danced&mdash;through the brain of a
+      sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church of
+      England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite
+      impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so
+      numerous actual demands upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings
+      that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's
+      lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform
+      smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded richness
+      of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back to them
+      again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught it, and
+      insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of England the
+      author of the &ldquo;Hesperides&rdquo; remains, and is likely to remain, unique. As
+      Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick stands alone in
+      his scanty plot of ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #625 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/625)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ponkapog Papers
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #625]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PONKAPOG PAPERS
+
+By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+
+
+TO FRANCIS BARTLETT
+
+
+
+THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called _Ponkapog Papers_ not
+simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within
+the limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is
+something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which
+Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts
+settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions
+concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound
+that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great
+centres of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting
+comparison between themselves and important pieces of literature.
+Therefore there seems something especially appropriate in the
+geographical title selected, and if the author's choice of name need
+further excuse, it is to be found in the alluring alliteration lying
+ready at his hand.
+
+REDMAN FARM, _Ponkapog_, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+TOM FOLIO
+
+FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON"
+
+PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+DECORATION DAY
+
+WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+ON EARLY RISING
+
+UN POETE MANQUE
+
+THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+POOR YORICK
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+
+IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of
+the Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from
+them when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive
+for a fantastic short story, in which the hero--an author in vogue or
+a popular actor--might be depicted as having all his good qualities
+gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of
+too prolonged indulgence in the effort to "look natural." First the man
+loses his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual
+attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious,
+and finally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be
+brought about by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for
+the moment, no hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his
+enlarged requirement.
+
+THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging
+directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have
+been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori
+quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing
+more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better
+moon.
+
+I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of "The Two First Centuries
+of Florentine Literature," by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not
+acquainted with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari
+makes it plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first.
+
+THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to
+divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation
+of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time
+will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The
+beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just
+at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome
+stride toward the longed-for millennium.
+
+SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we can guard against. The
+well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and
+several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied
+themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of "the first known
+forefather of the poet." This lately turned up ancestor, who does not
+date very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on
+the mural marble as "formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of
+Corfe Castle." Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou
+Ben Adhem himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love
+their fellow men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the
+matter he probably would have preferred not to have that particular
+footman exhumed. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir
+John Bankes would scarcely have been heard of in our young century if
+it had not been for his footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and
+solemn, behind his master's chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered
+into the head of Sir John that his highly respectable name would be
+served up to posterity--like a cold relish--by his own butler! By
+Robert!
+
+IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery
+district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to
+long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand
+clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and
+rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One
+could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that
+those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the
+doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you
+approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a
+most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here
+and there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you
+may become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion.
+
+POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not any too soon. If it only
+were practicable to kill him in real life! A story--to be called The
+Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a decree condemning to death
+every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank,
+and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects
+his own tediousness is yet to be born.
+
+WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically
+to his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre
+verse, he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our
+poets; but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can
+bear comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative
+quality and austere richness of diction what other verse of our period
+approaches it? The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael
+Drayton said of Marlowe, "those brave translunary things that the first
+poets had."
+
+
+IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one
+man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine
+him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and
+hearing a ring at the door-bell!
+
+No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself
+in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about
+it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds
+superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the
+least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who
+accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end
+in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of
+his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his
+life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare
+his heart with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that
+inevitably colors premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those
+small octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected
+that he was adding a photographic portrait of himself to the world's
+gallery of immortals. We are more intimately acquainted with Mr.
+Samuel Pepys, the inner man--his little meannesses and his large
+generosities--then we are with half the persons we call our dear
+friends.
+
+THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is
+to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.
+
+IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced
+an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf,
+and his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I
+have no disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is
+as hearty as if he had not been dead and--otherwise provided for
+these last three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as
+merciless, but she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of
+heretics.
+
+Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news
+of the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it
+for the time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a
+maniac; but the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty
+pure and simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment
+of him stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially
+dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting
+Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I.
+gave the amiable Mr. Dick.
+
+AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an
+English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be
+preternaturally clever and amusing--"so very droll, don't you know." He
+recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics public
+characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of the
+elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is
+capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last
+time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in
+spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of
+entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on
+"the English and American languages." As there were two Americans on
+the back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amurricans"--his choice
+of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in
+pronunciation from a gentleman who said _boult_ for bolt, called St.
+John _Sin' Jun_, and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of
+his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying _Maudlin_
+for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English
+folk who have resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or
+thereabouts.
+
+EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it.
+The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's _ex
+libris_ is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of
+indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is
+placed.
+
+WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most
+matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an
+alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists
+and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused
+through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in
+individual Englishmen.
+
+THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first
+person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
+memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always
+lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of
+nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to
+this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
+author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was
+also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses
+secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton,
+feeling that "they also serve who only stand and wait," sat down and
+waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there
+spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he
+read: "Don't forget to see the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his
+contract," "Don't forget H-----'s proofs," etc. An inspiration seized
+upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of
+"don't forgets" he wrote: "Don't forget to accept A 's poem." He left
+his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon when the
+publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little astonished at
+the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he did accept
+the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the
+lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day unprinted. That
+kindly publisher was wise as well as kind.
+
+FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always
+certain to be particularly indecent.
+
+I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the
+priggish little boy in the story of "Sandford and Merton," has a worthy
+American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through
+a seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of
+fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from
+infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely
+pursuing her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted
+didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter,
+who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with
+the same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her
+elders. An interesting instance of hereditary talent!
+
+H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender, graceful, and hollow.
+Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might have
+been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like
+an ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is
+ungrammatical.
+
+AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the
+spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on
+cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom
+at the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem.
+
+Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time.
+The current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as
+is also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed
+with the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into
+rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely.
+
+I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should
+involve the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment
+of a fresh censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in
+permanent absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to
+express his opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal
+danger, It is almost inevitable that he should come to overrate
+the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much
+seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility.
+The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious
+bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an
+exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings
+not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: "I am Sir Oracle,
+and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." When the critic reaches this
+exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone.
+
+AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and
+signs it with a rainbow.
+
+I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every
+detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the
+desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which
+the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised
+knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely
+thought lovelier by sometimes half veiling it.
+
+I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick
+has handled twice in the "Hesperides." The fancy, however, is not
+Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I
+have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it:
+
+UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER
+
+
+
+When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my
+lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day
+begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and
+wakes, Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the
+cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks!
+
+Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by
+anticipating everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell:
+
+But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and
+Juliet is the sun.
+
+THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable
+times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says:
+
+Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my
+heart's core, ay, in my _heart of heart_.
+
+The words italicized are invariably written "heart of hearts"--as if a
+person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with
+the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of
+Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural
+on two occasions in his recent novel, "The Mystery of the Sea." Mrs.
+Humphry Ward also twice misquotes the passage in "Lady Rose's Daughter."
+
+BOOKS that have become classics--books that ave had their day and now
+get more praise than perusal--always remind me of venerable colonels and
+majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves
+retired upon half pay.
+
+WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is
+a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother
+naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved
+points of theology. Up among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart
+of the region of porcupines, I happen to have a modest cottage. This
+retreat is called The Porcupine, and I ought by good rights to know
+something about the habits of the small animal from which it derives
+its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to return home on an average of
+three times a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose
+stuck full of quills, and _he_ ought to have some concrete ideas on the
+subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify that the porcupine in its
+moments of relaxation occasionally contracts itself into what might be
+taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to please in the matter
+of spheres. But neither Buster nor I--being unwilling to get into
+trouble--would like to assert that it is an actual ball. That it is a
+shape with which one had better not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction
+that my friend Buster stands ready to defend against all comers.
+
+WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a
+creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has
+always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets
+one to thinking of the South Sea islanders.
+
+THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a
+superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was
+wisdom itself--"Put money in thy purse." Whoever disparages money
+disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened
+the other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of
+glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant
+of natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around
+immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold
+has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have
+been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of
+poverty the world will never know. "After the love of knowledge," says
+Buckle, "there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind
+as the love of money."
+
+DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication
+between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care
+for anything properly said.
+
+DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the
+way of pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest
+contrivances in this fashion--probably dropped down to him by the
+inventor angling for a nibble of commendation--were always making one
+another's acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: "I 'm
+waiting for somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any
+accident put into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of
+humiliation."
+
+THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the
+pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated
+in modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist
+have ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the
+bearer strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names
+in contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum
+may be instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the
+memory of my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are
+individuals with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum
+& Cheetam, Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to
+be true. But it was once, if it is not now, an actuality.
+
+I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately
+becomes a great literary centre.
+
+THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.
+There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.
+
+EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that
+goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him
+among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he
+dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only
+in the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that
+the world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist,
+or the historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long
+time dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure.
+Up to that point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or
+underrated him, or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the
+eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily
+under its dominion. It invariably represents him as either a greater or
+a smaller personage than he actually is. Presently the simulacrum
+works no more spells, good or evil, and the deception is unveiled. The
+hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and the idol of yesterday,
+which seemed so important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and
+carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he
+chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is
+found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on
+a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks
+to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust
+may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation
+of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is
+ever a wide discrepancy.
+
+A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by
+Charles Brookfield, the English actor, in his "Random Recollections."
+Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and
+Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson,
+and others. "After dinner," relates the random recollector, "the poet
+insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair
+_more Americano_. There were strangers in the room, and he was
+expostulated with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your
+feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very
+comfortable as I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another.
+'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father,
+'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet." That _more
+Americano_ of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular
+flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the
+prince of courtesy--as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It
+will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor
+of it.
+
+GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct
+historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The
+spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of
+him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be
+made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care
+of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air
+surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible
+record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The
+tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works
+of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can
+picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that
+scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up
+the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical
+argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of
+government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art
+wither quickly.
+
+ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of
+the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do
+so, would I?
+
+SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs--putting in his oar, so
+to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other
+evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen
+present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a
+rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced
+by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece
+of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it
+imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special
+branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work
+requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing
+an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are
+employed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular
+indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application,
+finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve demanded by his task,
+he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in
+order that his hand may recover the requisite precision of touch. As
+I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of
+sensibility came drifting into my memory. "The hand of little employment
+hath the daintier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left nothing unsaid.
+
+IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary
+deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and
+nights the streets of Tokio--where the squat little brown houses look
+for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture
+of the Japanese--were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made
+gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and
+mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into
+lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched
+across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha
+whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The
+spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that.
+
+     A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers,
+     Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers--
+     Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice
+     And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.
+
+     Each day has its fair or its festival there,
+     And life seems immune to all trouble and care--
+     Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,
+     Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
+
+     They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars,
+     And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars;
+     They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone,
+     As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
+
+     They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs,
+     And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs:
+     Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black,
+     And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
+
+     On roadside and street toddling images meet,
+     And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet;
+     Their obis are tied with particular pride,
+     Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.
+
+     With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat,
+     Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat;
+     A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or "Stay!"
+     "I hate you!"  "I love you!"--a fan can say that!
+     Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three
+     Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea;
+     They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear
+     Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.
+
+     At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight,
+     With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight--
+     Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead,
+     Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
+
+     Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume
+     Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom;
+     On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,
+     They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
+
+     At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near,
+     A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear;
+     Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings
+     The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
+
+THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the
+theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing.
+The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for
+deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds
+usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a
+facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for
+this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been
+indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors.
+
+AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French
+gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which
+always has the air of saying: "I have lived!"
+
+WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always
+instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory
+playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing
+the phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they
+remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single
+reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred
+lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good
+memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly
+the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons
+possessing it. The small boy who defined memory as "the thing you forget
+with" described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of
+men and women.
+
+THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong
+argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One
+publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a
+dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.
+
+THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets
+tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For
+many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and
+fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering
+she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender
+figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair.
+
+FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught
+"to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--especially the
+fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.
+
+The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would
+have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and
+been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly
+dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as "what
+song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself
+among women." He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his
+breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker
+is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for
+such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where
+everybody knows everybody and what everybody has for lunch.
+
+I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying
+that "Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice." I went rather
+confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light
+luggage of cynical maxims.
+
+THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to
+serve as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it
+logically might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of
+the _abattoir_, the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the
+victim or the criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious
+moment as to another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not,
+and cannot, read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors.
+Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a
+difference. There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In
+every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
+There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime music for the many.
+
+G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not
+accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his
+conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to
+the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one
+electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
+
+
+I HAVE thought of an essay to be called "On the Art of Short-Story
+Writing," but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It
+would be too _intime_, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own
+ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of
+importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the
+last paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all
+digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told
+about the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will
+talk, and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over
+the dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy
+that makes my characters pretty mad.
+
+THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as
+a madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three
+centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his
+wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert
+Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man
+into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the
+boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times
+the pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of
+encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially
+practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it
+by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or
+a mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it.
+
+A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually
+with noble books, with "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of
+courtesy," teaches the soul good manners.
+
+THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of
+mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and
+women eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or
+chaotic. Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a
+sense of tolerant superiority when they say: "Of course this is not the
+kind of thing _you_ would like." Sometimes these impressionable souls
+almost seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish.
+
+I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself buried on the edge of the
+pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating
+birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to
+become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B----- is a great
+sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his
+best friend in the Maine woods."
+
+WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him
+bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not
+be in real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of
+real life would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable,
+and frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic
+novelist sometimes seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who
+perpetuated the old patch on the new trousers. True art selects and
+paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.
+
+THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at
+Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy
+of the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in
+bed, convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to
+prove fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture
+in aquarelle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the
+foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon
+sunlight, falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture,
+which was turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes
+rested thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just
+sent it to him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me
+since, that that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was
+waiting to bear his spirit away.
+
+CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If
+somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he
+causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw
+off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as
+in the Middle Ages.
+
+WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the
+purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not
+considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The
+word "brass" was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present,
+when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel
+circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like
+another word I have in mind--a word that has become slang, employed in
+the sense which once did not exclude it from very good society. A
+friend lately informed me that he had "fired" his housekeeper--that
+is, dismissed her. He little dreamed that he was speaking excellent
+Elizabethan.
+
+THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded with beautiful and hideous things,
+like a Japanese Museum.
+
+"AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw
+that she shuddered." This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, "Can You
+Forgive Her?" Can you forgive him? is the next question.
+
+A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing.
+Possessing this quality, a trifle "no bigger than an agate-stone on the
+forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will
+have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets
+Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More
+durable than marble or bronze are the words, "I could not love thee,
+deare, so much, loved I not honor more."
+
+I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall
+probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which
+I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff
+of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time
+cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece
+of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but
+he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world
+has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made
+card-catalogue of his library. "It was absurd of me to have it done," he
+remarked. "What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two
+volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always
+find each book as fresh as if I never had read it." This arraignment of
+his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like
+an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself,
+taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort
+of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he
+were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour
+with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there rather depressed,
+but I returned home leavened with his good spirits, which, I think, will
+never desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be
+hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.
+
+THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The
+thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is
+the sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr.
+Howells's blank-verse sketch called "Father and Mother: A Mystery"--a
+strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect
+to some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be
+standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own
+in a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to
+lie awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me.
+I should call the effect _weird_, if the word had not lately been worked
+to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch cold
+finger-tips in those three or four pages.
+
+FOR a character-study--a man made up entirely of limitations. His
+conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to
+attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it.
+
+A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer.
+During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no
+one at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on
+the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play,
+spoke "an infinite deal of nothing." He made persistent and pathetic
+attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him "William
+the Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor
+result--until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped
+at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish
+had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of
+excitement that morning at table. "Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually
+fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can
+you tell me, sir," he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what
+_kind_ of fish these are?" "Cork soles," said the saturnine man, in a
+deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast.
+
+LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's
+line,
+
+"Her heart and morning broke together."
+
+Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same
+platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to
+have its mischief-making bacilli. The late "incomparable and ingenious
+Dean of St. Paul's" says,
+
+"The day breaks not, it is my heart."
+
+I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the
+malady in a milder form when he wrote:
+
+"Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye."
+
+The charming naivete of it!
+
+
+SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening
+during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt
+picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror--_Dearling_,
+mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance
+upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a
+more charming adjective than the one that has replaced it.
+
+A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely
+buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of
+matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded
+from the definitive edition of his collected writings.
+
+     He gave the people of his best;
+     His worst he kept, his best he gave.
+
+One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to
+any possible future publisher of his poems:
+
+     Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,
+     Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer!
+     But my anathema on thee and thine
+     If thou add'st aught to what is printed here.
+
+THE claim of this country to call itself "The Land of the Free" must be
+held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not
+belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his
+daily bread.
+
+THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish
+race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash,
+usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea.
+I had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who
+reigns over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear
+lawn. It was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to
+belong New England. "It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day," she
+said, looking up at me. _"I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould
+mother's grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at
+Mullingar."_ I have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.
+
+
+SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture
+bureau, an old client of his remarked: "He was a most capable manager,
+but it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five
+per cent. commission." "Pond's Extract," murmured one of the gentlemen
+present.
+
+EACH of our great towns has its "Little Italy," with shops where nothing
+is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had
+better not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic
+communities seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little
+Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the
+ocean in order to visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older
+civilizations.
+
+POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are
+made possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious
+demand for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the
+atmosphere stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there
+been no Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely
+puts it,
+
+     Men became
+     Poets, for the air was fame.
+
+THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner
+opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human
+experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact.
+Now he takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the
+absconding bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question
+of distance, the man has positively no choice between a theatre and a
+graveyard. I met him this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity
+Church with a bridal party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing
+Cambridge Bridge, I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on his
+way to Mount Auburn. The wedding afforded him no pleasure, and the
+funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a factor in both. It is his odd
+destiny to be wholly detached from the vital part of his own acts. If
+the carriage itself could speak! The autobiography of a public hack
+written without reservation would be dramatic reading.
+
+IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for
+essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall
+write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves
+me, and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume
+has become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions,
+good and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection.
+
+A STAGE DIRECTION: _exit time; enter Eternity--with a soliloquy._
+
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+
+
+
+TOM FOLIO
+
+IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about
+town, furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a
+man of ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low,
+hesitating voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout
+worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking
+somewhat of his master's flavor--suggesting rather than imitating
+it--which he signed "Tom Folio." I forget how he glided into my
+acquaintanceship; doubtless in some way too shy and elusive for
+remembrance. I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one did, but the
+intercourse between us was most cordial, and our chance meetings and
+bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen years.
+
+Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseudonym--was sparely built and under
+medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it seem so,
+with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not his.
+Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first
+glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left
+you doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and
+would have attracted your attention even in a crowd.
+
+During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him
+only out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his
+hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an
+eye he became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew
+had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an
+instant later, an almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of
+light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of
+his hat, had perpetrated an unintentional deception by leading one to
+suppose a head profusely covered with curly locks. "Tom Folio," I said,
+"put on your hat and come back!" But after that day he never seemed young
+to me.
+
+I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and
+the book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is
+possible I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at
+the South End or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his
+coffee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or
+two fortuitous hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared,
+some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty
+or thirty at least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter
+pie, just as another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The
+only fireside companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was
+a Maltese cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to
+time. I suspected those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss
+Mowcher.
+
+If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of
+them, and not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more
+picturesque solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures
+introduced into the background of the canvas would have spoiled the
+artistic effect.
+
+Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a recluse even when he allowed
+himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of
+humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and
+its busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little
+real knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate
+environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen,
+they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded
+room I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty--the couch (a
+sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the
+litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings,
+among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and
+perhaps--nay, surely--an _editio princeps_ of the "Essays."
+
+The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple
+than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part
+of the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important
+edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be,
+in spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles
+Lamb passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East
+India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still
+seated, quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon
+Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the
+"Essays," describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities
+which occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible
+impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean annuitant"
+was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray
+scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known
+to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten
+magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles,
+yes--but Charles Lamb's! "The king's chaff is as good as other people's
+corn," says Tom Folio.
+
+Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of
+a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of
+fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak
+Walton was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though
+he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of "Cato" contained some proper
+good lines. Our friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly
+preferring the literature of the earlier periods to that of the
+Victorian age. His smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various
+modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous
+pretty, but over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct
+with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been
+composed in the moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you
+wanted a sound mind in a sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's
+"Essay on Man." There was something winsome and by-gone in the general
+make-up of Tom Folio. No man living in the world ever seemed to me to
+live so much out of it, or to live more comfortably.
+
+At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment.
+Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental
+journey, the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle
+sadness. It was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio
+had any love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy,
+platonic sort--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or
+Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa.
+
+Although Tom Folio was not a collector--that means dividends and bank
+balances--he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with
+a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare
+Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an
+undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling,
+though he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly
+have drunk any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's
+time. These things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense;
+in a spiritual sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned
+thus much of his tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the
+rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities.
+
+I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that
+I mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather
+steep staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which
+I have imagined for him--a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to
+believe, and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent
+moral of "The Industrious and Idle Apprentices" pinned against the
+chimney breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always the best of
+company, dropped in at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special
+chair reserved for him by the window, where he could catch a glimpse of
+the pretty housemaid over the way, chatting with the policeman at the
+area railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author of "The Deserted
+Village" were frequent visitors, sometimes appearing together
+arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, following
+obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastly more
+aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter or wholesomer.
+Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of the
+"Arcadia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others before
+whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to
+gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick
+Steele, Dean Swift--there was no end to them! On certain nights, when
+all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street
+stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with
+invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary
+glare of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither.
+A man so sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely.
+
+My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less
+insubstantial--that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ,
+to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the
+brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper
+when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday
+afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered
+woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market
+knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom
+Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of
+Dock Square. _Noblesse oblige!_ He was no stranger in those purlieus.
+Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a
+certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom
+Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the
+Cherwell at Oxford.
+
+I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a
+pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation,
+he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the
+squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses
+and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half
+consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful
+resignation of it all.
+
+Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was
+told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little
+heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old
+Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself--a
+personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen
+again!
+
+Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town,
+I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change,
+but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering
+the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down
+a musty volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on
+Cornhill.
+
+
+
+
+FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our
+countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable
+desire to present something typical in the way of names for his
+adopted characters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his
+nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls
+into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting
+some city directory, in which he would find more material than he could
+exhaust in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have secured in the pages
+of such a compendium a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee
+sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could
+have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young
+woman from "the States" in his novel called "Is He Popenjoy?"
+
+To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia
+Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than
+was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and
+manners was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English
+tourist's preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on
+the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his
+indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it
+was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as
+comical (just as Trollope strikes _us_ as comical), or, at least, as not
+serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish
+young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd
+to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and
+on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there.
+It is a notable circumstance that extraordinary names never seem
+extraordinary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were
+branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite
+unconscious of anything out of the common.
+
+I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but
+English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not
+thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or
+dead, can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for
+example--if the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as
+remarkable, in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British
+officer who was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of
+blessed memory 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished
+himself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine
+Coffin. I trust that the gallant major became a colonel later and is
+still alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to lose a man with a
+name like that.
+
+Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of "The Pall Mall
+Gazette" an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was
+arrested (it ought to have been by "a peeler") for purloining money
+from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of
+Bradford--_des noms bien idylliques!_ What mortal could have a more
+ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled Onions?
+And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more incredible
+coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No story-writer
+would dare to present that fact or those names in his fiction; neither
+would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. Fleabody is _ben
+trovato_.
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON"
+
+THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in "L'Aiglon"--an episode
+whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the point
+of a rapier--bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque passage in
+Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." It is the one intense great moment in
+the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am aware none
+of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the resemblance
+mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of Wagram, but
+the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with contending
+armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the
+mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth chapter in
+the second part of "Les Miserables" (Cosette), and runs as follows:
+
+Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre,
+support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La
+nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque
+voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme
+Virgile dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de
+la catastrophe le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse
+colline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de
+bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la
+plaine, des galops furieux traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit
+l'eclair des sabres, l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des
+bombes, l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un
+rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces
+ombres, ce sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers;
+. . . tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins
+s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque
+dans les nuees, et, dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches,
+Mont-Saint Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit,
+apparaissent confusement couronnees de tourbillons de spectres
+s'exterminant. (1)
+
+Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon," with scarcely a gruesome
+detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the
+ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only
+through the eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled
+shapes lying motionless in various postures of death upon the
+blood-stained sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by
+like vague wailings of the wind--all this might be taken for an artful
+appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though
+it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in
+early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If
+such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity
+of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it.
+
+     (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which
+     belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like
+     all other plains.  At night, however, a kind of visionary
+     mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and
+     watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful
+     plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe
+     takes possession of him.  The terrible June 18 relives; the
+     artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion
+     disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines
+     of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by
+     furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the
+     gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of
+     bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the
+     muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like
+     dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers,
+     these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really
+     exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with
+     purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds,
+     and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-Jean,
+     Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-pear
+     dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one
+     another.
+
+The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished
+hosts is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark
+hand on the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit
+of the past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was
+standing alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not
+being alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had
+a sudden vision of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard.
+Marshal Ney rose from the grave and again shouted those heroic words
+to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" For an
+instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that
+accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived
+dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a
+white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the
+rider's hand; his three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and
+his chin rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode
+away through the twilight, and nobody cried, _Vive l'Empereur!_
+
+The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon
+every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius,
+like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical.
+This sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette
+in "Les Miserables" and the battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon." A muse
+so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of
+supernaturalness from anybody.
+
+
+
+
+PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope
+"had taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels
+of character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except
+that he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former
+class, inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no
+means character." So neat an antithesis would surely never have found
+itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly
+lent it to him. Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have
+preached, his almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always
+had a _story_ to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and
+end--in short, a framework of some description.
+
+There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing;
+but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human
+action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That "character
+in itself is plot" is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive
+with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it
+is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in
+the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say
+that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform
+us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such
+persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those
+passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing
+is inadequate.
+
+Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike
+Achilles. "Plot is by no means character." Strictly speaking, it is
+not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being
+character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action,
+and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever
+conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of
+looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction
+_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than
+anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that "we care
+what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are."
+I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not
+know what happens to them.
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals
+some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that
+
+     The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+     In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
+     As when a giant dies.
+
+I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though
+distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend
+that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to
+take into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for
+knowledge.
+
+Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the "London
+Lancet," I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology
+delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association
+in London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper
+yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and
+palpitating.
+
+The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the
+point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited
+certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go
+very strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that
+the weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs.
+
+Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres
+with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the
+precise object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but
+probably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape.
+
+To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some
+slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded:
+
+I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a
+very decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch
+its toes? Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would
+rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a
+sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The
+spinal cord seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it
+will soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now
+_spontaneously_ drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its
+neck erect just as if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its
+toes, and you see the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the
+offending instrument. Does it still feel? and is the motion still the
+result of the volition?
+
+That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there
+seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that
+having once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the
+table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He
+then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its
+foot again, the frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then thrust
+a needle down the spinal cord. "The limbs are now flaccid," observed the
+experimenter; "we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes
+will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move." Here is
+where congratulations can come in for _la grenouille_. That frog being
+concluded, the lecturer continued:
+
+I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the
+brain and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and
+hang the animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent
+legs without any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The
+leg of the same side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely.
+. . . Both legs are thrown into motion.
+
+Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still
+suffer acutely, the professor resumed:
+
+The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so
+I put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see,
+gives rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice
+particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same
+side for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole
+animal into water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all
+at rest again. . . . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar
+region of the spine. . . . Both feet are instantly raised to the
+irritated spot. The animal is able to localize the seat of irritation.
+. . . I wash the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the feet at
+the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of acid over the knee of the footless
+leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the leg towards the knee, as if to
+reach the irritated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now
+available. But watch the other foot. The _foot of the other leg_ is now
+being used to rub away the acid. The animal, finding that the object is
+not accomplished with the foot of the same side, uses the other one.
+
+I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced
+reader of these excerpts, namely--that any frog (with its head on or its
+head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of Professor
+Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit science may
+have derived from such association I am not qualified to pronounce upon.
+The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a peculiarly sensitive
+and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the genial professor, in
+the years which followed, did not frequently consider it necessary to
+demonstrate the fact.
+
+
+
+
+LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt
+as a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to
+Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor
+a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was
+a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe,
+optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
+singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who
+has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer.
+
+I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since
+his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as
+extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in
+this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist
+may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for
+inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist.
+Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than
+the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies,
+and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His
+chief claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic
+studies, his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives
+to reproduce the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner,
+he naturally sings much of rural English life, but his England is the
+England of two or three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about
+the "falcon," but the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings
+against the bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished
+library was--if I may be pardoned a mixed image--the rock on which Barry
+Cornwall split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked
+into his books.
+
+A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world
+is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had
+better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The
+sea is one of these. The man who sang,
+
+     The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+     The blue, the fresh, _the ever free!_
+
+(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never
+have permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of
+Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly
+vapid poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever
+laid eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and
+in looking over Barry Cornwall's "Life and Letters" I am not so much
+surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land
+in the whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more
+positively than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he
+was hardly ever sick at sea.
+
+Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods,
+piping such thin feebleness as
+
+"The blue, the fresh, the ever free!"
+
+To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited
+to a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even
+frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and
+Turtle will not enable one to write sea poetry.
+
+Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement,
+
+     I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!
+     I am where I would ever be.
+
+The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor,
+but they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich
+ends with a striking piece of realism:
+
+     If a storm should come and awake the deep,
+     What matter?  I shall ride and sleep.
+
+This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale.
+The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each
+in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the
+storm is over.
+
+Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality,
+for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as
+Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of
+his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a
+glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an
+author does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is
+of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he
+had written more prose like his admirable "Recollections of Elia."
+
+Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is
+extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning,
+
+     Touch us gently, Time!
+     Let us glide adown thy stream,
+was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without
+questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but
+infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities.
+He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how
+to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head.
+In "Hero and Leander" there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth
+any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written:
+
+     So might they now have lived, and so have died;
+     _The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side_.
+
+Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on
+everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel"
+are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a
+handful.
+
+
+
+
+DECORATION DAY
+
+HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes
+to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she
+smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate
+flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery
+of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in
+unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the
+foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where
+the menacing shell described its curve through the air, a harmless crow
+flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing
+the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at
+last the once hotly contested battleground differs from none of its
+quiet surroundings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer
+tint and the grasses a deeper emerald.
+
+It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are
+left other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army
+sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over
+the mantel-piece of the "best room" of many a town and country house
+in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero
+is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from
+generation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us
+trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the
+resting-places of those who fell during the Civil War.
+
+     With the tears a Land hath shed
+     Their graves should ever be green.
+
+     Ever their fair, true glory
+     Fondly should fame rehearse--
+     Light of legend and story,
+     Flower of marble and verse.
+
+The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of
+our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our
+own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the
+generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall
+into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow,
+should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt.
+
+Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How
+different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through
+our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and
+greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim
+cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into
+peach blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains,
+except the presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and
+there an empty sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that
+empty sleeve is less in evidence.
+
+The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and
+confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The
+earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity.
+It quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the
+sequestered country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern
+cities were being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come
+to us that there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as
+tender and sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon
+those mounds. There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two
+years after the close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi,
+laid their offerings alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is
+said, the great Nation has but one heart.
+
+
+
+
+WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating
+and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial
+and entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable
+individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to
+meet him. The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your
+gripsack on your summer vacation--the poet whom you have so long desired
+to know personally--is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who
+fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the
+commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had
+painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young
+poets--the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never
+neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by
+appearing before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating
+glance, who stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when
+you ask him his opinion of "The Glees of the Gulches," by Popocatepetl
+Jones. The slender, dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with
+epigrammatic points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a
+short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose conversation does not sparkle
+at all, and you were on the lookout for the most brilliant of verbal
+fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you have idealized. Fresh from
+witnessing his delightful comedy of manners, you meet him face to face
+only to discover that his own manners are anything but delightful.
+The play and the playwright are two very distinct entities. You grow
+skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that the style is the
+man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author in the flesh
+has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed?
+
+After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk
+as cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist
+necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a
+poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional
+dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as
+prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is.
+
+
+
+
+ON EARLY RISING
+
+A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years
+to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a
+case of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising;
+from which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie
+abed late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the
+majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple
+fact that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth
+milestone he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit
+to him. As the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily
+reached the conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep
+late, instead of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are
+old. He moreover failed to take into account the numberless young lives
+that have been shortened by matutinal habits.
+
+The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told
+that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate
+of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb,
+which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by
+showing how extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm,
+and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that
+has overslept himself.
+
+The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New
+England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort.
+It is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is
+directly the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned
+by Lafcadio Hearn in his enchanting "Two Years in the French West
+Indies"--a species of colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the
+creole tongue, _cabritt-bois_. This ingenious pest works a soothing,
+sleep-compelling chant from sundown until precisely half past four in
+the morning, when it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens everybody
+it has lulled into slumber with its insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with
+strange obtuseness to the enormity of the thing, blandly remarks: "For
+thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its
+song is the signal to get up." I devoutly trust that none of the West
+India islands furnishing such satanic entomological specimens will
+ever be annexed to the United States. Some of our extreme advocates of
+territorial expansion might spend a profitable few weeks on one of those
+favored isles. A brief association with that _cabritt-bois_ would be
+likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist.
+
+An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon
+daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at
+mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than
+their precept--or their poetry. Thomson, the author of "The Castle of
+Indolence," who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe,
+
+"Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,"
+
+was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed
+until noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be
+seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat
+pockets, eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English
+poets who at that epoch celebrated what they called "the effulgent orb
+of day" were denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven
+months out of the twelve.
+
+In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is
+there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even
+from a nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the
+shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when "the very houses seem asleep,"
+as Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the
+milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at
+the seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though
+familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness
+or occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of
+his life has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may
+profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in
+the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to
+go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the
+sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him--a momentary
+Adam--the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the
+similitude of a three-pound trout.
+
+In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by
+candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no
+other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early
+riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the
+wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small
+things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his
+conceit in his bill.
+
+
+
+
+UN POETE MANQUE
+
+IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little
+poem which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to
+entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical
+intermezzo. I have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza:
+
+     I taste a liquor never brewed
+     In vats upon the Rhine;
+     No tankard ever held a draught
+     Of alcohol like mine.
+
+     Inebriate of air am I,
+     And debauchee of dew,
+     Reeling, through endless summer days,
+     From inns of molten blue.
+
+     When landlords turn the drunken bee
+     Out of the Foxglove's door,
+     When butterflies renounce their drams,
+     I shall but drink the more!
+     Till seraphs swing their snowy caps
+     And saints to windows run,
+     To see the little tippler
+     Leaning against the sun!
+
+Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets
+himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking
+matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less.
+This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in
+structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss
+Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The
+artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains
+unforgivable:
+
+     This is the land the sunset washes,
+     These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
+     Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
+     These are the western mystery!
+
+     Night after night her purple traffic
+     Strews the landing with opal bales;
+     Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
+     Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
+
+The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude
+Lorraine. One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of
+impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio.
+
+It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss
+Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of
+it in his preface to the volume: "In many cases these verses will seem
+to the reader _like poetry pulled up by the roots_, with rain and dew
+and earth clinging to them." Possibly it might be objected that this is
+not the best way to gather either flowers or poetry.
+
+Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind.
+She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced
+by the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her
+bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden
+at Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had
+much fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent
+flashes of imagination.
+
+That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want
+of a more precise name, we term _quality_, is not to be denied. But
+the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are
+fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite
+line or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an
+isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says
+of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: "Donne is full of
+salient verses that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with
+their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us like charades and then
+delight us with the felicity of their solution; but these have not saved
+him. He is exiled to the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary."
+
+Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say
+(it appears that he said it "in his earlier and better days"), and Mr.
+Higginson quotes it: "No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can
+outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." This is a proposition to
+which one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately
+stated. A suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is
+furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty
+enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes
+the artist from the bungler--the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when
+writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or
+"in his earlier and better days."
+
+Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved
+significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no
+continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager
+listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song,
+has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale.
+
+
+
+
+THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned
+English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The
+piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness,
+and obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a
+collection of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through.
+The one thing in it that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful
+costume of a certain player who looked like a fine old portrait--by
+Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say--that had come to life and kicked off
+its tarnished frame.
+
+I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play
+was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that
+the actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic
+periods. This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the
+special pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was
+not in himself interesting; he was like that Major Waters in "Pepys's
+Diary"--"a most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in
+love, which makes him bad company;" it was entirely Delorme's dress.
+
+I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The
+material was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some
+dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of
+a doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the
+gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description
+hanging negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat,
+showing a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full
+trousers reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft
+hat--not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear,
+one side jauntily fastened up with a jewel--completed the essential
+portions of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride
+in, to sit in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I
+will do Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe
+tests. But he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my
+countrymen would throw aside their present hideous habiliments and
+hasten to the measuring-room of Delorme's tailor.
+
+In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the
+monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck
+themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us,
+for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors
+in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are
+really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch
+a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four
+or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being
+something that had escaped from somewhere.
+
+Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made
+no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo
+themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own
+sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I
+wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to
+inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular
+swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird
+and gets him mistaken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears the modern
+coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress. What
+snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut
+about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button,
+and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of
+buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as
+indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits
+of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There is
+absolutely not one iota of sense, grace, or even economy in the modern
+coat."
+
+Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a
+Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head
+shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal
+decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an
+Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first "marked-down"
+article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to
+the eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the
+skull of a barbarian.
+
+It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our
+friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though
+there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to
+warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted
+only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a celluloid collar and
+a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an
+involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume of
+our own time.
+
+
+
+
+ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is
+no accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical
+temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise
+for themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may
+incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot
+help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their
+environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should
+openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family
+tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened
+to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to
+be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that
+resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting
+guest.
+
+The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a
+shadow lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under
+his desk are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would
+not be able to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect
+the integrity of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more
+recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow.
+
+The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled "Forsaken," in which she
+addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes.
+He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent
+spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of
+lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem--a rose whose countless
+petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not
+have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform
+the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of
+happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but
+one) and darkly intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming affably with
+"sigh"), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in
+making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of
+the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of
+your sympathy.
+
+This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of
+David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance
+to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of
+health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success
+justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and
+played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in
+one of his sonnets.
+
+In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) "Life and Letters of John Keats"
+it is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his
+lips after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: "I know the color
+of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop
+is my death-warrant. I must die." Who that ever read the passage
+could forget it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as
+happening to himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment:
+
+     Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain,
+     There came arterial blood, and with a sigh
+     Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein,
+     That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
+
+The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment
+should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger
+things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's
+pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--_Here lies one whose name_ _was writ in
+water_--finds an echo in David Gray's _Below lies one whose name was
+traced in sand_. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
+
+
+
+
+WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me
+in many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of
+print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain
+readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem
+exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent,
+would have others share it.
+
+The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of
+unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in
+measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the
+method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a
+little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The Tempest" and "A
+Midsummer Night's Dream"--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the
+dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their
+various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness,
+the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages
+of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers,
+gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in
+turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the
+streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare
+of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place,
+and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm.
+A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many
+passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the
+curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this
+mimic drama of life.
+
+The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could
+name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an
+atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an
+imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in
+certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains
+one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an
+example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such
+exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly
+for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to "Wishmakers'
+Town," not knowing better how to do it.
+
+     Myrtle, and eglantine,
+     For the old love and the new!
+     And the columbine,
+     With its cap and bells, for folly!
+     And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue,
+     For melancholy!
+     But of all the blossoms that blow,
+     Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may,
+     This gentle guest,
+     Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray,
+     Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low
+     Upon her breast.
+     For the orange flower
+     Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood
+     Is the love of maidenhood;
+     And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
+     He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
+     No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem
+     So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years,
+     At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
+     The past shall arise,
+     And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
+     And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise
+     Though he stand in the Shambles of death.
+In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is
+the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life:
+
+     Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame,
+     Plot, and plunder, and disagree!
+     O but the game is a royal game!
+     O but your tourneys are fair to see!
+
+     None too hopeful we found our lives;
+     Sore was labor from day to day;
+     Still we strove for our babes and wives--
+     Now, to the trumpet, we march away!
+
+     "Why?"--For some one hath will'd it so!
+     Nothing we know of the why or the where--
+     To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow--
+     Nothing we know, and little we care.
+
+     Give us to kill!--since this is the end
+     Of love and labor in Nature's plan;
+     Give us to kill and ravish and rend,
+     Yea, since this is the end of man.
+
+     States shall perish, and states be born:
+     Leaders, out of the throng, shall press;
+     Some to honor, and some to scorn:
+     We, that are little, shall yet be less.
+
+     Over our lines shall the vultures soar;
+     Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry;
+     And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore;
+     And daily the living shall pray to die.
+
+     Nay, what matter!--When all is said,
+     Prince and Bishop will plunder still:
+     Lord and Lady must dance and wed.
+     Pity us, pray for us, ye that will!
+
+It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents
+me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The
+Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World
+miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the
+thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of
+readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that
+it will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable
+rearrangement of present poetic values.
+
+The author of "Wishmakers' Town" is the child of his period, and has not
+escaped the _maladie du siecle_. The doubt and pessimism that marked
+the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes
+with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet
+who speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of
+hope. Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to
+sing
+
+     Of what the world shall be
+     When the years have died away.
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's
+"Hugh Wynne," I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and
+principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of
+actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving
+shocks in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary
+realm--in the realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air of
+possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local
+color, having an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged.
+You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of the period in which his
+narrative is laid, since the period is as vague as the geography.
+He walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils that beset
+the story-teller who ventures to stray beyond the bounds of the
+make-believe. One peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting human
+nature.
+
+The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to
+reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether
+wonderfully and fearfully made--the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron
+characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory
+rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so
+unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is
+supposed to hold up to nature.
+
+In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father,
+mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually
+the anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold
+twenty swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them
+before he escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly
+behind him. How tired one gets of that door! The "caitiff" in these
+chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from
+"the highest battlement"--the second highest would not do at all; or
+else he is thrown into "the deepest dungeon of the castle"--the second
+deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero
+habitually "cleaves" his foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff"
+being what the properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain
+fictional historian of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim:
+"My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;" but that is an exceptionally
+lofty flight of diction. My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in
+the course of long interviews with her lover remains unrecognized--a
+diaphanous literary invention that must have been old when the Pyramids
+were young. The heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called
+"a springald," puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for
+his sister or anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility
+that is not at home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen--a
+priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene:
+
+     \          The princess rose to her feet and
+     approached the priest.
+     \          "Father," she said swiftly, "this
+     is not the Lady Joan, my brother's
+     wife, but a youth marvelously like
+     her, who hath offered himself in
+     her place that she might escape. . . .
+     He is the Count von Loen, a lord
+     of Kernsburg.  And I love him.  We
+     want you to marry us now, dear
+     Father--now, without a moment's
+     delay; for if you do not they will
+     kill him, and I shall have to marry
+     Prince Wasp!"
+
+This is from "Joan of the Sword Hand," and if ever I read a more silly
+performance I have forgotten it.
+
+
+
+
+POOR YORICK
+
+THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac
+which I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a
+bracket in Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players--the apartment remains
+as he left it that solemn June day ten years ago--stands a sadly
+dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin,
+used to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act
+of "Hamlet."
+
+A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant;
+it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull
+is especially a skull "with a past."
+
+In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild
+West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly
+undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it
+seemed, was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman--in
+brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort
+of person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the
+course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily
+disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in
+the florid mind of his sometime benefactor.
+
+As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in
+Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier
+basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance
+of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it
+figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the
+actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features
+of that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard
+III. in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo
+usurped his seat at table.
+
+In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner,
+which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the
+tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary
+stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of
+"Hamlet." "Take it away, you black imp!" thundered the actor to the
+equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him
+to investigate the dark nature of his burden.
+
+Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee,
+recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim
+humor of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the
+testator's whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure
+an engagement to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company
+of strolling players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind
+the footlights in the hands of his famous son.
+
+Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging
+the thing--the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the
+cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache
+counterfeit manufactured in the property-room of the theatre. During
+his subsequent wanderings in Australia and California, he carefully
+preserved the relic, which finally found repose on the bracket in
+question.
+
+How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth
+floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer
+twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull
+until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten,
+if ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order
+to establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was
+conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance
+not without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance
+really was.
+
+Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober
+enough now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of
+merriment "that were wont to set the table on a roar." But I did not
+regret his evaporated hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial
+silence, and had learned to look upon his rather open countenance with
+the same friendliness as that with which I regarded the faces of
+less phantasmal members of the club. He had become to me a dramatic
+personality as distinct as that of any of the Thespians I met in the
+grillroom or the library.
+
+Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently
+speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in
+those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old
+experience had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had
+known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him
+into contact with a varied assortment of men and women, and extended
+his horizon. His more peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on
+lonely roads had surely not been without incident. It was inconceivable
+that all this had left no impressions. He must have had at least a faint
+recollection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick
+had formed his estimate of me, and probably not a flattering one, is
+something of which I am strongly convinced.
+
+At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal
+cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of
+the precious things I lost then.
+
+The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players
+has been, as I have said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from time to
+time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the
+centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory
+paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this
+chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull
+finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor
+Yorick had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had
+that happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner
+in my study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no
+more.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+     One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
+     --_King Lear._
+
+THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his
+manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal
+relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance
+to which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that
+might otherwise not seem becoming.
+
+No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his
+autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of
+books and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is
+importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who
+"collect" autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no
+interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as
+possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence,
+reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was "the
+buttonholes of all nations."
+
+In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two
+hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the
+literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast
+a sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two
+hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some
+favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then,
+that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it
+embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to
+be regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile
+of unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis,
+he quickly finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile
+correspondence. Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to
+become facile prey.
+
+A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always
+studied the idiosyncrasies of his "subject" as carefully as another
+sort of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates
+a midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and
+adroit approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According
+to the revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and
+Mr. Gladstone had their respective point of easy access--their one
+unfastened door or window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man
+has his weak side.
+
+Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was
+perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for
+instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one
+day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the
+shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I
+handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription.
+"Oh, yes," he said, smiling, "I know 'em by instinct." Relieved of its
+envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began
+with the usual amusing solecism: "As one of the most famous of American
+authors I would like to possess your autograph."
+
+Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding.
+Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson,
+always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps.
+
+Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a
+card; but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter
+addressed to him personally--"on any subject you please," as an immature
+scribe lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous
+youth purposed to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate
+competitors, in order to show them that he was on familiar terms with
+the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many
+a collector. The stratagems he employs to compass his end are
+inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note to inquire in what year you
+first published your beautiful poem entitled "A Psalm of Life." If you
+are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him that you are not the author
+of that poem, which he must have confused with your "Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner"--and there you are. Another expedient is to ask if your
+father's middle name was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably
+been dead many years, and as perhaps he was not a public man in his day,
+you are naturally touched that any one should have interest in him after
+this long flight of time. In the innocence of your heart you reply by
+the next mail that your father's middle name was not Hierophilus, but
+Epaminondas--and there you are again. It is humiliating to be caught
+swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch of one's genealogical
+tree.
+
+Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing
+parchment with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This
+document--I am relating an actual occurrence--announces with a flourish
+that you have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The
+Kalamazoo International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does
+not take away your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make
+an acknowledgment, and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging
+secretary of a literary organization which does not exist anywhere on
+earth.
+
+A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who
+advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed
+list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue,
+price, style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These
+interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher;
+but they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped "thanks in advance."
+The natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk
+commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or,
+possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant.
+Eight or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping
+you will not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list
+of your writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same
+words. The length of time it takes him to "replenish" his library (with
+your books) strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions
+sufficiently to pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this
+gentleman cares nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile
+point of view he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens,
+which he disposes of to dealers in such frail merchandise.
+
+The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and
+biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some
+slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a signed photograph and
+a copy of your bookplate are here in order--is also a character which
+periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions
+there are as many players as men have fancies.
+
+A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the
+book of his experience: "Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of
+a rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly
+a woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss
+of her little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a
+dozen lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of
+a child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing
+air of doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the
+entire poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am
+unable to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused
+when, two months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat
+price attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop."
+
+Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very
+poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other
+class of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of
+confirmed invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection
+between incipient spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which
+superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that
+one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases
+his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which
+leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors
+for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole
+resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal
+to one's sympathy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, however,
+I have my suspicions, suspicions that are shared by several men of
+letters, who have come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the
+majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very old and familiar
+tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class,
+is excellent.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+I
+
+A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of
+the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for
+more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was
+aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in
+countless quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were
+not much regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world
+in this matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not
+arrived!
+
+Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family
+in Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was
+John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman
+in 1535, and afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or
+Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--had five sons, the second of
+which sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in
+December, 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a
+sister to Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the
+many children of this marriage was Robert Herrick.
+
+It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was
+the poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an
+unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage
+of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the
+slightest record.
+
+Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and
+baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had
+several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves.
+It would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the
+little we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without
+dragging in the rest of the family.
+
+When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas
+Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window.
+Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high
+almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to
+the estate, "all goods and chattels of suicides" becoming his by law.
+The circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the
+good bishop, after long litigation, consented to refer the case to
+arbitrators, who awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving
+the question at issue--whether or not Herrick's death had been his own
+premeditated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular
+law, which had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to
+encourage suicide among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle
+classes, was afterward rescinded.
+
+Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate
+amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand
+pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's
+two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the
+latter subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and
+money-lender to James I., were appointed guardians to the children.
+
+     (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial
+     Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item
+     from Win-wood's _Manorials of Affairs of State_: "On Easter
+     Tuesday [1605], one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in
+     Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great
+     Diamond the King cloth wear.  The party little expected the
+     honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an
+     extraordinary liking of it."
+
+Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his
+fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned
+the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's
+indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have
+offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term
+expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge,
+which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two
+years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and
+the pursuit of the law--the two frequently go together. He received his
+degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the
+law for the arts.
+
+During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly
+allowance of ten pounds--a not illiberal provision, the pound being then
+five times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the
+master of arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his
+own share of his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for
+complaint; if otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance.
+
+The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few
+chance-preserved letters written to his "most careful uncle," as he
+calls that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and
+dreary epistles, which are signed "R. Hearick," the writer says: "The
+essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for
+my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the
+ordinarie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you
+maye." He also indulges in the natural wish that his college bills
+"had leaden wings and tortice feet." This was in 1617. The young man's
+patrimony, whatever it may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to
+"many a throe and pinches of the purse." For the moment, at least, his
+prospects were not flattering.
+
+Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the
+university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he
+was not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his
+wits before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court
+circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful,
+allies in the persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master
+John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems,
+honored by the music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at
+Westminster, it is more than possible that Herrick was brought to the
+personal notice of Charles and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise
+of success, but not success itself. It has been thought probable that
+Herrick may have secured some minor office in the chapel at Whitehall.
+That would accord with his subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as
+chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle
+of Rhe.
+
+Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not
+ascertainable. If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he
+led meanwhile was not such as his "most careful uncle" would have warmly
+approved. The literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a
+free-lance like young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing
+in manuscript from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as
+a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship,
+unless it were to the worship of "rare Ben Jonson," at whose feet
+Herrick now sat, with the other blossoming young poets of the season. He
+was a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to
+the master, of which not the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson:
+
+     When I a verse shall make,
+     Know I have praid thee
+     For old religion's sake,
+     Saint Ben, to aide me.
+
+     Make the way smooth for me,
+     When I, thy Herrick,
+     Honouring thee, on my knee
+     Offer my lyric.
+
+     Candles I'll give to thee,
+     And a new altar;
+     And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
+     Writ in my Psalter.
+
+On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of
+Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes,
+in Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of
+his life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away
+from London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway
+and telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a
+provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness
+of a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth
+century must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated
+throb of sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or
+unhappy he may have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may
+congratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far
+from the distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his
+Muse, for there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which
+were to make his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that
+we owe the cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural
+manners and customs--the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries,
+the morris-dances, and the May-day festivals.
+
+The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked
+by the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than "a ringe
+of twenty shillings." Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between
+them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in
+epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of
+verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew.
+One of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying
+Brother, Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to
+have been two brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is
+supposed to be referred to here.
+
+The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of
+detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have
+been irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock
+lightly. As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and
+poetry; but presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to
+sack was in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted
+the vicarship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of
+horse--with an eye to present emolument and future promotion. The
+promotion never came, and the emolument was nearly as scant as that
+of Goldsmith's parson, who considered himself "passing rich with forty
+pounds a year"--a height of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with
+his expensive town wants and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of
+his benefice--and possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial
+fees would enable him to live for the time being. It was better than a
+possible nothing a year in London.
+
+Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of
+the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the
+subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense
+of his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick
+afterward gave to the world--those astonishing epigrams upon his rustic
+enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his personal
+friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written only
+in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic
+confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him.
+
+It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate
+to the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with
+the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some
+of the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces
+grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves
+with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are
+"born of the royal blood." They lack the inspiration and magic of his
+secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to
+stir a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at
+all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may
+read Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness
+might have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. "For
+unconscious impiety," remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) "this rivals the
+famous passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and
+think.'" Elsewhere, in an apostrophe to "Heaven," Herrick says:
+
+     Let mercy be
+     So kind to set me free,
+     And I will straight
+     Come in, or force the gate.
+
+In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out!
+
+     (1) In _Seventeenth-Century Studies_. and the general
+     absence of arrangement in the "Hesperides," Dr. Grosart
+     advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary
+     authority on these points.  Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick
+     kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books
+     separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a
+     too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this
+     slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the
+     publisher, "whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate
+     proceeded to intermix these additions with the others.  That
+     the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or
+     disarrangement lies on the surface."  This is an amiable
+     supposition, but merely a supposition.
+
+Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed
+the "copy" in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and
+if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to
+observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is
+none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness
+was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed
+the fashion _malgre lui_. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly
+should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers,
+there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their
+manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly
+unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The "Hesperides" was
+his sole publication.
+
+Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance
+at this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the
+original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or
+not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet,
+it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on
+that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to
+note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the
+first collection of his miscellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume
+containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great
+offense to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it
+represented him as an elderly person, but because of certain minute
+figures of peasant lads and lassies who are very indistinctly seen
+dancing frivolously under the trees in the background. Herrick had more
+reason to protest. The aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist
+lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the vicar occasionally
+hurled the manuscript of his sermon at the heads of his drowsy
+parishioners, accompanying the missive with pregnant remarks. He has the
+aspect of one meditating assault and battery.
+
+To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability
+of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings.
+He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's
+imprisonment--a poem full of deference and tenderness for a person
+who had evidently injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some
+affair of church preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick "became much
+beloved by the gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise)
+discourses." It appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet
+spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away without a couplet attached
+to him:
+
+     Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see
+     For shape and service spaniell like to thee.
+
+Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he
+also sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's
+disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of
+Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at
+Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had
+taught to drink out of a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admirably
+qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when she
+communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on
+Herrick published in the "Quarterly Review" for August, 1810, and in the
+Boston edition (1) of the "Hesperides" attributed to Southey.
+
+     (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The
+     British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and
+     chronologi-cally.  On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as
+     living "in habits of intimacy" with Ben Jonson in 1648.  If
+     that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters
+     in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years.
+
+What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick
+was Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five
+pieces entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical
+hints under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual
+side-lights on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A
+whimsical personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved
+from these fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with
+perhaps less quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the
+prince of gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place
+Herrick laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what
+would have been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another
+place he tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this
+latter catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's _concetti_:
+
+     One of the five straight branches of my hand
+     Is lopt already, and the rest but stand
+     Expecting when to fall, which soon will be:
+     First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree.
+
+With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of
+himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest--he understood
+and loved music. None but a lover could have said:
+
+     The mellow touch of musick most doth wound
+     The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound.
+
+Or this to Julia:
+
+     So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,
+     As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise,
+     But listen to thee walking in thy chamber
+     Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.
+
+     . . . Then let me lye
+     Entranc'd, and lost confusedly;
+     And by thy musick stricken mute,
+     Die, and be turn'd into a lute.
+
+Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed
+by a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. "Fate likes fine names," says
+Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting
+of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be
+embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody:
+
+     In this little urne is laid
+     Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid;
+     From whose happy spark here let
+     Spring the purple violet.
+
+Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which
+seems to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a
+pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who
+says that "Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse." She
+was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this
+octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him:
+
+     These summer birds did with thy master stay
+     The times of warmth, but then they flew away,
+     Leaving their poet, being now grown old,
+     Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold.
+     But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide
+     As well the winter's as the summer's tide:
+     For which thy love, live with thy master here
+     Not two, but all the seasons of the year.
+
+Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew!
+
+In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls "a rude
+river," and his characterization of Devon folk as "a people currish,
+churlish as the seas," the fullest and pleasantest days of his life
+were probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the
+gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations.
+How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events,
+is attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its
+compensation. "I confess," he says,
+
+     I ne'er invented such
+     Ennobled numbers for the presse
+     Than where I loath'd so much.
+
+A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was
+firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of
+his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable
+regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The
+integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not
+given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the
+panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior,
+and installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with
+pronounced Cromwellian views.
+
+Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded
+his clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were
+left of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more
+he would drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the
+air breathed by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden,
+and the rest. "Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth
+too." In the gladness of getting back "from the dull confines of the
+drooping west," he writes a glowing apostrophe to London--that "stony
+stepmother to poets." He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud
+to find himself a citizen again. According to his earlier biographers,
+Herrick had much ado not to starve in that same longed-for London, and
+fell into great misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with
+justness, that Herrick's family, which was wealthy and influential,
+would not have allowed him to come to abject want. With his royalistic
+tendencies he may not have breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of
+the Commonwealth, and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot, but
+among them was not poverty.
+
+The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few
+weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume
+with the title "Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of
+Robert Herrick, Esq."
+
+The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned--the era of the
+commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie
+in a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had
+strayed by chance into an artificial and prosaic age--a sylvan singing
+creature alighting on an alien planet. "He was too natural," says Mr.
+Palgrave in his Chrysomela, "too purely poetical; he had not the learned
+polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn,
+which were then and onward demanded from poetry." Yet it is strange that
+a public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who
+was fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then,
+or in the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written
+Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and
+perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics?
+
+The "Hesperides" was received with chilling indifference. None of
+Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning
+it. The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for
+more than a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In
+1796 the "Gentleman's Magazine" copied a few of the poems, and two years
+later Dr. Nathan Drake published in his "Literary Hours" three critical
+papers on the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted
+him from the "Lives of the Poets," though space was found for half a
+score of poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810
+Dr. Nott, a physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections.
+It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained
+for the taste of our own day to multiply editions of him.
+
+In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that
+some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man
+who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity
+presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful
+of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant;
+the men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun
+make no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his
+birth and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable
+in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material
+for profundity and ciphers!
+
+
+     (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses
+     in the _Musarum Deliciae_ (1656) who mentions
+
+     That old sack
+     Young Herrick took to entertain
+     The Muses in a sprightly vein.
+
+Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648
+and 1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for
+the instant when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further
+literary work there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to
+the "Lacrymae Musarum" in 1649.
+
+He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's,
+Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in
+the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early
+manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old
+haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller
+banished, and many another comrade "in disgrace with fortune and men's
+eyes." As Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy
+river-bank in those years, his thought must have turned more than once
+to the little vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly.
+
+On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted
+Herrick back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious
+Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the
+seventy-first anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements
+after that, tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline.
+The only notable event concerning him is recorded twelve years later
+in the parish register: "Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day
+October, 1674." He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave
+is unknown. In 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church.
+And this is all.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life
+are as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were
+they as ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant
+compared with the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world
+his "Hesperides." The environments of the man were accidental and
+transitory. The significant part of him we have, and that is enduring so
+long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind.
+
+A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has
+henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said
+three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may
+have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been
+always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs,
+in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as
+they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in
+reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and
+there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.
+
+Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such
+message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this
+point he somewhere says:
+
+     Let others to the printing presse run fast;
+     Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste.
+
+He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by
+many of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the
+printer.
+
+Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the "Hesperides."
+It was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an
+unconscionable time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his
+pieces had been set to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and
+Laniers, and his court poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier
+party, Herrick cut but a small figure at the side of several of his
+rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. It sometimes happens
+that the light love-song, reaching few or no ears at its first singing,
+outlasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, dealing with some
+passing phase of thought, social or political, gains the instant
+applause of the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is somehow
+apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, and becomes the
+yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to get
+hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble poets laureate.
+
+Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as "a great little
+novelist." Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his
+poems, for he wrote nothing _de longue haleine_, would place him among
+the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The
+Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The
+accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one
+of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as
+exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the
+line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu,
+and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who,
+borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as
+"wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full
+of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an
+antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his
+lady-love's "winter face"--and there a couplet that breaks into unfading
+daffodils and violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His
+amatory songs and catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to
+hang on the boughs in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily
+done, not even that portion of it we could wish had not been done at
+all. Be the motive grave or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form
+which distinguishes everything in literature that has survived its
+own period. There is no such thing as "form" alone; it is only the
+close-grained material that takes the highest finish. The structure
+of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of
+innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and
+Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it
+fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat.
+
+Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are
+no "tears from the depth of some divine despair," no probings into the
+tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos
+of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to
+the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader
+who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads
+Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers.
+A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms.
+In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled.
+His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the
+sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any
+complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to
+duplicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl
+straying near its crystal. His is no troubled stream in which large
+trout are caught. He must be accepted on his own terms.
+
+The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted
+to their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been
+remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability
+is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is
+the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes
+into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The
+color of his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its
+affinities. A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of
+a hundred styles.
+
+Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been
+exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and
+there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting
+impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement
+on Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is
+inconsiderable.
+
+This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was
+doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell
+or Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his
+purely devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart.
+Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which
+Herrick frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any
+appreciable spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which
+finds no setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to
+brother poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for
+addressing four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in
+the main, obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth
+establishing. His London life, at two different periods, brought him
+into contact with many of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has
+helped to confer immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the
+secret of conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions.
+Shakespeare had not a finer confidence when he wrote,
+
+     Not marble nor the gilded monuments
+     Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
+
+than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by
+any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils.
+Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire
+village would have been unendurable.
+
+His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite,
+however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's
+themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it:
+
+     I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
+     Of April, May, of June, and July flowers;
+     I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
+     Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes;
+     I write of Youth, of Love, and have access
+     By these to sing of cleanly wantonness;
+     I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
+     Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris;
+     I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
+     How roses first came red and lilies white;
+     I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
+     The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King;
+     I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
+     Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.
+
+Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book
+the breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to
+exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender
+had been shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of
+hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half
+hidden with honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning
+home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should
+fall when fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English
+as Herrick. He painted the country life of his own time as no other has
+painted it at any time.
+
+It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as
+national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and
+period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece,
+Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for
+plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden
+and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian
+Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that
+have given Keats his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets.
+Shelley's two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong
+respectively to Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is
+Italian; Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the
+King, and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in
+dignity to none produced in the nineteenth century--is a Persian story.
+But Herrick's "golden apples" sprang from the soil in his own day, and
+reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island.
+
+Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not
+wanting in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable
+distance from that of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Puck and Titania
+are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have
+Devonshire manners and to live in a miniature England of their own. Like
+the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and
+perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts--from the
+cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is
+marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion
+or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in
+their winsome way, "part pagan, part papistical;" they have their
+pardons and indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and
+
+     An apple's-core is hung up dried,
+     With rattling kernels, which is rung
+     To call to Morn and Even-song;
+
+and very conveniently,
+
+     Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut,
+     The Holy-water there is put.
+
+It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the
+impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648
+seems never very far away.
+
+It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the
+Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and
+liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes,
+there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen
+from the lips of Posthumus in "Cymbeline." This delicate epicede would
+have fitted Imogen:
+
+     Here a solemne fast we keepe
+     While all beauty lyes asleepe;
+     Husht be all things; no noyse here
+     But the toning of a teare,
+     Or a sigh of such as bring
+     Cowslips for her covering.
+
+Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song,
+for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A
+poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many
+_dramatis personae_. "Enter a Song singing" is the stage-direction in a
+seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized
+in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his
+couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are
+intended presentations of himself:
+
+     To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed--
+     Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste.
+
+In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one.
+Silvia, Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively
+ladies ending in _a_, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy
+phantoms dancing--as they should not have danced--through the brain of
+a sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church
+of England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite
+impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so
+numerous actual demands upon it.
+
+Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings
+that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's
+lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform
+smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded
+richness of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back
+to them again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught
+it, and insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of
+England the author of the "Hesperides" remains, and is likely to remain,
+unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick
+stands alone in his scanty plot of ground.
+
+
+"Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
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+
+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ponkapog Papers by Aldrich***
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+#2 in our series by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+PONKAPOG PAPERS
+
+BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
+
+
+
+
+TO FRANCIS BARTLETT
+
+
+
+THESE miscellaneous notes and
+essays are called <i>Ponkapog Papers</i>
+not simply because they chanced, for
+the most part, to be written within the
+limits of the old Indian Reservation,
+but, rather, because there is something
+typical of their unpretentiousness in the
+modesty with which Ponkapog assumes
+to being even a village.  The little
+Massachusetts settlement, nestled under
+the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illu-
+sions concerning itself, never mistakes
+the cackle of the bourg for the sound
+that echoes round the world, and no
+more thinks of rivalling great centres of
+human activity than these slight papers
+dream of inviting comparison between
+themselves and important pieces of
+literature.  Therefore there seems some-
+thing especially appropriate in the geo-
+graphical title selected, and if the au-
+thor's choice of name need further
+excuse, it is to be found in the alluring
+alliteration lying ready at his hand.
+
+REDMAN FARM, <i>Ponkapog</i>,
+1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+     TOM FOLIO
+
+     FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+     A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON"
+
+     PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+     THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+     LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+     DECORATION DAY
+
+     WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+     ON EARLY RISING
+
+     UN POETE MANQUE
+
+     THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+     ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+     WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+     HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+     POOR YORICK
+
+     THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK
+
+
+
+
+IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular
+fact that the natives of the Malayan Archipel-
+ago have an idea that something is extracted from
+them when their likenesses are taken by photo-
+graphy.  Here is the motive for a fantastic short
+story, in which the hero--an author in vogue
+or a popular actor--might be depicted as having
+all his good qualities gradually photographed
+out of him.  This could well be the result of
+too prolonged indulgence in the effort to "look
+natural."  First the man loses his charming sim-
+plicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual
+attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes
+morbidly self-conscious, and finally ends in an
+asylum for incurable egotists.  His death might
+be brought about by a cold caught in going out
+bareheaded, there being, for the moment, no hat
+in the market of sufficient circumference to meet
+his enlarged requirement.
+
+THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay
+of Yedo the moon was hanging directly over
+Yokohama.  It was a mother-of-pearl moon,
+and might have been manufactured by any of
+the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter.
+It impressed one as being a very good imitation,
+but nothing more.  Nammikawa, the cloisonne-
+worker at Tokio, could have made a better
+moon.
+
+I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition
+of "The Two First Centuries of Florentine
+Literature," by Professor Pasquale Villari.  I
+am not acquainted with the work in question,
+but I trust that Professor Villari makes it plain
+to the reader how both centuries happened to be
+first.
+
+THE walking delegates of a higher civiliza-
+tion, who have nothing to divide, look upon the
+notion of property as a purely artificial creation
+of human society.  According to these advanced
+philosophers, the time will come when no man
+shall be allowed to call anything his.  The bene-
+ficent law which takes away an author's rights
+in his own books just at the period when old
+age is creeping upon him seems to me a hand-
+some stride toward the longed-for millennium.
+
+SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we
+can guard against.  The well-meaning rector of
+the little parish of Woodgates, England, and
+several of Robert Browning's local admirers
+have recently busied themselves in erecting a
+tablet to the memory of "the first known fore-
+father of the poet."  This lately turned up an-
+cestor, who does not date very far back, was also
+named Robert Browning, and is described on
+the mural marble as "formerly footman and
+butler to Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle."
+Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good
+right as Abou Ben Adhem himself to ask to be
+placed on the list of those who love their fellow
+men; but if the poet could have been consulted
+in the matter he probably would have preferred
+not to have that particular footman exhumed.
+However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody
+good.  Sir John Bankes would scarcely have
+been heard of in our young century if it had
+not been for his footman.  As Robert stood day
+by day, sleek and solemn, behind his master's
+chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered into
+the head of Sir John that his highly respectable
+name would be served up to posterity--like a
+cold relish--by his own butler!  By Robert!
+
+IN the east-side slums of New York, some-
+where in the picturesque Bowery district,
+stretches a malodorous little street wholly
+given over to long-bearded, bird-beaked mer-
+chants of ready-made and second-hand clothing.
+The contents of the dingy shops seem to have
+revolted, and rushed pell-mell out of doors, and
+taken possession of the sidewalk.  One could
+fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this
+point, and that those ghastly rows of complete
+suits strung up on either side of the doorways
+were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders.
+But as you approach these limp figures, each
+dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most
+suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the
+lapel of a coat here and there, a strip of paper
+announcing the very low price at which you
+may become the happy possessor.  That dis-
+sipates the illusion.
+
+POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not
+any too soon.  If it only were practicable to kill
+him in real life!  A story--to be called The
+Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a
+decree condemning to death every long-winded,
+didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of
+rank, and is himself instantly arrested and de-
+capitated.  The man who suspects his own
+tediousness is yet to be born.
+
+WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find
+myself turning automatically to his Bacchus.
+Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in
+mediocre verse, he rises for a moment to heights
+not reached by any other of our poets; but
+Bacchus is in the grand style throughout.  Its tex-
+ture can bear comparison with the world's best
+in this kind.  In imaginative quality and austere
+richness of diction what other verse of our
+period approaches it?  The day Emerson wrote
+Bacchus he had in him, as Michael Drayton said
+of Marlowe, "those brave translunary things
+that the first poets had."
+
+
+IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of
+the earth, excepting one man.  Imagine this
+man in some vast city, New York or London.
+Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his
+solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring
+at the door-bell!
+
+No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an
+honest portrait of himself in an autobiography,
+however sedulously he may have set to work
+about it.  In spite of his candid purpose he
+omits necessary touches and adds superfluous
+ones.  At times he cannot help draping his
+thought, and the least shred of drapery becomes
+a disguise.  It is only the diarist who accom-
+plishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, with-
+out any such end in view, does it unconsciously.
+A man cannot keep a daily record of his com-
+ings and goings and the little items that make
+up the sum of his life, and not inadvertently
+betray himself at every turn.  He lays bare his
+heart with a candor not possible to the self-
+consciousness that inevitably colors premeditated
+revelation.  While Pepys was filling those small
+octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he
+never once suspected that he was adding a pho-
+tographic portrait of himself to the world's gal-
+lery of immortals.  We are more intimately
+acquainted with Mr. Samuel Pepys, the inner
+man--his little meannesses and his large gener-
+osities--then we are with half the persons we
+call our dear friends.
+
+THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive
+to praise as a prism is to light.  Whenever any-
+body praises her she breaks into colors.
+
+IN the process of dusting my study, the other
+morning, the maid replaced an engraving of
+Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the man-
+tel-shelf, and his majesty has remained in that
+undignified posture ever since.  I have no dis-
+position to come to his aid.  My abhorrence of
+the wretch is as hearty as if he had not been
+dead and--otherwise provided for these last
+three hundred years.  Bloody Mary of England
+was nearly as merciless, but she was sincere and
+uncompromising in her extirpation of heretics.
+
+Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was
+occasioned by the news of the St. Bartholomew
+massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it
+for the time being, when it seemed politic to do
+so.  Queen Mary was a maniac; but the suc-
+cessor of Torquemada was the incarnation of
+cruelty pure and simple, and I have a mind to
+let my counterfeit presentment of him stand on
+its head for the rest of its natural life.  I cor-
+dially dislike several persons, but I hate no-
+body, living or dead, excepting Philip II. of
+Spain.  He appears to give me as much trouble
+as Charles I. gave the amiable Mr. Dick.
+
+AMONG the delightful men and women whom
+you are certain to meet at an English country
+house there is generally one guest who is sup-
+posed to be preternaturally clever and amusing
+--"so very droll, don't you know."  He recites
+things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and
+mimics public characters.  He is a type of a
+class, and I take him to be one of the elemen-
+tary forms of animal life, like the acalephae.
+His presence is capable of adding a gloom to
+an undertaker's establishment.  The last time I
+fell in with him was on a coaching trip through
+Devon, and in spite of what I have said I must
+confess to receiving an instant of entertainment
+at his hands.  He was delivering a little dis-
+sertation on "the English and American lan-
+guages."  As there were two Americans on the
+back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amur-
+ricans"--his choice of subject was full of tact.
+It was exhilarating to get a lesson in pronuncia-
+tion from a gentleman who said <i>boult</i> for bolt,
+called St. John <i>Sin' Jun</i>, and did not know
+how to pronounce the beautiful name of his
+own college at Oxford.  Fancy a perfectly sober
+man saying <i>Maudlin</i> for Magdalen!  Perhaps
+the purest English spoken is that of the English
+folk who have resided abroad ever since the
+Elizabethan period, or thereabouts.
+
+EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the
+collectors are after it.  The fool and his book-
+plate are soon parted.  To distribute one's <i>ex-
+libris</i> is inanely to destroy the only significance
+it has, that of indicating the past or present
+ownership of the volume in which it is placed.
+
+WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative
+he is apt to be the most matter-of-fact of mortals.
+He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an alert
+sense of humor.  Yet England has produced
+the finest of humorists and the greatest of
+poets.  The humor and imagination which
+are diffused through other peoples concentrate
+themselves from time to time in individual
+Englishmen.
+
+THIS is a page of autobiography, though not
+written in the first person: Many years ago a
+noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
+memorandum-book on a table in his personal
+office.  The volume always lay open, and was in
+no manner a private affair, being the receptacle
+of nothing more important than hastily scrawled
+reminders to attend to this thing or the other.  It
+chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
+author, passing through the city, looked in upon
+the publisher, who was also the editor of a
+famous magazine.  The unfledged had a copy
+of verses secreted about his person.  The pub-
+lisher was absent, and young Milton, feeling
+that "they also serve who only stand and wait,"
+sat down and waited.  Presently his eye fell
+upon the memorandum-book, lying there spread
+out like a morning newspaper, and almost in
+spite of himself he read: "Don't forget to see
+the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his
+contract," "Don't forget H-----'s proofs," etc.
+An inspiration seized upon the youth; he took
+a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of
+"don't forgets " he wrote: "Don't forget to
+accept A 's poem."  He left his manuscript
+on the table and disappeared.  That afternoon
+when the publisher glanced over his memo-
+randa, he was not a little astonished at the last
+item; but his sense of humor was so strong that
+he did accept the poem (it required a strong
+sense of humor to do that), and sent the lad a
+check for it, though the verses remain to this
+day unprinted.  That kindly publisher was wise
+as well as kind.
+
+FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psycholo-
+gical prefaces are always certain to be particu-
+larly indecent.
+
+I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry
+Sandford of England, the priggish little boy
+in the story of "Sandford and Merton," has a
+worthy American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore,
+who sedately pirouettes through a seemingly end-
+less succession of girls' books.  I came across
+a nest of fifteen of them the other day.  This
+impossible female is carried from infancy up to
+grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still lei-
+surely pursuing her way down to the tomb in an
+ecstatic state of uninterrupted didacticism.  There
+are twenty-five volumes of her and the grand-
+daughter, who is also christened Elsie, and is her
+grandmother's own child, with the same preco-
+cious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to
+her elders.  An interesting instance of hereditary
+talent!
+
+H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender,
+graceful, and hollow.  Personally, he is long and
+narrow, and looks as if he might have been
+the product of a rope-walk.  He is loosely put
+together, like an ill-constructed sentence, and
+affects me like one.  His figure is ungrammatical.
+
+AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as
+the flowers that bloom in the spring.  Each gen-
+eration has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on
+cultivating a new kind.  That of 1860, if it were
+to break into blossom at the present moment,
+would probably be left to fade upon the stem.
+
+Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing
+hectic flush of its time.  The current-topic variety
+is especially subject to very early frosts, as is
+also the dialectic species.  Mark Twain's humor
+is not to be classed with the fragile plants; it
+has a serious root striking deep down into
+rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering
+indefinitely.
+
+I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal,
+whose plan should involve the discharge of the
+chief literary critic and the installment of a fresh
+censor on the completion of each issue.  To
+place a man in permanent absolute control of a
+certain number of pages, in which to express his
+opinions, is to place him in a position of great
+personal danger, It is almost inevitable that he
+should come to overrate the importance of those
+opinions, to take himself with far too much
+seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of
+his own infallibility.  The liberty to summon
+this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious
+bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-ap-
+pointed judge an exaggerated sense of superi-
+ority.  He becomes impatient of any rulings not
+his, and says in effect, if not in so many words:
+" I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let
+no dog bark."  When the critic reaches this
+exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is
+gone.
+
+AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the
+weather takes the pledge and signs it with a
+rainbow.
+
+I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told
+in full.  When every detail is given, the mind
+rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the
+desire to use its own wings.  The partly draped
+statue has a charm which the nude lacks.  Who
+would have those marble folds slip from the
+raised knee of the Venus of Melos?  Hawthorne
+knew how to make his lovely thought lovelier
+by sometimes half veiling it.
+
+I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a
+slight fancy which Herrick has handled twice
+in the "Hesperides."  The fancy, however, is
+not Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the ex-
+aggeration of lovers, and I have the same privi-
+lege as another to try my fortune with it:
+
+UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE
+                                CHAUCER
+
+
+
+When some hand has partly drawn
+   The cloudy curtains of her bed,
+   And my lady's golden head
+Glimmers in the dusk like dawn,
+Then methinks is day begun.
+Later, when her dream has ceased
+   And she softly stirs and wakes,
+   Then it is as when the East
+   A sudden rosy magic takes
+From the cloud-enfolded sun,
+   And full day breaks!
+
+Shakespeare, who has done so much to discour-
+age literature by anticipating everybody, puts the
+whole matter into a nutshell:
+
+   But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
+   It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
+
+THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I
+have seen quoted innumerable times, and never
+once correctly.  Hamlet, addressing Horatio,
+says:
+
+                            Give me that man
+   That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
+   In my heart's core, ay, in my <i>heart of heart</i>.
+
+The words italicized are invariably written
+"heart of hearts"--as if a person possessed
+that organ in duplicate.  Perhaps no one living,
+with the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more
+familiar with the play of Hamlet than my good
+friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart
+plural on two occasions in his recent novel,
+"The Mystery of the Sea."  Mrs. Humphry
+Ward also twice misquotes the passage in
+"Lady Rose's Daughter."
+
+BOOKS that have become classics--books that
+ave had their day and now get more praise
+than perusal--always remind me of venerable
+colonels and majors and captains who, having
+reached the age limit, find themselves retired
+upon half pay.
+
+WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself
+into a ball is a subject over which my friend
+John Burroughs and several brother naturalists
+have lately become as heated as if the question
+involved points of theology.  Up among the
+Adirondacks, and in the very heart of the re-
+gion of porcupines, I happen to have a modest
+cottage.  This retreat is called The Porcupine,
+and I ought by good rights to know something
+about the habits of the small animal from which
+it derives its name.  Last winter my dog Buster
+used to return home on an average of three times
+a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with
+his nose stuck full of quills, and <i>he</i> ought to
+have some concrete ideas on the subject.  We
+two, then, are prepared to testify that the por-
+cupine in its moments of relaxation occasion-
+ally contracts itself into what might be taken
+for a ball by persons not too difficult to please
+in the matter of spheres.  But neither Buster
+nor I--being unwilling to get into trouble--
+would like to assert that it is an actual ball.
+That it is a shape with which one had better
+not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction that
+my friend Buster stands ready to defend against
+all comers.
+
+WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman
+in one of his poems as "a creature not too bright
+or good for human nature's daily food" has
+always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be
+poetical.  It directly sets one to thinking of the
+South Sea islanders.
+
+THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of per-
+son one would select as a superintendent for a
+Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo
+was wisdom itself--"Put money in thy purse."
+Whoever disparages money disparages every
+step in the progress of the human race.  I lis-
+tened the other day to a sermon in which gold was
+personified as a sort of glittering devil tempting
+mortals to their ruin.  I had an instant of natural
+hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed
+around immediately afterward.  Personally, I be-
+lieve that the possession of gold has ruined fewer
+men than the lack of it.  What noble enterprises
+have been checked and what fine souls have been
+blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will
+never know.  "After the love of knowledge,"
+says Buckle, " there is no one passion which has
+done so much good to mankind as the love of
+money."
+
+DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable
+medium of communication between persons who
+have nothing to say and persons who would not
+care for anything properly said.
+
+DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious
+desk-accessories in the way of pencil-sharpeners,
+paper-weights, penholders, etc.  The latest con-
+trivances in this fashion--probably dropped
+down to him by the inventor angling for a nibble
+of commendation--were always making one
+another's acquaintance on his study table.  He
+once said to me: "I 'm waiting for somebody to
+invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any
+accident put into your inkstand.  It would save
+me frequent moments of humiliation."
+
+THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs.
+Giddy, who figure in the pages of seventeenth
+and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated in
+modern novels and plays.  Steal the burglar and
+Palette the artist have ceased to be.  A name
+indicating the quality or occupation of the bearer
+strikes us as a too transparent device.  Yet there
+are such names in contemporary real life.  That
+of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum may be
+instanced.  Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons
+who linger in the memory of my boyhood.  Sweet
+the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are indi-
+viduals with whom I have had dealings.  The
+old-time sign of Ketchum & Cheetam, Brokers,
+in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too
+good to be true.  But it was once, if it is not
+now, an actuality.
+
+I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author
+dies, New York immediately becomes a great
+literary centre.
+
+THE possession of unlimited power will make
+a despot of almost any man.  There is a pos-
+sible Nero in the gentlest human creature that
+walks.
+
+EVERY living author has a projection of him-
+self, a sort of eidolon, that goes about in near
+and remote places making friends or enemies
+for him among persons who never lay eyes upon
+the writer in the flesh.  When he dies, this phan-
+tasmal personality fades away, and the author
+lives only in the impression created by his own
+literature.  It is only then that the world begins
+to perceive what manner of man the poet, the
+novelist, or the historian really was.  Not until
+he is dead, and perhaps some long time dead, is
+it possible for the public to take his exact mea-
+sure.  Up to that point contemporary criticism
+has either overrated him or underrated him, or
+ignored him altogether, having been misled by
+the eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks
+with the writer temporarily under its dominion.
+It invariably represents him as either a greater
+or a smaller personage than he actually is.  Pre-
+sently the simulacrum works no more spells,
+good or evil, and the deception is unveiled.  The
+hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and
+the idol of yesterday, which seemed so impor-
+tant, is taken down from his too large pedestal
+and carted off to the dumping-ground of inade-
+quate things.  To be sure, if he chances to have
+been not entirely unworthy, and on cool exam-
+ination is found to possess some appreciable
+degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab
+of appropriate dimensions.  The late colossal
+statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief.  On the
+other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may
+suddenly become a revered full-length figure.
+Between the reputation of the author living and
+the reputation of the same author dead there is
+ever a wide discrepancy.
+
+A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is
+incidentally given by Charles Brookfield, the
+English actor, in his "Random Recollections."
+Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion,
+dining at the Oxford and Cambridge Club with
+George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred
+Tennyson, and others.  "After dinner," relates
+the random recollector, "the poet insisted upon
+putting his feet on the table, tilting back his
+chair <i>more Americano</i>.  There were strangers
+in the room, and he was expostulated with for
+his uncouthness, but in vain.  'Do put down
+your feet!' pleaded his host.  'Why should I?'
+retorted Tennyson.  'I 'm very comfortable as
+I am.'  'Every one's staring at you,' said an-
+other.  'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, pla-
+cidly.  'Alfred,' said my father, 'people will
+think you're Longfellow.'  Down went the
+feet."  That <i>more Americano</i> of Brookfield the
+younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor,
+but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of
+gentleness, the prince of courtesy--as a buga-
+boo of bad manners is simply inimitable.  It
+will take England years and years to detect the
+full unconscious humor of it.
+
+GREAT orators who are not also great writers
+become very indistinct historical shadows to the
+generations immediately following them.  The
+spell vanishes with the voice.  A man's voice is
+almost the only part of him entirely obliterated
+by death.  The violet of his native land may be
+made of his ashes, but nature in her economy
+seems to have taken no care of his intonations,
+unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of
+air surging about the poles.  The well-graced
+actor who leaves no perceptible record of his
+genius has a decided advantage over the mere
+orator.  The tradition of the player's method
+and presence is associated with works of endur-
+ing beauty.  Turning to the pages of the drama-
+tist, we can picture to ourselves the greatness of
+Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in this
+or that character.  It is not so easy to conjure up
+the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry
+and possibly illogical argument in favor of or
+against some long-ago-exploded measure of gov-
+ernment.  The laurels of an orator who is not a
+master of literary art wither quickly.
+
+ALL the best sands of my life are somehow get-
+ting into the wrong end of the hour-glass.  If I
+could only reverse it!  Were it in my power to
+do so, would I?
+
+SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs
+--putting in his oar, so to speak--with some
+pat word or sentence.  The conversation, the
+other evening, had turned on the subject of
+watches, when one of the gentlemen present,
+the manager of a large watch-making establish-
+ment, told us a rather interesting fact.  The
+component parts of a watch are produced by
+different workmen, who have no concern with
+the complex piece of mechanism as a whole,
+and possibly, as a rule, understand it imper-
+fectly.  Each worker needs to be expert in only
+his own special branch.  When the watch has
+reached a certain advanced state, the work
+requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of
+an oculist performing an operation.  Here the
+most skilled and trustworthy artisans are em-
+ployed; they receive high wages, and have the
+benefit of a singular indulgence.  In case the
+workman, through too continuous application,
+finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve
+demanded by his task, he is allowed without
+forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in
+order that his hand may recover the requisite
+precision of touch.  As I listened, Hamlet's
+courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of
+sensibility came drifting into my memory.
+"The hand of little employment hath the dain-
+tier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left no-
+thing unsaid.
+
+IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some
+one of the auxiliary deities that preside over the
+destinies of Japland.  For three days and nights
+the streets of Tokio--where the squat little
+brown houses look for all the world as if they
+were mimicking the favorite sitting posture of
+the Japanese--were crowded with smiling hol-
+iday makers, and made gay with devices of
+tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and
+mythical winged creatures which at night amia-
+bly turned themselves into lanterns.  Garlands
+of these, arranged close together, were stretched
+across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole,
+and your jinrikisha whisked you through inter-
+minable arbors of soft illumination.  The spec-
+tacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all
+Japan does that.
+
+A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers,
+Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers--
+     Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice 
+And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.
+
+Each day has its fair or its festival there,
+And life seems immune to all trouble and care--
+     Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,
+Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
+
+They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars,
+And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars;
+     They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone,
+As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
+
+They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs,
+And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs:
+     Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black,
+And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
+
+On roadside and street toddling images meet,
+And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet;
+     Their obis are tied with particular pride,
+Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.
+
+With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat,
+Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat;
+     A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or "Stay!"
+"I hate you!  "I love you!"--a fan can say that!
+Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three
+Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea;
+     They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear
+Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.
+
+At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight,
+With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight--
+     Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead,
+Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
+
+Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume
+Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom;
+     On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,
+They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
+
+At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near,
+A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear;
+     Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings
+The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
+
+THE difference between an English audience
+and a French audience at the theatre is marked.
+The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the
+wing.  The Briton pauses for it to alight and
+give him reasonable time for deliberate aim.  In
+English playhouses an appreciable number of
+seconds usually precede the smile or the ripple
+of laughter that follows a facetious turn of the
+least fineness.  I disclaim all responsibility for
+this statement of my personal observation, since
+it has recently been indorsed by one of London's
+most eminent actors.
+
+AT the next table, taking his opal drops of 
+absinthe, was a French gentleman with the
+blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle,
+which always has the air of saying: "I have
+lived!"
+
+WE often read of wonderful manifestations of 
+memory, but they are always instances of the
+faculty working in some special direction.  It is
+memory playing, like Paganini, on one string.
+No doubt the persons performing the phenome-
+nal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more
+than they remember.  To be able to repeat a
+hundred lines of verse after a single reading is
+no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as
+the hundred lines go.  A man might easily fail
+under such a test, and yet have a good memory;
+by which I mean a catholic one, and that I
+imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts.  I have
+never met more than four or five persons pos-
+sessing it.  The small boy who defined memory
+as "the thing you forget with" described the
+faculty as it exists and works in the majority of
+men and women.
+
+THE survival in publishers of the imitative in-
+stinct is a strong argument in support of Mr.
+Darwin's theory of the descent of man.  One
+publisher no sooner brings out a new style of
+book-cover than half a dozen other publishers
+fall to duplicating it.
+
+THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place
+with a knot of violets tied to the dinted guard,
+there being no known grave to decorate.  For
+many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrow-
+ful woman had come and fastened these flowers
+there.  The first time she brought her offering
+she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own vio-
+lets.  It is a slender figure still, but there are
+threads of silver in the black hair.
+
+FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
+who in early youth was taught "to abstain from
+rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--espe-
+cially the fine writing.  Simplicity is art's last
+word.
+
+The man is clearly an adventurer.  In the seven-
+teenth century he would have worn huge flint-
+lock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and
+been something in the seafaring line.  The fel-
+low is always smartly dressed, but where he
+lives and how he lives are as unknown as
+"what song the Sirens sang, or what name
+Achilles assumed when he hid himself among
+women."  He is a man who apparently has no
+appointment with his breakfast and whose din-
+ner is a chance acquaintance.  His probable
+banker is the next person.  A great city like
+this is the only geography for such a character.
+He would be impossible in a small country
+town, where everybody knows everybody and
+what everybody has for lunch.
+
+I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the
+proprietor of the saying that "Economy is sec-
+ond or third cousin to Avarice."  I went rather
+confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not
+among that gentleman's light luggage of cynical
+maxims.
+
+THERE is a popular vague impression that butch-
+ers are not allowed to serve as jurors on mur-
+der trials.  This is not really the case, but it
+logically might be.  To a man daily familiar
+with the lurid incidents of the <i>abattoir</i>, the
+summary extinction of a fellow creature (whe-
+ther the victim or the criminal) can scarcely
+seem a circumstance of so serious moment
+as to another man engaged in less strenuous
+pursuits.
+WE do not, and cannot, read many of the novels
+that most delighted our ancestors.  Some of our
+popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor
+with a difference.  There is always a heavy de-
+mand for fresh mediocrity.  In every generation
+the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
+There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime
+music for the many.
+
+G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great
+purpose than not accomplish it in precisely his
+own way.  He has the courage of his conviction
+and the intolerance of his courage.  He is op-
+posed to the death penalty for murder, but he
+would willingly have any one electrocuted who
+disagreed with him on the subject.
+
+
+I HAVE thought of an essay to be called "On
+the Art of Short-Story Writing," but have given
+it up as smacking too much of the shop.  It
+would be too <i>intime</i>, since I should have to deal
+chiefly with my own ways, and so give myself
+the false air of seeming to consider them of im-
+portance.  It would interest nobody to know
+that I always write the last paragraph first, and
+then work directly up to that, avoiding all di-
+gressions and side issues.  Then who on earth
+would care to be told about the trouble my
+characters cause me by talking too much?
+They will talk, and I have to let them; but
+when the story is finished, I go over the dia-
+logue and strike out four fifths of the long
+speeches.  I fancy that makes my characters
+pretty mad.
+
+THIS is the golden age of the inventor.  He is
+no longer looked upon as a madman or a wiz-
+ard, incontinently to be made away with.  Two
+or three centuries ago Marconi would not have
+escaped a ropeless end with his wireless telegra-
+phy.  Even so late as 1800, the friends of one
+Robert Fulton seriously entertained the lumi-
+nous idea of hustling the poor man into an asy-
+lum for the unsound before he had a chance to
+fire up the boiler of his tiny steamboat on the
+Hudson river.  In olden times the pillory and
+the whipping-post were among the gentler forms
+of encouragement awaiting the inventor.  If a
+man devised an especially practical apple-peeler
+he was in imminent danger of being peeled with
+it by an incensed populace.  To-day we hail
+with enthusiasm a scientific or a mechanical
+discovery, and stand ready to make a stock
+company of it.
+
+A MAN is known by the company his mind
+keeps.  To live continually with noble books,
+with "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart
+of courtesy," teaches the soul good manners.
+
+THE unconventional has ever a morbid attrac-
+tion for a certain class of mind.  There is always
+a small coterie of highly intellectual men and
+women eager to give welcome to whatever is
+eccentric, obscure, or chaotic.  Worshipers at
+the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with
+a sense of tolerant superiority when they say:
+"Of course this is not the kind of thing <i>you</i>
+would like."  Sometimes these impressionable
+souls almost seem to make a sort of reputation
+for their fetish.
+
+I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself
+buried on the edge of the pond where his duck-
+stand was located, in order that flocks of migrat-
+ing birds might fly over his grave every autumn.
+He did not have to die, to become a dead shot.
+A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B----- is
+a great sportsman.  He has peppered every-
+thing from grouse in North Dakota to his best
+friend in the Maine woods."
+
+WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his
+novel he must not let him bore the reader.  The
+fellow must be made amusing, which he would
+not be in real life.  In nine cases out of ten
+an exact reproduction of real life would prove
+tedious.  Facts are not necessarily valuable, and
+frequently they add nothing to fiction.  The art
+of the realistic novelist sometimes seems akin to
+that of the Chinese tailor who perpetuated the
+old patch on the new trousers.  True art selects
+and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim
+translation.
+
+THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the
+north room of his house at Elmwood, the sleep-
+ing-room I had occupied during a two years'
+tenancy of the place in his absence abroad.  He
+was lying half propped up in bed, convales-
+cing from one of the severe attacks that were
+ultimately to prove fatal.  Near the bed was a
+chair on which stood a marine picture in aqua-
+relle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky
+shore in the foreground, if I remember, and a
+vessel at anchor.  The afternoon sunlight, falling
+through the window, cast a bloom over the pic-
+ture, which was turned toward Lowell.  From
+time to time, as he spoke, his eyes rested
+thoughtfully on the water-color.  A friend, he
+said, had just sent it to him.  It seemed to me
+then, and the fancy has often haunted me since,
+that that ship, in the golden haze, with top-
+sails loosened, was waiting to bear his spirit
+away.
+
+CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which bar-
+barism masquerades.  If somebody has already
+said that, I forgive him the mortification he
+causes me.  At the beginning of the twentieth
+century barbarism can throw off its gentle dis-
+guise, and burn a man at the stake as compla-
+cently as in the Middle Ages.
+
+WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into
+the vocabulary of the purist in the next.  On
+the other hand, expressions that once were not
+considered inelegant are looked at askance in
+the period following.  The word "brass" was
+formerly an accepted synonym for money; but
+at present, when it takes on that significance, it
+is not admitted into genteel circles of language.
+It may be said to have seen better days, like
+another word I have in mind--a word that has
+become slang, employed in the sense which
+once did not exclude it from very good society.
+A friend lately informed me that he had "fired"
+his housekeeper--that is, dismissed her.  He
+little dreamed that he was speaking excellent
+Elizabethan.
+
+THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded with
+beautiful and hideous things, like a Japanese
+Museum.
+
+"AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on
+her seat, and he saw that she shuddered."  This
+is from Anthony Trollope's novel, "Can You
+Forgive Her?"  Can you forgive him? is the
+next question.
+
+A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection
+is not a little thing.  Possessing this quality, a
+trifle "no bigger than an agate-stone on the
+forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the
+Pyramids.  The world will have forgotten all
+the great masterpieces of literature when it for-
+gets Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his
+going to the wars.  More durable than marble
+or bronze are the words, "I could not love
+thee, deare, so much, loved I not honor more."
+
+I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon
+to say good-by.  I shall probably not find him
+here when I come back from the long voyage
+which I have in front of me.  He is very fragile,
+and looks as though a puff of wind would blow
+him away.  He said himself, with his old-time
+cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth
+by only a little piece of twine.  He has percep-
+tibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but
+he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which
+all the world has listened, and will miss.  I
+found him absorbed in a newly made card-cata-
+logue of his library.  "It was absurd of me to
+have it done," he remarked.  "What I really
+require is a little bookcase holding only two
+volumes; then I could go from one to the other
+in alternation and always find each book as fresh
+as if I never had read it."  This arraignment of
+his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's
+mind was to the end like an unclouded crystal.
+It was interesting to note how he studied him-
+self, taking his own pulse, as it were, and diag-
+nosing his own case in a sort of scientific,
+impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's
+case and he were the consulting specialist.  I
+intended to spend a quarter of an hour with
+him, and he kept me three hours.  I went there
+rather depressed, but I returned home leavened
+with his good spirits, which, I think, will never
+desert him, here or hereafter.  To keep the heart
+unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful,
+reverent--that is to triumph over old age.
+
+THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets,
+is of no account.  The thing that stays, and
+haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is
+the sincere thing.  I am describing the impres-
+sion left upon me by Mr. Howells's blank-verse
+sketch called "Father and Mother: A Mystery"
+--a strangely touching and imaginative piece
+of work, not unlike in effect to some of Mae-
+terlinck's psychical dramas.  As I read on, I
+seemed to be standing in a shadow cast by some
+half-remembered experience of my own in a
+previous state of existence.  When I went to
+bed that night I had to lie awake and think it
+over as an event that had actually befallen me.
+I should call the effect <i>weird</i>, if the word had
+not lately been worked to death.  The gloom of
+Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch
+cold finger-tips in those three or four pages.
+
+FOR a character-study--a man made up en-
+tirely of limitations.  His conservatism and neg-
+ative qualities to be represented as causing him
+to attain success where men of conviction and
+real ability fail of it.
+
+A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table
+on board the steamer.  During the entire run from
+Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no
+one at meal-times excepting his table steward.
+Seated next to him, on the right, was a viva-
+cious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play,
+spoke "an infinite deal of nothing."  He made
+persistent and pathetic attempts to lure his silent
+neighbor (we had christened him "William the
+Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable
+was always the poor result--until one day.  It
+was the last day of the voyage.  We had stopped
+at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver
+the mails, and some fish had been brought
+aboard.  The vivacious gentleman was in a
+high state of excitement that morning at table.
+"Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually fresh!
+They seem quite different from ours.  Irish fish,
+of course.  Can you tell me, sir," he inquired,
+turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what <i>kind</i> of
+fish these are?"  "Cork soles," said the saturn-
+ine man, in a deep voice, and then went on
+with his breakfast.
+
+LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in
+General George P. Morris's line,
+
+     Her heart and morning broke together.
+
+Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however,
+had an attack of the same platitude, and pos-
+sibly inoculated poor Morris.  Even literature
+seems to have its mischief-making bacilli.  The
+late "incomparable and ingenious Dean of St.
+Paul's" says,
+
+     The day breaks not, it is my heart.
+
+I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than
+Morris's.  Chaucer had the malady in a milder
+form when he wrote:
+
+     Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye. 
+
+The charming naivete of it!
+
+SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the
+Lyceum Theatre one evening during that lady's
+temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bern-
+hardt picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty
+word on the mirror--<i>Dearling</i>, mistaking it
+for the word darling.  The French actress lighted
+by chance upon a Spenserianism now become
+obsolete without good reason.  It is a more
+charming adjective than the one that has re-
+placed it.
+
+A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly
+rights.  He is scarcely buried before old maga-
+zines and newspapers are ransacked in search
+of matters which, for reasons sufficient to him,
+he had carefully excluded from the definitive
+edition of his collected writings.
+
+     He gave the people of his best;
+     His worst he kept, his best he gave.
+
+One can imagine a poet tempted to address
+some such appeal as this to any possible future
+publisher of his poems:
+
+     Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,
+     Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer!
+     But my anathema on thee and thine
+     If thou add'st aught to what is printed here.
+
+
+THE claim of this country to call itself "The
+Land of the Free" must be held in abeyance
+until every man in it, whether he belongs or
+does not belong to a labor organization, shall
+have the right to work for his daily bread.
+
+THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running
+through the entire Irish race, a fleeting lyrical
+emotion which expresses itself in a flash, usually
+in connection with love of country and kindred
+across the sea.  I had a touching illustration of it
+the other morning.  The despot who reigns over
+our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on
+the rear lawn.  It was one of those blue and gold
+days which seem especially to belong New Eng-
+land.  "It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this
+day," she said, looking up at me.  <I>"I'd go cool
+my hands in the grass on my ould mother's
+grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst
+the priest's house at Mullingar."</i> I have
+seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.
+
+
+SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-
+known director of a lecture bureau, an old client
+of his remarked: "He was a most capable
+manager, but it always made me a little sore to
+have him deduct twenty-five per cent. commis-
+sion."  "Pond's Extract," murmured one of the
+gentlemen present.
+
+EACH of our great towns has its "Little Italy,"
+with shops where nothing is spoken but Italian
+and streets in which the alien pedestrian had
+better not linger after nightfall.  The chief in-
+dustry of these exotic communities seems to be
+spaghetti and stilettos.  What with our Little
+Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an Ameri-
+can need not cross the ocean in order to visit
+foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older
+civilizations.
+
+POETS are made as well as born, the proverb
+notwithstanding.  They are made possible by
+the general love of poetry and the consequent
+imperious demand for it.  When this is non-
+existent, poets become mute, the atmosphere
+stifles them.  There would have been no Shake-
+speare had there been no Elizabethan audience.
+That was an age when, as Emerson finely puts
+it,
+
+               Men became
+     Poets, for the air was fame.
+
+THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his car-
+riage-stand at the corner opposite my house is
+constantly touching on the extremes of human
+experience, with probably not the remotest per-
+ception of the fact.  Now he takes a pair of lovers
+out for an airing, and now he drives the abscond-
+ing bank-teller to the railway-station.  Except-
+ing as question of distance, the man has positively
+no choice between a theatre and a graveyard.  I
+met him this morning dashing up to the portals
+of Trinity Church with a bridal party, and this
+afternoon, as I was crossing Cambridge Bridge,
+I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on
+his way to Mount Auburn.  The wedding af-
+forded him no pleasure, and the funeral gave
+him no grief; yet he was a factor in both.  It is
+his odd destiny to be wholly detached from the
+vital part of his own acts.  If the carriage itself
+could speak!  The autobiography of a public
+hack written without reservation would be dra-
+matic reading.
+
+IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score
+or two of suggestions for essays, sketches, and
+poems, which I have not written, and never
+shall write.  The instant I jot down an idea the
+desire to utilize it leaves me, and I turn away to
+do something unpremeditated.  The shabby vol-
+ume has become a sort of Potter's Field where I
+bury my literary intentions, good and bad, with-
+out any belief in their final resurrection.
+
+A STAGE DIRECTION: <i>exit time; enter
+Eternity--with a soliloquy.</i>
+
+
+
+
+ASIDES
+
+
+
+
+TOM FOLIO
+
+IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was
+often to be met with about town, furtively
+haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial
+rooms, a man of ingratiating simplicity of man-
+ner, who always spoke in a low, hesitating voice,
+with a note of refinement in it.  He was a de-
+vout worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant dis-
+cursive essays smacking somewhat of his master's
+flavor--suggesting rather than imitating it--
+which he signed "Tom Folio."  I forget how
+he glided into my acquaintanceship; doubtless in
+some way too shy and elusive for remembrance.
+I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one
+did, but the intercourse between us was most
+cordial, and our chance meetings and bookish
+chats extended over a space of a dozen years.
+     Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseu-
+donym--was sparely built and under medium
+height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders
+made it seem so, with a fragile look about him
+and an aspect of youth that was not his.  En-
+countering him casually on a street corner, you
+would, at the first glance, have taken him for a
+youngish man, but the second glance left you
+doubtful.  It was a figure that struck a note of
+singularity and would have attracted your atten-
+tion even in a crowd.
+     During the first four or five years of our ac-
+quaintance, meeting him only out of doors or in
+shops, I had never happened to see him with his
+hat off.  One day he recklessly removed it, and
+in the twinkling of an eye he became an elderly
+bald-headed man.  The Tom Folio I once knew
+had virtually vanished.  An instant earlier he
+was a familiar shape; an instant later, an almost
+unrecognizable individual.  A narrow fringe of
+light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear
+under the rear brim of his hat, had perpetrated
+an unintentional deception by leading one to sup-
+pose a head profusely covered with curly locks.
+"Tom Folio," I said, "put on your hat and
+come back!  But after that day he never seemed
+young to me.
+     I had few or no inklings of his life discon-
+nected with the streets and the book-stalls, chiefly
+those on Cornhill or in the vicinity.  It is possi-
+ble I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a
+room somewhere at the South End or in South
+Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his cof-
+fee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp.  I
+got from him one or two fortuitous hints of
+quaint housekeeping.  Every winter, it appeared,
+some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch
+of mince pies, twenty or thirty at least.  He once
+spoke to me of having laid in his winter pie, just
+as another might speak of laying in his winter
+coal.  The only fireside companion Tom Folio
+ever alluded to in my presence was a Maltese
+cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him
+from time to time.  I suspected those mince
+pies.  The cat, I recollect, was named Miss
+Mowcher.
+     If he had any immediate family ties beyond
+this I was unaware of them, and not curious to
+be enlightened on the subject.  He was more pic-
+turesque solitary.  I preferred him to remain so.
+Other figures introduced into the background of
+the canvas would have spoiled the artistic effect.
+     Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a
+recluse even when he allowed himself to be
+jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream
+of humanity sweeping in opposite directions
+through Washington Street and its busy estu-
+aries.  He was in the crowd, but not of it.  I
+had so little real knowledge of him that I was
+obliged to imagine his more intimate environ-
+ments.  However wide of the mark my conjec-
+tures may have fallen, they were as satisfying to
+me as facts would have been.  His secluded
+room I could picture to myself with a sense of
+certainty--the couch (a sofa by day), the cup-
+board, the writing-table with its student lamp,
+the litter of pamphlets and old quartos and oc-
+tavos in tattered bindings, among which were
+scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb,
+and perhaps--nay, surely--an <i>editio prin-
+ceps</i> of the "Essays."
+     The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower
+or a more loving disciple than Tom Folio.  He
+moved and had much of his being in the early
+part of the last century.  To him the South-Sea
+House was the most important edifice on the
+globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used
+to be, in spite of all the changes that had be-
+fallen it.  It was there Charles Lamb passed the
+novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the
+East India Company.  In Tom Folio's fancy a
+slender, boyish figure was still seated, quill in
+hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon
+Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate.  That
+famous first paper in the "Essays," describing
+the South-Sea House and the group of human
+oddities which occupied desks within its gloomy
+chambers, had left an indelible impression upon
+the dreamer.  Every line traced by the "lean
+annuitant" was as familiar to Tom Folio as if
+he had written it himself.  Stray scraps, which
+had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were
+known to him, and it was his to unearth amid
+a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a
+handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men.
+Trifles, yes--but Charles Lamb's!  "The
+king's chaff is as good as other people's corn,"
+says Tom Folio.
+     Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-
+fashioned phrases; the talk of a man who loved
+books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere
+of fine thought.  Next to Charles Lamb, but at
+a convenable distance, Izaak Walton was Tom
+Folio's favorite.  His poet was Alexander Pope,
+though he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of
+"Cato" contained some proper good lines.  Our
+friend was a wide reader in English classics,
+greatly preferring the literature of the earlier pe-
+riods to that of the Victorian age.  His smiling,
+tenderly expressed disapprobation of various
+modern authors was enchanting.  John Keats's
+verses were monstrous pretty, but over-orna-
+mented.  A little too much lucent syrup tinct
+with cinnamon, don't you think?  The poetry
+of Shelley might have been composed in the
+moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning per-
+son.  If you wanted a sound mind in a sound
+metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's "Essay
+on Man."  There was something winsome and
+by-gone in the general make-up of Tom Folio.
+No man living in the world ever seemed to me
+to live so much out of it, or to live more com-
+fortably.
+     At times I half suspected him of a conva-
+lescent amatory disappointment.  Perhaps long
+before I knew him he had taken a little senti-
+mental journey, the unsuccessful end of which
+had touched him with a gentle sadness.  It was
+something far off and softened by memory.  If
+Tom Folio had any love-affair on hand in my
+day, it must have been of an airy, platonic sort
+--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Wof-
+fington or Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Wal-
+ler's Saccharissa.
+     Although Tom Folio was not a collector--
+that means dividends and bank balances--he
+had a passion for the Past and all its belongings,
+with a virtuoso's knowledge of them.  A fan
+painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare Nankin (he had
+caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china),
+or an undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him
+delight in the handling, though he might not
+aspire to ownership.  I believe he would will-
+ingly have drunk any horrible decoction from
+a silver teapot of Queen Anne's time.  These
+things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic
+sense; in a spiritual sense he held possession of
+them in fee-simple.  I learned thus much of his
+tastes one day during an hour we spent together
+in the rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities.
+     I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I
+am inclined to think that I mis-stated it.  He
+had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather
+steep staircase leading to that modest third-story
+front room which I have imagined for him--a
+room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to believe,
+and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Ho-
+garth's excellent moral of "The Industrious and
+Idle Apprentices" pinned against the chimney
+breast.  Young Chatterton, who was not always
+the best of company, dropped in at intervals.
+There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special chair
+reserved for him by the window, where he could
+catch a glimpse of the pretty housemaid over the
+way, chatting with the policeman at the area
+railing.  Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author
+of "The Deserted Village" were frequent visit-
+ors, sometimes appearing together arm-in-arm,
+with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, fol-
+lowing obsequiously behind.  Not that Tom
+Folio did not have callers vastly more aristo-
+cratic, though he could have had none plea-
+santer or wholesomer.  Sir Philip Sidney (who
+must have given Folio that copy of the "Arca-
+dia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two
+or three others before whom either of these might
+have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to gather
+round that hearthstone.  Fielding, Smollett,
+Sterne, Defoe, Dick Steele, Dean Swift--there
+was no end to them!  On certain nights, when all
+the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber,
+the narrow street stretching beneath Tom Folio's
+windows must have been blocked with invisible
+coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the
+visionary glare of torches borne by shadowy
+linkboys hurrying hither and thither.  A man
+so sought after and companioned cannot be
+described as lonely.
+     My memory here recalls the fact that he had
+a few friends less insubstantial--that quaint
+anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, to
+whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his
+apple; and the brown-legged little Neapolitan
+who was always nearly certain of a copper when
+this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums
+on a Saturday afternoon--Saturday probably
+being the essayist's pay-day.  The withered
+woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over
+against Faneuil Hall Market knew him for a
+friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant,
+whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted
+across the stormy traffic of Dock Square.  <i>No-
+blesse oblige!</i> He was no stranger in those
+purlieus.  Without designing to confuse small
+things with great, I may say that a certain strip
+of pavement in North Street could be pointed
+out as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison's
+Walk is pointed out on the banks of the Cher-
+well at Oxford.
+     I used to observe that when Tom Folio was
+not in quest of a print or a pamphlet or some
+such urgent thing, but was walking for mere
+recreation, he instinctively avoided respectable
+latitudes.  He liked best the squalid, ill-kept
+thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tene-
+ment-houses and teeming with unprosperous,
+noisy life.  Perhaps he had, half consciously,
+a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and
+cheerful resignation of it all.
+     Returning home from abroad one October
+morning several years ago, I was told that that
+simple spirit had passed on.  His death had
+been little heeded; but in him had passed away
+an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston--as
+genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself
+--a personality not to be restored or replaced.
+Tom Folio could never happen again!
+
+     Strolling to-day through the streets of the older
+section of the town, I miss many a venerable
+landmark submerged in the rising tide of change,
+but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the
+sight of Tom Folio entering the doorway of the
+Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down
+a musty volume from its shelf at some melan-
+choly old book-stall on Cornhill.
+
+
+
+FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
+
+WHEN an English novelist does us the
+honor to introduce any of our country-
+men into his fiction, he generally displays a
+commendable desire to present something typi-
+cal in the way of names for his adopted char-
+acters--to give a dash of local color, as it were,
+with his nomenclature.  His success is seldom
+commensurate to the desire.  He falls into the
+error of appealing to his invention, instead of
+consulting some city directory, in which he
+would find more material than he could exhaust
+in ten centuries.  Charles Reade might have
+secured in the pages of such a compendium a
+happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee
+sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if
+Anthony Trollope could have discovered any-
+thing better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the
+young woman from "the States" in his novel
+called "Is He Popenjoy?"
+     To christen a sprightly young female advo-
+cate of woman's rights Olivia Q. Fleabody was
+very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much
+better than was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose
+understanding of American life and manners was
+not enlarged by extensive travel in this country.
+An English tourist's preconceived idea of us is
+a thing he brings over with him on the steamer
+and carries home again intact; it is as much a
+part of his indispensable impedimenta as his hat-
+box.  But Fleabody is excellent; it was prob-
+ably suggested by Peabody, which may have
+struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just as Trollope
+strikes <i>us</i> as comical), or, at least, as not seri-
+ous.  What a capital name Veronica Trollope
+would be for a hoydenish young woman in a
+society novel!  I fancy that all foreign names
+are odd to the alien.  I remember that the signs
+above shop-doors in England and on the Conti-
+nent used to amuse me often enough, when I
+was over there.  It is a notable circumstance
+that extraordinary names never seem extraordi-
+nary to the persons bearing them.  If a fellow-
+creature were branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he
+would remain to the end of his days quite un-
+conscious of anything out of the common.
+     I am aware that many of our American names
+are sufficiently queer; but English writers make
+merry over them, as if our most eccentric were
+not thrown into the shade by some of their own.
+No American, living or dead, can surpass the
+verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for ex-
+ample--if the gentleman will forgive me for
+conscripting him.  Quite as remarkable, in a
+grimly significant way, is the appellation of a
+British officer who was fighting the Boers in the
+Transvaal in the year of blessed memory 1899.
+This young soldier, who highly distinguished
+himself on the field, was known to his brothers-
+in-arms as Major Pine Coffin.  I trust that the
+gallant major became a colonel later and is still
+alive.  It would eclipse the gayety of nations to
+lose a man with a name like that.
+     Several years ago I read in the sober police
+reports of "The Pall Mall Gazette" an account
+of a young man named George F. Onions, who
+was arrested (it ought to have been by "a
+peeler") for purloining money from his em-
+ployers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff
+merchants, of Bradford--<i>des noms bien idyl-
+liques!</i> What mortal could have a more ludi-
+crous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles,
+or Pickled Onions?  And then for Onions to rob
+Pickles!  Could there be a more incredible coin-
+cidence?  As a coincidence it is nearly sublime.
+No story-writer would dare to present that fact
+or those names in his fiction; neither would be
+accepted as possible.  Meanwhile Olivia Q. Flea-
+body is <i>ben trovato</i>.
+
+
+
+A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON"
+
+THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wa-
+gram in "L'Aiglon"--an episode whose
+sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagina-
+tion like the point of a rapier--bears a striking
+resemblance to a picturesque passage in Victor
+Hugo's "Les Miserables."  It is the one intense
+great moment in the play, and has been widely
+discussed, but so far as I am aware none of M.
+Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the
+resemblance mentioned.  In the master's ro-
+mance it is not the field of Wagram, but the
+field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled
+with contending armies of spooks, to use the
+grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the
+mind's eye.  The passage occurs at the end
+of the sixteenth chapter in the second part of
+"Les Miserables" (Cosette), and runs as
+follows:
+
+     Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui
+appartient a la terre, support impassible de l'homme,
+et il resemble a toutes les plaines.  La nuit pourtant
+une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si
+quelque voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute,
+s'il reve comme Virgile dans les funestes plaines de
+Philippes, l'hallucination de la catastrophe le saisit.
+L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse colline-monument
+s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de
+bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie
+ondulent dans la plaine, des galops furieux traversent
+l'horizon; le songeur effare voit l'eclair des sabres,
+l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des bombes,
+l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il en-
+tend, comme un rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur
+vague de la bataille-fantome; ces ombres, ce sont les
+grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; . . .
+tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et
+les ravins s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et
+il y a de la furie jusque dans les nuees, et, dans les
+tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, Mont-Saint-
+Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plance-
+noit, apparaissent confusement couronnees de tour-
+billons de spectres s'exterminant. <1>
+
+     Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon,"
+with scarcely a gruesome detail omitted.  The
+vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the
+ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against
+
+     <1> The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which be-
+longs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like all other
+plains.  At night, however, a kind of visionary mist is exhaled,
+and if any traveler walks there, and watches and listens, and
+dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful plains of Philippi, the hallu-
+cination of the catastrophe takes possession of him.  The terrible
+June 18 relives; the artificial commemorative mound effaces itself,
+the lion disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines
+of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by furious
+charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the gleam of sabres,
+the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of bursting shells, the
+clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the muffled clamor of the
+phantom conflict comes to him like dying moans from the tomb;
+these shadows are grenadiers, these lights are cuirassiers . . .
+all this does not really exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are
+stained with purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the
+clouds, and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-
+Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-
+pear dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one
+another.
+
+One another (seen only through the eyes of the
+poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled
+shapes lying motionless in various postures of
+death upon the blood-stained sward; the moans
+of the wounded rising up and sweeping by like
+vague wailings of the wind--all this might be
+taken for an artful appropriation of Victor
+Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though
+it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant
+page, read in early youth, still lingered on the
+retina of M. Rostand's memory.  If such were
+the case, it does not necessarily detract from the
+integrity of the conception or the playwright's
+presentment of it.
+     The idea of repeopling old battlefields with
+the shades of vanished hosts is not novel.  In
+such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark
+hand on the imagination, and prompts one to
+invoke the unappeased spirit of the past that
+haunts the place.  One summer evening long
+ago, as I was standing alone by the ruined walls
+of Hougomont, with that sense of not being
+alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by
+solitude, I had a sudden vision of that desperate
+last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard.  Marshal
+Ney rose from the grave and again shouted
+those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are
+you not going to get yourself killed?"  For
+an instant a thousand sabres flashed in the
+air.  The deathly silence that accompanied the
+ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the
+short-lived dream.  A moment later I beheld a
+hunched little figure mounted on a white horse
+with housings of purple velvet.  The reins lay
+slack in the rider's hand; his three-cornered hat
+was slouched over his brows, and his chin
+rested on the breast of his great-coat.  Thus he
+slowly rode away through the twilight, and
+nobody cried, <i>Vive l'Empereur!</i>
+     The ground on which a famous battle has
+been fought casts a spell upon every man's
+mind; and the impression made upon two men
+of poetic genius, like Victor Hugo and Edmond
+Rostand, might well be nearly identical.  This
+sufficiently explains the likeness between the
+fantastic silhouette in "Les Miserables" and the
+battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon."  A muse so
+rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need
+not borrow a piece of supernaturalness from
+anybody.
+
+
+
+PLOT AND CHARACTER
+
+HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony
+Trollope, says that if Trollope "had taken
+sides on the rather superficial opposition between
+novels of character and novels of plot, I can
+imagine him to have said (except that he never
+expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred
+the former class, inasmuch as character in itself
+is plot, while plot is by no means character."
+So neat an antithesis would surely never have
+found itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr.
+James had not cunningly lent it to him.  What-
+ever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may
+have preached, his almost invariable practice
+was to have a plot.  He always had a <i>story</i> to
+tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and
+end--in short, a framework of some description.
+     There have been delightful books filled wholly
+with character-drawing; but they have not been
+great novels.  The great novel deals with human
+action as well as with mental portraiture and
+analysis.  That "character in itself is plot" is
+true only in a limited sense.  A plan, a motive
+with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a
+novel or a romance as it is to a drama.  A group
+of skillfully made-up men and women lounging
+in the green-room or at the wings is not the
+play.  It is not enough to say that this is Romeo
+and that Lady Macbeth.  It is not enough to
+inform us that certain passions are supposed to
+be embodied in such and such persons: these
+persons should be placed in situations develop-
+ing those passions.  A series of unrelated scenes
+and dialogues leading to nothing is inadequate.
+     Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me
+vulnerable at both ends--unlike Achilles.
+"Plot is by no means character."  Strictly
+speaking, it is not.  It appears to me, however,
+that plot approaches nearer to being character
+than character does to being plot.  Plot necessi-
+tates action, and it is impossible to describe a
+man's actions' under whatever conditions, with-
+out revealing something of his character, his
+way of looking at things, his moral and mental
+pose.  What a hero of fiction <i>does</i> paints him
+better than what he <i>says</i>, and vastly better than
+anything his creator may say of him.  Mr.
+James asserts that "we care what happens to
+people only in proportion as we know what
+people are."  I think we care very little what
+people are (in fiction) when we do not know
+what happens to them.
+
+
+THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
+
+IN the process of their experiments upon the
+bodies of living animals some anatomists do
+not, I fear, sufficiently realize that
+
+     The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+     In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
+     As when a giant dies.
+
+I am not for a moment challenging the neces-
+sity of vivisection, though distinguished sur-
+geons have themselves challenged it; I merely
+contend that science is apt to be cold-hearted,
+and does not seem always to take into consider-
+ation the tortures she inflicts in her search for
+knowledge.
+     Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old
+number of the "London Lancet," I came upon
+the report of a lecture on experimental physiology
+delivered by Professor William Rutherford be-
+fore a learned association in London.  Though
+the type had become antiquated and the paper
+yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of
+those pages was alive and palpitating.
+     The following passages from the report will
+illustrate not unfairly the point I am making.
+In the course of his remarks the lecturer ex-
+hibited certain interesting experiments on living
+frogs.  Intellectually I go very strongly for Pro-
+fessor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess
+that the weight of my sympathy rests with the
+frogs.
+
+     Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regard-
+ing our manoeuvres with a somewhat lively air.  Now
+and then it gives a jump.  What the precise object of
+its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but prob-
+ably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires
+to escape.
+
+     To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted
+that the frog had some slight reason for appre-
+hension.  The lecturer proceeded:
+
+I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the
+molestation in a very decided manner.  Why does it so
+struggle to get away when I pinch its toes?  Doubt-
+less, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would
+rather not have it repeated.  I now behead the animal
+with the aid of a sharp chisel. . . .  The headless trunk
+lies as though it were dead.  The spinal cord seems to
+be suffering from shock.  Probably, however, it will
+soon recover from this. . . .  Observe that the animal
+has now <i>spontaneously</i> drawn up its legs and arms,
+and it is sitting with its neck erect just as if it had
+not lost its head at all.  I pinch its toes, and you see
+the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the
+offending instrument.  Does it still feel? and is the
+motion still the result of the volition?
+
+     That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted
+at the circumstance, there seems to be no room to
+doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that
+having once decapitated a frog, the animal sud-
+denly bounded from the table, a movement that
+presumably indicated a kind of consciousness.
+He then returned to the subject immediately
+under observation, pinched its foot again, the
+frog again "resenting the stimulation."  He then
+thrust a needle down the spinal cord.  "The
+limbs are now flaccid," observed the experi-
+menter; "we may wait as long as we please,
+but a pinch of the toes will never again cause
+the limbs of this animal to move."  Here is
+where congratulations can come in for <i>la gre-
+nouille</i>.  That frog being concluded, the lec-
+turer continued:
+
+I take another frog.  In this case I open the cranium
+and remove the brain and medulla oblongata. . . .
+I thrust a pin through the nose and hang the animal
+
+thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent
+legs without any difficulty. . . .  I gently pinch the
+toes. . . .  The leg of the same side is pulled up. . . .
+I pinch the same more severely. . . .  Both legs are
+thrown into motion.
+
+     Having thus satisfactorily proved that the
+wretched creature could still suffer acutely, the
+professor resumed:
+
+     The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sen-
+sitive to acids; so I put a drop of acetic acid on the
+outside of one knee.  This, you see, gives rise to most
+violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice
+particularly that the animal is using the toes of the
+leg on the same side for the purpose of rubbing the
+irritated spot.  I dip the whole animal into water
+in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all at
+rest again. . . .  I put a drop of acid on the skin
+over the lumbar region of the spine. . . .  Both feet
+are instantly raised to the irritated spot.  The animal
+is able to localize the seat of irritation. . . .  I wash
+the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the
+feet at the ankle. . . .  I apply a drop of acid over
+the knee of the footless leg. . . .  Again, the animal
+turns the leg towards the knee, as if to reach the irri-
+tated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now
+available.  But watch the other foot.  The <i>foot of the
+other leg</i> is now being used to rub away the acid.  The
+animal, finding that the object is not accomplished
+with the foot of the same side, uses the other one.
+
+     I think that at least one thing will be patent
+to every unprejudiced reader of these excerpts,
+namely--that any frog (with its head on or
+its head off) which happened to make the per-
+sonal acquaintance of Professor Rutherford must
+have found him poor company.  What benefit
+science may have derived from such association
+I am not qualified to pronounce upon.  The lec-
+turer showed conclusively that the frog is a
+peculiarly sensitive and intelligent little batra-
+chian.  I hope that the genial professor, in the
+years which followed, did not frequently con-
+sider it necessary to demonstrate the fact.
+
+
+
+LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL
+
+IT has recently become the fashion to speak
+disparagingly of Leigh Hunt as a poet, to
+class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer
+to Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats.  Truth to tell,
+Hunt was not a Keats nor a Shelley nor a Cole-
+ridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt.  He
+was a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed,
+indeed, in his blithe, optimistic way--and as a
+poet deserves to rank high among the lesser
+singers of his time.  I should place him far
+above Barry Cornwall, who has not half the
+freshness, variety, and originality of his com-
+peer.
+     I instance Barry Cornwall because there has
+seemed a disposition since his death to praise
+him unduly.  Barry Cornwall has always struck
+me as extremely artificial, especially in his dra-
+matic sketches.  His verses in this line are
+mostly soft Elizabethan echoes.  Of course a
+dramatist may find it to his profit to go out of
+his own age and atmosphere for inspiration; but
+in order successfully to do so he must be a dra-
+matist.  Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the
+role; he got no further than the composing of
+brief disconnected scenes and scraps of solilo-
+quies, and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for
+which the stage had no use.  His chief claim to
+recognition lies in his lyrics.  Here, as in the
+dramatic studies, his attitude is nearly always
+affected.  He studiously strives to reproduce the
+form and spirit of the early poets.  Being a Lon-
+doner, he naturally sings much of rural English
+life, but his England is the England of two or
+three centuries ago.  He has a great deal to say
+about the "falcon," but the poor bird has the
+air of beating fatigued wings against the book-
+shelves of a well-furnished library!  This well-
+furnished library was--if I may be pardoned a
+mixed image--the rock on which Barry Corn-
+wall split.  He did not look into his own heart,
+and write: he looked into his books.
+     A poet need not confine himself to his indi-
+vidual experiences; the world is all before him
+where to choose; but there are subjects which
+he had better not handle unless he have some
+personal knowledge of them.  The sea is one of
+these.  The man who sang,
+
+     The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+     The blue, the fresh, <i>the ever free!</i>
+
+(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have
+penned), should never have permitted himself to
+sing of the ocean.  I am quoting from one of
+Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics.  When I
+first read this singularly vapid poem years ago,
+in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had
+ever laid eyes on any piece of water wider than
+the Thames at Greenwich, and in looking over
+Barry Cornwall's "Life and Letters" I am not
+so much surprised as amused to learn that he was
+never out of sight of land in the whole course
+of his existence.  It is to be said of him more
+positively than the captain of the Pinafore said
+it of himself, that he was hardly ever sick at
+sea.
+     Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the
+ocean in all its protean moods, piping such
+thin feebleness as
+
+     The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
+
+To do that required a man whose acquaintance
+with the deep was limited to a view of it from
+an upper window at Margate or Scarborough.
+Even frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait
+at the sign of The Ship and Turtle will not en-
+able one to write sea poetry.
+     Considering the actual facts, there is some-
+thing weird in the statement,
+
+     I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea!
+     I am where I would ever be.
+
+The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth
+of an imagined sailor, but they are none the
+less diverting.  The stanza containing the distich
+ends with a striking piece of realism:
+
+     If a storm should come and awake the deep,
+     What matter?  I shall ride and sleep.
+
+This is the course of action usually pursued
+by sailors during a gale.  The first or second
+mate goes around and tucks them up comfort-
+ably, each in his hammock, and serves them
+out an extra ration of grog after the storm is
+over.
+     Barry Cornwall must have had an exception-
+ally winning personality, for he drew to him the
+friendship of men as differently constituted as
+Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster.
+He was liked by the best of his time, from
+Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne,
+who caught a glimpse of the aged poet in his
+vanishing.  The personal magnetism of an au-
+thor does not extend far beyond the orbit of his
+contemporaries.  It is of the lyrist and not of
+the man I am speaking here.  One could wish
+he had written more prose like his admirable
+"Recollections of Elia."
+     Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note,
+but when he does it is extremely sweet.  That
+little ballad in the minor key beginning,
+
+     Touch us gently, Time!
+     Let us glide adown thy stream,
+
+was written in one of his rare moments.  Leigh
+Hunt, though not without questionable manner-
+isms, was rich in the inspiration that came but
+infrequently to his friend.  Hunt's verse is full
+of natural felicities.  He also was a bookman,
+but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew
+how to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the
+coinage with his own head.  In "Hero and Lean-
+der" there is one line which, at my valuing, is
+worth any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall
+has written:
+
+     So might they now have lived, and so have died;
+     <i>The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side</i>.
+
+     Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane
+Carlyle gave him lingers on everybody's lip.
+That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and
+the Angel" are spice enough to embalm a man's
+memory.  After all, it takes only a handful.
+
+
+
+DECORATION DAY
+
+HOW quickly Nature takes possession of
+a deserted battlefield, and goes to work
+repairing the ravages of man!  With invisible
+magic hand she smooths the rough earthworks,
+fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and
+wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent
+drapery of tendrils.  Soon the whole sharp out-
+line of the spot is lost in unremembering grass.
+Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the
+foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremu-
+lous note; and where the menacing shell de-
+scribed its curve through the air, a harmless
+crow flies in circles.  Season after season the
+gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and
+rents made by the merciless enginery of war,
+until at last the once hotly contested battle-
+ground differs from none of its quiet surround-
+ings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take
+a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald.
+     It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated
+by Time, but there are left other and more last-
+ing relics of the struggle.  That dinted army
+sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its
+hilt, which hangs over the mantel-piece of the
+"best room" of many a town and country house
+in these States, is one; and the graven headstone
+of the fallen hero is another.  The old swords
+will be treasured and handed down from gener-
+ation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and
+with them, let us trust, will be cherished the
+custom of dressing with annual flowers the rest-
+ing-places of those who fell during the Civil
+War.
+
+     With the tears a Land hath shed
+        Their graves should ever be green.
+
+     Ever their fair, true glory
+        Fondly should fame rehearse--
+     Light of legend and story,
+        Flower of marble and verse.
+
+     The impulse which led us to set apart a day
+for decorating the graves of our soldiers sprung
+from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our
+own time there is little chance of the rite being
+neglected.  But the generations that come after
+us should not allow the observance to fall into
+disuse.  What with us is an expression of fresh
+love and sorrow, should be with them an ac-
+knowledgment of an incalculable debt.
+     Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our
+national holidays.  How different from those sul-
+len batteries which used to go rumbling through
+our streets are the crowds of light carriages,
+laden with flowers and greenery, wending their
+way to the neighboring cemeteries!  The grim
+cannon have turned into palm branches, and the
+shell and shrapnel into peach blooms.  There is
+no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, ex-
+cept the presence of men in undress uniform,
+and perhaps here and there an empty sleeve to
+remind one of what has been.  Year by year
+that empty sleeve is less in evidence.
+     The observance of Decoration Day is un-
+marked by that disorder and confusion common
+enough with our people in their holiday moods.
+The earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour,
+leaving a softened solemnity.  It quickly ceased
+to be simply a local commemoration.  While
+the sequestered country churchyards and burial-
+places near our great northern cities were being
+hung with May garlands, the thought could not
+but come to us that there were graves lying
+southward above which bent a grief as tender
+and sacred as our own.  Invisibly we dropped
+unseen flowers upon those mounds.  There is a
+beautiful significance in the fact that, two years
+after the close of the war, the women of Colum-
+bus, Mississippi, laid their offerings alike on
+Northern and Southern graves.  When all is
+said, the great Nation has but one heart.
+
+
+
+WRITERS AND TALKERS
+
+AS a class, literary men do not shine in con-
+versation.  The scintillating and playful
+essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the
+most genial and entertaining of companions,
+turns out to be a shy and untalkable individual,
+who chills you with his reticence when you
+chance to meet him.  The poet whose fascinating
+volume you always drop into your gripsack on
+your summer vacation--the poet whom you
+have so long desired to know personally--is a
+moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman,
+who fails to catch your name on introduction,
+and seems the avatar of the commonplace.  The
+witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had
+painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid
+appetite for tender young poets--the writer of
+those caustic and scholarly reviews which you
+never neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike
+portrait you had drawn by appearing before you
+as a personage of slender limb and deprecat-
+ing glance, who stammers and makes a painful
+spectacle of himself when you ask him his
+opinion of "The Glees of the Gulches," by Popo-
+catepetl Jones.  The slender, dark-haired novel-
+ist of your imagination, with epigrammatic
+points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape
+of a short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose
+conversation does not sparkle at all, and you
+were on the lookout for the most brilliant of
+verbal fireworks.  Perhaps it is a dramatist you
+have idealized.  Fresh from witnessing his de-
+lightful comedy of manners, you meet him face
+to face only to discover that his own manners
+are anything but delightful.  The play and the
+playwright are two very distinct entities.  You
+grow skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's
+assertion that the style is the man himself.  Who
+that has encountered his favorite author in the
+flesh has not sometimes been a little, if not
+wholly, disappointed?
+     After all, is it not expecting too much to
+expect a novelist to talk as cleverly as the clever
+characters in his novels?  Must a dramatist
+necessarily go about armed to the teeth with
+crisp dialogue?  May not a poet be allowed to
+lay aside his singing-robes and put on a con-
+ventional dress-suit when he dines out?  Why
+is it not permissible in him to be as prosaic
+and tiresome as the rest of the company?  He
+usually is.
+
+
+
+ON EARLY RISING
+
+A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my
+acquaintance, who has devoted years to
+investigating the subject, states that he has never
+come across a case of remarkable longevity un-
+accompanied by the habit of early rising; from
+which testimony it might be inferred that they
+die early who lie abed late.  But this would be
+getting out at the wrong station.  That the
+majority of elderly persons are early risers is due
+to the simple fact that they cannot sleep morn-
+ings.  After a man passes his fiftieth milestone
+he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakeful-
+ness is no credit to him.  As the theorist con-
+fined his observations to the aged, he easily
+reached the conclusion that men live to be old
+because they do not sleep late, instead of per-
+ceiving that men do not sleep late because they
+are old.  He moreover failed to take into ac-
+count  the numberless young lives that have been
+shortened by matutinal habits.
+     The intelligent reader, and no other is  sup-
+posable, need not be told that the early bird
+aphorism is a warning and not an incentive.
+The fate of the worm refutes the pretended
+ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes
+to illustrate the advantage of early rising and
+does so by showing how extremely dangerous
+it is.  I have no patience with the worm, and
+when I rise with the lark I am always careful
+to select a lark that has overslept himself.
+     The example set by this mythical bird, a  myth-
+ical bird so far as New England is concerned,
+has wrought wide-spread mischief and discom-
+fort.  It is worth noting that his method of  ac-
+complishing these ends is directly the reverse of
+that of the Caribbean insect mentioned by Laf-
+cadio Hearn in his enchanting "Two Years in
+the French West Indies"--a species of colossal
+cricket called the wood-kid; in the creole tongue,
+<i>cabritt-bois</i>.  This ingenious pest works a sooth-
+ing, sleep-compelling chant from sundown until
+precisely half past four in the morning, when
+it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens
+everybody it has lulled into slumber with its in-
+sidious croon.  Mr. Hearn, with strange obtuse-
+ness to the enormity of the thing, blandly re-
+marks: "For thousands of early risers too poor
+to own a clock, the cessation of its song is the
+signal to get up."  I devoutly trust that none of
+the West India islands furnishing such satanic
+entomological specimens will ever be annexed
+to the United States.  Some of our extreme ad-
+vocates of territorial expansion might spend a
+profitable few weeks on one of those favored
+isles.  A brief association with that <i>cabritt-bois</i>
+would be likely to cool the enthusiasm of the
+most ardent imperialist.
+     An incalculable amount of specious sentiment 
+has been lavished upon daybreak, chiefly by poets
+who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at
+mid-day.  It is charitably to be said that their
+practice was better than their precept--or their
+poetry.  Thomson, the author of "The Castle
+of Indolence," who gave birth to the depraved
+apostrophe,
+
+     Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,
+
+was one of the laziest men of his century.  He
+customarily lay in bed until noon meditating
+pentameters on sunrise.  This creature used to
+be seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both
+hands in his waistcoat pockets, eating peaches
+from a pendent bough.  Nearly all the English
+poets who at that epoch celebrated what they
+called "the effulgent orb of day" were denizens
+of London, where pure sunshine is unknown
+eleven months out of the twelve.
+     In a great city there are few incentives to
+early rising.  What charm is there in roof-tops
+and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even
+from a nightmare?  What is more depressing
+than a city street before the shop-windows have
+lifted an eyelid, when "the very houses seem
+asleep," as Wordsworth says, and nobody is
+astir but the belated burglar or the milk-and-
+water man or Mary washing off the front steps?
+Daybreak at the seaside or up among the moun-
+tains is sometimes worth while, though famil-
+iarity with it breeds indifference.  The man
+forced by restlessness or occupation to drink the
+first vintage of the morning every day of his life
+has no right appreciation of the beverage, how-
+ever much he may profess to relish it.  It is
+only your habitual late riser who takes in the
+full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when
+he gets up to go a-fishing.  He brings virginal
+emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling
+freshness of earth and stream and sky.  For him
+--a momentary Adam--the world is newly
+created.  It is Eden come again, with Eve in the
+similitude of a three-pound trout.
+     In the country, then, it is well enough occa-
+sionally to dress by candle-light and assist at the
+ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no other
+purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the
+professional early riser who, were he in a state
+of perfect health, would not be the wandering
+victim of insomnia, and boast of it.  There are
+few small things more exasperating than this
+early bird with the worm of his conceit in his
+bill.
+
+
+
+                       UN POETE MANQUE
+
+IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poet-
+ical melange is a little poem which needs
+only a slight revision of the initial stanza to
+entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-
+flights in Heine's lyrical intermezzo.  I have ten-
+tatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza:
+
+     I taste a liquor never brewed
+     In vats upon the Rhine;
+     No tankard ever held a draught
+     Of alcohol like mine.
+
+     Inebriate of air am I,
+     And debauchee of dew,
+     Reeling, through endless summer days,
+     From inns of molten blue.
+
+     When landlords turn the drunken bee
+     Out of the Foxglove's door,
+     When butterflies renounce their drams,
+     I shall but drink the more!
+     Till seraphs swing their snowy caps
+     And saints to windows run,
+     To see the little tippler
+     Leaning against the sun!
+
+Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable
+honey-gatherer who gets himself turned out-of-
+doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very
+taking matters.  I know of more important
+things that interest me vastly less.  This is one
+of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly per-
+fect in structure as almost to warrant the reader
+in suspecting that Miss Dickinson's general dis-
+regard of form was a deliberate affectation.  The
+artistic finish of the following sunset-piece
+makes her usual quatrains unforgivable:
+
+     This is the land the sunset washes,
+     These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;
+     Where it rose, or whither it rushes,
+     These are the western mystery!
+
+     Night after night her purple traffic
+     Strews the landing with opal bales;
+     Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
+     Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
+
+The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere
+of a Claude Lorraine.  One instantly frames it
+in one's memory.  Several such bits of impres-
+sionist landscape may be found in the portfolio.
+     It is to be said, in passing, that there are few
+things in Miss Dickinson's poetry so felicitous
+as Mr. Higginson's characterization of it in his
+preface to the volume: "In many cases these
+verses will seem to the reader <i>like poetry
+pulled up by the roots</i>, with rain and dew and
+earth clinging to them."  Possibly it might be
+objected that this is not the best way to gather
+either flowers or poetry.
+     Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely un-
+conventional and bizarre mind.  She was deeply
+tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly
+influenced by the mannerism of Emerson.  The
+very gesture with which she tied her bonnet-
+strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like
+walks in her  garden at Amherst, must
+have had something dreamy and Emersonian
+in it.  She had much fancy of a quaint kind,
+but only, as it appears to me, intermittent
+flashes of imagination.
+     That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a cer-
+tain something which, for want of a more pre-
+cise name, we term <i>quality</i>, is not to be denied.
+But the incoherence and shapelessness of the
+greater part of her verse are fatal.  On nearly
+every page one lights upon an unsupported
+exquisite line or a lonely happy epithet; but a
+single happy epithet or an isolated exquisite line
+does not constitute a poem.  What Lowell says
+of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss
+Dickinson: "Donne is full of salient verses
+that would take the rudest March winds of
+criticism with their beauty, of thoughts that first
+tease us like charades and then delight us with
+the felicity of their solution; but these have not
+saved him.  He is exiled to the limbo of the
+formless and the fragmentary."
+     Touching this question of mere technique Mr.
+Ruskin has a word to say (it appears that he
+said it "in his earlier and better days"), and
+Mr. Higginson quotes it: "No weight, nor
+mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh one
+grain or fragment of thought."  This is a pro-
+position to which one would cordially subscribe
+if it were not so intemperately stated.  A sug-
+gestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive
+dictum is furnished by his own volume of verse.
+The substance of it is weighty enough, but the
+workmanship lacks just that touch which dis-
+tinguishes the artist from the bungler--the
+touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing
+prose, appears not much to have regarded either
+in his later or "in his earlier and better days."
+     Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impos-
+sible rhyme, their involved significance, their
+interrupted flute-note of birds that have no con-
+tinuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a
+group of eager listeners.  A shy New England
+bluebird, shifting its light load of song, has for
+the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale.
+
+
+
+THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD
+
+I WENT to see a play the other night, one of
+those good old-fashioned English comedies
+that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen.
+The piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its
+archaic stiffness, and obsolete code of morals,
+was devoid of interest excepting as a collection
+of dramatic curios.  Still I managed to sit it
+through.  The one thing in it that held me a
+pleased spectator was the graceful costume of a
+certain player who looked like a fine old por-
+trait--by Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say--
+that had come to life and kicked off its tar-
+nished frame.
+     I do not know at what epoch of the world's
+history the scene of the play was laid; possibly
+the author originally knew, but it was evident
+that the actors did not, for their make-ups re-
+presented quite antagonistic periods.  This cir-
+cumstance, however, detracted only slightly from
+the special pleasure I took in the young person
+called Delorme.  He was not in himself inter-
+esting; he was like that Major Waters in
+"Pepys's Diary"--"a most amorous melan-
+choly gentleman who is under a despayr in love,
+which makes him bad company;" it was en-
+tirely Delorme's dress.
+
+     I never saw mortal man in a dress more sen-
+sible and becoming.  The material was accord-
+ing to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of
+some dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings
+of a deeper shade.  My idea of a doublet is so
+misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the
+gentleman wore a doublet.  It was a loose coat
+of some description hanging negligently from
+the shoulders and looped at the throat, showing
+a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at
+the wrists.  Full trousers reaching to the tops of
+buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft hat--
+not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque
+shapeless head-gear, one side jauntily fastened
+up with a jewel--completed the essential por-
+tions of our friend's attire.  It was a costume to
+walk in, to ride in, to sit in.  The wearer of it
+could not be awkward if he tried, and I will do
+Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress
+to some severe tests.  But he was graceful all
+the while, and made me wish that my country-
+men would throw aside their present hideous
+habiliments and hasten to the measuring-room
+of Delorme's tailor.
+     In looking over the plates of an old book of
+fashions we smile at the monstrous attire in
+which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to
+deck themselves.  Presently it will be the turn
+of posterity to smile at us, for in our own way
+we are no less ridiculous than were our ances-
+tors in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and <i>chapeau
+de bras</i>.  In fact we are really more absurd.  If
+a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch
+a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of
+his descendants four or five generations re-
+moved, he would have a strong impression of
+being something that had escaped from some-
+where.
+     Whatever strides we may have made in arts
+and sciences, we have made no advance in the
+matter of costume.  That Americans do not
+tattoo themselves, and do go fully clad--I am
+speaking exclusively of my own sex--is about
+all that can be said in favor of our present
+fashions.  I wish I had the vocabulary of Herr
+Teufelsdrockh with which to inveigh against
+the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angu-
+lar swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look
+like a poor species of bird and gets him mis-
+taken for the waiter.  "As long as a man wears
+the modern coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no
+right to despise any dress.  What snips at the
+collar and lapels!  What a mechanical and ridic-
+ulous cut about the flaps!  What buttons in front
+that are never meant to button, and yet are no
+ornament!  And what an exquisitely absurd pair
+of buttons at the back! gravely regarded, never-
+theless, and thought as indispensably necessary
+to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits of
+metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom
+we laugh at.  There is absolutely not one iota of
+sense, grace, or even economy in the modern
+coat."
+     Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of
+the period.  That a Christian can go about un-
+abashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head
+shows what civilization has done for us in the
+way of taste in personal decoration.  The scalp-
+lock of an Apache brave has more style.  When
+an Indian squaw comes into a frontier settle-
+ment the first "marked-down" article she pur-
+chases is a section of stove-pipe.  Her instinct
+as to the eternal fitness of things tells her that
+its proper place is on the skull of a barbarian.
+     It was while revolving these pleasing reflec-
+tions in my mind, that our friend Delorme
+walked across the stage in the fourth act, and
+though there was nothing in the situation nor in
+the text of the play to warrant it, I broke into
+tremendous applause, from which I desisted
+only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a
+celluloid collar and a claw-hammer coat.  My
+solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an in-
+voluntary and, I think, pardonable protest against
+the male costume of our own time.
+
+
+ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION
+
+EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is
+the age of vain fantasy, there is no ac-
+counting for the fact that young men and young
+women of poetical temperament should so fre-
+quently assume to look upon an early demise
+for themselves as the most desirable thing in
+the world.  Though one may incidentally be
+tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one
+cannot help wondering.  That persons who are
+exceptionally fortunate in their environment, and
+in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should
+openly announce their intention of retiring at
+once into the family tomb, is a problem not
+easily solved.  The public has so long listened
+to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets
+thus impatient to be gone were to go, their de-
+parture would perhaps be attended by that re-
+signed speeding which the proverb invokes on
+behalf of the parting guest.
+     The existence of at least one magazine editor
+would, I know, have a shadow lifted from it.
+At this writing, in a small mortuary basket
+under his desk are seven or eight poems of so
+gloomy a nature that he would not be able to
+remain in the same room with them if he did
+not suspect the integrity of their pessimism.
+The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable
+than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated
+sorrow.
+     The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled
+"Forsaken," in which she addresses death as her
+only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes.
+He sees, among other dissolving views, a little
+hoyden in magnificent spirits, perhaps one of
+this season's social buds, with half a score of
+lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem
+--a rose whose countless petals are coupons.  A
+caramel has disagreed with her, or she would
+not have written in this despondent vein.  The
+young man who seeks to inform the world in
+eleven anaemic stanzas of <i>terze rime</i> that the
+cup of happiness has been forever dashed from
+his lip (he appears to have but one) and darkly
+intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming af-
+fably with "sigh"), will probably be engaged
+a quarter of a century from now in making simi-
+lar declarations.  He is simply echoing some
+dysthymic poet of the past--reaching out with
+some other man's hat for the stray nickel of your
+sympathy.
+     This morbidness seldom accompanies gen-
+uine poetic gifts.  The case of David Gray, the
+young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an in-
+stance to the contrary.  His lot was exceedingly
+sad, and the failure of health just as he was on
+the verge of achieving something like success
+justified his profound melancholy; but that he
+tuned this melancholy and played upon it, as if
+it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in
+one of his sonnets.
+     In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's)
+"Life and Letters of John Keats" it is related
+that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood
+upon his lips after coughing, said to his friend
+Charles Brown: "I know the color of that blood;
+it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived.  That
+drop is my death-warrant.  I must die."  Who
+that ever read the passage could forget it?  David
+Gray did not, for he versified the incident as
+happening to himself and appropriated, as his
+own, Keats's comment:
+
+     Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain,
+     There came arterial blood, and with a sigh
+     Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein,
+     That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
+
+     The incident was likely enough a personal
+experience, but the comment should have been
+placed in quotation marks.  I know of few
+stranger things in literature than this poet's
+dramatization of another man's pathos.  Even
+Keats's epitaph--<i>Here lies one whose name</i>
+<i>was writ in water</i>--finds an echo in David Gray's
+<i>Below lies one whose name was traced in sand</i>.
+Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
+
+
+WISHMAKERS' TOWN
+
+A LIMITED edition of this little volume
+of verse, which seems to me in many re-
+spects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long
+been out of print.  The reissue of the book is
+in response to the desire off certain readers who
+have not forgotten the charm which William
+Young's poem exercised upon them years ago,
+and, finding the charm still potent, would have
+others share it.
+     The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem
+and not simply a series of unrelated lyrics, is in-
+genious and original, and unfolds itself in mea-
+sures at once strong and delicate.  The mood of
+the poet and the method of the playwright are
+obvious throughout.  Wishmakers' Town--a
+little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The
+Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
+--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the
+dawn.  The clangor of bells far and near calls
+the townfolk to their various avocations, the
+toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the
+miser to his gold.  In swift and picturesque se-
+quence the personages of the Masque pass be-
+fore us.  Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers,
+gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd
+the scene, and have in turn their word of poign-
+ant speech.  We mingle with the throng in the
+streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din
+of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the whisper
+of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and,
+in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy
+microcosm.  A contracted stage, indeed, yet
+large enough for the play of many passions, as
+the narrowest hearthstone may be.  With the
+sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to
+sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic
+drama of life.
+     The charm of it all is not easily to be defined.
+Perhaps if one could name it, the spell were
+broken.  Above the changing rhythms hangs
+an atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an
+atmosphere that stipulates an imaginative mood
+on the part of the reader.  The quality which
+pleases in certain of the lyrical episodes is less
+intangible.  One readily explains one's liking
+for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to
+select an example at random.  Next to the plea-
+sure that lies in the writing of such exquisite
+verse is the pleasure of quoting it.  I copy the
+stanzas partly for my own gratification, and
+partly to win the reader to "Wishmakers'
+Town," not knowing better how to do it.
+
+     Myrtle, and eglantine,
+     For the old love and the new!
+     And the columbine,
+     With its cap and bells, for folly!
+     And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue,
+     For melancholy!
+     But of all the blossoms that blow,
+     Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may,
+     This gentle guest,
+     Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray,
+     Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low
+     Upon her breast.
+     For the orange flower
+     Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood
+     Is the love of maidenhood;
+     And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour,
+     He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream,
+     No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem
+     So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years,
+     At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath,
+     The past shall arise,
+     And his eyes shall be dim with tears,
+     And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise
+     Though he stand in the Shambles of death.
+
+     In a different tone, but displaying the same
+sureness of execution, is the cry of the lowly
+folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of
+life:
+
+     Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame,
+        Plot, and plunder, and disagree!
+     O but the game is a royal game!
+        O but your tourneys are fair to see!
+
+     None too hopeful we found our lives;
+        Sore was labor from day to day;
+     Still we strove for our babes and wives--
+        Now, to the trumpet, we march away!
+
+     "Why?"--For some one hath will'd it so!
+      Nothing we know of the why or the where--
+     To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow--
+        Nothing we know, and little we care.
+
+     Give us to kill!--since this is the end
+        Of love and labor in Nature's plan;
+     Give us to kill and ravish and rend,
+        Yea, since this is the end of man.
+
+     States shall perish, and states be born:
+        Leaders, out of the throng, shall press;
+     Some to honor, and some to scorn:
+        We, that are little, shall yet be less.
+
+     Over our lines shall the vultures soar;
+        Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry;
+     And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore;
+        And daily the living shall pray to die.
+
+     Nay, what matter!--When all is said,
+        Prince and Bishop will plunder still:
+     Lord and Lady must dance and wed.
+     Pity us, pray for us, ye that will!
+
+     It is only the fear of impinging on Mr.
+Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting
+the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the
+prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page
+from the prelude to some Old-World miracle
+play.  The setting of these things is frequently
+antique, but the thought is the thought of to-
+day.  I think there is a new generation of
+readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's.  I ven-
+ture the prophecy that it will not lack for them
+later when the time comes for the inevitable
+rearrangement of present poetic values.
+     The author of "Wishmakers' Town" is the
+child of his period, and has not escaped the <i>ma-
+ladie du siecle</i>. The doubt and pessimism that
+marked the end of the nineteenth century find a
+voice in the bell-like strophes with which the
+volume closes.  It is the dramatist rather than
+the poet who speaks here.  The real message of
+the poet to mankind is ever one of hope.  Amid
+the problems that perplex and discourage, it is
+for him to sing
+
+     Of what the world shall be
+     When the years have died away.
+
+
+
+                       HISTORICAL NOVELS
+
+IN default of such an admirable piece of work
+as Dr. Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne," I
+like best those fictions which deal with king-
+doms and principalities that exist only in the
+mind's eye.  One's knowledge of actual events
+and real personages runs no serious risk of re-
+ceiving shocks in this no-man's-land.  Everything
+that happens in an imaginary realm--in the
+realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air
+of possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance.
+The atmosphere and local color, having an au-
+thenticity of their own, are not to be challenged.
+You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of
+the period in which his narrative is laid, since
+the period is as vague as the geography.  He
+walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils
+that beset the story-teller who ventures to stray
+beyond the bounds of the make-believe.  One
+peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting
+human nature.
+     The anachronisms of the average historical
+novel, pretending to reflect history, are among
+its minor defects.  It is a thing altogether won-
+derfully and fearfully made--the imbecile in-
+trigue, the cast-iron characters, the plumed and
+armored dialogue with its lance of gory rheto-
+ric forever at charge.  The stage at its worst
+moments is not so unreal.  Here art has broken
+into smithereens the mirror which she is sup-
+posed to hold up to nature.
+     In this romance-world somebody is always
+somebody's unsuspected father, mother, or child,
+deceiving every one excepting the reader.  Usu-
+ally the anonymous person is the hero, to whom
+it is mere recreation to hold twenty swordsmen
+at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of
+them before he escapes through a door that ever
+providentially opens directly behind him.  How
+tired one gets of that door!  The "caitiff" in
+these chronicles of when knighthood was in
+flower is invariably hanged from "the highest
+battlement"--the second highest would not do
+at all; or else he is thrown into "the deepest
+dungeon of the castle"--the second deepest
+dungeon was never known to be used on these
+occasions.  The hero habitually "cleaves" his
+foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff" being
+what the properly brought up hero always has
+in view.  A certain fictional historian of my
+acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim:
+"My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;" but
+that is an exceptionally lofty flight of diction.
+My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in
+the course of long interviews with her lover re-
+mains unrecognized--a diaphanous literary in-
+vention that must have been old when the Pyra-
+mids were young.  The heroine's small brother,
+with playful archaicism called "a springald,"
+puts on her skirts and things and passes him-
+self off for his sister or anybody else he pleases.
+In brief, there is no puerility that is not at home
+in this sphere of misbegotten effort.  Listen--
+a priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's
+clothes are on the scene:
+
+          The princess rose to her feet and
+     approached the priest.
+          "Father," she said swiftly, "this
+     is not the Lady Joan, my brother's
+     wife, but a youth marvelously like
+     her, who hath offered himself in
+     her place that she might escape. . . .
+     He is the Count von Loen, a lord
+     of Kernsburg.  And I love him.  We
+     want you to marry us now, dear
+     Father--now, without a moment's
+     delay; for if you do not they will
+     kill him, and I shall have to marry
+     Prince Wasp!"
+
+This is from "Joan of the Sword Hand," and
+if ever I read a more silly performance I have
+forgotten it.
+
+
+
+POOR YORICK
+
+THERE is extant in the city of New York
+an odd piece of bric-a-brac which I am
+sometimes tempted to wish was in my own
+possession.  On a bracket in Edwin Booth's
+bedroom at The Players--the apartment re-
+mains as he left it that solemn June day ten
+years ago--stands a sadly dilapidated skull
+which the elder Booth, and afterward his son
+Edwin, used to soliloquize over in the grave-
+yard at Elsinore in the fifth act of "Hamlet."
+     A skull is an object that always invokes
+interest more or less poignant; it always
+has its pathetic story, whether told or untold;
+but this skull is especially a skull "with a
+past."
+     In the early forties, while playing an engage-
+ment somewhere in the wild West, Junius
+Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a
+particularly undeserving fellow, the name of
+him unknown to us.  The man, as it seemed,
+was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer,
+and highwayman--in brief, a miscellaneous
+desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort
+of person likely to touch the sympathies of the
+half-mad player.  In the course of nature or the
+law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily
+disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist
+even as a reminiscence in the florid mind of his
+sometime benefactor.
+     As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast
+one morning in a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky,
+a negro boy entered the room bearing a small
+osier basket neatly covered with a snowy nap-
+kin.  It had the general appearance of a basket
+of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as
+such it figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's
+conjecture.  On lifting the cloth the actor started
+from the chair with a genuine expression on his
+features of that terror which he was used so
+marvelously to simulate as Richard III. in the
+midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the
+ghost of Banquo usurped his seat at table.
+     In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the
+head of Booth's old pensioner, which head the
+old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form
+to the tragedian, begging him henceforth to
+adopt it as one of the necessary stage properties
+in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy
+of "Hamlet.'' "Take it away, you black
+imp!" thundered the actor to the equally aghast
+negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not
+prompted him to investigate the dark nature of
+his burden.
+     Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's
+residuary legatee, recovering from the first shock
+of his surprise, fell into the grim humor of the
+situation, and proceeded to carry out to the
+letter the testator's whimsical request.  Thus it
+was that the skull came to secure an engage-
+ment to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B.
+Booth's company of strolling players, and to
+continue a while longer to glimmer behind the
+footlights in the hands of his famous son.
+     Observing that the grave-digger in his too
+eager realism was damaging the thing--the
+marks of his pick and spade are visible on the
+cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it
+with a papier-mache counterfeit manufactured
+in the property-room of the theatre.  During
+his subsequent wanderings in Australia and
+California, he carefully preserved the relic,
+which finally found repose on the bracket in
+question.
+     How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in
+that front room on the fourth floor of the club-
+house in Gramercy Park, watching the winter
+or summer twilight gradually softening and
+blurring the sharp outline of the skull until it
+vanished uncannily into the gloom!  Edwin
+Booth had forgotten, if ever he knew, the name
+of the man; but I had no need of it in order to
+establish acquaintance with poor Yorick.  In
+this association I was conscious of a deep tinge
+of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance
+not without its queerness, considering how very
+distant the acquaintance really was.
+     Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his
+day; he was sober enough now, and in no way
+disposed to indulge in those flashes of merri-
+ment "that were wont to set the table on a
+roar."  But I did not regret his evaporated
+hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial si-
+lence, and had learned to look upon his rather
+open countenance with the same friendliness as
+that with which I regarded the faces of less
+phantasmal members of the club.  He had be-
+come to me a dramatic personality as distinct as
+that of any of the Thespians I met in the grill-
+room or the library.
+     Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a sub-
+ject upon which I frequently speculated.  There
+was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence
+in those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden
+remembrance of some old experience had illu-
+mined them.  He had been a great traveler, and
+had known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage
+career had brought him into contact with a
+varied assortment of men and women, and ex-
+tended his horizon.  His more peaceful profes-
+sion of holding up mail-coaches on lonely roads
+had surely not been without incident.  It was
+inconceivable that all this had left no impres-
+sions.  He must have had at least a faint recol-
+lection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth.
+That Yorick had formed his estimate of me, and
+probably not a flattering one, is something of
+which I am strongly convinced.
+     At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick
+passed out of my personal cognizance, and now
+lingers an incongruous shadow amid the mem-
+ories of the precious things I lost then.
+     The suite of apartments formerly occupied by
+Edwin Booth at The Players has been, as I have
+said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from
+time to time some loving heart makes silent
+pilgrimage.  On a table in the centre of his
+bedroom lies the book just where he laid it
+down, an ivory paper-cutter marking the page
+his eyes last rested upon; and in this chamber,
+with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments,
+the skull finds its proper sanctuary.  If at odd
+moments I wish that by chance poor Yorick
+had fallen to my care, the wish is only half-
+hearted, though had that happened, I would
+have given him welcome to the choicest corner
+in my study and tenderly cherished him for the
+sake of one who comes no more.
+
+
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER
+
+ One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!--<i>King Lear.</i>
+
+THE material for this paper on the auto-
+graph hunter, his ways and his manners,
+has been drawn chiefly from experiences not
+my own.  My personal relations with him have
+been comparatively restricted, a circumstance
+to which I owe the privilege of treating the
+subject with a freedom that might otherwise not
+seem becoming.
+     No author is insensible to the compliment in-
+volved in a request for his autograph, assuming
+the request to come from some sincere lover of
+books and bookmen.  It is an affair of different
+complection when he is importuned to give time
+and attention to the innumerable unknown who
+"collect" autographs as they would collect post-
+age stamps, with no interest in the matter be-
+yond the desire to accumulate as many as possi-
+ble.  The average autograph hunter, with his
+purposeless insistence, reminds one of the queen
+in Stockton's story whose fad was "the button-
+holes of all nations."
+     In our population of eighty millions and up-
+ward there are probably two hundred thousand
+persons interested more or less in what is termed
+the literary world.  This estimate is absurdly
+low, but it serves to cast a sufficient side-light
+upon the situation.  Now, any unit of these two
+hundred thousand is likely at any moment to in-
+dite a letter to some favorite novelist, historian,
+poet, or what not.  It will be seen, then, that
+the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable per-
+son.  He has made it embarrassing work for the
+author fortunate or unfortunate enough to be re-
+garded as worth while.  Every mail adds to his
+reproachful pile of unanswered letters.  If he
+have a conscience, and no amanuensis, he quickly
+finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless
+and futile correspondence.  Through policy,
+good nature, or vanity he is apt to become facile
+prey.
+     A certain literary collector once confessed in
+print that he always studied the idiosyncrasies
+of his "subject" as carefully as another sort of
+collector studies the plan of the house to which
+he meditates a midnight visit.  We were as-
+sured that with skillful preparation and adroit
+approach an autograph could be extracted from
+anybody.  According to the revelations of the
+writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and Mr.
+Gladstone had their respective point of easy
+access--their one unfastened door or window,
+metaphorically speaking.  The strongest man
+has his weak side.
+     Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every
+one who wrote to him was perhaps not a trait
+characteristic of the elder group.  Mr. Lowell,
+for instance, was harder-hearted and rather diffi-
+cult to reach.  I recall one day in the library at
+Elmwood.  As I was taking down a volume
+from the shelf a sealed letter escaped from the
+pages and fluttered to my feet.  I handed it to
+Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the
+superscription.  "Oh, yes," he said, smiling,
+"I know 'em by instinct."  Relieved of its en-
+velope, the missive turned out to be eighteen
+months old, and began with the usual amusing
+solecism: "As one of the most famous of
+American authors I would like to possess your
+autograph."
+     Each recipient of such requests has of course
+his own way of responding.  Mr. Whittier used
+to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr.
+Emerson, always philosophical, dreamily con-
+fiscated the postage stamps.
+     Time was when the collector contented him-
+self with a signature on a card; but that, I am
+told, no longer satisfies.  He must have a letter
+addressed to him personally--"on any subject
+you please," as an immature scribe lately sug-
+gested to an acquaintance of mine.  The in-
+genuous youth purposed to flourish a letter in the
+faces of his less fortunate competitors, in order
+to show them that he was on familiar terms with
+the celebrated So-and-So.  This or a kindred
+motive is the spur to many a collector.  The
+stratagems he employs to compass his end are
+inexhaustible.  He drops you an off-hand note
+to inquire in what year you first published your
+beautiful poem entitled "A Psalm of Life."  If
+you are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him
+that you are not the author of that poem, which
+he must have confused with your "Rime of the
+Ancient Mariner"--and there you are.  Another
+expedient is to ask if your father's middle name
+was not Hierophilus.  Now, your father has
+probably been dead many years, and as perhaps
+he was not a public man in his day, you are
+naturally touched that any one should have in-
+terest in him after this long flight of time.  In
+the innocence of your heart you reply by the
+next mail that your father's middle name was
+not Hierophilus, but Epaminondas--and there
+you are again.  It is humiliating to be caught
+swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch
+of one's genealogical tree.
+     Some morning you find beside your plate at
+breakfast an imposing parchment with a great
+gold seal in the upper left-hand corner.  This
+document--I am relating an actual occurrence
+--announces with a flourish that you have unan-
+imously been elected an honorary member of
+The Kalamazoo International Literary Associa-
+tion.  Possibly the honor does not take away
+your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy
+to make an acknowledgment, and you express
+your insincere thanks to the obliging secretary
+of a literary organization which does not exist
+anywhere on earth.
+     A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of
+the correspondent who advises you that he is
+replenishing his library and desires a detailed
+list of your works, with the respective dates of
+their first issue, price, style of binding, etc.  A
+bibliophile, you say to yourself.  These inter-
+rogations should of course have been addressed
+to your publisher; but they are addressed to
+you, with the stereotyped "thanks in advance."
+The natural inference is that the correspondent,
+who writes in a brisk commercial vein, wishes
+to fill out his collection of your books, or, pos-
+sibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full
+crushed Levant.  Eight or ten months later this
+individual, having forgotten (or hoping you
+will not remember) that he has already de-
+manded a chronological list of your writings,
+forwards another application couched in the
+self-same words.  The length of time it takes
+him to "replenish" his library (with your
+books) strikes you as pathetic.  You cannot
+control your emotions sufficiently to pen a
+reply.  From a purely literary point of view
+this gentleman cares nothing whatever for your
+holograph; from a mercantile point of view
+he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate
+specimens, which he disposes of to dealers in
+such frail merchandise.
+     The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in
+preparing a critical and biographical sketch of
+you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some
+slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a
+signed photograph and a copy of your book-
+plate are here in order--is also a character
+which periodically appears upon the scene.  In
+this little Comedy of Deceptions there are as
+many players as men have fancies.
+     A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to
+transfer this leaf from the book of his experi-
+ence: "Not long ago the postman brought me
+a letter of a rather touching kind.  The unknown
+writer, lately a widow, and plainly a woman of
+refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in
+the loss of her little girl.  My correspondent
+asked me to copy for her ten or a dozen lines
+from a poem which I had written years before
+on the death of a child.  The request was so
+shrinkingly put, with such an appealing air of
+doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately
+transcribed the entire poem, a matter of a hun-
+dred lines or so, and sent it to her.  I am unable
+to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt
+or wholly amused when, two months afterward,
+I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat
+price attached to it, in a second-hand book-
+shop."
+     Perhaps the most distressing feature of the
+whole business is the very poor health which
+seems to prevail among autograph hunters.  No
+other class of persons in the community shows
+so large a percentage of confirmed invalids.
+There certainly is some mysterious connection
+between incipient spinal trouble and the col-
+lecting of autographs.  Which superinduces the
+other is a question for pathology.  It is a fact
+that one out of every eight applicants for a
+specimen of penmanship bases his or her claim
+upon the possession of some vertebral disability
+which leaves him or her incapable of doing
+anything but write to authors for their auto-
+graph.  Why this particular diversion should be
+the sole resource remains undisclosed.  But so
+it appears to be, and the appeal to one's sympa-
+thy is most direct and persuasive.  Personally,
+however, I have my suspicions, suspicions that
+are shared by several men of letters, who have
+come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the
+majority of cases, as simply the variation of a
+very old and familiar tune.  I firmly believe
+that the health of autograph hunters, as a class,
+is excellent.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT HERRICK
+
+I
+
+A LITTLE over three hundred years ago
+England had given to her a poet of the
+very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not dis-
+cover the fact for more than a hundred and
+fifty years afterward.  The poet himself was
+aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps
+not too modestly, in countless quatrains and
+couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were
+not much regarded at the moment.  It has al-
+ways been an incredulous world in this matter.
+So many poets have announced their arrival,
+and not arrived!
+     Robert Herrick was descended in a direct
+line from an ancient family in Lincolnshire, the
+Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which
+was John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grand-
+father, admitted freeman in 1535, and afterward
+twice made mayor of the town.  John Eyrick
+or Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--
+had five sons, the second of which sought a
+career in London, where he became a gold-
+smith, and in December, 1582, married Julian
+Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a sister to
+Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen
+Soame.  One of the many children of this mar-
+riage was Robert Herrick.
+     It is the common misfortune of the poet's
+biographers, though it was the poet's own great
+good fortune, that the personal interviewer was
+an unknown quantity at the period when Her-
+rick played his part on the stage of life.  Of
+that performance, in its intimate aspects, we
+have only the slightest record.
+     Robert Herrick was born in Wood street,
+Cheapside, London, in 1591, and baptized at
+St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that
+year.  He had several brothers and sisters, with
+whom we shall not concern ourselves.  It would
+be idle to add the little we know about these
+persons to the little we know about Herrick
+himself.  He is a sufficient problem without
+dragging in the rest of the family.
+     When the future lyrist was fifteen months old
+his father, Nicholas Herrick, made his will,
+and immediately fell out of an upper win-
+dow.  Whether or not this fall was an intended
+sequence to the will, the high almoner, Dr.
+Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in
+his claim to the estate, "all goods and chattels
+of suicides" becoming his by law.  The cir-
+cumstances were suspicious, though not conclu-
+sive, and the good bishop, after long litigation,
+consented to refer the case to arbitrators, who
+awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds,
+thus leaving the question at issue--whether or
+not Herrick's death had been his own premedi-
+tated act--still wrapped in its original mystery.
+This singular law, which had the possible effect
+of inducing high almoners to encourage suicide
+among well-to-do persons of the lower and
+middle classes, was afterward rescinded.
+     Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household
+destitute, for his estate amounted to five thousand
+pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand
+pounds in to-day's money; but there were many
+mouths to feed.  The poet's two uncles, Robert
+Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor,
+the latter subsequently knighted <1> for his useful-
+ness as jeweller and money-lender to James I.,
+were appointed guardians to the children.
+     Young Robert appears to have attended school
+in Westminster until his fifteenth year, when
+he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had
+learned the gentle art of goldsmith from his
+nephew's father.  Though Robert's indentures
+
+     <1> Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial-Intro-
+duction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item from Win-
+wood's <i>Manorials of Affairs of State</i>: "On Easter Tuesday [1605],
+one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was Knighted
+for making a Hole in the great Diamond the King cloth wear.  The
+party little expected the honour, but he did his work so well as
+won the King to an extraordinary liking of it."
+bound him for ten years, Sir William is sup-
+posed to have offered no remonstrance when he
+was asked, long before that term expired, to
+cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter
+Cambridge, which he did as fellow-commoner
+at St. John's College.  At the end of two years
+he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a
+view to economy and the pursuit of the law--
+the two frequently go together.  He received
+his degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in
+1620, having relinquished the law for the arts.
+     During this time he was assumed to be in
+receipt of a quarterly allowance of ten pounds--
+a not illiberal provision, the pound being then
+five times its present value; but as the payments
+were eccentric, the master of arts was in recur-
+rent distress.  If this money came from his own
+share of his father's estate, as seems likely,
+Herrick had cause for complaint; if otherwise,
+the pith is taken out of his grievance.
+     The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture
+is told in a few chance-preserved letters written
+to his "most careful uncle," as he calls that
+evidently thrifty person.  In one of these mono-
+tonous and dreary epistles, which are signed
+"R. Hearick," the writer says: "The essence
+of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat
+you to paye for my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson,
+bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the ordi-
+narie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as
+much sceleritie as you maye."  He also indulges
+in the natural wish that his college bills "had
+leaden wings and tortice feet."  This was in
+1617.  The young man's patrimony, whatever
+it may have been, had dwindled, and he con-
+fesses to "many a throe and pinches of the
+purse."  For the moment, at least, his prospects
+were not flattering.
+     Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when
+in 1620 he quitted the university and went up to
+London, are conjectural.  It is clear that he was
+not without some resources, since he did not
+starve to death on his wits before he discovered
+a patron in the Earl of Pembroke.  In the court
+circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but per-
+haps not less useful, allies in the persons of
+Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master
+John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king.  Through
+the two New Year anthems, honored by the
+music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist
+at Westminster, it is more than possible that
+Herrick was brought to the personal notice of
+Charles and Henrietta Maria.  All this was a
+promise of success, but not success itself.  It
+has been thought probable that Herrick may
+have secured some minor office in the chapel
+at Whitehall.  That would accord with his sub-
+sequent appointment (September, 1627,) as
+chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortu-
+nate expedition of the Isle of Rhe.
+     Precisely when Herrick was invested with
+holy orders is not ascertainable.  If one may
+draw an inference from his poems, the life he
+led meanwhile was not such as his "most care-
+ful uncle" would have warmly approved.  The
+literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were
+open to a free-lance like young Herrick, some
+of whose blithe measures, passing in manuscript
+from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to
+light as a poet.  The Dog and the Triple Tun
+were not places devoted to worship, unless it
+were to the worship of "rare Ben Jonson," at
+whose feet Herrick now sat, with the other
+blossoming young poets of the season.  He was
+a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed
+many loving lyrics to the master, of which not
+the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson:
+
+     When I a verse shall make,
+     Know I have praid thee
+     For old religion's sake,
+     Saint Ben, to aide me.
+
+     Make the way smooth for me,
+     When I, thy Herrick,
+     Honouring thee, on my knee
+     Offer my lyric.
+
+     Candles I'll give to thee,
+     And a new altar;
+     And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
+     Writ in my Psalter.
+
+
+     On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the
+recommending of the Earl of Exeter, presented
+Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near
+Totnes, in Devonshire.  Here he was destined
+to pass the next nineteen years of his life among
+surroundings not congenial.  For Herrick to be
+a mile away from London stone was for Herrick
+to be in exile.  Even with railway and tele-
+graphic interruptions from the outside world,
+the dullness of a provincial English town of to-
+day is something formidable.  The dullness of a
+sequestered English hamlet in the early part of
+the seventeenth century must have been appall-
+ing.  One is dimly conscious of a belated throb
+of sympathy for Robert Herrick.  Yet, however
+discontented or unhappy he may have been at
+first in that lonely vicarage, the world may con-
+gratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded
+him there, far from the distractions of the town,
+and with no other solace than his Muse, for there
+it was he wrote the greater number of the poems
+which were to make his fame.  It is to this acci-
+dental banishment to Devon that we owe the
+cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obso-
+lete rural manners and customs--the Christ-
+mas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, the
+morris-dances, and the May-day festivals.
+     The November following Herrick's appoint-
+ment to the benefice was marked by the death
+of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy
+than "a ringe of twenty shillings."  Perhaps
+this was an understood arrangement between
+them; but it is to be observed that, though Her-
+rick was a spendthrift in epitaphs, he wasted no
+funeral lines on Julian Herrick.  In the matter
+of verse he dealt generously with his family
+down to the latest nephew.  One of his most
+charming and touching poems is entitled To
+His Dying Brother, Master William Herrick,
+a posthumous son.  There appear to have been
+two brothers named William.  The younger,
+who died early, is supposed to be referred to
+here.
+     The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior
+is as vague and bare of detail as the rest of the
+narrative.  His parochial duties must have been
+irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he
+wore his cassock lightly.  As a preparation for
+ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and poetry;
+but presently he was with the Muse again, and
+his farewell to sack was in a strictly Pickwickian
+sense.  Herrick had probably accepted the vicar-
+ship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in
+a troop of horse--with an eye to present emol-
+ument and future promotion.  The promotion
+never came, and the emolument was nearly as
+scant as that of Goldsmith's parson, who con-
+sidered himself "passing rich with forty pounds
+a year"--a height of optimism beyond the
+reach of Herrick, with his expensive town wants
+and habits.  But fifty pounds--the salary of his
+benefice--and possible perquisites in the way
+of marriage and burial fees would enable him to
+live for the time being.  It was better than a
+possible nothing a year in London.
+     Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly
+not deeper than those of the average layman.
+Various writers have taken a different view of
+the subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergy-
+man with a fitting sense of his function could
+have written certain of the poems which Her-
+rick afterward gave to the world--those aston-
+ishing epigrams upon his rustic enemies, and
+those habitual bridal compliments which, among
+his personal friends, must have added a terror
+to matrimony.  Had he written only in that vein,
+the posterity which he so often invoked with
+pathetic confidence would not have greatly
+troubled itself about him.
+     It cannot positively be asserted that all the
+verses in question relate to the period of his in-
+cumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with
+the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace
+and Lydia.  The date of some of the composi-
+tions may be arrived at by induction.  The re-
+ligious pieces grouped under the title of Noble
+Numbers distinctly associate themselves with
+Dean Prior, and have little other interest.  Very
+few of them are "born of the royal blood."
+They lack the inspiration and magic of his secu-
+lar poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and
+grotesque as to stir a suspicion touching the ab-
+solute soundness of Herrick's mind at all times.
+The lines in which the Supreme Being is as-
+sured that he may read Herrick's poems with-
+out taking any tincture from their sinfulness
+might have been written in a retreat for the un-
+balanced.  "For unconscious impiety," remarks
+Mr. Edmund Gosse, <1> "this rivals the famous
+passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted
+God to 'pause and think.'" Elsewhere, in an
+apostrophe to "Heaven," Herrick says:
+
+             Let mercy be
+          So kind to set me free,
+             And I will straight
+          Come in, or force the gate.
+
+In any event, the poet did not purpose to be
+left out!
+     Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces
+
+     <1> In <i>Seventeenth-Century Studies</i>.
+and the general absence of arrangement in the
+"Hesperides," Dr. Grosart advances the theory
+that the printers exercised arbitrary authority on
+these points.  Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick
+kept the epigrams and personal tributes in
+manuscript books separate from the rest of the
+work, which would have made a too slender
+volume by itself, and on the plea of this slender-
+ness was induced to trust the two collections
+to the publisher, "whereupon he or some un-
+skilled subordinate proceeded to intermix these
+additions with the others.  That the poet him-
+self had nothing to do with the arrangement or
+disarrangement lies on the surface."  This is an
+amiable supposition, but merely a supposition.
+Herrick personally placed the "copy" in the
+hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield,
+and if he were over-persuaded to allow them
+to print unfit verses, and to observe no method
+whatever in the contents of the book, the dis-
+credit is none the less his.  It is charitable to
+believe that Herrick's coarseness was not the
+coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that
+he followed the fashion <i>malgre lui</i>.  With re-
+gard to the fairy poems, they certainly should
+have been given in sequence; but if there are
+careless printers, there are also authors who are
+careless in the arrangement of their manuscript,
+a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was
+wholly unpractised, and might easily have made
+mistakes.  The "Hesperides" was his sole
+publication.
+     Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age.
+Of his personal appearance at this time we have
+no description.  The portrait of him prefixed to
+the original edition of his works belongs to a
+much later moment.  Whether or not the bovine
+features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on
+the poet, it is to be regretted that oblivion has
+not laid its erasing finger on that singularly un-
+pleasant counterfeit presentment.  It is interest-
+ing to note that this same Marshall engraved the
+head of Milton for the first collection of his mis-
+cellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume
+containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc.
+The plate gave great offense to the serious-
+minded young Milton, not only because it re-
+presented him as an elderly person, but because
+of certain minute figures of peasant lads and
+lassies who are very indistinctly seen dancing
+frivolously under the trees in the background.
+Herrick had more reason to protest.  The ag-
+gressive face bestowed upon him by the artist
+lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the
+vicar occasionally hurled the manuscript of his
+sermon at the heads of his drowsy parishioners,
+accompanying the missive with pregnant re-
+marks.  He has the aspect of one meditating
+assault and battery.
+     To offset the picture there is much indirect
+testimony to the amiability of the man, aside
+from the evidence furnished by his own writ-
+ings.  He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the
+Bishop of Lincoln's imprisonment--a poem full
+of deference and tenderness for a person who
+had evidently injured the writer, probably by
+opposing him in some affair of church prefer-
+ment.  Anthony Wood says that Herrick "be-
+came much beloved by the gentry in these parts
+for his florid and witty (wise) discourses."  It
+appears that he was fond of animals, and had a
+pet spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away
+without a couplet attached to him:
+
+
+     Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see
+     For shape and service spaniell like to thee.
+
+Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a
+sparrow, whose elegy he also sings, comparing
+the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's
+disadvantage.  All of Herrick's geese were swans.
+On the authority of Dorothy King, the daughter
+of a woman who served Herrick's successor at
+Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet
+kept a pig, which he had taught to drink out of
+a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admir-
+ably qualified to impart.  Dorothy was in her
+ninety-ninth year when she communicated this
+fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the
+paper on Herrick published in the "Quarterly
+Review" for August, 1810, and in the Boston
+edition <1> of the "Hesperides" attributed to
+Southey.
+     What else do we know of the vicar?  A very
+favorite theme with Herrick was Herrick.  Scat-
+tered through his book are no fewer than twenty-
+five pieces entitled On Himself, not to men-
+tion numberless autobiographical hints under
+other captions.  They are merely hints, throw-
+ing casual side-lights on his likes and dislikes,
+and illuminating his vanity.  A whimsical per-
+sonage without any very definite outlines might
+be evolved from these fragments.  I picture him
+as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with perhaps less
+quaintness, and the poetical temperament added.
+Like the prince of gossips, too, he somehow
+gets at your affections.  In one place Herrick
+
+     <1> The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The British
+Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and chronologi-
+cally.  On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as living "in habits
+of intimacy" with Ben Jonson in 1648.  If that was the case, Her-
+rick must have taken up his quarters in Westminster Abbey, for
+Jonson had been dead eleven years.
+laments the threatened failure of his eyesight
+(quite in what would have been Pepys's man-
+ner had Pepys written verse), and in another
+place he tells us of the loss of a finger.  The
+quatrain treating of this latter catastrophe is as
+fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's <i>concetti</i>:
+
+     One of the five straight branches of my hand
+     Is lopt already, and the rest but stand
+     Expecting when to fall, which soon will be:
+     First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree.
+
+With all his great show of candor Herrick really
+reveals as little of himself as ever poet did.  One
+thing, however, is manifest--he understood and
+loved music.  None but a lover could have said:
+
+     The mellow touch of musick most doth wound
+     The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound.
+
+Or this to Julia:
+
+     So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice,
+     As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise,
+     But listen to thee walking in thy chamber
+     Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.
+
+     . . . Then let me lye
+     Entranc'd, and lost confusedly;
+     And by thy musick stricken mute,
+     Die, and be turn'd into a lute.
+
+     Herrick never married.  His modest Devon-
+shire establishment was managed by a maid-
+servant named Prudence Baldwin.  "Fate likes
+fine names," says Lowell.  That of Herrick's
+maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting
+of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had
+the good fortune to be embalmed in the amber
+of what may be called a joyous little threnody:
+
+     In this little urne is laid
+     Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid;
+     From whose happy spark here let
+     Spring the purple violet.
+
+Herrick addressed a number of poems to her
+before her death, which seems to have deeply
+touched him in his loneliness.  We shall not al-
+low a pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flip-
+pancy of an old writer who says that "Prue was
+but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse."
+She was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit
+of causing Herrick in this octave to strike a note
+of sincerity not usual with him:
+
+     These summer birds did with thy master stay
+     The times of warmth, but then they flew away,
+     Leaving their poet, being now grown old,
+     Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold.
+     But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide
+     As well the winter's as the summer's tide:
+     For which thy love, live with thy master here
+     Not two, but all the seasons of the year.
+
+Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mis-
+tress Prew!
+     In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Dean-
+bourn, which he calls "a rude river," and
+his characterization of Devon folk as "a peo-
+ple currish, churlish as the seas," the fullest
+and pleasantest days of his life were prob-
+ably spent at Dean Prior.  He was not un-
+mindful meanwhile of the gathering political
+storm that was to shake England to its foun-
+dations.  How anxiously, in his solitude, he
+watched the course of events, is attested by
+many of his poems.  This solitude was not
+without its compensation.  "I confess," he
+says,
+
+        I ne'er invented such
+     Ennobled numbers for the presse
+        Than where I loath'd so much.
+
+     A man is never wholly unhappy when he is
+writing verses.  Herrick was firmly convinced
+that each new lyric was a stone added to the
+pillar of his fame, and perhaps his sense of
+relief was tinged with indefinable regret when
+he found himself suddenly deprived of his bene-
+fice.  The integrity of some of his royalistic
+poems is doubtful; but he was not given the
+benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament,
+which ejected the panegyrist of young Prince
+Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, and
+installed in his place the venerable John Syms,
+a gentleman with pronounced Cromwellian
+views.
+     Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers
+at the Puritans, discarded his clerical habili-
+ments, and hastened to London to pick up such
+as were left of the gay-colored threads of his
+old experience there.  Once more he would
+drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he
+would breathe the air breathed by such poets
+and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden,
+and the rest.  "Yes, by Saint Anne! and gin-
+ger shall be hot I' the mouth too."  In the
+gladness of getting back "from the dull con-
+fines of the drooping west," he writes a glow-
+ing apostrophe to London--that "stony step-
+mother to poets."  He claims to be a free-born
+Roman, and is proud to find himself a citizen
+again.  According to his earlier biographers,
+Herrick had much ado not to starve in that
+same longed-for London, and fell into great
+misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing,
+with justness, that Herrick's family, which was
+wealthy and influential, would not have allowed
+him to come to abject want.  With his royal-
+istic tendencies he may not have breathed quite
+freely in the atmosphere of the Commonwealth,
+and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot,
+but among them was not poverty.
+     The poet was now engaged in preparing his
+works for the press, and a few weeks following
+his return to London they were issued in a sin-
+gle volume with the title "Hesperides; or, The
+Works both Humane and Divine of Robert
+Herrick, Esq."
+     The time was not ready for him.  A new era
+had dawned--the era of the commonplace.
+The interval was come when Shakespeare him-
+self was to lie in a kind of twilight.  Herrick
+was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had strayed
+by chance into an artificial and prosaic age--
+a sylvan singing creature alighting on an alien
+planet.  "He was too natural," says Mr. Pal-
+grave in his Chrysomela, "too purely poetical;
+he had not the learned polish, the political al-
+lusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn,
+which were then and onward demanded from
+poetry."  Yet it is strange that a public which
+had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect
+a poet who was fifty times finer than Waller
+in his own specialty.  What poet then, or in the
+half-century that followed the Restoration, could
+have written Corinna's Going a-Maying, or ap-
+proached in kind the ineffable grace and perfec-
+tion to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics?
+     The "Hesperides" was received with chilling
+indifference.  None of Herrick's great contem-
+poraries has left a consecrating word concerning
+it.  The book was not reprinted during the au-
+thor's lifetime, and for more than a century after
+his death Herrick was virtually unread.  In 1796
+the "Gentleman's Magazine" copied a few of
+the poems, and two years later Dr. Nathan Drake
+published in his "Literary Hours" three critical
+papers on the poet, with specimens of his writ-
+ings.  Dr. Johnson omitted him from the "Lives
+of the Poets," though space was found for half a
+score of poetasters whose names are to be found
+nowhere else.  In 1810 Dr. Nott, a physician
+of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections.
+It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted
+in full.  It remained for the taste of our own
+day to multiply editions of him.
+     In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it
+is now only needful that some wiseacre should
+attribute the authorship of the poems to some
+man who could not possibly have written a line
+of them.  The opportunity presents attractions
+that ought to be irresistible.  Excepting a hand-
+ful of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap
+of his manuscript extant; the men who drank
+and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple
+Tun make no reference to him; <1> and in the wide
+parenthesis formed by his birth and death we
+find as little tangible incident as is discover-
+able in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-
+two years.  Here is material for profundity and
+ciphers!
+     Herrick's second sojourn in London covered
+the period between 1648 and 1662, curing which
+interim he fades from sight, excepting for the
+
+     <1> With the single exception of the writer of some verses in the
+<i>Musarum Deliciae</i> (1656) who mentions
+
+               That old sack
+     Young Herrick took to entertain
+     The Muses in a sprightly vein.
+instant when he is publishing his book.  If he
+engaged in further literary work there are no
+evidences of it beyond one contribution to the
+"Lacrymae Musarum" in 1649.
+     He seems to have had lodgings, for a while
+at least, in St. Anne's, Westminster.  With the
+court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated
+in the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the
+merry London of his early manhood.  Time and
+war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the
+old haunts the old familiar faces were wanting.
+Ben Jonson was dead, Waller banished, and
+many another comrade "in disgrace with for-
+tune and men's eyes."  As Herrick walked
+through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy
+river-bank in those years, his thought must have
+turned more than once to the little vicarage in
+Devonshire, and lingered tenderly.
+     On the accession of Charles II. a favorable
+change of wind wafted Herrick back to his
+former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious
+Syms having been turned adrift.  This occurred
+on August 24, 1662, the seventy-first anniver-
+sary of the poet's baptism.  Of Herrick's move-
+ments after that, tradition does not furnish even
+the shadow of an outline.  The only notable
+event concerning him is recorded twelve years
+later in the parish register: "Robert Herrick,
+vicker, was buried ye 15" day October, 1674."
+He was eighty-three years old.  The location of
+his grave is unknown.  In 1857 a monument to
+his memory was erected in Dean Church.  And
+this is all.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE details that have come down to us touch-
+ing Herrick's private life are as meagre as if he
+had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare.  But
+were they as ample as could be desired they
+would still be unimportant compared with the
+single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world his
+"Hesperides."  The environments of the man
+were accidental and transitory.  The significant
+part of him we have, and that is enduring so
+long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold
+a charm for mankind.
+     A fine thing incomparably said instantly be-
+comes familiar, and has henceforth a sort of
+dateless excellence.  Though it may have been
+said three hundred years ago, it is as modern
+as yesterday; though it may have been said
+yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have
+been always in our keeping.  This quality of
+remoteness and nearness belongs, in a striking
+degree, to Herrick's poems.  They are as novel
+to-day as they were on the lips of a choice few
+of his contemporaries, who, in reading them in
+their freshness, must surely have been aware
+here and there of the ageless grace of old idyllic
+poets dead and gone.
+     Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message
+to the world, and such message as he had he
+was apparently in no hurry to deliver.  On this
+point he somewhere says:
+
+     Let others to the printing presse run fast;
+     Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste.
+
+He had need of his patience, for he was long
+detained on the road by many of those obstacles
+that waylay poets on their journeys to the
+printer.
+     Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he
+published the "Hesperides."  It was, I repeat,
+no heavy message, and the bearer was left an
+unconscionable time to cool his heels in the ante-
+chamber.  Though his pieces had been set to
+music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay,
+and Laniers, and his court poems had naturally
+won favor with the Cavalier party, Herrick cut
+but a small figure at the side of several of his
+rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten.
+It sometimes happens that the light love-song,
+reaching few or no ears at its first singing, out-
+lasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which,
+dealing with some passing phase of thought,
+social or political, gains the instant applause of
+the multitude.  In most cases the timely ode is
+somehow apt to fade with the circumstance that
+inspired it, and becomes the yesterday's edito-
+rial of literature.  Oblivion likes especially to
+get hold of occasional poems.  That makes it
+hard for feeble poets laureate.
+     Mr. Henry James once characterized Al-
+phonse Daudet as "a great little novelist."
+Robert Herrick is a great little poet.  The brev-
+ity of his poems, for he wrote nothing <i>de longue
+haleine</i>, would place him among the minor
+singers; his workmanship places him among
+the masters.  The Herricks were not a family
+of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing.  The
+accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and
+costly metals was one of the gifts transmitted to
+Robert Herrick.  Much of his work is as ex-
+quisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-
+hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly always that
+vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and
+is never the result of anything but austere labor.
+The critic who, borrowing Milton's words,
+described these carefully wrought poems as
+"wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of
+penetration.  They are full of subtle simplicity.
+Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as
+an antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in
+which the poet speaks of his lady-love's "win-
+ter face"--and there a couplet that breaks into
+unfading daffodils and violets.  The art, though
+invisible, is always there.  His amatory songs
+and catches are such poetry as Orlando would
+have liked to hang on the boughs in the forest
+of Arden.  None of the work is hastily done,
+not even that portion of it we could wish had
+not been done at all.  Be the motive grave or
+gay, it is given that faultlessness of form which
+distinguishes everything in literature that has
+survived its own period.  There is no such thing
+as "form" alone; it is only the close-grained
+material that takes the highest finish.  The struc-
+ture of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is
+simple to the verge of innocence.  Such rhyth-
+mic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson,
+and Swinburne he never dreamed of.  But his
+manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as
+the cup of the acorn fits its meat.
+     Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has
+little or none.  Here are no "tears from the
+depth of some divine despair," no probings into
+the tragic heart of man, no insight that goes
+much farther than the pathos of a cowslip on a
+maiden's grave.  The tendrils of his verse reach
+up to the light, and love the warmer side of the
+garden wall.  But the reader who does not de-
+tect the seriousness under the lightness misreads
+Herrick.  Nearly all true poets have been whole-
+some and joyous singers.  A pessimistic poet,
+like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sar-
+casms.  In his own bright pastoral way Herrick
+must always remain unexcelled.  His limitations
+are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the
+sunshine.  Neither in his thought nor in his
+utterance is there any complexity; both are as
+pellucid as a woodland pond, content to du-
+plicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance,
+the face of a girl straying near its crystal.  His
+is no troubled stream in which large trout
+are caught.  He must be accepted on his own
+terms.
+     The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions,
+been the most indebted to their predecessors
+or to their contemporaries.  It has wittily been
+remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly
+original.  Impressionability is one of the condi-
+tions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind
+is the only mind that invents.  What the poet
+reads, sees, and feels, goes into his blood, and
+becomes an ingredient of his originality.  The
+color of his thought instinctively blends itself
+with the color of its affinities.  A writer's style,
+if it have distinction, is the outcome of a hun-
+dred styles.
+     Though a generous borrower of the ancients,
+Herrick appears to have been exceptionally free
+from the influence of contemporary minds.
+Here and there in his work are traces of his
+beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting impressions
+of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct in-
+fringement on Suckling; but the sum of
+Herrick's obligations of this sort is inconsider-
+able.
+     This indifference to other writers of his time,
+this insularity, was doubtless his loss.  The more
+exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell or
+Herbert might have taught him a deeper note
+than he sounded in his purely devotional poems.
+Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart.
+Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the
+clubs and taverns which Herrick frequented on
+his first going up to London, failed to lay any
+appreciable spell upon him.  That great name,
+moreover, is a jewel which finds no setting in
+Herrick's rhyme.  His general reticence rela-
+tive to brother poets is extremely curious when
+we reflect on his penchant for addressing four-
+line epics to this or that individual.  They were,
+in the main, obscure individuals, whose iden-
+tity is scarcely worth establishing.  His London
+life, at two different periods, brought him into
+contact with many of the celebrities of the day;
+but his verse has helped to confer immortality
+on very few of them.  That his verse had the
+secret of conferring immortality was one of his
+unshaken convictions.  Shakespeare had not a
+finer confidence when he wrote,
+
+     Not marble nor the gilded monuments
+     Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
+
+than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own
+poetry, and he is not by any means backward in
+speaking of it.  It was the breath of his nostrils.
+Without his Muse those nineteen years in that
+dull, secluded Devonshire village would have
+been unendurable.
+     His poetry has the value and the defect of that
+seclusion.  In spite, however, of his contracted
+horizon there is great variety in Herrick's themes.
+Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has
+stated it:
+
+     I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
+     Of April, May, of June, and July flowers;
+     I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
+     Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes;
+     I write of Youth, of Love, and have access
+     By these to sing of cleanly wantonness;
+     I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
+     Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris;
+     I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
+     How roses first came red and lilies white;
+     I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
+     The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King;
+     I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
+     Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.
+
+     Never was there so pretty a table of contents!
+When you open his book the breath of the Eng-
+lish rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem
+to exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if
+sprigs of tansy and lavender had been shut up
+in the volume and forgotten.  One has a sense
+of hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks,
+of open lead-set lattices half hidden with honey-
+suckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, re-
+turning home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily
+on one's ear, as sounds should fall when fancy
+listens.  There is no English poet so thoroughly
+English as Herrick.  He painted the country
+life of his own time as no other has painted it at
+any time.
+     It is to be remarked that the majority of Eng-
+lish poets regarded as national have sought their
+chief inspiration in almost every land and period
+excepting their own.  Shakespeare went to Italy,
+Denmark, Greece, Egypt, and to many a hitherto
+unfooted region of the imagination, for plot and
+character.  It was not Whitehall Garden, but
+the Garden of Eden and the celestial spaces, that
+lured Milton.  It is the Ode on a Grecian Urn,
+The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment
+of Hyperion that have given Keats his spacious
+niche in the gallery of England's poets.  Shelley's
+two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The
+Cenci, belong respectively to Greece and Italy.
+Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian;
+Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the
+Idylls of the King, and Matthew Arnold's Soh-
+rab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in
+dignity to none produced in the nineteenth cen-
+tury--is a Persian story.  But Herrick's "golden
+apples" sprang from the soil in his own day,
+and reddened in the mist and sunshine of his
+native island.
+     Even the fairy poems, which must be classed
+by themselves, are not wanting in local flavor.
+Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable dis-
+tance from that of "A Midsummer Night's
+Dream."  Puck and Titania are of finer breath
+than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to
+have Devonshire manners and to live in a minia-
+ture England of their own.  Like the magician
+who summons them from nowhere, they are
+fond of color and perfume and substantial feasts,
+and indulge in heavy draughts--from the cups
+of morning-glories.  In the tiny sphere they in-
+habit everything is marvelously adapted to their
+requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out
+of perspective.  The elves are a strictly religious
+people in their winsome way, "part pagan, part
+papistical;" they have their pardons and indul-
+gences, their psalters and chapels, and
+
+     An apple's-core is hung up dried,
+     With rattling kernels, which is rung
+     To call to Morn and Even-song;
+
+and very conveniently,
+
+     Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut,
+     The Holy-water there is put.
+
+It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-
+world, where the impossible does not strike one
+as incongruous, and the England of 1648 seems
+never very far away.
+     It is only among the apparently unpremedi-
+tated lyrical flights of the Elizabethan dramatists
+that one meets with anything like the lilt and
+liquid flow of Herrick's songs.  While in no de-
+gree Shakespearian echoes, there are epithalamia
+and dirges of his that might properly have fallen
+from the lips of Posthumus in "Cymbeline."
+This delicate epicede would have fitted Imogen:
+
+     Here a solemne fast we keepe
+     While all beauty lyes asleepe;
+     Husht be all things; no noyse here
+     But the toning of a teare,
+     Or a sigh of such as bring
+     Cowslips for her covering.
+
+Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in
+essence; the Mad Maid's Song, for example.
+The lyrist may speak in character, like the
+dramatist.  A poet's lyrics may be, as most of
+Browning's are, just so many <i>dramatis per-
+sonae</i>.  "Enter a Song singing" is the stage-
+direction in a seventeenth-century play whose
+name escapes me.  The sentiment dramatized in
+a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression.
+In one of his couplets Herrick neatly denies that
+his more mercurial utterances are intended pre-
+sentations of himself:
+
+     To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed--
+     Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste.
+
+In point of fact he was a whole group of im-
+aginary lovers in one.  Silvia, Anthea, Electra,
+Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively
+ladies ending in <i>a</i>, were doubtless, for the most
+part, but airy phantoms dancing--as they should
+not have danced--through the brain of a senti-
+mental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar
+of the Church of England.  Even with his over-
+plus of heart it would have been quite impossible
+for him to have had enough to go round had
+there been so numerous actual demands upon it.
+     Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's
+verse: at its best it has wings that carry it nearly
+as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's
+lark-like interludes.  The brevity of the poems
+and their uniform smoothness sometimes produce
+the effect of monotony.  The crowded richness
+of the line advises a desultory reading.  But one
+must go back to them again and again.  They
+bewitch the memory, having once caught it,
+and insist on saying themselves over and over.
+Among the poets of England the author of the
+"Hesperides" remains, and is likely to remain,
+unique.  As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast
+domain, so Herrick stands alone in his scanty
+plot of ground.
+
+
+     Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ponkapog Papers by Aldrich
+