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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 + |