Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 12
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Title: Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 12
Editor: Charles Dudley Warner
Hamilton Wright Mabie
Lucia Gilbert Runkle
George H. Warner
Release date: May 9, 2010 [eBook #32308]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE, ANCIENT AND MODERN — VOLUME 12 ***
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[Illustration: _JAVANESE ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT._
The origin of the Oceanic dialects, and of those of India
beyond the Ganges more especially the civilized idioms of the
Indian Archipelago, is referred to a language which was that
of an unknown people inhabiting the island of Java. From this
primitive language the modern Javanese is supposed to be
immediately derived. Javanese literature consists of poems,
dramas, songs, and historical and religious writings. The
accompanying facsimile is from a mythological-religious tract
written upon a vegetable paper of native manufacture, and
ornamented with grotesque drawings.]
LIBRARY OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
ANCIENT AND MODERN
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
EDITOR
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Connoisseur Edition
VOL. XII.
NEW YORK
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
Connoisseur Edition
LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES IN HALF RUSSIA
_No_. ..........
Copyright, 1896, by
R. S. PEALE AND J. A. HILL
_All rights reserved_
THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
CRAWFORD H. TOY, A. M., LL. D.,
Professor of Hebrew, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL. D., L. H. D.,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, PH. D., L. H. D.,
Professor of History and Political Science,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N. J.
BRANDER MATTHEWS, A. M., LL. B.,
Professor of Literature, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.
JAMES B. ANGELL, LL. D.,
President of the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.
WILLARD FISKE, A. M., PH. D.,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages
and Literatures, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N. Y.
EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A. M., LL. D.,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.
ALCÉE FORTIER, LIT. D.,
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A.,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH. D.,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D.,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M., LL. D.,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOL. XII
LIVED PAGE
DENIS DIDEROT 1713-1784 4689
From 'Rameau's Nephew'
FRANZ VON DINGELSTEDT 1814-1881 4704
A Man of Business ('The Amazon')
The Watchman (same)
DIOGENES LAERTIUS 200-250 A. D.? 4711
Life of Socrates ('Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers')
Examples of Greek Wit and Wisdom: Bias; Plato; Aristippus;
Aristotle; Theophrastus; Demetrius; Antisthenes;
Diogenes; Cleanthes; Pythagoras
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1766-1848 4725
Poets, Philosophers, and Artists Made by Accident
('Curiosities of Literature')
Martyrdom of Charles the First ('Commentaries on the
Reign of Charles the First')
SYDNEY DOBELL 1824-1874 4733
Epigram on the Death of Edward Forbes
How's My Boy?
The Sailor's Return
Afloat and Ashore
The Soul ('Balder')
England (same)
America
Amy's Song of the Willow ('Balder')
AUSTIN DOBSON 1840- 4741
BY ESTHER SINGLETON
On a Nankin Plate
The Old Sedan-Chair
Ballad of Prose and Rhyme
The Curé's Progress
"Good-Night, Babbette"
The Ladies of St. James's
Dora _versus_ Rose
Une Marquise
A Ballad to Queen Elizabeth
The Princess De Lamballe ('Four Frenchwomen')
MARY MAPES DODGE 1840?- 4751
The Race ('Hans Brinker')
JOHN DONNE 1573-1631 4771
The Undertaking
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Song
Love's Growth
Song
FEODOR MIKHAILOVITCH DOSTOÉVSKY 1821-1881 4779
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
From 'Poor People': Letter from Varvara Debrosyeloff to
Makar Dyevushkin; Letter from Makar Dyevushkin
to Varvara Alexievna Dobrosyeloff
The Bible Reading ('Crime and Punishment')
EDWARD DOWDEN 1843- 4806
The Humor of Shakespeare ('Shakespeare; a Critical
Study of His Mind and Art')
Shakespeare's Portraiture of Women ('Transcripts
and Studies')
The Interpretation of Literature (same)
A. CONAN DOYLE 1859- 4815
The Red-Headed League ('The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes')
Bowmen's Song ('The White Company')
HOLGER DRACHMANN 1846- 4840
The Skipper and His Ship ('Paul and Virginia
of a Northern Zone')
The Prince's Song ('Once Upon a Time')
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 1795-1820 4851
A Winter's Tale ('The Croakers')
The Culprit Fay
The American Flag
JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER 1811-1882 4865
The Vedas and Their Theology ('The Intellectual
Development of Europe')
Primitive Beliefs Dismissed by Scientific
Knowledge (same)
The Koran (same)
MICHAEL DRAYTON 1563-1631 4877
Sonnet
The Ballad of Agincourt
Queen Mab's Excursion ('Nymphidia, the Court of Faery')
GUSTAVE DROZ 1832-1895 4885
How the Baby Was Saved ('The Seamstress's Story')
A Family New-Year's ('Monsieur, Madame, and Bébé')
Their Last Excursion ('Making an Omelette')
HENRY DRUMMOND 1851- 4897
The Country and Its People ('Tropical Africa')
The East-African Lake Country (same)
White Ants (same)
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 1585-1649 4913
Sextain
Madrigal
Reason and Feeling
On Death ('Cypress Grove')
Degeneracy of the World
Briefness of Life
The Universe
JOHN DRYDEN 1631-1700 4919
BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
From 'The Hind and the Panther'
To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve
Ode to the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew
A Song
Lines Printed under Milton's Portrait
Alexander's Feast; or, The Power of Music
Achitophel ('Absalom and Achitophel')
MAXIME DU CAMP 1822- 4951
Street Scene during the Commune ('The Convulsions
of Paris')
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR 1802-1870 4957
BY ANDREW LANG
The Cure for Dormice that Eat Peaches ('The Count of
Monte Cristo')
The Shoulder of Athos, the Belt of Porthos, and the
Handkerchief of Aramis ('The Three Musketeers')
Defense of the Bastion St.-Gervais (same)
Consultation of the Musketeers (same)
The Man in the Iron Mask ('The Viscount of Bragelonne')
A Trick is Played on Henry III. by Aid of Chicot
('The Lady of Monsoreau')
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR 1824-1895 5001
BY FRANCISQUE SARCEY
The Playwright Is Born--and Made (Preface to
'The Prodigal Father')
An Armed Truce ('A Friend to the Sex')
Two Views of Money ('The Money Question')
M. De Remonin's Philosophy of Marriage
('L'Étrangére')
Reforming a Father ('The Prodigal Father')
Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson ('L'Étrangére')
GEORGE DU MAURIER 1834-1896 5041
At the Heart of Bohemia ('Trilby')
Christmas in the Latin Quarter (same)
"Dreaming True" ('Peter Ibbetson')
Barty Josselin at School ('The Martian')
WILLIAM DUNBAR 1465?-1530? 5064
The Thistle and the Rose
From 'The Golden Targe'
No Treasure Avails Without Gladness
JEAN VICTOR DURUY 1811-1894 5069
The National Policy ('History of Rome')
Results of the Roman Dominion (same)
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME XII
PAGE
Javanese Manuscript (Colored Plate) Frontispiece
The Alexandrine Manuscript (Fac-simile) xii
Old Black-Letter Quarto (Fac-simile) 4726
"Charles I. Going to Execution" (Photogravure) 4730
"The Skater of the Zuyder Zee" (Photogravure) 4758
African Arabic Manuscript (Fac-simile) 4870
John Dryden (Portrait) 4920
Alexandre Dumas (Portrait) 4958
Alexandre Dumas, Fils (Portrait) 5002
VIGNETTE PORTRAITS
Denis Diderot Joseph Rodman Drake
Franz von Dingelstedt John William Draper
Isaac D'Israeli Michael Drayton
Austin Dobson Gustav Droz
Mary Mapes Dodge Henry Drummond
John Donne William Drummond
Feodor Dostoévsky Maxime Du Camp
A. Conan Doyle George du Maurier
Holger Drachmann Jean Victor Duruy
[Illustration: _CODEX ALEXANDRINUS._
Fifth Century. British Museum.
The Alexandrine Manuscript of the Christian Scriptures is
almost complete in both Testaments, the Septuagint version of
the Old and the original Greek of the New. It consists of 773
sheets, 12-3/4 by 10-3/4 inches, of very thin gray goatskin
vellum, written on both sides in two columns of faint but
clear characters. It was made in the early part of the fifth
century, under the supervision of Thecla, a noble Christian
lady of Alexandria, in the fifth century. It was brought from
Alexandria to Constantinople by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of
Constantinople, who in 1624 gave it into the charge of the
English Ambassador for presentation to King James I.; but
owing to James' death before the presentation could be made,
it was presented instead to Charles I. It remained in the
possession of the English sovereigns until the Royal Library
was presented to the nation by George II. in 1753. With the
exception of the greater part of Matthew to Chapter xxv., two
leaves of John, and three of Second Corinthians, it contains
the whole Greek Bible, including the two Epistles of Clement
of Rome, which in early times ranked among the inspired
books. Its table of contents shows that it once included also
the "Psalms of Solomon," though, from their position and
title in the index, it is evident that they were regarded as
standing apart from the other books. The Museum has bound the
leaves of this precious manuscript in four volumes, and has
had photographic copies made of each page for the use of
students. The accompanying reproduction is from the last
chapter of the First Epistle of John, from "His Son," in
verse 9, to the end.]
DENIS DIDEROT
(1713-1784)
[Illustration: DENIS DIDEROT]
Among the French Encyclopædists of the eighteenth century Denis
Diderot holds the place of leader. There were intellects of broader
scope and of much surer balance in that famous group, but none of such
versatility, brilliancy, and outbursting force. To his associates he
was a marvel and an inspiration.
He was born in October 1713, in Langres, Haute-Marne, France; and
died in Paris July 31st, 1784. After a classical education in Jesuit
schools, he utterly disgusted his father by turning to the Bohemian
life of a littérateur in Paris. Although very poor, he married at
the age of thirty. The whole story of his married life--the common
Parisian story in those days--reflects no credit on him; though
his _liaison_ with Mademoiselle Voland presents the aspects of a
friendship abiding through life. Poverty spurred him to exertion.
Four days of work in 1746 are said to have produced 'Pensées
Philosophiques' (Philosophic Thoughts). This book, with a little
essay following it, 'Interprétation de la Nature,' was his first open
attack on revealed religion. Its argument, though only negative, and
keeping within the bounds of theism, foretokened a class of utterances
which were frequent in Diderot's later years, and whose assurance of
his materialistic atheism would be complete had they not been too
exclamatory for settled conviction. He contents himself with
glorifying the passions, to the annulling of all ethical standards.
On this point at least his convictions were stable, for long afterward
he writes thus to Mademoiselle Voland:--"The man of mediocre passion
lives and dies like the brute.... If we were bound to choose between
Racine, a bad husband, a bad father, a false friend, and a sublime
poet, and Racine, good father, good husband, good friend, and dull
worthy man, I hold to the first. Of Racine the bad man, what remains?
Nothing. Of Racine the man of genius? The work is eternal."
About 1747 he produced an allegory, 'Promenade du Sceptique.' This
French 'Pilgrim's Progress' scoffs at the Church of Rome for denying
pleasure, then decries the pleasures of the world, and ends by
asserting the hopeless uncertainty of the philosophy which both scoffs
at the Church and decries worldly pleasure. At this period he was
evidently inclined to an irregular attack on the only forms of
Christianity familiar to him, asceticism and pietism.
In 1749 Diderot first showed himself a thinker of original power, in
his Letter on the Blind. This work, 'Lettre sur les Avengles à l'Usage
de Ceux qui Voient' (Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those who See)
opened the eyes of the public to Diderot's peculiar genius, and the
eyes of the authorities to the menace in his principles. The result
was his imprisonment, and from that the spread of his views. His
offense was, that through his ingenious supposition of the mind
deprived of its use of one or more of the bodily senses, he had shown
the relativity of all man's conceptions, and had thence deduced
the relativity, the lack of absoluteness, of all man's ethical
standards--thus invalidating the foundations of civil and social
order. The broad assertion that Diderot and his philosophic group
caused the French Revolution has only this basis, that these men
were among the omens of its advance, feeling its stir afar but not
recognizing the coming earthquake. Yet it may be conceded that Diderot
anticipated things great and strange; for his mind, although neither
precise nor capable of sustained and systematic thought, was amazingly
original in conception and powerful in grasp. The mist, blank to his
brethren, seems to have wreathed itself into wonderful shapes to his
eye; he was the seer whose wild enthusiasm caught the oracles from
an inner shrine. A predictive power appears in his Letter on the
Blind, where he imagines the blind taught to read by touch; and
nineteenth-century hypotheses gleam dimly in his random guess at
variability in organisms, and at survival of those best adapted to
their environment.
Diderot's monumental work, 'L'Encyclopédie,' dates from the middle of
the century. It was his own vast enlargement of Ephraim Chambers's
Cyclopædia of 1727, of which a bookseller had demanded a revision
in French. D'Alembert was secured as his colleague, and in 1751 the
first volume appeared. The list of contributors includes most of
the great contemporary names in French literature. From these,
Diderot and D'Alembert gathered the inner group known as the French
Encyclopædists, to whose writings has been ascribed a general tendency
to destroy religion and to reconstitute society. The authorities
interfered repeatedly, with threats and prohibitions of the
publication; but the science of government included the science of
connivance for an adequate consideration, and the great work went
forward. Its danger lurked in its principles; for Diderot dealt but
little in the cheap flattery which the modern demagogue addresses to
the populace. D'Alembert, wearied by ten years of persecution, retired
in 1759, leaving the indefatigable Diderot to struggle alone through
seven years, composing and revising hundreds of articles, correcting
proofs, supervising the unrivaled illustrations of the mechanic arts,
while quieting the opposition of the authorities.
The Encyclopædia under Diderot followed no one philosophic path.
Indeed, there are no signs that he ever gave any consideration to
either the intellectual or the ethical force of consistency. His
writing indicates his utter carelessness both as to the direction and
as to the pace of his thought. He had an abiding conviction that
Christianity was partly delusion and largely priestcraft, and was
maintained chiefly for upholding iniquitous privilege. His antagonism
was developed primarily from his emotions and sympathies rather than
from his intellect; hence it sometimes swerved, drawing perilously
near to formal orthodoxy. Moreover, this vivacious philosopher
sometimes rambled into practical advice, and easily effervesced
into fervid moralizings of the sentimental and almost tearful sort.
His immense natural capacity for sentiment appears in his own account
of his meeting with Grimm after a few months' absence. His
sentimentalism, however, had its remarkable counterpoise in a most
practical tendency of mind. In the Encyclopædia the interests of
agriculture and of all branches of manufacture were treated with great
fullness; and the reform of feudal abuses lingering in the laws of
France was vigorously urged in a style more practical than cyclopædic.
Diderot gave much attention to the drama, and his 'Paradoxe sur le
Comédien' (Paradox on the Actor) is a valuable discussion. He is the
father of the modern domestic drama. His influence upon the dramatic
literature of Germany was direct and immediate; it appeared in the
plays of Lessing and Schiller, and much of Lessing's criticism was
inspired by Diderot. His 'Père de Famille' (Family-Father) and 'Le
Fils Naturel' (The Natural Son) marked the beginning of a new era in
the history of the stage, in the midst of which we are now living.
Breaking with the old traditions, Diderot abandoned the lofty themes
of classic tragedy and portrayed the life of the _bourgeoisie_.
The influence of England, frequently manifest in the work of the
Encyclopædists, is evident also here. Richardson was then the chief
force in fiction, and the sentimental element so characteristic in
him reappears in the dramas of Diderot.
Goethe was strongly attracted by the genius of Diderot, and thought it
worth his while not only to translate but to supply with a long and
luminous commentary the latter's 'Essay on Painting.' It was by a
singular trick of fortune, too, that one of Diderot's most powerful
works should first have appeared in German garb, and not in the
original French until after the author's death. A manuscript copy of
the book chanced to fall into the hands of Goethe, who so greatly
admired it that he at once translated, annotated, and published it.
This was the famous dialogue 'Le Neveu de Rameau' (Rameau's Nephew),
a work which only Diderot's peculiar genius could have produced.
Depicting the typical parasite, shameless, quick-witted for every
species of villainy, at home in every possible meanness, the dialogue
is a probably unequaled compound of satire, high æsthetics, gleaming
humor, sentimental moralizing, fine musical criticism, and scientific
character analysis, with passages of brutal indecency.
Among literary critics of painting, Diderot has his place in the
highest rank. His nine 'Salons'--criticisms which in his good-nature
he wrote for the use of his friend Grimm, on the annual exhibitions
in the Paris Salon from 1759 onward--have never been surpassed among
non-technical criticisms for brilliancy, freshness, and philosophic
suggestiveness. They reveal the man's elemental strength; which was
not in his knowledge, for he was without technical training in art
and had seen scarcely any of the world's masterpieces, but in his
sensuously sympathetic nature, which gave him quickness of insight
and delicacy in interpretation.
He had the faculty of making and keeping friends, being unaffected,
genial, amiable, enthusiastically generous and helpful to his friends,
and without vindictiveness to his foes. He needed these qualities to
counteract his almost utter lack of conscientiousness, his gush of
sentiment, his unregulated morals, his undisciplined genius, his
unbalanced thought. His style of writing, often vivid and strong,
is as often awkward and dull, and is frequently lacking in finish.
As a philosophic author and thinker his voluminous work is of little
enduring worth, for though plentiful in original power it totally
lacks organic unity; his thought rambles carelessly, his method is
confused. It has been said of him that he was a master who produced no
masterpiece. But as a talker, a converser, all witnesses testify that
he was wondrously inspiring and suggestive, speaking sometimes as from
mysterious heights of vision or out of unsearchable deeps of thought.
FROM 'RAMEAU'S NEPHEW'
Be the weather fair or foul, it is my custom in any case at five
o'clock in the afternoon to stroll in the Palais Royal. I am always to
be seen alone and meditative, on the bench D'Argenson. I hold converse
with myself on politics or love, on taste or philosophy, and yield up
my soul entirely to its own frivolity. It may follow the first idea
that presents itself, be the idea wise or foolish. In the Allée de Foi
one sees our young rakes following upon the heels of some courtesan
who passes on with shameless mien, laughing face, animated glance, and
a pug nose; but they soon leave her to follow another, teasing them
all, joining none of them. My thoughts are my courtesans.
When it is really too cold or rainy, I take refuge in the Café de la
Régence and amuse myself by watching the chess-players. Paris is the
place of the world and the Café de la Régence the place of Paris where
the best chess is played. There one witnesses the most carefully
calculated moves; there one hears the most vulgar conversation; for
since it is possible to be at once a man of intellect and a great
chess-player, like Légal, so also one may be at once a great
chess-player and a very silly person, like Foubert or Mayot.
One afternoon I was there, observing much, speaking rarely, and
hearing as little as possible, when one of the most singular
personages came up to me that ever was produced by this land of ours,
where surely God has never caused a dearth of singular characters.
He is a combination of high-mindedness and baseness, of sound
understanding and folly; in his head the conceptions of honor and
dishonor must be strangely tangled, for the good qualities with which
nature has endowed him he displays without boastfulness, and the bad
qualities without shame. For the rest, he is firmly built, has an
extraordinary power of imagination, and possesses an uncommonly strong
pair of lungs. Should you ever meet him and succeed in escaping from
the charm of his originality, it must be by stopping both ears with
your fingers or by precipitate flight. Heavens, what terrible lungs!
And nothing is less like him than he himself. Sometimes he is thin and
wasted, like a man in the last stages of consumption; you could count
his teeth through his cheeks; you would think he had not tasted food
for several days, or had come from La Trappe.
A month later he is fattened and filled out as if he had never left
the banquets of the rich or had been fed among the Bernardines.
To-day, with soiled linen, torn trousers, clad in rags, and almost
barefoot, he passes with bowed head, avoids those whom he meets, till
one is tempted to call him and bestow upon him an alms. To-morrow,
powdered, well groomed, well dressed, and well shod, he carries his
head high, lets himself be seen, and you would take him almost for a
respectable man.
So he lives from day to day, sad or merry, according to the
circumstances. His first care, when he rises in the morning, is to
take thought where he is to dine. After dinner he bethinks himself of
some opportunity to procure supper, and with the night come new cares.
Sometimes he goes on foot to his little attic, which is his home if
the landlady, impatient at long arrears of rent, has not taken the key
away from him. Sometimes he goes to one of the taverns in the suburbs,
and there, between a bit of bread and a mug of beer, awaits the day.
If he lacks the six sous necessary to procure him quarters for the
night, which is occasionally the case, he applies to some cabman among
his friends or to the coachman of some great lord, and a place on the
straw beside the horses is vouchsafed him. In the morning he carries a
part of his mattress in his hair. If the season is mild, he spends the
whole night strolling back and forth on the Cours or in the Champs
Élysées. With the day he appears again in the city, dressed yesterday
for to-day and to-day often for the rest of the week.
For such originals I cannot feel much esteem, but there are others who
make close acquaintances and even friends of them. Once in the year
perhaps they are able to put their spell upon me, when I meet them,
because their character is in such strong contrast to that of
every-day humanity, and they break the oppressive monotony which our
education, our social conventions, our traditional proprieties have
produced. When such a man enters a company, he acts like a cake of
yeast that raises the whole, and restores to each a part of his
natural individuality. He shakes them up, brings things into motion,
elicits praise or censure, drives truth into the open, makes upright
men recognizable, unmasks the rogues, and there the wise man sits and
listens and is enabled to distinguish one class from another.
This particular specimen I had long known; he frequented a house into
which his talents had secured him the entrée. These people had an only
daughter. He swore to the parents that he would marry their daughter.
They only shrugged their shoulders, laughed in his face, and assured
him that he was a fool. But I saw the day come when the thing was
accomplished. He asked me for some money, which I gave him. He had,
I know not how, squirmed his way into a few houses, where a _couvert_
stood always ready for him, but it had been stipulated that he should
never speak without the consent of his hosts. So there he sat and
ate, filled the while with malice; it was fun to see him under this
restraint. The moment he ventured to break the treaty and open his
mouth, at the very first word the guests all shouted "O Rameau!" Then
his eyes flashed wrathfully, and he fell upon his food again with
renewed energy.
You were curious to know the man's name; there it is. He is the nephew
of the famous composer who has saved us from the church music of Lulli
which we have been chanting for a hundred years, ... and who, having
buried the Florentine, will himself be buried by Italian virtuosi; he
dimly feels this, and so has become morose and irritable, for no one
can be in a worse humor--not even a beautiful woman who in the morning
finds a pimple on her nose--than an author who sees himself threatened
with the fate of outliving his reputation, as Marivaux and Crébillon
_fils_ prove.
Rameau's nephew came up to me. "Ah, my philosopher, do I meet you once
again? What are you doing here among the good-for-nothings? Are you
wasting your time pushing bits of wood about?"
_I_--No; but when I have nothing better to do, I take a passing
pleasure in watching those who push them about with skill.
_He_--A rare pleasure, surely. Excepting Légal and Philidor, there is
no one here that understands it....
_I_--You are hard to please. I see that only the best finds favor with
you.
_He_--Yes, in chess, checkers, poetry, oratory, music, and such other
trumpery. Of what possible use is mediocrity in these things?
_I_--I am almost ready to agree with you....
_He_--You have always shown some interest in me, because I'm a poor
devil whom you really despise, but who after all amuses you.
_I_--That is true.
_He_--Then let me tell you. (Before beginning, he drew a deep sigh,
covered his forehead with both hands, then with calm countenance
continued:--) You know I am ignorant, foolish, silly, shameless,
rascally, gluttonous.
_I_--What a panegyric!
_He_--It is entirely true. Not a word to be abated; no contradiction,
I pray you. No one knows me better than I know myself, and I don't
tell all.
_I_--Rather than anger you, I will assent.
_He_--Now, just think, I lived with people who valued me precisely
because all these qualities were mine in a high degree.
_I_--That is most remarkable. I have hitherto believed that people
concealed these qualities even from themselves, or excused them, but
always despised them in others.
_He_--Conceal them? Is that possible? You may be sure that when
Palissot is alone and contemplates himself, he tells quite a different
story. You may be sure that he and his companion make open confession
to each other that they are a pair of arrant rogues. Despise these
qualities in others? My people were much more reasonable, and I fared
excellently well among them. I was cock of the walk. When absent, I
was instantly missed. I was pampered. I was their little Rameau, their
good Rameau, the shameless, ignorant, lazy Rameau, the fool, the
clown, the gourmand. Each of these epithets was to me a smile, a
caress, a slap on the back, a box on the ears, a kick, a dainty morsel
thrown upon my plate at dinner, a liberty permitted me after dinner as
if it were of no account; for I am of no account. People make of me
and do before me and with me whatever they please, and I never give it
a thought....
_I_--You have been giving lessons, I understand, in accompaniment and
composition?
_He_--Yes.
_I_--And you knew absolutely nothing about it?
_He_--No, by Heaven; and for that very reason I was a much better
teacher than those who imagine they know something about it. At all
events, I didn't spoil the taste nor ruin the hands of my young
pupils. If when they left me they went to a competent master, they had
nothing to unlearn, for they had learned nothing, and that was just so
much time and money saved.
_I_--But how did you do it?
_He_--The way they all do it. I came, threw myself into a chair:--"How
bad the weather is! How tired the pavement makes one!" Then some
scraps of town gossip:... "At the last Amateur Concert there was an
Italian woman who sang like an angel.... Poor Dumênil doesn't know
what to say or do," etc., etc. ... "Come, mademoiselle, where is your
music-book?" And as mademoiselle displays no great haste, searches
every nook and corner for the book, which she has mislaid, and finally
calls the maid to help her, I continue:--"Little Clairon is an enigma.
There is talk of a perfectly absurd marriage of--what is her
name?"--"Nonsense, Rameau, it isn't possible."--"They say the affair
is all settled." ... "There is a rumor that Voltaire is dead,"--"All
the better."--"Why all the better?"--"Then he is sure to treat us to
some droll skit. That's a way he has, a fortnight before his death."
What more should I say? I told a few scandals about the families in
the houses where I am received, for we are all great scandal-mongers.
In short, I played the fool; they listened and laughed, and exclaimed,
"He is really too droll, isn't he?" Meanwhile the music-book had been
found under a chair, where a little dog or a little cat had worried
it, chewed it, and torn it. Then the pretty child sat down at the
piano and began to make a frightful noise upon it. I went up to her,
secretly making a sign of approbation to her mother. "Well, now, that
isn't so bad," said the mother; "one needs only to make up one's mind
to a thing; but the trouble is, one will not make up one's mind; one
would rather kill time by chattering, trifling, running about, and God
knows what. Scarcely do you turn your back but the book is closed, and
not until you are at her side again is it opened. Besides, I have
never heard you reprimand her." In the mean time, since something had
to be done, I took her hands and placed them differently. I pretended
to lose my patience; I shouted,--"Sol, sol, sol, mademoiselle, it's a
_sol_." The mother: "Mademoiselle, have you no ears? I'm not at the
piano, I'm not looking at your notes, but my own feeling tells me that
it ought to be a _sol_. You give the gentleman infinite trouble. You
remember nothing, and make no progress." To break the force of this
reproof a little, I tossed my head and said: "Pardon me, madame,
pardon me. It would be better if mademoiselle would only practice a
little, but after all it is not so bad."--"In your place I would keep
her a whole year at one piece."--"Rest assured, I shall not let her
off until she has mastered every difficulty; and that will not take so
long, perhaps, as mademoiselle thinks."--"Monsieur Rameau, you flatter
her; you are too good." And that is the only thing they would remember
of the whole lesson, and would upon occasion repeat to me. So the
lesson came to an end. My pupil handed me the fee, with a graceful
gesture and a courtesy which her dancing-master had taught her. I put
the money into my pocket, and the mother said, "That's very nice,
mademoiselle. If Favillier were here, he would praise you." For
appearance's sake I chattered for a minute or two more; then I
vanished; and that is what they called in those days a lesson in
accompaniment.
_I_--And is the case different now?
_He_--Heavens! I should think so. I come in, I am serious, throw my
muff aside, open the piano, try the keys, show signs of great
impatience, and if I am kept a moment waiting I shout as if my purse
had been stolen. In an hour I must be there or there; in two hours
with the Duchess So-and-so; at noon I must go to the fair Marquise;
and then there is to be a concert at Baron de Bagge's, Rue Neuve des
Petits Champs.
_I_--And meanwhile no one expects you at all.
_He_--Certainly not.... And precisely because I can further my fortune
through vices which come natural to me, which I acquired without labor
and practice without effort, which are in harmony with the customs of
my countrymen, which are quite to the taste of my patrons, and better
adapted to their special needs than inconvenient virtues would be,
which from morning to night would be standing accusations against
them, it would be strange indeed if I should torture myself like one
of the damned to twist and turn and make of myself something which I
am not, and hide myself beneath a character foreign to me, and assume
the most estimable qualities, whose worth I will not dispute, but
which I could acquire and live up to only by great exertions, and
which after all would lead to nothing,--perhaps to worse than nothing.
Moreover, ought a beggar like me, who lives upon the wealthy,
constantly to hold up to his patrons a mirror of good conduct? People
praise virtue but hate it; they fly from it, let it freeze; and in
this world a man has to keep his feet warm. Besides, I should always
be in the sourest humor: for why is it that the pious and the
devotional are so hard, so repellent, so unsociable? It is because
they have imposed upon themselves a task contrary to their nature.
They suffer, and when a man suffers he makes others suffer. Now, that
is no affair of mine or of my patrons'. I must be in good spirits,
easy, affable, full of sallies, drollery, and folly. Virtue demands
reverence, and reverence is inconvenient; virtue challenges
admiration, and admiration is not entertaining. I have to do with
people whose time hangs heavy on their hands; they want to laugh. Now
consider the folly: the ludicrous makes people laugh, and I therefore
must be a fool; I must be amusing, and if nature had not made me so,
then by hook or by crook I should have made myself seem so.
Fortunately I have no need to play the hypocrite. There are hypocrites
enough of all colors without me, and not counting those who deceive
themselves.... Should it ever occur to friend Rameau to play Cato, to
despise fortune, women, good living, idleness, what would he be? A
hypocrite. Let Rameau remain what he is, a happy robber among wealthy
robbers, and a man without either real or boasted virtue. In short,
your idea of happiness, the happiness of a few enthusiastic dreamers
like you, has no charm for me....
_I_--He earns his bread dearly, who in order to live must assail
virtue and knowledge.
_He_--I have already told you that we are of no consequence. We
slander all men and grieve none.
[The dialogue reverts to music.]
_I_--Every imitation has its original in nature. What is the
musician's model when he breaks into song?
_He_--Why do you not grasp the subject higher up? What is song?
_I_--That, I confess, is a question beyond my powers. That's the way
with us all. The memory is stored with words only, which we think we
understand because we often use them and even apply them correctly,
but in the mind we have only indefinite conceptions. When I use the
word "song," I have no more definite idea of it than you and the
majority of your kind have when you say reputation, disgrace, honor,
vice, virtue, shame, propriety, mortification, ridicule.
_He_--Song is an imitation in tones, produced either by the voice or
by instruments, of a scale invented by art, or if you will,
established by nature; an imitation of physical sounds or passionate
utterances; and you see, with proper alterations this definition could
be made to fit painting, oratory, sculpture, and poetry. Now to come
to your question, What is the model of the musician or of song? It is
the declamation, when the model is alive or sensate; it is the tone,
when the model is insensate. The declamation must be regarded as a
line, and the music as another line which twines about it. The
stronger and the more genuine is this declamation, this model of song,
the more numerous the points at which the accompanying music
intersects it, the more beautiful will it be. And this our younger
composers have clearly perceived. When one hears "Je suis un pauvre
diable," one feels that it is a miser's complaint. If he didn't sing,
he would address the earth in the very same tones when he intrusts to
its keeping his gold: "O terre, reçois mon trésor." ... In such works
with the greatest variety of characters, there is a convincing truth
of declamation that is unsurpassed. I tell you, go, go, and hear the
aria where the young man who feels that he is dying, cries out, "Mon
coeur s'en va." Listen to the air, listen to the accompaniment, and
then tell me what difference there is between the true tones of a
dying man and the handling of this music. You will see that the line
of the melody exactly coincides with the line of declamation. I say
nothing of the time, which is one of the conditions of song; I confine
myself to the expression, and there is nothing truer than the
statement which I have somewhere read, "Musices seminarium
accentus,"--the accent is the seed-plot of the melody. And for that
reason, consider how difficult and important a matter it is to be able
to write a good recitative. There is no beautiful aria out of which a
beautiful recitative could not be made; no beautiful recitative out of
which a clever man could not produce a beautiful aria. I will not
assert that one who recites well will also be able to sing well, but I
should be much surprised if a good singer could not recite well. And
you may believe all that I tell you now, for it is true.
(And then he walked up and down and began to hum a few arias from the
"Île des Fons," etc., exclaiming from time to time, with upturned eyes
and hands upraised:--) "Isn't that beautiful, great heavens! isn't
that beautiful? Is it possible to have a pair of ears on one's head
and question its beauty?" Then as his enthusiasm rose he sang quite
softly, then more loudly as he became more impassioned, then with
gestures, grimaces, contortions of body. "Well," said I, "he is losing
his mind, and I may expect a new scene." And in fact, all at once he
burst out singing.... He passed from one aria to another, fully thirty
of them,--Italian, French, tragic, comic, of every sort. Now with a
deep bass he descended into hell; then, contracting his throat, he
split the upper air with a falsetto, and in gait, mien, and action he
imitated the different singers, by turns raving, commanding,
mollified, scoffing. There was a little girl that wept, and he hit off
all her pretty little ways. Then he was a priest, a king, a tyrant; he
threatened, commanded, stormed; then he was a slave and submissive. He
despaired, he grew tender, he lamented, he laughed, always in the
tone, the time, the sense of the words, of the character, of the
situation.
All the chess-players had left their boards and were gathered around
him; the windows of the café were crowded with passers-by, attracted
by the noise. There was laughter enough to bring down the ceiling. He
noticed nothing, but went on in such a rapt state of mind, in an
enthusiasm so close to madness, that I was uncertain whether he would
recover, or if he would be thrown into a cab and taken straight to the
mad-house; the while he sang the Lamentations of Jomelli.
With precision, fidelity, and incredible warmth, he rendered one of
the finest passages, the superb obligato recitative in which the
prophet paints the destruction of Jerusalem; he wept himself, and the
eyes of the listeners were moist. More could not be desired in
delicacy of vocalization, nor in the expression of overwhelming grief.
He dwelt especially on those parts in which the great composer has
shown his greatness most clearly. When he was not singing, he took the
part of the instruments; these he quickly dropped again, to return to
the vocal part, weaving one into the other so perfectly that the
connection, the unity of the whole, was preserved. He took possession
of our souls and held them in the strangest suspense I have ever
experienced. Did I admire him? Yes, I admired him. Was I moved and
melted? I was moved and melted, and yet something of the ludicrous
mingled itself with these feelings and modified their nature.
But you would have burst out laughing at the way he imitated the
different instruments. With a rough muffled tone and puffed-out
cheeks he represented horns and bassoon; for the oboe he assumed a
rasping nasal tone; with incredible rapidity he made his voice run
over the string instruments, whose tones he endeavored to reproduce
with the greatest accuracy; the flute passages he whistled; he rumbled
out the sounds of the German flute; he shouted and sang with the
gestures of a madman, and so alone and unaided he impersonated the
entire ballet corps, the singers, the whole orchestra,--in short, a
complete performance,--dividing himself into twenty different
characters, running, stopping, with the mien of one entranced, with
glittering eyes and foaming mouth.... He was quite beside himself.
Exhausted by his exertions, like a man awakening from a deep sleep or
emerging from a long period of abstraction, he remained motionless,
stupefied, astonished. He looked about him in bewilderment, like one
trying to recognize the place in which he finds himself. He awaited
the return of his strength, of his consciousness; he dried his face
mechanically. Like one who upon awaking finds his bed surrounded by
groups of people, in complete oblivion and profound unconsciousness of
what he had been doing, he cried, "Well, gentlemen, what's the matter?
What are you laughing at? What are you wondering about? What's the
matter?"
_I_--My dear Rameau, let us talk again of music. Tell me how it comes
that with the facility you display for appreciating the finest
passages of the great masters, for retaining them in your memory, and
for rendering them to the delight of others with all the enthusiasm
with which the music inspires you,--how comes it that you have
produced nothing of value yourself?
(Instead of answering me, he tossed his head, and raising his finger
towards heaven, cried:--)
The stars, the stars! When nature made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni,
she wore a smile; her face was solemn and commanding when she created
my dear uncle Rameau, who for ten years has been called the great
Rameau, and who will soon be named no more. But when she scraped his
nephew together, she made a face and a face and a face.--(And as he
spoke he made grimaces, one of contempt, one of irony, one of scorn.
He went through the motions of kneading dough, and smiled at the
ludicrous forms he gave it. Then he threw the strange pagoda from
him.) So she made me and threw me down among other pagodas, some with
portly well-filled paunches, short necks, protruding goggle eyes, and
an apoplectic appearance; others with lank and crooked necks and
emaciated forms, with animated eyes and hawks' noses. These all felt
like laughing themselves to death when they saw me, and when I saw
them I set my arms akimbo and felt like laughing myself to death, for
fools and clowns take pleasure in one another; seek one another out,
attract one another. Had I not found upon my arrival in this world the
proverb ready-made, that the money of fools is the inheritance of the
clever, the world would have owed it to me. I felt that nature had put
my inheritance into the purse of the pagodas, and I tried in a
thousand ways to recover it.
_I_--I know these ways. You have told me of them. I have admired them.
But with so many capabilities, why do you not try to accomplish
something great?
_He_--That is exactly what a man of the world said to the Abbé Le
Blanc. The abbé replied:--"The Marquise de Pompadour takes me in hand
and brings me to the door of the Academy; then she withdraws her hand;
I fall and break both legs."--"You ought to pull yourself together,"
rejoined the man of the world, "and break the door in with your
head."--"I have just tried that," answered the abbé, "and do you know
what I got for it? A bump on the head." ... (Then he drank a swallow
from what remained in the bottle and turned to his neighbor.) Sir, I
beg you for a pinch of snuff. That's a fine snuff-box you have there.
You are a musician? No! All the better for you. They are a lot of poor
deplorable wretches. Fate made me one of them, me! Meanwhile at
Montmartre there is a mill, and in the mill there is perhaps a miller
or a miller's lad, who will never hear anything but the roaring of the
mill, and who might have composed the most beautiful of songs. Rameau,
get you to the mill, to the mill; it's there you belong . . . But it
is half-past five. I hear the vesper bell which summons me too.
Farewell. It's true, is it not, philosopher, I am always the same
Rameau?
_I_--Yes, indeed. Unfortunately.
_He_--Let me enjoy my misfortune forty years longer. He laughs best
who laughs last.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature.'
FRANZ VON DINGELSTEDT
(1814-1881)
[Illustration: DINGELSTEDT]
Franz von Dingelstedt was born at Halsdorf, Hessen, Germany, June
30th, 1814. He attained eminence as a poet and dramatist, but his best
powers were devoted to his principal calling as theatre director.
His boyhood's education was received at Rinteln. At the University
of Marburg he applied himself to theology and philology, but more
especially to modern languages and literature. After leaving the
university he became instructor at Ricklingen, near Hanover. He was
characterized, even as a young man, by his political freedom and
independence of thought; and at Cassel, where in 1836 he was teacher
in the Lyceum, he was on this account looked upon so much askance that
it was found expedient to transfer him to the gymnasium at Fulda
(1838). He resigned this position, however, in order to devote himself
to writing. A collection of his poems appeared in 1838-45, and of
these, 'Lieder eines Kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters' (Songs of a
Cosmopolitan Night-Watchman: 1841) may be said to have produced a
genuine agitation. These were not only important as literature, but
as political promulgations, boldly embodying the radical sentiments
of freethinking Germany.
In 1841 he went to Augsburg, connected himself with the Allgemeine
Zeitung, and traveled as newspaper correspondent in France, Holland,
Belgium, and England. 'Das Wanderbuch' (The Wander-Book), and 'Jusqu'
à la Mer--Erinnerungen aus Holland' (As Far as the Sea--Remembrances
of Holland: 1847), were the fruits of these journeys. He had in
contemplation a voyage to the Orient, and preparatory to this he
settled for a short time in Vienna; but the journey was not
undertaken, for just at this time he was appointed librarian of the
Royal Library of Stuttgart, and reader to the king, with the title of
Court Councilor. Here in 1844 he married the celebrated singer Jenny
Lutzer. He returned to Vienna, where in 1850 his drama 'Das Haus der
Barneveldt' (The House of the Barneveldts) was produced with such
brilliant success that he was thereupon appointed stage manager of the
National Theatre at Munich. To this for six years he devoted his best
efforts, presenting in the most admirable manner the finest of the
German classics. The merit of his work was recognized by the king, who
ennobled him in 1857. He was pre-eminently a theatrical manager, and
served successively at Weimar (1857) and at Vienna, where he was
appointed director of the Court Opera House in 1867, and of the Burg
Theatre in 1870. He brought the classic plays of other lands upon the
stage, and his revivals of Shakespeare's historical plays and the
'Winter's Tale,' and of Molière's 'L'Avare' (The Miser), were
brilliant events in the theatrical annals of Vienna. He was made
Imperial Councilor by the Emperor, and raised in 1876 to the rank of
baron. In 1875 he took the position of general director of both court
theatres of Vienna. He died at Vienna, May 15th, 1881.
The novels 'Licht und Schatten der Liebe' (The Light and Shadow of
Love: 1838); 'Heptameron,' 1841; and 'Novellenbuch,' 1855, were not
wholly successful; but in contrast to these, 'Unter der Erde' (Under
the Earth: 1840); 'Sieben Friedliche Erzählungen' (Seven Peaceful
Tales: 1844), and 'Die Amazone' (The Amazon: 1868), are admirable.
Regarded purely as literature, Dingelstedt's best productions are his
early poems, although his commentaries upon Shakespeare and Goethe are
wholly praiseworthy. He was successful chiefly as a political poet,
but his muse sings also the joys of domestic life. 'Hauslieder'
(Household Songs: 1844), and his poems upon Chamisso and Uhland,
are among the most beautiful personal poems in German literature.
A MAN OF BUSINESS
From 'The Amazon': copyrighted by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Herr Krafft was about to reply, but was prevented by the hasty
appearance of Herr Heyboldt, the first procurist, who entered the
apartment; not an antiquated comedy figure in shoe-buckles, coarse
woolen socks, velvet pantaloons, and a long-tailed coat, his vest full
of tobacco, and a goose-quill back of his comically flexible ear; no,
but a fine-looking man, dressed in the latest style and in black, with
a medal in his button-hole, and having an earnest, expressive
countenance. He was house-holder, member of the City Council, and
militia captain; the gold medal and colored ribbon on his left breast
told of his having saved, at the risk of his own life, a Leander who
had been carried away by the current in the swimming-baths.
His announcement, urgent as it was, was made without haste, deliberate
and cool, somewhat as the mate informs the captain that an ugly wind
has sprung up. "Herr Principal," he said, "the crowd has broken in the
barriers and one wing of the gateway; they are attacking the
counting-house." "Who breaks, pays," said Krafft, with a joke; "we
will charge the sport to their account."--"The police are not strong
enough; they have sent to the Royal Watch for military."--"That is
right, Heyboldt. No accident, no arms or legs broken?"--"Not that I
know of."--"Pity for Meyer Hirsch; he would have thundered
magnificently in the official Morning News against the excesses of the
rage for speculation. Nor any one wounded by the police?"--"Not any,
so far."--"Pity for Hirsch Meyer. The oppositional Evening Journal has
missed a capital opportunity of weeping over the barbarity of the
soldateska. At all events, the two papers must continue to write--one
for, the other against us. Keep Hirsch Meyer and Meyer Hirsch
going."--"All right, Herr Principal."--"Send each of them a polite
line, to the effect that we have taken the liberty of keeping a few
shares for him, to sell them at the most favorable moment, and pay him
over the difference."--"It shall be attended to, Herr Principal."--"So
our Southwestern Railway goes well, Heyboldt?"--"By steam, Herr
Principal." The sober man smiled at his daring joke, and Herr Krafft
smiled affably with him. "The amount that we have left to furnish will
be exhausted before one has time to turn around. The people throw
money, bank-notes, government bonds, at our cashiers, who cannot fill
up the receipts fast enough. On the Bourse they fought for the
blanks."--"For the next four weeks we will run the stock up, Heyboldt;
after that it can fall, but slowly, with decorum."--"I understand,
Herr Principal."
A cashier came rushing in without knocking. "Herr Principal," he
stammered in his panic, "we have not another blank, and the people are
pouring in upon us more and more violently. Wild shouts call for you."
"To your place, sir," thundered Krafft at him. "I shall come when I
think it time. In no case," he added more quietly, "before the
military arrive. We need an interference, for the sake of the market."
The messenger disappeared; but pale, bewildered countenances were to
be seen in the doorways of the comptoir; the house called for its
master: the trembling daughter sent again and again for her father.
"Let us bring the play to a close," said Herr Krafft, after brief
deliberation; he stepped into the middle office, flung open a window,
and raising his harsh voice to its loudest tones, cried to the throng
below, "You are looking for me, folks. Here I am. What do you want of
me?" "Shares, subscriptions," was the noisy answer.--"You claim
without any right or any manners. This is my house, a peaceable
citizen's house. You are breaking in as though it were a dungeon, an
arsenal, a tax-office,--as though we were in the midst of a
revolution. Are you not ashamed of yourselves?" A confused murmur rang
through the astonished ranks. "If you wish to do business with me,"
continued the merchant, "you must first learn manners and discipline.
Have I invited your visit? Do I need your money, or do you need my
shares? Send up some deputies to convey your requests. I shall have
nothing to do with a turbulent mob." So saying, he closed the window
with such violence that the panes cracked, and the fragments fell down
on the heads of the assailants.
"The Principal knows how to talk to the people," said Heyboldt with
pride to Roland, the mute witness of this strange scene. "He speaks
their own language. He replies to a broken door with a broken window."
Meantime a company of soldiers had arrived on double-quick, with a
flourish of drums. The officer's word of command rang through the
crowd, now grown suddenly quiet: "Fix bayonets! form line! march!"
Yard and passages were cleared, the doors guarded; in the street the
low muttering tide, forced back, made a sort of dam. Three deputies,
abashed and confused, appeared at Krafft's door and craved audience.
The merchant received them like a prince surrounded by his court, in
the midst of his clerks, in the large counting-room. The spokesman
commenced: "We ask your pardon, Herr Krafft, for what has
happened."--"For shame, that you should drag in soldiers as witnesses
and peacemakers in a quiet little business affair among order-loving
citizens."--"It was reported that we had been fooled with these
subscriptions, and that the entire sum had been already disposed of on
the Bourse."--"And even if that were so, am I to be blamed for it? The
Southwestern Railway must raise thirty millions. Double, treble that
amount is offered it. Can I prevent the necessity of reducing the
subscriptions?"--"No; but they say that we poor folks shall not get a
cent's worth; the big men of the Bourse have gobbled up the best bits
right before our noses."--"They say so? Who says so? Court Cooper
Täubert, I ask you who says so?"--"Gracious Herr Court Banker--"
"Don't Court or Gracious me. My name is Krafft, Herr Hans Heinrich
Krafft. I think we know each other, Master Täubert. It is not the
first time that we have done business together. You have a very snug
little share in my workingmen's bank. Grain-broker Wüst, you have
bought one of the houses in my street. Do I ever dun you for the
installments of purchase money?" "No indeed, Herr Krafft; you are a
good man, a public-spirited man, no money-maker, no leech, no Jew!"
cried the triumvirate of deputies in chorus.--"I am nothing more than
you are: a man of business, who works for his living, the son of a
peasant, a plain simple citizen. I began in a smaller way than any of
you; but I shall never forget that I am flesh of your flesh, blood of
your blood. Facts have proved it. I will give you a fresh proof
to-day. Go home and tell the people who have sent you, Hans Heinrich
Krafft will give up the share which his house has subscribed to the
Southwestern Railway, in favor of the less wealthy citizens of this
city. This sum of five hundred thousand thalers shall be divided up
_pro rata_ among the subscriptions under five hundred dollars."
"Heaven bless you, Herr Krafft!" stammered out the court cooper, and
the grain-broker essayed to shed a tear of gratitude; the confidential
clerk Herr Lange, the third of the group, caught at the hand of the
patron to kiss it, with emotion. Krafft drew it back angrily. "No
self-abasement, Herr Lange," he said. "We are men of the people; let
us behave as such. God bless you, gentlemen. You know my purpose. Make
it known to the good people waiting outside, and see that I am rid of
my billeting. Let the subscriptions be conducted quietly and in good
order. Adieu, children!" The deputation withdrew. A few minutes
afterwards there was heard a thundering hurrah:--"Hurrah for Herr
Krafft! Three cheers for Father Krafft!" He showed himself at the
window, nodded quickly and soberly, and motioned to them to disperse.
While the tumult was subsiding, Krafft and Roland retired into the
private counting-room. "You have," the latter said, "spoken nobly,
acted nobly."--"I have made a bargain, nothing more, nothing less;
moreover, not a bad one."--"How so?"--"In three months I shall buy at
70, perhaps still lower, what I am now to give up to them at
90."--"You know that beforehand?"--"With mathematical certainty. The
public expects an El Dorado in the Southwestern Railway, as it does in
every new enterprise. The undertaking is a good one, it is true, or I
should not have ventured upon it. But one must be able to wait until
the fruit is ripe. The small holders cannot do that; they sow today,
and tomorrow they wish to reap. At the first payment their heart and
their purse are all right. At the second or third, both are gone. Upon
the least rise they will throw the paper, for which they were ready to
break each other's necks, upon the market, and so depreciate their
property. But if some fortuitous circumstance should cause a pressure
upon the money market, then they drop all that they have, in a perfect
panic, for any price. I shall watch this moment, and buy. In a year or
so, when the road is finished and its communications complete, the
shares that were subscribed for at 90, and which I shall have bought
at 60 to 70, will touch 100, or higher."
"That is to say," said Roland, thoughtfully, "you will gain at the
expense of those people whose confidence you have aroused, then
satisfied with objects of artificial value, and finally drained for
yourself." "Business is business," replied the familiar harsh voice.
"Unless I become a counterfeiter or a forger I can do nothing more
than to convert other persons' money into my own; of course, in an
honest way."--"And you do this, without fearing lest one day some one
mightier and luckier than you should do the same to you?"--"I must be
prepared for that; I am prepared."--"Also for the storm,--not one of
your own creating, but one sent by the wrath of God, that shall
scatter all this paper splendor of our times, and reduce this
appalling social inequality of ours to a universal zero?" "Let us
quietly abide this Last Day," laughed the banker, taking the artist
by the arm.
THE WATCHMAN
The last faint twinkle now goes out
Up in the poet's attic;
And the roisterers, in merry rout,
Speed home with steps erratic.
Soft from the house-roofs showers the snow,
The vane creaks on the steeple,
The lanterns wag and glimmer low
In the storm by the hurrying people.
The houses all stand black and still,
The churches and taverns deserted,
And a body may now wend at his will,
With his own fancies diverted.
Not a squinting eye now looks this way,
Not a slanderous mouth is dissembling,
And a heart that has slept the livelong day
May now love and hope with trembling.
Dear Night! thou foe to each base end,
While the good still a blessing prove thee,
They say that thou art no man's friend,--
Sweet Night! how I therefore love thee!
DIOGENES LAERTIUS
(200-250 A. D.?)
It is curious how often we are dependent, for our knowledge of some
larger subject, upon a single ancient author, who would be hardly
worthy of notice but for the accidental loss of the books composed by
fitter and abler men. Thus, our only general description of Greece at
the close of the classical period is written by a man who describes
many objects that he certainly did not see, who leaves unmentioned
numberless things we wish explained, and who has a genius for so
misplacing an adverb as to bring confusion into the most commonplace
statement. But not even to Pausanias do we proffer such grudging
gratitude and such ungrateful objurgations as to Diogenes Laertius,
our chief--often our sole--authority for the 'Lives and Sayings of the
Philosophers.' His book is a fascinating one, and even amusing, if we
can forget what we so much wanted in its stead. At second or third
hand, from the compendiums of the schools rather than from the
original works of the great masters themselves, Diogenes does give us
a fairly intelligible sketch, as a rule, of the outward life lived by
each sage. This slight frame is crammed with anecdotes, evidently
culled with most eager and uncritical hand from miscellaneous
collections. Many of these stories are so fragmentary as to be
pointless. Others are unquestionably attached to the wrong person.
This method is at its maddest in the author's sketch of his namesake,
the Recluse of the Tub. (One of Ali Baba's _jars_, by the way, would
give a better notion of the real hermitage.) Since this "philosopher"
had himself little character and no doctrines, the loose string of
anecdotes, puns, and saucy answers suits all our needs. Throughout the
work are scattered, apocryphal letters, and feeble poetic epigrams
composed by the compiler himself. The leaning of our most
unphilosophic author was apparently toward Epicurus. The loss of that
teacher's own works causes us to prize doubly the extensive fragments
of them preserved in this relatively copious and serious study. The
lover of the great Epicurean poem of Lucretius on the 'Nature of
Things' will often be surprised to find here the source of many among
the Roman poet's most striking doctrines and images. The sketch of
Zeno is also an important authority on Stoicism. Instruction in these
particular chapters, then, and rich diversion elsewhere, await the
reader of this most gossipy, formless, and uncritical volume. The
English reader, by the way, ought to be provided with something
better than the "Bohn" version. This adds a goodly harvest of
ludicrous misprints and other errors of every kind to Diogenes's own
mixture of borrowed wisdom and native silliness. The classical student
will prefer the _Didot_ edition by Cobet, with the Latin version in
parallel columns.
It has been thought desirable to offer here a version, slightly
abridged, of Diogenes's chapter on Socrates. The original sources, in
Plato's and Xenophon's extant works, will almost always explain, or
correct, the statements of Diogenes. Such wild shots as the assertion
that the plague repeatedly visited Athens, striking down _every
inhabitant_ save the temperate Socrates, hardly need a serious
rejoinder. Diogenes cannot even speak with approximate accuracy of
Socrates's famous Dæmon or Inward Monitor. We know, on the best
authority, that it prophesied nothing, even proposed nothing, but only
vetoed the rasher impulses of its human companion. But to apply the
tests of mere accuracy to Diogenes would be like criticizing Uncle
Remus for his sins against English syntax.
Of the author's life we know nothing. Our assignment of him to the
third century is based merely on the fact that he quotes writers of
the second, and is himself in turn cited by somewhat later authors.
LIFE OF SOCRATES
From the 'Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers'
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus a sculptor and Phænarete a
midwife [as Plato also states in the 'Theaetetus'], and an Athenian,
of the deme Alopeke. He was believed to aid Euripides in composing his
dramas. Hence Mnesimachus speaks thus:--
"This is Euripides's new play, the 'Phrygians':
And Socrates has furnished him the sticks."
And again:--
"Euripides, Socratically patched."
Callias also, in his 'Captives,' says:--
_A_--"Why art so solemn, putting on such airs?
_B_--Indeed I may; the cause is Socrates."
Aristophanes, in the 'Clouds,' again, remarks:--
"And this is he who for Euripides
Composed the talkative wise tragedies."
He was a pupil of Anaxagoras, according to some authorities, but also
of Damon, as Alexander states in his 'Successions.' After the former's
condemnation he became a disciple of Archelaus the natural
philosopher. But Douris says he was a slave, and carried stones. Some
say, too, that the Graces on the Acropolis are his; they are clothed
figures. Hence, they say, Timon in his 'Silli' declares:--
"From them proceeded the stone-polisher,
Prater on law, enchanter of the Greeks,
Who taught the art of subtle argument,
The nose-in-air, mocker of orators,
Half Attic, the adept in irony."
For he was also clever in discussion. But the Thirty Tyrants, as
Xenophon tells us, forbade him to teach the art of arguing.
Aristophanes also brings him on in comedy, making the Worse Argument
seem the better. He was moreover the first, with his pupil Æschines,
to teach oratory. He was likewise the first who conversed about life,
and the first of the philosophers who came to his end by being
condemned to death. We are also told that he lent out money. At least,
investing it, he would collect what was due, and then after spending
it invest again. But Demetrius the Byzantine says it was Crito who,
struck by the charm of his character, took him out of the workshop and
educated him.
Realizing that natural philosophy was of no interest to men, it is
said, he discussed ethics, in the workshops and in the agora, and used
to say he was seeking
"Whatsoever is good in human dwellings, or evil."
And very often, we are told, when in these discussions he conversed
too violently, he was beaten or had his hair pulled out, and was
usually laughed to scorn. So once when he was kicked, and bore it
patiently, some one expressed surprise; but he said, "If an ass had
kicked me, would I bring an action against him?"
Foreign travel he did not require, as most men do, except when he had
to serve in the army. At other times, remaining in Athens, he disputed
in argumentative fashion with those who conversed with him, not so as
to deprive them of their belief, but to strive for the ascertainment
of truth. They say Euripides gave him the work of Heraclitus, and
asked him, "What do you think of it?" And he said, "What I understood
is fine; I suppose what I did not understand is, too; only it needs a
Delian diver!" He attended also to physical training, and was in
excellent condition. Moreover, he went on the expedition to
Amphipolis, and when Xenophon had fallen from his horse in the battle
of Delium he picked him up and saved him. Indeed, when all the other
Athenians were fleeing he retreated slowly, turning about calmly, and
on the lookout to defend himself if attacked. He also joined the
expedition to Potidæa--by sea, for the war prevented a march by land;
and it was there he was said once to have remained standing in one
position all night. There too, it is said, he was pre-eminent in
valor, but gave up the prize to Alcibiades, of whom he is stated to
have been very fond. Ion of Chios says moreover that when young he
visited Samos with Archelaus, and Aristotle states that he went to
Delphi. Favorinus again, in the first book of his 'Commentaries' says
he went to the Isthmus.
He was also very firm in his convictions and devoted to the democracy,
as was evident from his not yielding to Critias and his associates
when they bade him bring Leon of Salamis, a wealthy man, to them to be
put to death. He was also the only one who opposed the condemnation of
the ten generals. When he could have escaped from prison, too, he
would not. The friends who wept at his fate he reproved, and while in
prison he composed those beautiful discourses.
He was also temperate and austere. Once, as Pamphila tells us in the
seventh book of her 'Commentaries,' Alcibiades offered him a great
estate, on which to build a house; and he said, "If I needed sandals,
and you offered me a hide from which to make them for myself, I should
be laughed at if I took it." Often, too, beholding the multitude of
things for sale, he would say to himself, "How many things I do not
need!" He used constantly to repeat aloud these iambic verses:--
"But silver plate and garb of purple dye
To actors are of use,--but not in life."
He disdained the tyrants,--Archelaus of Macedon, Scopas of Crannon,
Eurylochus of Melissa,--not accepting gifts from them nor visiting
them. He was so regular in his way of living that he was frequently
the only one not ill when Athens was attacked by the plague.
Aristotle says he wedded two wives, the first Xanthippe, who bore him
Lamprocles, and the second Myrto, daughter of Aristides the Just,
whom he received without dowry and by whom he had Sophroniscus and
Menexenus. Some however say he married Myrto first; and some again
that he had them both at once, as the Athenians on account of scarcity
of men passed a law to increase the population, permitting any one to
marry one Athenian woman and have children by another; so Socrates did
this.
He was a man also able to disdain those who mocked him. He prided
himself on his simple manner of living, and never exacted any pay.
He used to say he who ate with best appetite had least need of
delicacies, and he who drank with best appetite had least need to seek
a draught not at hand; and that he who had fewest needs was nearest
the gods. This indeed we may learn from the comic poets, who in their
very ridicule covertly praise him. Thus Aristophanes says:--
"O thou who hast righteously set thy heart on attaining to noble
wisdom,
How happy the life thou wilt lead among the Athenians and the
Hellenes!
Shrewdness and memory both are thine, and energy unwearied
Of mind; and never art thou tired from standing or from walking.
By cold thou art not vexed at all, nor dost thou long for breakfast.
Wine thou dost shun, and gluttony, and every other folly."
Ameipsias also, bringing him upon the stage in the philosopher's
cloak, says:--
"O Socrates, best among few men, most foolish of many, thou also
Art come unto us; thou'rt a patient soul; but where didst get that
doublet?
That wretched thing in mockery was presented by the cobblers!
Yet though so hungry, he never however has stooped to flatter a
mortal."
This disdain and arrogance in Socrates has also been exposed by
Aristophanes, who says:--
"Along the streets you haughtily strut; your eyes roll hither and
thither:
Barefooted, enduring discomforts, you go with countenance solemn
among us."
And yet sometimes, suiting himself to the occasion, he dressed finely;
as when for instance in Plato's 'Symposium' he goes to Agathon's.
He was a man able both to urge others to action, and to dissuade them.
Thus, when he conversed with Theætetus on Knowledge, he sent him away
inspired, as Plato says. Again, when Euthyphron had indicted his own
father for manslaughter, by conversing with him on piety Socrates
turned him from his purpose. Lysis also by his exhortations he
rendered a most moral man. He was moreover skillful in fitting his
arguments to the circumstances. He changed the feeling of his son
Lamprocles when he was enraged with his mother, as Xenophon somewhere
relates. Plato's brother Glaucon, who wished to be active in politics,
he dissuaded because of his inexperience, as Xenophon states; but
Charmides on the other hand, who was well fitted, he urged on. He
roused the spirit of Iphicrates the general also, pointing out to him
the cocks of Midias the barber fighting those of Callias. He said it
was strange that every man could tell easily how many sheep he had,
but could not call by name the friends whom he had acquired, so
negligent were men in that regard. Once seeing Euclid devoting great
pains to captious arguments, he said, "O Euclid, you will be able to
manage sophists--but men, never!" For he thought hair-splitting on
such matters useless, as Plato also says in his 'Euthydemus.'
When Glaucon offered him some slaves, so that he might make a profit
on them, he did not take them.
He praised leisure as the best of possessions, as Xenophon also says
in his 'Symposium.' He used to say, too, that there was but one
good--knowledge; and one evil--ignorance. Wealth and birth, he said,
had no value, but were on the contrary wholly an evil. So when some
one told him Antisthenes's mother was a Thracian, "Did you think,"
quoth he, "so fine a man must be the child of two Athenians?" When
Phaedo had been captured in war and shamefully enslaved, Socrates bade
Crito ransom him, and made him a philosopher.
He also learned, when already an old man, to play the lyre, saying
there was no absurdity in learning what one did not know. He used to
dance frequently, too, thinking this exercise helpful to health. This
Xenophon tells us in the 'Symposium.'
He used to say that his Dæmon foretold future events: and that he knew
nothing, except that very fact that he did know nothing. Those who
bought at a great price what was out of season, he said, had no hope
of living till the season came around. Once being asked what was
virtue in a young man, he said, "To avoid excess in all things." He
used to say one should study geometry (surveying) just enough to be
able to measure land in buying and selling it.
When Euripides in the 'Auge' said of virtue:--
"These things were better left to lie untouched,"
he rose up and left the theatre, saying it was absurd to think it
proper to seek for a slave if he was not to be found, but to let
virtue perish unregarded. When his advice was asked whether to marry
or not, he said, "Whichever you do, you will regret it!" He used to
say that he marveled that those who made stone statues took pains to
make the stone as like the man as possible, but took none with
themselves, that they might not be like the stone. He thought it
proper for the young to look constantly in the mirror, so that if they
had beauty they might prove themselves worthy of it, and if they were
ugly, that they might conceal their ugliness by their accomplishments.
When he had invited rich friends to dinner, and Xanthippe was ashamed,
he said, "Do not be troubled. If they are sensible, they will bear
with us. If not, we shall care nothing for them." Most men, he said,
lived to eat; but he ate to live. As to those who showed regard for
the opinions of the ignoble multitude, he said it was as if a man
should reject one tetradrachm [coin] as worthless, but accept a heap
of such coins as good. When Æschines said, "I am poor and have nothing
else, but I give you myself," he said, "Do you then not realize you
are offering me the greatest of gifts?" To him who said, "The
Athenians have condemned you to death," he responded, "And nature has
condemned them also thereto:" though some ascribe this to Anaxagoras.
When his wife exclaimed, "You die innocent!" he answered, "Do you wish
I were guilty?"
When a vision in sleep seemed to say:--
"Three days hence thou'lt come to the fertile region of Phthia,"
he said to Æschines, "On the third day I shall die." When he was to
drink the hemlock, Apollodorus gave him a fine garment to die in: "But
why," quoth he, "is this garment of mine good enough to live in, but
not to perish in?" To him who said, "So-and-so speaks ill of you," he
answered, "Yes, he has not learned to speak well." When Antisthenes
turned the ragged side of his cloak to the light, he remarked, "I see
your vanity through your cloak." He declared we ought to put
ourselves expressly at the service of the comedy writers: "For if they
say anything about us that is true, they will correct us; and if what
they say be untrue, it does not concern us at all."
When Xanthippe had first reviled him, then drenched him with water,
"Didn't I tell you," said he, "it was thundering and would soon rain?"
To Alcibiades, who said Xanthippe's scolding was unbearable, he
replied, "I am accustomed to it, as to a constantly creaking pulley.
And you," he added, "endure the cackling of geese." Alcibiades said,
"Yes, for they bring me eggs and goslings." "And Xanthippe," retorted
Socrates, "bears me children." Once when she pulled off his cloak in
the agora, his friends advised him to defend himself with force.
"Yes," said he, "by Jove, so that as we fight, each of you may cry,
'Well done, Socrates!' 'Good for you, Xanthippe!'" He used to say he
practiced on Xanthippe just as trainers do with spirited horses. "Just
as they if they master them are able to control any other horse, so I
who am accustomed to Xanthippe shall get on easily with any one else."
It was for such words and acts as this that the Delphic priestess bore
witness in his honor, giving to Chairephon that famous response:--
"Wisest of all mankind is Socrates."
He became extremely unpopular on account of this oracle; but also
because he convicted of ignorance those who had a great opinion of
themselves, particularly Anytus, as Plato also says in the 'Meno.' For
Anytus, enraged at the ridicule Socrates brought upon him, first urged
Aristophanes and the rest on to attack him, and then induced Meletus
to join in indicting him for impiety and for corrupting the young men.
Plato in the 'Apology' says there were three accusers,--Anytus, Lycon,
and Meletus: Anytus being incensed at him in behalf of the artisans
and politicians, Lycon for the orators, and Meletus for the poets, all
of whom Socrates pulled to pieces. The sworn statement of the
plaintiffs ran as follows; for it is still recorded, Favorinus says,
in the State archives:--"Socrates is guilty, not honoring the gods
whom the State honors, but introducing other strange divinities; and
he is further guilty of corrupting the young. Penalty, death."
When Lysias wrote a speech for his defense, he read it, and said, "A
fine speech, Lysias, but not suited to me;" for indeed it was rather
a lawyer's plea than a philosopher's. Lysias said, "But why, if the
speech is a fine one, should it not be suitable for you?" Socrates
replied, "Would not fine robes, then, and sandals, be unfitting for
me?"
While he was on trial, it is stated that Plato ascended the _bema_ and
began, "Being the youngest, O men of Athens, of all who ever came upon
the bema"--but at this point the judges cried out, "Come down! come
down!" So he was convicted by two hundred and eighty-one votes more
than were cast for his acquittal. And when the judges considered what
penalty or fine he should receive, he said he would pay
five-and-twenty drachmæ. Euboulides says he agreed to pay a hundred,
but when the judges expressed their indignation aloud, he said, "For
what I have done, I consider the proper return to be support at the
public expense in the town hall." But they condemned him to death, the
vote being larger than before by eighty.
Not many days later he drank the hemlock in the prison, after uttering
many noble words, recorded by Plato in the 'Phædo.' According to some,
he wrote a poem beginning--
"Greeting, Apollo of Delos, and Artemis, youthful and famous."
He also versified, not very successfully, a fable of Æsop's which
began--
"Æsop once to the people who dwell in the city of Corinth
Said, 'Let virtue be judged not by the popular voice.'"
So he passed from among men; but straightway the Athenians repented of
their action, so that they closed the gymnasia, and exiling the other
accusers, put Meletus to death. Socrates they honored with a statue of
bronze, the work of Lysippus, which was set up in the Pompeion. Anytus
in exile, entering Heraclea, was warned out of town that very day.
The Athenians have had the same experience not only in Socrates's
case, but with many others. Indeed, it is stated that they fined Homer
as a madman, and adjudged Tyrtæus to be crazy. Euripides reproves them
in the 'Palamedes,' saying:--
"Ye have slain, ye have slain the all-wise, the harmless
nightingale of the Muses."
That is so. But Philochorus says Euripides died before Socrates.
Socrates and Euripides were both disciples of Anaxagoras. It appears
to me, too, that Socrates did talk on natural philosophy. In fact,
Xenophon says so, though he states that Socrates held discourse only
upon moral questions. Plato indeed, in the 'Apology,' mentioning
Anaxagoras and other natural philosophers, himself says of them things
whereof Socrates denies any knowledge; yet it is all ascribed to
Socrates.
Aristotle states that a certain mage from Syria came to Athens, and
among other prophecies concerning Socrates foretold that his death
would be a violent one.
The following verses upon him are our own:--
Drink, in the palace of Zeus, O Socrates, seeing that truly
Thou by a god wert called wise, who is wisdom itself.
Foolish Athenians, who to thee offered the potion of hemlock,
Through thy lips themselves draining the cup to the dregs!
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
William C. Lawton.
EXAMPLES OF GREEK WIT AND WISDOM
BIAS
Once he was on a voyage with some impious men. The vessel was
overtaken by a storm, and they began to call upon the gods for aid.
But Bias said, "Be silent, so they may not discover that you are
aboard our ship!"
He declared it was pleasanter to decide a dispute between his enemies
than between friends. "For of two friends," he explained, "one is sure
to become my enemy; but of two enemies I make one friend."
PLATO
It is said Socrates, in a dream, seemed to be holding on his knees a
cygnet, which suddenly grew wings and flew aloft, singing sweetly.
Next day Plato came to him; and Socrates said he was the bird.
It is told that Plato, once seeing a man playing at dice, reproved
him. "The stake is but a trifle," said the other. "Yes, but,"
responded Plato, "the habit is no trifle."
Once when Xenocrates came into Plato's house, the latter bade him
scourge his slave for him, explaining that he could not do it
himself, because he was angry. Again, he said to one of his slaves,
"You would have had a beating if I were not angry."
ARISTIPPUS
Dionysius once asked him why it is that the philosophers are seen at
rich men's doors, not the rich men at the doors of the sages.
Aristippus replied, "Because the wise realize what they lack, but the
rich do not." On a repetition of the taunt on another occasion he
retorted, "Yes, and physicians are seen at sick men's doors; yet none
would choose to be the patient rather than the leech!"
Once when overtaken by a storm on a voyage to Corinth, he was badly
frightened. Somebody said to him, "We ordinary folk are not afraid,
but you philosophers play the coward." "Yes," was his reply, "we are
not risking the loss of any such wretched life as yours."
Some one reproached him for his extravagance in food. He answered,
"If you could buy these same things for threepence, wouldn't you
do it?"--"Oh yes."--"Why then, 'tis not I who am too fond of the
luxurious food, but you that are over-fond of your money!"
ARISTOTLE
When asked, "What is Hope?" he answered, "The dream of a man awake."
Asked what grows old quickest, he replied, "Gratitude." When told that
some one had slandered him in his absence, he said, "He may beat me
too--in my absence!" Being asked how much advantage the educated have
over the ignorant, he replied, "As much as the living over the dead."
Some one asked him why we spend much time in the society of the
beautiful. "That," he said, "is a proper question for a blind man!"
[_Cf._ Emerson's 'Rhodora.']
Once being asked how we should treat our friends, he said, "As we
would wish them to treat us." Asked what a friend is, he answered,
"One soul abiding in two bodies."
THEOPHRASTUS
To a man who at a feast was persistently silent, he remarked, "If you
are ignorant, you are acting wisely; if you are intelligent, you are
behaving foolishly."
DEMETRIUS
It was a saying of his that to friends in prosperity we should go when
invited, but to those in misfortune unbidden.
When told that the Athenians had thrown down his statues, he answered,
"But not my character, for which they erected them."
ANTISTHENES
Some one asked him what he gained from philosophy. He replied, "The
power to converse with myself."
He advised the Athenians to pass a vote that asses were horses. When
they thought that irrational, he said, "But certainly, your generals
are not such because they have learned anything, but simply because
you have elected them!"
DIOGENES
He used to say that when in the course of his life he saw pilots, and
physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the most sensible of
animals; but when he saw interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers, and
those who paid attention to them, and those puffed up by fame or
wealth, he believed no creature was sillier than man.
Some said to him, "You are an old man. Take life easy now." He
replied, "And if I were running the long-distance race, should I when
nearing the goal slacken, and not rather exert myself?"
When he saw a child drink out of his hands, he took the cup out of his
wallet and flung it away, saying, "A child has beaten me in
simplicity."
He used to argue thus, "All things belong to the gods. The wise are
the friends of the gods. The goods of friends are common property.
Therefore all things belong to the wise."
To one who argued that _motion_ was impossible, he made no answer, but
rose and walked away.
When the Athenians urged him to be initiated into the Mysteries,
assuring him that in Hades those who were initiated have the front
seats, he replied, "It is ludicrous, if Agesilaus and Epaminondas are
to abide in the mud, and some ignoble wretches who are initiated are
to dwell in the Isles of the Blest!"
Plato made the definition "Man is a two-footed featherless animal,"
and was much praised for it. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it
into his school, saying "This is Plato's man!" So the addition was
made to the definition, "with broad nails."
When a man asked him what was the proper hour for lunch, he said, "If
you are rich, when you please; if you are poor, when you can get it."
He used often to shout aloud that an easy life had been given by the
gods to men, but they had covered it from sight in their search for
honey-cakes and perfumes and such things.
The musician who was always left alone by his hearers he greeted with
"Good morning, cock!" When the other asked him the reason, he said,
"Because your music starts everybody up."
When an exceedingly superstitious man said to him, "With one blow I
will break your head!" he retorted, "And with a sneeze at your left
side I will make you tremble."
When asked what animal had the worst bite, he said, "Of wild beasts,
the sycophant; and of tame creatures, the flatterer."
Being asked when was the proper time to marry, he responded, "For
young men, not yet; and for old men, not at all."
When he was asked what sort of wine he enjoyed drinking, he answered,
"Another man's." [Of a different temper was Dante, who knew too well
"how salt the bread of others tastes!"]
Some one advised him to hunt up his runaway slave. But he replied, "It
is ridiculous if Manes lives without Diogenes, but Diogenes cannot
without Manes."
When asked why men give to beggars, but not to philosophers, he said,
"Because they expect themselves to become lame and blind; but
philosophers, never!"
CLEANTHES
When a comic actor apologized for having ridiculed him from
the stage, he answered gently, "It would be preposterous, when
Bacchus and Hercules bear the raillery of the poets without
showing any anger, if I should be indignant when I chance to
be attacked."
PYTHAGORAS
_Precepts_
Do not stir the fire with a sword.
Do not devour your heart.
Always have your bed packed up.
Do not walk in the main street.
Do not cherish birds with crooked talons.
Avoid a sharp sword.
When you travel abroad, look not back at your own borders.
[Diogenes explains this: be resigned to death.]
Consider nothing exclusively your own.
Destroy no cultivated tree, or harmless animal.
Modesty and decorum consist in never yielding to laughter,
and yet not looking stern. [_Cf._ Emerson on Manners.]
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
William C. Lawton.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
(1766-1848)
[Illustration: ISAAC D'ISRAELI]
Among the writers whose education and whose tastes were the outcome
of the classicism of the eighteenth century, yet whose literary life
lapped over into the Victorian epoch, was Isaac D'Israeli, born at
Enfield in May 1766. D'Israeli was of Jewish origin, his ancestors
having fled from the Spanish persecutions of the fifteenth century to
find a home in Venice, whence a younger branch migrated to England.
At the time of his birth his family had stood for generations among
the foremost English Jews, his father having been made a citizen by
special legislation. The boy, however, did not inherit the commercial
spirit which had established his house. He was a lover of books and a
dreamer of dreams, and so early developed literary tendencies that his
frightened father sent him off to Amsterdam to school, in the hope of
curing proclivities so dangerous. Here he became familiar with the
works of the Encyclopædists, and adopted the theories of Rousseau.
On returning to England in his nineteenth year, he replied to his
father's proposition that he should enter a commercial house at
Bordeaux, by a long poem in which he passionately inveighed against
the commercial spirit, and avowed himself a student of philosophy and
letters. His father's reluctant acquiescence was obtained at last
through the good offices of the laureate Pye, to whom the youth had
already dedicated his first book, 'A Defence of Poetry.'
At the outset of his career he found himself received with
consideration by the men whose acquaintance he most desired. Following
the fashion of the day, and inspired by the books of anecdotes so
successfully published by his friend Douce, D'Israeli in 1791 produced
anonymously a small volume entitled 'Curiosities of Literature,' the
copyright of which he magnanimously presented to his publisher. The
extraordinary success of this book can be accounted for only by the
curious taste of the time, which still reflected the more unworthy
traditions of the Addisonian era. It was an age of clubs and
tea-tables, of society scandal-mongering and fireside gossip; and the
reading public welcomed a contribution whose refined dilettantism so
well matched its own. The mysteries of Eleusis and the origin of wigs
received the same grave attention. This popularity induced D'Israeli
to buy back the copyright at a generous valuation; he enlarged the
work to five volumes, which passed through twelve in his own lifetime,
and still serves to illustrate a curious literary phase.
Other compilations of similar nature met the same success: 'The
Calamities of Authors,' 'Quarrels of Authors,' and 'Literary
Recollections'; but the 'Amenities of Literature,' his last work, is
the most purely literary in form, and affords perhaps the best index
to D'Israeli's abilities as a writer. The reader of to-day, however,
is struck by the ephemeral nature of this criticism, which yet by a
curious literary experience is keeping a place among the permanent
productions of its age. The reader is everywhere impressed by the
human sympathy, by the wide if rather superficial knowledge, and by
innumerable felicities of expression and style, which betray the
cultivated mind. To lovers of the curious the books still appeal, and
they will continue to hold an honorable place among the bric-a-brac of
literature.
The spirit of curiosity which characterized the mind of D'Israeli
assumed its most dignified concrete form in the 'Commentaries on the
Reign of Charles I.' D'Israeli had an artistic sense of the values in
a historical picture, with a keen perception of the importance of side
lights; and although the book is not a great contribution to the
literature of history, yet it became popular, and in July 1832 earned
for its author the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford.
D'Israeli's romances were tedious tales, but his hold upon the public
was secure, and the vast amount of miscellaneous matter which he
published always found a delighted audience. 'The Genius of Judaism,'
a philosophical inquiry into the historical significance of
the permanence of the Jewish race, showed the author's psychic
limitations. He designed a history of English literature, for which
he had gathered much material, but increasing blindness forced him to
abandon it. Much of D'Israeli's popularity was unquestionably due to
his qualities of heart. His nature was fine; he was an affectionate
and devoted friend, and held an enviable position in the literary
circles of the day. Campbell, Byron, Rogers, and Scott alike admired
and loved him, while a host of lesser men eagerly sought his
friendship.
Although brought up in the Jewish faith, D'Israeli affiliated early in
life with the Church of England, in which his three sons and one
daughter were baptized. He died in 1848, and was buried at Brandenham.
Twenty years later his daughter-in-law, the Countess of Beaconsfield,
erected at Hughenden a monument to his memory.
[Illustration: _OLD BLACK-LETTER QUARTO_.
Slightly reduced facsimile of title-page of first edition of
"THE POSIES."
London, about 1572. Original, 4-1/8 x 6-3/8 inches.
An example of title-page, typography, and spelling a hundred
years after the introduction of printing into England. The
Old English, Gothic, or Black-letter type was being superseded
by the modern "Roman;" and on this title page both forms were
used.
A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one small Poesie.
Gathered partely (by translation) in the fyne outlandish
Gardins of Euripides, Ouid, Petrarke, Ariosto, and others:
and partly by inuention, out of our owne fruitefull Orchardes
in Englande:
Yelding sundrie sweet fauours of Tragical, Comical, and
Morall Discourses, bothe pleasaunt and profitable to the well
smellyng noses of learned Readers.
=Meritum petere, graue.=
AT LONDON, Imprinted for Richarde Smith.]
POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS MADE BY ACCIDENT
From 'Curiosities of Literature'
Accident has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses to
display their powers. It was at Rome, says Gibbon, on the fifteenth of
October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while
the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,
that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first
started to my mind.
Father Malebranche, having completed his studies in philosophy and
theology without any other intention than devoting himself to some
religious order, little expected the celebrity his works acquired for
him. Loitering in an idle hour in the shop of a bookseller, and
turning over a parcel of books, 'L'Homme de Descartes' fell into his
hands. Having dipt into some parts, he read with such delight that the
palpitations of his heart compelled him to lay the volume down. It was
this circumstance that produced those profound contemplations which
made him the Plato of his age.
Cowley became a poet by accident. In his mother's apartment he found,
when very young, Spenser's 'Fairy Queen,' and by a continual study of
poetry he became so enchanted of the Muse that he grew irrecoverably a
poet.
Dr. Johnson informs us that Sir Joshua Reynolds had the first fondness
of his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's Treatise.
Vaucanson displayed an uncommon genius for mechanics. His taste was
first determined by an accident: when young, he frequently attended
his mother to the residence of her confessor; and while she wept with
repentance, he wept with weariness! In this state of disagreeable
vacation, says Helvetius, he was struck with the uniform motion of the
pendulum of the clock in the hall. His curiosity was roused; he
approached the clock-case, and studied its mechanism; what he could
not discover he guessed at. He then projected a similar machine, and
gradually his genius produced a clock. Encouraged by this first
success, he proceeded in his various attempts; and the genius which
thus could form a clock, in time formed a fluting automaton.
If Shakespeare's imprudence had not obliged him to quit his wool trade
and his town; if he had not engaged with a company of actors, and at
length, disgusted with being an indifferent performer, he had not
turned author, the prudent wool-seller had never been the celebrated
poet.
Accident determined the taste of Molière for the stage. His
grandfather loved the theatre, and frequently carried him there. The
young man lived in dissipation; the father, observing it, asked in
anger if his son was to be made an actor. "Would to God," replied the
grandfather, "he was as good an actor as Montrose." The words struck
young Molière; he took a disgust to his tapestry trade; and it is to
this circumstance France owes her greatest comic writer.
Corneille loved; he made verses for his mistress, became a poet,
composed 'Mélite,' and afterwards his other celebrated works. The
discreet Corneille had remained a lawyer.
Thus it is that the devotion of a mother, the death of Cromwell,
deer-stealing, the exclamation of an old man, and the beauty of a
woman, have given five illustrious characters to Europe.
We owe the great discovery of Newton to a very trivial accident. When
a student at Cambridge, he had retired during the time of the plague
into the country. As he was reading under an apple-tree, one of the
fruit fell, and struck him a smart blow on the head. When he observed
the smallness of the apple, he was surprised at the force of the
stroke. This led him to consider the accelerating motion of falling
bodies; from whence he deduced the principle of gravity, and laid the
foundation of his philosophy.
Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish gentleman who was dangerously wounded at
the siege of Pampeluna. Having heated his imagination by reading the
Lives of the Saints, which were brought to him in his illness instead
of a romance, he conceived a strong ambition to be the founder of a
religious order; whence originated the celebrated society of the
Jesuits.
Rousseau found his eccentric powers first awakened by the
advertisement of the singular annual subject which the Academy of
Dijon proposed for that year, in which he wrote his celebrated
Declamation against the arts and sciences; a circumstance which
determined his future literary efforts.
La Fontaine, at the age of twenty-two, had not taken any profession or
devoted himself to any pursuit. Having accidentally heard some verses
of Malherbe, he felt a sudden impulse, which directed his future
life. He immediately bought a Malherbe, and was so exquisitely
delighted with this poet that after passing the nights in treasuring
his verses in his memory, he would run in the daytime to the woods,
where, concealing himself, he would recite his verses to the
surrounding dryads.
Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on
account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book 'De Sphæra' having been
lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a
course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural
history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of
Willoughby's work on birds; the same accident, of finding on the table
of his professor Reaumur's 'History of Insects,'--of which he read
more than he attended to the lecture.--and having been refused the
loan, gave such an instant turn to the mind of Bonnet that he hastened
to obtain a copy, but found many difficulties in procuring this costly
work. Its possession gave an unalterable direction to his future life:
this naturalist indeed lost the use of his sight by his devotion to
the microscope.
Dr. Franklin attributes the cast of his genius to a similar accident.
"I found a work of Defoe's, entitled an 'Essay on Projects,' from
which perhaps I derived impressions that have since influenced some of
the principal events of my life."
I shall add the incident which occasioned Roger Ascham to write his
'Schoolmaster,' one of the most curious and useful treatises among our
elder writers.
At a dinner given by Sir William Cecil during the plague in 1563, at
his apartments at Windsor, where the Queen had taken refuge, a number
of ingenious men were invited. Secretary Cecil communicated the news
of the morning, that several scholars at Eton had run away on account
of their master's severity, which he condemned as a great error in the
education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary; severe
in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defense of hard flogging. Dr.
Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the Secretary. Sir John Mason,
adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted
Sir William Petre, and adduced as an evidence that the best
schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then was it that
Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed that if such a master had an able
scholar it was owing to the boy's genius and not the preceptor's rod.
Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir
Richard Sackville was silent; but when Ascham after dinner went to the
Queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside,
and frankly told him that though he had taken no part in the debate he
would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal;
that he knew to his cost the truth Ascham had supported, for it was
the perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an
unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this
defect in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his
observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance
which produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.
THE MARTYRDOM OF CHARLES THE FIRST
From the 'Commentaries on the Reign of Charles the First'
At Whitehall a repast had been prepared. The religious emotions of
Charles had consecrated the sacrament, which he refused to mingle with
human food. The Bishop, whose mind was unequal to conceive the
intrepid spirit of the King, dreading lest the magnanimous monarch,
overcome by the severity of the cold, might faint on the scaffold,
prevailed on him to eat half a manchet of bread and taste some claret.
But the more consolatory refreshment of Charles had been just imparted
to him in that singular testimony from his son, who had sent a _carte
blanche_ to save the life of his father at any price. This was a
thought on which his affections could dwell in face of the scaffold
which he was now to ascend.
Charles had arrived at Whitehall about ten o'clock, and was not led to
the scaffold till past one. It was said that the scaffold was not
completed; it might have been more truly said that the conspirators
were not ready. There was a mystery in this delay. The fate of Charles
the First to the very last moment was in suspense. Fairfax, though at
the time in the palace, inquired of Herbert how the King was, when the
King was no more! and expressed his astonishment on hearing that the
execution had just taken place. This extraordinary simplicity and
abstraction from the present scene of affairs has been imputed to the
General as an act of refined dissimulation, yet this seems uncertain.
The Prince's _carte blanche_ had been that morning confided to his
hands, and he surely must have laid it before the "Grandees of the
Army," as this new order of the rulers of England was called. Fairfax,
whose personal feelings respecting the King were congenial with those
his lady had so memorably evinced, labored to defer for a few days the
terrible catastrophe; not without the hope of being able, by his own
regiment and others in the army, to prevent the deed altogether. It is
probable--inexplicable as it may seem to us--that the execution of
Charles the First really took place unknown to the General. Fairfax
was not unaccustomed to discover that his colleagues first acted, and
afterwards trusted to his own discernment.
[Illustration: _CHARLES I. GOING TO EXECUTION._
Photogravure from a painting by E. Crofts.]
Secret history has not revealed all that passed in those three awful
hours. We know, however, that the warrant for the execution was not
signed till within a few minutes before the King was led to the
scaffold. In an apartment in the Palace, Ireton and Harrison were in
bed together, and Cromwell, with four colonels, assembled in it.
Colonel Huncks refused to sign the warrant. Cromwell would have no
further delay, reproaching the Colonel as "a peevish, cowardly
fellow," and Colonel Axtell declared that he was ashamed for his
friend Huncks, remonstrating with him, that "the ship is coming into
the harbor, and now would he strike sail before we come to anchor?"
Cromwell stepped to a table, and wrote what he had proposed to Huncks;
Colonel Hacker, supplying his place, signed it, and with the ink
hardly dry, carried the warrant in his hand and called for the King.
At the fatal summons Charles rose with alacrity. The King passed
through the long gallery by a line of soldiers. Awe and sorrow seem
now to have mingled in their countenances. Their barbarous commanders
were intent on their own triumph, and no farther required the forced
cry of "Justice and Execution." Charles stepped out of an enlarged
window of the Banqueting House, where a new opening leveled it with
the scaffold. Charles came forward with the same indifference as "he
would have entered Whitehall on a masque night," as an intelligent
observer described. The King looked towards St. James's and smiled.
Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions; and the
Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps their
vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the Monarch.
These mean spirits had flattered themselves that he who had been
cradled in royalty, who had lived years in the fields of honor, and
was now, they presumed, a recreant in imprisonment,--"the grand
Delinquent of England,"--as they called him, would start in horror at
the block.
This last triumph at least was not reserved for them,--it was for the
King. Charles, dauntless, strode "the floor of Death," to use Fuller's
peculiar but expressive phraseology. He looked on the block with the
axe lying upon it, with attention; his only anxiety was that the block
seemed not sufficiently raised, and that the edge of the axe might be
turned by being swept by the flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the
feet of some moving about the scaffold. "Take care they do not put me
to pain!--Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!" exclaimed the
King to a gentleman passing by. "Hurt not the axe; that may hurt me!"
His continued anxiety concerning these _circumstances_ proves that he
felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to avoid the pain, for he
had an idea of their cruelty. With that sedate thoughtfulness which
was in all his actions, he only looked at the business of the hour.
One circumstance Charles observed with a smile. They had a notion that
the King would resist the executioner; on the suggestion of Hugh
Peters, it is said, they had driven iron staples and ropes into the
scaffold, that their victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon
the block.
The King's speech has many remarkable points, but certainly nothing so
remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This was the first
"King's Speech" spoken from a scaffold. Time shall confirm, as history
has demonstrated, his principle that "They mistook the nature of
government; for people are free under a government, not by being
sharers in it, but by the due administration of the laws." "It was for
this," said Charles, "that now I am come here. If I could have given
way to an arbitrary sway, for to have all laws changed according to
the power of the sword, I need not have come here; and therefore I
tell you that I am _the Martyr of the People_!"
SYDNEY DOBELL
(1824-1874)
Sydney Dobell, the son of a wine merchant, was born at Cranbrook in
Kent. His parents, both persons of strong individuality, believed in
home training, and not one of their eight children went either to
school or to university. They belonged to the Broad Church Community
founded by Sydney's maternal grandfather, Samuel Thompson; a church
intended to recall in its principles the primitive Christian ages. The
parents looked upon Sydney, their eldest-born, as destined to become
the apostle of this creed. He grew up in a kind of religious fervor,
with his precocious mind unnaturally stimulated; a course of conduct
which materially weakened his constitution, and made him a chronic
invalid at the early age of thirty-three. He read whatever books came
to hand, many of them far beyond his years. At the age of eight he
filled his diary with theological discussions.
Entering his father's counting-house as a mere lad, he remained to the
end of his life a business man of great energy. Notwithstanding his
rare poetic endowments, he never seems to have entertained a
single-minded purpose to be a poet and nothing more. On the contrary,
he thought the ideal and the practical life perfectly compatible, and
he strove to unite in himself the poet and the man of affairs. He
wrote habitually until 1856, when regular literary work was forbidden
by his physicians. With characteristic energy he now turned his
thoughts into other channels; identified himself with the affairs of
Gloucester, where he was living, looked after his business, and was
one of the first to adopt the system of industrial co-operation. The
last four years of his life, a period of suffering and helplessness,
he spent at Barton-End House, above the Stroud valley, where he died
in the spring of 1874.
In the work of Dobell it is curious to find so few traces of the
influences under which he grew up. He had every encouragement to
become a writer of religious poetry; yet much of his work is
philosophic and recondite. His delicate health is in a measure
responsible for his failure to achieve the success which his natural
endowments promised. All his literary work was done between the ages
of twenty-three and thirty-three. 'The Roman,' his first long poem,
appeared in 1850. Dedicated to the Italian struggle for liberty, it
showed his breadth of sympathy. In 'Balder,' finished in 1853, Dobell
is at his best both as thinker and as poet. Yet its many fine
passages, its wealth of metaphor, and the exquisite songs of Amy,
hardly counterbalance the remoteness of its theme, and its over-subtle
analysis of morbid psychic states. It is a poem to be read in
fragments, and has aptly been called a mine for poets.
With Alexander Smith he published in 1855 a series of sonnets inspired
by the Crimean War. This was followed in 1856 by 'England in War
Time,' a collection of Dobell's lyrical and descriptive poems, which
possess more general human interest than any other of his books.
After continuous work was interdicted, he still contributed verse and
prose to the periodicals. His essays have been collected by Professor
Nichol, under the title 'Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion.'
As a poet Dobell belongs to the so-called "spasmodic school," a school
"characterized by an undercurrent of discontent with the mystery of
existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle, skeptical unrest, and
an uneasy striving after some incomprehensible end.... Poetry of this
kind is marked by an excess of metaphor which darkens rather than
illustrates, and by a general extravagance of language. On the other
hand, it manifests freshness and originality, and a rich natural
beauty." Dobell's descriptions of scenery are among the finest in
English literature. His senses were abnormally acute, like those of a
savage, a condition which intensified his appreciation of natural
beauty. Possessing a vivid imagination and wide sympathies, he was
often over-subtle and obscure. He strove to realize in himself his
ideal of a poet, and during his years of ill-health gave himself up to
promoting the welfare of his fellow-men; but of his seventeen years of
inactivity he says:--"The keen perception of all that should be done,
and that so bitterly cries for doing, accompanies the consciousness of
all that I might but cannot do."
EPIGRAM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES
Nature, a jealous mistress, laid him low.
He wooed and won her; and, by love made bold,
She showed him more than mortal man should know--
Then slew him lest her secret should be told.
HOW'S MY BOY?
"Ho, sailor of the sea!
How's my boy--my boy?"--
"What's your boy's name, good wife,
And in what good ship sailed he?"
"My boy John--
He that went to sea--
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy's my boy to me.
"You come back from the sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have asked some landsman,
Yonder down in the town.
There's not an ass in all the parish
But knows my John.
"How's my boy--my boy?
And unless you let me know,
I'll swear you are no sailor,
Blue jacket or no--
Brass buttons or no, sailor,
Anchor and crown or no--
"Sure, his ship was the Jolly Briton--"
"Speak low, woman, speak low!
"And why should I speak low, sailor,
About my own boy John?
If I was loud as I am proud
I'd sing him over the town!
Why should I speak low, sailor?"--
"That good ship went down."
"How's my boy--my boy?
What care I for the ship, sailor?
I was never aboard her.
Be she afloat or be she aground,
Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound
Her owners can afford her!
I say, how's my John?"--
"Every man on board went down,
Every man aboard her."
"How's my boy--my boy?
What care I for the men, sailor?
I'm not their mother.
How's my boy--my boy?
Tell me of him and no other!
How's my boy--my boy?"
THE SAILOR'S RETURN
This morn I lay a-dreaming,
This morn, this merry morn;
When the cock crew shrill from over the hill,
I heard a bugle horn.
And through the dream I was dreaming,
There sighed the sigh of the sea,
And through the dream I was dreaming,
This voice came singing to me:--
"High over the breakers,
Low under the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow,
And the lash of the rolling sea!
"Boat, boat, to the billow,
Boat, boat, to the lee!
Love, on thy pillow,
Art thou dreaming of me?
"Billow, billow, breaking,
Land us low on the lee!
For sleeping or waking,
Sweet love, I am coming to thee!
"High, high, o'er the breakers,
Low, low, on the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow
That brings me back to thee!"
AFLOAT AND ASHORE
"Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort,
Like a whale to starboard, a whale to port;
Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort,
And the steamer steams thro' the sea, love!"
"I see the ship on the sea, love;
I stand alone
On this rock;
The sea does not shock
The stone;
The waters around it are swirled,
But under my feet
I feel it go down
To where the hemispheres meet
At the adamant heart of the world.
Oh that the rock would move!
Oh that the rock would roll
To meet thee over the sea, love!
Surely my mighty love
Should fill it like a soul,
And it should bear me to thee, love;
Like a ship on the sea, love,
Bear me, bear me, to thee, love!"
"Guns are thundering, seas are sundering, crowds are wondering,
Low on our lee, love.
Over and over the cannon-clouds cover brother and lover, but over
and over
The whirl-wheels trundle the sea, love;
And on through the loud pealing pomp of her cloud
The great ship is going to thee, love,
Blind to her mark, like a world through the dark,
Thundering, sundering, to the crowds wondering,
Thundering over to thee, love."
"I have come down to thee coming to me, love;
I stand, I stand
On the solid sand;
I see thee coming to me, love;
The sea runs up to me on the sand:
I start--'tis as if thou hadst stretched thine hand
And touched me through the sea, love.
I feel as if I must die,
For there's something longs to fly,
Fly and fly, to thee, love.
As the blood of the flower ere she blows
Is beating up to the sun,
And her roots do hold her down,
And it blushes and breaks undone
In a rose,
So my blood is beating in me, love!
I see thee nigh and nigher;
And my soul leaps up like sudden fire,
My life's in the air
To meet thee there,
To meet thee coming to me, love!
Over the sea,
Coming to me,
Coming, and coming to me, love!"
"The boats are lowered: I leap in first,
Pull, boys, pull! or my heart will burst!
More! more!--lend me an oar!--
I'm thro' the breakers! I'm on the shore!
I see thee waiting for me, love!"
"A sudden storm
Of sighs and tears,
A clenching arm,
A look of years.
In my bosom a thousand cries,
A flash like light before my eyes,
And I am lost in thee, love!"
THE SOUL
From 'Balder'
And as the mounting and descending bark,
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it,--so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tossed,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and, still wet with drops of death,
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum.
ENGLAND
From 'Balder'
This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell: but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes,
Forever calm, the unforgotten dead
In quiet grave-yards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Through unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues through all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!
AMERICA
Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye
Who north or south, or east or western land,
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God
For God; O ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand
Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand
Heroic utterance--parted, yet a whole,
Far, yet unsevered,--children brave and free
Of the great Mother tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare's soul,
Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme,
And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream.
AMY'S SONG OF THE WILLOW
From 'Balder'
The years they come, and the years they go,
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Down by the stream there be two sweet willows,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
She is blighted, the fair young willow;
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark;
She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
The stream runs sparkling under the willow,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
The summer rose-leaves drop in the stream;
The winter oak-leaves drop in the stream;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster;
Because she touched it her tears fall faster;
Over the stream her tears fall faster,
All in the sunshine or the rain.
The years they come, and the years they go;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow,
The goodly green willow, the green waving willow,
Sweet in the willow, the wind-whispering willow;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the sun, and the dew, and the rain.
AUSTIN DOBSON
(1840-)
BY ESTHER SINGLETON
[Illustration: AUSTIN DOBSON]
At first thought it seems difficult to consider Austin Dobson as
belonging to the Victorian period, so entirely is he saturated with
the spirit of the eighteenth century. A careful study of his verse
reveals the fact that the Georgian era, seen through the vista of his
poetic imagination, is divested of all that is coarse, dark, gross,
and prosaic. The mental atmosphere and the types and characters that
he gives, express only beauty and charm.
One approaches the poems of Austin Dobson as one stands before a rare
collection of enamels, fan-mounts, jeweled snuff-boxes, and delicate
carvings in ivory and silver; and after delighting in the beauty and
finish of these graceful curios, passes into a gallery of paintings
and water-colors, suggesting Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Meissonier,
and Greuze. We also wander among trim box-hedges and quaint gardens of
roses and bright hollyhocks; lean by sun-dials to watch the shadow of
Time; and enjoy the sight of gay belles, patched and powdered and
dressed in brocaded gowns and gypsy hats. Gallant beaux, such as are
associated with Reynolds's portraits, appear, and hand them into
sedan-chairs or lead them through stately minuets to the notes of
Rameau, Couperin, and Arne.
Just as the scent of rose-leaves, lavender, and musk rises from
antique Chinese jars, so Dobson's delicate verse reconstructs a life
"Of fashion gone, and half-forgotten ways."
He is equally at home in France. Nothing could be more sympathetic and
exquisite than 'A Revolutionary Relic,' 'The Curé's Progress,' 'Une
Marquise,' and the 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' one of which is cited
below.
In the 'Vers de Société,' as well as his other poetry, Dobson fulfills
all the requirements of light verse--charm, mockery, pathos, banter,
and, while apparently skimming the surface, often shows us the
strange depths of the human heart. He blends so many qualities that he
deserves the praise of T.B. Aldrich, who says, "Austin Dobson has the
grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is easily master of
both in metrical art."
Henry Austin Dobson, the son of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, a civil
engineer, was born in Plymouth, England, January 18th 1840. His early
years were spent in Anglesea, and after receiving his education in
Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, he returned to England to become a
civil engineer. In 1856 he entered the civil service of Great Britain,
and ever since that date he has held offices in the Board of Trade.
His leisure was devoted to literature, and when Anthony Trollope first
issued his magazine St. Paul's in 1868, he introduced to the public
the verse of Austin Dobson. In 1873 his fugitive poems were published
in a small volume entitled 'Vignettes in Rhyme' and 'Vers de Société.'
This was followed in 1877 by 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books,
with additional poems, were printed again in two volumes: 'Old World
Idylls' (1883), and 'At the Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's
original essays are contained in three volumes: 'Four Frenchwomen,'
studies of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe,
and Madame de Genlis (1890), and 'Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first
series 1892, second series 1894), which touch upon a host of
picturesque and fascinating themes. He has written also several
biographies: of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith
(1888), and a 'Memoir of Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written
felicitous critical introductions to many new editions of the
eighteenth-century classics.
Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into the
old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roundels,
and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical fables,
cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint obsolete
affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne.
So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience,
that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be
realized:--
In after days, when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question nor reply.
I shall not see the morning sky,
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must,
In after days.
But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying--_He held his pen in trust_
_To Art, not serving shame or lust._
Will none?--Then let my memory die
In after days!
[Illustration: Signature (Esther Singleton)]
ON A NANKIN PLATE
VILLANELLE
"Ah me, but it might have been!
Was there ever so dismal a fate?"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.
"Such a maid as was never seen:
She passed, tho' I cried to her, 'Wait,'--
Ah me, but it might have been!
"I cried, 'O my Flower, my Queen,
Be mine!'--'Twas precipitate,"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.
"But then ... she was just sixteen,--
Long-eyed, as a lily straight,--
Ah me, but it might have been!
"As it was, from her palankeen
She laughed--'You're a week too late!'"
(Quoth the little blue mandarin.)
"That is why, in a mist of spleen
I mourn on this Nankin Plate.
Ah me, but it might have been!"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.
THE OLD SEDAN-CHAIR
"What's not destroyed by Time's devouring Hand?
Where's Troy,--and where's the May-Pole in the Strand?"
--BRAMSTON'S 'ART OF POLITICKS.'
It stands in the stable-yard, under the eaves,
Propped up by a broomstick and covered with leaves;
It once was the pride of the gay and the fair,
But now 'tis a ruin,--that old Sedan-chair!
It is battered and tattered,--it little avails
That once it was lacquered, and glistened with nails;
For its leather is cracked into lozenge and square
Like a canvas by Wilkie,--that old Sedan-chair.
See, here come the bearing-straps; here were the holes
For the poles of the bearers--when once there were poles;
It was cushioned with silk, it was wadded with hair,
As the birds have discovered,--that old Sedan-chair.
"Where's Troy?" says the poet! Look; under the seat
Is a nest with four eggs; 'tis a favored retreat
Of the Muscovy hen, who has hatched, I dare swear,
Quite an army of chicks in that old Sedan-chair.
And yet--Can't you fancy a face in the frame
Of the window,--some high-headed damsel or dame,
Be-patched and be-powdered, just set by the stair,
While they raise up the lid of that old Sedan-chair?
Can't you fancy Sir Plume, as beside her he stands,
With his ruffles a-droop on his delicate hands,
With his cinnamon coat, with his laced solitaire,
As he lifts her out light from that old Sedan-chair?
Then it swings away slowly. Ah, many a league
It has trotted 'twixt sturdy-legged Terence and Teague;
Stout fellows!--but prone, on a question of fare,
To brandish the poles of that old Sedan-chair!
It has waited by portals where Garrick has played;
It has waited by Heidegger's "Grand Masquerade";
For my Lady Codille, for my Lady Bellair,
It has waited--and waited, that old Sedan-chair!
Oh, the scandals it knows! Oh, the tales it could tell
Of Drum and Ridotto, of Rake and of Belle,--
Of Cock-fight and Levee, and (scarcely more rare!)
Of Fête-days at Tyburn, that old Sedan-chair!
"_Heu! quantum mutata_," I say as I go.
It deserves better fate than a stable-yard, though!
We must furbish it up, and dispatch it,--"With Care,"--
To a Fine-Art Museum--that old Sedan-chair.
THE BALLAD OF PROSE AND RHYME
When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!
When the brain gets dry as an empty nut,
When the reason stands on its squarest toes,
When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut,"--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows,
And the young year draws to the "golden prime,"
And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose,--
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!
In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut,
In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes,"
In a starched procession of "If" and "But,"--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a soft glance softer grows
And the light hours dance to the trysting-time,
And the secret is told "that no one knows,"--
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!
ENVOY
In the work-a-day world,--for its needs and woes,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-bells clash and chime,
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!
THE CURÉ'S PROGRESS
Monsieur The Curé down the street
Comes with his kind old face,--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
And his green umbrella-case.
You may see him pass by the little "_Grande Place_,"
And the tiny "_Hôtel-de-Ville_";
He smiles as he goes, to the _fleuriste_ Rose,
And the _pompier_ Théophile.
He turns as a rule through the "_Marché_" cool,
Where the noisy fishwives call;
And his compliment pays to the "_belle Thérèse_,"
As she knits in her dusky stall.
There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop,
And Toto, the locksmith's niece,
Has jubilant hopes, for the Curé gropes
In his tails for a _pain d'épice_.
There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit
Who is said to be heterodox,
That will ended be with a "_Ma foi, oui!_"
And a pinch from the Curé's box.
There is also a word that no one heard
To the furrier's daughter Lou;
And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red,
And a "_Bon Dieu garde M'sieu!_"
But a grander way for the _Sous-Préfet_,
And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne;
And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat,
And a nod to the Sacristan:--
For ever through life the Curé goes
With a smile on his kind old face--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair.
And his green umbrella-case.
"GOOD-NIGHT, BABETTE"
"Si vieillesse pouvait!"
SCENE.--_A small neat room. In a high Voltaire chair sits a
white-haired old gentleman._
M. VIEUXBOIS [_turning querulously_]
Day of my life! Where _can_ she get?
BABETTE! I Say! BABETTE!--BABETTE!
BABETTE [_entering hurriedly_]
Coming, M'sieu'! If M'sieu' speaks
So loud, he won't be well for weeks!
M. VIEUXBOIS
Where have you been?
BABETTE
Why, M'sieu' knows:--
April!... Ville-d' Avray!... Ma'm'selle ROSE!
M. VIEUXBOIS
Ah! I am old,--and I forget.
Was the place growing green, BABETTE?
BABETTE
But of a greenness!--Yes, M'sieu'!
And then the sky so blue!--so blue!
And when I dropped my _immortelle_,
How the birds sang!
[_Lifting her apron to her eyes._]
This poor Ma'm'selle!
M. VIEUXBOIS
You're a good girl, BABETTE, but she,--
She was an angel, verily.
Sometimes I think I see her yet
Stand smiling by the cabinet;
And once, I know, she peeped and laughed
Betwixt the curtains....
Where's the draught?
[_She gives him a cup._]
Now I shall sleep, I think, BABETTE;--
Sing me your Norman _chansonnette_.
BABETTE [_sings_]
"_Once at the Angelus
(Ere I was dead),
Angels all glorious
Came to my bed;--
Angels in blue and white,
Crowned on the head._"
M. VIEUXBOIS [_drowsily_]
"She was an Angel" ... "Once she laughed" ...
What! was I dreaming?
Where's the draught?
BABETTE [_showing the empty cup_]
The draught, M'sieu'?
M. VIEUXBOIS
How I forget!
I am so old! But sing, BABETTE!
BABETTE [_sings_]
"_One was the Friend I left
Stark in the Snow;
One was the Wife that died
Long,--long ago;
One was the Love I lost--
How could she know?_"
M. VIEUXBOIS [_murmuring_]
Ah PAUL! ... old PAUL! ... EULALIE, too!
And ROSE ... And O! "the sky so blue!"
BABETTE [_sings_]
"_One had my Mother's eyes,
Wistful and mild;
One had my Father's face;
One was a Child:
All of them bent to me,--
Bent down and smiled!_"
[He is asleep!]
M. VIEUXBOIS [_almost inaudibly_]
How I forget!
I am so old! ... Good-night, BABETTE!
THE LADIES OF ST. JAMES'S
A PROPER NEW BALLAD OF THE COUNTRY AND THE TOWN
"Phyllida amo ante alias."--VIRGIL.
The ladies of St. James's
Go swinging to the play;
Their footmen run before them
With a "Stand by! Clear the way!"
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
She takes her buckled shoon,
When we go out a-courting
Beneath the harvest moon.
The ladies of St. James's
Wear satin on their backs;
They sit all night at _Ombre_,
With candles all of wax:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
She dons her russet gown,
And runs to gather May-dew
Before the world is down.
The ladies of St. James's!
They are so fine and fair,
You'd think a box of essences
Was broken in the air:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
The breath of heath and furze,
When breezes blow at morning,
Is not so fresh as hers.
The ladies of St. James's!
They're painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever,
Their red it never dies:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her color comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,--
It wavers like a rose,
The ladies of St. James's!
You scarce can understand
The half of all their speeches,
Their phrases are so grand:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her shy and simple words
Are clear as after rain-drops
The music of the birds.
The ladies of St. James's!
They have their fits and freaks;
They smile on you--for seconds;
They frown on you--for weeks:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Come either storm or shine,
From Shrove-tide unto Shrove-tide,
Is always true--and mine.
My Phyllida! my Phyllida!
I care not though they heap
The hearts of all St. James's,
And give me all to keep;
I care not whose the beauties
Of all the world may be,--
For Phyllida, my Phyllida,
Is all the world to me.
DORA _VERSUS_ ROSE
"The Case is Proceeding"
From the tragic-est novels at Mudie's--
At least on a practical plan--
To the tales of mere Hodges and Judys,
One love is enough for a man.
But no case that I ever yet met is
Like mine: I am equally fond
Of Rose, who a charming brunette is,
And Dora, a blonde.
Each rivals the other in powers--
Each waltzes, each warbles, each paints--
Miss Rose, chiefly tumble-down towers;
Miss Do., perpendicular saints.
In short, to distinguish is folly;
'Twixt the pair I am come to the pass
Of Macheath, between Lucy and Polly,--
Or Buridan's ass.
If it happens that Rosa I've singled
For a soft celebration in rhyme,
Then the ringlets of Dora get mingled
Somehow with the tune and the time;
Or I painfully pen me a sonnet
To an eyebrow intended for Do.'s,
And behold I am writing upon it
The legend, "To Rose."
Or I try to draw Dora (my blotter
Is all over scrawled with her head),
If I fancy at last that I've got her,
It turns to her rival instead;
Or I find myself placidly adding
To the rapturous tresses of Rose
Miss Dora's bud-mouth, and her madding,
Ineffable nose.
Was there ever so sad a dilemma?
For Rose I would perish (_pro tem._);
For Dora I'd willingly stem a--
(Whatever might offer to stem);
But to make the invidious election,--
To declare that on either one's side
I've a scruple,--a grain,--more affection,
I _cannot_ decide.
And as either so hopelessly nice is,
My sole and my final resource
Is to wait some indefinite crisis,--
Some feat of molecular force,
To solve me this riddle conducive
By no means to peace or repose,
Since the issue can scarce be inclusive
Of Dora _and_ Rose.
(AFTER-THOUGHT)
But perhaps if a third (say, a Norah),
Not quite so delightful as Rose,
Nor wholly so charming as Dora,
Should appear, is it wrong to suppose,--
As the claims of the others are equal,--
And flight--in the main--is the best,--
That I might ... But no matter,--the sequel
Is easily guessed.
UNE MARQUISE
A RHYMED MONOLOGUE IN THE LOUVRE
"Belle Marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour."
--MOLIÈRE.
I
As you sit there at your ease,
O Marquise!
And the men flock round your knees
Thick as bees,
Mute at every word you utter,
Servants to your least frill-flutter,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
As you sit there, growing prouder,
And your ringed hands glance and go,
And your fan's _frou-frou_ sounds louder,
And your "_beaux yeux_" flash and glow;--
Ah, you used them on the Painter,
As you know,
For the Sieur Larose spoke fainter,
Bowing low,
Thanked Madame and Heaven for Mercy
That each sitter was not Circe,--
Or at least he told you so;
Growing proud, I say, and prouder
To the crowd that come and go,
Dainty Deity of Powder,
Fickle Queen of Fop and Beau,
As you sit where lustres strike you,
Sure to please,
Do we love you most, or like you,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
II
You are fair; oh yes, we know it
Well, Marquise;
For he swore it, your last poet,
On his knees;
And he called all heaven to witness
Of his ballad and its fitness,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
You were everything in _ère_
(With exception of _sévère_),--
You were _cruelle_ and _rebelle_,
With the rest of rhymes as well;
You were "_Reine_" and "_Mère d' Amour_";
You were "_Vénus à Cythère_";
"_Sappho mise en Pompadour_,"
And "_Minerve en Paravère_";
You had every grace of heaven
In your most angelic face,
With the nameless finer leaven
Lent of blood and courtly race;
And he added, too, in duty,
Ninon's wit and Boufflers's beauty;
And La Valliere's _yeux veloutés_
Followed these;
And you liked it, when he said it
(On his knees),
And you kept it, and you read it,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
III
Yet with us your toilet graces
Fail to please,
And the last of your last faces,
And your _mise_;
For we hold you just as real,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
As your _Bergers_ and _Bergères_,
_Tes d' Amour_ and _Batelières_;
As your _pares_, and your Versailles,
Gardens, grottoes, and _socailles_;
As your Naiads and your trees;--
Just as near the old ideal
Calm and ease,
As the Venus there by Coustou,
That a fan would make quite flighty,
Is to her the gods were used to,--
Is to grand Greek Aphroditè,
Sprung from seas.
You are just a porcelain trifle,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Just a thing of puffs and patches
Made for madrigals and catches,
Not for heart wounds, but for scratches,
O Marquise!
Just a pinky porcelain trifle,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Wrought in rarest _rose-Dubarry,_
Quick at verbal point and parry,
Clever, doubtless;--but to marry,
No, Marquise!
IV
For your Cupid, you have clipped him,
Rouged and patched him, nipped and snipped him,
And with _chapeau-bras_ equipped him,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Just to arm you through your wife-time,
And the languors of your lifetime,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Say, to trim your toilet tapers
Or--to twist your hair in papers,
Or--to wean you from the vapors;--
As for these,
You are worth the love they give you,
Till a fairer face outlive you,
Or a younger grace shall please;
Till the coming of the crows'-feet,
And the backward turn of beaux' feet,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Till your frothed-out life's commotion
Settles down to Ennui's ocean,
Or a dainty sham devotion,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
V
No: we neither like nor love you,
"_Belle Marquise!_"
Lesser lights we place above you,--
Milder merits better please.
We have passed from _Philosophe_-dom
Into plainer modern days,--
Grown contented in our oafdom,
Giving grace not all the praise;
And, _en partant, Arsinoé_,--
Without malice whatsoever,--
We shall counsel to our Chloë
To be rather good than clever;
For we find it hard to smother
Just one little thought, Marquise!
Wittier perhaps than any other,--
You were neither Wife nor Mother.
"_Belle Marquise!_"
A BALLAD TO QUEEN ELIZABETH
OF THE SPANISH ARMADA
King Philip had vaunted his claims;
He had sworn for a year he would sack us;
With an army of heathenish names
He was coming to fagot and stack us;
Like the thieves of the sea he would track us,
And shatter our ships on the main;
But we had bold Neptune to back us,--
And where are the galleons of Spain?
His carackes were christened of dames
To the kirtles whereof he would tack us;
With his saints and his gilded stern-frames,
He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us;
Now Howard may get to his Flaccus,
And Drake to his Devon again,
And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus,--
For where are the galleons of Spain?
Let his Majesty hang to St. James
The axe that he whetted to hack us:
He must play at some lustier games.
Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us;
To his mines of Peru he would pack us
To tug at his bullet and chain;
Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!--
But where are the galleons of Spain?
ENVOY
GLORIANA!--the Don may attack us
Whenever his stomach be fain;
He must reach us before he can rack us,...
And where are the galleons of Spain?
THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE
From 'Four Frenchwomen'
A tender wife, a loving daughter, and a loyal friend,--shall we not
here lay down upon the grave of Marie de Lamballe our reverential
tribute, our little chaplet of _immortelles_, in the name of all good
women, wives, and daughters?
"_Elle était mieux femme que les autres._"[A] To us that apparently
indefinite, exquisitely definite sentence most fitly marks the
distinction between the subjects of the two preceding papers and the
subject of the present. It is a transition from the stately figure of
a marble Agrippina to the breathing, feeling woman at your side; it is
the transition from the statuesque Rachelesque heroines of a David to
the "small sweet idyl" of a Greuze. And, we confess it, we were not
wholly at ease with those tragic, majestic figures. We shuddered at
the dagger and the bowl which suited them so well. We marveled at
their bloodless serenity, their superhuman self-sufficiency; inly we
questioned if they breathed and felt. Or was their circulation a
matter of machinery--a mere dead-beat escapement? We longed for the
_sexe prononcé_ of Rivarol--we longed for the showman's "female
woman!" We respected and we studied, but we did not love them. With
Madame de Lamballe the case is otherwise. Not grand like this one, not
heroic like that one, "_elle est mieux femme que les autres_."
She at least is woman--after a fairer fashion--after a truer type. Not
intellectually strong like Manon Philipon, not Spartan-souled like
Marie de Corday, she has still a rare intelligence, a courage of
affection. She has that _clairvoyance_ of the heart which supersedes
all the stimulants of mottoes from Reynel or maxims from Rousseau; she
has that "angel instinct" which is a juster lawgiver than Justinian.
It was thought praise to say of the Girondist lady that she was a
greater man than her husband; it is praise to say of this queen's
friend that she was more woman than Madame Roland. Not so grand, not
so great, we like the princess best. _Elle est mieux femme que les
autres._
[A] She was more woman than the others.
MARY MAPES DODGE
(1840?-)
[Illustration: MARY MAPES DODGE]
To write a story which in thirty years should pass through more than a
hundred editions, which should attain the apotheosis of an _edition de
luxe_, which should be translated into at least four foreign
languages, be allotted the Montyon prize of 1500 francs for moral as
well as literary excellence, and be crowned by the French
Academy--this is a piece of good fortune which falls to the lot of few
story-tellers. The book which has deserved so well is 'Hans Brinker,
or The Silver Skates,' a story of life in Holland. Its author, born in
New York, is a daughter of Professor James Jay Mapes, an eminent
chemist and inventor, an accomplished writer and brilliant talker.
In a household where music, art, and literature were cultivated, and
where the most agreeable society came, talents were not likely to be
overlooked. Mrs. Dodge, very early widowed, began writing before she
was twenty, publishing short stories, sketches, and poems in various
periodicals. 'Hans Brinker' appeared in 1864,--her delight in Motley's
histories and their appeal to her own Dutch blood inspiring her to
write it. Of this book Mr. Frank R. Stockton says:--
"There are strong reasons why the fairest orange groves, the
loftiest mountain peaks, or the inspiriting waves of the
rolling sea, could not tempt average boys and girls from the
level stretches of the Dutch canals, until they had skated
through the sparkling story, warmed with a healthy glow.
"This is not only a tale of vivid description, interesting
and instructive; it is a romance. There are adventures,
startling and surprising, there are mysteries of buried gold,
there are the machinations of the wicked, there is the
heroism of the good, and the gay humor of happy souls. More
than these, there is love--that sentiment which glides into
a good story as naturally as into a human life; and whether
the story be for old or young, this element gives it an
ever-welcome charm. Strange fortune and good fortune come to
Hans and to Gretel, and to many other deserving characters in
the tale, but there is nothing selfish about these heroes and
heroines. As soon as a new generation of young people grows
up to be old enough to enjoy this perennial story, all these
characters return to the days of their youth, and are ready
to act their parts again to the very end, and to feel in
their own souls, as everybody else feels, that their story is
just as new and interesting as when it was first told."
Besides this book, Mrs. Dodge has published several volumes of
juvenile verse, such as 'Rhymes and Jingles,' and 'When Life was
Young'; a volume of serious verse, 'Along the Way'; a volume of
satirical and humorous sketches, 'Theophilus and Others'; a second
successful story for young people, 'Donald and Dorothy,' and a
number of other works. Her stories evince an unusual faculty of
construction and marked inventiveness,--inherited perhaps from her
father,--truthful characterization, literary feeling, a strong sense
of humor, and a high ethical standard. Her whimsical character sketch,
'Miss Maloney on the Chinese Question,' which has been reprinted
thousands of times and repeated by every elocutionist in the land, is
in its way as searching a satire as Bret Harte's 'Heathen Chinee.'
Since its beginning in 1873, Mrs. Dodge has edited the St. Nicholas
Magazine, whose pages bear witness to her enormous industry.
THE RACE
From 'Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,' Copyright 1896, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
The 20th of December came at last, bringing with it the perfection of
winter weather. All over the level landscape lay the warm sunlight. It
tried its power on lake, canal, and river; but the ice flashed
defiance, and showed no sign of melting. The very weathercocks stood
still to enjoy the sight. This gave the windmills a holiday. Nearly
all the past week they had been whirling briskly; now, being rather
out of breath, they rocked lazily in the clear still air. Catch a
windmill working when the weathercocks have nothing to do!
There was an end to grinding, crushing, and sawing for that day. It
was a good thing for the millers near Broek. Long before noon, they
concluded to take in their sails and go to the race. Everybody would
be there. Already the north side of the frozen Y was bordered with
eager spectators; the news of the great skating-match had traveled far
and wide. Men, women, and children, in holiday attire, were flocking
toward the spot. Some wore furs and wintry cloaks or shawls; but
many, consulting their feelings rather than the almanac, were dressed
as for an October day.
[Illustration: _THE SKATER OF THE ZUYDER ZEE._
Photogravure from a Painting by G. H. Boughton, A. R. A.]
The site selected for the race was a faultless plain of ice near
Amsterdam, on that great _arm_ of the Zuyder Zee, which Dutchmen of
course must call the Eye. The townspeople turned out in large numbers.
Strangers in the city deemed it a fine chance to see what was to be
seen. Many a peasant from the northward had wisely chosen the 20th as
the day for the next city-trading. It seemed that everybody, young and
old, who had wheels, skates, or feet at command, had hastened to the
scene.
There were the gentry in their coaches, dressed like Parisians fresh
from the Boulevards; Amsterdam children in charity uniforms; girls
from the Roman Catholic Orphan House, in sable gowns and white
head-bands; boys from the Burgher Asylum, with their black tights and
short-skirted harlequin coats. There were old-fashioned gentlemen in
cocked hats and velvet knee-breeches; old-fashioned ladies too, in
stiff quilted skirts and bodices of dazzling brocade. These were
accompanied by servants bearing foot-stoves and cloaks. There were the
peasant folk, arrayed in every possible Dutch costume,--shy young
rustics in brazen buckles; simple village maidens concealing their
flaxen hair under fillets of gold; women whose long narrow aprons were
stiff with embroidery; women with short corkscrew curls hanging over
their foreheads; women with shaved heads and close-fitting caps, and
women in striped skirts and windmill bonnets; men in leather, in
homespun, in velvet and broadcloth; burghers in modern European
attire, and burghers in short jackets, wide trousers, and
steeple-crowned hats.
There were beautiful Friesland girls in wooden shoes and coarse
petticoats, with solid gold crescents encircling their heads, finished
at each temple with a golden rosette, and hung with lace a century
old. Some wore necklaces, pendants, and earrings of the purest gold.
Many were content with gilt, or even with brass; but it is not an
uncommon thing for a Friesland woman to have all the family treasure
in her headgear. More than one rustic lass displayed the value of two
thousand guilders upon her head that day.
Scattered throughout the crowd were peasants from the Island of
Marken, with sabots, black stockings, and the widest of breeches; also
women from Marken, with short blue petticoats, and black jackets gayly
figured in front. They wore red sleeves, white aprons, and a cap like
a bishop's mitre over their golden hair.
The children often were as quaint and odd-looking as their elders. In
short, one-third of the crowd seemed to have stepped bodily from a
collection of Dutch paintings.
Everywhere could be seen tall women and stumpy men, lively-faced
girls, and youths whose expressions never changed from sunrise to
sunset.
There seemed to be at least one specimen from every known town in
Holland. There were Utrecht water-bearers, Gouda cheese-makers, Delft
pottery-men, Schiedam distillers, Amsterdam diamond-cutters, Rotterdam
merchants, dried-up herring-packers, and two sleepy-eyed shepherds
from Texel. Every man of them had his pipe and tobacco pouch. Some
carried what might be called the smoker's complete outfit,--a pipe,
tobacco, a pricker with which to clean the tube, a silver net for
protecting the bowl, and a box of the strongest of brimstone matches.
A true Dutchman, you must remember, is rarely without his pipe on any
possible occasion. He may for a moment neglect to breathe; but when
the pipe is forgotten, he must be dying indeed. There were no such sad
cases here. Wreaths of smoke were rising from every possible quarter.
The more fantastic the smoke-wreath, the more placid and solemn the
smoker.
Look at those boys and girls on stilts! That is a good idea. They can
look over the heads of the tallest. It is strange to see those little
bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have
such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous
old gentlemen with tender feet wince and tremble while the long-legged
little monsters stride past them!
You will read in certain books that the Dutch are a quiet people. So
they are, generally. But listen! did you ever hear such a din? All
made up of human voices--no, the horses are helping somewhat, and the
fiddles are squeaking pitifully; (how it must pain fiddles to be
tuned!) but the mass of the sound comes from the great _vox humana_
that belongs to a crowd.
That queer little dwarf, going about with a heavy basket, winding in
and out among the people, helps not a little. You can hear his shrill
cry above all other sounds, "Pypen en tabac! Pypen en tabac!"
Another, his big brother, though evidently some years younger, is
selling doughnuts and bonbons. He is calling on all pretty children,
far and near, to come quickly or the cakes will be gone.
You know quite a number among the spectators. High up in yonder
pavilion, erected upon the border of the ice, are some persons whom
you have seen very lately. In the centre is Madame Van Gleck. It is
her birthday, you remember; she has the post of honor. There is
Mynheer Van Gleck, whose meerschaum has not really grown fast to his
lips; it only appears so. There are Grandfather and Grandmother, whom
you met at the St. Nicholas fête. All the children are with them. It
is so mild, they have brought even the baby. The poor little creature
is swaddled very much after the manner of an Egyptian mummy; but it
can crow with delight, and when the band is playing, open and shut its
animated mittens in perfect time to the music.
Grandfather, with his pipe and spectacles and fur cap, makes quite a
picture as he holds Baby upon his knee. Perched high upon their
canopied platforms, the party can see all that is going on. No wonder
the ladies look complacently at the glassy ice; with a stove for a
footstool, one might sit cosily beside the North Pole.
There is a gentleman with them, who somewhat resembles St. Nicholas as
he appeared to the young Van Glecks on the fifth of December. But the
Saint had a flowing white beard, and this face is as smooth as a
pippin. His Saintship was larger round the body too, and (between
ourselves) he had a pair of thimbles in his mouth, which this
gentleman certainly has not. It cannot be St. Nicholas, after all.
Near by in the next pavilion sit the Van Holps, with their son and
daughter (the Van Gends) from The Hague. Peter's sister is not one to
forget her promises. She has brought bouquets of exquisite hot-house
flowers for the winners.
These pavilions,--and there are others beside,--have all been erected
since daylight. That semicircular one, containing Mynheer Korbes's
family, is very pretty, and proves that the Hollanders are quite
skilled at tentmaking; but I like the Van Glecks' best,--the centre
one, striped red and white, and hung with evergreens.
The one with the blue flags contains the musicians. Those pagoda-like
affairs, decked with sea-shells and streamers of every possible hue,
are the judges' stands; and those columns and flagstaffs upon the ice
mark the limit of the race-course. The two white columns twined with
green, connected at the top by that long floating strip of drapery,
form the starting point. Those flagstaffs, half a mile off, stand at
each end of the boundary line, cut sufficiently deep to be distinct to
the skaters, though not deep enough to trip them when they turn to
come back to the starting-point.
The air is so clear, it seems scarcely possible that the columns and
flagstaffs are so far apart. Of course the judges' stands are but
little nearer together. Half a mile on the ice, when the atmosphere is
like this, is but a short distance after all, especially when fenced
with a living chain of spectators.
The music has commenced. How melody seems to enjoy itself in the open
air! The fiddles have forgotten their agony, and everything is
harmonious. Until you look at the blue tent, it seems that the music
springs from the sunshine, it is so boundless, so joyous. Only the
musicians are solemn.
Where are the racers? All assembled together near the white columns.
It is a beautiful sight,--forty boys and girls in picturesque attire,
darting with electric swiftness in and out among each other, or
sailing in pairs and triplets, beckoning, chatting, whispering, in the
fullness of youthful glee.
A few careful ones are soberly tightening their straps; others,
halting on one leg, with flushed eager faces, suddenly cross the
suspected skate over their knee, give it an examining shake, and dart
off again. One and all are possessed with the spirit of motion. They
cannot stand still. Their skates are a part of them, and every runner
seems bewitched.
Holland is the place for skaters, after all. Where else can nearly
every boy and girl perform feats on the ice that would attract a crowd
if seen on Central Park? Look at Ben! I did not see him before. He is
really astonishing the natives; no easy thing to do in the
Netherlands. Save your strength, Ben; you will need it soon. Now other
boys are trying! Ben is surpassed already. Such jumping, such poising,
such spinning, such india-rubber exploits generally! That boy with a
red cap is the lion now; his back is a watch-spring, his body is
cork--no, it is iron, or it would snap at that. He is a bird, a top, a
rabbit, a corkscrew, a sprite, a flesh-ball, all in an instant. When
you think he is erect, he is down; and when you think he is down, he
is up. He drops his glove on the ice, and turns a somerset as he picks
it up. Without stopping, he snatches the cap from Jacob Poot's
astonished head, and claps it back again "hind side before."
Lookers-on hurrah and laugh. Foolish boy! It is arctic weather under
your feet, but more than temperate overhead. Big drops already are
rolling down your forehead. Superb skater as you are, you may lose the
race.
A French traveler, standing with a notebook in his hand, sees our
English friend Ben buy a doughnut of the dwarf's brother, and eat it.
Thereupon he writes in his note-book that the Dutch take enormous
mouthfuls, and universally are fond of potatoes boiled in molasses.
There are some familiar faces near the white columns. Lambert, Ludwig,
Peter, and Carl are all there, cool, and in good skating order. Hans
is not far off. Evidently he is going to join in the race, for his
skates are on,--the very pair that he sold for seven guilders. He had
soon suspected that his fairy godmother was the mysterious "friend"
who bought them. This settled, he had boldly charged her with the
deed; and she, knowing well that all her little savings had been spent
in the purchase, had not had the face to deny it. Through the fairy
god-mother, too, he had been rendered amply able to buy them back
again. Therefore Hans is to be in the race. Carl is more indignant
than ever about it; but as three other peasant boys have entered, Hans
is not alone.
Twenty boys and twenty girls. The latter by this time are standing in
front, braced for the start; for they are to have the first "run."
Hilda, Rychie, and Katrinka are among them. Two or three bend hastily
to give a last pull at their skate-straps. It is pretty to see them
stamp, to be sure that all is firm. Hilda is speaking pleasantly to a
graceful little creature in a red jacket and a new brown petticoat.
Why, it is Gretel! What a difference those pretty shoes make; and the
skirt and the new cap! Annie Bouman is there too. Even Janzoon Kolp's
sister has been admitted; but Janzoon himself has been voted out by
the directors because he killed the stork, and only last summer was
caught in the act of robbing a bird's nest,--a legal offense in
Holland.
This Janzoon Kolp, you see, was--There, I cannot tell the story just
now. The race is about to commence.
Twenty girls are formed in a line. The music has ceased.
A man whom we shall call the crier stands between the columns and the
first judges' stand. He reads the rules in a loud voice:--
"_The girls and boys are to race in turn, until one girl and
one boy have beaten twice. They are to start in a line from
the united columns, skate to the flagstaff line, turn, and
then come back to the starting-point; thus making a mile at
each run._"
A flag is waved from the judges' stand. Madame Van Gleck rises in her
pavilion. She leans forward with a white handkerchief in her hand.
When she drops it, a bugler is to give the signal for them to start.
The handkerchief is fluttering to the ground. Hark!
They are off!
No. Back again. Their line was not true in passing the judges' stand.
The signal is repeated.
Off again. No mistake this time. Whew! how fast they go!
The multitude is quiet for an instant, absorbed in eager, breathless
watching.
Cheers spring up along the line of spectators. Huzza! five girls are
ahead. Who comes flying back from the boundary mark? We cannot tell.
Something red, that is all. There is a blue spot flitting near it, and
a dash of yellow nearer still. Spectators at this end of the line
strain their eyes, and wish they had taken their post nearer the
flagstaff.
The wave of cheers is coming back again. Now we can see. Katrinka is
ahead!
She passes the Van Holp pavilion. The next is Madame Van Gleck's. That
leaning figure gazing from it is a magnet. Hilda shoots past Katrinka,
waving her hand to her mother as she passes. Two others are close now,
whizzing on like arrows. What is that flash of red and gray? Hurrah,
it is Gretel! She too waves her hand, but toward no gay pavilion. The
crowd is cheering; but she hears only her father's voice, "Well done,
little Gretel!" Soon Katrinka, with a quick merry laugh, shoots past
Hilda. The girl in yellow is gaining now. She passes them all,--all
except Gretel. The judges lean forward without seeming to lift their
eyes from their watches. Cheer after cheer fills the air; the very
columns seem rocking. Gretel has passed them. She has won.
"GRETEL BRINKER, ONE MILE!" shouts the crier.
The judges nod. They write something upon a tablet which each holds in
his hand.
While the girls are resting,--some crowding eagerly around our
frightened little Gretel, some standing aside in high disdain,--the
boys form in a line.
Mynheer Van Gleck drops the handkerchief this time. The buglers give a
vigorous blast. Off start the boys!
Half-way already. Did ever you see the like!
Three hundred legs flashing by in an instant. But there are only
twenty boys. No matter; there were hundreds of legs, I am sure. Where
are they now? There is such a noise one gets bewildered. What are the
people laughing at? Oh! at that fat boy in the rear. See him go! See
him! He'll be down in an instant; no, he won't. I wonder if he knows
he is all alone: the other boys are nearly at the boundary line. Yes,
he knows it. He stops. He wipes his hot face. He takes off his cap,
and looks about him. Better to give up with a good grace. He has made
a hundred friends by that hearty, astonished laugh. Good Jacob Poot!
The fine fellow is already among the spectators, gazing as eagerly as
the rest.
A cloud of feathery ice flies from the heels of the skaters as they
"bring to," and turn at the flagstaffs.
Something black is coming now,--one of the boys: it is all we know. He
has touched the _vox humana_ stop of the crowd; it fairly roars. Now
they come nearer; we can see the red cap. There's Ben, there's Peter,
there's Hans!
Hans is ahead. Young Madame Van Gend almost crushes the flowers in her
hand: she had been quite sure that Peter would be first. Carl Schummel
is next, then Ben, and the youth with the red cap. The others are
pressing close. A tall figure darts from among them. He passes the red
cap, he passes Ben, then Carl. Now it is an even race between him and
Hans. Madame Van Gend catches her breath.
It is Peter! He is ahead! Hans shoots past him. Hilda's eyes fill with
tears: Peter _must_ beat. Annie's eyes flash proudly. Gretel gazes
with clasped hands: four strokes more will take her brother to the
columns.
He is there! Yes; but so was young Schummel just a second before. At
the last instant, Carl, gathering his powers, had whizzed between
them, and passed the goal.
"CARL SCHUMMEL, ONE MILE!" shouts the crier.
Soon Madame Van Gleck rises again. The falling handkerchief starts the
bugle, and the bugle, using its voice as a bowstring, shoots off
twenty girls like so many arrows.
It is a beautiful sight; but one has not long to look: before we can
fairly distinguish them they are far in the distance. This time they
are close upon one another. It is hard to say, as they come speeding
back from the flagstaff, which will reach the columns first. There are
new faces among the foremost,--eager glowing faces, unnoticed before.
Katrinka is there, and Hilda; but Gretel and Rychie are in the rear.
Gretel is wavering, but when Rychie passes her she starts forward
afresh. Now they are nearly beside Katrinka. Hilda is still in
advance: she is almost "home." She has not faltered since that bugle
note sent her flying: like an arrow, still she is speeding toward the
goal. Cheer after cheer rises in the air. Peter is silent, but his
eyes shine like stars. "Huzza! Huzza!"
The crier's voice is heard again.
"HILDA VAN GLECK, ONE MILE!"
A loud murmur of approval runs through the crowd, catching the music
in its course, till all seems one sound, with a glad rhythmic
throbbing in its depths. When the flag waves all is still.
Once more the bugle blows a terrific blast. It sends off the boys like
chaff before the wind,--dark chaff, I admit, and in big pieces.
It is whisked around at the flagstaff, driven faster yet by the cheers
and shouts along the line. We begin to see what is coming. There are
three boys in advance this time, and all abreast,--Hans, Peter, and
Lambert. Carl soon breaks the ranks, rushing through with a whiff.
Fly, Hans; fly, Peter; don't let Carl beat again!--Carl the bitter,
Carl the insolent. Van Mounen is flagging, but you are as strong as
ever. Hans and Peter, Peter and Hans; which is foremost? We love them
both. We scarcely care which is the fleeter.
Hilda, Annie, and Gretel, seated upon the long crimson bench, can
remain quiet no longer. They spring to their feet, so different! and
yet one in eagerness. Hilda instantly reseats herself: none shall know
how interested she is; none shall know how anxious, how filled with
one hope. Shut your eyes then, Hilda, hide your face rippling with
joy. Peter has beaten.
"PETER VAN HOLP, ONE MILE!" calls the crier.
The same buzz of excitement as before, while the judges take notes,
the same throbbing of music through the din; but something is
different. A little crowd presses close about some object near the
column. Carl has fallen. He is not hurt, though somewhat stunned. If
he were less sullen, he would find more sympathy in these warm young
hearts. As it is, they forget him as soon as he is fairly on his feet
again.
The girls are to skate their third mile.
How resolute the little maidens look, as they stand in a line! Some
are solemn with a sense of responsibility; some wear a smile, half
bashful, half provoked; but one air of determination pervades them
all.
This third mile may decide the race. Still, if neither Gretel nor
Hilda win, there is yet a chance among the rest for the silver skates.
Each girl feels sure that this time she will accomplish the distance
in one-half the time. How they stamp to try their runners! How
nervously they examine each strap! How erect they stand at last, every
eye upon Madame Van Gleck!
The bugle thrills through them again. With quivering eagerness they
spring forward, bending, but in perfect balance. Each flashing stroke
seems longer than the last.
Now they are skimming off in the distance.
Again the eager straining of eyes; again the shouts and cheering;
again the thrill of excitement, as after a few moments, four or five
in advance of the rest come speeding back, nearer, nearer to the white
columns.
Who is first? Not Rychie, Katrinka, Annie, nor Hilda, nor the girl in
yellow, but Gretel,--Gretel, the fleetest sprite of a girl that ever
skated. She was but playing in the earlier race: _now_ she is in
earnest, or rather, something within her has determined to win. That
blithe little form makes no effort; but it cannot stop,--not until the
goal is passed!
In vain the crier lifts his voice: he cannot be heard. He has no news
to tell: it is already ringing through the crowd,--_Gretel has won the
silver skates!_
Like a bird she has flown over the ice; like a bird she looks about
her in a timid, startled way. She longs to dart to the sheltered nook
where her father and mother stand. But Hans is beside her; the girls
are crowding round. Hilda's kind, joyous voice breathes in her ear.
From that hour none will despise her. Goose-girl or not, Gretel stands
acknowledged Queen of the Skaters.
With natural pride, Hans turns to see if Peter Van Holp is witnessing
his sister's triumph. Peter is not looking toward them at all. He is
kneeling, bending his troubled face low, and working hastily at his
skate-strap. Hans is beside him at once.
"Are you in trouble, mynheer?"
"Ah, Hans! that you? Yes; my fun is over. I tried to tighten my strap
to make a new hole, and this botheration of a knife has cut it nearly
in two."
"Mynheer," said Hans, at the same time pulling off a skate, "you must
use my strap!"
"Not I, indeed, Hans Brinker!" cried Peter, looking up; "though I
thank you warmly. Go to your post, my friend: the bugle will sound in
a minute."
"Mynheer," pleaded Hans in a husky voice, "you have called me your
friend. Take this strap--quick! There is not an instant to lose. I
shall not skate this time: indeed, I am out of practice. Mynheer, you
_must_ take it;" and Hans, blind and deaf to any remonstrance, slipped
his strap into Peter's skate, and implored him to put it on.
"Come, Peter!" cried Lambert from the line: "we are waiting for you."
"For Madame's sake," pleaded Hans, "be quick! She is motioning to you
to join the racers. There, the skate is almost on: quick, mynheer,
fasten it. I could not possibly win. The race lies between Master
Schummel and yourself."
"You are a noble fellow, Hans!" cried Peter, yielding at last. He
sprang to his post just as the handkerchief fell to the ground. The
bugle sends forth its blast, loud, clear, and ringing.
Off go the boys!
"Mein Gott!" cries a tough old fellow from Delft. "They beat
everything, these Amsterdam youngsters. See them!"
See them, indeed! They are winged Mercuries, every one of them. What
mad errand are they on? Ah, I know; they are hunting Peter Van Holp.
He is some fleet-footed runaway from Olympus. Mercury and his troop of
winged cousins are in full chase. They will catch him! Now Carl is the
runaway. The pursuit grows furious. Ben is foremost!
The chase turns in a cloud of mist. It is coming this way. Who is
hunted now? Mercury himself. It is Peter, Peter Van Holp! Fly, Peter!
Hans is watching you. He is sending all his fleetness, all his
strength, into your feet. Your mother and sister are pale with
eagerness. Hilda is trembling, and dare not look up, Fly, Peter! The
crowd has not gone deranged; it is only cheering. The pursuers are
close upon you. Touch the white column! It beckons; it is reeling
before you--it--
"Huzza! Huzza! Peter has won the silver skates!"
"PETER VAN HOLP!" shouted the crier. But who heard him? "Peter Van
Holp!" shouted a hundred voices; for he was the favorite boy of the
place. "Huzza! Huzza!"
Now the music was resolved to be heard. It struck up a lively air,
then a tremendous march. The spectators, thinking something new was
about to happen, deigned to listen and to look.
The racers formed in single file. Peter, being tallest, stood first.
Gretel, the smallest of all, took her place at the end. Hans, who had
borrowed a strap from the cake-boy, was near the head.
Three gayly twined arches were placed at intervals upon the river,
facing the Van Gleck pavilion.
Skating slowly, and in perfect time to the music, the boys and girls
moved forward, led on by Peter, It was beautiful to see the bright
procession glide along like a living creature. It curved and doubled,
and drew its graceful length in and out among the arches; whichever
way Peter, the head, went, the body was sure to follow. Sometimes it
steered direct for the centre arch; then, as if seized with a new
impulse, turned away and curled itself about the first one; then
unwound slowly, and bending low, with quick snake-like curvings,
crossed the river, passing at length through the farthest arch.
When the music was slow, the procession seemed to crawl like a thing
afraid; it grew livelier, and the creature darted forward with a
spring, gliding rapidly among the arches, in and out, curling,
twisting, turning, never losing form, until at the shrill call of the
bugle rising above the music it suddenly resolved itself into boys and
girls, standing in double semicircle before Madame Van Gleck's
pavilion.
Peter and Gretel stand in the centre, in advance of the others. Madame
Van Gleck rises majestically. Gretel trembles, but feels that she
must look at the beautiful lady. She cannot hear what is said, there
is such a buzzing all around her. She is thinking that she ought to
try and make a courtesy, such as her mother makes to the _meester_,
when suddenly something so dazzling is placed in her hand that she
gives a cry of joy.
Then she ventures to look about her. Peter too has something in his
hands. "Oh, oh! how splendid!" she cries; and "Oh! how splendid!" is
echoed as far as people can see.
Meantime the silver skates flash in the sunshine, throwing dashes of
light upon those two happy faces.
"Mevrouw Van Gend sends a little messenger with her bouquets,--one for
Hilda, one for Carl, and others for Peter and Gretel."
At sight of the flowers, the Queen of the Skaters becomes
uncontrollable. With a bright stare of gratitude, she gathers skates
and bouquet in her apron, hugs them to her bosom, and darts off to
search for her father and mother in the scattering crowd.
JOHN DONNE
(1573-1631)
[Illustration: JOHN DONNE]
"The memory of Dr. Donne must not, cannot die, as long as men speak
English," wrote Izaak Walton, "whilst his conversation made him and
others happy. His life ought to be the example of more than that age
in which he died."
Born in 1573, all the influences of the age in which Donne lived
nourished his large nature and genius. Shakespeare and Marlowe were
nine years older than he; Chapman fourteen; Spenser, Lyly, and Richard
Hooker each twenty; while Sir Philip Sidney counted one year less.
Lodge and Puttenham were grown men, and Greene and Nash riotous boys.
In the following year Ben Jonson "came forth to warm our ears," and
soon after we have his future co-worker Inigo Jones. It was the time
of a multitude of poets,--Drayton, the Fletchers, Beaumont, Wither,
Herrick, Carew, Suckling, and others. Imagination was foremost, and
was stimulated by vast discoveries. Debates upon ecclesiastical
reform, led by Wyclif, Tyndal, Knox, Foxe, Sternhold, Hopkins, and
others, had prepared the way; and the luminous literatures of Greece
and Italy, but recently brought into England, had made men's spirits
receptive and creative. It was a period of vast conceptions, when men
discovered themselves and the world afresh.
Under such outward conditions Donne was born, in London, "of good and
virtuous parents," says Walton, being descended on his mother's side
from no less distinguished a personage than Sir Thomas More. In 1584,
when he was eleven years old, with a good command both of French and
Latin, he passed from the hands of tutors at home to Hare Hall, a much
frequented college at Oxford. Here he formed a friendship with Henry
Wotton, who, after the poet's death, collected the material from which
Walton wrote his tender and sincere 'Life of Donne.'
After leaving Oxford he traveled for three years on the Continent, and
on his return in 1592 became a member of Lincoln's Inn, with intent to
study law; but his law never, says Walton, "served him for other use
than an ornament and self-satisfaction." While a member of Lincoln's
Inn he became one of the coterie of the poets of his youth. To this
time are to be referred those of his 'Divine Poems' which show him a
sincere Catholic. Stirred by the increasing differences between the
Romanist and the Anglican denominations, Donne turned toward
theological questions, and finally cast his lot with the new
doctrines. His large nature, impetuously reacting from the asceticism
to which he had been bred, turned to excess and overboldness in
action, and an occasional coarseness of phrasing in his poems.
The first of his famous 'Satires' are dated 1593, and all were
probably written before 1601. During this time also he squandered his
father's legacy of £3000. In 1596, when the Earl of Essex defeated the
Spanish navy and pillaged Cadiz, Donne, now one of the first poets of
the time, was among his followers. "Not long after his return into
England ... the Lord Ellesmere, the Keeper of the Great Seal,...
taking notice of his learning, languages, and other abilities, and
much affecting his person and behavior, took him to be his chief
secretary, supposing and intending it to be an introduction to some
weighty employment in the State;... and did always use him with much
courtesy, appointing him a place at his own table." Here he met the
niece of Lady Ellesmere,--the daughter of Sir George More, Lord
Lieutenant of the Tower,--whom at Christmas, 1600, he married, despite
the opposition of her father. Sir George, transported with wrath,
obtained Donne's imprisonment; but the poet finally regained his
liberty and his wife, Sir George in the end forgiving the young
couple. "Mr. Donne's estate was the greatest part spent in many
chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought experience, he [being] out
of all employment that might yield a support for himself and wife."
The depth and intensity of Donne's feeling for this beautiful and
accomplished woman are manifested, says Mr. Norton, in all the poems
known to be addressed to her, such as 'The Anniversary' and 'The
Token.'
Of 'The Valediction Forbidding Mourning' Walton declares:--"I beg
leave to tell that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them;" while from Lowell's unpublished 'Lecture on Poetic
Diction' Professor Norton quotes the opinion that "This poem is a
truly sacred one, and fuller of the soul of poetry than a whole
Alexandrian Library of common love verses."
During this period of writing for court favors, Donne wrote many of
his sonnets and studied the civil and canon law. After the death of
his patron Sir Francis in 1606, Donne divided his time between
Mitcham, whither he had removed his family, and London, where he
frequented distinguished and fashionable drawing-rooms. At this time
he wrote his admirable epistles in verse, 'The Litany,' and funeral
elegies on Lady Markham and Mistress Bulstrode; but those poems are
merely "occasional," as he was not a poet by profession. At the
request of King James he wrote the 'Pseudo-Martyr,' published in 1610.
In 1611 appeared his funeral elegy 'An Anatomy of the World,' and one
year later another of like texture, 'On the Progress of the Soul,'
both poems being exalted and elaborate in thought and fancy.
The King, desiring Donne to enter into the ministry, denied all
requests for secular preferment, and the unwilling poet deferred his
decision for almost three years. All that time he studied textual
divinity, Greek, and Hebrew. He was ordained about the beginning of
1615. The King made him his chaplain in ordinary, and promised other
preferments. "Now," says Walton, "the English Church had gained a
second St. Austin, for I think none was so like him before his
conversion, none so like St. Ambrose after it; and if his youth had
the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellences of the other,
the learning and holiness of both."
In 1621 the King made him Dean of St. Paul's, and vicar of St. Dunstan
in the West. By these and other ecclesiastical emoluments "he was
enabled to become charitable to the poor and kind to his friends, and
to make such provision for his children that they were not left
scandalous, as relating to their or his profession or quality."
His first printed sermons appeared in 1622. The epigrammatic terseness
and unexpected turns of imagination which characterize the poems, are
found also in his discourses. Three years later, during a dangerous
illness, he composed his 'Devotion.' He died on the 31st of March,
1631.
"Donne is full of salient verses," says Lowell in his 'Shakespeare
Once More,' "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." There are few in
which an occasional loftiness is sustained throughout, but this
occasional excellence is original, condensed, witty, showing a firm
and strong mind, clear to a degree almost un-English. His poetry has
somewhat of the stability of the Greeks, though it may lack their
sweetness and art. His grossness was the heritage of his time. He is
classed among the "metaphysical poets," of whom Dr. Johnson
wrote:--"They were of very little care to clothe their notions with
elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which
are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to
adorn their thoughts." It was in obedience to such a dictum, and to
Dryden's suggestion, doubtless, that Pope and Parnell recast and
re-versified the 'Satires.'
The first edition of Donne's poems appeared two years after his death.
Several editions succeeded during the seventeenth century. In the more
artificial eighteenth century his harsh and abrupt versification and
remote theorems made him difficult to understand. The best editions
are 'The Complete Poems of John Donne,' edited by Dr. Alexander
Grosart (1872); and 'The Poems of John Donne,' from the text of the
edition of 1633, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1895), from whose
work the citations in this volume are taken.
THE UNDERTAKING
I have done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did,
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.
It were but madness now t' impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he which can have learned the art
To cut it, can find none.
So, if I now should utter this,
Others (because no more
Such stuff to work upon there is)
Would love but as before:
But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes;
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
If, as I have, you also do
Virtue attired in women see,
And dare love that and say so too,
And forget the He and She;
And if this love, though placed so,
From profane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they do, deride;
Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did,
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say "No";
So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips, hands to miss.
Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansiòn,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the other do,
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
SONG
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Then, when thou return'st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not: I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
LOVE'S GROWTH
I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude and season as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
But if this medicine love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence
But mixed of all stuffs paining soul or sense,
And of the sun his working vigor borrow,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown;
As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love-deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awakened root do bud out now.
If, as in water stirred, more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Thou, like so many spheres, but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the spring's increase.
SONG
Sweetest Love, I do not go
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for me:
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feigned deaths to die.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here to-day;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way.
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
Oh, how feeble is man's power,
That, if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to advance.
When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lov'st me as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou waste;
Thou art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfill:
But think that we
Are but turned aside to sleep:
They who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.
FEODOR MIKHAILOVITCH DOSTOÉVSKY
(1821-1881)
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
[Illustration: FEODOR DOSTOÉVSKY]
In certain respects Dostoévsky is the most characteristically national
of Russian writers. Precisely for that reason, his work does not
appeal to so wide a circle outside of his own country as does the work
of Turgénieff and Count L.N. Tolstoy. This result flows not only from
the natural bent of his mind and temperament, but also from the
peculiar vicissitudes of his life as compared with the comparatively
even tenor of their existence, and the circumstances of the time in
which he lived. These circumstances, it is true, were felt by the
writers mentioned; but practically they affected him far more deeply
than they did the others, with their rather one-sided training; and
his fellow-countrymen--especially the young of both sexes--were not
slow to express their appreciation of the fact. His special domain was
the one which Turgénieff and Tolstoy did not understand, and have
touched not at all, or only incidentally,--the great middle class of
society, or what corresponds thereto in Russia.
Through his father, Mikhail Andréevitch Dostoévsky, Feodor
Mikhailovitch belonged to the class of "nobles,"--that is to say, to
the gentry; through his mother, to the respectable, well-to-do
merchant class, which is still distinct from the other, and was even
more so during the first half of the present century; and in personal
appearance he was a typical member of the peasant class. The father
was resident physician in the Marie Hospital for the Poor in Moscow,
having entered the civil service at the end of the war of 1812, during
which he had served as a physician in the army. In the very contracted
apartment which he occupied in the hospital, Feodor was born--one of a
family of seven children, all of whom, with the exception of the
eldest and the youngest, were born there--on October 30th (November
11th), 1821. The parents were very upright, well-educated, devoutly
religious people; and as Feodor expressed it many years later to his
elder brother, after their father died, "Do you know, our parents
were very superior people, and they would have been superior even in
these days." The children were brought up at home as long as possible,
and received their instruction from tutors and their father. Even
after the necessity of preparing the two elder boys for a government
institution forced the parents to send them to a boarding-school
during the week, they continued their strict supervision over their
associates, discouraged nearly all friendships with their comrades,
and never allowed them to go into the street unaccompanied, after the
national custom in good families, even at the age of seventeen or
more.
Feodor, according to the account of his brothers and relatives, was
always a quiet, studious lad, and he with his elder brother Mikhail
spent their weekly holidays chiefly in reading, Walter Scott and James
Fenimore Cooper being among their favor
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