Dies Boreales.

No. III.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

Scene—Gutta Percha.

Time—Early Evening.

North—Buller—Seward—Talboys.

NORTH.

Trim—trim—trim—

TALBOYS.

Gentlemen, are you all seated?

NORTH.

Why into such strange vagaries fall as you would dance, Longfellow! Seize his skirts, Seward. Buller, cling to his knees. Billy, the boat-hook—he will be—he is—overboard.

TALBOYS.

Not at all. Gutta Percha is somewhat crank—and I am steadying her, sir.

NORTH.

What is that round your waist?

TALBOYS.

My Air-girdle.

NORTH.

I insist upon you dropping it, Longman. It makes you reckless. I did not think you were such a selfish character.

TALBOYS.

Alas! in this world, how are our noblest intentions misunderstood! I put it on, sir, that, in case of a capsize, I might more buoyantly bear you ashore.

NORTH.

Forgive me, my friend. But—be seated. Our craft is but indifferently well adapted for the gallopade. Be seated, I beseech you! Or, if you will stand, do plant both feet—do not—do not alternate so—and above all, do not, I implore you—show off on one, as if you were composing and reciting verses.—There, down you are—and if there be not a hole in her bottom, Gutta Percha is safe against all the hidden rocks in Loch Awe.

TALBOYS.

Let me take the stroke oar.

NORTH.

For sake of the ancient houses of the Sewards and the Bullers, sit where you are. We are already in four fathom water.

TALBOYS.

The Lines?

BILLY.

Nea, nea—Mister Talboys. Nane shall steer Perch when He's afloat but t' auld commodore.

NORTH.

Shove off, lads.

TALBOYS.

Are we on earth or in heaven?

BILLY.

On t' watter.

NORTH.

Billy—mum.

TALBOYS.

The Heavens are high—and they are deep. Fear would rise up from that Profound, if fear there could be in the perfectly Beautiful!

SEWARD.

Perhaps there is—though it wants a name.

NORTH.

We know there is no danger—and therefore we should feel no fear. But we cannot wholly disencumber ourselves of the emotions that ordinarily great depth inspires—and verily I hold with Seward, while thus we hang over the sky-abyss below with suspended oars.

SEWARD.

The Ideal rests on the Real—Imagination on Memory—and the Visionary, at its utmost, still retains relations with Truth.

BULLER.

Pray you to look at our Encampment. Nothing visionary there—

TALBOYS.

Which Encampment?

BULLER.

On the hill-side—up yonder—at Cladich.

TALBOYS.

You should have said so at first. I thought you meant that other down—

BULLER.

When I speak to you, I mean thebona fideflesh and blood Talboys, sitting by the side of thebona fideflesh and blood Christopher North, in Gutta Percha, and not that somewhat absurd, and, I trust, ideal personage, standing on his head in the water, or it may be the air, some fathoms below her keel—like a pearl-diver.

TALBOYS.

Put up your hands—so—my dear Mr North, and frame the picture.

NORTH.

And Maculloch not here! Why the hills behind Cladich, that people call tame, make a background that no art might meliorate. Cultivation climbs the green slopes, and overlays the green hill-ridges, while higher up all is rough, brown, heathery, rocky—and behind that undulating line, for the first time in my life, I see the peaks of mountains. From afar they are looking at the Tents. And far off as they are, the power of that Sycamore Grove connects them with our Encampment.

TALBOYS.

Are you sure, sir, they are not clouds?

NORTH.

If clouds, so much the better. If mountains, they deserve to be clouds; and if clouds, they deserve to be mountains.

SEWARD.

The long broad shadow of the Grove tames the white of the Tents—tones it—reduces it into harmony with the surrounding colour—into keeping with the brown huts of the villagers, clustering on bank and brae on both sides of the hollow river.

NORTH.

The cozey Inn itself from its position is picturesque.

TALBOYS.

The Swiss Giantess looks imposing—

BULLER.

So does the Van. But Deeside is the Pandemonium—

TALBOYS.

Well translated by Paterson in his Notes on Milton, "All-Devil's-Hall."

NORTH.

Hush. And how lovely the foreground! Sloping upland—with single trees standing one by one, at distances wide enough to allow to each its own little grassy domain—with its circle of bracken or broom—or its own golden gorse grove—divided by the sylvan course of the hidden river itself, visible only when it glimpses into the Loch—Here, friends, we seem to see the united occupations of pastoral, agricultural—and—

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, I have a proposition to make.

NORTH.

You might have waited a moment till—

BULLER.

Not a moment. We all Four see the background—and the middle-ground and the foreground—and all the ground round and about—and all the islands and their shadows—and all the mountains and theirs—and, towering high above all, that Cruachan of yours, who, I firmly believe, is behind us—though 'twould twist my neck now to get a vizzy of him. No use then in describing all that lies within the visible horizon—there it is—let us enjoy it and be thankful—and let us talk this evening of whatever may happen to come into our respective heads—and I beg leave to add, sir, with all reverence, let's have fair play—let no single man—young or old—take more than his own lawful share—

NORTH.

Sir?

BULLER.

And let the subject of angling be tabooed—and all its endless botheration about baskets and rods, and reels and tackle—salmon, sea-trout, yellow-fin, perch, pike, and the Ferox—and no drivel about Deer and Eagles—

NORTH.

Sir? What's the meaning of all this—Seward, say—tell, Talboys.

BULLER.

And let each man on opening his mouth betimed—and let it be two-minute time—and let me be time-keeper—but, in consideration of your years and habits, and presidency, let time to you, sir, be extended to two minutes and thirty seconds—and let us all talk time about—and let no man seek to nullify the law by talking at railway rate—and let no man who waives his right of turn, however often, think to make up for the loss by claiming quarter of an hour afterwards—and that, too, perhaps at the smartest of the soiree—and let there be no contradiction, either round, flat, or angular—and let no man speak about what he understands—that is, has long studied and made himself master of—for that would be giving him an unfair—I had almost said—would be taking a mean advantage—and let no man—

NORTH.

Why, the mutiny at the Nore was nothing to this!

BULLER.

Lord High Admiral though you be, sir, you must obey the laws of the service—

NORTH.

I see how it is.

BULLER.

How is it?

NORTH.

But it will soon wear off—that's the saving virtue of Champagne.

BULLER.

Champagne indeed! Small Beer, smaller than the smallest size. You have not the heart, sir, to give Champagne.

NORTH.

We had better put about, gentlemen, and go ashore.

BULLER.

My ever-honoured, long-revered sir! I have got intoxicated on our Teetotal debauchery. The fumes of the water have gone to my head—and I need but a few drops of brandy to set me all right. Billy—the flask. There—I am as sober as a Judge.

NORTH.

Ay, 'tis thus, Buller, you wise wag, that you would let the "old man garrulous" into the secret of his own tendencies—too often unconscious he of the powers that have set so many asleep. I accept the law—but let it—do let it be three-minute time.

BULLER.

Five—ten—twenty—"with thee conversing I forget all time."

NORTH.

Strike medium—Ten.

BULLER.

My dear sir, for a moment let me have that Spy-glass.

NORTH.

I must lay it down—for a Bevy of Fair Women are on the Mount—and are brought so near that I hear them laughing—especially the Prima Donna, whose Glass is in dangerous proximity with my nose.

BULLER.

Fling her a kiss, sir.

NORTH.

There—and how prettily she returns it!

BULLER.

Happy old man! Go where you will—

TALBOYS.

Ulysses and the Syrens. Had he my air-girdle, he would swim ashore.

NORTH.

"Oh, mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos!"

TALBOYS.

The words are regretful—but there is no regret in the voice that syllables them—it is clear as a bell, and as gladsome.

NORTH.

Talking of kissing, I hear one of the most melodious songs that ever flowed from lady's lip—

"The current that with gentle motion glides,Thou knowest, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;But when his fair course is not hindered,He makes sweet music with th' enamelled stones,Giving a gentle kiss to every sedgeHe overtaketh in his pilgrimage;And so by many winding nooks he straysWith willing sport to the wild ocean."

Is it not perfect?

SEWARD.

It is. Music—Painting, and Poetry—

BULLER.

Sculpture and architecture.

NORTH.

Buller, you're a blockhead. Dear Mr Alison, in his charmingEssays on Taste, finds a little fault in what seems to me a great beauty in this, one of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare.

BULLER.

Sweetest. That's a miss-mollyish word.

NORTH.

Ass. One of the sweetest passages in Shakspeare. He finds fault with the Current kissing the Sedges. "The pleasing personification which we attribute to a brook is founded upon the faint belief of voluntary motion, and is immediately checked when the Poetdescendsto any minute or particular resemblance."

SEWARD.

Descends!

NORTH.

The word, to my ear, does sound strangely; and though his expression, "faint belief," is a true and a fine one, yet here the doctrine does not apply. Nay, here we have a true notion inconsiderately misapplied. Without doubt Poets of more wit than sensibility do follow on a similitude beyond the suggestion of the contemplated subject. But the rippling of water against a sedge suggests a kiss—is, I believe, a kiss—liquid, soft, loving,lipped.

BULLER.

Beautiful.

NORTH.

Buller, you are a fellow of fine taste. Compare the whole catalogue of metaphorical kisses—admitted and claimable—and you will find this one of the most natural of them all. Pilgrimage, in Shakspeare's day, had dropt, in the speech of our Poets, from its early religious propriety, of seeking a holy place under a vow, into a roving of the region. See his "Passionate Pilgrim." If Shakspeare found the word so far generalised, then "wanderer through the woods," or plains, or through anything else, is the suggestion of the beholding. The river is more, indeed; being, like the pilgrim, on his way to a term, and an obliged way—"the wild ocean."

SEWARD.

The "faint belief of voluntary motion"—Mr Alison's fine phrase—is one, and possibly the grounding incentive to impersonating the "current" here; but other elements enter in; liquidity—transparency—which suggest a spiritual nature, and Beauty which moves Love.

NORTH.

Ay, and the Poets of that age, in the fresher alacrity of their fancy, had a justification of comparisons, which do not occur as promptly to us, nor, when presented to us, delight so much as they would, were our fancy as alive as theirs. You might suspecta prioriOvid, Cowley, and Dryden, as likely to be led by indulgence of their ingenuity into passionless similitudes—and you may misdoubt even that Shakspeare was in danger of being so run away with. But let us have clear and unequivocal instances. This one assuredly is not of the number. It is exquisite.

TALBOYS.

Mr Alison, I presume to think, sir, should either have quoted the whole speech, or kept the whole in view, when animadverting on those two lines about the kissing Pilgrim. Julia, a Lady of Verona, beloved by Proteus, is only half-done—and now she comes—to herself.

"Then let me go, and hinder not my course;I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,And make a pastime of each weary step,Till the last step have brought me to my love;And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,A blessed soul doth in Elysium."

The language of Shakspeare's Ladies is not the language we hear in real life. I wish it were. Real life would then be delightful indeed. Julia is privileged to be poetical far beyond the usage of the very best circles—far beyond that of any mortal creatures. For the God Shakspeare has made her and all her kin poetical—and if you object to any of the lines, you must object to them all. Eminently beautiful, sir, they are; and their beauty lies in the passionate, imaginative spirit that pervades the whole, and sustains the Similitude throughout, without a moment's flagging of the fancy, without a moment's departure from the truthfulness of the heart.

NORTH.

Talboys, I thank you—you are at the root.

SEWARD.

A wonderful thing—altogether—is Impersonation.

NORTH.

It is indeed. If we would know the magnitude of the dominion which the disposition constraining us to impersonate has exercised over the human mind, we should have to go back unto those ages of the world when it exerted itself, uncontrolled by philosophy, and in obedience to religious impulses—when Impersonations of Natural Objects and Powers, of Moral Powers and of Notions entertained by the Understanding, filled the Temples of the Nations with visible Deities, and were worshipped with altars and incense, hymns and sacrifices.

BULLER.

Was ever before such disquisition begotten by—an imaginary kiss among the Sedges!

NORTH.

Hold your tongue, Buller. But if you would see how hard this dominion is to eradicate, look to the most civilised and enlightened times, when severe Truth has to the utmost cleansed the Understanding of illusion—and observe how tenaciously these imaginary Beings, endowed with imaginary life, hold their place in our Sculpture, Painting, and Poetry, and Eloquence—nay, in our common and quiet speech.

SEWARD.

It is all full of them. The most prosaic of prosers uses poetical language without knowing it—and Poets without knowing to what extent and degree.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward, and were we to expatiate in the walks of the profounder emotions, we should sometimes be startled by the sudden apparitions of boldly impersonated Thoughts, upon occasions that did not seem to promise them—where you might have thought that interests of overwhelming moment would have effectually banished the play of imagination.

TALBOYS.

Shakspeare is justified, then—and the Lady Julia spoke like a Lady in Love with all nature—and with Proteus.

BULLER.

A most beautiful day is this indeed—but it is a Puzzler.

"The Swan on still St Mary's LakeFloats double, Swan and Shadow;"

But here all the islands float double—and all the castles and abbeys—and all the hills and mountains—and all the clouds and boats and men,—double, did I say—triple—quadruple,—we are here, and there, and everywhere, and nowhere, all at the same moment. Inishail, I have you—no—Gutta Percha slides over you, and you have no material existence. Very well.

SEWARD.

Is there no house on Inishail?

NORTH.

Not one—but the house appointed for all living. A Burial-place. I see it—but not one of you—for it is little noticeable, and seldom used—on an average, one funeral in the year. Forty years ago I stepped into a small snuff-shop in the Saltmarket, Glasgow, to replenish my shell—and found my friend was from Lochawe-side. I asked him if he often revisited his native shore, and he answered—seldom, and had not for a long time—but that though his lot did not allow him to live there, he hoped to be buried in Inishail. We struck up a friendship—his snuff was good, and so was his whisky, for it was unexcised. A few years ago, trolling for Feroces, I met a boat with a coffin, and in it the body of the old tobacconist.

SEWARD.

"The Churchyard among the Mountains," in Wordsworth'sExcursion, is alone sufficient for his immortality on earth.

NORTH.

It is. So for Gray's is his Elegy. But some hundred and forty lines inall—no more—yet how comprehensive—how complete! "In a Country Churchyard!" Every generation there buries the whole hamlet—which is much the same as burying the whole world—or a whole world.

SEWARD.

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!"

All Peasants—diers and mourners! Utmost simplicity of all belonging to life—utmost simplicity of all belonging to death. Therefore, universally affecting.

NORTH.

Then the—Grayishness.

BULLER.

The what, sir?

NORTH.

The Grayishness. The exquisite scholarship, and the high artifice of the words and music—yet all in perfect adaptation to the scene and its essential character. Is there not in that union and communion of the solemn-profound, and the delicate-exquisite, something Cathedral-like? Which has the awe and infinitude of Deity and Eternity, and the prostrations and aspirations of adoration for its basis—expressed in the general structure and forms; and all this meeting and blent into the minute and fine elaboration of the ornaments? Like the odours that steal and creep on the soft, moist, evening air, whilst the dim hush of the Universal Temple dilates and elates. The least and the greatest in one. Why not? Is not that spiritual—angelical—divine! The least is not too exiguous for apprehension—the amplest exceeds not comprehension—and their united power is felt when not understood. I speak, Seward, of that which might be suggested for a primary fault in the Elegy—the contrast of the most artful, scholarly style, and the simple, rude, lowly, homely matter. But you shall see that every fancy seizes, and every memory holds especially those verses and wordings which bring out this contrast—that richest line—

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn!"

is felt to be soon followed well by that simplest—

"No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"——

where—I take "lowly" to imply low in earth—humbly turfed or flowered—and of the lowly.

SEWARD.

And so, sir, the pomp of a Cathedral is described, though a village Church alone is in presence. So Milton, Cromwell, and other great powers are set in array—that which these were not, against that which those were.

NORTH.

Yet hear Dr Thomas Brown—an acute metaphysician—but an obtuse critic—and no Poet at all. "The two images in this stanza ('Full many a gem,' &c.,) certainly produce very different degrees of poetical delight. That which is borrowed from the rose blooming in solitude pleases in a very high degree, both as it contains a just and beautiful similitude, and still more as the similitude is one of the most likely to have arisen in such a situation. But the simile in the two first lines of the stanza, though it may perhaps philosophically be as just, has no other charm, and strikes us immediately as not the natural suggestion of such a moment and such a scene. To a person moralising amid a simple Churchyard, there is perhaps no object that would not sooner have occurred than this piece of minute jewellery—'a gem of purest ray serene, in the unfathomed caves of ocean.'"

SEWARD.

A person moralising! He forgot that person was Thomas Gray. And he never knew what you have told us now.

NORTH.

Why, my dear Seward, the Gem is the recognised most intense expression, from the natural world, of worth—inestimable priceless price—dependent onrarity and beauty. The Flower is a like intense expression, from the same world, of the power to call forth love. The first image isfeltby every reader to be high, andexaltingits object; the second to be tender, and openlypathetic. Of course it moves more, and of course it comes last. The Poet has just before spoken of Milton and Cromwell—of bards and kings—and history with all her wealth. Is the transition violent from these objects to Gems? He is moved by, but he is not bound to, the scene and time. His own thoughts emancipate. Brown seems utterly to have forgotten that the Poet himself is the Dramatic person of the Monologue. Shall he be restricted from using the richness and splendour of his own thoughts? That one stanza sums up the two or three preceding—and is perfectly attuned to the reigning mood, temper, or pathos.

BULLER.

Thank you, gentlemen. The Doctor is done brown.

NORTH.

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave!"

Methinks I could read you a homily on that Text.

BULLER.

To-morrow, sir, if you please. To-morrow is Sunday—and you may read it to us as we glide to Divine Service at Dalmally—two of us to the Established, and two of us to the Free Kirk.

NORTH.

Be it so. But you will not be displeased with me for quoting now, from heart-memory, a single sentence on the great line, from Beattie, and from Adam Fergusson. "It presents to the imagination a wide plain, where several roads appear, crowded with glittering multitudes, and issuing from different quarters, but drawing nearer and nearer as they advance, till they terminate in the dark and narrow house, where all their glories enter in succession, and disappear for ever."

SEWARD.

Thank you, sir. That is Beattie?

NORTH.

It is. Fergusson's memorable words are—"If from this we are disposed to collect any inference adverse to the pursuits of glory, it may be asked whither do the paths of ignominy lead? If to the grave also, then our choice of a life remains to be made on the grounds of its intrinsic value, without regard to an end which is common to every station of life we can lead, whether illustrious or obscure."

SEWARD.

Very fine. Who says it? Fergusson—who was he?

NORTH.

The best of you Englishers are intolerably ignorant about Scotland. Do you know the Reverend John Mitford?

SEWARD.

I do—and have for him the greatest respect.

NORTH.

So have I. He is one of our best Editors—as Pickering is one of our best Publishers of the Poets. But I am somewhat doubtful of the truthfulness of his remarks on the opening of the Elegy, in the Appendix to his excellent Life of Gray. "The Curfew 'toll' is not the appropriate word—it was not a slow bell tolling for the dead."

SEWARD.

True enough, not for the dead—but Gray then felt as if it were for the dying—and chose to say so—the parting day. Was it quick and "merry as a marriage-bell?" I can't think it—nor did Milton, "swingingslowwith sullen roar." Gray was Il Penseroso. Prospero calls it the "solemn curfew." Toll is right.

NORTH.

But, says my friend Mitford, "there is another error, a confusion of time.The curfew tolls, and the ploughman returns from work. Now the ploughman returns two or three hours before the curfew rings; and 'the glimmering landscape' has 'long ceased to fade' before the curfew. The 'parting day' is also incorrect; the day had long finished. But if the word Curfew is taken simply for 'the Evening Bell,' then also is the time incorrect—and aknellis not tolled for the parting, but for the parted—'and leaves the world to darkness and to me.' 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incidents, instead of being progressive, fall back, and make the picture confused and inharmonious; especially as it appears soon after that it wasnotdark. For 'the moping owl does to the moon complain.'"

SEWARD.

Pardon me, sir, I cannot venture to answer all that—but if Mitford be right, Gray must be very wrong indeed. Let me see—give us it over again—sentence by sentence—

BULLER.

No—no—no. Once is enough—and enough is as good as a feast.

NORTH.

Talboys?

TALBOYS.

Since you have a great respect for Mr Mitford, sir, so have I. But hitherto I have been a stranger to his merits.

SEWARD.

The best of you Scottishers are intolerably ignorant about England.

TALBOYS.

In the first place, Mr North, when does the Curfew toll, or ring?—for hang me if I remember—or rather ever knew. And in the second place, when does the Evening Bell give tongue?—for hang me if I am much better informed as to his motions. Yet I should know something of the family of the Bells. Say—eighto'clock. Well. It is summer-time, I suppose; for you cannot believe that so dainty a person in health and habits, as the Poet Gray, would write an Elegy in a Country churchyard in winter, and well on towards night. True, that is a way of speaking; he did not write it with his crow-quill, in his neat hand, on his neat vellum, on the only horizontal tomb-stone. But in the Churchyard he assumes to sit—probably under a Plane-tree, for sake of the congenial Gloom. Season of the year ascertained—Summer—time of Curfew—eight—then I can find no fault with the Ploughman. He comes in well—either as an image or a man. He must have been an honest, hard-working fellow, and worth the highest wages going between the years 1745 and 1750. At what hour do ploughmen leave the stilts in Cambridgeshire? We must not say at six. Different hours in different counties, Buller.

BULLER.

Go on—all's right, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

It is not too much to believe that Hodge did not grudge, occasionally, a half-hour over, to a good master. Then he had to stable his horses—Star and Smiler—rub them down—bed them—fill rack and manger—water them—make sure their noses were in the oats—lock the stable before the nags were stolen—and then, and not till then,

"The Ploughman homewards plods his weary way."

For he does not sleep on the Farm—he has a wife and small family—that is, a large family of smallish children—in the Hamlet, at least two miles off—and he does not walk for a wager of a flitch of bacon and barrel of beer—but for his accustomed rasher and a jug—and such endearments as will restore his weariness up to the proper pitch for a sound night's sleep. God bless him!

BULLER.

Shorn of your beams, Mr North, eclipsed.

TALBOYS.

The ploughman, then, does not return "two or three hours before the curfew rings." Nor has "the glimmering landscape long ceased to fade before the curfew." Nor is "the parting day incorrect." Nor "has the day long finished." Nor, when it may have finished, or may finish, can any man in the hamlet, during all that gradual subsiding of light and sound, take upon him to give any opinion at all.

NORTH.

My boy, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

"And leave the world to darkness and to me." Ay—into his hut goes the ploughman, and leaves the world and me to darkness—which is coming—but not yet come—the Poet knows it is coming—near at hand its coming glooms; and Darkness shows her divinity as she is preparing to mount her throne.

NORTH.

Nothing can be better.

TALBOYS.

"'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight.' Here the incident, instead of being progressive, falls back, and makes the picture confused and inharmonious." Confused and inharmonious! By no manner of means. Nothing of the sort. There is no retrogression—the day has been unwilling to die—cannot believe she is dying—and cannot think 'tis for her the curfew is tolling; but the Poet feels it is even so; the glimmering and the fading, beautiful as they are, are sure symptoms—she is dying into Evening, and Evening will soon be the dying into Night; but to the Poet's eye how beautiful the transmutations! Nor knows he that the Moon has arisen, till, at the voice of the nightbird, he looks up the ivied church-tower, and there she is, whether full, waning, or crescent, there are not data for the Astronomer to declare.

NORTH.

My friend Mr Mitford says of the line, "No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed"—That "here the epithetlowly, as applied tobed, occasions an ambiguity, as to whether the Poet means the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid;" and he adds, "there can be no greater fault in composition than a doubtful meaning."

TALBOYS.

There cannot be a more touching beauty. Lowly applies to both. From their lowly bed in their lowly dwellings among the quick, those joyous sounds used to awaken them; from their lowly bed in their lowly dwellings among the dead, those joyous sounds will awaken them never more: but a sound will awaken them when He comes to judge both the quick and the dead; and for them there is Christian hope—from

"Many a holy text around them strewedThat teach the rustic moralist to die."

NORTH.

"Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe hath broke;How jocund did they drive their team afield!How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!"

This stanza—says Mr Mitford—"is made up of various pieces inlaid. 'Stubborn glebe' is from Gay; 'drive afield' from Milton; 'sturdy stroke' from Spenser. Such is too much the system of Gray's composition, and therefore such the cause of his imperfections. Purity of language, accuracy of thought, and even similarity of rhyme, all give way to the introduction of certain poetical expressions; in fact, the beautiful jewel, when brought, does not fit into the new setting, or socket. Such is the difference between the flower stuck into the ground and those that grow from it." Talboys?

BULLER.

Why not—Buller?

TALBOYS.

I give way to the gentleman.

BULLER.

Not for worlds would I take the word out of any man's mouth.

TALBOYS.

Gray took "stubborn glebe" from Gay. Why from Gay? It has been familiar in men's mouths from the introduction of agriculture into this Island. May not a Saxon gentleman say "drive their teams afield" without charge of theft from Milton, who said "drove afield." Who first said "Gee-ho, Dobbin?" Was Spenser the first—the only man before Milton—who used "sturdy stroke?" and has nobody used it since Gray?

BULLER.

You could give a "sturdy stroke" yourself, Talboys. What's your weight?

TALBOYS.

Gray's style is sometimes too composite—you yourself, sir, would not deny it is so—but Mr Mitford's instances here are absurd, and the charge founded on them false. Gray seldom, if ever—say never, "sacrificespurity of language, and accuracy of thought," for the sake of introducing certain poetical expressions. "All give way" is a gross exaggeration. The beautiful words of the brethren, with which his loving memory was stored, came up in the hour of imagination, and took their place among the words as beautiful of his own congenial inspirations; the flowers he transplanted from poetry "languished not, grew dim, nor died;" for he had taken them up gently by the roots, and with some of the old mould adhering to their tendrils, and, true florist as he was, had prepared for them a richest soil in his own garden, which he held from nature, and which the sun and the dew of nature nourished, and will nourish for ever.

BULLER.

That face is not pleasant, sir. Nothing so disfigures a face as envy. Old Poets at last grow ugly all—but you, sir, are a Philosopher—and on your benign countenance 'twas but a passing cloud. There—you are as beautiful as ever—how comely in critical old age! Any farther fault to find with our friend Mitford?

NORTH.

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,Some pious drops the closing eye requires,Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."

"'Pious drops' is from Ovid—piæ lachrymæ; 'closing eye' is from Pope—'voice of nature' from the Anthologia, and the last line from Chaucer—'Yet on our ashes cold is fire yreken.'From so many quarries are the stones brought to form this elaborate Mosaic pavement." I say, for "piæ lachrymæ" all honour to Ovid—for "pious drops" all honour to Gray. "Closing eye" isnotfrom Pope's Elegy; "voice of nature" isnotfrom the Anthologia, but from Nature herself; Chaucer's line may have suggested Gray's, but the reader of Chaucer knows that Gray's has a tender and profound meaning which is not in Chaucer's at all—and he knows, too, that Mr Mitford is not a reader of Chaucer—for were he, he could not have written "ashes" for "ashen." There werenoquarries—there isnoMosaic. Mosaic pavement! Worse, if possible—more ostentatiously pedantic—even than stuck in flowers, jewels, settings, and sockets.

TALBOYS.

The Stanza is sacred to sorrow.

NORTH.

"From this Stanza," quoth Mitford, "the style of the composition drops intoa lower key; the language is plainer, and is not in harmony with the splendid and elaborate diction of the former part." This objection is disposed of by what I said some minutes ago——

BULLER.

Half an hour ago—onGrayishness.

NORTH.

And I have only this farther to say, gentlemen, that though the language is plainer—yet it is solemn; nor is it unpoetical—for the hoary-headed swain was moved as he spake; the style, if it drop into a lower key, is accordant with that higher key on which the music was pitched that has not yet left our hearing. An Elegy is not an Ode—the close should be mournful as the opening—with loftier strain between—and it is so; and whatever we might have to say of the Epitaph—its final lines are "awful"—as every man must have felt them to be—whether thought on in our own lonely night-room—in the Churchyard of Grantchester, where it is said Gray mused the Elegy—or by that Burial-ground in Inishail—or here afloat in the joyous sunshine for an hour privileged to be happy in a world of grief.

BULLER.

Let's change the subject, sir. May I ask what author you have in your other hand?

NORTH.

Alison on Taste.

BULLER.

You don't say so! I thought you quoted from memory.

NORTH.

So I did; but I have dog-eared a page or two.

BULLER.

I see no books lying about in the Pavilion—only Newspapers—and Magazines—and Reviews—and trash of that kind——

NORTH.

Without which, you, my good fellow, could not live a week.

BULLER.

The Spirit of the Age! The Age should be ashamed of herself for living from hand to mouth on Periodical Literature. The old Lady should indeed, sir. If the Pensive Public conceits herself to be the Thinking World—

NORTH.

Let us help to make her so. I have a decent little Library of some three hundred select volumes in the Van—my Plate-chest—and a few dozens of choice wines for my friends—of Champagne, which you, Buller, call small beer——

BULLER.

I retracted and apologised. Is that the key of the Van at your watch-chain?

NORTH.

It is. So many hundred people about the Encampment—sometimes among them suspicious strangers in paletots in search of the picturesque, and perhaps the pecuniary—that it is well to intrust the key to my own body-guard. It does not weigh an ounce. Andthatlock is not to be picked by the ghost of Huffey White.

SEWARD.

But of the volume in hand, sir?

NORTH.

"In that fine passage in the Second Book of the Georgics," says Mr Alison, "in which Virgil celebrates the praises of his native country, after these fine lines—

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