Chapter 8

'Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnumEruerint Danai!'

Has Nature feared, therefore, to use it? She builds the world with it. And look how she proceeds. To these two—the Lovers as they are called—theUniverse isinthese two—to each in the other. The rest of the Universe is shut out from their view, or more wonderfully comprehended in their view—seen to each through and relatively to the other—seen transformed in the magical mirror of their love. Can you expect anything less than that they should go by different doors, or by the same door, into Bedlam? Lo! they have become a Father and a Mother! They have returned into the real world—into a world yet dearer than Dreamland! The world in which their children shall grow up into men and women. Sedate, vigilant, circumspect, sedulous, industrious, wise, just—Pater-familias and Mater-familias. So Nature lets down from an Unreal which she has chosen, and knows how to use.

NORTH.

The ground of the Poet, my dear Talboys, is an extraordinary dotation of sensibility—of course, ten thousand dangers. Life is exuberant in him—and if the world lies at all wide about him, the joy of the great and the beautiful. The dearest of all interests to every rational soul is her own coming destiny. The Poet, quick and keen above all men in self-reference, must, among his contemplations and creations, be full of contemplating and creating his own future, and must pour over it all his power of joy, rosy and golden hopes. And that vision, framed with all his power of the Ideal, must needs be something exceedingly different from that which this bare, and blank, and hard earth of reality has to bestow. What follows? A severe, and perhaps an unprepared trial. The self-protection demanded of him is a morally-guarded heart and life. The protection provided for him is—his Art. The visions—the Ideal—the Great and the Fair, which he cannot incorporate in his own straitened existence—the ambitions, at large, of his imagination he localises—colonises—imparadises—in his works. He has two lives; the life of his daily steps upon the hard and bare, or the green, and elastic, and sweet-smelling earth, and the life of his books, papers, and poetical, studious reveries—art-intending, intellectual ecstasies.

BULLER.

What say you, sir, to the charge of "overweening self-conceit and indolence?"

NORTH.

What say you, my Buller?

BULLER.

That I do not quite understand the proposition. Is it, thatgenerallythe "sanguine" temperament is apt to make these accompaniments for itself? Or that in the Poet the three elements are often found together? If the former, I see no truth in it. The sanguine temper should naturally inspire activity—and I do not quite know what is here an "overweening conceit." That a sanguine-minded man is apt to have greatself-reliancein any project he has in hand—a confidence in his own present views that is not a little refractory to good argument of cooler observers, I understand. But that sort of self-conceit which makes of a man an intellectual fop—gazing in the pocket looking-glass of self-conceit at his own perfections—vain self-contemplation and self-adulation—the sanguine temper is far more likely to carry a man out of himself, to occupy his time, his pleasure, and his passion in works, and withdraw them from himself. I suppose, therefore, that we must look to the Poet alone. I daresay that small poets have a great conceit of themselves. They have a talent that is flattered and admired far beyond its worth. They readily fancy themselves members of the Immortal Family. But a true Poet has a thousand sources of humility. Does he not reverence all greatness, moral and intellectual? Does he not reverence, above all, the mighty masters of song? He understands their greatness—he can measure distances—which your small Poet cannot.

NORTH.

Every soul conscious of power is in danger of estimating the power too highly; but I do not know why the Poet should be so more than another man. Then, what is "overweening?" Is it overvaluing himself relatively to other men? Is it over-measuring his power of achievement—whencedisproportionate undertakings, that fail in their accomplishment? I can more easily suppose that all the Sons of Genius "overween" in this direction. They must needs shape enterprises of unattainable magnificence. But some one has said rightly that in attempting the Impossible we accomplish the Possible. But this is a higher and truer and more generous meaning, I fancy, than is intended by the choice of that slighting and scoffing dispraise of "overweening"—a word pointing to a social, or moral, defect that makes an exceedingly disagreeable companion, rather than to any sublime error in the calculations of genius. And I come back upon the small sinner in rhyme, who has been cockered by his friends and cuddled by himself into conceit, till he thinks the world not good enough for him—takes no trouble to satisfy Its reasonable expectations, and finds that It will take none to satisfy his unreasonable ones—thereis a source of "numberless misfortunes"—a seedy surtout, a faded vest, and very threadbare inexpressibles.

TALBOYS.

And why should those who are sanguine in hope be "too frequently indolent?" A hopeful temper engender indolence! A desponding temper engenders it; a hopeful one is the very spur of activity. The sanguine spirit of hope taking possession of an active intellect, engenders the Projector—of all human beings the most restless and indefatigable—his undaunted and unconquerable trust in futurity creates for itself incessantly new shapes of exertion—till the curtain falls.

SEWARD.

There is, I suppose, a species of Castle-builder who hopes and does nothing; as if he believed that futurity had the special charge of bringing into existence the children of his wish. But his temper is not properly called sanguine—it isdreamy. Neither is his indolence a consequence of his dreams; but as much or more, his dreams, of his indolence. He sits and dreams. Say that Nature has given to some one, as she will from time to time, an active fancy and an indolent humour—a disproportion in one faculty. 'Tis a misfortune: and a reason why his friends should seek out, if possible, the means of stirring him into activity; but it has nothing to do with describing the Idea of the Poetical Character.

TALBOYS.

The Great Poets have not been indolent. They have been working men. The genius of the Poet calls him to his work. Shakspeare was a man of business. Spenser was a state-secretary.

BULLER.

Read Milton's Life.

TALBOYS.

See Cowper drowned in an invincible melancholy, and deliberately choosing a long-lasting and severe task of his Art, as a means of relieving, from hour to hour, the pressure of his intolerable burthen. If he had drooped under his hopeless disease into motionless stupor, you could not have wondered, much less could you have blamed. He fought, pen in hand, year after year, against the still-repelled and ultimately victorious enemy.

BULLER.

Think of Southey!

NORTH.

Yet the Poet is in danger of indolence. For in his younger years joy comes to him unpurchased. To do, takes him out of his dream. To do nothing, is to live in an enchanted world; and with all tenderness be it said, he hath, too, his specific temptation to overmuch self-esteem. Because his specific faculty and habit are to refer every thing that befalls constantly to himself as a contemplative spirit. Herein is the most luminous intuition alone. The perversion is to be quick and keen in referring to the ignobler Self—for as I or you said, and all men may know, the Poet assuredly has two souls. Personal estimation, personal prospects! A sensibility to injury, to fear, to harm, to misprision—a quick jealousy—suspicion—soreness! You do see them in Poets—and in Artists, who after their kind are Poets—for they are Men.As to excessive reflection upon and admiration of their own intellectual powers, while we rightly condemn it, we should remember that the Poetisgifted, and in comparison with most of those with whom he lives, is in certain directions far abler; and more delicate apprehensions he probably has than most or all of them—at least of such apprehensions as come under the Pleasures of Imagination. And when he begins to call auditors to his Harp—then, well-a-day!—then he lives and feeds upon the breath of praise—and upon the glow of sympathy—a flower that opens to the caress of zephyrs and sunbeams, and without them pines. Then comes envy and spiritual covetousness. Others obtain the praise and the sympathy—others who merit them less, or not at all. What a temptation to disparage all others—alive! And to the Poet, essentially plunged in the individualities of his own being, how easy! For each of his rivals has a different individuality from his own; and how easy to construe points of difference into points of inferiority! Easy to him whom pain wrings more than it does others—to whom disagreeable things are more disagreeable—

TALBOYS.

Have done, sir, I beseech you, have done—talk not so of the Brotherhood.

NORTH.

I am thinking of some of the most majestic!

SEWARD.

Alas! it is true.

NORTH.

Mr Stewart more than insinuates, with a wavering and equivocating uncertainty of assertion he signifies, that thePoet, or poetic mind, is not much endowed with "common sense." Talboys, what say you?

TALBOYS.

I rather think it unusually well-endowed that way, and that it is the opposite class of minds—those that cultivate abstract science—that have, or seem to have, least of it.

SEWARD.

The poetic mind, from its sensibility, is peculiarly ready to sympathise with the general mind, and it is that sympathy that produces common sense. Common sense is instinctive; and in its origin allied to that which in the higher acts of the poet's mind is called Inspiration. Therefore it is native to his mind. It is an inspiration of his mind as much as poetic Imagination.

BULLER.

Has Seward said what you meant to say, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

He has—why did not you? But observe, Buller, common sense is not solely employed upon a man's own conduct: it has all the world besides for its object. The common sense of a Poet in his own case may be disturbed by his sensibilities, which are greater than common; while yet, in all other cases, it may be truer than the magnet.

BULLER.

Good.

TALBOYS.

I will trouble you, if you please, for an Obs.

BULLER.

I have long desired a definition of Common Sense. It seems to me rather a commonplace thing. I suppose it is called Common Sense, as being common to men, so that you may expect it in 9 out of 10, or 99 out of 100.

TALBOYS.

Pretty good.

BULLER.

Common Life seems to be the school of it. It seems a practical faculty, or to respect practice. Obvious relations are its domain—obvious connexions of cause and effect—means and end. A man of common sense effects a plain object, quickly and cheaply, by ready and direct means. High reach of thought is distinguished from common sense on the same side, as downrightfolly is on the other. Yet the interests dealt with need not be, if they frequently are, low; only the relations obvious. Perhaps the phrase is oftener brought out by its violation than its maintenance. He who wants common sense employs means thwarting his end. I propose that Common Sense is a combination of common understanding and common experience.

TALBOYS.

I asked you, my dear Buller, for an Obs—one single Obs—you have given us a dozen—a Series. Let us take them one by one, and dissect the—

BULLER.

Be hanged if we do! I am afraid that my notion of Common Sense is but a low one. I think that a blacksmith may acquire common sense about shoeing of horses, and a housewife about her kitchen and laundry.Sound senseapplicable to high matters is another matter—une toute autre chose.

TALBOYS.

Be done, dear Buller.

BULLER.

In a moment. Moreover, I can imagine a strong, clear, sound senseconfinedto a specialhigheremployment—a lawyer who would manage the most difficult and hazardous cause with admirable discretion, and make a mere fool of himself in marrying.

TALBOYS.

Be done—be done.

BULLER.

In a moment.Iam not able to affirm that a Poet of high and sound facultiesmusthave the talent for conducting himself with prudence in the common affairs of life; and reallythatis what seems to me to beCommon Sense.

TALBOYS.

Be done now—you cannot better it.

BULLER.

About the Poet what can I say that every body does not know and say in all the weekly newspapers. Why, gentlemen, the Mission of the Poet is to fight the fight of the Spirit against the flesh, and to extend the reign of the Beautiful. Also, he is the Prophet of [Greek: gnôthi seauton]: and the finest of wordmongers. The words that he touches turn all to gold. He is the subtlest of thinkers.Ourbest discipline of thinking has been from the Poets. Compare Shakspeare and Euclid.

TALBOYS.

From you! Buller, you astonish me.

BULLER.

Astonishment is sometimes proof of a weak mind.

NORTH.

There seem to be two Common Senses. Goldsmith appears to be viewed as an eminent case of wanting it, in conduct—the practical—for his own use. But the theoretical—for judging others—imaginary cases—characterises that immortal work,The Vicar of Wakefield: and the theoretical, for judging other men real, existing, and known, hisRetaliation. The criticism of Burke, for instance, is all exalted Common Sense—

"Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,And to Party gave up what was meant for Mankind."

That is the larger grasp of common Sense rising into high Sense.

"And thought of convincing while they thought of dining"

is its homelier scope.

SEWARD.

Common Sense is the lower part of complete Good Sense. Shakspeare and Phidias must use Good Sense in governing their whole composition; which Common Sense could not reach; and a man might have good sense in composing a group in marble, yet want it in governing his family. But Phidias executing a Venus with a blunt notched chisel, would want Common Sense.

NORTH.

Wordsworth the Great and Good has said that "the privilege and the duty of Poetry is to describe things not as they are, but as they seem to the senses and the passions;" and when in so saying he claimed further for the works of Poetry law and constancy, he spake heroically and thence well,—up to the mark of the fearless and clear truth. But when he condescended to speak of "one quality that is always favourable to good poetry, namely, good sense," he said that,without note of reserve, which should have been guarded. Good sense, if you please, but such good sense as Homer shows when the κλαγγη of the silver bow sounds—when the Mountain-Isle trembles with all her Woods to Neptune stepping along—or the many-folded snowy Olympus to Jupiter giving the one calm, slow, simple, majestic, earth-and-heaven-obliging Nod—or when at the loosed storm of terrestrial and celestial battle on the Scamandrian plain, the Infernal Jove leaps from his throne, and shouts, or yells, or bellows—μεγ' ιαχε—lest the solidly-vaulted Earth rend above and let in sunlight on the Shades. The "good sense" of Shakspeare, when the Witches mingle in the hell-broth "Tartar's lips," and "yew-slips slivered in the Moon's eclipse." Claim the good sense, but claim it in its own kind—separated and high—kingly—Delphic—divine. The good sense of Jupiter—Apollo—the Nine Muses, and the practical Pallas Athene. Or claimWisdom—and not "good sense;"—"the meed of PoetsSAGE!" Lucid intelligence—profound intuitions—disclosed essences—hidden relations laid bare—laws discerned—systems and worlds comprehended—revealed mysteries—prophecy—the "terrible sagacity"—and to all these add the circumspection—the caution—the self-rule—the attentive and skilful prudence of consummate Art, commanding effects which she forecast and willed. Wisdom in choosing his aim—Wisdom in reaching his aim—Wisdom to weigh men's minds and men's deeds—their hopes, fears, interests—to read the leaves of the books which men have written—to read the leaves of the book which the Creating Finger has written—to read the leaves of the book which lies for ever open before the Three Sisters—the leaves which the Storms of the Ages turn over.

TALBOYS.

Coffee, my dear sir? Here's a cup—cool and sweetened to your taste to a nicety.

NORTH.

Thanks, Talboys. I am ready for another spell.

BULLER.

Reflect, sir, breathe awhile. Do, Seward, interpose something between the Master and exhaustion. Quick—quick—else he will be off again—and at his time of Life—

SEWARD.

Oh for the gift denied me by my star—presence of mind!

TALBOYS.

Common sense, in a high philosophical signification, is the sum of human opinions and feelings; or the "Universal Sense" of mankind. That is not homely—and cannot therefore be what Stewart calls that "homely endowment." The apter translation of the place in his Essay is "ordinary sense or understanding"—which seems to suggestnow"so much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with among men"—andnow"sense and understanding applied to ordinary concerns." Only this last makes the qualityhomely. But the tooth of Stewart's insult is in the prior suggestion (in the case of the Gifted, untrue), that they have not as much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with. They have ten, twenty, a thousand times as much. Think of Robert Burns! But they have—or may, I do not say must have—the repugnance to apply the winged and "delighted spirit" to considerations and cares that are easily felt as if sordid and servile—imprisoning—odious. They suffer, however, not for the lack of knowing, but of resolution to conform their doing to their knowing. They sin against common sense—and much more against their own.Hinc illæ lacrymæ.

NORTH.

Gentlemen, the Cardinal Virtue—Prudence—holds her sway, in the worldof man, over Action, and, as much as she may, over Event, by the union as if of two Sceptres. For She must reign, at once, in the Understanding and in the Will. Common Sense, as the word is commonly meant and understood, is Intellectual Prudence applied to the more obvious requisitions of the more obvious interests which daily and hourly claim our concern and regard. This Intellectual Prudence, thus applied—that is to say, the clear Intelligence of these requisitions—Common Sense, therefore—one man has, and another has not. The case shall occur that the man, Poet or no Poet, who has it, shall act like a fool; whilst the Poet or no Poet, who has it not, shall act like a Sage. For the man, wise to see and to know, shall have yielded the throne of his Will to some usurping and tyrannising desire—and the other, who either does not possess, or who possessing, has not so applied the Intelligence—some dedicated Mathematician, or Metaphysician, or Mechanician, or Naturalist, or Scholar, or Antiquary, or Artist, or Poet, shall live wisely, because he has brought his heart and his blood under the rule of Moral Necessity. Prudence, or, in her stead, Conscience, has established her reign in his Will. To be endowed with Common Sense is one thing; toactwith common sense, or agreeably to her demands, is another. Popular speech—loose, negligent, self-willed, humoursome and humorous—often poetical—easily and gladly confounds the two neighbouring cases. Philosophic disquisition—which this of Dugald Stewart does not—should sedulously hold them apart. You may judge of a man's Common Sense by hearing him criticise the character and conduct of his neighbour. To learn in what hand the Sceptre of the Will is, you must enter his own doors. The proneness of the Poet, easy, kind, frank—except in his Art, artless—compassionate, generous, and, large-thoughted—heaven-aspiring—to neglect, like the lover, (and what else is he but the perpetually enthralled lover of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?) the earthly and distastefulCura Peculî, is to be counteracted mainly on the side of the Will. Simplicity of desire will go far, and this you may expect in him from Nature—indeed it is the first ground of the fault charged. Next, of stronger avail—not perhaps of more dignity—comes that which is indeed the base, if not yet the edified structure of Common Sense, the plain Intelligence of naked Necessity. No great stretch of intellectual power required, surely, for discovering and knowing his own condition in the work-day world! But the goods of fortune—worldly estate—money—shall the "heavenly Essence"—the "celestial Virtue"—the "divine Emanation"—for so loftily has Man spoken of Man—that is within us—crouch down and grovel in this dark, chill den—this grave which Mammon has delved to be to it a pitfall and a prison?

BULLER.

Ay—why shall the Poet guard and noose the strings of his purse?

NORTH.

One reason, drawn from the sublimity of his being, stands ever nigh to bow the pliant neck of his Will under the lowly yoke. Hemust—because, according to the manner in which the All-Disposer saw good to order and adjust the constituents and conditions of our human life here below, in him who, of his own will and deed, lays himself under a bond to live by unearned bread, the Moral Soul dies.

SEWARD.

The Poet is not—and he is—improvident. Nothing in his genius binds him to improvidence. Prudence may accompany sensibility—may accompany ample and soaring contemplations—may accompany creative thought—may accompany the diligent observation of human life and manners—may accompany profound insight into the human heart. These are chief constituents of the poetical mind, and have nothing in them that rejects Prudence.

BULLER.

Neither do I believe that the more distinguished Poets generally have been culpably unforethinking—

"Vatis avarusNon temere est animus!"

I hope so. I should be exceedingly sorry to think that the Bard were apt togive into the most odious of all vices. But the interval is wide from vicious negligence to vicious care: and I hope that somewhere between, and verging from the Golden Mean a little way towards the negligent extreme, might be the proper and earned place of the Poets.

TALBOYS.

We must confess to some negligent tendencies in the Poet. The warm sympathies give advantage to designing beggars of different ranks—and are themselves betraying advisers. The law of the poetical mind to accept Impression, and let it have its way, if it overflow its legitimate channel of poetical study and art, and irregularly lay the conduct of life under water, may leave behind it something else than fertility. The dwelling in pleasure may make the narrow and exact cares of economy irksome. But why shall weexpectthat a man of high, clear, and strong mind shall not learn how to—cut his coat according to his cloth?

NORTH.

I am afraid that the high faculties of a Poet threaten to endanger his vulgar welfare. The foundation of his poetical being and power, as you well have hinted, Talboys, is the free spontaneity of motion in his own mind—the surrendering of his whole spirit to influxes and self-impulses. The spontaneous movement allies his temperament to common passion, which founds upon this very characteristic. And you sometimes see, accordingly, that the Poet is a victim sacrificed for the benefit of the rest. Not that it need be so—for he has his own means of protection; but powers delicate, sensitive, profound, must walk perilously in a lapsed world.

SEWARD.

Let it be allowed, then, to Dugald, that the poetical temperament is adverse to getting—and to keeping—money—and that a touching picture might be drawn of the conflicts of spirit between a Poet and his false position in a counting-house—or with "poverty's unconquerable bar."

NORTH.

"This carelessness about the goods of fortune," says Mr Stewart, "is an infirmity very naturally resulting from their studies, and is only to be cured by years and experience, or by combination (very rare indeed) of poetical genius with a more than ordinary share of that 'homely endowment calledcommon-sense.'" And wherefore any infirmity? Why not have portrayed rather—or at least kindly qualified the word—in winning hues, or in lofty shape—the delicious or magnanimousUnworldlinessof the poetical character? That most ennobling, and most unostentatious quality, which dear and great Goddess—in lovingly tempering a soul that from its first inhalation of terrestrial air to the breath in which it escapes home, she intends to follow with her love—commingles in precious and perilous atoms that, in consecrating, destine to sorrow.

SEWARD.

An infirmity? A charm—a grace—and a virtue! Alas! sir, a virtue too suitable to the golden age to be safe in ours.

TALBOYS.

Ay, Seward, a virtue demanding the correction or the protection of some others, which the iron generations countenance or allow—such as Prudence, Justice, Affection for those whose welfare he unavoidably commixes with his own.

NORTH.

Protection! It sometimes happily wins its protection from virtues that love and admiration rouse and arm in other breasts, in its favour—a reverent love—a pitying admiration.

TALBOYS.

He quotes Horace as on his side of the question.

NORTH.

A Poet whose name is amongst the most cited from antiquity, Virgil's illustrious lyrical brother, has rehearsed (not indeed to the lyre, but in the style which he offers for little better than versified prose) modestly and apologetically, the Praises of the Poet—his personal worth, and serviceable functionamongst his fellow-men. Singular that in a few words of this passage, and indeed just those which gently allege thepersonal virtueof the poor bard, the Professor should have helped himself to a weapon for dealing upon that head his unkindest cut of all.

SEWARD.

That flowing Epistle of Horace's to Augustus—which he gives good reason in excellent verse for keeping short, and turns out, notwithstanding, rather unreasonably long—if we look for its method, it rambles—if for the spirit, it is a delicate intercommunion between the least of the Courtiers, the Poet, and his imperial Patron, the Lord of Rome and of Rome's World.

TALBOYS.

A facile, roving, and sketchy—partly historical and partly critical disquisition on Poetry chiefly Roman, presenting, with occasion the virtues and faults of the species—Poet.

BULLER.

Let's hear it. In my day Horace was not much read at Oxford—

NORTH.

By you—and other First Class Physical Men. Seward, spout it.

SEWARD.

I will recite the passage.

"Hic error tamen, et levis hæc insania, quantasVirtutes habeat, sic collige: vatis avarusNon temere est animus; versus amat, hoc studet unum;Detrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet;Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullamPupillo; vivit siliquis et pane secundo.Militiæ quamquam piger et malus, utilis urbi:Si das hoc, parvis quoque rebus magna juvari.Os tenerum pueri balbumque poeta figurat;Torquet ab obscœnis jam nunc sermonibus aurem,Mox etiam pectus præceptis format amicis,Asperitatis et invidiae, corrector et iræ;Recte facta refert; orientia tempora notisInstruit exemplis, inopem solatur et ægrum.Castis cum pueris ignara puella maritiDisceret unde preces, vatem ni Musa dedisset?Poscit opem chorus, et præsentia numina sentit;Cælestes implorat aquas, docta prece blandus;Avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit;Impetrat et pacem, et locupletem frugibus annum.Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes."

BULLER.

Oh! that passage. Why, I have had it by heart for half a hundred. We quote from it at Quarter Sessions.

TALBOYS.

The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold personality—the free intimacy between the great Protector and the small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or question of Augustus.

NORTH.

True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent seeming—to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity—should win the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses.

SEWARD.

The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly subdued!

NORTH.

Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding with beneficentpower the destinies of the Roman world. And now, confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned, and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar—poor Horatius Flaccus!

BULLER.

Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers!

SEWARD.

Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory—

BULLER.

You muttered the passage so that you murdered it.

TALBOYS.

You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it—he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly—admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy—he will propitiate kindness.

BULLER.

Artful Dodger.

TALBOYS.

He has acknowledged—you might have given us the line—afault. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers—young and old—and grave and gay—wise and foolish—the skilled and the unskilled—the called and the uncalled.

BULLER.

You write verses well yourself, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion—this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity—of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion—his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky—but he laughs. It is nothethat speculates upon, orwaylays, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances—nothethat handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's—pulse and brown bread.

BULLER.

Very prettily paraphrased indeed!

SEWARD.

And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in the natural verse of—Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described himself—and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to follow.

NORTH.

My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself—and not himself. It is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together, as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point which imperiously requires anotherfault. Frankly and humorously he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier—slow to find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it. Nevertheless—now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology—for the purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at theutilis urbi. If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to."

TALBOYS.

And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest sphere!

NORTH.

How finely! Romewasa republic ofOrators. Cedant arma togæ—the Toga the war-weed of the Orator!

"Romanos rerum dominos,gentemque togatam."

The gowned Lords of the Nations—and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators!

BULLER.

Are you sure that is the right reading?

NORTH.

Let it be so. Observe now—the occultation.

BULLER.

The what?

TALBOYS.

The occultation.

BULLER.

Mille gratias.

NORTH.

The nascent and adolescent Orator is moulded to the power of the word by the greatest masters of the word, the Poets! Tell this, O Poet, in imperial ears! Then speak modestly, withdrawingly, insinuatingly. Hide the boast. It is hidden—and shown. The Poet fashions the tender and stammering mouth of the boy. The rudiments of pronunciation—The Orator nascent. No more. It is pretty and gentle that the Muse herself condescends to the care of moulding the young soft lip to the pure musical utterance of Latium's magnificent Mother-tongue.

BULLER.

Now I see it all. The occultation!

NORTH.

But She delays not undertaking a nobler and more momentous function. From the bodily organs She passes to the governing mind. And of the Mind at once to the nobler part, the Will. She is the young Roman's Moral Tutress. Horace is brief. What these her first lessons to the soul are, he does not say. He tells you their powerful virtue. Theywrest, he says, (torquet,) the charmed hearing from dishonest, from gross and grovelling, from depraving and polluting discourse. You may, my friends, imagine Phædrus' feeling Fables, or the "Lays of Ancient Rome;" or at Athens, instead of Rome, the Iliad.

TALBOYS.

It is the hint but of a line, sir. But each of us may know in himself how early the Muse really did begin to possess our spirits with thoughts, and scenes, and actions that soared away from the presences of our lives—that She did

"Lift us in aspiration from the earth."

And as the pupil grows, the discipline of the divine Instructress ripens. With precepts that are the counsels of a dear and wise friend, she moulds the susceptible compliant bosom. She softens his rough self-will—weeds out envy—and curbs anger.

BULLER.

Talboys, you expound Flaccus well.

TALBOYS.

Her storial informations, pictures from human existence, take now a more direct purpose. She recites deeds justly and virtuously done; She furnishes and arms—instruit—the springing generation with high transmitted examples.

NORTH.

Ay, my dear Talboys,Heis thinking now—

BULLER.

Hitherto you have always saidShe—

NORTH.

I have. "She" is really "He"—the Poet and not the Muse. I was rapt. He is thinking now, my dear Buller, of old strong-hearted Ennius—the heroicannalist, in soldierly rough verses, of younger heroic Rome. We may recollect, for the nonce, whatever is most English, and most Scottish, and most heroic, in those more musical "histories" of William, and of Walter.

TALBOYS.

We have done with education. We come to the Charity of the Muse. She visits the poor man's home and the sick-bed. One almost starts at the thought, in the midst of the smoke, and the wealth, and the uproar of Pagan Rome. Yet there the plain words are, "She (pardon me) comforts the indigent and the sick man." Is it notsic in orig.?

NORTH.

Sic.

BULLER.

Of her ministrations to the splendour of Arts and the luxury of Patrician feasts—of her Theatres, that spread laughter or tears over the dense myriads of the World's Metropolis—not a syllable. The innermost heart of the Poet must have held the chord that gave out the soft low sound—inopem solatur et ægrum. No introduction and no comment. A solitary, unpretending sentence or clause.

NORTH.

God bless you, my dear Buller.

TALBOYS.

Amen. May the Chairman of Quarter Sessions live a thousand years! The indigent man may, I suppose, be a poor learned or a poor unlearned man. Relatively to the latter we may think, for Scotland, of Burns' Poems lying in Scottish cottages; and beginning from Scotland, of the traditional ballads and songs that sound in every hut throughout Europe:—for Italy, of what they say of the Venetian Gondoliers singing a Venetianised Gerusalemme Liberata.

NORTH.

So far, my children, for the "parvis rebus." Something on a more extended scale, and of a loftier reach! We are commenting Horace. From the earliest times of civilisation, a principal office of verse was to adorn and solemnise the services of Religion. The cultivation of Verse was early in the Temples. A moment's recollection recalls to us the immense influence on the Hellenic Poetry of this ritual dedication. This theme closes the Praise of the Poet. But faithful to the strain which he has undertaken, and so far adhered to, the discreet Eulogist still, in the loftiest matter, diminishes the pomp, rejects ostentation, confines the sensible dimensions. And still faithful, he dwells on that which, of less show, is the more touching. He has to array a religious procession that drawing, as it moves along, all gaze—thrilling—as it slowly passes door after door, and winds through street after street, with solemn and sweet chaunt lifted from the sorrowing Earth to the listening Heavens—the universal heart of the Eternal Queen-City—Look! Who are they that, as the crowds divide, draw into sight? Chaste boys, and girls yet afar from the marriage-bond. The sanctity of natural innocence heightening to the heart, and rendering more gracious, the sanctity of the altar!—winning favour—alluring the worshipper to the worship!

SEWARD.

The only expanded movement of the short passage—a third of it—seven verses out of the twenty-one.

NORTH.

The religious topics are, generally, the propitiating of the Divinities—then the particular benefits: Rain supplicated in seasons of Drought—the visitation of Pestilential Sickness averted—National dangers repelled—Peace, the wished-for, obtained—and the perpetual desire of earth's dwellers and tillers, the fruitful Year. He has risen gradually, and has reached the summit. Unexpectedly—you know not how—the Poet, though it is not so said, is far greater than the Emperor. Yes, my friends, for the dominion of the Imperial Throne is over the Kings of the Earth; but the sway of the well-strung Lyre is over the throned Gods who inhabit above or underneath the Earth. With Song are the celestial Deities soothed and made favourable—with Song the dark dominators of Hell.

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