Letters to Dead Authors [20]
The road to many long and happy days.
However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green pastures, thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, who stray into thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy hand, and listen to thy cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, may our content be equal, and our praise, therefore, none the less. Father, if Master Stoddard, the great fisher of Tweedside, be with thee, greet him for me, and thank him for those songs of his, and perchance he will troll thee a catch of our dear River.
Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound, They know not, they dream not, who linger around, How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin From thee--the bliss withered within.
Or perhaps thou wilt better love,
The lanesome Tala and the Lyne, And Manor wi' its mountain rills, An' Etterick, whose waters twine Wi' Yarrow frae the forest hills; An' Gala, too, and Teviot bright, An' mony a stream o' playfu' speed, Their kindred valleys a' unite Amang the braes o' bonnie Tweed!
So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old anglers, like Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age.
LETTER--To M. Chapelain
Monsieur,--You were a popular poet, and an honourable, over- educated, upright gentleman. Of the latter character you can never be deprived, and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are, than the laurels which flourished so gaily, and faded so soon.
Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day, But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but YOUR laurel certainly outlived not May, nor can we hope that you dwell where Orpheus and where Homer are. Some other crown, some other Paradise, we cannot doubt it, awaited un si bon homme. But the moral excellence that even Boileau admitted, la foi, l'honneur, la probite, do not in Parnassus avail the popular poet, and some luckless Glatigny or Theophile, Regnier or Gilbert, attains a kind of immortality denied to the man of many contemporary editions, and of a great commercial success.
If ever, for the confusion of Horace, any Poet was Made, you, Sir, should have been that fortunately manufactured article. You were, in matters of the Muses, the child of many prayers. Never, since Adam's day, have any parents but yours prayed for a poet-child. Then Destiny, that mocks the desires of men in general, and fathers in particular, heard the appeal, and presented M. Chapelain and Jeanne Corbiere his wife with the future author of "La Pucelle." Oh futile hopes of men, O pectora caeca! All was done that education could do for a genius which, among other qualities, "especially lacked fire and imagination," and an ear for verse--sad defects these in a child of the Muses. Your training in all the mechanics and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim, like Rasselas, "Enough! Thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a Poet." Unhappily, you succeeded in convincing Cardinal Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your powers, you received a pension of one thousand crowns, and were made Captain of the Cardinal's Minstrels, as M. de Treville was Captain of the King's Musketeers.
Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were more richly endowed than ever is Research, even Research in Prehistoric English, among us niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a Cardinal, or even, as you did, a Prime Minister, who would praise and pension ME; but envy be still! Your existence was made happy indeed; you constructed odes, corrected sonnets, presided at the Hotel Rambouillet, while the learned ladies were still young and fair, and you enjoyed a prodigious celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished Epic. "Who, indeed," says a sympathetic author, M. Theophile Gautier, "who could expect less than a miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of art--a perfect Turk in the science of poetry, a person so well pensioned,
However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green pastures, thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, who stray into thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy hand, and listen to thy cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, may our content be equal, and our praise, therefore, none the less. Father, if Master Stoddard, the great fisher of Tweedside, be with thee, greet him for me, and thank him for those songs of his, and perchance he will troll thee a catch of our dear River.
Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound, They know not, they dream not, who linger around, How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin From thee--the bliss withered within.
Or perhaps thou wilt better love,
The lanesome Tala and the Lyne, And Manor wi' its mountain rills, An' Etterick, whose waters twine Wi' Yarrow frae the forest hills; An' Gala, too, and Teviot bright, An' mony a stream o' playfu' speed, Their kindred valleys a' unite Amang the braes o' bonnie Tweed!
So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old anglers, like Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age.
LETTER--To M. Chapelain
Monsieur,--You were a popular poet, and an honourable, over- educated, upright gentleman. Of the latter character you can never be deprived, and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are, than the laurels which flourished so gaily, and faded so soon.
Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day, But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but YOUR laurel certainly outlived not May, nor can we hope that you dwell where Orpheus and where Homer are. Some other crown, some other Paradise, we cannot doubt it, awaited un si bon homme. But the moral excellence that even Boileau admitted, la foi, l'honneur, la probite, do not in Parnassus avail the popular poet, and some luckless Glatigny or Theophile, Regnier or Gilbert, attains a kind of immortality denied to the man of many contemporary editions, and of a great commercial success.
If ever, for the confusion of Horace, any Poet was Made, you, Sir, should have been that fortunately manufactured article. You were, in matters of the Muses, the child of many prayers. Never, since Adam's day, have any parents but yours prayed for a poet-child. Then Destiny, that mocks the desires of men in general, and fathers in particular, heard the appeal, and presented M. Chapelain and Jeanne Corbiere his wife with the future author of "La Pucelle." Oh futile hopes of men, O pectora caeca! All was done that education could do for a genius which, among other qualities, "especially lacked fire and imagination," and an ear for verse--sad defects these in a child of the Muses. Your training in all the mechanics and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim, like Rasselas, "Enough! Thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a Poet." Unhappily, you succeeded in convincing Cardinal Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your powers, you received a pension of one thousand crowns, and were made Captain of the Cardinal's Minstrels, as M. de Treville was Captain of the King's Musketeers.
Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were more richly endowed than ever is Research, even Research in Prehistoric English, among us niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a Cardinal, or even, as you did, a Prime Minister, who would praise and pension ME; but envy be still! Your existence was made happy indeed; you constructed odes, corrected sonnets, presided at the Hotel Rambouillet, while the learned ladies were still young and fair, and you enjoyed a prodigious celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished Epic. "Who, indeed," says a sympathetic author, M. Theophile Gautier, "who could expect less than a miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of art--a perfect Turk in the science of poetry, a person so well pensioned,