Talk at a country house; fact and fiction

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMEBIOA.

I. The Squire And His Old Manor Place

The Squire and his old House. — Arrivai. — Talk about Building Bess. — Berowne's Oak. — Love's Labour 's Lost, — Idea or Motive of the Play . . . , ^ . . i n.

The Giant's Wall. — The Rose Garden.— Persian Poetry.

— Muhammedan and Christian Mystics. — The Atabaks. — The Use and Disuse of Persian in India . . 14

in.

THE OLD HALL AND THE PORTRAITS.

The Old Hall. — The Children dancing. — The Portraits.

— John Locke and John Strachey, Clive, Watson, Kirkpatrick. — Burke and Sir William Jones. — The Negotiation with the United States 41

IV.

A General Election. — The Candidature. — The Polling Day. — Before and after the Ballot Act. — Counting viii Contents the Votes. — The Winner and his Welcome Home. — The Morality of the Ballot 66

LOVE AND MARRIAGE.

A Country Wedding. — The Village Church. — The Village Home. — Wedding Breakfasts. — Love and Marriage. — Death and Life 94

VL

BOOKS : TENNYSON AND MAURICE.

Books, — The Bible and Shakespeare. — Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress. — The Riddle of the Sphinx. — Crossing the Bar. — The Poet and the Prophet. — The Crimean War. — The King's College Story

VII.

RIDING DOWN TO CAMELOT.

The Camelot and Arthur of History. — Of Local Tradition and Legend. — Of Romance. — Of Modern Poetry. — Chivalry. — Sir Thomas Malory. — Idylls of the King 150

vin.

y

THE ARROWHEADED INSCRIPTIONS.

Decipherment. — Criticism and Divination. — Ideographic and Alphabetical Writing. — Assyrian Annals. — Light thrown on Jewish History. — German Criticism. — How estimated by Grote 1 79

Contents ix

IX.

TAKING LEAVE.

'1 aking Leave. — :6mile Souvestre. — Old Age. — Memory. — Pope and Parnell. — Edward Lear. — A Retrospect 209

Appendix

Introduction to the Bustan or Garden of Sa'di, translated from the Persian 237

THE SQUIRE AND HIS OLD MANOR PLACE.

And one, an English home, — gray twilight pour'd

On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep, — all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace.

Palace of Art.

While traveling abroad some years ago I had made the acquaintance of an old Somersetshire country gentleman : we had become

" A pair of friends, though I was young, And Matthew seventy-two,"

and now, on my coming back to England, he had invited me to pay him a visit.

The Squire, as his family and his neighbors called him, was past work, as he used to say, but not past the enjoyments of an old age spent in the home which he shared with his children and grandchildren. And as he loved his bit of Chaucer, he would apply to himself the description of the Clerk, —

" And gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

He liked to talk of the old house which I was now about to see. And I think that my friend's character as I knew him had been a good deal formed by the influences of the house in which he was born and looked to die. Though he mourned the destruction of some very old features of the house, and the things in it, some of which had still existed in his own childhood, yet he had made like changes when he himself came into possession ; and he used to say that he had the authority of Carlyle and Maurice for so doing — the former advising him ever to join the new with the old, and the latter not to scruple to make the house he was to live in fitting in all respects for his own generation. He loved books of all kinds, but poetry and history most of all : and I fancied when I came to know him in his old hall and parlor, as well as under his old trees, that these things had both limited and deepened his reading. He used to say that his motto was " Multum non multa," which he translated " Not many things, but much of two or three."

He loved what have been called the byways of history. " Why," he would say, " go along the dusty high road, when you may get to the same place by the path across the fields, and have shrubs and flowers, and the songs of the birds, all along, instead of the dust." And when I reminded him of what came to Christian and Hopeful in his favorite " Pilgrim's Progress," when they preferred the walk through the fields, he only answered with a smile : —

"John p.

Robinson, he '

Sez they did n't know everythin' down in Judee."

From the railway station I drove along the road by which Leland had ridden four hundred and fifty years before, when he was on the like errand to my own, that of visiting the old Manor Place of Southetoune. Now, as then, the road was " meatly well woddyd."

Evening was coming on when I drove through the lodge gates. The air was resonant with the cawing of the rooks as they filled the sky with the circles in which they wheeled to and fro, disappearing in the distance, to appear again, and so gradually reach their roostingtrees. In spite of their blackness where they did not catch and reflect back the rays of the setting sun, I might call them a coruscation of rooks, so much did they remind me of the Roman Girandola, when the sky was filled with its countless flights of rockets. I saw before me, and on my right hand, two giant arbors — '• aisles," Tennyson would have called them ■ — • of lime-trees, feathering to the ground, and seeming to reach the very sky ; while between them opened out an avenue of immemorial elms. On my left I saw, as Leland had seen them before me, the old battlemented wall and the square tower with its corner turret rising behind and above the wall, and a succession of gables on either side ; and among them I saw one marked by a cross which I knew must be that of the chapel which my old friend had told me of, as the work of Building Bess of Hardwicke, afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury. Like the Roman Coliseum before it was scraped by the modern reformers, the old battlemented wall had a flora of its own : ferns, crimson valerian, snapdragons, and briar roses, and along with these I saw an ash and a yew growing on the battlements, where they had been sown no doubt by the rooks. And as I passed through an archway in the wall, the whole house came in view. It was not a castle, nor a palace, but it might be called a real though small record of what men had been doing there from the time of Domesday Book to our own.

The Squire welcomed me with his usual heartiness, introducing me to the ladies of the family, and then adding : " But you know Foster already : you have often met him at Headlong Hall. I am glad he has not brought Mr. Escot wdth him." The Squire was fond of quoting Peacock's derivation of the name of Foster in

" Headlong Hall," as that of " one who watches over and guards the light," telling us that it suited my habit of asking questions.

Next morning we had breakfast in a parlor the oak paneling and carved mantelpiece of which, the Squire said, were among the embellishments of the old manor place made by- Building Bess of Hardwicke, to one of whose four husbands the house belonged. After breakfast we walked together down the steps of the terraces, and through the avenue of huge lime-trees and oaks, which my host told me were all planted by the same great lady. My thoughts wandered from that imperious dame to her still more imperious mistress. Queen Elizabeth, and from Queen Elizabeth to Shakespeare, and so to the Forest of Arden and to the park of the king of Navarre. It was in the leafy month of June. The air was fragrant with honeysuckle and sweetbrier growing along the banks of a brook hidden from sight, but telling of itself by the pleasant noise of a little waterfall into which it was breaking ; and the musical hum of unseen insects was all around, through which was now and then heard the cooing of a wood pigeon hidden somewhere in the trees. We stopped under a great oak, and sat down in the shade, on a mossy seat formed by the roots of the tree.

" What are you thinking of ? " said the Squire, who had been silent since he had finished pointing out the works of the lady I have named.

I answered that I was thinking this was the oak in the branches of which Berowne lay hid while he listened to the talk of the king and his other lords.

" I am glad to hear you call him, as Shakespeare himself did, ' Berowne.' I respect as well as like the Cambridge editors, but I cannot conceive why they should substitute the spelling of the Second Folio, which has no authority, for that of the Quarto and the First Folio."

My old friend seemed inclined to be warm on this point, so I turned the subject by saying, " I know you do not make much account of internal evidence, but do you not think there is something in the case of ' Love's Labour 's Lost ' to show that it was one of the earliest of Shakespeare's plays ? "

The Squire. I can seldom find that the so-called internal evidence as to the date of any book is more than critical, that is more or less ingenious, conjecture. Where are you to stop if, after finding all the buoyancy and brightness of youth in this play, you go on (like Hallam, if I remember rightly) to discover a disappointed, it may be melancholy, and even a misanthropical Shakespeare in " Hamlet " and " Timon," drawn from the experiences of manhood and old age ?

Foster. I confess that internal evidence is for the most part like a circle in the water, —

" Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought."

Yet does not the circle start from a real stone thrown in ?

The Squire. Or from some bubble rising from we know not where ? Yet I am inclined to yield to you here, and to make an exception in favor of the indications that this was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of Shakespeare's plays. Ferdinand and Miranda, Romeo and Juliet, are even more perfect representatives of the youth and maiden than are Berowne and Rosaline ; yet while these last require only that the poet's pen should be dipped in ink " temper'd by Love's sighs," it may have been that the others could not have been depicted but by an eye

" That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."

Besides, " I too once lived in Arcady," and I should like to hear w^hat you have still to say of the idea, or, as I suppose people would now call it, the motive, of " Love's Labour 's Lost," and what it may possibly tell us of the poet himself, and so of its probable date.

Foster. I can hardly pretend to add anything to what Coleridge has already said on the subject.

The Squire. There is, indeed, not much more to be said when Coleridge has spoken, and his words have come down to us ; yet — forgive the impertinence — a dwarf on a giant's shoulders may see farther than the giant himself.

Foster. Artists say that a portrait, while it must be true to nature and a likeness of the individual whom it represents, must, if it be a true work of art, show the idea, or motive, either of calm repose or of the animation of the moment in which one characteristic expression is passing into another. And the motive of this play may, I think, be said to be youth at the moment of passing into manhood and womanhood. Boys and girls become dignified men and women before our eyes ; and it is love which makes the magic change, — a change which Berowne describes in words so burning yet so pure and chaste, so passionate yet spiritual, that I, at least, can never read or repeat them too often : —

" Other slow arts entirely keep the brain ; And therefore, finding barren practisers, Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil : But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain ; But, with the motion of all elements,

The Squire and his Old Alanor Place 9

Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye ;

A lovers eyes will gaze an eagle blind ;

A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd :

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails ;

Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste :

For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ?

Subtle as Sphinx ; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair :

And when Love speaks, the voice' of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs ;

O, then his lines would ravish savage ears

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive :

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain and nourish all the world :

Else none at all in aught proves excellent."

The Squire. They are indeed perfect ; and we may well say with Berowne that when such " Love speaks, the voice' of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony." Does not Coleridge say that this speech is that of the very god of love himself } But go on.

Foster. The ladies in the play, as in nature, are at first inclined to make fun of the serious ardor of their admirers, till the whole scene becomes a tilting-match or tournament of wits, lo Talk at a Country House

in which — again with truth to nature — the ladies get the better, and the men confess themselves " beaten with pure scoff." But Love is becoming lord of all with the ladies, too. Another transition is marked when the princess exclaims, " We are wise girls to mock our lovers so ! " Then come the tidings of the death of her father, the king of France. In a moment the electric spark crystallizes that life of fun and joyousness. The generous and noble-minded youths and maidens become, as I have said, dignified men and women, and turn to the duties of real life, though agreeing that the new is still to be linked with the old. If the poet had told us the real ending, he would have called the play " Love's Labour 's Won," and so anticipated the answer to a still vexed question of Dr. Dryasdust.

The Squire. Well done ! I wish every one knew, and then he would prize this play as you do. But how does all this prove the early date of the play ?

Foster. You yourself said just now that you were inclined to recognize a distinction between the creations of Ferdinand and Miranda, and Romeo and Juliet, and those of Berowne and Rosaline. I think this is so, and that we must not look in this play for the expression of that mature genius which we find in the later works. But of the genius itself, not yet ma-

The Squire and his Old Ma?ior Place 1 1

ture, we have abundant tokens ; and here is, in truth, one especial charm and interest of this play. How pleasant it is to look at the portraits of Milton, the child, the youth, and the man, and to trace the lineaments of moral and intellectual as well as physical beauty in their successive developments, — the child surviving in the man, and the man fulfilling the promise of the child ! And though no such portraiture of Shakespeare's face in youth exists for us, we have the portrait of his mind iR its successive stages of growth, if we follow Ben Jonson's advice and

" looke Not on his picture, but his Booke ; "

and again : —

" Look, how the father's face Lives in his issue ; even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well turned and true filed lines."

The Squire. You remember that Ben Jonson said something on the other side, — that he wished Shakespeare had blotted a thousand lines.

Foster. Yes, but the reconciliation is obvious as we read ; for we know Shakespeare does write with an accuracy as well as profoundness of thought which must have been the fruit of the highest intellectual training and culture ; with an ease and a fluency of utterance which sometimes verges on carelessness and negligence of language, and shows especially when the poet is under the influence of his love of fun. But his play of " Love's Labour 's Lost " is remarkable for its careful accuracy of thought and word even in its fun, and indicates how much Shakespeare must, in the days of his earliest compositions, have studied the logical use of language, even when he is employing it to express the most fanciful conceits or the most soaring imaginations. The play is full of instances of this careful composition, with its regular balance of thoughts, words, and rhymes in the successive lines. This use of language is perfect in its kind ; yet how different it is from that of "The Tempest," "Othello," or "Hamlet"! Surely, the difference between the youthful and the mature genius is plain enough.

The Squire. Yes, and you have made a good defense — or explanation shall I call it? — of Coleridge's saying that this play is like a portrait of the poet taken in his boyhood. And let me confess to you that when I was young I myself wrote an argument in the same sense, endeavoring to show, by an analysis of Berowne's speech against learning, how exactly it must have represented Shakespeare's own experiences and conclusions as to the relations between the study of books and the knowledge of life, when he first came up to London with his small Latin and less Greek.^

Then we got up, and walked to the wooden bridge which crossed the brook just above the waterfall ; and I saw the small red and blue dragonflies and one great brown one — so formidable looking, though so harmless — darting to and fro over the water ; and a kingfisher shot, flashing in the sunlight, from a hawthorn bush upon the bank.

1 Eraser s Magazine, January, 185S, p. 41.

II. Persian Poetry

The roses of this garden will not fade.

Sa'di.

The Squire loved his limes, elms, and oaks, but he loved his roses, too. They festooned the transoms of the old mullioned windows of the parlor, and might be gathered from the casement of my lady's chamber ; and they stood in array under the shelter of what still remained of the great battlemented wall, which had once protected the house and tower against arrows and bolts as it still did from the north winds. The Squire told me tradition related that this wall was built by the Norman giant, St. Loe, who lived in the tower. This tradition was authenticated by the fact that a neighboring giant, Hakewell, whose quoit still remains in witness, on passing by asked what he was building this wall for ; and when he was answered, " To keep out such fellows as you," Hakewell at once stepped over it ; and the effigies of both giants, one in oak and the other in stone, may still be seen in the parish church. Leland, in-

Persian Foctry 15 deed, writing in Henry VIII. 's time, says only, " Here hath Sir John St. Loe an old manor place," and adds that the monument of his grandfather is in the church. Modern archaeologists, moreover, declare that the quoit is only one of the huge Druidical stones of which more than one circle remains hard by. But the wall itself, as I have said, stands there to testify, and to shelter the Squire's roses.

He was gathering a nosegay of these when I joined him. As he stood by a great bush of the kind called " maiden blush," he gently shook from a flower one of those bright green rosechafers which live on that rose, repeating, as it flew off, " A mailed angel on a battle day." I said, " Why do you drive away the pretty creature .'' " " Because I might have ' maiden shriek ' for ' maiden blush,' " he answered, " if I were to offer a young lady a green beetle with my roses." He walked toward a carriage, which I had not seen before, in which were a mother and daughter, who had been among the visitors, and were now taking leave. I could not hear wdiat he said, as he gave a nosegay to each lady with his wonted old-fashioned gallantry ; but I might guess that it was " Sweets to the sweet." Then, as the carriage rolled through the gateway in the old wall, he turned tow^ard the house, repeating some words which, from the half-chanting sound, I knew to be something from the

Persian, which he was always fond of quoting to himself. Then we talked on.

Foste?'. I like to hear the musical and melodious sound of Persian, though I do not understand the meaning. But were you taking leave of the ladies in Persian ?

The Squire. Only a poet can translate poetry ; but come into the Great Parlor, and I will try to find you a better translation than my own would be of what I said.

Foster. Why do you and your children call it the " Great Parlor," while other people call it the " library " ?

The Squire. It is the old name ; perhaps given it by Bess of Hardwicke herself, when she built it, and the chapel over it, because she was not content with the *' little parlor," which was enough for the forefathers of her husband, St. Loe. Bookshelves have now taken the place of her oak paneling; but I fancy her still sitting in one of the deep window-seats, and looking up at her great coat of arms over the mantelpiece, impaled with that of her husband, and with more quarterings than I can remember the names of. Now for the books.

Foster. But you have not yet told me the name of the book you were quoting, nor its author.

The Squire. It is the " Gulistan," or Rose Garden, of Sa'di. Many who have a far better right than I to speak on the subject say that it is the greatest work of the greatest of the Persian poets. It has been translated into Latin, English, German, French, and perhaps other languages. There are at least four English translations, which you will find on that shelf.

Foster, A great witness to the worth of the original. How every man who has drunk deeply of Homer, Horace, or Dante tries to translate his favorite author, in order that others may share with him the enjoyment which, while it remains unshared, seems scarcely his own !

The Squire. Every one tries, and every one fails. The thought, the habit of mind, is as different in one country and one age from that of another as is the language ; and what genius is sufficient to reproduce the original thought in a wholly new form, and to express it in new words as exactly fitted to the thought as are those of the first writer ! The English Bible — not the Revised Version — is almost an exception ; but then Hebrew thought has, through long ages, become the thought of Christendom, and is in a measure as English as English itself. Even so, it is wonderful that such a translation into such English should have been possible.

Foster. You were to show me a translation of the passage which you were quoting from Sa'di : which am I to take ?

The Squire. That of Eastwick is probably the most scholarly, and he represents the original alternations of prose and verse in a way which is often happy ; but I sometimes rather fancy the quaintness of Dumoulin. There it is. But if the subject interests you enough, you should read the whole of Sa'di's Introduction, or preface, which in this, as in his " Bustan," is to European taste, at least, the finest part of either book. But for the " Bustan " I must refer you to a translation of my own.^ And then, after all our disparagement of translations, if only you will, with Tennyson, spread the silken sail of infancy and call back your old visions of the Arabian Nights, I think you will be repaid for your trouble, though you do not find all that the readers of the original talk of.

Foster. Meanwhile, Squire, will you give me an outline of the country you advise me to enter on ?

The Squire. The " Bustan," or Garden, and the " Gulistan," or Rose Garden, have the same idea or motive, though there is great variety in the treatment. The Introduction to each opens with the praises of God, taking as it were for text the words with which the devout Mussulman always begins to speak or write, " In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate." The outburst of beauty which clothes the earth in the season of spring, the gift of life and

1 See Appendix.

articulate speech to man, the divine government of the world, the blessings of which are shared by the good and bad alike, — all these declare the wisdom, goodness, and greatness of the Creator, and call for thankfulness from man. Sa'di's piety, and the political genius which that piety inspires and informs, are very striking. He writes in a manner which reminds one of the spirit of Isaiah or of Milton.

Explain it or leave it unexplained as you may, the fact cannot be denied of the contrast — the difference in kind between the religions of Greece antl Rome and the faith of Islam, and the likeness in kind between the latter and the Christian faith. And this was evidently the genuine and practical faith of Sa'di; he was eminently a religious man, believing in an actual relation between God and man. And the wreck and anarchy of nations which the Tartar devastation had caused around him, contrasted with the beneficent reign of such rulers as his own, directed all his thoughts and hopes to the belief in a constitutional government of the world, old and settled on the foundations of eternal law and justice and mercy, under a righteous king. The " Gulistan " opens with a description of springtime : the " Bustan " by setting forth the attributes of the Creator. From this praise of the Creator Sa'di goes on to speak of the Prophet; and then of the righteous rule of the

Atabak, or sovereign, Aboo-Bakr, in whose reign he was writing. In a day when the prosperity and happiness of a wliole people were always dependent on the character of a ruler, Sa'di is never weary of insisting on the duties of kings, justice, mercy, beneficence, and the maintenance of all these by a strong hand ; and while the former annals of Persia treat of many such kings, he declares that none of them was more worthy than Aboo-Bakr. Then, with the proud humility of a great man conscious of his genius, he says that lowly as he is in the presence of his king, yet it is his verses — the pearls of poetry which he is stringing — which shall keep that king's memory alive in the coming ages.

Foster. But, Squire, you have not told me what you said after speeding the ladies on their way.

The Squire. You find me " as tedious as a king," though you have not Dogberry's appreciation of that virtue. But I was just coming to the point. Sa'di goes on, in the Introduction to each book, to give his reasons for writing it, in the form of an apologue. In the " Gulistan," he tells, in a charming idyl, how, when he had become a dervish, and was sitting in the corner of retirement and meditation, he was prevailed on, by the entreaties of an old friend, to spend the evening outside the city, in a garden spark-

Persiafi Poetry 21

ling and fragrant with flowers and cool with fountains. In the morning, when the desire to depart had overcome the wish to stay, Sa'di's friend gathered a nosegay of roses, hyacinths, and sweet basil for him to take, but threw them down when the poet, reminding him that such flowers must soon fade and die, promised to write him a book which should live. And on the same day he began the "Gulistan."