Oh, spring to light,
auspicious
Babe, be born!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v20 - Phi to Qui
Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise;
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)
With open arms received one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approved!
Happier their author, when by these beloved!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.
Soft were my numbers: who could take offense,
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,
A painted mistress or a purling stream.
Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill:
I wished the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret:
I never answered,-I was not in debt.
If want provoked, or madness made them print,
I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.
11743
## p. 11744 (#368) ##########################################
11744
ALEXANDER POPE
Did some more sober critic come abroad,—
If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretense,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibalds:
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,-
Even such small critics some regard may claim,
Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.
Were others angry, I excused them too:
Well might they rage-I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;
But each man's secret standard in his mind.
That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,-
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;
He who, still wanting though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left;
And he who, now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such! But were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
## p. 11745 (#369) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11745
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise:
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus* were he? .
Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear.
But he who hurts a harmless neighbor's peace,
Insults fallen worth or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet, absent, wounds an author's honest fame;
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honor, injured, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And if he lie not, must at least betray;
Who to the dean and silver bell can swear.
And sees at canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie:
lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
Let Sporust tremble- A. What! that thing of silk?
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Lord Hervey.
* Addison.
XX-735
## p. 11746 (#370) ##########################################
11746
ALEXANDER POPE
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies:
His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust.
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not fortune's worshiper nor fashion's fool,
Not lucre's madman nor ambition's tool,
Not proud nor servile;-be one poet's praise,
That if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;
That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to truth, and moralized his song;
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
Th' imputed trash, and dullness not his own;
The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libeled person and the pictured shape;
## p. 11747 (#371) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11747
Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father dead;
The whisper that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear;-
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state:
Alike my scorn if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court or Japhet in a jail,
A hireling scribbler or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a pillory or near a throne,
He gain his prince's ear or lose his own.
Of gentle blood (part shed in honor's cause,
While yet in Britain honor had applause)
Each parent sprung - A. What fortune, pray? -P. Their
own,
And better got than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walked innoxious through his age.
Nor courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dared an oath nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearned, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temperance and by exercise;
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant and without a groan.
Oh, grant me thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.
O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
## p. 11748 (#372) ##########################################
11748
ALEXANDER POPE
Ν
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a Queen.
A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,
Thus far was right; the rest belongs to Heaven.
THE GODDESS OF DULLNESS IS ADDRESSED ON EDUCATION
From the Dunciad'
ow crowds on crowds around the Goddess press,
Each eager to present their first address.
Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance.
When lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beavered brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbled: Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the genius of the place;
The pale Boy-Senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus: "Since man from beast by words is known,
Words are man's province; words we teach alone.
When reason, doubtful like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Placed at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,—
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel wit and double chain on chain;
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall;
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er;
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
## p. 11749 (#373) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11749
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many
tials were in Pulteney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reached the work, the all that mortal can;
And South beheld that masterpiece of man. "
"Oh" (cried the Goddess) "for some pedant reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the Council to a grammar school!
For sure, if Dullness sees a grateful day,
'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.
Oh! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king,-
That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which as it dies, or lives, we fall or reign:
May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it long! —
The right divine of kings to govern wrong. '»
Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away.
Each stanch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dashed through thin and thick
On German Crouzaz and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murm'ring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
Before them marched that awful Aristarch:
Plowed was his front with many a deep remark;
His hat, which never vailed to human pride,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest; He, kingly, did but nod:
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
"Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt-is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.
## p. 11750 (#374) ##########################################
11750
ALEXANDER POPE
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain.
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better,-
Author of something yet more great than letter;
While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of me or te, of aut or at,
To sound or sink in cano, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply;
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobæus hashed before,
Or chewed by blind old scholiasts o'er and o'er.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.
"Ah, think not, mistress! more true dullness lies
In folly's cap, than wisdom's grave disguise.
Like buoys that never sink into the flood,
On learning's surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much divinity, without a Novs.
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoiled the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read;
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it:
So spins the silk-worm small its slender store,
And labors till it clouds itself all o'er.
"What though we let some better sort of fool
Thrid every science, run through every school? .
•
## p. 11751 (#375) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse;
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a genius to a dunce;
Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level every mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
And hew the block off and get out the man. ”
THE TRIUMPH OF DULLNESS
Closing Lines of the Dunciad›
I
N VAIN, in vain,- the all-composing hour
Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the power.
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus's eyes, by Hermes's wand opprest,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest:
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defense,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.
11751
## p. 11752 (#376) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11752
THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER
ATHER of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
F
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou great First Cause, least understood;
Who all my sense confined
To know but this,-that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,-
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue.
――――――
What blessings thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,——
To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round;
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way.
Save me alike from foolish pride
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied
Or aught thy goodness lent.
## p. 11753 (#377) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11753
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy breath;
Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death.
This day, be bread and peace my lot;
All else beneath the sun,
Thou. know'st if best bestowed or not:
And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar earth, sea, skies,
One chorus let all being raise,
All nature's incense rise!
ODE: THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL
VITA
VITAL spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,-
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?
## p. 11754 (#378) ##########################################
11754
ALEXANDER POPE.
EPITAPH ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBAL
A
PLEASING form; a firm yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resigned:
Honor unchanged, a principle profest,
Fixed to one side, but moderate to the rest:
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true:
Filled with the sense of Age, the fire of Youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;
A generous faith, from superstition free;
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny:
Such this man was; who now from earth removed,
At length enjoys that liberty he loved.
MESSIAH
A SACRED ECLOGUE IN IMITATION OF VIRGIL'S 'POLLIO'
E NYMPHS of Solyma! begin the song:
YE
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more;- O thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire!
Rapt into future times, the bard begun:
A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son!
From Jesse's root behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies:
The Ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descend the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour.
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower!
The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid,—
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.
Swift fly the years, and rise th' expected morn!
Oh, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born!
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring;
--
## p. 11755 (#379) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11755
See lofty Lebanon his head advance,
See nodding forests on the mountains dance;
See, spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise,
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies!
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers:
Prepare the way! a God, a God appears!
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply,
The rocks proclaim th' approaching Deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down ye mountains, and ye valleys rise;
With heads declined, ye cedars homage pay;
Be smooth ye rocks, ye rapid floods give way!
The Savior comes! by ancient bards foretold:
Hear him ye deaf, and all ye blind behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day;
'Tis he th' obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear;
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound,
And hell's grim Tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture and the purest air,
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects,
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms,-
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a plowshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts with surprise
See lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise:
## p. 11756 (#380) ##########################################
11756
ALEXANDER POPE
And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn;
To leafless shrubs the flowering palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead;
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake,
Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongues shall innocently play.
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!
See, a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,'
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabæan springs!
For thee Idumè's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!
## p. 11757 (#381) ##########################################
11757
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
(1802-1839)
W
INTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED was born in London, in 1802.
His father was an eminent barrister, and the son was sent
to Eton at the age of twelve. He remained at Eton till his
twentieth year; and while an upper-class man was instrumental, in
collaboration with Walter Blunt and Henry Nelson Coleridge, in
founding the Etonian, which under his management had more claims
to be considered literature than any other undergraduate magazine
ever published. From Eton he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.
At the university he was the friend of
Macaulay and Austin, and was distinguished
both for brilliant scholarship and for skill
in versification. He took his degree in
1825, and having prepared himself for the
law, he was admitted to the bar in 1829.
While at the university he was the princi-
pal contributor to Knight's Quarterly, and
his verse appeared in periodicals with con-
siderable regularity during his life. He
seemed eminently fitted for English polit-
ical life, and obtained a seat in Parliament
in 1830; but unfortunately lost his health
from pulmonary troubles, and died in 1839
at the age of thirty-seven.
Shakespeare is not more unmistakably the first dramatist than
Praed is the first writer of society verse. It is true that he did not
write anything of the flawless accuracy and dainty precision of form
of Austin Dobson's 'Avis, nor anything quite as gay and insouciant
as 'La Marquise'; but Dobson is too much of a littérateur and a
lover of eighteenth-century bric-a-brac, to be regarded primarily as
a writer of vers de société. The subject-matter of this sub-department
of poetry grows out of the superficial social relations among persons
of leisure and culture. In form it should be light and unconsciously
graceful, and in tone good-humored and well-bred; its satire not ris-
ing much above pleasantry, and its morality kindly rather than
righteous. It is more germane to the Celtic than to the Germanic
side of our compound national spirit, and has more affinity with the
WINTHROP M. PRAED
## p. 11758 (#382) ##########################################
11758
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
urbane, sententious Horace than with any of the great originals of
our national literature; though the frank paganism of the Roman
must be tempered with a delicate flavor of chivalric gallantry. The
cavalier poets Suckling and Lovelace display in their verse some of
the spirit of this genre. Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' is too affected
and artificial to come precisely into the category. Prior's charming
verses To Chloe' have the true tone of careless persiflage; but the
eighteenth century was as a rule too formal and academic for this
dainty exotic. Praed's verse embodies that good-humored interest in
trifles, that necessity of never being insistent or tiresome or officious,
that gracious submergement of the personal for the entertainment
of others, and the well-bred ease of expression, which is the note of
good society. If it be objected that these characteristics, with the
exception of the first, are never found in "good society," it may
be answered that they can be found nowhere else, for they make
society good. "Good society," like everything else, has its ideal, by
which we define it, as we define Christianity by something which
it does not practically reach. This ideal is embodied in the verse
of Praed.
Few men have ever been more careless of literary reputation
than he, and it was not till after his death that any collection of his
verse was made. In fact, no comprehensive edition of his work was
published in England till 1864, though several had appeared in the
United States. Thirty years ago it would not have been considered
good form to cultivate literary notoriety in the modern manner; and
Praed was precisely the opposite of what is conveyed in that express-
ive word of English slang, "cad. " He wrote one poem, 'The Red
Fisherman,' which for imaginative force, and a certain element of
poetic vision, is distinguished from the rest; but 'Every-day Char-
acters,' 'Private Theatricals,' 'School and Schoolfellows,' 'A Letter
of Advice,' 'Our Ball,' 'My Partner,' and 'My Little Cousins,' — and
the list might be extended,- are as good of their kind as anything
can be. There is the apparent spontaneity, the correspondence be-
tween form and sentiment, and the fine workmanship, which are so
rare and so satisfying. No one, not even the Brownings, excelled
Praed in the easy use of the trochaic or feminine rhyme. His rhymes
and even his puns seem inevitable, as if the language had been con-
structed for that very purpose.
Praed is an artist in light verse: and art is a realization of the
excellent; perfection is an absolute matter. The subject of the epic
may be weightier than that of light verse, but the beauty of the short
verse may be not inferior to the beauty of the great poem, and it
is much more easily apprehended. The beauty of the humming-bird
is not less than the beauty of the eagle; and besides, the humming-
## p. 11759 (#383) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11759
bird is darting about the vines of the porch, and the eagle is on
the top of a mountain or up in the clouds, where it is not easy to get
at him. Light verse like Praed's is art; for the function of art is to
charm as well as to elevate. When the Muse drops the great ques-
tions, and discourses about every-day matters, she does not become
the gossip nor the newspaper reporter. She does not lay aside her
delicate tact nor her keen vision: her words are still literature;
the literature of a class, perhaps, but still aiming at the ideal repre-
sentation of a mood, and reaching excellence as often as the greater
literature of humanity. The heroic, the philosophic, the devotedly
Christian are motifs beyond the aim of light verse, but it is not on
that account hostile to them. In reaching perfection of form as Praed
did, he put light verse in sympathy with nature, which finishes little
things; and in so doing is following a great principle, which makes
beauty universal, and therefore divine.
TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE
"Rien n'est changé, mes amis. "-CHARLES X.
HEARD a sick man's dying sigh,
I
And an infant's idle laughter;
The Old Year went with mourning by-
The New came dancing after!
Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;
Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,
Fling roses on the cradle;
Mutes to wait on the funeral state;
Pages to pour the wine:
A requiem for Twenty-Eight,
And a health to Twenty-Nine!
Alas for human happiness!
Alas for human sorrow!
Our yesterday is nothingness,
What else will be our morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;
While sages prate and courts debate,
The same stars set and shine:
## p. 11760 (#384) ##########################################
11760
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
And the world, as it rolled through Twenty-Eight,
Must roll through Twenty-Nine.
Some king will come, in Heaven's good time,
To the tomb his father came to;
Some thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim tc;
Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her;
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat and combine:
And much where we were in Twenty-Eight,
We shall be in Twenty-Nine.
O'Connell will toil to raise the Rent,
And Kenyon to sink the Nation;
And Sheil will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;
And the thought of bayonets and swords
Will make ex-chancellors merry;
And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County Kerry;
And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet's design:
And just what it did in Twenty-Eight
It will do in Twenty-Nine.
And the Goddess of Love will keep her smiles,
And the God of Cups his orgies;
And there'll be riots in St. Giles,
And weddings in St. George's;
And mendicants will sup like kings,
And lords will swear like lackeys;
And black eyes oft will lead to rings,
And rings will lead to black eyes;
And pretty Kate will scold her mate,
In a dialect all divine,-
Alas! they married in Twenty-Eight,
They will part in Twenty-Nine.
And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
## p. 11761 (#385) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11761
How the laugh of Pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of Friendship colder;
But still I shall be what I have been,
Sworn foe to Lady Reason,
And seldom troubled with the spleen,
And fond of talking treason;
I shall buckle my skate, and leap my gate,
And throw and write my line:
And the woman I worshiped in Twenty-Eight
I shall worship in Twenty-Nine.
THE VICAR
So
OME years ago, ere time and taste
Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way, between
St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket,
Was always shown across the green,
And guided to the parson's wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveler up the path,
Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlor steps collected,
Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say,
"Our master knows you - you're expected. "
Uprose the Reverend Dr. Brown,
Uprose the doctor's winsome marrow;
The lady laid her knitting down,
Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow:
Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed,
Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner.
If, when he reached his journey's end,
And warmed himself in court or college,
He had not gained an honest friend
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge,-
"
XX-730
## p. 11762 (#386) ##########################################
11762
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
If he departed as he came,
With no new light on love or liquor,-
Good sooth, the traveler was to blame,
And not the vicarage, nor the vicar.
His talk was like a stream, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.
He was a shrewd and sound divine,
Of loud Dissent the mortal terror:
And when, by dint of page and line,
He 'stablished truth, or startled error,
The Baptist found him far too deep;
The Deist sighed with saving sorrow;
And the lean Levite went to sleep,
And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.
His sermon never said or showed
That earth is foul, that heaven is gracious,
Without refreshment on the road
From Jerome or from Athanasius;
And sure a righteous zeal inspired
The hand and head that penned and planned them,
For all who understood admired,
And some who did not understand them.
He wrote, too, in a quiet way,
Small treatises and smaller verses,
And sage remarks on chalk and clay,
And hints to noble lords- and nurses;
True histories of last year's ghost,
Lines to a ringlet, or a turban,
And trifles for the Morning Post,
And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.
He did not think all mischief fair,
Although he had a knack of joking;
He did not make himself a bear,
Although he had a taste for smoking;
## p. 11763 (#387) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11763
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man's belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
And he was kind, and loved to sit
In the low hut or garnished cottage,
And praise the farmer's homely wit,
And share the widow's homelier pottage;
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome which they could not utter.
He always had a tale for me
Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus;
From him I learnt the Rule of Three,
Cat's-cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus;
I used to singe his powdered wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig
When he began to quote Augustine.
Alack the change! In vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,
The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;
You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the vicar's seat: you'll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid? -look down,
And construe on the slab before you,
"Hic jacet GVLIELMVS BROWN,
Vir nulla non donandus lauru. »
## p. 11764 (#388) ##########################################
11764
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
THE BELLE OF THE BALL
EARS, years ago, ere yet my dreams
Had been of being wise or witty;
Ere I had done with writing themes,
Or yawned o'er this infernal Chitty;
Years, years ago, while all my joys
Were in my fowling-piece and filly,—
In short, while I was yet a boy,
I fell in love with Laura Lilly.
Y
I saw her at a country ball;
There, when the sound of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle,
Hers was the subtlest spell by far
Of all that sets young hearts romancing;
She was our queen, our rose, our star,
And when she danced-O heaven, her dancing!
Dark was her hair, her hand was white,
Her voice was exquisitely tender,
Her eyes were full of liquid light;
I never saw a waist so slender;
Her every look, her every smile,
Shot right and left a score of arrows:
I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,
And wondered where she'd left her sparrows.
She talked of politics or prayers,
Of Southey's prose or Wordsworth's sonnets,
Of daggers or of dancing bears,
Of battles or the last new bonnets;
By candle-light, at twelve o'clock,
To me it mattered not a tittle,-
If these bright lips had quoted Locke,
I might have thought they murmured Little.
--
Through sunny May, through sultry June.
I loved her with a love eternal;
I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them for the Sunday Journal.
My mother laughed,—I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling;
My father frowned; - but how should gout
Find any happiness in kneeling?
## p. 11765 (#389) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11765
She was the daughter of a dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother, just thirteen,
Whose color was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,
And lord-lieutenant of the county.
But titles and the three-per-cents,
And mortgages and great relations,
And India bonds and tithes and rents,-
Oh! what are they to love's sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks,
Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks
As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
She sketched- the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
She botanized- I envied each
Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Handel-it was grand,
-
She made the Catalina jealous;
She touched the organ-I could stand
For hours and hours and blow the bellows.
And she was flattered, worshiped, bored;
Her steps were watched, her dress was noted,
Her poodle dog was quite adored,
Her sayings were extremely quoted.
She laughed and every heart was glad
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned- and every look was sad
As if the opera were demolished.
She smiled on many just for fun-
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the first, the only one,
Her heart had thought of for a minute
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase which was divinely molded;
She wrote a charming hand, and oh!
How sweetly all her notes were folded!
## p. 11766 (#390) ##########################################
11766
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
Our love was like most other loves:
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rosebud and a pair of gloves,
And Fly not Yet' upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one's heir,
Some hopes of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows - and then we parted.
We parted-months and years rolled by;
We met again four summers after;
Our parting was all sob and sigh,
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter:
For in my heart's most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room belle,
But only Mrs. -Something-Rogers.
## p. 11766 (#391) ##########################################
## p. 11766 (#392) ##########################################
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## p. 11766 (#396) ##########################################
4. PRESCOTT
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## p. 11767 (#397) ##########################################
11767
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
(1796-1859)
BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE
RESCOTT had been at work on his 'Ferdinand and Isabella'
about four years when he adopted the plan that distin-
Anguishes all his histories. To this he was led by his confi-
dence in Mably, author of 'Étude de l'Histoire,' of whom he made
this record: "I like particularly his notion of the necessity of giv
ing an interest as well as utility to history, by letting events tend
to some obvious point or moral; in short, by paying such attention
to the development of events tending to this leading result as one
would in the construction of a romance or a drama. » All the world
knows the success of the plan: Prescott is read as freely as the great
novelists and dramatists. A critical, rather than a creative, age has
charged him with being more interesting than accurate. This is
the old charge against Herodotus, and against Thucydides; it is the
charge made against Prescott's great English contemporary, Macaulay.
What critic of either of these has won an equal place in literature?
It would be gratifying, though difficult, to explain why an interest-
ing history provokes suspicion. Each generation revises the record.
Learned specialists who venture to become critics, condemn an entire
work because of a fault in relating an episode. The story of Philip
the Second has been retold by one whose genius Prescott recognized
and encouraged, just as his own had been recognized and encouraged
by Washington Irving. The Spanish-American story has been retold
by Sir Arthur Helps, by Markham, and by John Fiske.
A history is variously judged. One reader estimates it by its
authorities; another by its style. Of literary virtues, style is the
first to be cultivated and the last to be formed.
"With regard to the style of this work," wrote Prescott of his 'Ferdinand
and Isabella,' seven years after its completion, "I will only remark that most
of the defects, such as they are, may be comprehended in the words trop
soigné. At least they may be traced to this source. The only rule is, to
write with freedom and nature, even with homeliness of expression occasion-
ally, and with alternation of long and short sentences; for such variety is essen-
tial to harmony. But after all, it is not the construction of the sentence, but
## p. 11768 (#398) ##########################################
11768
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
the tone of the coloring, which produces the effect. If the sentiment is warm,
lively, forcible, the reader will be carried along without much heed to the
arrangement of the periods, which differs exceedingly in different standard
writers. Put life into the narrative, if you would have it take. Elaborate
and artificial fastidiousness in the form of expression is highly detrimental
to this. A book may be made up of perfect sentences and yet the general
impression be very imperfect. In fine, be engrossed with the thought and not
with the fashion of expressing it. "
His plan and his style harmonize, and are principal causes of the
popularity of his books. There is another cause: the fortunes of the
men and women whose lives are depicted on his pages become of
personal interest to the reader.
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise;
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read;
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head,
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friends before)
With open arms received one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approved!
Happier their author, when by these beloved!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.
Soft were my numbers: who could take offense,
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,
A painted mistress or a purling stream.
Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill:
I wished the man a dinner, and sat still.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret:
I never answered,-I was not in debt.
If want provoked, or madness made them print,
I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.
11743
## p. 11744 (#368) ##########################################
11744
ALEXANDER POPE
Did some more sober critic come abroad,—
If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretense,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibalds:
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,-
Even such small critics some regard may claim,
Preserved in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.
Were others angry, I excused them too:
Well might they rage-I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;
But each man's secret standard in his mind.
That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,-
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year;
He who, still wanting though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left;
And he who, now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.
Peace to all such! But were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
## p. 11745 (#369) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11745
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise:
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus* were he? .
Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,
Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear.
But he who hurts a harmless neighbor's peace,
Insults fallen worth or beauty in distress,
Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,
Who writes a libel, or who copies out:
That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,
Yet, absent, wounds an author's honest fame;
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honor, injured, to defend;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And if he lie not, must at least betray;
Who to the dean and silver bell can swear.
And sees at canons what was never there;
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie:
lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.
Let Sporust tremble- A. What! that thing of silk?
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Lord Hervey.
* Addison.
XX-735
## p. 11746 (#370) ##########################################
11746
ALEXANDER POPE
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies:
His wit all see-saw between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust.
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not fortune's worshiper nor fashion's fool,
Not lucre's madman nor ambition's tool,
Not proud nor servile;-be one poet's praise,
That if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;
That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same.
That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to truth, and moralized his song;
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head,
The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
Th' imputed trash, and dullness not his own;
The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libeled person and the pictured shape;
## p. 11747 (#371) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11747
Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father dead;
The whisper that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps, yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear;-
Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last!
A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?
P. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state:
Alike my scorn if he succeed or fail,
Sporus at court or Japhet in a jail,
A hireling scribbler or a hireling peer,
Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;
If on a pillory or near a throne,
He gain his prince's ear or lose his own.
Of gentle blood (part shed in honor's cause,
While yet in Britain honor had applause)
Each parent sprung - A. What fortune, pray? -P. Their
own,
And better got than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walked innoxious through his age.
Nor courts he saw, no suits would ever try,
Nor dared an oath nor hazarded a lie.
Unlearned, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language but the language of the heart.
By nature honest, by experience wise,
Healthy by temperance and by exercise;
His life, though long, to sickness past unknown,
His death was instant and without a groan.
Oh, grant me thus to live, and thus to die!
Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.
O Friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky!
On cares like these if length of days attend,
May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,
## p. 11748 (#372) ##########################################
11748
ALEXANDER POPE
Ν
Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,
And just as rich as when he served a Queen.
A. Whether that blessing be denied or given,
Thus far was right; the rest belongs to Heaven.
THE GODDESS OF DULLNESS IS ADDRESSED ON EDUCATION
From the Dunciad'
ow crowds on crowds around the Goddess press,
Each eager to present their first address.
Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance.
When lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beavered brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbled: Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the genius of the place;
The pale Boy-Senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus: "Since man from beast by words is known,
Words are man's province; words we teach alone.
When reason, doubtful like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Placed at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,—
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel wit and double chain on chain;
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall;
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er;
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
## p. 11749 (#373) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11749
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many
tials were in Pulteney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reached the work, the all that mortal can;
And South beheld that masterpiece of man. "
"Oh" (cried the Goddess) "for some pedant reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the Council to a grammar school!
For sure, if Dullness sees a grateful day,
'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.
Oh! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king,-
That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which as it dies, or lives, we fall or reign:
May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it long! —
The right divine of kings to govern wrong. '»
Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away.
Each stanch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dashed through thin and thick
On German Crouzaz and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murm'ring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
Before them marched that awful Aristarch:
Plowed was his front with many a deep remark;
His hat, which never vailed to human pride,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest; He, kingly, did but nod:
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
"Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt-is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.
## p. 11750 (#374) ##########################################
11750
ALEXANDER POPE
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain.
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better,-
Author of something yet more great than letter;
While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of me or te, of aut or at,
To sound or sink in cano, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply;
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobæus hashed before,
Or chewed by blind old scholiasts o'er and o'er.
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.
"Ah, think not, mistress! more true dullness lies
In folly's cap, than wisdom's grave disguise.
Like buoys that never sink into the flood,
On learning's surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much divinity, without a Novs.
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoiled the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read;
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it:
So spins the silk-worm small its slender store,
And labors till it clouds itself all o'er.
"What though we let some better sort of fool
Thrid every science, run through every school? .
•
## p. 11751 (#375) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse;
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a genius to a dunce;
Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level every mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
And hew the block off and get out the man. ”
THE TRIUMPH OF DULLNESS
Closing Lines of the Dunciad›
I
N VAIN, in vain,- the all-composing hour
Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the power.
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus's eyes, by Hermes's wand opprest,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest:
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defense,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.
11751
## p. 11752 (#376) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11752
THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER
ATHER of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
F
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou great First Cause, least understood;
Who all my sense confined
To know but this,-that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,-
This, teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heaven pursue.
――――――
What blessings thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,——
To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth's contracted span
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round;
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way.
Save me alike from foolish pride
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied
Or aught thy goodness lent.
## p. 11753 (#377) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11753
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy breath;
Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death.
This day, be bread and peace my lot;
All else beneath the sun,
Thou. know'st if best bestowed or not:
And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar earth, sea, skies,
One chorus let all being raise,
All nature's incense rise!
ODE: THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL
VITA
VITAL spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,-
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?
## p. 11754 (#378) ##########################################
11754
ALEXANDER POPE.
EPITAPH ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBAL
A
PLEASING form; a firm yet cautious mind;
Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resigned:
Honor unchanged, a principle profest,
Fixed to one side, but moderate to the rest:
An honest courtier, yet a patriot too;
Just to his prince, and to his country true:
Filled with the sense of Age, the fire of Youth,
A scorn of wrangling, yet a zeal for truth;
A generous faith, from superstition free;
A love to peace, and hate of tyranny:
Such this man was; who now from earth removed,
At length enjoys that liberty he loved.
MESSIAH
A SACRED ECLOGUE IN IMITATION OF VIRGIL'S 'POLLIO'
E NYMPHS of Solyma! begin the song:
YE
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more;- O thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire!
Rapt into future times, the bard begun:
A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son!
From Jesse's root behold a branch arise,
Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies:
The Ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move,
And on its top descend the mystic Dove.
Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour.
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower!
The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid,—
From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale;
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.
Swift fly the years, and rise th' expected morn!
Oh, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born!
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring,
With all the incense of the breathing spring;
--
## p. 11755 (#379) ##########################################
ALEXANDER POPE
11755
See lofty Lebanon his head advance,
See nodding forests on the mountains dance;
See, spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise,
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies!
Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers:
Prepare the way! a God, a God appears!
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply,
The rocks proclaim th' approaching Deity.
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies!
Sink down ye mountains, and ye valleys rise;
With heads declined, ye cedars homage pay;
Be smooth ye rocks, ye rapid floods give way!
The Savior comes! by ancient bards foretold:
Hear him ye deaf, and all ye blind behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day;
'Tis he th' obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear;
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear;
From every face he wipes off every tear.
In adamantine chains shall Death be bound,
And hell's grim Tyrant feel th' eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture and the purest air,
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects,
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms,-
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes,
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a plowshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field.
The swain in barren deserts with surprise
See lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise:
## p. 11756 (#380) ##########################################
11756
ALEXANDER POPE
And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn;
To leafless shrubs the flowering palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead;
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake,
Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongues shall innocently play.
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!
See, a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,'
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabæan springs!
For thee Idumè's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!
## p. 11757 (#381) ##########################################
11757
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
(1802-1839)
W
INTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED was born in London, in 1802.
His father was an eminent barrister, and the son was sent
to Eton at the age of twelve. He remained at Eton till his
twentieth year; and while an upper-class man was instrumental, in
collaboration with Walter Blunt and Henry Nelson Coleridge, in
founding the Etonian, which under his management had more claims
to be considered literature than any other undergraduate magazine
ever published. From Eton he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.
At the university he was the friend of
Macaulay and Austin, and was distinguished
both for brilliant scholarship and for skill
in versification. He took his degree in
1825, and having prepared himself for the
law, he was admitted to the bar in 1829.
While at the university he was the princi-
pal contributor to Knight's Quarterly, and
his verse appeared in periodicals with con-
siderable regularity during his life. He
seemed eminently fitted for English polit-
ical life, and obtained a seat in Parliament
in 1830; but unfortunately lost his health
from pulmonary troubles, and died in 1839
at the age of thirty-seven.
Shakespeare is not more unmistakably the first dramatist than
Praed is the first writer of society verse. It is true that he did not
write anything of the flawless accuracy and dainty precision of form
of Austin Dobson's 'Avis, nor anything quite as gay and insouciant
as 'La Marquise'; but Dobson is too much of a littérateur and a
lover of eighteenth-century bric-a-brac, to be regarded primarily as
a writer of vers de société. The subject-matter of this sub-department
of poetry grows out of the superficial social relations among persons
of leisure and culture. In form it should be light and unconsciously
graceful, and in tone good-humored and well-bred; its satire not ris-
ing much above pleasantry, and its morality kindly rather than
righteous. It is more germane to the Celtic than to the Germanic
side of our compound national spirit, and has more affinity with the
WINTHROP M. PRAED
## p. 11758 (#382) ##########################################
11758
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
urbane, sententious Horace than with any of the great originals of
our national literature; though the frank paganism of the Roman
must be tempered with a delicate flavor of chivalric gallantry. The
cavalier poets Suckling and Lovelace display in their verse some of
the spirit of this genre. Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' is too affected
and artificial to come precisely into the category. Prior's charming
verses To Chloe' have the true tone of careless persiflage; but the
eighteenth century was as a rule too formal and academic for this
dainty exotic. Praed's verse embodies that good-humored interest in
trifles, that necessity of never being insistent or tiresome or officious,
that gracious submergement of the personal for the entertainment
of others, and the well-bred ease of expression, which is the note of
good society. If it be objected that these characteristics, with the
exception of the first, are never found in "good society," it may
be answered that they can be found nowhere else, for they make
society good. "Good society," like everything else, has its ideal, by
which we define it, as we define Christianity by something which
it does not practically reach. This ideal is embodied in the verse
of Praed.
Few men have ever been more careless of literary reputation
than he, and it was not till after his death that any collection of his
verse was made. In fact, no comprehensive edition of his work was
published in England till 1864, though several had appeared in the
United States. Thirty years ago it would not have been considered
good form to cultivate literary notoriety in the modern manner; and
Praed was precisely the opposite of what is conveyed in that express-
ive word of English slang, "cad. " He wrote one poem, 'The Red
Fisherman,' which for imaginative force, and a certain element of
poetic vision, is distinguished from the rest; but 'Every-day Char-
acters,' 'Private Theatricals,' 'School and Schoolfellows,' 'A Letter
of Advice,' 'Our Ball,' 'My Partner,' and 'My Little Cousins,' — and
the list might be extended,- are as good of their kind as anything
can be. There is the apparent spontaneity, the correspondence be-
tween form and sentiment, and the fine workmanship, which are so
rare and so satisfying. No one, not even the Brownings, excelled
Praed in the easy use of the trochaic or feminine rhyme. His rhymes
and even his puns seem inevitable, as if the language had been con-
structed for that very purpose.
Praed is an artist in light verse: and art is a realization of the
excellent; perfection is an absolute matter. The subject of the epic
may be weightier than that of light verse, but the beauty of the short
verse may be not inferior to the beauty of the great poem, and it
is much more easily apprehended. The beauty of the humming-bird
is not less than the beauty of the eagle; and besides, the humming-
## p. 11759 (#383) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11759
bird is darting about the vines of the porch, and the eagle is on
the top of a mountain or up in the clouds, where it is not easy to get
at him. Light verse like Praed's is art; for the function of art is to
charm as well as to elevate. When the Muse drops the great ques-
tions, and discourses about every-day matters, she does not become
the gossip nor the newspaper reporter. She does not lay aside her
delicate tact nor her keen vision: her words are still literature;
the literature of a class, perhaps, but still aiming at the ideal repre-
sentation of a mood, and reaching excellence as often as the greater
literature of humanity. The heroic, the philosophic, the devotedly
Christian are motifs beyond the aim of light verse, but it is not on
that account hostile to them. In reaching perfection of form as Praed
did, he put light verse in sympathy with nature, which finishes little
things; and in so doing is following a great principle, which makes
beauty universal, and therefore divine.
TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE
"Rien n'est changé, mes amis. "-CHARLES X.
HEARD a sick man's dying sigh,
I
And an infant's idle laughter;
The Old Year went with mourning by-
The New came dancing after!
Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;
Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,
Fling roses on the cradle;
Mutes to wait on the funeral state;
Pages to pour the wine:
A requiem for Twenty-Eight,
And a health to Twenty-Nine!
Alas for human happiness!
Alas for human sorrow!
Our yesterday is nothingness,
What else will be our morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;
While sages prate and courts debate,
The same stars set and shine:
## p. 11760 (#384) ##########################################
11760
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
And the world, as it rolled through Twenty-Eight,
Must roll through Twenty-Nine.
Some king will come, in Heaven's good time,
To the tomb his father came to;
Some thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim tc;
Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her;
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat and combine:
And much where we were in Twenty-Eight,
We shall be in Twenty-Nine.
O'Connell will toil to raise the Rent,
And Kenyon to sink the Nation;
And Sheil will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;
And the thought of bayonets and swords
Will make ex-chancellors merry;
And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County Kerry;
And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet's design:
And just what it did in Twenty-Eight
It will do in Twenty-Nine.
And the Goddess of Love will keep her smiles,
And the God of Cups his orgies;
And there'll be riots in St. Giles,
And weddings in St. George's;
And mendicants will sup like kings,
And lords will swear like lackeys;
And black eyes oft will lead to rings,
And rings will lead to black eyes;
And pretty Kate will scold her mate,
In a dialect all divine,-
Alas! they married in Twenty-Eight,
They will part in Twenty-Nine.
And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
## p. 11761 (#385) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11761
How the laugh of Pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of Friendship colder;
But still I shall be what I have been,
Sworn foe to Lady Reason,
And seldom troubled with the spleen,
And fond of talking treason;
I shall buckle my skate, and leap my gate,
And throw and write my line:
And the woman I worshiped in Twenty-Eight
I shall worship in Twenty-Nine.
THE VICAR
So
OME years ago, ere time and taste
Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way, between
St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket,
Was always shown across the green,
And guided to the parson's wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveler up the path,
Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlor steps collected,
Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say,
"Our master knows you - you're expected. "
Uprose the Reverend Dr. Brown,
Uprose the doctor's winsome marrow;
The lady laid her knitting down,
Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow:
Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed,
Pundit or Papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner.
If, when he reached his journey's end,
And warmed himself in court or college,
He had not gained an honest friend
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge,-
"
XX-730
## p. 11762 (#386) ##########################################
11762
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
If he departed as he came,
With no new light on love or liquor,-
Good sooth, the traveler was to blame,
And not the vicarage, nor the vicar.
His talk was like a stream, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.
He was a shrewd and sound divine,
Of loud Dissent the mortal terror:
And when, by dint of page and line,
He 'stablished truth, or startled error,
The Baptist found him far too deep;
The Deist sighed with saving sorrow;
And the lean Levite went to sleep,
And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.
His sermon never said or showed
That earth is foul, that heaven is gracious,
Without refreshment on the road
From Jerome or from Athanasius;
And sure a righteous zeal inspired
The hand and head that penned and planned them,
For all who understood admired,
And some who did not understand them.
He wrote, too, in a quiet way,
Small treatises and smaller verses,
And sage remarks on chalk and clay,
And hints to noble lords- and nurses;
True histories of last year's ghost,
Lines to a ringlet, or a turban,
And trifles for the Morning Post,
And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.
He did not think all mischief fair,
Although he had a knack of joking;
He did not make himself a bear,
Although he had a taste for smoking;
## p. 11763 (#387) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11763
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man's belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
And he was kind, and loved to sit
In the low hut or garnished cottage,
And praise the farmer's homely wit,
And share the widow's homelier pottage;
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarred the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome which they could not utter.
He always had a tale for me
Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus;
From him I learnt the Rule of Three,
Cat's-cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus;
I used to singe his powdered wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig
When he began to quote Augustine.
Alack the change! In vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled,—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,
The trees I climbed, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;
You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the vicar's seat: you'll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid? -look down,
And construe on the slab before you,
"Hic jacet GVLIELMVS BROWN,
Vir nulla non donandus lauru. »
## p. 11764 (#388) ##########################################
11764
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
THE BELLE OF THE BALL
EARS, years ago, ere yet my dreams
Had been of being wise or witty;
Ere I had done with writing themes,
Or yawned o'er this infernal Chitty;
Years, years ago, while all my joys
Were in my fowling-piece and filly,—
In short, while I was yet a boy,
I fell in love with Laura Lilly.
Y
I saw her at a country ball;
There, when the sound of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle,
Hers was the subtlest spell by far
Of all that sets young hearts romancing;
She was our queen, our rose, our star,
And when she danced-O heaven, her dancing!
Dark was her hair, her hand was white,
Her voice was exquisitely tender,
Her eyes were full of liquid light;
I never saw a waist so slender;
Her every look, her every smile,
Shot right and left a score of arrows:
I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,
And wondered where she'd left her sparrows.
She talked of politics or prayers,
Of Southey's prose or Wordsworth's sonnets,
Of daggers or of dancing bears,
Of battles or the last new bonnets;
By candle-light, at twelve o'clock,
To me it mattered not a tittle,-
If these bright lips had quoted Locke,
I might have thought they murmured Little.
--
Through sunny May, through sultry June.
I loved her with a love eternal;
I spoke her praises to the moon,
I wrote them for the Sunday Journal.
My mother laughed,—I soon found out
That ancient ladies have no feeling;
My father frowned; - but how should gout
Find any happiness in kneeling?
## p. 11765 (#389) ##########################################
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
11765
She was the daughter of a dean,
Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic;
She had one brother, just thirteen,
Whose color was extremely hectic;
Her grandmother for many a year
Had fed the parish with her bounty;
Her second cousin was a peer,
And lord-lieutenant of the county.
But titles and the three-per-cents,
And mortgages and great relations,
And India bonds and tithes and rents,-
Oh! what are they to love's sensations?
Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks,
Such wealth, such honors, Cupid chooses;
He cares as little for the stocks
As Baron Rothschild for the Muses.
She sketched- the vale, the wood, the beach,
Grew lovelier from her pencil's shading;
She botanized- I envied each
Young blossom in her boudoir fading;
She warbled Handel-it was grand,
-
She made the Catalina jealous;
She touched the organ-I could stand
For hours and hours and blow the bellows.
And she was flattered, worshiped, bored;
Her steps were watched, her dress was noted,
Her poodle dog was quite adored,
Her sayings were extremely quoted.
She laughed and every heart was glad
As if the taxes were abolished;
She frowned- and every look was sad
As if the opera were demolished.
She smiled on many just for fun-
I knew that there was nothing in it;
I was the first, the only one,
Her heart had thought of for a minute
I knew it, for she told me so,
In phrase which was divinely molded;
She wrote a charming hand, and oh!
How sweetly all her notes were folded!
## p. 11766 (#390) ##########################################
11766
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
Our love was like most other loves:
A little glow, a little shiver,
A rosebud and a pair of gloves,
And Fly not Yet' upon the river;
Some jealousy of some one's heir,
Some hopes of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,
The usual vows - and then we parted.
We parted-months and years rolled by;
We met again four summers after;
Our parting was all sob and sigh,
Our meeting was all mirth and laughter:
For in my heart's most secret cell
There had been many other lodgers;
And she was not the ball-room belle,
But only Mrs. -Something-Rogers.
## p. 11766 (#391) ##########################################
## p. 11766 (#392) ##########################################
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## p. 11766 (#396) ##########################################
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## p. 11767 (#397) ##########################################
11767
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
(1796-1859)
BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE
RESCOTT had been at work on his 'Ferdinand and Isabella'
about four years when he adopted the plan that distin-
Anguishes all his histories. To this he was led by his confi-
dence in Mably, author of 'Étude de l'Histoire,' of whom he made
this record: "I like particularly his notion of the necessity of giv
ing an interest as well as utility to history, by letting events tend
to some obvious point or moral; in short, by paying such attention
to the development of events tending to this leading result as one
would in the construction of a romance or a drama. » All the world
knows the success of the plan: Prescott is read as freely as the great
novelists and dramatists. A critical, rather than a creative, age has
charged him with being more interesting than accurate. This is
the old charge against Herodotus, and against Thucydides; it is the
charge made against Prescott's great English contemporary, Macaulay.
What critic of either of these has won an equal place in literature?
It would be gratifying, though difficult, to explain why an interest-
ing history provokes suspicion. Each generation revises the record.
Learned specialists who venture to become critics, condemn an entire
work because of a fault in relating an episode. The story of Philip
the Second has been retold by one whose genius Prescott recognized
and encouraged, just as his own had been recognized and encouraged
by Washington Irving. The Spanish-American story has been retold
by Sir Arthur Helps, by Markham, and by John Fiske.
A history is variously judged. One reader estimates it by its
authorities; another by its style. Of literary virtues, style is the
first to be cultivated and the last to be formed.
"With regard to the style of this work," wrote Prescott of his 'Ferdinand
and Isabella,' seven years after its completion, "I will only remark that most
of the defects, such as they are, may be comprehended in the words trop
soigné. At least they may be traced to this source. The only rule is, to
write with freedom and nature, even with homeliness of expression occasion-
ally, and with alternation of long and short sentences; for such variety is essen-
tial to harmony. But after all, it is not the construction of the sentence, but
## p. 11768 (#398) ##########################################
11768
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT
the tone of the coloring, which produces the effect. If the sentiment is warm,
lively, forcible, the reader will be carried along without much heed to the
arrangement of the periods, which differs exceedingly in different standard
writers. Put life into the narrative, if you would have it take. Elaborate
and artificial fastidiousness in the form of expression is highly detrimental
to this. A book may be made up of perfect sentences and yet the general
impression be very imperfect. In fine, be engrossed with the thought and not
with the fashion of expressing it. "
His plan and his style harmonize, and are principal causes of the
popularity of his books. There is another cause: the fortunes of the
men and women whose lives are depicted on his pages become of
personal interest to the reader.
