By-ways in Book-land: Short Essays on Literary Subjects

If, however, the Thames does not often or greatly inspire the rhymers of to-day, it cannot, certainly, be described as songless. On the contrary, it has received from the poets more magnificent and more frequent eulogium than any of its compeers. If one goes back even so far as Spenser, one finds that writer picturing it in one poem as ‘noble Thamis’ – a ‘lovely bridegroom,’ ‘full, fresh and jolly,’ ‘all decked in a robe of watchet hew,’ and adorned by a coronet ‘in which were many towres and castels set;’ while, in another work from the same hand, it figures as a ‘gentle river,’ is characterized as ‘christall Thamis,’ and is lauded for its ‘pure streames’ and ‘sweete waters.’ Chapman, in his ‘Ovid’s Banquet of Sense,’ discourses eloquently of the ‘wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet The brackish coast of old Oceanus’:

‘And as by London’s bosom she doth fleet,Casts herself proudly through the bridge’s twists,Where, as she takes again her crystal feet,She curls her silver hair like amourists,Smooths her bright cheeks, adorns her brow with ships,And, empress-like, along the coast she trips’ —

a description almost as impressive as the thing described. Among the lovers of the Thames must be ranked, too, Herrick, who, in one of his pieces, sends to his ‘silver-footed Thamasis’ his ‘supremest kiss.’ ‘No more,’ he regrets, will he ‘reiterate’ its strand, whereon so many stately structures stand; no more, in the summer’s sweeter evenings, will he go to bathe in it, as thousand others do:

‘No more shall I along thy christall glide,The barge with boughes and rushes beautifi’d…To Richmond, Kingstone, and to Hampton Court.Never againe shall I with finnie oreCut from or draw unto the faithfull shore,And landing here, or safely landing there,Make way to my beloved Westminster.’

Milton, in his ‘Vacation Exercise,’ bestows upon the Thames the epithet of ‘Royal-towered.’ How Denham celebrated it is well known to most. In his view it was ‘the most loved of all the Ocean’s sons,’ and he commended it especially for its freedom from sudden and impetuous wave, from the unexpected inundations which spoil the mower’s hopes and mock the ploughman’s toil.

‘Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full’ —

such was the famous panegyric he passed upon it. From Denham, too, came an early poetical recognition of the growth of London’s commerce. The Thames, he says, brings home to us, and makes the Indies ours; his fair bosom is the world’s exchange. To Pope, in his ‘Windsor Forest,’ the Thames appears as the ‘great father of the British floods,’ on whose shores figure future navies.

‘No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,No lakes so gentle, and no spring so clear.’

And the poet ends by prophesying the time when ‘unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,’ whole nations entering with each swelling tide. Elsewhere he assures us that ‘blest Thames’s shores the brightest beauties yield.’ Thomson, again, dwells on the extent of the trade fostered by the river. Commerce, he says, has chosen for his grand resort ‘Thy stream, O Thames, large, gentle, deep, majestic, King of floods!’ And he describes how, on either hand,

‘Like a long wintry forest, groves of mastsShot up their spires.’

Then, as now, ‘the sooty hulk steered sluggish on,’ while

‘The splendid bargeRow’d, regular, to harmony; around,The boat, light-skimming, stretched its oary wings.’

Up to this time, the river had been called ‘clear’ and ‘crystal,’ in spite of ‘sooty hulks;’ but, with the advent of Cowper, another note is struck. With him the Thames is

‘The finest streamThat wavers to the noon-day beam,’

but it is not, alas! absolutely pure:

‘Nor yet, my Delia, to the mainRuns the sweet tide without a stain,Unsullied as it seems;The nymphs of many a sable floodDeform with streaks of oozy mudThe bosom of the Thames.’

Happily, this is about the only word of depreciation which the poets have permitted themselves. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge in 1803, notes that ‘the river glideth at its own sweet will,’ and if his olfactory nerves were at all distressed he has not said so in verse. Of later singers, none has been more enthusiastic about the Thames than Eliza Cook, who has told us that, though it bears no azure wave and rejoices in no leaping cascades, yet she ever loved to dwell where she heard its gushing swell – in which expression, we may be sure, there is no allusion to the British ‘dude.’ Another lady – Mrs. Isa Craig Knox – has supplied a very pretty description of the Thames in its more idyllic phases, pointing out how

‘It glimmersThrough the stems of the beeches;Through the screen of the willows it shimmersIn long-winding reaches;Flowing so softly that scarcelyIt seems to be flowing;But the reeds of the low little islandAre bent to its going;And soft as the breath of a sleeperIts heaving and sighing,In the coves where the fleets of the liliesAt anchor are lying.’

Finally, there is that austere teacher, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, who, addressing the Thames, exhorts it to go on soothing, but beseeches it also to add a warning voice, telling her, to whom the pomp of gold is dear, of ‘Tyre that fell, of Fortune’s perfidy.’

‘With murmur low and ceaseless cheer,The Imperial City’s agitated ear,’

Other poetic celebrations – such as those of Mr. Ernest Myers, Mr. Ashby-Sterry, and ‘C. C. R.’ – might be recorded; but the above will suffice to show how prominent a place the Thames has always held in the heart and mind of those poets who have come within the sphere of its influence. Even if it were never made the subject of a future song, it would still figure largely and conspicuously in the British corpus poetarum.

ENGLISH EPIGRAPHS

The student of English poetry must often have been struck by its richness in that form of verse which may best be called the Epigraph – the brief sententious effort, answering somewhat to the epigram as understood and practised by the Greeks, but unlike the Latin, French, and English epigram in being sentimental instead of witty, and aiming rather at all-round neatness than at pungency or point. Our language abounds, of course, in examples of short lyrical compositions, such (to name familiar instances) as Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Lay a garland on my hearse,’ Congreve’s ‘False though she be to me and love,’ Goldsmith’s ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly,’ Shelley’s ‘Music, when soft voices die,’ and MacDonald’s ‘Alas, how easily things go wrong!’ – all of these being only eight lines long. There are, indeed, plenty of lyrical performances even more brief than this; such as Mr. Marzials’ ‘tragedy’ in quatrain:

‘She reach’d a rosebud from the tree,And bit the tip and threw it by;My little rose, for you and meThe worst is over when we die!’

But, then, the epigraph is never lyrical. It belongs to the order of reflective poetry, and consists of a single thought, expressed with as much brevity and grace as possible. A common form of it is the epitaph; another is the inscription; while at other times the poets have used it for the purpose of enshrining some occasional or isolated utterance.

The thoroughly successful epitaphs – at once short, and wholly poetical in expression – are among the most famous and popular things in literature. Who does not remember the admirable tribute to ‘Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother’ – usually ascribed to Ben Jonson, but sometimes attributed to Browne? Jonson penned an epitaph on ‘Elizabeth L. H.,’ which would have been exquisite had it consisted only of the following:

‘Underneath this stone doth lieAs much beauty as could die;Which, in life, did harbour giveTo more virtue than doth live.’

Even as they stand, the lines, as a whole, may fairly compare with those on Lady Pembroke. How happy Pope was in his epitaphs is familiarly known. The art was just that in which he might naturally be expected to excel. The time-honoured couplet on Newton need not be quoted: the ‘octave’ on Sir Godfrey Kneller is most notable for the final bit of hyperbole:

‘Living, great Nature fear’d he might outvieHer works, and, dying, fears herself may die.’

And, talking of epitaphs, one is reminded of the quaint comment by Sir Henry Wotton ‘On the Death of Sir A. Morton’s Wife’:

‘He first deceased; she, for a little, triedTo live without him, liked it not, and died’ —

surely a piece of work as nearly as possible perfect in its way. In the matter of inscriptions, we have, of course, that by Ben Jonson on Shakespeare’s portrait, and that by Dryden under Milton’s picture – the last-named being by no means deserving of its reputation. We have also the well-known lines by Pope, ‘written on glass with Lord Chesterfield’s diamond pencil;’ the equally well-known sentence on Rogers by Lord Holland; and the less-hackneyed and even more flattering couplet composed by Lord Lyttelton for Lady Suffolk’s bust (erected in a wood at Stowe):

‘Her wit and beauty for a Court were made,But truth and goodness fit her for a shade.’

The writers of verse have naturally shone in such concentrated testimonies to the merits of those whom they delighted to honour. Our literature is full of eloquent and graceful summaries of individual gifts and acquirements, apart altogether from the ordinary inscription or epitaph. Pope celebrated Lady Wortley Montagu’s beauty in a couple of lines too frequently cited to need reproduction. Less often quoted is David Graham’s concise but sufficient criticism on Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’:

‘This work is Nature’s; every tittle in’tShe wrote, and gave it Richardson to print.’

James Montgomery, in a well-turned quatrain, said of Burns that he ‘pass’d through life … a brilliant trembling northern light,’ but that ‘thro’ years to come’ he would shine from far ‘a fix’d unsetting polar star.’ It will be remembered that, in another quatrain, Lord Erskine besought his contemporaries to ‘mourn not for Anacreon dead,’ for they rejoiced in the possession of ‘an Anacreon Moore.’ James Smith wrote of Miss Edgeworth that her work could never be anonymous – ‘Thy writings … must bring forth the name of their author to light.’ And so on, and so on: the poetry of compliment presents many such conceits.

A treatise, indeed, might be written on the epigraphs in which poets have praised their lady-loves or their friends – from Herrick’s Julia to, say, Tennyson’s General Gordon. Rather, however, let us turn to what the bards have been at pains to say about themselves, recalling, for example, Herrick’s ‘Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste,’ and Matthew Prior’s triplet ‘On Himself.’ Colman the Younger wrote:

‘My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled,Sat up together many a night, no doubt;But now I’ve sent the poor old lass to bed,Simply because my fire is going out.’

But how inferior is this, both in feeling and in expression, to the dignified epigraph in which Landor celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birthday:

‘I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;I warmed both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.’

In the couplet and quatrain of pure sentiment and reflection, some of the most delightful of our poetry is embodied. Herrick was conspicuously fond of this species of verse, and his works abound in gems of style and fancy, the difficulty being, not to find them, but to select from them. The beauty of one is apt to be rivalled by that of its neighbour. Thus we find on one page:

‘When words we want, Love teaches to indite;And what we blush to speak, she bids us write.’

And on another:

‘Love’s of itself too sweet; the best of allIs when love’s honey has a dash of gall.’

Then there is Lord Lyttelton’s distich about ‘Love can hope when reason would despair;’ there are Aaron Hill’s famous lines on ‘modest ease in beauty,’ which, though it ‘means no mischief, does it all.’ There are Sir William Jones’s ‘To an Infant Newly Born;’ Wolcot’s ‘To Sleep;’ Luttrell’s ‘On Death;’ and many, many others.

Of nineteenth-century writers, the most admirable composer of the epigraph has been Landor, who in this, as in some other respects, may be placed in the same category with Herrick. What, for instance, could be prettier than this?

‘Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever;From you, Ianthe, little troubles passLike little ripples in a sunny river.’

How well-phrased, again, is this:

‘Various the roads of life; in oneAll terminate, one lonely way.We go; and “Is he gone?”Is all our best friends say.’

Among living authors, Mr. Aubrey de Vere can lay claim to a quatrain which is entirely faultless:

‘For me no roseate garlands twine,But wear them, dearest, in my stead;Time has a whiter hand than thine,And lays it on my head.’

To this, Sir Henry Taylor wrote a pendant scarcely less fortunate in idea and wording. Lord Tennyson has in his day written several epitaphs, inscriptions, and other trifles; but none of them have quite the perfection which might have been looked for from so great a master of poetic form. Mr. Matthew Arnold produced, with others, this excellent epigraph:

‘Though the Muse be gone away,Though she move not earth to-day,Souls erewhile who caught her word,Ah! still harp on what they heard.’

Finally, the reader may be recommended to glance at Mr. William Allingham’s little book of ‘Blackberries,’ in which they will find a large number of such ‘snatches of song,’ many of them fresh in conception and finished in execution.

THE ‘SEASON’ IN SONG

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die,’ and the Season, when ‘dead,’ yet speaks to many through the mouths of the men who have given it perennial life in verse. Its first laureate, one may say, was Mackworth Praed, whose ‘Good-night’ to it still remains the most brilliant epitome of its characteristics ever written. Nothing was omitted from that remarkable series of coruscating epigrams. From

‘The breaches and battles and blundersPerformed by the Commons and Peers,’

we are taken to ‘the pleasures which fashion makes duties’ – ‘the dances, the fillings of hot little rooms,’ ‘the female diplomatists, planners of matches for Laura and Jane,’ ‘the rages, led off by the chiefs of the throng,’ the ballet, the bazaar, the horticultural fête, and what not. Of later years the Season, as a whole, has been celebrated only by Mr. Alfred Austin, who published, more than a quarter of a century ago, a satire which was indeed formidable in its tone. Mr. Austin was severe about everybody – about the

‘Unmarketable maidens of the mart,Who, plumpness gone, fine delicacy feint,And hide their sins in piety and paint;’

about the Gardens, where

‘The leafy gladePrompts the proposal dalliance delayed;’

about the ballrooms, where

‘Panting damsels, dancing for their lives,Are only maidens waltzing into wives;’

about the theatre, where

‘Toole or Compton, perfect in his part,Touches each sense, except the head and heart;’

and about a number of other things too censurable to be mentioned here.

And, in truth, when one thinks of the Season in song, one thinks less of the satire than of the sarcasm, less of the cynicism than of the sympathy, with which it has been treated by its poets. Take, for example, that most conspicuous feature of the Season – the walking, riding, driving in the Row. It was Tickell who made a woman of fashion of his day tell how she

‘Mounted her palfrey as gay as a lark,And, followed by John, took the dust in Hyde Park,’

and how

‘On the way she was met by some smart Macaroni,Who rode by her side on a little bay pony.’

In our own time the glories and the humours of the Row have been described with geniality by Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Ashby-Sterry, with point by Mr. Austin Dobson, and with smartness by H. S. Leigh. Says Mr. Locker:

‘Forsooth, and on a livelier spotThe sunbeam never shines;Fair ladies here can talk and trotWith statesmen and divines.‘What grooms! what gallant gentlemen!What well-appointed hacks!What glory in their pace, and then,What beauty on their backs!’

Mr. Dobson, in a different mood, assures his Roman prototype that the world to-day is very much what it was in the time of ‘Q. H. F.’:

‘Walk in the Park – you’ll seldom failTo find a Sybaris on the railBy Lydia’s ponies;Or hap on Barrus, wigged and stayed,Ogling some unsuspecting maid.‘Fair Neobule, too! Is notOne Hebrus here – from Aldershot?Aha, you colour!Be wise. There old Canidia sits;No doubt she’s tearing you to bits.’

The Eton and Harrow match, like lawn-tennis, caret vate sacro; but the delights of Henley and Hurlingham have been sung in verse, and the Inter-University Boat-race was the subject of some admirable lines by Mortimer Collins and G. J. Cayley:

‘Sweet amid lime-trees’ blossom, astir with the whispers of springtide,Maiden speech to hear, eloquent murmur and sighAh! but the joy of the Thames when, Cam with Isis contending,Up the Imperial stream flash the impetuous Eights!Sweeping and strong is the stroke, as they race from Putney to Mortlake,Shying the Crab Tree bight, shooting through Hammersmith Bridge;Onward elastic they strain to the deep low moan of the rowlock;Louder the cheer from the bank, swifter the flash of the oar!’

Pretty again, in its way, is the better-known ‘Boat-race Sketch,’ by Mr. Ashby-Sterry, whose heroine

‘Twines her fair hair with the colours of Isis,Whilst those of the Cam glitter bright in her eyes.’

The joys of Epsom and of Goodwood have not, I believe, been versified by any prominent rhymer, and, concerning those of Ascot, I know of but one elaborate celebration – that which describes, among other things,

‘Tall bottles passing to and fro,And clear-cut crystal’s creamy flow,Where vied with velvet Veuve Clicquot,Moët and Chandon;’

as well as

‘The homeward drive that came too soonBy parks and lodges bright with June,And how we mocked the afternoonWith lazy laughter.’

Nothing, of course, is more peculiar to the Season than the devotion displayed by Society at the shrine of Art. The Academy and the Grosvenor are institutions without which the Season would not be itself. The latter has not figured very conspicuously in song, but at least it has managed to creep into one of the Gilbert-Sullivan operas, in the shape of a rhyme to ‘greenery-yallery.’ Mr. Andrew Lang, too, has told us of the critic who had

‘Totter’d, since the dawn was red,Through miles of Grosvenor Gallery;’

and, in another of his ‘verses vain,’ has practically limned the Gallery itself under the guise of ‘Camelot’:

‘In Camelot, how gray and greenThe damsels dwell, how sad their teen;In Camelot, how green and grayThe melancholy poplars sway.I wis I wot not what they mean,Or wherefore, passionate and lean,The maidens mope their loves between.’

The character of Burne-Jonesian art is here very happily hit off. Happy, too, is Mr. Lang’s sketch of the Philistian features of the Academy:

‘Philistia! Maids in muslin whiteWith flannelled oarsmen oft delightTo drift upon thy streams, and floatIn Salter’s most luxurious boat;In buff and boots the cheery knightReturns (quite safe) from Naseby fight.’

But did not Praed long ago address ‘The Portrait of a Lady at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy’? Has not Mr. Ashby-Sterry addressed ‘Number One’ in the said exhibition – also ‘the portrait of a lady’? And, moreover, has not Mr. Austin Dobson made the Academy the scene of one of his brightly-written dialogues? – that in which the lady says:

‘From now until we go in JuneI shall hear nothing but this tune:Whether I like Long’s “Vashti,” orLike Leslie’s “Naughty Kitty” more;With all that critics, right or wrong,Have said of Leslie or of Long.’

Among the events of every season are the fashionable marriages, one of which is described for us by Mr. Frederick Locker in his ‘St. George’s, Hanover Square.’ On the subject of the belles of the season I need not dwell. Praed’s ‘Belle of the Ballroom’ was a provincial beauty; but not so, assuredly, was Pope’s and Lord Peterborough’s Mrs. Howard, Congreve’s Miss Temple, Lord Chesterfield’s Duchess of Richmond, Fox’s Mrs. Crewe, Lord Lytton’s La Marquise, Mr. Aïdè’s Beauty Clare, or Mr. Austin Dobson’s Avice. Of London balls and routs the poets have been many, including Edward Fitzgerald, C. S. Calverley, and Mr. Dobson again. The opera, so far as I know, has had very few celebrants in rhyme. The ‘Monday Pops’ figure in ‘Patience’ with the Grosvenor Gallery, but have not otherwise, I fancy, been distinguished in song. On the whole, however, the Season has received poetic tributes at once numerous and interesting.

THE ‘RECESS’ IN RHYME

If the Season has had its laureates, so has the Recess. Why not? Of the two, the latter has the more numerous elements of poetry. Town has its charms for the versifier; there is much to say about its streets, its parks, its belles, its balls, its many diversions. But there is even more, surely, to say about the country, with its ancestral halls, its watering-places, and its shootings, as well as about the seaside and the various attractions outre-mer. Surely, of the two, life out of town has even more delights, for the poet, at any rate, than life in town. Sylvester is reported to have said that people, after tiring in town, go to re-tire in the country. But the saying, if epigrammatic, is not strictly true. No doubt some of us feel bored, wherever we may go, or whatever we may do. But to most people, I imagine, the Recess, if spent out of London, is a time of genuine enjoyment, and certainly it is a time which deserves to be distinguished in song.

The Recess, as spent in London, has been drawn by the rhymers in depressing tints. The picture painted by Haynes Bayly remains – for the fashionable world, at least – almost as true as it ever was. As he said:

‘In town, in the month of September,We find neither riches nor rank;In vain we look out for a memberTo give us a nod or a frank.Each knocker in silence reposes,In every mansion you findOne dirty old woman who dozes,Or peeps through the dining-room blind.’

This may be compared with the soliloquy put by H. S. Leigh in the mouth of ‘the last man’ left in London:

‘The Row is dull, as dull can be;Deserted is the Drive;The glass that stood at eighty-three,Now stands at sixty-five.The summer days are over,The town, ah me! has flown,Through Dover, or to clover —And I am all alone.’

It has long been held, among a certain class, that to be seen in town during the Recess is to forfeit all pretensions to haut ton. And so ‘the last man’ of the Season is naturally represented by Bayly as somewhat ashamed of himself. ‘He’ll blush,’ we are told, ‘if you ask him the reason Why he with the rest is not gone’:

‘He’ll seek you with shame and with sorrow,He’ll smile with affected delight;He’ll swear he leaves London to-morrow,And only came to it last night!’

He will tell you that he is in general request – that the difficulty is to know where not to go:

‘So odd you should happen to meet him;So strange, as he’s just passing through.’

The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on ‘the Twelfth,’ the other on ‘the First.’ The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges. And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of these facts. ‘Don’t talk of September,’ she says; ‘a lady

‘Must think it of all months the worst;The men are preparing alreadyTo take themselves off on the First.’‘Last month, their attention to quicken,A supper I knew was the thing;But now, from my turkey and chicken,They’re tempted by birds on the wing!They shoulder their terrible rifles(’Tis really too much for my nerves!)And, slighting my sweets and my trifles,Prefer my Lord Harry’s preserves!’

And she goes on to say:

‘Oh, marriage is hard of digestion,The men are all sparing of words;And now ’stead of popping the question,They set off to pop at the birds.’

Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet. Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left town – how

‘She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,Old-fashion’d halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks…(To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire.’

Lord Lyttelton’s ‘beauty in the country’ complains that

‘Now with mamma at tedious whist I play,Now without scandal drink insipid tea;’

while Lady Mary Montagu’s ‘bride in the country’ deplores the fact that she is

‘Left in the lurch,Forgot and secluded from view,Unless when some bumpkin at churchStares wistfully over the pew.’

Agreeably descriptive of rural pleasures is Lord Chesterfield’s ‘Advice to a Lady in Autumn.’ Of recent years the subject has been treated by a versifier who has at least a measure of the neatness of Praed, and who enumerates among the typical guests at a country house