I drew from my battered, weather-beaten sea-box sad store of old

letters, bethumbed and soiled,--an accusation in every one of them,

and small hope of forgiveness, save what the gentle dead might render.

There were pretty little portraits, too.--Ah, well! I put them back,

--a frown, or a shadow of reproachful sadness, on the picture of a

once loving and approving face is the hardest bitterness to bide, the

self-unsparing wanderer can know. Therefore I would fain let these

faces be turned from me,--all save one, a merry minx of maidenhood, of

careless heart, and laughing lips, and somewhat naughty eyes. It was a

steel engraving, not of the finest, torn from some Book of Beauty, or

other silly-sentimental keepsake of the literary catch-penny class,

brought all the way from home, and tenderly saved for the sake of its

strange by-chance resemblance to a smart little _lionne_ I had known

in Virginia, in the days when smart little _lionnes_ made me a sort of

puppy Cumming. The picture, unframed, and exposed to all the chances

of rough travel, had partaken of my share of foul weather and coarse

handling, and been spotted and smutched, and creased and torn, and

every way defaced. I had often wished that I might have a pretty

painting made from it, before it should be spoiled past copying. So

here, I thought, shall be my introduction to my fly-in-amber artist,

of the seedy tent and the romantic miniatures. So pocketing my

picture, I hied me forthwith to Dupont Street.

The tent seemed quite deserted. At first, I feared my rare bird had

flitted; I shook the bit of flying-jib that answered for a door, and

called to any one within, more than once, before an inmate stirred.

Then, so quietly that I had not heard his approach, a lad, of ten

perhaps, came to the entrance, and, timidly peering up into my face,

asked, "Is it my father you wish to see, Sir?"

How beautiful! how graceful! with what touching sweetness of voice!

how intellectual his expression, and how well-bred his air!--plainly a

gentleman's son, and the son of no common gentleman! Instinctively I

drew back a pace to compare him with the child of the "specimens."

Unquestionably the same,--there were the superior brow, the richly

clustered curls of golden brown, the painful lips, and the foreboding

eyes.

"If your father painted these pretty pictures, my boy,--yes, I would

be glad to see him, if he is within."

"He is not here at present, Sir; he went with my mother to the ship,

to bring away our things. But it is quite a long while since they

went; and I think they will return presently. Take a seat, Sir,

please."

I accepted the stool he offered,--a canvas one, made to "unship" and

fold together,--such a patent accommodation for tired "hurdies" as

amateur sketchers and promiscuous lovers of the picturesque in

landscape take with them on excursions. My accustomed eye took in at a

glance the poor furniture of that very Californian make-shift of a

shelter for fortune-seeking heads. There were chests, boxes, and

trunks, the usual complement, bestowed in every corner, as they could

best be got out of the way,--a small, rough table, on temporary legs,

and made, like the seats, to unship and be stowed,--several other of

the same canvas stools,--a battered chest of drawers, at present doing

the duty of a cupboard,--some kitchen utensils, and a few articles of

table furniture of the plainest delft. As for the kitchen, I had

noticed, as I passed, a portable furnace for charcoal, without, and at

the rear of the tent; it was plain they did their cooking in the open

air. On one side of the entrance, and near the top of the tent, a

small square had been cut from the canvas, and the sides framed with

slats of wood, making a sort of Rembrandtish skylight, through which

some scanty rays of barbaric glory fell on an easel, with its palette,

brushes, and paints. A canvas framed, on which the ground had been

laid, and the outline of a head already traced, was mounted on the

easel; other such frames, as if of finished portraits with their faces

turned to the wall, stood on the earthen floor, supported by a strip

of wood tacked to the tent-cloth near the bottom. On the floor, at the

foot of the easel, lay an artist's sketch-book. A part of the tent

behind was divided off from what, by way of melancholy jest, I may

call the reception-room, or the studio, by a rope stretched across,

from which were suspended a blanket, a travelling shawl, and a

voluminous, and evidently costly, Spanish cloak. Protruding beyond the

edge of this extemporaneous screen, I could see the footposts of an

iron bedstead, and the end of a large _poncho_, which served for a

counterpane.

"Will you amuse yourself with this sketch-book, please," said the

pretty lad, "till my father comes?"

"With pleasure, my boy,--if you are sure your father will not object."

"Oh, no, indeed, Sir! My father has told me I must always entertain

any gentlemen who may call when he is out,--that is, if he is to

return soon; and any one may look at this book;--it is only his

portfolio, in which he sketches whatever new or pretty things we see

on our travels; but there are some very nice pictures in

it,--landscapes, and houses, and people."

"Have you travelled much, then?"

"Oh, yes! we have been travelling ever since I can remember; we have

been far, and seen a great many strange sights, and some such queer

people!--There! that is our shepherd in Australia; isn't he funny? his

name was Dirk. I tied that blue ribbon round his straw hat, that seems

big enough for an umbrella. He looks as if he were laughing, doesn't

he? That's because I was there when my father sketched him; and he

made such droll faces, with his brown skin and his great grizzly

moustaches, when father told him he must make up a pleasant

expression, that it set me laughing,--for my father said he looked

like a Cape lion making love; and then Dirk would laugh too, and spoil

his pleasant expression; and father would scold; and it was so funny!

I loved Dirk very much, he was so good to me; he gave me a tame

kangaroo, and a black swan, and taught me to throw the boomerang; and

once, when he went to Sydney, he spent ever so much money to buy me a

silver bell for Lipse, my yellow lamb. I wonder if Dirk is living yet?

Do you think he is dead, Sir? I should be very much grieved, if he

were; for I promised I would come back to see him when I am a man."

--"_That_ is Dolores,--dear old Dolores! Isn't she fat?"

"Yes, and good, too, I should think, from the kind face she has. Who

was Dolores?"

"Ah! you never saw Dolores, did you? And you never heard her sing. She

was my Chilena nurse in Valparaiso; and she had a mother--oh, so very

old!--who lived in Santiago. We went once to see her; the other

Santiago--that was Dolores's son--drove us there in the _veloche_.

Wasn't it curious, his name should be the same as the city's? But he

was a bad boy, Santiago,--so mischievous! such a scamp! Father had to

whip him many times; and once the _vigilantes_ took him up, and would

have put him in the chain-gang, for cutting an American sailor with a

knife, in the Calle de San Francisco, if father had not paid five

ounces, and become security for his good behavior. But he ran away,

after all, and went as a common sailor in a nasty guano ship. Dolores

cried very much, and it was long before she would sing for me again.

Oh, she did know such delightful songs!--_Mi Niña_, and _Yo tengo Ojos

Negros_, and

"'No quiero, no quiero casarme;

Es mejor, es mejor soltera!'"

And the delightful little fellow merrily piped the whole of that "song

of pleasant glee," one of the most melodious and sauciest bits of

lyric coquetry to be found in Spanish.

"Ah," said he, "but I cannot sing it half so well as Dolores. She had

a beautiful guitar, with a blue ribbon, that her sweetheart gave her

before I was born, when she was young and very pretty;--he brought it

all the way from Acapulco."

--"And _that_ pretty girl is Juanita; she sold pine-apples and grapes

in the Almendral, and every night she would go with her guitar--it was

a very nice one, but did not cost near so much money as Dolores's--and

sing to the American gentlemen in the Star Hotel. My mother said she

was a naughty person, and that she did not dare tell where she got her

gold cross and those jet ear-rings. But I liked her very much, for all

that; and I'm sure she would not steal, for she used to give me a

fresh pine-apple every morning; and whenever her brother José came

down from Casa Blanca with the mules and the _pisco_, she sent me a

large melon and some lovely roses."

--"That is the house we lived in at Baltimore. It was painted white,

and there was a paling in front, and a dooryard with grass. We had

some honeysuckles on the porch;--there they are, and there's the

grape-vine. I had a dog-house, too, made to look like a church, and my

father promised to buy me a Newfoundland dog,--one of those great

hairy fellows, with brass collars, you know, that you can ride

on,--when he had sold a great many pictures, and made his fortune. But

we did not make our fortune in Baltimore, and I never got my dog; so

we came here to Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up gold and silver. When

we are fixed, and get a new tent, my father is going to give me a

little spade and a cradle, to dig gold enough to buy a Newfoundland

dog with, and then I shall borrow a saw and make a dog-house, like the

one I had in Baltimore, out of that green chest. Charley Saunders

lived in that next house in the picture, and he had a martin-box, with

a steeple to it; but his father gave fencing-lessons, and was very

rich."

As the intelligent little fellow ran on with his pretty prattle, I was

diligently pursuing the lady and child of the specimens through the

sketches. On every leaf I encountered them, ever changing, yet always

the same. Here was the child by my side,--unquestionably the same;

though now I looked in vain for the anxious mouth and the foreboding

eyes in his face of careless, hopeful urchinhood. But who was the

other?--his mother, no doubt; and yet no trace of resemblance.

"And tell me, who is this beautiful lady, my lad,--here, and here, and

here, and here again? You see I recognize her always,--so lovely, and

so gentle-looking. Your mother?"

"Oh, no, Sir!" and he laughed,--"my mother is very different from

that. That is nobody,--only a fancy sketch."

"Only a fancy sketch!" So, then, I thought, my pretty entertainer,

confiding and communicative as you are, it is plain there are some

things you do not know, or will not tell.

"She is not any one we ever saw;--she never lived. My father made her

out of his own head, as I make stories sometimes; or he dreamed her,

or saw her in the fire. But he is very fond of her, I suppose, because

he made her himself,--just as I think my own stories prettier than any

true ones; and he's always drawing her, and drawing her, and drawing

her. I love her, too, very much,--she looks so natural, and has such

nice ways. Isn't it strange my father--but he's _so_ clever with his

pencil and brushes!--should be able to invent the Lady Angelica?

--that's her name. But my mother does not like her at all, and

gets out of patience with my father for painting so many of her.

Mamma says she has a stuck-up expression,--such a funny word,

'stuck-up'!--and does not look like a lady. Once I told mamma I was

sure she was only jealous, and she grew very angry, and made me cry;

so now I never speak of Lady Angelica before her. What makes me think

my father must have dreamed her is that I dreamed her once myself. I

thought she came to me in such a splendid dress, and told me that she

was not only a live lady, but my own mother, and that mamma was----

Hush! This is my father, Sir."

Wonderful! how the lad had changed!--like a phantom, the thoughtless

prattler was gone in a moment, and in his place stood the seer-boy of

the picture, the profound foreboding eyes fixed anxiously, earnestly,

on the singular man who at that moment entered: a singularly small

man, cheaply but tidily attired in black; even his shoes polished,--a

rare and dandyish indulgence in San Francisco, before the French

bootblacks inaugurated the sumptuary vanity of Day and Martin's lustre

on the stoop of the California Exchange, and made it a necessity no

less than diurnal ablutions; a well-preserved English hat on his head,

which, when he with a somewhat formal air removed it, discovered thin

black locks, beginning to part company with the crown of his head. In

his large, brown eyes an expression of moving melancholy was

established; a nervous tremulousness almost twitched his refined lips,

which, to my surprise, were not concealed by the universal

moustache,--indeed, the smooth chin and symmetrically trimmed

mutton-chop whiskers, in the orthodox English mode, showed that the

man shaved. His nose, slightly aquiline, was delicately cut, and his

nostrils fine; and he had small feet and hands, the latter remarkably

white and tender. As he stood before me, he was never at rest for an

instant, but changed his support from one leg to the other,--they were

slight as a young boy's,--and fumbled, as it were, with his feet; as I

have seen a distinguished medical lecturer, of Boston, gesticulate

with his toes. He played much with his whiskers, too, and his fingers

were often in his hair--as a fidgety and vulgar man would bite his

nails. From all of which I gathered that my new acquaintance was an

intensely nervous person,--very sensitive, of course, and no doubt

irritable.

He was accompanied by a--female, much taller than he, and as stalwart

as dear woman can be; an especially common-looking person, bungled as

to her dress, which was tawdry-fine, unseasonable for the place as

well as time, inappropriate to herself, inharmonious in its

composition, and every way most vilely put on; a clumsy and, as I

presently perceived, a loud person, whose face, still showing traces

of the coarse but decided beauty it must once have possessed, fell far

short of compensating for the complete gracelessness of her presence.

Her eyes had a bibulous quality, and the bright redness of her nose

vied vulgarly with the rusty redness of her cheeks. I suspected her

complexion of potations, but charitably let it off with--beer; for she

was, at first glance, English. As she jerked off her flaunting bonnet,

and dragged off her loud shawl, saluting me, as she did so, with an

overdone obeisance, she said, "This San Fanfrisko"--why would she, how

could she, always twist the decent name of the metropolis of the

Pacific into such an absurd shape?--"was a norrid 'ole; she happealed

to the gentleman,"--meaning me,--"didn't 'e find it a norrid 'ole,

habsolutely hawful?" And then she went clattering among tinware and

crockery, and snubbed the gentlemanly boy in a sort of tender

Billingsgate.

While she was thus gracefully employed, the agonized artist, his face

suffused with blushes and fairly ghastly with an enforced smile, was

painfully struggling to abstract himself, by changing the places of

things, shifting the position of his easel, prying in a lost way into

lumbered corners, and pretending to be in search of something,

--ingenious, but unable to disguise his chagrin. He pranced

with his legs, and tumbled his hair, and twitched at his whiskers more

than ever, as he said,--

"My dear," (and the boy had called her Mamma; so, then, it must be a

fancy sketch, after all,) "my dear, no doubt the gentleman is more a

cosmopolite than yourself, and blessed with more facility in adapting

himself to circumstances."

"You know, Madam," I came to his assistance, "we Americans have a

famous trick of living and enjoying a little in advance, of 'going

ahead' of the hour, as it were. We find in San Francisco rather what

it promises to be than what it is, and we take it at its word."

"Oh, pray, don't mention Americans! I positively 'ate the hodious

people. I confess I 'ave a hinsurmountable prejudice hagainst the

race; you are not haware that I am Hinglish. I think I might endure

heven San Fanfrisko, if it were not for the Americans. Are you an

American?"

Alternating between the pallor of rage and the flush of mortification,

her husband now turned, with a calmness that had something of

desperation in it, and saved me the trouble and the pain of replying,

by asking, in the frigid tone of one who resented my presence as the

cause of his shame,--

"Did you wish to see me on business, Sir? and have you been waiting

long?"

"The success with which your charming little boy has entertained me

has made the time seem very short. I could willingly have waited

longer."

That last remark was a mere _contretemps_. I did not mean to be as

severe as he evidently thought me, for he bowed haughtily and

resentfully.

I came at once to business,--drew from my pocket the engraving I had

brought,--"Could he copy that for me?"

"How?--in miniature or life-size?--ivory or canvas?"

"You are, then, a portrait-painter, also?--Ah! to be sure!" and I

glanced at the canvas on the easel.

"Certainly,--I prefer to make portraits."

"And in this case I should prefer to have one. Extravagant as the

vanity may seem, I am willing to indulge in it, for the sake of being

the first, in this land of primitive wants and fierce unrefinements,

to take a step in the direction of the Fine Arts,--unless you have had

calls upon your pencil already."

"None, Sir."

"Then to-morrow, if you please,--for I cannot remain longer at

present,--we will discuss my whim in detail."

"I shall be at your service, Sir."

"Good day, Madam! And you, my pretty lad, well met,--what is your

name?"

"Ferdy, Sir,--Ferdinand Pintal."

At that moment, his father, as if reminded of a neglected courtesy, or

a business form, handed me his card,--"Camillo Alvarez y Pintal."

"Thanks, then, Ferdy, for the pains you took to entertain me. You must

let me improve an acquaintance so pleasantly begun."

The boy's hand trembled as it lay in mine, and his eyes, fixed upon

his father's, wore again the ominous expression of the picture. He did

not speak, and his father took a step toward the door significantly.

But the doleful silence that might have attended my departure was

broken by a demonstration, "as per sample," from my country's fair and

gentle 'ater. "She 'oped I would not be hoffended by the freedom of

'er hobservations on my countrymen. I must hexcuse 'er Hinglish

bluntness; she was haware that she 'ad a somewhat hoff-'and way of

hexpressing 'er hemotions; but when she 'ated she 'ated, and it

relieved 'er to hout with it hat once. Certainly she would

never--bless 'er 'eart, no!--'ave taken me for an American; I was so

huncommonly genteel."

With my hand upon the region of my heart, as I had seen stars, when

called before the curtain on the proudest evening of their lives, give

anatomical expression to their overwhelming sense of the honor done

them, I backed off, hat in hand.

"Camillo Alvarez y Pintal," I read again, as I approached the Plaza.

"Can this man be Spanish, then? Surely not;--how could he have

acquired his excellent English, without a trace of foreign accent, or

the least eccentricity of idiom? His child, too, said nothing of that.

English, no doubt, of Spanish parentage; or,--oh, patience! I shall

know by-and-by, thanks to my merry Virginia jade, who shall be arrayed

in resplendent hues, and throned in a golden frame, if she but feed my

curiosity generously enough."

Next day, in the afternoon, having bustled through my daily programme

of business, I betook myself with curious pleasure to my appointment

with Pintal. To my regret, at first, I found him alone; but I derived

consolation from the assurance, that, wherever the engaging boy had

gone, his mother had accompanied him. Even more than at my first

visit, the artist was frigidly reserved and full of warning-off

politeness. With but a brief prelude of courteous commonplaces, he

called me to the business of my visit.

My picture, as I have said, was a fairly executed steel engraving,

taken from some one of the thousands of "Tokens," or "Keepsakes," or

"Amulets," or "Gems," or such like harmless giftbooks, with which

youths of tender sentiment remind preoccupied damsels of their careful

_penchants_. It represented an "airy, fairy Lilian" of eighteen, or

thereabouts, lolling coquettishly, fan in hand, in an antique,

high-backed chair, with "carven imageries," and a tasselled cushion.

She rejoiced in a profusion of brown ringlets, and her costume was

pretty and quaint,--a dainty chemisette, barred with narrow bands of

velvet, as though she had gone to Switzerland, or the South of Italy,

for the sentiment of her bodice,--sleeves quaintly puffed and

"slashed,"--the ample skirt looped up with rosettes and natty little

ends of ribbon; her feet beneath her petticoat, "like little mice,"

stole out, "as if they feared the light." Somewhere, among the many

editions of Dickens's works, I have seen a Dolly Varden that resembled

her.

It was agreed between us that she should be reproduced in a life-size

portrait, with such a distribution of rich colors as the subject

seemed to call for, as his fine taste might select, and his cunning

hand lay on. I sought to break down his reserve, and make myself

acceptable to him, by the display of a discreet geniality, and a

certain frankness, not falling into familiarity, which should seem to

proceed from sympathy, and a _bonhommie_, that, assured of its own

kindly purpose, would take no account of his almost angry distance.

The opportunity was auspicious, and I was on the alert to turn it to

account. I made a little story of the picture, and touched it with

romance. I told him of Virginia,--especially of that part of the State

in which this saucy little lady lived,--of its famous scenery, its

historic places, and the peculiar features of its society. I strove to

make the lady present to his mind's eye by dwelling on her certain

eccentricities, and helping my somewhat particular description of her

character with anecdotes, more or less pointed and amusing, especially

to so grave a foreigner, of her singular ready-wittedness and graceful

audacity. Then I had much to say about her little "ways" of attitude,

gesture, and expression, and some hints to offer for slight changes in

the finer lines of the face, and in the expression, which might make

the likeness more real to both of us, and, by getting up an interest

in him for the picture, procure his favorable impression for myself.

I had the gratification, as my experiment proceeded, to find that it

was by no means unsuccessful. His austerity appreciably relaxed, and

the kindly tone into which his few, but intelligent observations

gradually fell, was accompanied by an encouraging smile, when the

drift of our talk was light. Then I spoke of his child, and eagerly

praised the beauty, the intelligence, and sweet temper of the lad.

'Twas strange how little pleasure he seemed to derive from my sincere

expressions of admiration; indeed, the slight satisfaction he did

permit himself to manifest appeared in his words only, not at all in

his looks; for a shade of deep sadness fell at once upon his handsome

face, and his expression, so full of sensibility, assumed the cast of

anxiety and pain. "He thanked me for my eloquent praises of the boy,

and--not too partially, he hoped--believed that he deserved them all.

A prize of beauty and of love had fallen to him in his little Ferdy,

for which he would be grieved to seem ungrateful. But yet--but

yet--the responsibility, the anxiety, the ceaseless fretting care!

This fierce, unbroken city";--he spoke of it as though it were a

newly-lassoed and untamed mustang,--I liked the simile; "this lawless,

blasphemous, obscene, and dangerous community; these sights of

heartlessness and cruelty; these sounds of selfish, greedy contention;

the absence of all taste and culture,--no lines of beauty, no strains

of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace,

no delicate attentions, no ladies' presence, no social circle, no

books, no home, no church;--Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of

coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all

manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of

fine childhood to! The boy was nervous, sensitive, of a spirit quick

to take alarms or hurts,--physically unprepared to wrestle with

arduous toil, privation, and exposure,--most apt for the teachings of

gentleness and taste. It was cruel to think--he could wish him dead

first--that his clean, white mind must become smeared and spotted

here, his well-tuned ear reconciled to loud discords, and his fine eye

at peace with deformity; but there was no help for it." And then, as

though he had suddenly detected in my face an expression of surprised

discovery, he said, "But I am sure I do not know how I came to say so

much, or let myself be tedious with sickly egotisms to a polite, but

indifferent, stranger. If you have gathered from them more than I

meant should appear, you will at least do me the justice to believe

that I have not been boasting of what I regard as a calamity."

I essayed to reassure him by urging upon his consideration the

manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and

economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance,

which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude

surroundings,--at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless

vigilance and severe restraints. But he only shook his head sadly, and

said, "No doubt, no doubt; and I hope, Sir, the fault is in myself,

that I do not appreciate the force and value of all that."

The subject was so plainly full of a peculiar pain for him, he was so

ill at mind on this point, that I could not find it in my heart to

pursue it further at the cost of his feelings. So we talked of other

things: of gold, and the placers, and their unimpaired productiveness,

--of the prospects of the country, and of the character the

mineral element must stamp upon its politics, its commerce, and

its social system,--of San Francisco, and all the enchantments of its

sudden upspringing,--of Alcaldes and town-councils,--of hounds and

gamblers,--of real estate and projected improvements,--of canvas

houses, and iron houses, and fires,--of sudden fortunes, and as sudden

failures,--of speculations and markets, and the prices of clothing,

provisions, and labor,--of intemperance, disease, and hospitals,--of

brawls, murder, and suicide,--till we had exhausted all the

Californian budget; and then I bade him good day. He parted with me

with flattering reluctance, cordially shaking my hand and urging me to

repeat my visit in a few days, when he should be sufficiently forward

with the picture to admit me to a sight of it. I confessed my

impatience for the interval to pass; for my interest was now fully

awakened and very lively;--so well-informed and so polished a

gentleman, so accomplished and so fluent, so ill-starred and sad, so

every way a man with a history!

I saw much of Pintal after this, and he sometimes visited me at my

office. Impelled by increasing admiration and esteem, I succeeded by

the exercise of studious tact in ingratiating myself in his friendship

and confidence; he talked with freedom of his feelings and his

affairs; and although he had not yet admitted me to the knowledge of

his past, he evinced but little shyness in speaking of the present. At

our interviews in his tent I seldom met his wife; indeed, I suspected

him of contriving to keep her out of the way; for I was always told

she had just stepped out;--or if by chance I found her there, she was

never again vulgarly loquacious, but on some pretext or other at once

took herself away. On the other hand, the child was rarely

absent,--from which I argued that I was in favor; nor was his pretty

prattle, even his boldest communicativeness, harshly checked, save

when, as I guessed, he was approaching too near some forbidden theme.

Then a quick flash from his father's eye instantaneously imposed

silence upon him: as if that eye were an evil one, and there were a

malison in its glance, the whole demeanor of the child underwent at

once a magical change; the foreboding look took possession of his

beautiful eyes, the anxious lines appeared around his mouth, his lips

and chin became tremulous, his head drooped, he let fall my hand which

he was fond of holding as he talked, and quietly, penitently slunk

away; and though he might presently be recalled by his father's

kindliest tones, his brightness would not be restored that time.

This mysterious, severe understanding between the father and the child

affected me painfully; I was at a loss to surmise its nature, whence

it proceeded, or how it could be; for Ferdy evinced in his every word,

look, movement, an undivided fondness for his father. And in his

tender-proud allusions to the boy, at times let fall to me,--in the

anxious watchfulness with which he followed him with his eye, when an

interval of peace and comparative happiness had set childhood's spirit

free, and lent a degree of graceful gayety to all his motions,--I saw

the brimming measure of the father's love. Could it be but his

morbidly repellant pride, his jealous guarding of the domestic

privacies, his vigilant pacing up and down forever before the

close-drawn curtain of the heart?--was there no Bluebeard's chamber

there? No! Pride was all the matter,--pride was the Spartan fox that

tore the vitals of Pintal, while he but bit his lips, and bowed, and

passed.

Among the pictures in Pintal's tent was one which had in an especial

manner attracted my attention. It was a cabinet portrait, nearly

full-length, of a venerable gentleman, of grave but benevolent aspect,

and an air of imposing dignity. Care had evidently been taken to

render faithfully the somewhat remarkable vigor of his frame; his

iron-gray hair was cropped quite short, and he wore a heavy grizzled

moustache, but no other beard; the lines of his mouth were not severe,

and his eye was soft and gentle. But what made the portrait

particularly noticeable was the broad red ribbon of a noble order

crossing the breast, and a Maltese cross suspended from the neck by a

short chain of massive and curiously wrought links. I had many times

been on the point of asking the name of this singularly handsome and

distinguished-looking personage; but an instinctive feeling of

delicacy always deterred me.

One day I found little Ferdy alone, and singing merrily some pretty

Spanish song. I told him I was rejoiced to find him in such good

spirits, and asked him if he had not been having a jolly romp with the

American carpenter's son, who lived in the Chinese house close by. My

question seemed to afflict him with puzzled surprise;--he half smiled,

as if not quite sure but I might be jesting.

"Oh, no, indeed! I have never played with him; I do not know him; I

never play with any boys here. Oh, no, indeed!"

"But why not, Ferdy? What! a whole month in this tiresome tent, and

not make the acquaintance of your nearest neighbor,--such a sturdy,

hearty chunk of a fellow as that is?--I have no doubt he's

good-natured, too, for he's fat and funny, tough and independent.

Besides, he's a carpenter's son, you know; so there's a chance to

borrow a saw to make the dog-house with. Who knows but his father will

take a fancy to you,--I'm sure he is very likely to,--and make you a

church dog-house, steeple and all complete and painted, and much finer

than Charley Saunders's martin-box?"

"Oh, I should like to, so much! And perhaps he has a Newfoundlander

with a bushy tail and a brass collar,--that would be nicer than a

kangaroo. But--but"--looking comically bothered,--"I never knew a

carpenter's son in my life. I am sure my father would not give me

permission,--I am sure he would be very angry, if I asked him. Are

they not very disagreeable, that sort of boys? Don't they swear, and

tear their clothes, and fight, and sing vulgar songs, and tell lies,

and sit down in the middle of the street?"

Merciful Heaven! thought I,--here's a crying shame! here's an

interesting case for professors of moral hygiene! An apt, intelligent

little man, with an empty mind, and a by-no-means overloaded stomach,

I'll engage,--with a pride-paralyzed father, and a beer-bewitched

slattern of a mother,--with his living to get, in San Francisco, too,

and the world to make friends with,--who has never enjoyed the

peculiar advantages to be derived from the society of little dirty

boys, never been admitted to the felicity of popular songs, nor

exercised his pluck in a rough-and-tumble, nor ventilated himself in

wholesome "giddy, giddy, gout,"--to whom dirt-pies are a fable!

"Ferdy," said I, "I'll talk with your father myself. But tell me, now,

what makes you so happy to-day."

"My father got a letter this morning,"--a mail had just arrived; it

brought no smile or tear for me,--no parallelogram of tragedy or

comedy in stationery,--"such a pleasant one, from my uncle Miguel, at

Florence, in Italy, you know. He is well, and quite rich, my father

says; they have restored to him his property that he thought was all

lost forever, and they have made him a chevalier again. But I am sure

my father will tell you all about it, for he said he did hope you

would come to-day; and he is so happy and so kind!"

"They have made him a chevalier again," I wondered. "Your uncle Miguel

is your father's brother, then, Ferdy. And did you ever see him?"

Before he could reply, Pintal entered, stepping smartly, his color

heightened with happiness, his eyes full of an extraordinary elation.

"Ah! my dear Doctor, I am rejoiced to find you here; I have been

wishing for you. See! your picture is finished. Tell me if you like

it."

"Indeed, a work of beauty, Pintal."

"To me, too, it never looked so well before; but I see things with

glad eyes to-day. I have much to tell you. Ferdy, your mother is

dining at the restaurant; go join her. And when you have finished your

dinner, ask her to take you to walk. Say that I am engaged. Would you

not like to walk, my boy, and see how fast the new streets spring up?

When you return, you can tell me of all you saw."

The boy turned up his lovely face to be kissed, and for a moment hung

fondly on his father's neck. The poor painter's lips quivered, and his

eyes winked quickly. Then the lad took his cap, and without another

word went forth.

"I am happy to-day, Doctor,--Heaven save the mark! My happiness is so

much more than my share, that I shall insist, will ye, nill ye, on

your sharing it with me. I have a heart to open to somebody, and you

are the very man. So, sit you down, and bear with my egotism, for I

have a little tale to tell you, of who I am and how I came here. The

story is not so commonplace but that your kindness will find, here and

there, an interesting passage in it.

"I have seen that that picture,"--indicating the one I have last

described,--"attracted your attention, and that you were prevented

from questioning me about it only by delicacy. That is my father's

likeness. He was of English birth, the younger son of a rich Liverpool

merchant. An impulsive, romantic, adventurous boy, seized early with a

passion for seeing the world, his unimaginative, worldly-wise father,

practical and severe, kept him within narrow, fretting bounds, and

imposed harsh restraints upon him. When he was but sixteen years old,

he ran away from home, shipped before the mast, and, after several

long voyages, was discharged, at his own request, at Carthagena, where

he entered a shipping-house as clerk, and, having excellent mercantile

talents, was rapidly promoted.

"Meantime, through a sister, the only remaining child, except a

half-witted brother, he heard at long intervals from home. His father

remained strangely inexorable, fiercely forbade his return, and became

violent at the slightest mention of his name by his sister, or some

old and attached servant; he died without bequeathing his forgiveness,

or, of course, a single shilling. But the young man thrived with his

employers, whose business growing rapidly more and more prosperous,

and becoming widely extended, they transferred him to a branch house

at Malaga. Here he formed the acquaintance of the Don Francisco de

Zea-Bermudez, whose rising fortunes made his own.

"Zea-Bermudez was at that time engaged in large commercial operations.

Although, under the diligent and ambitious teaching of his famous

relative, the profound, sagacious, patriotic, bold, and gloriously

abused Jovellanos, he had become accomplished in politics, law, and

diplomacy, he seemed to be devoting himself for the present to large

speculations and the sudden acquisition of wealth, and to let the

state of the nation, the Cortes, and its schemes, alone.

"Only a young, beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid

establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing

attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with

his friendship for her brother. Zea favored the suit of the

high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence,

independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and

his engaging manners, had quite won his heart. By policy, too, no less

than by pleasure, the match recommended itself to him;--my father

would make a famous junior-partner. So they were married under the

name of Pintal, bestowed upon his favorite English clerk by the

adventurous first patron at Carthagena, who had found the boy provided

with only a 'purser's name,' as sailors term it.

"I will not be so disrespectful to the memory of my distinguished

uncle, nor so rude toward your intelligence, my friend, as to presume

that you are not familiar with the main points of his history,--the

great strides he took, almost from that time, in a most influential

diplomatic career: the embassy to St. Petersburg, and the

Romanzoff-Bermudez treaty of amity and alliance in 1812, by which

Alexander acknowledged the legality of the ordinary and extraordinary

Cortes of Cadiz; the embassy to the Porte in 1821; his recall in 1823,

and extraordinary mission to the Court of St. James; his appointment

to lead the Ministry in 1824; my father's high place in the Treasury;

their joint efforts from this commanding position to counteract the

violence of the Apostolical party, to meet the large requisitions of

France, to cover the deficit of three hundred millions of reals, and

to restore the public credit; the insults of the Absolutists, and

their machinations to thwart his liberal and sagacious measures; his

efforts to resign, opposed by the King; the suppression of a

formidable Carlist conspiracy in 1825; the execution of Bessières, and

the 'ham-stringing' of Absolutist leaders; his dismissal from the

Ministry in October, 1825, Ferdinand yielding to the Apostolic storm;

the embassy to Dresden; his appointment as Minister at London.

"And here my story begins, for I was his Secretary of Legation then;

while my brother Miguel, younger than I, was _attaché_ at Paris, where

he had succeeded me, on my promotion,--a promotion that procured for

me congratulations for which I could with difficulty affect a decent

show of gratitude, for I knew too well what it meant. It was not the

enlightened, liberal Minister I had to deal with, but the hard, proud

uncle, full of expediencies, and calculating schemes for family

advancement, and the exaltation of a lately obscure name.

"In Paris I had been admitted first to the flattering friendship, and

then to the inmost heart of--of a most lovely young lady, as noble by

her character as by her lineage,"--and he glanced at the open

sketch-book.

"The Lady Angelica," I quietly said.

"Sir!" he exclaimed, quickly changing color, and assuming his most

frigid expression and manner. But as quickly, and before I could

speak, his sad smile and friendly tone returned, and he said,--

"Ah! I see,--Ferdy has been babbling of his visions and his dreams.

Yes, the Lady Angelica. 'Very charming,' my uncle granted, 'but very

poor; less of the angel and more of the heiress was desirable,' he

said,--'less heaven and more land. A decayed family was only a little

worse than an obscure one,--a poor knight not a whit more respectable

than a rich merchant. I must relinquish my little romance,--I had not

time for it; I had occupation enough for the scant leisure my family

duties'--and he laid stress on the words--'left me in the duties of my

post. He would endeavor to find arguments for the lady and employment

for me.'

"It was in vain for me to remonstrate,--I was too familiar with my

uncle's temper to waste my time and breath so. I would be silent, I

resolved, and pursue my honorable and gallant course without regard to

his scandalous schemes. I wrote to the 'Lady Angelica,'--since Ferdy's

name for her is so well chosen,--telling her all, giving her solemn

assurances of my unchangeable purpose toward her, and scorn of my

uncle's mercenary ambition. She replied very quietly: 'She, also, was

not without pride; she would come and see for herself';--and she came

at once.

"The family arrived in London in the evening. Within two hours I was

sent--after the fashion of an old-time courier, 'Ride! ride!

ride!--for your life! for your life! for your life!'--to Turin with

despatches, and sealed instructions for my own conduct, not to be

opened till I arrived; then I found my orders were, to remain at Turin

until it should be my uncle's pleasure to recall me.

"I had not been in Turin a month when a letter came from------the Lady

Angelica. 'It was her wish that all intercourse between us, by

interview or correspondence, should cease at once and forever. She

assumed this position of her own free will, and she was resolute to

maintain it. She trusted that I would not inquire obtrusively into her

motives,--she had no fear that I would doubt that they were worthy of

her. Her respect for me was unabated,--her faith in me perfect. I had

her blessing and her anxious prayers. I must go on my way in brave

silence and patience, nor ever for one moment be so weak as to fool

myself into a hope that she would change her purpose.'

"What should I do? I had no one to advise with; my mother, whose faith

in her brother's wisdom was sure, was in Madrid, and my father had

been dead some years. At first my heart was full of bitter curses, and

my uncle had not at his heels a heartier hater than I. Then came the

merely romantic thought, that this might be but a test she would put

me to,--that he might be innocent and ignorant of my misfortune. With

the thought I flung my heart into writing, and madly plied her with

one long, passionate letter after another. I got no answers; but by

his spies my uncle was apprised of all I did.

"About this time,--it was in 1832,--Zea-Bermudez was recalled to

Madrid in a grave crisis, and appointed to the administration of

foreign affairs. Ferdinand VII. was apparently approaching the end of

his reign and his life. The Apostolical party, exulting in their

strength, and confiding in those well-laid plans which, with mice and

men, 'gang aft agley,' imprudently showed their hand, and suffered

their favorite project to transpire; which was, to set aside the

ordinance by which the King had made null the Salic law, in favor of

his infant daughter, and to support the pretensions of the King's

brother, Carlos, to the throne.

"By this stupid flourish the Apostolical party threw themselves bound

at the feet of Zea. All of their persuasion who filled high places

under government were without ceremony removed, and their seats filled

by Liberals. Many of them did not escape without more crippling blows.

As for me, I looked on with indifference, or at most some philosophic

sneers. What had I to fear or care? In my uncle's estimation, my

politics had been always healthy, no doubt; and although he had on

more than one occasion hinted, with sarcastic wit, that such a

lady's-man must, of his devoir, be a 'gallant champion of the Salic

law,' and dropped something rude and ill-natured about my English

blood,--still, that was only in his dyspeptic moods; his temper was

sure to improve, I fancied, with his political and material digestion.

"But I deceived myself. When, in the name of the infant Queen,

Isabella Segunda, and in honor of the reestablishment of order and

public safety, the pleasant duty devolved upon Zea-Bermudez of

awarding approbation and encouragement to all the officers, from an

ambassador to the youngest _attaché_ of foreign legations, and

presenting them with tokens of the nation's happiness in the shape of

stars, and seals with heraldic devices, and curious chains of historic

significance, not even a paltry ribbon fell to my share, but only a

few curt lines of advice, 'to look well to my opinions, and be

modest,--obediently to discharge the duties prescribed to me, and

remember that presumption was a fault most intolerable in a young

gentleman so favored by chance as to be honored with the confidence of

government.'

"That exhausted the little patience I had left. Savagely I tore the

note into contemptible fragments, tossed into my travelling-boxes as

much of my wardrobe as happened to be at hand, consigned to a sealed

case my diplomatic instructions and all other documents pertaining to

my office, placed them in the hands of a confidential friend, Mr.

Ballard, the British Agent, and secretly took passage for England,

where, without losing an hour, I made the best of my way to the abode

of an ambitious cockney wine-merchant, to whose daughter I had not

been disagreeable in other days, and within a fortnight married her.

You have seen the lady, Sir," he said, eyeing me searchingly as he

spoke, with a sardonic smile,--the only ugly expression I ever saw him

wear.

"Certain title-deeds and certificates of stock, part of my father's

legacy, which, as if foreseeing the present emergency, I had brought

away with me, were easily converted into cash. I had then twenty

thousand sterling pounds, to which my father-in-law generously added

ten thousand more, by way of portion with his daughter.

"And now to what should I betake myself? I had small time to cast

about me, and was easy to please; any tolerably promising enterprise,

so the field of it were remote, would serve my purpose. The papers

were full of Australian speculations, the wonderful prosperity of the

several colonies there, the great fortunes suddenly made in wool.

Good! I would go to Australia, and be a gentle shepherd on an imposing

scale. But first I sought out my father's old friends, my Lords

Palmerston and Brougham, and the Bishop of Dublin, and besought the

aid of their wisdom. With but slight prudential hesitation they with

one accord approved my project. Observe: a first-rate Minister,

especially if he be a very busy one, always likes the plan that

pleases his young friend best,--that is, if it be not an affair of

State, and all the risks lie with his young friend. They would have

spoken of Turin and Zea-Bermudez; but I had been bred a diplomat and

knew how to stick to my point, which, this time, was wool. In another

fortnight I had sailed for Sydney with my shekels and my wife. But

first, and for the first time, I caused the announcement of my

marriage to appear in the principal papers of London, Paris, St.

Petersburg, and Madrid.

"Arrived in Australia, I at once made myself the proprietor of a

considerable farm, and stocked it abundantly with sheep. Speculation

had not yet burst itself, like the frog in the fable; and large

successes, as in water-lot and steamboat operations here, to-day, were

the rule. On the third anniversary of my landing at Sydney, I was

worth three hundred thousand pounds, and my commercial name was among

the best in the colony. Six months after that, the rot, the infernal

rot, had turned my thriving populous pastures into shambles for

carrion-mutton, and I had not sixpence of my own in the wide world. A

few of the more generous of my creditors left me a hundred pounds with

which to make my miserable way to some South American port on the

Pacific.

"So I chose Valparaiso, to paint miniatures, and teach English,

French, Italian, and German in. But earthquakes shook my poor house,

and the storm-fiend shook my soul with fear;--for skies in lightning

and thunder are to me as the panorama and hurly-burly of the Day of

Wrath, in all the stupid rushing to and fro and dazed stumbling of

Martin's great picture. I shall surely die by lightning; I have not

had that live shadow of a sky-reaching fear hanging over me, with its

black wings and awful mutterings, so long for nothing; in every flash

my eyes are scathed by the full blaze of hell. If I had been deaf and

blind, I might have lived in Valparaiso. As it was, I must go

somewhere where I need not sit all day and night stopping my ears and

with my face covered, fearing that the rocks would fall upon me too

soon.

"So, with my wife and the child,--we have had no other, thank God!--I

got round Cape Horn--Heaven knows how! I dare not think of that

time--to the United States. We were making for Boston; but the ship,

strained by long stress of heavy weather, sprung a leak, and we put in

at Baltimore. I was pleased with the place; it is picturesque, and has

a kindly look; and as all places were alike to me then, save by the

choice of a whim, I let go my weary anchor there.

"But the Baltimoreans only admired my pictures,--they did not buy

them; they only wondered at my polyglot accomplishment, and were

content with ringing silly-kind changes on an Encyclopaedic compliment

about the Admirable Crichton, and other well-educated personages, to

be found alphabetically embalmed in Conversations-Lexicons,--they did

not inquire into my system of teaching, or have quarterly knowledge of

my charges. So I fled from Baltimore, pretty speeches, and starvation,

to San Francisco, plain talk, and pure gold. And now--see here,

Sir!--I carry these always about with me, lest the pretty pickings of

this Tom Tiddler's ground should make my experience forget."

He drew from his pocket an "illuminated" card, bearing a likeness of

Queen Victoria, and a creased and soiled bit of yellow paper. The one

was, by royal favor, a complimentary pass to a reserved place in

Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the coronation of her Britannic

Majesty, "For the Señor Camillo Alvarez y Pintal, Chevalier of the

Noble Order of the Cid, Secretary to His Catholic Majesty's Legation

near the Court of St. James,"--the other, a Sydney pawnbroker's ticket

for books pledged by "Mr. Camilla Allverris i Pintal." He held these

contrasted certificates of Fortune,--her mocking visiting-cards, when

she called on him in palace and in cabin,--one in each hand for a

moment; and bitterly smiling, and shaking his head, turned from one to

the other. Then suddenly he let them fall to the ground, and, burying

his face in his hands, was roughly shaken through all his frame by a

great gust of agony.

I laid my hand tenderly on his shoulder: "But, Pintal," I said,--"the

Lady Angelica,--tell me why she chose that course."

In a moment the man was fiercely aroused. "Ah, true! I had forgotten

that delectable passage in my story. Why, man, Bermudez went to her,

told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,--faring,

brilliant,--that she, only she, stood in the way, an impassable

stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,--told her, (devil!) that,

with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without

embarrassment on this score,--appealed to her disinterested love, to

her pride,--don't you see?--to her pride."

"And where is she now, Pintal?"

No anger now, no flush of excitement;--the man, all softened as by an

angel's touch, arose, and, with clasped hands and eyes upturned

devoutly, smiled through big tears, and without a word answered me.

I, too, was silent. Whittier had not yet written,--

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen

The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

"Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes;

"And, in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!"

Then Pintal paced briskly to and fro a few turns across the narrow

floor of his tent, and presently stopping, said,--his first

cheerfulness, with its unwonted smile, returning,--

"But I must tell you why I should be happy today. I have a letter from

my brother Miguel, who is Secretary to the Legation at the Porte. He

has leave of absence, and is happy with his dearest friends in

Florence. He shared my disgrace until lately, but bore it patiently;

and now is reinstated in his office and his honors, a large portion of

his property restored, which had been temporarily confiscated, while

he was under suspicion as a Carlist. He is authorized to offer me

pardon, and all these pretty things, if I will return and take a new

oath of allegiance."

"And you will accept, Pintal?"

"Why, in God's name, what do you take me for?--Pardon! I forgot

myself, Sir. Your question is a natural one. But no, I shall surely

not accept. Zea-Bermudez is dead, but there is a part of me which can

never die; and I am happy today because I feel that I am not so poor

as I thought I was."

Ferdy entered, alone. He went straight to his father and whispered

something in his ear,--about the mother, I suspected, for both

blushed, and Pintal said, with a vexed look,--"Ah, very well! never

mind that, my boy."

Then Ferdy threw off his cap and cloak, and, seating himself on a pile

of books at his father's feet, quietly rested his head upon his knee.

I observed that his face was vividly flushed, and his eyes looked

weary. I felt his pulse,--it indicated high fever; and to our anxious

questions he answered, that his head ached terribly, and he was "every

minute hot or cold." I persuaded him to go to bed at once, and left

anxious instructions for his treatment, for I saw that he was going to

be seriously ill.

In three days little Ferdy was with the Lady Angelica in heaven. He

died in my arms, of scarlet fever. In the delirium of his last moments

he saw _her_, and he departed with strange words on his lips: "I am

coming, Lady, I am coming!--my father will be ready presently!"

Some strangers from the neighborhood helped me to bury him; we laid

him near the grave of the First Lady; but very soon his pretty bones

were scattered, and there's a busy street there now.

Pintal, when I told him that the boy was dead, only bowed and smiled.

He did not go to the grave, he never again named the child, nor by the

least word or look confessed the change. But when, a little later, a

fire swept down Dupont Street and laid the poor tent in ashes,

spoiling the desolate house whose beautiful _lar_ had flitted,--when

his wife went moaning maudlinly among the yet warm ashes, and groping,

in mean misery, with a stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat

the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as,

with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to

see, the shocking scene. Presently the woman, poking with the stick,

found something under the ashes. With her naked hands she greedily

dug it out;--it was a tin shaving-case. Another moment, and Pintal had

snatched it from her grasp, torn it open, and had a naked razor in his

hand. I wrested it from him, as he fairly foamed, and dragged him from

the place.

A few days after that, I took leave of them on board a merchant ship

bound for England, and with a heavy-hearted prayer sped them on their

way. On the voyage, as Pintal stood once, trembling in a storm, near

the mainmast, a flash of lightning transfixed him.--That was well! He

had been distinguished by his sorrows, and was worthy of that special

messenger.

* * * * *

That picture,--it was the first and last he painted in California. I

kept it long, rejoicing in the admiration it excited, and only grieved

that the poor comfort of the praises I daily heard lavished upon it

could never reach him.

Once, when I was ill in Sacramento, my San Francisco house was burned,

but not before its contents had been removed. In the hopeless

scattering of furniture and trunks, this picture disappeared,--no one

knew whither. I sought it everywhere, and advertised for it, but in

vain. About a year afterward, I sailed for Honolulu. I had letters of

introduction to some young American merchants there, one of whom

hospitably made me his guest for several weeks. On the second day of

my stay with him, he was showing me over his house, where, hanging

against the wall in a spare room, I found,--not the Pintal picture,

but a Chinese copy of it, faithful in its every detail. There were the

several alterations I had suggested, and there the rich, warm colors

that Pintal's taste had chosen. Of course, it was a copy. No doubt, my

picture had been stolen at the fire, or found its way by mistake among

the "traps" of other people. Then it had been sold at auction,--some

Chinaman had bought it,--it had been shipped to Canton or Hong

Kong,--some one of the thousand "artists" of China Street or the

Victoria Road had copied it for the American market. A ship-load of

Chinese goods--Canton crape shawls, camphor-boxes, carved toys,

curiosities, and pictures--had been sold in Honolulu,--and here it

was.

* * * * *

THE HOUSE THAT WAS JUST LIKE ITS NEIGHBORS.

Oh, the houses are all alike, you know,--

All the houses alike, in a row!

You'll see a hat-stand in the hall,

Against the painted and polished wall;

And the threaded sunbeams softly fall

On the long stairs, winding up, away

Up to the garret, lone and gray:

And you can hear, if you wait awhile,

Odd little noises to make you smile;

And minutes will be as long as a mile;--

Just as they would in the house below,

Were you in the entry waiting to go.

Oh, the houses are all alike, you know,--

All the houses alike, in a row!

And the world swings sadly to and fro,--

Mayhap the shining, but sure the woe!

For in the sunlight the shadows grow

Over the new name on the door,

Over the face unseen before.

Yet who shall number, by any art,

The chasms that keep so wide apart

The dancing step and the weary heart?

Oh, who shall guess that the polished wall

Is a headstone over his neighbor's hall?

Yet the houses are just alike, you know,--

All the houses alike, in a row!

And solemn sounds are heard at night,

And solemn forms shut out the light,

And hideous thoughts the soul affright:

Death and despair, in solemn state,

In the silent, vaulted chambers wait;

And up the stairs as your children go,

Spectres follow them, to and fro,--

Only a wall between them, oh!

And the darkest demons, grinning, see

The fairest angels that dwell with thee!

For the houses are all alike, you know,--

All the houses alike, in a row!

My chariot waited, gold and gay:

"I'll ride," I said, "to the woods to-day,--

Out to the blithesome woods away,--

Where the old trees, swaying thoughtfully,

Watch the breeze and the shadow's glee."

I smiled but once, with my joy elate,

For a chariot stood at my neighbor's gate,--

A grim old chariot, dark as fate.

"Oh, where are you taking my neighbor?" I cried.

And the gray old driver thus replied:--

"Where the houses are all alike, you know,--

Narrow houses, all in a row!

Unto a populous city," he saith:

"The road lies steep through the Vale of Death

Oh, it makes the old steeds gasp for breath!

There'll be a new name over the door,

In a place where _he's_ never been before,--

Where the neighbors never visit, they say,--

Where the streets are echoless, night and day,

And the children forget their childish play.

And if you should live next door, I doubt

If you'd ever hear what they were about

Who lived in the next house in the row,--

Though the houses are all alike, you know!"

DAPHNAIDES:

OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON.

[Concluded.]

Dorset was still Lord Chamberlain when the death of Shadwell placed

the laurel again at his disposal. Had he listened to Dryden, William

Congreve would have received it. Of all the throng of young gentlemen

who gathered about the chair of the old poet at Wills's, Congreve was

his prime favorite. That his advice was not heeded was long a matter

of pensive regret:--

"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained!

Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned!

The father had descended for the son;

For only you are lineal to the throne.

Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,

A greater Edward in his room arose."[1]

The choice fell upon Nahum Tate:--

"But now not I, but poetry is cursed;

For Tom the Second reigns like Tom the First."

What particular quality recommended Tate we are not wholly able to

explain. Dryden alleges "charity" as the single impulse of the

appointment,--not the merit or aptitude of the candidate. But

throughout life Dorset continued to countenance Nahum, serving as

standing dedicatee of his works, and the prompter of several of them.

We have remarked the want of judgment which Lord Dorset exhibited in

his anxious patronage of the scholars and scribblers of his time,--a

trait which stood the Blackmores, Bradys, and Tates in good stead.

But there was still another reason why Tate was preferred to Congreve.

Dorset was too practised a courtier not to study the tastes of his

master to good purpose. A liking for the stage, or a lively sense of

poetic excellence, was not among the preferences of King William. The

Laureate was sub-purveyor of amusement for the court; but there was no

longer a court to amuse, and the King himself never once in his reign

entered a theatre. The piety of Queen Mary rendered her a rare

attendant at the play-house. Plays were therefore no longer wanted. A

playwright could not amuse. Congreve was a dramatist who had never

exhibited even passable talent for other forms of poetical

composition. But Tate's limited gifts, displayed to Dorset's

satisfaction in various encomiastic verses addressed to himself, were

fully equal to the exigencies of the office under the new order of

things; he was by profession a eulogist, not a dramatist. He was a

Tory; and the King was out of humor with the Whigs. He was

pretentiously moral and exemplary of life and pen, and so suited the

Queen. The duties of the office were conformed, as far as practicable,

to the royal tastes. Their scene was transferred from the play-house

to the church. On the anniversaries of the birthdays of the two

sovereigns, and upon New Year's day, the Laureate was expected to have

ready congratulatory odes befitting the occasion, set to music by the

royal organist, and sung after service in the Chapel Royal of St.

James. Similar duties were required when great victories were to be

celebrated, or national calamities to be deplored. In short, from

writing dramas to amuse a merry monarch and his courtiers, an office

not without dignity, the Laureate sunk into a hired writer of

adulatory odes; a change in which originated that prevalent contempt

for the laurel which descended from the era of Tate to that of

Southey.

And yet the odes were in no sense more thoroughly Pindaric than in the

circumstance of their flatteries being bought and paid for at a stated

market value. The triumphal lyrics of Pindar himself were very far

from being those spontaneous and enthusiastic tributes to the prowess

of his heroes, which the vulgar receive them for. Hear the painful

truth, as revealed by the Scholiast.[2] Pytheas of AEgina had

conquered in rough-and-tumble fight all antagonists in the Pancratium.

Casting about for the best means of perpetuating his fame, he found

the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple

of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing

the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article,

and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate

bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a

dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed

bargainer left, and was for some days decided in favor of the brazen

image, which could be had at half the price. But reflecting that what

Pindar would give for his money was a draft upon universal fame and

immortality, while the statue might presently be lost, or melted down,

or its identity destroyed, his final determination was in favor of the

ode,--a conclusion which time has justified. Nor was the Bard of the

Victors ashamed of his mercenary Muse. In the Second Isthmian Ode, we

find an elaborate justification of his practice of praising for

pay,--a practice, he admits, unknown to primitive poets, but rendered

inevitable, in his time, by the poverty of the craft, and the

degeneracy of the many, with whom, in the language of the Spartan

sage, "money made the man." With this Pindaric precedent, therefore,

for selling Pindaric verses, it is no wonder, if the children of the

Muse, in an age still more degenerate than that of their great

original, found ample excuse for dealing out their wares at the best

market. When such as Dryden and Pope lavished in preface and

dedication their encomiums upon wealth and power, and waited eagerly

for the golden guineas the bait might bring them, we have no right to

complain of the Tates and Eusdens for prostituting their neglected

Muses for a splendid sum certain _per annum_. Surely, if royalty, thus

periodically and mercenarily eulogized, were content, the poet might

well be so. And quite as certainly, the Laureate stipend never

extracted from poet panegyric more fulsome, ill-placed, and degrading,

than that which Laureate Dryden volunteered over the pall of Charles

II.[4]

Tate had been known as a hanger-on at the court of Charles, and as a

feeble versifier and pamphleteer of the Tory school, before an

alliance with Dryden gave him a certain degree of importance. The

first part of "Absalom and Achitophel," in 1681, convulsed the town

and angered the city. Men talked for a time of nothing else. Tate, who

was in the secret of its authorship, talked of it to Dryden, and urged

an extension of the poem. Were there not enough of Shaftesbury's brisk

boys running at large who deserved to be gibbeted? Were there not

enough Hebrew names in the two books of Samuel to name each as

appropriately as those already nomenclatured? But Dryden was

indisposed to undertake a continuation which must fall short of what

had been executed in the exact proportion that the characters left for

it were of minor consequence. He recommended the task to Tate. Tate,

flattered and nothing loath, accordingly sent to the press the second

part of "Absalom and Achitophel," embodying a contribution from Dryden

of two hundred lines, which are as plainly distinguishable from the

rest as a patch of cloth of gold upon cloth of frieze. The credit of

this first alliance proved so grateful to Nahum, that he never after

ventured upon literary enterprise without the aid of a similar

coalition. His genius was inherently parasitic. In conjunction with

Tory and Jesuit, he coalesced in the celebration of Castlemaine's

gaudy reception at Rome.

In conjunction with Nicholas Brady, he prepared that version of the

Psalms still appended to the English Book of Common Prayer. In

conjunction with Dryden and others, he translated Juvenal. In

conjunction with Lord Dorset, he edited a praiseworthy edition of the

poems of Sir John Davies, which might otherwise have been lost or

forgotten. In conjunction with Garth, he translated the

"Metamorphoses" of Ovid. And in conjunction with Dr. Blow, he prepared

those Pindaric flights which set King William asleep, and made

Godolphin ashamed that the deeds of Marlborough should be so

unworthily sung.

So long as he continued to enjoy the patronage of his liberal

Maecenas, Tate, with his aid, and these labors, and the income of his

office, contrived to maintain the state of a gentleman. But Dorset

died in 1706; the Laureate's dull heroics found no vent; and ere the

death of Queen Anne,--an event which he bewailed in the least

contemptible of his odes,--his revenues were contracted to the

official stipend. The accession of the house of Hanover, in 1714, was

the downfall of Toryism; and Tate was a Tory. His ruin was complete.

The Elector spared not the house of Pindar. The Laureate was stripped

of the wreath; his only income confiscated; and after struggling

feebly with fate in the form of implacable creditors, he took refuge

in the Old Mint, the resort of thieves and debtors, where in 1715 he

died,--it is said, of starvation. Alas, that the common lot of Grub

Street should have precedent in the person of laurelled royalty

itself!

The coronation of Laureate Rowe was simultaneous with that of George

I. His immediate claim to the honor dated back to the year 1702, when

his play of "Tamerlane" had caught the popular fancy, and proved of

vast service to the ministry at a critical moment in stimulating the

national antipathy to France. The effect was certainly not due to

artistic nicety or refinement. King William, as _Tamerlane_, was

invested with all virtues conceivable of a Tartar conqueror, united

with the graces of a primitive saint; while King Louis, as _Bajazet_,

fell little short of the perfections of Satan. These coarse daubs,

executed in the broadest style of the sign-post school of Art, so

gratified the mob, that for half a century their exhibition was called

for on the night of November the fifth. Rowe, moreover, belonged to

the straitest sect of Whiggery,--was so bigoted, indeed, as to decline

the acquaintance of a Tory, and in play and prologue missed no chance

of testifying devotion to liberal opinions.[5] His investiture with

the laurel was only another proof that at moments of revolution

extremists first rise to the surface. A man of affluent fortune, and

the recipient of redundant favors from the new ministry, Rowe enjoyed

the sunshine of life, while the dethroned Nahum starved in the Mint,

as the dethroned James starved at Rome. Had the dramatic tribute still

been exacted, there is little doubt that the author of the "Fair

Penitent," and of "Jane Shore," would have lent splendid lustre to his

office. His odes, however,--such, at least, as have been thought

worthy of preservation among his works,--are a prodigious improvement

upon the tenuity of his predecessor, and immeasurably superior in

poetical fire and elegance to those of any successor antecedent to

Warton.

For, following Nicholas Rowe, there were dark ages of Laureate

dulness,--a period redeemed by nothing, unless by the ridicule and

controversy to which the wearers of the leaf gave occasion. Rowe died

in the last days of 1718. The contest for the vacant place is presumed

to have been unusually active. John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire,

imitating Suckling's "Session of the Poets," brings all the

versifiers of the time into the canvas, and after humorously

dispatching one after another, not sparing himself, closes,--

"At last, in rushed Eusden, and cried, 'Who shall have it,

But I, the true Laureate, to whom the King gave it?'

Apollo begged pardon, and granted his claim,

But vowed, though, till then, he ne'er heard of his name."[6]

This Laurence Eusden was a scribbling parson, whose model in Art was

Sir Richard Blackmore, and whose morality was of the Puritanical

stripe. He had assisted Garth in his Ovid, assuming, doubtless upon

high moral grounds, the rendering of the impurest fables. He had

written odes to great people upon occasions more or less great,

therein exhibiting some ingenuity in varying the ordinary staple of

adulation. He had addressed an epithalamium to the Duke of Newcastle

upon his marriage with the Lady Henrietta Godolphin,--a tribute so

gratifying to his Grace, then Lord Chamberlain, as to secure the poet

the place of Rowe. Eusden's was doubtless the least honorable name as

yet associated with the laurel. His contemporaries allude to him with

uniform disdain. Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, tells us,--

"Eusden, a laurelled bard, by fortune raised,

By very few was read, by fewer praised,"

Pope, as cavalierly, in the "Dunciad":--

"She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine,

And Eusden eke out Blackmore's endless line."

Jacobs, in his "Lives of the Poets," speaks of him as a multifarious

writer of unreadable trash,--and names but few of his productions. The

truth was, Eusden, secluding himself at his rectory among the fens of

Lincolnshire, took no part in society, declined all association with

the polite circles of the metropolis, thus inviting attacks, from

which his talents were not respectable enough to screen him. That the

loftiest revelations of poetry were not required of the Laureate of

George I., who understood little or no English, there can be no

question. George II. was equally insensible to the Muses; and had the

annual lyrics been a mosaic of the merest gibberish, they would have

satisfied his earlier tastes as thoroughly as the odes of Collins or

Gray. A court, at which Pope and Swift, Young and Thomson were

strangers, had precisely that share of Augustan splendor which enabled

such as Eusden to shine lustrously.[7]

And so Eusden shone and wrote, and in the fulness of time--September,

1730--died and was buried; and his laurel others desired.[8] The

leading claimants were Richard Savage and Colley Cibber. The touching

story of Savage had won the heart of the Queen, and she had extracted

from the King the promise of the Laureateship for its hero. But in the

Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Savage had an irreconcilable opponent.

The apprehension of exciting powerful enmities, if he elevated the

"Bastard" and his wrongs to so conspicuous a place, had, no doubt, an

influence with the shrewd statesman. Possibly, too, so keen and

practical a mind could not but entertain thorough contempt for the

man, who, with brains, thews, and sinews of his own, a fair education,

and as many golden opportunities of advancement as a reasonable being

could desire, should waste his days in profitless mendicancy at the

doors of great people, in whining endeavors to excite the sympathies

of the indifferent, in poem and petition, in beastly drunkenness, or,

if sober, in maudlin lamentations at the bitterness of his fortune. A

Falconbridge would have better suited the ministerial taste. At all

events, when his Majesty came to request the appointment of the

Queen's _protégé_, he found that the patent had already been made out

in the name of Cibber: and Cibber had to be Laureate. The disappointed

one raved, got drunk, sober again, and finally wrote an ode to her

Majesty, announcing himself as her "Volunteer Laureate," who should

repeat his congratulations upon each recurrence of her birthday. The

Queen, in pity, sent him fifty pounds, with a promise of an equal

amount for each of his annual verses. And although Cibber protested,

and ridiculed the new title, as no more sensible than "Volunteer Duke,

Marquis, or Prime Minister," still Savage adhered to it and the

pension tenaciously, sharing the Queen's favor with Stephen Duck, the

marvellous "Thresher,"[9] whose effusions were still more to her

taste. That the yearly fifty pounds were expended in inexcusable riot,

almost as soon as received, was a matter of course. Upon the demise of

Queen Caroline, in 1738, Savage experienced another proof of Walpole's

dislike. The pensions found upon her Majesty's private list were all

continued out of the exchequer, one excepted. The pension of Savage

was the exception. Right feelingly, therefore, might he mourn his

royal mistress, and vituperate the insensible minister; and that he

did both with some degree of animation, the few who still read his

poems will freely admit.

Colley Cibber had recommended himself to promotion by consistent

partisanship, and by two plays of fair merit and exceeding popularity.

"The Careless Husband" even Pope had praised; "The Nonjuror," an

adaptation of Molière's "Tartuffe," was one of the most successful

comedies of the period. The King had been delighted with it,--a

circumstance doubtless considered by Sir Robert in selecting a rival

for Savage. Cibber had likewise been the manager, time out of mind, of

Drury-Lane Theatre; and if now and then he had failed to recognize the

exact direction of popular taste,--as in the instance of the "Beggar's

Opera," which he rejected, and which, being accepted by Manager Rich

of Covent Garden, made Rich gay and Gay rich,--he was generally a

sound stage-tactician and judicious caterer. His career, however, had

not been so profitable that an additional hundred pounds should be a

thing of indifference; in fact, the sum seemed to be just what was

needed to enable him to forsake active duty on the stage,--for the

patent was no sooner signed than the veteran retired upon his laurels.

The annals of the Laureateship, during Cibber's reign, are without

incident.[10] The duties remained unchanged, and were performed, there

is no reason to doubt, to the contentment of the King and court.[11]

But the Laureate himself was peculiarly the object of sarcastic

satire. The standing causes were of course in operation: the envy of

rival poetasters, the dislike of political opponents, the enmities

originating in professional disputes and jealousies. Cibber's manners

had not been studied in the school of Chesterfield, although that

school was then open and flourishing. He was rude, presumptuous,

dogmatic. To superiors in rank he was grudgingly respectful; to equals

and inferiors, insupportably insolent. But when to these aggravating

traits he added the vanity of printing an autobiography, exposing a

thousand assailable points in his life and character, the temptation

was irresistible, and the whole population of Grub Street enlisted in

a crusade against him.[12] Fortunately, beneath the crust of insolence

and vanity, there was a substratum of genuine power in the Laureate's

make, which rendered him not only a match for these, but for even a

greater than these, the author of the "Dunciad." Pope's antipathy for

the truculent actor dated some distance back.

Back to the 'Devil,' the last echoes roll,

And 'Coll!' each butcher roars at Hockley-hole.

The latter accounts for it by telling, that at the first

representation of Gay's "Three Hours after Marriage," in 1717, where

one of the scenes was violently hissed, some angry words passed

between the irritated manager and Pope, who was behind the scenes, and

was erroneously supposed to have aided in the authorship. The odds of

a scolding match must have been all in favor of the blustering Cibber,

rather than of the nervous and timid Pope; but then the latter had a

faculty of hate, which his antagonist had not, and he exercised it

vigorously. The allusions to Cibber in his later poems are frequent.

Thus, in the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot":--

"And has not Colley still his Lord and whore?

His butchers Henley? his freemasons Moore?"

And again:--

"So humble he has knocked at Tibbald's door,

Has drunk with Colley, nay, has rhymed for Moore."

And in the "Imitation of Horace," addressed to Lord Fortescue:--

"Better be Cibber, I maintain it still,

Than ridicule all taste, blaspheme, quadrille."

"The Dunciad," as originally published in 1728, had Lewis Theobald for

its hero. There was neither sense nor justice in the selection. Pope

hated Theobald for presuming to edit the plays of Shakspeare with

greatly more ability and acuteness than himself had brought to the

task. His dislike had no better foundation. Neither the works, the

character, nor the associations of the man authorized his elevation to

the throne of dulness. The disproportion between the subject and the

satire instantly impresses the reader. After the first explosion of

his malice, it impressed Pope; and anxious to redeem his error, he

sought diligently for some plan of dethroning Tibbald, and raising

another to the vacant seat. Cibber, in the mean time, was elevated to

the laurel, and that by statesmen whom it was the fate of Pope to

detest in secret, and yet not dare to attack in print. The Fourth Book

of the "Dunciad" appeared in 1742, and its attacks were mainly

levelled at the Laureate. The Laureate replied in a pamphlet,

deprecating the poet's injustice, and declaring his unconsciousness of

any provocation for these reiterated assaults. At the same time he

announced his determination to carry on the war in prose as long as

the satirist should wage it in verse,--pamphlet for poem, world

without end. Hostilities were now fairly established. Pope issued a

fresh edition of his satire complete. The change he had long coveted

he now made. The name of Cibber was substituted throughout for that of

Theobald, the portraiture remaining the same. Johnson properly

ridicules the absurdity of leaving the heavy traits of Theobald on the

canvas, and simply affixing the name of his mercurial contemporary

beneath; and, indeed, there is much reason to doubt whether the mean

jealousy which inspired the first "Dunciad," or the blundering rage

which disfigured the second, is in the worse taste. Cibber kept his

engagement, replying in pamphlet. The immediate victory was

unquestionably his. Morbidly sensitive to ridicule, Pope suffered

acutely. Richardson, who found him once with the Cibberine leaves in

his hand, declared his persuasion, from the spectacle of rage,

vexation, and mortification he witnessed, that the poet's death

resulted from the strokes of the Laureate. If so, we must concede him

to have been the victor who laid his adversary at his feet on the

field. Posterity, however, which listens only to the satirist, has

judged differently and unjustly.[13] Theobald, though of no original

talent, was certainly, in his generation, the most successful

illustrator of Shakspeare, and the first, though Rowe and Pope had

preceded him in the effort, who had brought a sound verbal criticism

to bear on the text. It is to his credit, that many of the most

ingenious emendations suggested in Mr. Collier's famous folio were

anticipated by this "king of the dunces"; and it must be owned, that

his edition is as far superior to Warburton's and Hanmer's, which were

not long after brought out with a deafening flourish of trumpets, as

the editions of Steevens and Malone are to his. Yet, prompted by the

"Dunciad," it is the fashion of literature to regard Theobald with

compassion, as a block-head and empiric. Cibber escapes but little

better, and yet he was a man of respectable talent, and played no

second-rate part in the literary history of the time.

As Laureate Cibber drew near the end of earthly things, a desire,

common to poetical as well as political potentates, possessed him,--a

desire to nominate a successor. In his case, indeed, the idea may have

been borrowed from "MacFlecknoe" or the "Dunciad." The Earl of

Chesterfield, during his administration in Ireland, had discovered a

rival to Ben Jonson in the person of a poetical bricklayer, one Henry

Jones, whom his Lordship carried with him to London, as a specimen of

the indigenous tribes of Erin. It was easier for this Jones to rhyme

in heroics than to handle a trowel or construct a chimney. He rhymed,

therefore, for the amusement and in honor of the polite circle of

which Stanhope was the centre; the fashionable world subscribed

magnificently for his volume of "Poems upon Several Occasions";[14]

his tragedy, "The Earl of Essex," in the composition of which his

patron is said to have shared, was universally applauded. Its

introduction to the stage was the work of Cibber; and Cibber, assisted

by Chesterfield, labored zealously to secure the author a reversion of

the laurel upon his own lamented demise.

The effort was unsuccessful. Cibber's death occurred in December,

1757. The administration of the elder Pitt, which had been restored

six months before, was insensible to the merits of the prodigious

bricklayer. The wreath was tendered to Thomas Gray. It would, no

doubt, have proved a grateful relief to royalty, obliged for

twenty-seven years to listen twice yearly, if not oftener, to the

monotonous felicitations of Colley, to hear in his stead the author of

the "Bard," of the "Progress of Poetry," of the "Ode at Eton College."

But the relief was denied it. Gray, ambitious only of the historical

chair at Cambridge, declined the laurel. In the mean time, the claims

of William Whitehead were earnestly advocated with the Lord

Chamberlain, by Lord and Lady Jersey, and by the Earl Harcourt. A

large vote in the House of Commons might be affected by a refusal.

Pitt, who cared nothing for the laurel, but much for the votes, gave

his assent, and Whitehead was appointed. Whitehead was the son of a

baker, and, as an eleëmosynary scholar at Winchester School, had won a

poetical prize offered to the students by Alexander Pope. Obtaining a

free scholarship at Cambridge, he became in due time a fellow of Clare

Hall, and subsequently tutor to the sons of Lord Jersey and Lord

Harcourt, with whom he made the tour of the Continent. Two of his

tragedies, "The Roman Father," and "Creüsa," met with more success

than they deserved. A volume of poems, not without merit, was given to

the press in 1756, and met with unusual favor through the exertions of

his two noble friends. That he was not a personal applicant for the

laurel, nor conscious of the movement in his behalf, he takes occasion

in one of his poems to state:--

"Howe'er unworthily I wear the crown,

unasked it came, and from a hand unknown."[15]

From the warm championship of his friends, and the commendations of

Mason, the friend of Gray, we infer that Whitehead was not destitute

of fine social qualities. His verse, which is of the only type current

a century ago, is elegantly smooth, and wearisomely tame,--nowhere

rising into striking or original beauties. Among his merits as a poet

modesty was not. His "Charge to the Poets," published in 1762, drew

upon him the wrath and ridicule of his fellow-verse-wrights, and

perhaps deservedly. Assuming, with amusing vanity, what, if ever true,

was only so a century before or a half-century after, that the laurel

was the emblem of supremacy in the realm of letters, and that it had

been granted him as a token of his matchless merit,--

"Since my king and patron have thought fit

To place me on the throne of modern wit,--"

he proceeds to read the subject throng a saucy lecture on their vices

and follies,--

"As bishops to their clergy give their charge."

A good-natured dogmatism is the tone of the whole; but presumption and

dogmatism find no charity among the _genus irritabile_, and Whitehead

received no quarter. Small wits and great levelled their strokes at a

hide which self-conceit had happily rendered proof. The sturdiest

assailant was Charles Churchill. He never spares him,--

"Who in the Laureate chair--

By grace, not merit, planted there--

In awkward pomp is seen to sit,

And by his patent proves his wit;

For favors of the great, we know,

Can wit as well as rank bestow;

And they who, without one pretension,

Can get for fools a place or pension,

Must able be supposed, of course,

If reason is allowed due force,

To give such qualities and grace

As may equip them for the place.

"But he who measures as he goes

A mongrel kind of tinkling prose,

And is too frugal to dispense

At once both poetry and sense,--

Who, from amidst his slumbering guards,

Deals out a charge to subject bards,

Where couplets after couplets creep,

Propitious to the reign of sleep," etc.

Again, in the "Prophecy of Famine,"--

"A form, by silken smile, and tone

Dull and unvaried, for the Laureate known,

Folly's chief friend, Decorum's eldest son,

In every party found, and yet of none,

This airy substance, this substantial shade."

And elsewhere he begs for

"Some such draught...

As makes a Whitehead's ode go down,

Or slakes the feverette of Brown."

But satire disturbed not the calm equanimity of the pensioner and

placeman.

"The laurel worn

By poets in old time, but destined now

In grief to wither on a Whitehead's brow,"

continued to fade there, until a whole generation of poets had passed

away. It was not until the middle of April, 1785, that Death made way

for a successor.

The suddenness of Whitehead's decease came near leaving a royal

birthday unsung,--an omission scarcely pardonable with one of George

the Third's methodical habits. An impromptu appointment had to be

made. It was made before the Laureate was buried. Thomas Warton, the

Professor of Poetry at Oxford, received the patent on the 30th of

April, and his ode, married to fitting music, was duly forthcoming on

the 24th of May. The selection of Warton was faultless. His lyrical

verse was the best of a vicious school; his sonnets, according to that

exquisite sonneteer, Sir Egerton Brydges, were the finest in the

language; his "History of English Poetry," of which three volumes had

appeared, displayed an intimate acquaintance with the early English

writers. Nor should we pass unnoticed his criticisms and annotations

upon Milton and Spenser, manifesting as they did the acutest

sensitiveness to the finest beauties of poetry. If the laurel implied

the premiership of living poets, Warton certainly deserved it. He was

a head and shoulders taller than his actual contemporaries.[16] He

stood in the gap between the old school and the new, between the dead

and the coming. Goldsmith and Johnson were no more; Cowper did not

print his "Task" until the autumn of 1785; Burns made his _début_

about the same moment; Rogers published his "Ode to Superstition" the

next year; the famous "Fourteen Sonnets" of Bowles came two years

later; while Wordsworth and Landor made their first appearance in

1793. Fortunate thus in time, Warton was equally fortunate in

politics. He was an Oxford Tory, a firm believer in divine right and

passive obedience, and a warm supporter of the new ministers. To the

King, it may be added, no nomination could have given greater

satisfaction. The official odes of Warton evince all the elegant

traits which characterize his other writings. Their refined taste and

exquisite modulation are admirable; while the matter is far less

sycophantic than was to be expected from so devout a monarchist. The

tender of the laurel certainly gratified him:--

"Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure

Nor useless all my vacant days have flowed,

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature,

Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestowed."[17]

And, like Southey, he was not indisposed to enhance the dignity of the

wreath by classing Chaucer and Spenser, as we have seen, among its

wearers. The genuine claims of Warton to respect probably saved him

from the customary attacks. Bating a few bungling thrusts amid the

doggerel of "Peter Pindar," he escaped scathless,--gaining, on the

other hand, a far more than ordinary proportion of poetical panegyric.

"Affection and applause alike he shared;

All loved the man, all venerate the bard:

E'en Prejudice his fate afflicted hears,

And lettered Envy sheds reluctant tears.

Such worth the laurel could alone repay,

Profaned by Cibber, and contemned by Gray;

Yet hence its Breath shall new distinction claim,

And, though it gave not, take from Warton fame."[18]

The last of Warton's odes was written in his last illness, and

performed three days after his death. Appositely enough, it was an

invocation to Health, meriting more than ordinary praise for eloquent

fervor. Warton died May 21st, 1790. The laurel was vacant for a month,

when Henry James Pye was gazetted. There was hardly a hungry placeman

in London who had not as just pretensions to the honor. What poetical

gifts he had displayed had been in school or college exercises. His

real claims consisted in having spent a fortune in electioneering for

ministers; and these claims being pressed with unusual urgency at the

moment of Warton's death, he was offered the Laureateship as

satisfaction in part.[19] He eagerly accepted it, and received the

balance two years later in the shape of a commission as Police

Magistrate of Middlesex. Thereafter, like Henry Fielding, or Gilbert

A'Beckett, he divided his days between penal law and polite

literature. His version of the "Poetics" of Aristotle, with

illustrations drawn liberally from recent authors, was perhaps

begotten of a natural wish to satisfy the public that qualifications

for the laurel were not wholly wanting. A barren devotion to the drama

was always his foible. It was freely indulged. With few exceptions,

his plays were affairs of partnership with Samuel James Arnold, a

writer of ephemeral popularity, whose tale of "The Haunted Island" was

wildly admired by readers of the intensely romantic school, but whose

tragedies, melodramas, comedies, farces, operas, are now forgotten. In

addition to these auxiliary labors, which ripened yearly, Pye tried

his hand at an epic,--the subject, King Alfred,--the plot and

treatment not greatly differing from those which Blackmore brought to

the same enterprise. The poem passed at once from the bookshop to the

trunk-maker,--not, however, before an American publisher was found

daring enough to reprint it. There are also to be mentioned

translations from Pindar, Horace, and other classics, for Sharpe's

edition of the British Poets, a collection to which he lent editorial

aid. "Poet Pye"[20] was fortunate in escaping contemporary wit and

satire. Gifford alluded to him, but Gifford's Toryism was security

that no Tory Court-Poet would be roughly handled. Byron passed him in

silence. The Smiths treated him as respectfully as they treated

anybody. Moore's wit at the expense of the Regent and his courtiers

had only found vent in the "Two-Penny Post-Bag" when Pye was gathered

to his predecessors.

That calamity occurred in August, 1813. With it ended the era of

birthday songs and New-Year's verses. The King was mad; his nativity

was therefore hardly a rational topic of rejoicing. The Prince Regent

had no taste for the solemn inanity of stipulated ode, the performance

of which only served to render insufferably tedious the services of

the two occasions in the year when imperative custom demanded his

attendance at the Chapel. Consultation was had with John Wilson

Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty. Croker's sharp common-sense at

once suggested the abolition of the Laureate duties, but the retention

of the office as a sinecure. Walter Scott, to whom the place was

offered, as the most popular of living poets, seconded the counsel of

Croker, but declined the appointment, as beneath the dignity of the

intended founder of a long line of border knights. He recommended

Southey. He had already recommended Southey to the "Quarterly," and

through the "Quarterly" to Croker, then and still its most brilliant

contributor; and this second instance of disinterested kindness was

equally efficacious. Southey was appointed. The tierce of Canary

ceased to be a perquisite of the office, the Laureate disclaiming it;

and instead of annual odes upon set occasions, such effusions as the

poet might choose to offer at the suggestion of passing events were to

be accepted as the sum of official duty. These were to be said or

read, not sung,--a change that completed the radical revolution of the

office.

However important the salary of a hundred pounds may have been to

Southey, it is very sure that the laurel seemed to infuse all its

noxious and poisonous juices into his literary character. His vanity,

like Whitehead's, led him to regard his chaplet as the reward of

unrivalled merit. His study-chair was glorified, and became a throne.

His supremacy in poetry was as indubitable as the king's supremacy in

matters ecclesiastical. He felt himself constrained to eliminate

utterly from his conscience whatever traces of early republicanism,

pantisocracy, and heresy still disfigured it; and to conform

unreservedly to the exactest requirements of high Toryism in politics

and high Churchism in religion. He was in the pay and formed a part of

the government; could he do else than toil mightily in his department

for the service of a master who had so sagaciously anticipated the

verdict of posterity, as to declare him, who was the least popular,

the greatest of living poets? He found it a duty to assume a rigid

censorship over as many of his Majesty's lieges as were addicted to

verse,--to enact the functions of minister of literary police,--to

reprehend the levity of Moore, the impiety of Byron, the democracy of

Leigh Hunt, the unhappy lapse of Hazlitt, the drunkenness of Lamb.

Assumptions so open to ridicule, and so disparaging to far abler men,

told as disadvantageously upon his fame as upon his character. He

became the butt of contemporary satire. Horace Smith, Moore, Shelley,

Byron, lampooned him savagely. The latter made him the hero of his

wicked "Vision of Judgment," and to him dedicated his "Don Juan." The

dedication was suppressed; but no chance offered in the body of that

profligate rhapsody to assail Bob Southey, that was not vigorously

employed. The self-content of the Laureate armed him, however, against

every thrust. Contempt he interpreted as envy of his sublime

elevation:--

"Grin, Envy, through thy ragged mask of scorn!

In honor it was given; with honor it is worn."

Of course such matchless self-complacency defied assault.

Southey's congratulatory odes appeared as often as public occasion

seemed to demand them. There were in rapid succession the "Ode to the

Regent," the "Carmen Triumphale," the "Pilgrimage to Waterloo," the

"Vision of Judgment," the "Carmen Nuptiale," the "Ode on the Death of

the Princess Charlotte." The "Quarterly" exalted them, one and all;

the "Edinburgh" poured upon them volleys of keen but ineffectual

ridicule. At last the Laureate desisted. The odes no longer appeared;

and during the long and dark closing years of his life, the only

production of the Laureate pen was the yearly signature to a receipt

for one hundred pounds sterling, official salary.