We were contemplating our fireplace, in which, some of the
hearth-bricks are rather irregularly disposed; and we said to
ourself, perhaps the brick-layer who built this noble fireplace
worked like Ben Jonson, with a trowel in one hand and a copy of
Horace in the other. That suggested to us that we had not read any
Ben Jonson for a very long time: so we turned to "Every Man in His
Humour" and "The Alchemist." Part of Jonson's notice "To the Reader"
preceding "The Alchemist" struck us as equally valid as regards
poetry to-day:
Thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in
this age, in poetry; wherein ... antics to run away from
nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that
tickles the spectators ... For they commend writers, as they do
fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put
for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the
braver fellows.... I deny not, but that these men, who always
seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing
that is good, and great; but very seldom ... I give thee this
warning, that there is a great difference between those, that
utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use
election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the
unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or
scattered more numerous than composed.
Ben Jonson's perpetual allusions to tobacco always remind one of the
odd circumstance that of two such cronies as he and Will
Shakespeare, one should have mentioned tobacco continually, the
other not at all. Undoubtedly Ben smoked a particularly foul old
pipe and was forever talking about it, spouting his rank strangling
"Cuban ebolition" across the table; and Will, probably rather nice
in his personal habits, grew disgusted with the habit.
At any rate, Shakespeare's silence on the subject has always been a
grief to smokers. At a time when we were interested in that famous
and innocent way of wasting time, trying to discover ciphers in
Shakespeare's sonnets, we spent long cryptogrammarian evenings
seeking to prove some anagram or rebus by which the Bard could be
supposed to have concealed a mention of tobacco. But the only
lurking secret we ever discovered seemed to suggest that the sonnets
had been written by an ex-President of the United States. Observe
the 131st sonnet:
*T*hou art as tyrannous, so as thou art
*A*s those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;
*F*or well thou know'st to my dear doting heart
*T*hou art the fairest and most precious jewel.
And evidently Shakespeare intended to begin the 51st sonnet with the
same acrostic; but, with Elizabethan laxity, misspelled Mr. Taft's
name as TOFT.
Reading Elizabethan literature always encourages one to proceed,
even though decorously, with the use of the pun. Such screams of
mirth as (we doubt not) greeted one of Ben Jonson's simpletons when
he spoke of Roger Bacon as Rasher Bacon (we can hear them laughing,
can't you?) are highly fortifying.
But we began by quoting Ben Jonson on poetry. The passage sent us to
the bookcase to look up the "axioms" about poetry stated by another
who was also, in spirit at least, an habitué of The Mermaid. In that
famous letter from Keats to his publisher and friend John Taylor,
February 27, 1818, there is a fine fluent outburst on the subject.
All Keats lovers know these "axioms" already, but they cannot be
quoted too often; and we copy them down with additional pleasure
because not long ago, by the kindness of the two librarians who
watch over one of the most marvellous private collections in the
world--Mr. J.P. Morgan's--we saw the original letter itself:--
1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not
by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his
own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
2d. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby
making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the
progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come
natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in
magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is
easier to think what poetry should be than to write it--and
this leads me to
Another axiom--That if poetry comes not as naturally as the
leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.
Some people can always find things to complain about. We have seen
protests because the house in Rome where Keats died is used as a
steamship office. We think it is rather appropriate. No man's mind
ever set sail upon wider oceans of imagination. To paraphrase Emily
Dickinson:
Night after night his purple traffic
Strews the landing with opal bales;
Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.
Another pleasing fact is that while he was a medical student Keats
lived in Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside--best known nowadays as the
home of Simpson's, that magnificent chophouse. Who else, in modern
times, came so close to holding unruffled in his hand the shy wild
bird of Poetry?
[Illustration]