or any number, referring my reader to the works of ornithologists in
general, and for what small portion of them he may afterwards care to
consult, to my Appendix, I will end this lecture, and this volume, with
the refreshment for us of a piece of perfect English and exquisite wit,
falling into verse,--the Chorus of the Birds, in Mr. Courthope's
Paradise of them,--a book lovely, and often faultless, in most of its
execution, but little skilled or attractive in plan, and too thoughtful
to be understood without such notes as a good author will not write on
his own work; partly because he has not time, and partly because he
always feels that if people won't look for his meaning, they should not
be told it. My own special function, on the contrary, is, and always
has been, that of the Interpreter only, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress;'
and I trust that Mr. Courthope will therefore forgive my arranging his
long cadence of continuous line so as to come symmetrically into my own
page, (thus also enforcing, for the inattentive, the rhymes which he is
too easily proud to insist on,) and my division of the whole chorus
into equal strophe and antistrophe of six lines each, in which,
counting from the last line of the stanza, the reader can easily catch
the word to which my note refers.
123. We wish to declare,
How the birds of the air
All high institutions designed,
And, holding in awe
Art, Science, and Law,
Delivered the same to mankind. 6
To begin with; of old
Man went naked, and cold,
Whenever it pelted or froze,
Till _we_ showed him how feathers
Were proof against weathers,
With that, _he_ bethought him of hose. 12
And next, it was plain,
That he, in the rain,
Was forced to sit dripping and blind,
While the Reed-warbler swung
In a nest, with her young
Deep sheltered, and warm, from the wind. 18
So our homes in the boughs
Made _him_ think of the House;
And the Swallow, to help him invent,
Revealed the best way
To economize clay,
And bricks to combine with cement. 24
The knowledge withal
Of the Carpenter's awl,
Is drawn from the Nuthatch's bill;
And the Sand-Martin's pains
In the hazel-clad lanes
Instructed the Mason to drill. 30
Is there _one_ of the Arts,
More dear to men's hearts?
To the bird's inspiration they owe it;
For the Nightingale first
Sweet music rehearsed,
Prima-Donna, Composer, and Poet. 36
The Owl's dark retreats
Showed sages the sweets
Of brooding, to spin, or unravel
Fine webs in one's brain,
Philosophical--vain;
The Swallows,--the pleasures of travel. 42
Who chirped in such strain
Of Greece, Italy, Spain
And Egypt, that men, when they heard,
Were mad to fly forth,
From their nests in the North,
And follow--the tail of the Bird. 48
Besides, it is true,
To _our_ wisdom is due
The knowledge of Sciences all;
And chiefly, those rare
Metaphysics of Air
Men 'Meteorology' call, 54
And men, in their words,
Acknowledge the Birds'
Erudition in weather and star;
For they say, "'Twill be dry,--
The swallow is high,"
Or, "Rain, for the Chough is afar." 60
'Twas the Rooks who taught men
Vast pamphlets to pen
Upon social compact and law,
And Parliaments hold,
As themselves did of old,
Exclaiming 'Hear, Hear,' for 'Caw, Caw.' 66
And whence arose Love?
Go, ask of the Dove,
Or behold how the Titmouse, unresting,
Still early and late
Ever sings by his mate,
To lighten her labors of nesting. 72
_Their_ bonds never gall,
Though the leaves shoot, and fall,
And the seasons roll round in their course,
For their marriage, each year,
Grows more lovely and dear;
And they know not decrees of Divorce. 78
That these things are truth
We have learned from our youth,
For our hearts to our customs incline,
As the rivers that roll
From the fount of our soul,
Immortal, unchanging, divine. 84
Man, simple and old,
In his ages of gold,
Derived from our teaching true light,
And deemed it his praise
In his ancestors' ways
To govern his footsteps aright. 90
But the fountain of woes,
Philosophy, rose;
And, what between reason and whim,
He has splintered our rules
Into sections and schools,
So the world is made bitter, for _him_. 96
But the birds, since on earth
They discovered the worth
Of their souls, and resolved with a vow
No custom to change,
For a new, or a strange,
Have attained unto Paradise, _now_. 102
Line 9. PELTED, said of _hail_, not rain. Felt by nakedness, in
a more severe manner than mere rain.
11. 'WEATHERS,' _i.e., both_ weathers--hail and cold: the _armor_
of the feathers against hail; the down of them against cold. See
account of Feather-mail in 'Laws of Fésole,' chap, vi., p. 53,
with the first and fifth plates, and figure 15.
15. BLIND. By the beating of the rain in his face. In _hail_,
there is real danger and bruising, if the hail be worth calling
so, for the whole body; while in rain, if _it_ be rain also worth
calling rain, the great plague is the beating and drenching in
the face.
16. SWUNG. Opposed to 'sit' in previous line. The human creature,
though it sate steady on this unshakable earth, had no house over
its head. The bird, that lived on the tremblingest and weakest of
bending things, had her _nest_ on it, in which even her
infinitely tender brood were _deep_ sheltered and warm, from the
_wind_. It is impossible to find a lovelier instance of pure
poetical antithesis.
20. HOUSE. Again antithetic to the perfect word 'Home' in the
line before. A house is exactly, and only, half-way to a 'home.'
Man had not yet got so far as even that! and had lost, the chorus
satirically imply, even the power of getting the other half,
ever, since his "_She_ gave me of the tree."
24. BRICKS. The first bad inversion permitted, for "to combine
bricks with cement." In my Swallow lecture I had no time to go
into the question of her building materials; the point is,
however, touched upon in the Appendix (pp. 110, 112, and note).
30. 'DRILL,' for 'quarry out,' 'tunnel,' etc., the best general
term available.
36. COMPOSER of the music; POET of the meaning.
Compare, and think over, the Bullfinch's nest, etc., § 48 to 61
of 'Eagle's Nest.'
In modern music the _meaning_ is, I believe, by the reputed
masters omitted.
39. To SPIN, or _un_ravel. Synthesis and analysis, in the vulgar
Greek slang.
46. MAD. Compare Byron of the English in _his_ day. "A parcel of
staring boobies who go about gaping and wishing to be at once
cheap and magnificent. A man is a fool now, who travels in France
or Italy, till that tribe of wretches be swept home again. In two
or three years, the first rush will be over, and the Continent
will be roomy and agreeable." (Life, vol. ii., p. 319.) For
sketches of the English of seventeen years later, at the same
_spots_ (Wengern Alp and Interlachen), see, if you _can_ see, in
any library, public or private, at Geneva, Topffer's 'Excursions
dans les Alpes, 1832.' Douzième, Treizième, and Quatorzième
Journée.
48. THE TAIL. Mr. Courthope does not condescend to italicize his
pun; but a swallow-tailed and adder-tongued pun like this must be
paused upon. Compare Mr. Murray's Tale of the Town of Lucca, to
be seen between the arrival of one train and the departure of the
next,--nothing there but twelve churches and a cathedral,--mostly
of the tenth to thirteenth century.
60. AFAR. I did not know of this weather sign; nor, I suppose,
did the Duke of Hamilton's keeper, who shot the last pair of
Choughs on Arran in 1863. ('Birds of the West of Scotland,' p.
165.) I trust the climate has wept for them; certainly our
Coniston clouds grow heavier, in these last years.
63. SOCIAL. Rightly sung by the Birds in three syllables; but the
lagging of the previous line (probably intentional, but not
pleasant,) makes the lightness of this one a little dangerous for
a clumsy reader. The 'i-al' of 'social' does not fill the line as
two full short syllables, else the preceding word should have
been written '_on_,' not 'upon.' The five syllables, rightly
given, just take the time of two iambs; but there _are_ readers
rude enough to accent the 'on' of upon, and take 'social' for two
short syllables.
64. HOLD. Short for 'to hold'--but it is a licentious
construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they
themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the poem,
its irony and essential force being much dimmed by obscure
expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought.
The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute,
but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and
the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach
pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for
rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as much as ever
they did.
76. EACH YEAR. I doubt the fact; and too sadly suspect that birds
take different mates. What a question to have to ask at this time
of day and year!
82. RIVERS. Read slowly. The 'customs' are rivers that 'go on
forever' flowing from the fount of the soul. The Heart drinks of
them, as of waterbrooks.
92. PHILOSOPHY. The author should at least have given a note or
two to explain the sense in which he uses words so wide as this.
The philosophy which begins in pride, and concludes in malice, is
indeed _a_ fountain--though not _the_ fountain--of woes, to
mankind. But true philosophy such as Fénelon's or Sir Thomas
More's, is a well of peace.
98. WORTH. Again, it is not clearly told us what the author means
by the worth of a bird's soul, nor how the birds learned it. The
reader is left to discern, and collect for himself--with patience
such as not one in a thousand now-a-days possesses, the
opposition between the "fount of our soul" (line 83) and fountain
of philosophy.
124. I could willingly enlarge on these last two stanzas, but think my
duty will be better done to the poet if I quote, for conclusion, two
lighter pieces of his verse, which will require no comment, and are
closer to our present purpose. The first,--the lament of the French
Cook in purgatory,--has, for once, a note by the author, giving M.
Soyer's authority for the items of the great dish,--"symbol of
philanthropy, served at York during the great commemorative banquet
after the first exhibition." The commemorative soul of the tormented
Chef--always making a dish like it, of which nobody ever eats--sings
thus:--
"Do you veesh
To hear before you taste, of de hundred-guinea deesh?
Has it not been sung by every knife and fork,
'L'extravagance culinaire à l'Alderman,' at York?
Vy, ven I came here, eighteen Octobers seence,
I dis deesh was making for your Royal Preence,
Ven half de leeving world, cooking all de others,
Swore an oath hereafter, to be men and brothers.
All de leetle Songsters in de voods dat build,
Hopped into the kitchen asking to be kill'd;
All who in de open furrows find de seeds,
Or de mountain berries, all de farmyard breeds,--
Ha--I see de knife, vile de deesh it shapens,
Vith les petits noix, of four-and-twenty capons,
Dere vere dindons, fatted poulets, fowls in plenty,
Five times nine of partridges, and of pheasants twenty;
Ten grouse, that should have had as many covers,
All in dis one deesh, with six preety plovers,
Forty woodcocks, plump, and heavy in the scales,
Pigeons dree good dozens, six-and-dirty quails,
Ortulans, ma foi, and a century of snipes,
But de preetiest of dem all was twice tree dozen pipes
Of de melodious larks, vich each did clap the ving,
And veeshed de pie vas open, dat dey all might sing!"
125. There are stiff bits of prosody in these verses,--one or two,
indeed, quite unmanageable,--but we must remember that French meter
will not read into ours. The last piece I will give flows very
differently. It is in express imitation of Scott--but no nobler model
could be chosen; and how much better for minor poets sometimes to write
in another's manner, than always to imitate their own.
This chant is sung by the soul of the Francesca of the Bird-ordained
purgatory; whose torment is to be dressed only in falling snow, each
flake striking cold to her heart as it falls,--but such lace
investiture costing, not a cruel price per yard in souls of women, nor
a mortal price in souls of birds.
Her 'snow-mantled shadow' sings:
"Alas, my heart! No grief so great
As thinking on a happy state
In misery. Ah, dear is power
To female hearts! Oh, blissful hour
When Blanche and Flavia, joined with me,
Tri-feminine Directory,
Dispensed in latitudes below
The laws of flounce and furbelow;
And held on bird and beast debate,
What lives should die to serve our state!
We changed our statutes with the moon,
And oft in January or June,
At deep midnight, we would prescribe
Some furry kind, or feathered tribe.
At morn, we sent the mandate forth;
Then rose the hunters of the North:
And all the trappers of the West
Bowed at our feminine behest.
Died every seal that dared to rise
To his round air-hole in the ice;
Died each Siberian fox and hare
And ermine trapt in snow-built snare.
For us the English fowler set
The ambush of his whirling net;
And by green Rother's reedy side
The blue kingfisher flashed and died.
His life for us the seamew gave
High upon Orkney's lonely wave;
Nor was our queenly power unknown
In Iceland or by Amazon;
For where the brown duck stripped her breast
For her dear eggs and windy nest,
Three times her bitter spoil was won
For woman; and when all was done,
She called her snow-white piteous drake,
Who plucked his bosom for our sake."
126. "See 'Hartwig's Polar World' for the manner of taking
Eiderdown."--Once more, we have thus much of author's note, but edition
and page not specified, which, however, I am fortunately able to
supply. Mr. Hartwig's miscellany being a favorite--what can I call it,
sand-hill?--of my own, out of which every now and then, in a rasorial
manner, I can scratch some savory or useful contents;--one or two, it
may be remembered, I collected for the behoof of the Bishop of
Manchester, on this very subject, (_Contemporary Review_, Feb. 1880);
and some of Mr. Hartwig's half-sandy, half-soppy, political opinions,
are offered to the consideration of the British workman in the last
extant number of 'Fors.' Touching eider ducks, I find in his fifth
chapter--on Iceland--he quotes the following account, by Mr. Shepherd,
of the shore of the island of 'Isafjardarjup'--a word which seems to
contain in itself an introduction to Icelandic literature:--
127. "The ducks and their nests were everywhere, in a manner that was
quite alarming. Great brown ducks sat upon their nests in masses, and
at every step started up from under our feet. It was with difficulty
that we avoided treading on some of the nests. The island being but
three-quarters of a mile in width, the opposite shore was soon reached.
On the coast was a wall built of large stones, just above the
high-water level, about three feet in height, and of considerable
thickness. At the bottom, on both sides of it, alternate stones had
been left out, so as to form a series of square compartments for the
ducks to make their nests in. Almost every compartment was occupied;
and, as we walked along the shore, a long line of ducks flew out one
after another. The surface of the water also was perfectly white with
drakes, who welcomed their brown wives with loud and clamorous cooing.
When we arrived at the farmhouse, we were cordially welcomed by its
mistress. The house itself was a great marvel. The earthen wall that
surrounded it and the window embrasures were occupied by ducks. On the
ground, the house was fringed with ducks. On the turf-slopes of the
roof we could see ducks; and a duck sat in the scraper.
"A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a
chess-board, (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed,
and a hollow made,) and all were filled with ducks. A windmill was
infested, and so were all the out-houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices.
The ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame that we could
stroke them on their nests; and the good lady told us that there was
scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its
eggs without flight or fear."
128. But upon the back of the canvas, as it were, of this pleasant
picture--on the back of the leaf, in his book, p. 65,--this description
being given in p. 66,--Doctor Hartwig tells us, in his own peculiar
soppy and sandy way--half tearful, half Dryasdusty, (or may not we
say--it sounds more Icelandic--'Dry-as-sawdusty,') these less cheerful
facts. "The eiderdown is easily collected, as the birds are quite tame.
The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest
thickly lined with her beautiful down, the collectors, after carefully
removing the bird, rob the nest of its contents; after which they
replace her. She then begins to lay afresh--though this time only three
or four eggs,--and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her
greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it
for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted,
and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who
willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the
deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former
times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot,
never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her
maternal instinct undisturbed by the avarice of man."
129. Now, as I have above told you, these two statements are given on
the two sides of the same leaf; and the reader must make what he may of
them. Setting the best of my own poor wits at them, it seems to me that
the merciless abstraction of down is indeed the usual custom of the
inhabitants and visitors; but that the 'good lady,' referred to by Mr.
Shepherd, manages things differently; and in consequence we are
presently farther told of her, (bottom of p. 65,) that "when she first
became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks was
not more than fifteen pounds weight in the year; but under her careful
nurture of twenty years it had risen to nearly one hundred pounds
annually. It requires about one pound and a half to make a coverlet for
a single bed, and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen shillings
per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter
consumption, one or two only being left to hatch."
But here, again, pulverulent Dr. Hartwig leaves us untold who
'consumes' all these pickled eggs of the cooing and downy-breasted
creatures; (you observe, in passing, that an eider-duck coos instead of
quacking, and must be a sort of Sea-Dove,) or what addition their price
makes to the good old lady's feather-nesting income of, as I calculate
it, sixty to seventy-five pounds a year,--all her twenty years of skill
and humanity and moderate plucking having got no farther than that. And
not feeling myself able, on these imperfect data, to offer any
recommendations to the Icelandic government touching the duck trade, I
must end my present chapter with a rough generalization of results. For
a beginning of which, the time having too clearly and sadly come for
me, as I have said in my preface, to knit up, as far as I may, the
loose threads and straws of my raveled life's work, I reprint in this
place the second paragraph of the chapter on Vital Beauty in the second
volume of 'Modern Painters,' premising, however, some few necessary
words.
130. I intended never to have reprinted the second volume of 'Modern
Painters'; first, because it is written in affected imitation of
Hooker, and not in my own proper style; and, secondly, yet chiefly,
because I did not think the analytic study of which it mainly consists,
in the least likely to be intelligible to the general student, or,
therefore, profitable to him. But I find now that the 'general student'
has plunged himself into such abysses, not of analytic, but of
dissolytic,--dialytic--or even diarrhoeic--lies, belonging to the
sooty and sensual elements of his London and Paris life, that, however
imperfectly or dimly done, the higher analysis of that early work of
mine ought at least to be put within his reach; and the fact, somehow,
enforced upon him, that there were people before _he_ lived, who knew
what 'æsthesis' meant, though they did not think that pigs' flavoring
of pigs'-wash was ennobled by giving it that Greek name: and that there
were also people before his time who knew what vital beauty meant,
though they did not seek it either in the model-room, or the Parc aux
Cerfs.
Therefore, I will republish (D.V.) the analytic parts of the second
volume of 'Modern Painters' as they were written, but with perhaps an
additional note or two, and the omission of the passages concerning
Evangelical or other religious matters, in which I have found out my
mistakes.
131. To be able to hunt for these mistakes, and crow over them, in the
original volume, will always give that volume its orthodox value in
sale catalogues, so that I shall swindle nobody who has already bought
the book by bringing down its price upon them. Nor will the new edition
be a cheap one--even if I ever get it out, which is by no means
certain. Here, however, at once, is the paragraph above referred to,
quite one of the most important in the book. The reader should know,
preparatorily, that for what is now called 'æsthesis,' _I_ always used,
and still use, the English word 'sensation'--as, for instance, the
sensation of cold or heat, and of their differences;--of the flavor of
mutton and beef, and their differences;--of a peacock's and a lark's
cry, and their differences;--of the redness in a blush, and in rouge,
and their differences;--of the whiteness in snow, and in almond-paste,
and their differences;--of the blackness and brightness of night and
day, or of smoke and gaslight, and their differences, etc., etc. But
for the Perception of Beauty, I always used Plato's word, which is the
proper word in Greek, and the only possible _single_ word that can be
used in any other language by any man who understands the
subject,--'Theoria,'--the Germans only having a term parallel to it,
'Anschauung,' assumed to be its equivalent in p. 22 of the old edition
of 'Modern Painters,' but which is not its real equivalent, for
Anschauung does not (I believe) _include_ bodily sensation, whereas
Plato's Theoria does, so far as is necessary; and mine, somewhat more
than Plato's. "The first perfection," (then I say, in this so long in
coming paragraph) of the theoretic faculty, "is the kindness and
unselfish fullness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of
pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high degree the
heart of man is incapable; neither what intense enjoyment the angels
may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the
part they take in the shedding of God's kindness upon them, can we know
or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are made in
measure like unto Him, can we increase this our possession of charity,
of which the entire essence is in God only. But even the ordinary
exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being
in some measure right and healthy, and to the entire exercise of it
there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character;
for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass
beneath his feet, and the creatures which live not for his uses,
filling those spaces in the universe which he needs not; while, on the
other hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving
all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them, every
one, as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than
he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part be touched
more truly. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of S.
Francis of Assisi, who never spoke to bird or cicala, nor even to wolf
and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the
minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from
the mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the
Hartleap Well:--
'Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'
And again in the White Doe of Rylstone, with the added teaching, that
anguish of our own
'Is tempered and allayed by sympathies,
Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
Even to the inferior kinds;'
so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic
faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect,
than those accursed sports, in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger,
serpent, chætodon, and alligator in one; and gathers into one
continuance of cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes
sparingly, and at intervals, use against each other for their
necessities."
132. So much I had perceived, and said, you observe, good reader,
concerning S. Francis of Assisi, and his sermons, when I was only
five-and-twenty,--little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as
I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of
Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi,[25] or ever--among such
poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries--I should fondly keep
a little 'pinch' of his cloak.
[25] See 'Ariadne Florentina,' chap. v., § 164; compare 'Fors,'
Letter V.