[1] The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one of the
sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with the
most beguiling mockery of distance.
[2] They made their appearance again this summer (1870).
[3] One of Mr. Lincoln’s neatest strokes of humor was his treatment of
this gentleman when a laudable curiosity induced him to be presented to
the President of the Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln persisted in calling
him Mr. Partington. Surely the refinement of good-breeding could go no
further. Giving the young man his real name (already notorious in the
newspapers) would have made his visit an insult. Had Henri IV. done
this, it would have been famous.
[4] The Life of Josiah Quincy by his son.
[5] Apropos of his Frederick the Great.
[6] Mr. Emerson, in the Biographical Sketch prefixed to the
“Excursions.”
[7] _Publications of the Chaucer Society._ London. 1869-70.
_Étude sur G. Chaucer considéré comme imitateur des Trouvères._ Par E.
G. SANDRAS, Agrégé de l’Université. Paris: Auguste Dusand. 1859. 8vo.
pp. 298.
_Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury-Geschichten, uebersetzt in den
Versmassen der Urschrift, und durch Einleitung und Anmerkungen
erläutert._ Von WILHELM HERTZBERG. Hildburghausen. 1866. 12mo. pp. 674.
_Chaucer in Seinen Beziehungen zur italienischen Literatur.
Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doctorwürde._ Von ALFONS
KISSNER. Bonn. 1867. 8vo pp. 81.
[8] Tyrwhitt doubted the authenticity of “The Flower and the Leaf” and
“The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.” To these Mr. Bradshaw (and there can
be no higher authority) would add “The Court of Love,” the “Dream,”
the “Praise of Woman,” the “Romaunt of the Rose,” and several of the
shorter poems. To these doubtful productions there is strong ground,
both moral and æsthetic, for adding the “Parson’s Tale.”
[9] Fauriel, _Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale_, Vol. I. _passim_.
[10] Allegat ergo pro se lingua _Oil_ quod propter sui faciliorem et
delectabiliorem vulgaritatem, quicquid redactum sive inventum est
ad vulgare prosaicum, suum est; videlicet biblia cum Trojanorum,
Romanorumque gestibus compilata et Arturi regis ambages pulcherrimæ et
quamplures aliæ historiæ ac doctrinæ. That Dante by _prosaicum_ did
not mean prose, but a more inartificial verse, _numeros lege solutos_,
is clear. Cf. Wolf, Ueber die Lais, pp. 92 _seq._ and notes. It has
not, I think, been remarked that Dante borrows his _faciliorem el
delectabiliorem_ from the _plus diletable et comune_ of his master
Brunetto Latini.
[11]
“My ears no sweeter music know
Than hauberk’s clank with saddlebow,
The noise, the cries, the tumult blown
From trumpet and from clarion.”
[12] Compare Floripar in _Fierabras_ with Nausikäa, for example.
[13] If internal evidence may be trusted, the _Lai de l’Espine_ is not
hers.
[14] _Sir Eger and Sir Grine_ in the Percy Folio. The passage quoted is
from Ellis.
[15] I think he tried one now and then, like “eyen _columbine_.”
[16] Commonly printed _hath_.
[17] Froissart’s description of the book of traités amoureux et de
moralité, which he had had engrossed for presentation to Richard II. in
1394, is enough to bring tears to the eyes of a modern author. “Et lui
plut très grandement; et plaire bien lui devoit car il é’tait enluminé,
écrit et historié et couvert de vermeil velours à dis cloux d’argent
dorés d’or, et roses d’or au milieu, et à deux grands fremaulx dorés et
richement ouvrés au milieu de rosiers d’or.” How lovingly he lingers
over it, hooking it together with _et_ after _et_! But two centuries
earlier, while the _jongleurs_ were still in full song, poems were also
read aloud.
“Pur remembrer des ancessours
Les faits et les dits et les mours,
Deit l’en les livres et les gestes
Et les estoires _lire a festes_.”--_Roman du Rou._
But Chaucer wrote for the private reading of the closet.
[18] One of the very worst, be it said in passing.
[19] Whence came, pray, the Elizabethan _commandëment_, _chapëlain_,
_surëly_, and a score of others? Whence the Scottish _bonny_, and so
many English words of Romance derivation ending in _y_?
[20] Poésies de Marie de France, Tome I. p. 168.
[21] Le Roman de la Rose, Tome II. p. 890.
[22] Rutebeuf, Tome I. pp. 203 seqq. 304 seqq.
[23] From the “Craft of Lovers,” attributed by Ritson to Lydgate, but
too bad even for him.
[24] Here the received texts give “So pray I _to_ God.” Cf. “But Reason
said him.” T. & C.
[25] Corrected from Kissner, p. 18.
[26] Compare this with the Mumbo-Jumbo Revenge in Collins’s Ode.
[27] London: John Russell Smith. 1856-64.
[28] Literary Remains, Vol. I. pp. 259, 260.
[29] Chapman himself was evidently pleased with this, for he cites it
as a sample of his version.
[30] Early Popular Poetry. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt.
[31] The careless Ritson would have printed this _twynkling_.
[32] For example:--
“And in the arber was a tre
A fairer in the world might none be,”
should certainly read,
“None fairer in the world might be.”
[33] The _to_ is, we need not say, an addition of Mr. Hazlitt’s. What
faith can we put in the text of a man who so often copies even his
quotations inaccurately?
[34] This was Thomas Warton’s opinion.
[35] Milton, a London boy, was in his eighth, seventeenth, and
twenty-ninth years, respectively, when Shakespeare (1616), Fletcher
(1625), and B. Jonson (1637) died.
[36] In his Tractate on Education.
[37] Milton, Collins, and Gray, our three great masters of harmony were
all musicians.
[38] Wordsworth, who recognized forerunners in Thomson, Collins, Dyer,
and Burns, and who chimes in with the popular superstition about
Chatterton, is always somewhat niggardly in his appreciation of Gray.
Yet he owed him not a little. Without Gray’s tune in his ears, his own
noblest Ode would have missed the varied modulation which is one of its
main charms. Where he forgets Gray, his verse sinks to something like
the measure of a jig. Perhaps the suggestion of one of his own finest
lines,
(“The light that never was on land or sea,”)
was due to Gray’s
“Orient hues unborrowed of the sun.”
I believe it has not been noticed that among the verses in Gray’s
“Sonnet on the Death of West,” which Wordsworth condemns as of no
value, the second--
“And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fires”--
is one of Gray’s happy reminiscences from a poet in some respects
greater than either of them:--
Jamque _rubrum_ tremulis jubar _ignibus erigere alte_
Cum cœptat natura.
LUCRET., iv. 404, 405.
Gray’s taste was a sensitive divining-rod of the sources whether of
pleasing or profound emotion in poetry. Though he prized pomp, he did
not undervalue simplicity of subject or treatment, if only the witch
Imagination had cast her spell there. Wordsworth loved solitude in his
appreciations as well as in his daily life, and was the readier to find
merit in obscurity, because it gave him the pleasure of being a first
discoverer all by himself. Thus he addresses a sonnet to John Dyer. But
Gray was one of “the pure and powerful minds” who had discovered Dyer
during his lifetime, when the discovery of poets is more difficult. In
1753 he writes to Walpole: “Mr. Dyer has more poetry in his imagination
than almost any of our number, but rough and injudicious.” Dyer has one
fine verse,--
“On the dark level of adversity.”
[39] MS. letter of Voltaire, cited by Warburton in his edition of Pope,
Vol. IV. p. 38, note. The date is 15th October, 1726. I do not find it
in Voltaire’s Correspondence.
[40] Its taste for verbal affectations is to be found in the _Roman de
la Rose_, and (yet more absurdly forced) in Gauthier de Coinsy; but in
Du Bartas the research of effect not seldom subjugates the thought as
well as the phrase.
[41] _Barclaii Satyricon_, p. 382. Barclay had lived in France.
[42] Usually printed _arms_, but Dryden certainly wrote _arm_, to
correspond with _dint_, which he used in its old meaning of a downright
blow.
[43] Morgante, xviii. 115.
[44] Elegie on Doctor Wilson. But if Quarles had been led astray by the
vices of Donne’s manner, he had good company in Herbert and Vaughan.
In common with them, too, he had that luck of simpleness which is even
more delightful than wit. In the same poem he says,--
“Go, glorious soul, and lay thy temples down
In Abram’s bosom, _in the sacred down_
_Of soft eternity_.”
[45] Preface to the _Theatrum_.
[46] Bowles’s Sonnets, wellnigh forgotten now, did more than his
controversial writings for the cause he advocated. Their influence
upon the coming generation was great (greater than we can well account
for) and beneficial. Coleridge tells us that he made forty copies of
them while at Christ’s Hospital. Wordsworth’s prefaces first made
imagination the true test of poetry, in its more modern sense. But they
drew little notice till later.
[47] Briefe die neueste Litteratur betreffend, 1759, II. Brief. See
also his more elaborate criticism of the “Essay on Man” (Pope ein
Metaphysiker), 1755.