We were talking of Love, Constancy, the Ideal. "Who ever loved like the
poets?" cried Lady Violet Lebas, her pure, pale cheek flushing. "Ah, if
ever I am to love, he shall be a singer!"
"Tenors are popular, very," said Lord Walter.
"I mean a poet," she answered witheringly.
Near them stood Mr. Witham, the author of "Heart's Chords Tangled."
"Ah," said he, "that reminds me. I have been trying to catch it all the
morning. That reminds me of my dream."
"Tell us your dream," murmured Lady Violet Lebas, and he told it.
"It was through an unfortunate but pardonable blunder," said Mr. Witham,
"that I died, and reached the Paradise of Poets. I had, indeed,
published volumes of verse, but with the most blameless motives. Other
poets were continually sending me theirs, and, as I could not admire
them, and did not like to reply by critical remarks, I simply printed
some rhymes for the purpose of sending them to the gentlemen who favoured
me with theirs. I always wrote on the fly-leaf a quotation from the
'Iliad,' about giving copper in exchange for gold; and the few poets who
could read Greek were gratified, while the others, probably, thought a
compliment was intended. Nothing could be less culpable or pretentious,
but, through some mistake on the part of Charon, I was drafted off to the
Paradise of Poets.
"Outside the Golden Gate a number of Shadows were waiting, in different
attitudes of depression and languor. Bavius and Maevius were there,
still complaining of 'cliques,' railing at Horace for a mere rhymer of
society, and at Virgil as a plagiarist, 'Take away his cribs from Homer
and Apollonius Rhodius,' quoth honest Maevius, 'and what is there left of
him?' I also met a society of gentlemen, in Greek costume, of various
ages, from a half-naked minstrel with a tortoiseshell lyre in his hand to
an elegant of the age of Pericles. They all consorted together, talking
various dialects of Aeolic, Ionian, Attic Greek, and so forth, which were
plainly not intelligible to each other. I ventured to ask one of the
company who he was, but he, with a sweep of his hand, said, 'We are
Homer!' When I expressed my regret and surprise that the Golden Gate had
not yet opened for so distinguished, though collective, an artist, my
friend answered that, according to Fick, Peppmuller, and many other
learned men, they were Homer. 'But an impostor from Chios has got in
somehow,' he said; 'they don't pay the least attention to the Germans in
the Paradise of Poets.'
"At this moment the Golden Gates were thrown apart, and a fair lady, in
an early Italian costume, carrying a laurel in her hand, appeared at the
entrance. All the Shadows looked up with an air of weary expectation,
like people waiting for their turn in a doctor's consulting-room. She
beckoned to me, however, and I made haste to follow her. The words
'Charlatan!' 'You a poet!' in a variety of languages, greeted me by way
of farewell from the Shadows.
"'The renowned Laura, if I am not mistaken,' I ventured to remark,
recognising her, indeed, from the miniature in the Laurentian library at
Florence.
"She bowed, and I began to ask for her adorer, Petrarch.
"'Excuse me,' said Laura, as we glided down a mossy path, under the shade
of trees particularly dear to poets, 'excuse me, but the sonneteer of
whom you speak is one whose name I cannot bear to mention. His conduct
with Burns's Clarinda, his heartless infatuation for Stella--'
"'You astonish me,' I said. 'In the Paradise of Poets--'
"'They are poets still--incorrigible!' answered the lady; then slightly
raising her voice of silver, as a beautiful appearance in a toga drew
near, she cried '_Catullo mio_!'
"The greeting between these accomplished ghosts was too kindly to leave
room for doubt as to the ardour of their affections.
"'Will you, my Catullus,' murmured Laura, 'explain to this poet from the
land of fogs, any matters which, to him, may seem puzzling and unfamiliar
in our Paradise?'
"The Veronese, with a charming smile, took my hand, and led me to a
shadowy arbour, whence we enjoyed a prospect of many rivers and mountains
in the poets' heaven. Among these I recognised the triple crest of the
Eildons, Grongar Hill, Cithaeron and Etna; while the reed-fringed waters
of the Mincius flowed musically between the banks and braes o' bonny Doon
to join the Tweed. Blithe ghosts were wandering by, in all varieties of
apparel, and I distinctly observed Dante's Beatrice, leaning loving on
the arm of Sir Philip Sidney, while Dante was closely engaged in
conversation with the lost Lenore, celebrated by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.
"'In what can my knowledge of the Paradise of Poets be serviceable to
you, sir?' said Catullus, as he flung himself at the feet of Laura, on
the velvet grass.
"'I am disinclined to seem impertinently curious,' I answered, 'but the
ladies in this fair, smiling country--have the gods made them poetical?'
"'Not generally,' replied Catullus. 'Indeed, if you would be well with
them, I may warn you never to mention poetry in their hearing. They
never cared for it while on earth, and in this place it is a topic which
the prudent carefully avoid among ladies. To tell the truth, they have
had to listen to far too much poetry, and too many discussions on the
caesura. There are, indeed, a few lady poets--very few. Sappho, for
example; indeed I cannot recall any other at this moment. The result is
that Phaon, of all the shadows here, is the most distinguished by the
fair. He was not a poet, you know; he got in on account of Sappho, who
adored him. They are estranged now, of course.'
"'You interest me deeply,' I answered. 'And now, will you kindly tell me
why these ladies are here, if they were not poets?'
"'The women that were our ideals while we dwelt on earth, the women we
loved but never won, or, at all events, never wedded, they for whom we
sighed while in the arms of a recognised and legitimate affection, have
been chosen by the Olympians to keep us company in Paradise!'
"'Then wherefore,' I interrupted, 'do I see Robert Burns loitering with
that lady in a ruff,--Cassandra, I make no doubt--Ronsard's Cassandra?
And why is the incomparable Clarinda inseparable from Petrarch; and Miss
Patty Blount, Pope's flame, from the Syrian Meleager, while _his_
Heliodore is manifestly devoted to Mr. Emerson, whom, by the way, I am
delighted, if rather surprised, to see here?'
"'Ah,' said Catullus, 'you are a new-comer among us. Poets will be
poets, and no sooner have they attained their desire, and dwelt in the
company of their earthly Ideals, than they feel strangely, yet
irresistibly drawn to Another. So it was in life, so it will ever be. No
Ideal can survive a daily companionship, and fortunate is the poet who
did not marry his first love!'
"'As far as that goes,' I answered, 'most of you were highly favoured;
indeed, I do not remember any poet whose Ideal was his wife, or whose
first love led him to the altar.'
"'I was not a marrying man myself,' answered the Veronese; 'few of us
were. Myself, Horace, Virgil--we were all bachelors.'
"'And Lesbia!'
"I said this in a low voice, for Laura was weaving bay into a chaplet,
and inattentive to our conversation.
"'Poor Lesbia!' said Catullus, with a suppressed sigh. 'How I misjudged
that girl! How cruel, how causeless were my reproaches,' and wildly
rending his curled locks and laurel crown, he fled into a thicket, whence
there soon arose the melancholy notes of the Ausonian lyre.'
"'He is incorrigible,' said Laura, very coldly; and she deliberately
began to tear and toss away the fragments of the chaplet she had been
weaving. 'I shall never break him of that habit of versifying. But they
are all alike.'
"'Is there nobody here,' said I, 'who is happy with his Ideal--nobody but
has exchanged Ideals with some other poet?'
"'There is one,' she said. 'He comes of a northern tribe; and in his
life-time he never rhymed upon his unattainable lady, or if rhyme he did,
the accents never carried her name to the ears of the vulgar. Look
there.'
"She pointed to the river at our feet, and I knew the mounted figure that
was riding the ford, with a green-mantled lady beside him like the Fairy
Queen.
"Surely I had read of her, and knew her--
"'She whose blue eyes their secret told,
Though shaded by her locks of gold.'
"'They are different; I know not why. They are constant,' said Laura,
and rising with an air of chagrin, she disappeared among the boughs of
the trees that bear her name.
"'Unhappy hearts of poets,' I mused. 'Light things and sacred they are,
but even in their Paradise, and among their chosen, with every wish
fulfilled, and united to their beloved, they cannot be at rest!'
"Thus moralising, I wended my way to a crag, whence there was a wide
prospect. Certain poets were standing there, looking down into an abyss,
and to them I joined myself.
"'Ah, I cannot bear it!' said a voice, and, as he turned away, his brow
already clearing, his pain already forgotten, I beheld the august form of
Shakespeare.
"Marking my curiosity before it was expressed, he answered the unuttered
question.
"'That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, 'and may give them pleasure. But
my Paradise were embittered if I had to watch the sorrows of others, and
their torments, however well deserved. The others are gazing on the
purgatory of critics and commentators.'
"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest'--Homer,
who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated on a throne of
rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel crown, Hugo, Sophocles,
Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley.
"At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest
critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers. Some were
condemned to roll logs up insuperable heights, whence they descended
thundering to the plain. Others were set to impositions, and I
particularly observed that the Homeric commentators were obliged to write
out the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in their complete shape, and were always
driven by fiends to the task when they prayed for the bare charity of
being permitted to leave out the 'interpolations.' Others, fearful to
narrate, were torn into as many fragments as they had made of these
immortal epics. Others, such as Aristarchus, were spitted on their own
critical signs of disapproval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the
books which they had criticised without perusal, and it was terrible to
watch the agonies of the worthy pressmen who were set to this unwonted
task. 'May we not be let off with the preface?' they cried in piteous
accents. 'May we not glance at the table of contents and be done with
it?' But the presiding demons (who had been Examiners in the bodily
life) drove them remorseless to their toils.
"Among the condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the
punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in
particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable men.
Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their
ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the
tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the
'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the heroic couplet and similar devices can
inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not wisely: and now
their penance was to hear each other read their own translations."
"That must have been more than they could bear," said Lady Violet
"Yes," said Mr. Witham; "I should know, for down I fell into Tartarus
with a crash, and writhed among the Translators."
"Why?" asked Lady Violet.
"Because I have translated Theocritus!"
"Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, "did you meet your ideal woman when you
were in the Paradise of Poets?"
"She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too significant bow.
Lady Violet turned coldly away.
* * *
Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again--the name of Lord Azure's
place in Kent.
The Poet is shut out of Paradise.