ELECTRA
_Elec._--O night! ... O father! ... Ah, it was your deed,
Ye gods, this thought of mine to place Orestes
In safety first.--Thou wilt not find him, traitor.--
Ah live, Orestes, live: and I will keep
This impious steel for thy adult right hand.
The day, I hope, will come, when I in Argos
Shall see thee the avenger of thy father.
Translation of Edgar Alfred Bowring, Bohn's Library.
ALFONSO THE WISE
(1221-1284)
"Alfonso," records the Jesuit historian, Mariana, "was a man of great
sense, but more fit to be a scholar than a king; for whilst he studied
the heavens and the stars, he lost the earth and his kingdom." Certainly
it is for his services to letters, and not for political or military
successes, that the meditative son of the valorous Ferdinand the Saint
and the beautiful Beatrice of Swabia will be remembered. The father
conquered Seville, and displaced the enterprising and infidel Moors with
orthodox and indolent Christians. The son could not keep what his sire
had grasped. Born in 1226, the fortunate young prince, at the age of
twenty-five, was proclaimed king of the newly conquered and united
Castile and Leon. He was very young: he was everywhere admired and
honored for skill in war, for learning, and for piety; he was everywhere
loved for his heritage of a great name and his kindly and
gracious manners.
In the first year of his reign, however, he began debasing the
coinage,--a favorite device of needy monarchs in his day,--and his
people never forgave the injury. He coveted, naturally enough, the
throne of the Empire, for which he was long a favorite candidate; and
for twenty years he wasted time, money, and purpose, heart and hope, in
pursuit of the vain bauble. His kingdom fell into confusion, his eldest
son died, his second son Sancho rebelled against him and finally deposed
him. Courageous and determined to the last, defying the league of Church
and State against him, he appealed to the king of Morocco for men and
money to reinstate his fortunes.
In Ticknor's 'History of Spanish Literature' may be found his touching
letter to De Guzman at the Moorish court. He is, like Lear, poor and
discrowned, but not like him, weak. His prelates have stirred up strife,
his nobles have betrayed him. If Heaven wills, he is ready to pay
generously for help. If not, says the royal philosopher, still,
generosity and loyalty exalt the soul that cherishes them.
"Therefore, my cousin, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, so treat with
your master and my friend [the king of Morocco] that he may
lend me, on my richest crown and on the jewels in it, as much
as shall seem good to him: and if you should be able to
obtain his help for me, do not deprive me of it, which I
think you will not do; rather I hold that all the good
offices which my master may do me, by your hand they will
come, and may the hand of God be with you.
"Given in my only loyal city of Seville, the thirtieth year
of my reign and the first of my misfortunes.
"THE KING."
In his "only loyal city" the broken man remained, until the Pope
excommunicated Sancho, and till neighboring towns began to capitulate.
But he had been wounded past healing. There was no medicine for a mind
diseased, no charm to raze out the written troubles of the brain. "He
fell ill in Seville, so that he drew nigh unto death.... And when the
sickness had run its course, he said before them all: that he pardoned
the Infante Don Sancho, his heir, all that out of malice he had done
against him, and to his subjects the wrong they had wrought towards him,
ordering that letters confirming the same should be written--sealed with
his golden seal, so that all his subjects should be certain that he had
put away his quarrel with them, and desired that no blame whatever
should rest upon them. And when he had said this, he received the body
of God with great devotion, and in a little while gave up his soul
to God."
This was in 1284, when he was fifty-eight years old. At this age, had a
private lot been his,--that of a statesman, jurist, man of science,
annalist, philosopher, troubadour, mathematician, historian, poet,--he
would but have entered his golden prime, rich in promise, fruitful in
performance. Yet Alfonso, uniting in himself all these vocations, seemed
at his death to have left behind him a wide waste of opportunities, a
dreary dearth of accomplishment. Looking back, however, it is seen that
the balance swings even. While his kingdom was slipping away, he was
conquering a wider domain. He was creating Spanish Law, protecting the
followers of learning, cherishing the universities, restricting
privilege, breaking up time-honored abuses. He prohibited the use of
Latin in public acts. He adopted the native tongue in all his own works,
and thus gave to Spanish an honorable eminence, while French and German
struggled long for a learning from scholars, and English was to wait a
hundred years for the advent of Dan Chaucer.
Greatest achievement of all, he codified the common law of Spain in 'Las
Siete Partidas' (The Seven Parts). Still accepted as a legal authority
in the kingdom, the work is much more valuable as a compendium of
general knowledge than as an exposition of law. The studious king with
astonishing catholicity examined alike both Christian and Arabic
traditions, customs, and codes, paying a scholarly respect to the
greatness of a hostile language and literature. This meditative monarch
recognized that public office is a public trust, and wrote:--
"Vicars of God are the kings, each one in his kingdom, placed
over the people to maintain them in justice and in truth.
They have been called the heart and soul of the people. For
as the soul lies in the heart of men, and by it the body
lives and is maintained, so in the king lies justice, which
is the life and maintenance of the people of his lordship....
"And let the king guard the thoughts of his heart in three
manners: firstly let him not desire nor greatly care to have
superfluous and worthless honors. Superfluous and worthless
honors the king _ought_ not to desire. For that which is
beyond necessity cannot last, and being lost, and come short
of, turns to dishonor. Moreover, the wise men have said that
it is no less a virtue for a man to keep that which he has
than to gain that which he has not; because keeping comes of
judgment, but gain of good fortune. And the king who keeps
his honor in such a manner that every day and by all means it
is increased, lacking nothing, and does not lose that which
he has for that which he desires to have,--he is held for a
man of right judgment, who loves his own people, and desires
to lead them to all good. And God will keep him in this world
from the dishonoring of men, and in the next from the
dishonor of the wicked in hell."
Besides the 'Siete Partidas,' the royal philosopher was the author, or
compiler, of a 'Book of Hunting'; a treatise on Chess; a system of law,
the 'Fuero Castellano' (Spanish Code),--an attempt to check the
monstrous irregularities of municipal privilege; 'La Gran Conquista
d'Ultramar (The Great Conquest Beyond the Sea), an account of the wars
of the Crusades, which is the earliest known specimen of Castilian
prose; and several smaller works, now collected under the general title
of 'Opuscules Legales' (Minor Legal Writings). It was long supposed that
he wrote the 'Tesoro' (Thesaurus), a curious medley of ignorance and
superstition, much of it silly, and all of it curiously inconsistent
with the acknowledged character of the enlightened King. Modern
scholarship, however, discards this petty treatise from the list of his
productions.
His 'Tablas Alfonsinas' (Alfonsine Tables), to which Chaucer refers in
the 'Frankeleine's Tale,' though curiously mystical, yet were really
scientific, and rank among the most famous of mediaeval books. Alfonso
had the courage and the wisdom to recall to Toledo the heirs and
successors of the great Arabian philosophers and the learned Rabbis, who
had been banished by religious fanaticism, and there to establish a
permanent council--a mediaeval Academy of Sciences--which devoted itself
to the study of the heavens and the making of astronomical calculations.
"This was the first time," says the Spanish historian, "that in
barbarous times the Republic of Letters was invited to contemplate a
great school of learning,--men occupied through many years in rectifying
the old planetary observations, in disputing about the most abstruse
details of this science, in constructing new instruments, and observing,
by means of them, the courses of the stars, their declensions, their
ascensions, eclipses, longitudes, and latitudes." It was the vision of
Roger Bacon fulfilled.
At his own expense, for years together, the King entertained in his
palace at Burgos, that their knowledge might enrich the nation, not only
certain free-thinking followers of Averroës and Avicebron, but infidel
disciples of the Koran, and learned Rabbis who denied the true faith.
That creed must not interfere with deed, was an astonishing mental
attitude for the thirteenth century, and invited a general suspicion of
the King's orthodoxy. His religious sense was really strong, however,
and appears most impressively in the 'Cantigas à la Vergen Maria' (Songs
to the Virgin), which were sung over his grave by priests and acolytes
for hundreds of years. They are sometimes melancholy and sometimes
joyous, always simple and genuine, and, written in Galician, reflect the
trustful piety and happiness of his youth in remote hill provinces where
the thought of empire had not penetrated. It was his keen intelligence
that expressed itself in the saying popularly attributed to him, "Had I
been present at the creation, I might have offered some useful
suggestions." It was his reverent spirit that made mention in his will
of the sacred songs as the testimony to his faith. So lived and died
Alfonso the Tenth, the father of Spanish literature, and the reviver of
Spanish learning.
"WHAT MEANETH A TYRANT, AND HOW HE USETH HIS POWER
IN A KINGDOM WHEN HE HATH OBTAINED IT"
"A tyrant," says this law, "doth signify a cruel lord, who, by force or
by craft, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or
country; and such men be of such nature, that when once they have grown
strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit, though it
be in harm of the land, than the common profit of all, for they always
live in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to fulfill
this their purpose unincumbered, the wise of old have said that they use
their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they
strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous,
because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them,
nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that they be not kindly
and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one
another, for while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to
make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should
not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to
make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they
never can finish, whereby they may have so much harm that it may never
come into their hearts to devise anything against their ruler. And above
all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to
destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in
their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do
trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners,
who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from
oppression. And moreover, we say that though any man may have gained
mastery of a kingdom by any of the lawful means whereof we have spoken
in the laws going before this, yet, if he use his power ill, in the ways
whereof we speak in this law, him may the people still call tyrant; for
he turneth his mastery which was rightful into wrongful, as Aristotle
hath said in the book which treateth of the rule and government of
kingdoms."
From 'Las Siete Partidas,' quoted in Ticknor's 'Spanish Literature.'
ON THE TURKS, AND WHY THEY ARE SO CALLED
The ancient histories which describe the early inhabitants of the East
and their various languages show the origin of each tribe or nation, or
whence they came, and for what reason they waged war, and how they were
enabled to conquer the former lords of the land. Now in these histories
it is told that the Turks, and also the allied race called Turcomans,
were all of one land originally, and that these names were taken from
two rivers which flow through the territory whence these people came,
which lies in the direction of the rising of the sun, a little toward
the north; and that one of these rivers bore the name of Turco, and the
other Mani: and finally that for this reason the two tribes which dwelt
on the banks of these two rivers came to be commonly known as Turcomanos
or Turcomans. On the other hand, there are those who assert that because
a portion of the Turks lived among the Comanos (Comans) they
accordingly, in course of time, received the name of Turcomanos; but the
majority adhere to the reason already given. However this may be, the
Turks and the Turcomans belong both to the same family, and follow no
other life than that of wandering over the country, driving their herds
from one good pasture to another, and taking with them their wives and
their children and all their property, including money as well
as flocks.
The Turks did not dwell then in houses, but in tents made of skins, as
do in these days the Comanos and Tartars; and when they had to move
from one place to another, they divided themselves into companies
according to their different dialects, and chose a _cabdillo_ (judge),
who settled their disputes, and rendered justice to those who deserved
it. And this nomadic race cultivated no fields, nor vineyards, nor
orchards, nor arable lands of any kind; neither did they buy or sell for
money: but traded their flocks among one another, and also their milk
and cheese, and pitched their tents in the places where they found the
best pasturage; and when the grass was exhausted, they sought fresh
herbage elsewhere. And whenever they reached the border of a strange
land, they sent before them special envoys, the most worthy and
honorable of their men, to the kings or lords of such countries, to ask
of them the privilege of pasturage on their lands for a space; for which
they were willing to pay such rent or tax as might be agreed upon. After
this manner they lived among each nation in whose territory they
happened to be.
From 'La Gran Conquista de Ultramar,' Chapter xiii.
TO THE MONTH OF MARY
From the 'Cantigas'
Welcome, O May, yet once again we greet thee!
So alway praise we her, the Holy Mother,
Who prays to God that he shall aid us ever
Against our foes, and to us ever listen.
Welcome, O May! loyally art thou welcome!
So alway praise we her, the Mother of kindness,
Mother who alway on us taketh pity,
Mother who guardeth us from woes unnumbered.
Welcome, O May! welcome, O month well favored!
So let us ever pray and offer praises
To her who ceases not for us, for sinners,
To pray to God that we from woes be guarded.
Welcome, O May! O joyous month and stainless!
So will we ever pray to her who gaineth
Grace from her Son for us, and gives each morning
Force that by us the Moors from Spain are driven.
Welcome, O May, of bread and wine the giver!
Pray then to her, for in her arms, an infant
She bore the Lord! she points us on our journey,
The journey that to her will bear us quickly!
ALFRED THE GREAT
(849-901)
In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford may be seen an antique jewel,
consisting of an enameled figure in red, blue, and green, enshrined in a
golden frame, and bearing the legend "Alfred mec heht gewyrcean" (Alfred
ordered me made). This was discovered in 1693 in Newton Park, near
Athelney, and through it one is enabled to touch the far-away life of a
thousand years ago. But greater and more imperishable than this archaic
gem is the gift that the noble King left to the English nation--a gift
that affects the entire race of English-speaking people. For it was
Alfred who laid the foundations for a national literature.
Alfred, the younger son of Ethelwulf, king of the West Saxons, and
Osberga, daughter of his cup-bearer, was born in the palace at Wantage
in the year 849. He grew up at his father's court, a migratory one, that
moved from Kent to Devonshire and from Wales to the Isle of Wight
whenever events, raids, or the Witan (Parliament) demanded. At an early
age Alfred was sent to pay homage to the Pope in Rome, taking such gifts
as rich vessels of gold and silver, silks, and hangings, which show that
Saxons lacked nothing in treasure. In 855 Ethelwulf visited Rome with
his young son, bearing more costly presents, as well as munificent sums
for the shrine of St. Peter's; and returning by way of France, they
stopped at the court of Charles the Bold. Once again in his home, young
Alfred applied himself to his education. He became a marvel of courage
at the chase, proficient in the use of arms, excelled in athletic
sports, was zealous in his religious duties, and athirst for knowledge.
His accomplishments were many; and when the guests assembled in the
great hall to make the walls ring with their laughter over cups of mead
and ale, he could take his turn with the harpers and minstrels to
improvise one of those sturdy bold ballads that stir the blood to-day
with their stately rhythms and noble themes.
Ethelwulf died in 858, and eight years later only two sons, Ethelred and
Alfred, were left to cope with the Danish invaders. They won victory
after victory, upon which the old chroniclers love to dwell, pausing to
describe wild frays among the chalk-hills and dense forests, which
afforded convenient places to hide men and to bury spoils.
Ethelred died in 871, and the throne descended to Alfred. His kingdom
was in a terrible condition, for Wessex, Kent, Mercia, Sussex, and
Surrey lay at the mercy of the marauding enemy. "The land," says an old
writer, "was as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a
desolate wilderness." London was in ruins; the Danish standard, with its
black Raven, fluttered everywhere; and the forests were filled with
outposts and spies of the "pagan army." There was nothing for the King
to do but gather his men and dash into the fray to "let the hard steel
ring upon the high helmet." Time after time the Danes are overthrown,
but, like the heads of the fabled Hydra, they grow and flourish after
each attack. They have one advantage: they know how to command the sea,
and numerous as the waves that their vessels ride so proudly and well,
the invaders arrive and quickly land to plunder and slay.
Alfred, although but twenty-five, sees the need for a navy, and in 875
gathers a small fleet to meet the ships of the enemy, wins one prize,
and puts the rest to flight. The chroniclers now relate that he fell
into disaster and became a fugitive in Selwood Forest, while Guthrum and
his host were left free to ravage. From this period date the legends of
the King's visit in disguise to the hut of the neat-herd, and his
burning the bread he was set to watch; his penetrating into the camp of
the Danes and entertaining Guthrum by his minstrelsy while discovering
his plans and force; the vision of St. Cuthbert; and the fable of his
calling five hundred men by the winding of his horn.
Not long after he was enabled to emerge from the trials of exile in
Athelney; and according to Asser, "In the seventh week after Easter, he
rode to Egbert's Stone in the eastern part of Selwood or the Great Wood,
called in the old British language Coit-mawr. Here he was met by all the
neighboring folk of Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, who had not
for fear of the Pagans fled beyond the sea; and when they saw the king
alive after such great tribulation, they received him, as he deserved,
with joy and acclamations and all encamped there for the night." Soon
afterward he made a treaty with the Danes, and became king of the whole
of England south of the Thames.
It was now Alfred's work to reorganize his kingdom, to strengthen the
coast defenses, to rebuild London, to arrange for a standing army, and
to make wise laws for the preservation of order and peace; and when all
this was accomplished, he turned his attention to the establishment of
monasteries and colleges. "In the mean-time," says old Asser, "the King,
during the frequent wars and other trammels of this present life, the
invasions of the Pagans, and his own daily infirmities of body,
continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting in all its
branches; to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds, his
falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers, to build houses majestic and good,
beyond all the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical
inventions, to recite the Saxon books, and more especially to learn by
heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them also; for he alone
never desisted from studying, most diligently, to the best of his
ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of religion: he
was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer, at the proper hours, both of
the night and of the day. He also went to the churches, as we have
already said, in the night-time, to pray, secretly and unknown to his
courtiers; he bestowed alms and largesses both on his own people and on
foreigners of all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and
curious to investigate things unknown."
As regards Alfred's personal contribution to literature, it may be said
that over and above all disputed matters and certain lost works, they
represent a most valuable and voluminous assortment due directly to his
own royal and scholarly pen. History, secular and churchly, laws and
didactic literature, were his field; and though it would seem that his
actual period of composition did not much exceed ten years, yet he
accomplished a vast deal for any man, especially any busy sovereign
and soldier.
An ancient writer, Ethelwerd, says that he translated many books from
Latin into Saxon, and William of Malmesbury goes so far as to say that
he translated into Anglo-Saxon almost all the literature of Rome.
Undoubtedly the general condition of education was deplorable, and
Alfred felt this deeply. "Formerly," he writes, "men came hither from
foreign lands to seek instruction, and now when we desire it, we can
only obtain it from abroad." Like Charlemagne he drew to his court
famous scholars, and set many of them to work writing chronicles and
translating important Latin books into Anglo-Saxon. Among these was the
'Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory,' to which he wrote the Preface; but with
his own hand he translated the 'Consolations of Philosophy,' by
Boethius, two manuscripts of which still exist. In this he frequently
stops to introduce observations and comments of his own. Of greater
value was his translation of the 'History of the World,' by Orosius,
which he abridged, and to which he added new chapters giving the record
of coasting voyages in the north of Europe. This is preserved in the
Cotton MSS. in the British Museum. His fourth translation was the
'Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,' by Bede. To this last
may be added the 'Blossom Gatherings from St. Augustine,' and many minor
compositions in prose and verse, translations from the Latin fables and
poems, and his own note-book, in which he jots, with what may be termed
a journalistic instinct, scenes that he had witnessed, such as Aldhelm
standing on the bridge instructing the people on Sunday afternoons; bits
of philosophy; and such reflections as the following, which remind one
of Marcus Aurelius:--"Desirest thou power? But thou shalt never obtain
it without sorrows--sorrows from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows
from thine own kindred." and "Hardship and sorrow! Not a king but would
wish to be without these if he could. But I know that he cannot."
Alfred's value to literature is this: he placed by the side of
Anglo-Saxon poetry,--consisting of two great poems, Caedmon's great song
of the 'Creation' and Cynewulf's 'Nativity and Life of Christ,' and the
unwritten ballads passed from lip to lip,--four immense translations
from Latin into Anglo-Saxon prose, which raised English from a mere
spoken dialect to a true language. From his reign date also the famous
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Anglo-Saxon Gospels; and a few scholars
are tempted to class the magnificent 'Beowulf' among the works of this
period. At any rate, the great literary movement that he inaugurated
lasted until the Norman Conquest.
In 893 the Danes once more disturbed King Alfred, but he foiled them at
all points, and they left in 897 to harry England no more for several
generations. In 901 he died, having reigned for thirty years in the
honor and affection of his subjects. Freeman in his 'Norman Conquest'
says that "no other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the
virtues both of the ruler and of the private man." Bishop Asser, his
contemporary, has left a half-mythical eulogy, and William of
Malmesbury, Roger of Wendover, Matthew of Westminster, and John Brompton
talk of him fully and freely. Sir John Spellman published a quaint
biography in Oxford in 1678, followed by Powell's in 1634, and
Bicknell's in 1777. The modern lives are by Giles, Pauli, and Hughes.
KING ALFRED ON KING-CRAFT
Comment in his Translation of Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy'
The mind then answered and thus said: O Reason, indeed thou knowest that
covetousness and the greatness of this earthly power never well pleased
me, nor did I altogether very much yearn after this earthly authority.
But nevertheless I was desirous of materials for the work which I was
commanded to perform; that was, that I might honorably and fitly guide
and exercise the power which was committed to me. Moreover, thou knowest
that no man can show any skill nor exercise or control any power,
without tools and materials. There are of every craft the materials
without which man cannot exercise the craft. These, then, are a king's
materials and his tools to reign with: that he have his land well
peopled; he must have prayer-men, and soldiers, and workmen. Thou
knowest that without these tools no king can show his craft. This is
also his materials which he must have besides the tools: provisions for
the three classes. This is, then, their provision: land to inhabit, and
gifts and weapons, and meat, and ale, and clothes, and whatsoever is
necessary for the three classes. He cannot without these preserve the
tools, nor without the tools accomplish any of those things which he is
commanded to perform. Therefore, I was desirous of materials wherewith
to exercise the power, that my talents and power should not be forgotten
and concealed. For every craft and every power soon becomes old, and is
passed over in silence, if it be without wisdom: for no man can
accomplish any craft without wisdom. Because whatsoever is done through
folly, no one can ever reckon for craft. This is now especially to be
said: that I wished to live honorably whilst I lived, and after my life,
to leave to the men who were after me, my memory in good works.
ALFRED'S PREFACE TO THE VERSION OF POPE GREGORY'S 'PASTORAL CARE'
King Alfred bids greet Bishop Waerferth with his words lovingly and with
friendship; and I let it be known to thee that it has very often come
into my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both
of sacred and secular orders; and what happy times there were then
throughout England; and how the kings who had power of the nation in
those days obeyed God and his ministers; and they preserved peace,
morality, and order at home, and at the same time enlarged their
territory abroad; and how they prospered both with war and with wisdom;
and also the sacred orders, how zealous they were, both in teaching and
learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and how foreigners
came to this land in search of wisdom and instruction, and how we should
now have to get them from abroad if we would have them. So general was
its decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber
who could understand their rituals in English, or translate a letter
from Latin into English; and I believe there were not many beyond the
Humber. There were so few that I cannot remember a single one south of
the Thames when I came to the throne. Thanks be to God Almighty that we
have any teachers among us now. And therefore I command thee to do as I
believe thou art willing, to disengage thyself from worldly matters as
often as thou canst, that thou mayst apply the wisdom which God has
given thee wherever thou canst. Consider what punishments would come
upon us on account of this world if we neither loved it (wisdom)
ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain it: we should love the name
only of Christian, and very few of the virtues.
When I considered all this I remembered also how I saw, before it had
been all ravaged and burnt, how the churches throughout the whole of
England stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a
great multitude of God's servants; but they had very little knowledge of
the books, for they could not understand anything of them, because they
were not written in their own language. As if they had said, "Our
forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through
it they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can still
see their tracks, but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost
both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts
after their example."
When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely that the good and wise
men, who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly learnt all
the books, did not wish to translate them into their own language. But
again, I soon answered myself and said, "They did not think that men
would ever be so careless, and that learning would so decay; therefore
they abstained from translating, and they trusted that the wisdom in
this land might increase with our knowledge of languages."
Then I remember how the law was first known in Hebrew, and again, when
the Greeks had learnt it, they translated the whole of it into their own
language, and all other books besides. And again, the Romans, when they
had learnt it, they translated the whole of it through learned
interpreters into their own language. And also all other Christian
nations translated a part of them into their own language. Therefore it
seems better to me, if ye think so, for us also to translate some books
which are most needful for all men to know, into the language which we
can all understand, and for you to do as we very easily can if we have
tranquillity enough; that is, that all the youth now in England of free
men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set
to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until
that they are well able to read English writing: and let those be
afterward taught more in the Latin language who are to continue learning
and be promoted to a higher rank. When I remember how the knowledge of
Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read
English writing, I began among other various and manifold troubles of
this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in
Latin 'Pastoralis,' and in English 'Shepherd's Book,' sometimes word by
word and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from
Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbold, my
mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest. And when I had learnt it as I
could best understand it, and as I could most clearly interpret it, I
translated it into English; and I will send a copy to every bishopric in
my kingdom; and on each there is a clasp worth fifty mancus. And I
command, in God's name, that no man take the clasp from the book or the
book from the minister: it is uncertain how long there may be such
learned bishops as now, thanks be to God, there are nearly everywhere;
therefore, I wish them always to remain in their place, unless the
bishop wish to take them with him, or they be lent out anywhere, or any
one make a copy from them.
BLOSSOM GATHERINGS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE
In every tree I saw something there which I needed at home, therefore I
advise every one who is able and has many wains, that he trade to the
same wood where I cut the stud shafts, and there fetch more for himself
and load his wain with fair rods, that he may wind many a neat wall and
set many a comely house and build many a fair town of them; and thereby
may dwell merrily and softly, so as I now yet have not done. But He who
taught me, to whom the wood was agreeable, He may make me to dwell more
softly in this temporary cottage, the while that I am in this world, and
also in the everlasting home which He has promised us through St.
Augustine, and St. Gregory, and St. Jerome, and through other holy
fathers; as I believe also that for the merits of all these He will make
the way more convenient than it was before, and especially the carrying
and the building: but every man wishes after he has built a cottage on
his lord's lease by his help, that he may sometimes rest him therein
and hunt, and fowl, and fish, and use it every way under the lease both
on water and on land, until the time that he earn book-land and
everlasting heritage through his lord's mercy. So do enlighten the eyes
of my mind so that I may search out the right way to the everlasting
home and the everlasting glory, and the everlasting rest which is
promised us through those holy fathers. May it be so! ...
It is no wonder though men swink in timber working, and in the wealthy
Giver who wields both these temporary cottages and eternal homes. May He
who shaped both and wields both, grant me that I may be meet for each,
both here to be profitable and thither to come.
WHERE TO FIND TRUE JOY
From 'Boethius'
Oh! It is a fault of weight,
Let him think it out who will,
And a danger passing great
Which can thus allure to ill
Careworn men from the rightway,
Swiftly ever led astray.
Will ye seek within the wood
Red gold on the green trees tall?
None, I wot, is wise that could,
For it grows not there at all:
Neither in wine-gardens green
Seek they gems of glittering sheen.
Would ye on some hill-top set,
When ye list to catch a trout,
Or a carp, your fishing-net?
Men, methinks, have long found out
That it would be foolish fare,
For they know they are not there.
In the salt sea can ye find,
When ye list to start an hunt,
With your hounds, the hart or hind?
It will sooner be your wont
In the woods to look, I wot,
Than in seas where they are not.
Is it wonderful to know
That for crystals red or white
One must to the sea-beach go,
Or for other colors bright,
Seeking by the river's side
Or the shore at ebb of tide?
Likewise, men are well aware
Where to look for river-fish;
And all other worldly ware
Where to seek them when they wish;
Wisely careful men will know
Year by year to find them so.
But of all things 'tis most sad
That they foolish are so blind,
So besotted and so mad,
That they cannot surely find
Where the ever-good is nigh
And true pleasures hidden lie.
Therefore, never is their strife
After those true joys to spur;
In this lean and little life
They, half-witted, deeply err
Seeking here their bliss to gain,
That is God Himself in vain.
Ah! I know not in my thought
How enough to blame their sin,
None so clearly as I ought
Can I show their fault within;
For, more bad and vain are they
And more sad than I can say.
All their hope is to acquire
Worship goods and worldly weal;
When they have their mind's desire,
Then such witless Joy they feel,
That in folly they believe
Those True Joys they then receive.
Works of Alfred the Great, Jubilee Edition (Oxford and Cambridge, 1852).
A SORROWFUL FYTTE
From 'Boethius'
Lo! I sting cheerily
In my bright days,
But now all wearily
Chaunt I my lays;
Sorrowing tearfully,
Saddest of men,
Can I sing cheerfully,
As I could then?
Many a verity
In those glad times
Of my prosperity
Taught I in rhymes;
Now from forgetfulness
Wanders my tongue,
Wasting in fretfulness,
Metres unsung.
Worldliness brought me here
Foolishly blind,
Riches have wrought me here
Sadness of mind;
When I rely on them,
Lo! they depart,--
Bitterly, fie on them!
Rend they my heart.
Why did your songs to me,
World-loving men,
Say joy belongs to me
Ever as then?
Why did ye lyingly
Think such a thing,
Seeing how flyingly
Wealth may take wing?
Works of Alfred the Great, Jubilee Edition (Oxford and Cambridge, 1852).
CHARLES GRANT ALLEN
(1848-)
The Irish-Canadian naturalist, Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen, who
turns his industrious hand with equal facility to scientific writing, to
essays, short stories, botanical treatises, biography, and novels, is
known to literature as Grant Allen, as "Arbuthnot Wilson," and as
"Cecil Power."
His work may be divided into two classes: fiction and popular essays.
The first shows the author to be familiar with varied scenes and types,
and exhibits much feeling for dramatic situations. His list of novels is
long, and includes among others, 'Strange Stories,' 'Babylon,' 'This
Mortal Coil,' 'The Tents of Shem,' 'The Great Taboo,' 'Recalled to
Life,' 'The Woman Who Did,' and 'The British Barbarians.' In many of
these books he has woven his plots around a psychological theme; a proof
that science interests him more than invention. His essays are written
for unscientific readers, and carefully avoid all technicalities and
tedious discussions. Most persons, he says, "would much rather learn why
birds have feathers than why they have a keeled sternum, and they think
the origin of bright flowers far more attractive than the origin of
monocotyledonous seeds or esogenous stems."
Grant Allen was born in Kingston, Canada, February 24th, 1848. After
graduation at Merton College, Oxford, he occupied for four years the
chair of logic and philosophy at Queen's College, Spanish Town, Jamaica,
which he resigned to settle in England, where he now resides. Early in
his career he became an enthusiastic follower of Darwin and Herbert
Spencer, and published the attractive books entitled 'Science in
Arcady,' 'Vignettes from Nature,' 'The Evolutionist at Large,' and
'Colin Clout's Calendar.' In his preface to 'Vignettes from Nature,' he
says that the "essays are written from an easy-going, half-scientific
half-aesthetic standpoint." In this spirit he rambles in the woods, in
the meadows, at the seaside, or upon the heather-carpeted moor, finding
in such expeditions material and suggestions for his lightly moving
essays, which expound the problems of Nature according to the theories
of his acknowledged masters. A fallow deer grazing in a forest, a
wayside berry, a guelder rose, a sportive butterfly, a bed of nettles, a
falling leaf, a mountain tarn, the hole of a hedgehog, a darting
humming-bird, a ripening plum, a clover-blossom, a spray of sweet-briar,
a handful of wild thyme, or a blaze of scarlet geranium before a cottage
door, furnish him with a text for the discussion of "those biological
and cosmical doctrines which have revolutionized the thought of the
nineteenth century," as he says in substance.
Somewhat more scientific are 'Psychological Aesthetics,' 'The Color
Sense,' 'The Color of Flowers,' and 'Flowers and their Pedigrees'; and
still deeper is 'Force and Energy' (1888), a theory of dynamics in which
he expresses original views. In 'Psychological Aesthetics' (1877), he
first seeks to explain "such simple pleasures in bright color, sweet
sound, or rude pictorial imitation as delight the child and the savage,
proceeding from these elementary principles to the more and more complex
gratifications of natural scenery, painting, and poetry." In 'The Color
Sense' he defines all that we do not owe to the color sense, for example
the rainbow, the sunset, the sky, the green or purple sea, the rocks,
the foliage of trees and shrubs, hues of autumn, effects of iridescent
light, or tints of minerals and precious stones; and all that we do owe,
namely, "the beautiful flowers of the meadow and the garden-roses,
lilies, cowslips, and daisies; the exquisite pink of the apple, the
peach, the mango, and the cherry, with all the diverse artistic wealth
of oranges, strawberries, plums, melons, brambleberries, and
pomegranates; the yellow, blue, and melting green of tropical
butterflies; the magnificent plumage of the toucan, the macaw, the
cardinal-bird, the lory, and the honey-sucker; the red breast of our
homely robin; the silver or ruddy fur of the ermine, the wolverene, the
fox, the squirrel, and the chinchilla; the rosy cheeks and pink lips of
the English maiden; the whole catalogue of dyes, paints, and pigments;
and last of all, the colors of art in every age and nation, from the red
cloth of the South Seas, the lively frescoes of the Egyptian and the
subdued tones of Hellenic painters, to the stained windows of Poictiers
and the Madonna of the Sistine Chapel." Besides these books, Mr. Allen
has written for the series called 'English Worthies' a sympathetic 'Life
of Charles Darwin' (1885).
THE COLORATION OF FLOWERS
From 'The Colors of Flowers'
The different hues assumed by petals are all thus, as it were, laid up
beforehand in the tissues of the plant, ready to be brought out at a
moment's notice. And all flowers, as we know, easily sport a little in
color. But the question is, Do their changes tend to follow any regular
and definite order? Is there any reason to believe that the modification
runs from any one color toward any other? Apparently there is. The
general conclusion to be set forth in this work is the statement of such
a tendency. All flowers, it would seem, were in their earliest form
yellow; then some of them became white; after that, a few of them grew
to be red or purple; and finally, a comparatively small number acquired
various shades of lilac, mauve, violet, or blue. So that if this
principle be true, such a flower as the harebell will represent one of
the most highly developed lines of descent; and its ancestors will have
passed successively through all the intermediate stages. Let us see what
grounds can be given for such a belief.
Some hints of a progressive law in the direction of a color-change from
yellow to blue are sometimes afforded to us even by the successive
stages of a single flower. For example, one of our common little English
forget-me-nots, _Myosotis versicolor_, is pale yellow when it first
opens; but as it grows older, it becomes faintly pinkish, and ends by
being blue, like the others of its race. Now, this sort of color-change
is by no means uncommon; and in almost all known cases it is always in
the same direction, from yellow or white, through pink, orange, or red,
to purple or blue. For example, one of the wall-flowers, _Cheiranthus
chamoeleo_, has at first a whitish flower, then a citron-yellow, and
finally emerges into red or violet. The petals of _Stytidium
fructicosum_ are pale yellow to begin with, and afterward become light
rose-colored. An evening primrose, _Oenothera tetraptera_, has white
flowers in its first stage, and red ones at a later period of
development. _Cobea scandens_ goes from white to violet; _Hibiscus
mutabilis_ from white through flesh-colored to red. The common Virginia
stock of our gardens _(Malcolmia)_ often opens of a pale yellowish
green, then becomes faintly pink; afterward deepens into bright red; and
fades away at the last into mauve or blue. Fritz Müller's _Lantana_ is
yellow on its first day, orange on its second, and purple on the third.
The whole family of _Boraginaceae_ begin by being pink and end with
being blue. The garden convolvulus opens a blushing white and passes
into full purple. In all these and many other cases the general
direction of the changes is the same. They are usually set down as due
to varying degrees of oxidation in the pigmentary matter. If this be so,
there is a good reason why bees should be specially fond of blue, and
why blue flowers should be specially adapted for fertilization by their
aid. For Mr. A.R. Wallace has shown that color is most apt to appear or
to vary in those parts of plants or animals which have undergone the
highest amount of modification. The markings of the peacock and the
argus pheasant come out upon their immensely developed secondary
tail-feathers or wing-plumes; the metallic hues of sun-birds, or
humming-birds, show themselves upon their highly specialized crests,
gorgets, or lappets. It is the same with the hackles of fowls, the head
ornaments of fruit-pigeons, and the bills of toucans. The most exquisite
colors in the insect world are those which are developed on the greatly
expanded and delicately feathered wings of butterflies; and the
eye-spots which adorn a few species are usually found on their very
highly modified swallow-tail appendages. So too with flowers: those
which have undergone most modification have their colors most profoundly
altered. In this way, we may put it down as a general rule (to be tested
hereafter) that the least developed flowers are usually yellow or white;
those which have undergone a little more modification are usually pink
or red; and those which have been most highly specialized of any are
usually purple, lilac, or blue. Absolute deep ultramarine probably marks
the highest level of all.
On the other hand, Mr. Wallace's principle also explains why the bees
and butterflies should prefer these specialized colors to all others,
and should therefore select those flowers which display them by
preference over any less developed types; for bees and butterflies are
the most highly adapted of all insects to honey-seeking and
flower-feeding. They have themselves on their side undergone the largest
amount of specialization for that particular function. And if the more
specialized and modified flowers, which gradually fitted their forms and
the position of their honey-glands to the forms of the bees or
butterflies, showed a natural tendency to pass from yellow through pink
and red to purple and blue, it would follow that the insects which were
being evolved side by side with them, and which were aiding at the same
time in their evolution, would grow to recognize these developed colors
as the visible symbols of those flowers from which they could obtain the
largest amount of honey with the least possible trouble. Thus it would
finally result that the ordinary unspecialized flowers, which depended
upon small insect riff-raff, would be mostly left yellow or white; those
which appealed to rather higher insects would become pink or red; and
those which laid themselves out for bees or butterflies, the aristocrats
of the arthropodous world, would grow for the most part to be purple
or blue.
Now, this is very much what we actually find to be the case in nature.
The simplest and earliest flowers are those with regular, symmetrical
open cups, like the _Ranunculus_ genus, the _Potentillas_, and the
_Alsine_ or chickweeds, which can be visited by any insects whatsoever;
and these are in large part yellow or white. A little higher are flowers
like the Campions or _Sileneoe_, and the stocks (_Matthiola_), with more
or less closed cups, whose honey can only be reached by more specialized
insects; and these are oftener pink or reddish. More profoundly modified
are those irregular one-sided flowers, like the violets, peas, and
orchids, which have assumed special shapes to accommodate bees and other
specific honey-seekers; and these are often purple and not unfrequently
blue. Highly specialized in another way are the flowers like harebells
(_Campanulaceoe_), scabious (_Dipsaceoe_), and heaths (_Ericaceoe_),
whose petals have all coalesced into a tubular corolla; and these might
almost be said to be usually purple or blue. And finally, highest of all
are the flowers like labiates (rosemary, _Salvia_, etc.) and speedwells
(_Veronica_), whose tubular corolla has been turned to one side, thus
combining the united petals with the irregular shape; and these are
almost invariably purple or blue.
AMONG THE HEATHER
From 'The Evolutionist at Large'
I suppose even that apocryphal person, the general reader, would be
insulted at being told at this hour of the day that all bright-colored
flowers are fertilized by the visits of insects, whose attentions they
are specially designed to solicit. Everybody has heard over and over
again that roses, orchids, and columbines have acquired their honey to
allure the friendly bee, their gaudy petals to advertise the honey, and
their divers shapes to insure the proper fertilization by the correct
type of insect. But everybody does not know how specifically certain
blossoms have laid themselves out for a particular species of fly,
beetle, or tiny moth. Here on the higher downs, for instance, most
flowers are exceptionally large and brilliant; while all Alpine climbers
must have noticed that the most gorgeous masses of bloom in Switzerland
occur just below the snow-line. The reason is, that such blossoms must
be fertilized by butterflies alone. Bees, their great rivals in
honey-sucking, frequent only the lower meadows and slopes, where flowers
are many and small: they seldom venture far from the hive or the nest
among the high peaks and chilly nooks where we find those great patches
of blue gentian or purple anemone, which hang like monstrous breadths of
tapestry upon the mountain sides. This heather here, now fully opening
in the warmer sun of the southern counties--it is still but in the bud
among the Scotch hills, I doubt not--specially lays itself out for the
humble-bee, and its masses form almost his highest pasture-grounds; but
the butterflies--insect vagrants that they are--have no fixed home, and
they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms
altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the
bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a
business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest
fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that he is,
from a great patch of color here to another great patch at a distance,
whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size and brilliancy.
Hence, as that indefatigable observer, Dr. Hermann Müller, has noticed,
all Alpine or hill-top flowers have very large and conspicuous blossoms,
generally grouped together in big clusters so as to catch a passing
glance of the butterfly's eye. As soon as the insect spies such a
cluster, the color seems to act as a stimulant to his broad wings, just
as the candle-light does to those of his cousin the moth. Off he sails
at once, as if by automatic action, towards the distant patch, and there
both robs the plant of its honey, and at the same time carries to it on
his legs and head fertilizing pollen from the last of its congeners
which he favored with a call. For of course both bees and butterflies
stick on the whole to a single species at a time; or else the flowers
would only get uselessly hybridized, instead of being impregnated with
pollen from other plants of their own kind. For this purpose it is that
most plants lay themselves out to secure the attention of only two or
three varieties among their insect allies, while they make their
nectaries either too deep or too shallow for the convenience of all
other kinds.
Insects, however, differ much from one another in their aesthetic
tastes, and flowers are adapted accordingly to the varying fancies of
the different kinds. Here, for example, is a spray of common white
galium, which attracts and is fertilized by small flies, who generally
frequent white blossoms. But here again, not far off, I find a
luxuriant mass of the yellow species, known by the quaint name of
"lady's-bedstraw,"--a legacy from the old legend which represents it as
having formed Our Lady's bed in the manger at Bethlehem. Now why has
this kind of galium yellow flowers, while its near kinsman yonder has
them snowy white? The reason is that lady's-bedstraw is fertilized by
small beetles; and beetles are known to be one among the most
color-loving races of insects. You may often find one of their number,
the lovely bronze and golden-mailed rose-chafer, buried deeply in the
very centre of a red garden rose, and reeling about when touched as if
drunk with pollen and honey. Almost all the flowers which beetles
frequent are consequently brightly decked in scarlet or yellow. On the
other hand, the whole family of the umbellates, those tall plants with
level bunches of tiny blossoms, like the fool's-parsley, have all but
universally white petals; and Müller, the most statistical of
naturalists, took the trouble to count the number of insects which paid
them a visit. He found that only fourteen per cent. were bees, while the
remainder consisted mainly of miscellaneous small flies and other
arthropodous riff-raff, whereas, in the brilliant class of composites,
including the asters, sunflowers, daisies, dandelions, and thistles,
nearly seventy-five per cent. of the visitors were steady, industrious
bees. Certain dingy blossoms which lay themselves out to attract wasps,
are obviously adapted, as Müller quaintly remarks, "to a less
aesthetically cultivated circle of visitors." But the most brilliant
among all insect-fertilized flowers are those which specially affect the
society of butterflies; and they are only surpassed in this respect
throughout all nature by the still larger and more magnificent tropical
species which owe their fertilization to humming-birds and
brush-tongued lories.
Is it not a curious, yet a comprehensible circumstance, that the tastes
which thus show themselves in the development, by natural selection, of
lovely flowers, should also show themselves in the marked preference for
beautiful mates? Poised on yonder sprig of harebell stands a little
purple-winged butterfly, one of the most exquisite among our British
kinds. That little butterfly owes its own rich and delicately shaded
tints to the long selective action of a million generations among its
ancestors. So we find throughout that the most beautifully colored birds
and insects are always those which have had most to do with the
production of bright-colored fruits and flowers. The butterflies and
rose-beetles are the most gorgeous among insects; the humming-birds and
parrots are the most gorgeous among birds. Nay, more, exactly like
effects have been produced in two hemispheres on different tribes by the
same causes. The plain brown swifts of the North have developed among
tropical West Indian and South American orchids the metallic gorgets and
crimson crests of the humming-bird; while a totally unlike group of
Asiatic birds have developed among the rich flora of India and the Malay
Archipelago the exactly similar plumage of the exquisite sun-birds. Just
as bees depend upon flowers, and flowers upon bees, so the color-sense
of animals has created the bright petals of blossoms; and the bright
petals have reacted upon the tastes of the animals themselves, and
through their tastes upon their own appearance.
THE HERON'S HAUNT
From 'Vignettes from Nature'
Most of the fields on the country-side are now laid up for hay, or down
in the tall haulming corn; and so I am driven from my accustomed
botanizing grounds on the open, and compelled to take refuge in the wild
bosky moor-land back of Hole Common. Here, on the edge of the copse, the
river widens to a considerable pool, and coming upon it softly through
the wood from behind--the boggy, moss-covered ground masking and
muffling my foot-fall--I have surprised a great, graceful ash-and-white
heron, standing all unconscious on the shallow bottom, in the very act
of angling for minnows. The heron is a somewhat rare bird among the more
cultivated parts of England; but just hereabouts we get a sight of one
not infrequently, for they still breed in a few tall ash-trees at
Chilcombe Park, where the lords of the manor in mediaeval times long
preserved a regular heronry to provide sport for their hawking. There is
no English bird, not even the swan, so perfectly and absolutely graceful
as the heron. I am leaning now breathless and noiseless against the
gate, taking a good look at him, as he stands half-knee deep on the oozy
bottom, with his long neck arched over the water, and his keen purple
eye fixed eagerly upon the fish below. Though I am still twenty yards
from where he poises lightly on his stilted legs, I can see distinctly
his long pendent snow-white breast-feathers, his crest of waving black
plumes, falling loosely backward over the ash-gray neck, and even the
bright red skin of his bare legs just below the feathered thighs. I dare
hardly move nearer to get a closer view of his beautiful plumage; and
still I will try. I push very quietly through the gate, but not quite
quietly enough for the heron. One moment he raises his curved neck and
poises his head a little on one side to listen for the direction of the
rustling; then he catches a glimpse of me as I try to draw back silently
behind a clump of flags and nettles; and in a moment his long legs give
him a good spring from the bottom, his big wings spread with a sudden
flap sky-wards, and almost before I can note what is happening he is off
and away to leeward, making a bee-line for the high trees that fringe
the artificial water in Chilcombe Hollow.
All these wading birds the herons, the cranes, the bitterns, the snipes,
and the plovers are almost necessarily, by the very nature of their
typical conformation, beautiful and graceful in form. Their tall,
slender legs, which they require for wading, their comparatively light
and well-poised bodies, their long, curved, quickly-darting necks and
sharp beaks, which they need in order to secure their rapid-swimming
prey, all these things make the waders, almost in spite of themselves,
handsome and shapely birds. Their feet, it is true, are generally rather
large and sprawling, with long, wide-spread toes, so as to distribute
their weight on the snow-shoe principle, and prevent them from sinking
in the deep soft mud on which they tread; but then we seldom see the
feet, because the birds, when we catch a close view of them at all, are
almost always either on stilts in the water, or flying with their legs
tucked behind them, after their pretty rudder-like fashion. I have often
wondered whether it is this general beauty of form in the waders which
has turned their aesthetic tastes, apparently, into such a sculpturesque
line. Certainly, it is very noteworthy that whenever among this
particular order of birds we get clear evidence of ornamental devices,
such as Mr. Darwin sets down to long-exerted selective preferences in
the choice of mates, the ornaments are almost always those of form
rather than those of color.
The waders, I sometimes fancy, only care for beauty of shape, not for
beauty of tint. As I stood looking at the heron here just now, the same
old idea seemed to force itself more clearly than ever upon my mind. The
decorative adjuncts--the curving tufted crest on the head, the pendent
silvery gorget on the neck, the long ornamental quills of the
pinions--all look exactly as if they were deliberately intended to
emphasize and heighten the natural gracefulness of the heron's form. May
it not be, I ask myself, that these birds, seeing one another's
statuesque shape from generation to generation, have that shape
hereditarily implanted upon the nervous system of the species, in
connection with all their ideas of mating and of love, just as the human
form is hereditarily associated with all our deepest emotions, so that
Miranda falling in love at first sight with Ferdinand is not a mere
poetical fiction, but the true illustration of a psychological fact? And
as on each of our minds and brains the picture of the beautiful human
figure is, as it were, antecedently engraved, may not the ancestral type
be similarly engraved on the minds and brains of the wading birds? If
so, would it not be natural to conclude that these birds, having thus a
very graceful form as their generic standard of taste, a graceful form
with little richness of coloring, would naturally choose as the
loveliest among their mates, not those which showed any tendency to more
bright-hued plumage (which indeed might be fatal to their safety, by
betraying them to their enemies, the falcons and eagles), but those
which most fully embodied and carried furthest the ideal specific
gracefulness of the wading type? ... Forestine flower-feeders and
fruit-eaters, especially in the tropics, are almost always brightly
colored. Their chromatic taste seems to get quickened in their daily
search for food among the beautiful blossoms and brilliant fruits of
southern woodlands. Thus the humming-birds, the sun-birds, and the
brush-tongued lories, three very dissimilar groups of birds as far as
descent is concerned, all alike feed upon the honey and the insects
which they extract from the large tubular bells of tropical flowers; and
all alike are noticeable for their intense metallic lustre or pure tones
of color. Again, the parrots, the toucans, the birds of paradise, and
many other of the more beautiful exotic species, are fruit-eaters, and
reflect their inherited taste in their own gaudy plumage. But the waders
have no such special reasons for acquiring a love for bright hues. Hence
their aesthetic feeling seems rather to have taken a turn toward the
further development of their own graceful forms. Even the plainest
wading birds have a certain natural elegance of shape which supplies a
primitive basis for aesthetic selection to work on.
JAMES LANE ALLEN
(1850-)
The literary work of James Lane Allen was begun with maturer powers and
wider culture than most writers exhibit in their first publications. His
mastery of English was acquired with difficulty, and his knowledge of
Latin he obtained through years of instruction as well as of study. The
wholesome open-air atmosphere which pervades his stories, their pastoral
character and love of nature, come from the tastes bequeathed to him by
three generations of paternal ancestors, easy-going gentlemen farmers of
the blue-grass region of Kentucky. On a farm near Lexington, in this
beautiful country of stately homes, fine herds, and great flocks, the
author was born, and there he spent his childhood and youth.
About 1885 he came to New York to devote himself to literature; for
though he had contributed poems, essays, and criticisms to leading
periodicals, his first important work was a series of articles
descriptive of the "Blue-Grass Region," published in Harper's Magazine.
The field was new, the work was fresh, and the author's ability was at
once recognized. Inevitably he chose Kentucky for the scene of his
stories, knowing and loving, as he did, her characteristics and her
history. While preparing his articles on 'The Blue-Grass Region,' he had
studied the Trappist Monastery and the Convent of Loretto, as well as
the records of the Catholic Church in Kentucky; and his first stories,
'The White Cowl' and 'Sister Dolorosa,' which appeared in the Century
Magazine, were the first fruits of this labor. A controversy arose as to
the fairness of these portraitures; but however opinions may differ as
to his characterization, there can be no question of the truthfulness of
the exposition of the mediaeval spirit of those retreats.
This tendency to use a historic background marks most of Mr. Allen's
stories. In 'The Choir Invisible,' a tale of the last century, pioneer
Kentucky once more exists. The old clergyman of 'Flute and Violin' lived
and died in Lexington, and had been long forgotten when his story
"touched the vanishing halo of a hard and saintly life." The old negro
preacher, with texts embroidered on his coat-tails, was another figure
of reality, unnoticed until he became one of the 'Two Gentlemen of
Kentucky.' In Lexington lived and died "King Solomon," who had almost
faded from memory when his historian found the record of the poor
vagabond's heroism during the plague, and made it memorable in a story
that touches the heart and fills the eyes. 'A Kentucky Cardinal,' with
'Aftermath,' its second part, is full of history and of historic
personages. 'Summer in Arcady: A Tale of Nature,' the latest of Mr.
Allen's stories, is no less based on local history and no less full of
local color than his other tales, notwithstanding its general
unlikeness.
This book sounds a deeper note than the earlier tales, although the
truth which Mr. Allen sees is not mere fidelity to local types, but the
essential truth of human nature. His realism has always a poetic aspect.
Quiet, reserved, out of the common, his books deal with moods rather
than with actions; their problems are spiritual rather than physical;
their thought tends toward the higher and more difficult way of life.
A COURTSHIP
From 'Summer in Arcady'
The sunlight grew pale the following morning; a shadow crept rapidly
over the blue; bolts darted about the skies like maddened redbirds; the
thunder, ploughing its way down the dome as along zigzag cracks in the
stony street, filled the caverns of the horizon with reverberations that
shook the earth; and the rain was whirled across the landscape in long,
white, wavering sheets. Then all day quiet and silence throughout Nature
except for the drops, tapping high and low the twinkling leaves; except
for the new melody of woodland and meadow brooks, late silvery and with
a voice only for their pebbles and moss and mint, but now yellow and
brawling and leaping-back into the grassy channels that were their
old-time beds; except for the indoor music of dripping eaves and rushing
gutters and overflowing rain-barrels. And when at last in the gold of
the cool west the sun broke from the edge of the gray, over what a
green, soaked, fragrant world he reared the arch of Nature's peace!
[Illustration: A COURTSHIP.
Photogravure from Painting by H. Vogka.]
Not a little blade of corn in the fields but holds in an emerald vase
its treasures of white gems. The hemp-stalks bend so low under the
weight of their plumes, that were a vesper sparrow to alight on one for
his evening hymn, it would go with him to the ground. The leaning barley
and rye and wheat flash in the last rays their jeweled beards. Under the
old apple-trees, golden-brown mushrooms are already pushing upward
through the leaf-loam, rank with many an autumn's dropping. About the
yards the peonies fall with faces earthward. In the stable-lots the
larded porkers, with bristles as clean as frost, and flesh of pinky
whiteness, are hunting with nervous nostrils for the lush purslain. The
fowls are driving their bills up and down their wet breasts. And the
farmers who have been shelling corn for the mill come out of their
barns, with their coats over their shoulders, on the way to supper, look
about for the plough-horses, and glance at the western sky, from which
the last drops are falling.
But soon only a more passionate heat shoots from the sun into the
planet. The plumes of the hemp are so dry again, that by the pollen
shaken from their tops you can trace the young rabbits making their way
out to the dusty paths. The shadows of white clouds sail over purple
stretches of blue-grass, hiding the sun from the steady eye of the
turkey, whose brood is spread out before her like a fan on the earth. At
early morning the neighing of the stallions is heard around the horizon;
at noon the bull makes the deep, hot pastures echo with his majestic
summons; out in the blazing meadows the butterflies strike the afternoon
air with more impatient wings; under the moon all night the play of
ducks and drakes goes on along the margins of the ponds. Young people
are running away and marrying; middle-aged farmers surprise their wives
by looking in on them at their butter-making in the sweet dairies; and
Nature is lashing everything--grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human
creatures--more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is
the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod,
but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding
man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities
for joy and pain, as of no more account than a couple of fertilizing
nasturtiums.
The storm kept Daphne at home. On the next day the earth was yellow with
sunlight, but there were puddles along the path, and a branch rushing
swollen across the green valley in the fields. On the third, her mother
took the children to town to be fitted with hats and shoes, and Daphne
also, to be freshened up with various moderate adornments, in view of a
protracted meeting soon to begin. On the fourth, some ladies dropped in
to spend the day, bearing in mind the episode at the dinner, and having
grown curious to watch events accordingly. On the fifth, her father
carried out the idea of cutting down some cedar-trees in the front yard
for fence posts; and whenever he was working about the house, he kept
her near to wait on him in unnecessary ways. On the sixth, he rode away
with two hands and an empty wagon-bed for some work on the farm; her
mother drove off to another dinner--dinners never cease in Kentucky, and
the wife of an elder is not free to decline invitations; and at last she
was left alone in the front porch, her face turned with burning
eagerness toward the fields. In a little while she had slipped away.
All these days Hilary had been eager to see her. He was carrying a good
many girls in his mind that summer; none in his heart; but his plans
concerning these latter were for the time forgotten. He hung about that
part of his farm from which he could have descried her in the distance.
Each forenoon and afternoon, at the usual hour of her going to her
uncle's, he rode over and watched for her. Other people passed to and
fro,--children and servants,--but not Daphne; and repeated
disappointments fanned his desire to see her.
When she came into sight at last, he was soon walking beside her,
leading his horse by the reins.
"I have been waiting to see you, Daphne," he said, with a smile, but
general air of seriousness. "I have been waiting a long time for a
chance to talk to you."
"And I have wanted to see you," said Daphne, her face turned away and
her voice hardly to be heard. "I have been waiting for a chance to
talk to you."
The change in her was so great, so unexpected, it contained an appeal to
him so touching, that he glanced quickly at her. Then he stopped short
and looked searchingly around the meadow.
The thorn-tree is often the only one that can survive on these pasture
lands. Its spikes, even when it is no higher than the grass, keep off
the mouths of grazing stock. As it grows higher, birds see it standing
solitary in the distance and fly to it, as a resting-place in passing.
Some autumn day a seed of the wild grape is thus dropped near its root;
and in time the thorn-tree and the grape-vine come to thrive together.
As Hilary now looked for some shade to which they could retreat from the
blinding, burning sunlight, he saw one of these standing off at a
distance of a few hundred yards. He slipped the bridle-reins through the
head-stall, and giving his mare a soft slap on the shoulder, turned her
loose to graze.
"Come over here and sit down out of the sun," he said, starting off in
his authoritative way. "I want to talk to you."
Daphne followed in his wake, through the deep grass.
When they reached the tree, they sat down under the rayless boughs. Some
sheep lying there ran round to the other side and stood watching them,
with a frightened look in their clear, peaceful eyes.
"What's the matter?" he said, fanning his face, and tugging with his
forefinger to loosen his shirt collar from his moist neck. He had the
manner of a powerful comrade who means to succor a weaker one.
"Nothing," said Daphne, like a true woman.
"Yes, but there is," he insisted. "I got you into trouble. I didn't
think of that when I asked you to dance."
"You had nothing to do with it," retorted Daphne, with a flash. "I
danced for spite."
He threw back his head with a peal of laughter. All at once this was
broken off. He sat up, with his eyes fixed on the lower edge of
the meadow.
"Here comes your father," he said gravely.
Daphne turned. Her father was riding slowly through the bars. A
wagon-bed loaded with rails crept slowly after him.
In an instant the things that had cost her so much toil and so many
tears to arrange,--her explanations, her justifications, and her
parting,--all the reserve and the coldness that she had laid up in her
heart, as one fills high a little ice-house with fear of far-off summer
heat,--all were quite gone, melted away. And everything that he had
planned to tell her was forgotten also at the sight of that stern figure
on horseback bearing unconsciously down upon them.
"If I had only kept my mouth shut about his old fences," he said to
himself. "Confound my bull!" and he looked anxiously at Daphne, who sat
with her eyes riveted on her father. The next moment she had turned, and
they were laughing in each other's faces.
"What shall I do?" she cried, leaning over and burying her face in her
hands, and lifting it again, scarlet with excitement.
"Don't do anything," he said calmly.
"But Hilary, if he sees us, we are lost."
"If he sees us, we are found."
"But he mustn't see me here!" she cried, with something like real
terror. "I believe I'll lie down in the grass. Maybe he'll think I am a
friend of yours."
"My friends all sit up in the grass," said Hilary.
But Daphne had already hidden.
Many a time, when a little girl, she had amused herself by screaming
like a hawk at the young guineas, and seeing them cuddle invisible under
small tufts and weeds. Out in the stable lot, where the grass was grazed
so close that the geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes get one
of the negro men to scare the little pigs, for the delight of seeing
them squat as though hidden, when they were no more hidden than if they
had spread themselves out upon so many dinner dishes. All of us reveal
traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion. Daphne was doing her
best to hide now.
When Hilary realized it he moved in front of her, screening her as well
as possible.
"Hadn't you better lie down, too?" she asked.
"No," he replied quickly.
"But if he sees you, he might take a notion to ride over this way!"
"Then he'll have to ride."
"But, Hilary, suppose he were to find me lying down here behind you,
hiding?"
"Then he'll have to find you."
"You get me into trouble, and then you won't help me out!" exclaimed
Daphne with considerable heat.
"It might not make matters any better for me to hide," he answered
quietly. "But if he comes over here and tries to get us into trouble,
I'll see then what I can do."
Daphne lay silent for a moment, thinking. Then she nestled more closely
down, and said with gay, unconscious archness: "I'm not hiding because
I'm afraid of him. I'm doing it just because I want to."
She did not know that the fresh happiness flushing her at that moment
came from the fact of having Hilary between herself and her father as a
protector; that she was drinking in the delight a woman feels in getting
playfully behind the man she loves in the face of danger: but her action
bound her to him and brought her more under his influence.
His words showed that he also felt his position,--the position of the
male who stalks forth from the herd and stands the silent challenger. He
was young, and vain of his manhood in the usual innocent way that led
him to carry the chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off; and
he placed himself before Daphne with the understanding that if they were
discovered, there would be trouble. Her father was a violent man, and
the circumstances were not such that any Kentucky father would overlook
them. But with his inward seriousness, his face wore its usual look of
reckless unconcern.
"Is he coming this way?" asked Daphne, after an interval of impatient
waiting.
"Straight ahead. Are you hid?"
"I can't see whether I'm hid or not. Where is he now?"
"Right on us."
"Does he see you?"
"Yes."
"Do you think he sees me?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Then I might as well get up," said Daphne, with the courage of despair,
and up she got. Her father was riding along the path in front of them,
but not looking. She was down again like a partridge.
"How could you fool me, Hilary? Suppose he _had_ been looking!"
"I wonder what he thinks I'm doing, sitting over here in the grass like
a stump," said Hilary. "If he takes me for one, he must think I've got
an awful lot of roots."
"Tell me when it's time to get up."
"I will."
He turned softly toward her. She was lying on her side, with her burning
cheek in one hand. The other hand rested high on the curve of her hip.
Her braids had fallen forward, and lay in a heavy loop about her lovely
shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her scarlet lips parted in a smile. The
edges of her snow-white petticoats showed beneath her blue dress, and
beyond these one of her feet and ankles. Nothing more fragrant with
innocence ever lay on the grass.
"Is it time to get up now?"
"Not yet," and he sat bending over her.
"Now?"
"Not yet," he repeated more softly.
"Now, then?"
"Not for a long time."
His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at him. His laughing eyes
were glowing down upon her under his heavy mat of hair. She sat up and
looked toward the wagon crawling away in the distance; her father was no
longer in sight.
One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back view, stamped her forefoot
impatiently, and ran round in front, and out into the sun. Her lambs
followed, and the three, ranging themselves abreast, stared at Daphne,
with a look of helpless inquiry.
"Sh-pp-pp!" she cried, throwing up her hands at them, irritated. "Go
away!"
They turned and ran; the others followed; and the whole number, falling
into line, took a path meekly homeward. They left a greater sense of
privacy under the tree. Several yards off was a small stock-pond. Around
the edge of this the water stood hot and green in the tracks of the
cattle and the sheep, and about these pools the yellow butterflies were
thick, alighting daintily on the promontories of the mud, or rising two
by two through the dazzling atmosphere in columns of enamored flight.
Daphne leaned over to the blue grass where it swayed unbroken in the
breeze, and drew out of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on
their tops the purplish seed-vessels. With them she began to braid a
ring about one of her fingers in the old simple fashion of the country.
As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, watching her fingers, the
soft slow movements of which little by little wove a spell over his
eyes. And once again the power of her beauty began to draw him beyond
control. He felt a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in his. His
eyes passed upward along her tapering wrists, the skin of which was like
mother-of-pearl; upward along the arm to the shoulder--to her neck--to
her deeply crimsoned cheeks--to the purity of her brow--to the purity of
her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid them like conscious fringes.
An awkward silence began to fall between them. Daphne felt that the time
had come for her to speak. But, powerless to begin, she feigned to busy
herself all the more devotedly with braiding the deep-green circlet.
Suddenly he drew himself through the grass to her side.
"Let _me_!"
"No!" she cried, lifting her arm above his reach and looking at him with
a gay threat. "You don't know how."
"I do know how," he said, with his white teeth on his red underlip, and
his eyes sparkling; and reaching upward, he laid his hand in the hollow
of her elbow and pulled her arm down.
"No! No!" she cried again, putting her hands behind her back. "You will
spoil it!"
"I will not spoil it," he said, moving so close to her that his breath
was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.
"No! No! No!" she cried, bending away from him. "I don't want any ring!"
and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass. Then she
got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.
He sat cross-legged on the grass before her. He had put on his hat, and
the brim hid his eyes.
"And you are not going to stay and talk to me?" he said in a tone of
reproachfulness, without looking up.
She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and
took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of
the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.
"I thought you were better than the others," he continued, with the
bitter wisdom of twenty years. "But you women are all alike. When a man
gets into trouble, you desert him. You hurry him on to the devil. I have
been turned out of the church, and now you are down on me. Oh, well! But
you know how much I have always liked you, Daphne."
It was not the first time he had acted this character. It had been a
favorite role. But Daphne had never seen the like. She was overwhelmed
with happiness that he cared so much for her; and to have him reproach
her for indifference, and see him suffering with the idea that she had
turned against him--that instantly changed the whole situation. He had
not heard then what had taken place at the dinner. Under the
circumstances, feeling certain that the secret of her love had not been
discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a little more.
So she turned toward him smiling, and swayed gently as she clung to the
vine.
"Yes; I have my orders not even to speak to you! Never again!" she said,
with the air of tantalizing.
"Then stay with me a while now," he said, and lifted slowly to her his
appealing face. She sat down, and screened herself with a little
feminine transparency.
"I can't stay long: it's going to rain!"
He cast a wicked glance at the sky from under his hat; there were a few
clouds on the horizon.
"And so you are never going to speak to me again?" he said mournfully.
"Never!" How delicious her laughter was.
"I'll put a ring on your finger to remember me by."
He lay over in the grass and pulled several stalks. Then he lifted his
eyes beseechingly to hers.
"Will you let me?"
Daphne hid her hands. He drew himself to her side and took one of them
forcibly from her lap.
With a slow, caressing movement he began to braid the grass ring around
her finger--in and out, around and around, his fingers laced with her
fingers, his palm lying close upon her palm, his blood tingling through
the skin upon her blood. He made the braiding go wrong, and took it off
and began over again. Two or three times she drew a deep breath, and
stole a bewildered look at his face, which was so close to hers that his
hair brushed it--so close that she heard the quiver of his own breath.
Then all at once he folded his hands about hers with a quick, fierce
tenderness, and looked up at her. She turned her face aside and tried to
draw her hand away. His clasp tightened. She snatched it away, and got
up with a nervous laugh.
"Look at the butterflies! Aren't they pretty?"
He sprang up and tried to seize her hand again.
"You shan't go home yet!" he said, in an undertone.
"Shan't I?" she said, backing away from him. "Who's going to keep me?"
"_I am_," he said, laughing excitedly and following her closely.
"My father's coming!" she cried out as a warning.
He turned and looked: there was no one in sight.
"He _is_ coming--sooner or later!" she called.
She had retreated several yards off into the sunlight of the meadow.
The remembrance of the risk that he was causing her to run checked him.
He went over to her.
"When can I see you again--soon?"
He had never spoken so seriously to her before. He had never before been
so serious. But within the last hour Nature had been doing her work, and
its effect was immediate. His sincerity instantly conquered her. Her
eyes fell.
"No one has any right to keep us from seeing each other!" he insisted.
"We must settle that for ourselves."
Daphne made no reply.
"But we can't meet here any more--with people passing backward and
forward!" he continued rapidly and decisively. "What has happened to-day
mustn't happen again."
"No!" she replied, in a voice barely to be heard. "It must never happen
again. We can't meet here."
They were walking side by side now toward the meadow-path. As they
reached it he paused.
"Come to the back of the pasture--to-morrow!--at four o'clock!" he said,
tentatively, recklessly.
Daphne did not answer as she moved away from him along the path
homeward.
"Will you come?" he called out to her.
She turned and shook her head. Whatever her own new plans may have
become, she was once more happy and laughing.
"Come, Daphne!"
She walked several paces further and turned and shook her head again.
"Come!" he pleaded.
She laughed at him.
He wheeled round to his mare grazing near. As he put his foot into the
stirrup, he looked again: she was standing in the same place,
laughing still.
"_You_ go," she cried, waving him good-by. "There'll not be a soul to
disturb you! To-morrow--at four o'clock!"
"Will you be there?" he said.
"Will you?" she answered.
"I'll be there to-morrow," he said, "and every other day till you come."
By permission of the Macmillan Company, Publishers.
OLD KING SOLOMON'S CORONATION
From 'Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances' Copyright
1891, by Harper and Brothers.
He stood on the topmost of the court-house steps, and for a moment
looked down on the crowd with the usual air of official severity.
"Gentlemen," he then cried out sharply, "by an ordah of the cou't I now
offah this man at public sale to the highes' biddah. He is able-bodied
but lazy, without visible property or means of suppoht, an' of dissolute
habits. He is therefoh adjudged guilty of high misdemeanahs, an' is to
be sole into labah foh a twelvemonth. How much, then, am I offahed foh
the vagrant? How much am I offahed foh ole King Sol'mon?"
Nothing was offered for old King Solomon. The spectators formed
themselves into a ring around the big vagrant, and settled down to enjoy
the performance.
"Staht 'im, somebody."
Somebody started a laugh, which rippled around the circle.
The sheriff looked on with an expression of unrelaxed severity, but
catching the eye of an acquaintance on the outskirts, he exchanged a
lightning wink of secret appreciation. Then he lifted off his tight
beaver hat, wiped out of his eyes a little shower of perspiration which
rolled suddenly down from above, and warmed a degree to his theme.
"Come, gentlemen," he said more suasively, "it's too hot to stan' heah
all day. Make me an offah! You all know ole King Sol'mon; don't wait to
be interduced. How much, then, to staht 'im? Say fifty dollahs!
Twenty-five! Fifteen! Ten! Why, gentlemen! Not _ten_ dollahs? Remembah,
this is the Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky--the land of Boone an' Kenton,
the home of Henry Clay!" he added, in an oratorical _crescendo_.
"He ain't wuth his victuals," said an oily little tavern-keeper, folding
his arms restfully over his own stomach and cocking up one piggish eye
into his neighbor's face. "He ain't wuth his 'taters."
"Buy 'im foh 'is rags!" cried a young law student, with a Blackstone
under his arm, to the town rag picker opposite, who was unconsciously
ogling the vagrant's apparel.
"I _might_ buy 'im foh 'is _scalp_," drawled a farmer, who had taken
part in all kinds of scalp contests, and was now known to be busily
engaged in collecting crow scalps for a match soon to come off between
two rival counties.
"I think I'll buy 'im foh a hat sign," said a manufacturer of ten-dollar
Castor and Rhorum hats. This sally drew merry attention to the vagrant's
hat, and the merchant felt rewarded.
"You'd bettah say the town ought to buy 'im an' put 'im up on top of the
cou't-house as a scarecrow foh the cholera," said some one else.
"What news of the cholera did the stage coach bring this mohning?"
quickly inquired his neighbor in his ear; and the two immediately fell
into low, grave talk, forgot the auction, and turned away.
"Stop, gentlemen, stop!" cried the sheriff, who had watched the rising
tide of good humor, and now saw his chance to float in on it with
spreading sails. "You're runnin' the price in the wrong direction--down,
not up. The law requires that he be sole to the highes' biddah, not the
lowes'. As loyal citizens, uphole the constitution of the commonwealth
of Kentucky an' make me an offah; the man is really a great bargain. In
the first place, he would cos' his ownah little or nothin', because, as
you see, he keeps himself in cigahs an' clo'es; then, his main article
of diet is whisky--a supply of which he always has on ban'. He don't
even need a bed, foh you know he sleeps jus' as well on any doohstep;
noh a chair, foh he prefers to sit roun' on the curbstones. Remembah,
too, gentlemen, that ole King Sol'mon is a Virginian--from the same
neighbohhood as Mr. Clay. Remembah that he is well educated, that he is
an _awful_ Whig, an' that he has smoked mo' of the stumps of Mr. Clay's
cigahs than any other man in existence. If you don't b'lieve _me,_
gentlemen, yondah goes Mr. Clay now; call _him_ ovah an' ask 'im foh
yo'se'ves."
He paused, and pointed with his right forefinger towards Main Street,
along which the spectators, with a sudden craning of necks, beheld the
familiar figure of the passing statesman.
"But you don't need _any_body to tell these fac's, gentlemen," he
continued. "You merely need to be reminded that ole King Sol'mon is no
ohdinary man. Mo'ovah he has a kine heaht; he nevah spoke a rough wohd
to anybody in this worl', an' he is as proud as Tecumseh of his good
name an' charactah. An', gentlemen," he added, bridling with an air of
mock gallantry and laying a hand on his heart, "if anythin' fu'thah is
required in the way of a puffect encomium, we all know that there isn't
anothah man among us who cuts as wide a swath among the ladies. The'foh,
if you have any appreciation of virtue, any magnanimity of heaht; if you
set a propah valuation upon the descendants of Virginia, that mothah of
Presidents; if you believe in the pure laws of Kentucky as the pioneer
bride of the Union; if you love America an' love the worl'--make me a
gen'rous, high-toned offah foh ole King Sol'mon!"
He ended his peroration amid a shout of laughter and applause, and
feeling satisfied that it was a good time for returning to a more
practical treatment of his subject, proceeded in a sincere tone:--
"He can easily earn from one to two dollahs a day, an' from three to six
hundred a yeah. There's not anothah white man in town capable of doin'
as much work. There's not a niggah ban' in the hemp factories with such
muscles an' such a chest. _Look_ at 'em! An', if you don't b'lieve me,
step fo'ward and _feel_ 'em. How much, then, is bid foh 'im?"
"One dollah!" said the owner of a hemp factory, who had walked forward
and felt the vagrant's arm, laughing, but coloring up also as the eyes
of all were quickly turned upon him. In those days it was not an
unheard-of thing for the muscles of a human being to be thus examined
when being sold into servitude to a new master.
"Thank you!" cried the sheriff, cheerily. "One precinc' heard from! One
dollah! I am offahed one dollah foh ole King Sol'mon. One dollah foh the
king! Make it a half. One dollah an' a half. Make it a half. One
dol-dol-dol-dollah!"
Two medical students, returning from lectures at the old Medical Hall,
now joined the group, and the sheriff explained:
"One dollah is bid foh the vagrant ole King Sol'mon, who is to be sole
into labah foh a twelvemonth. Is there any othah bid? Are you all done?
One dollah, once--"
"Dollah and a half," said one of the students, and remarked half
jestingly under his breath to his companion, "I'll buy him on the chance
of his dying. We'll dissect him."
"Would you own his body if he _should_ die?"
"If he dies while bound to me, I'll arrange _that_."
"One dollah an' a half," resumed the sheriff, and falling into the tone
of a facile auctioneer he rattled on:--
"One dollah an' a half foh ole Sol'mon--sol, sol, sol,--do, re, mi, fa,
sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol! Why, gentlemen, you can set the king
to music!"
All this time the vagrant had stood in the centre of that close ring of
jeering and humorous bystanders--a baffling text from which to have
preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some
years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been
given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his
personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient sacred
magnificence; and never had the mockery seemed so fine as at this
moment, when he was led forth into the streets to receive the lowest
sentence of the law upon his poverty and dissolute idleness. He was
apparently in the very prime of life--a striking figure, for nature at
least had truly done some royal work on him. Over six feet in height,
erect, with limbs well shaped and sinewy, with chest and neck full of
the lines of great power, a large head thickly covered with long,
reddish hair, eyes blue, face beardless, complexion fair but discolored
by low passions and excesses--such was old King Solomon. He wore a
stiff, high, black Castor hat of the period, with the crown smashed in
and the torn rim hanging down over one ear; a black cloth coat in the
old style, ragged and buttonless; a white cotton shirt, with the broad
collar crumpled wide open at the neck and down his sunburnt bosom; blue
jean pantaloons, patched at the seat and the knees; and ragged cotton
socks that fell down over the tops of his dusty shoes, which were open
at the heels.
In one corner of his sensual mouth rested the stump of a cigar. Once
during the proceedings he had produced another, lighted it, and
continued quietly smoking. If he took to himself any shame as the
central figure of this ignoble performance, no one knew it. There was
something almost royal in his unconcern. The humor, the badinage, the
open contempt, of which he was the public target, fell thick and fast
upon him, but as harmlessly as would balls of pith upon a coat of mail.
In truth, there was that in his great, lazy, gentle, good-humored bulk
and bearing which made the gibes seem all but despicable. He shuffled
from one foot to the other as though he found it a trial to stand up so
long, but all the while looking the spectators full in the eyes without
the least impatience. He suffered the man of the factory to walk round
him and push and pinch his muscles as calmly as though he had been the
show bull at a country fair. Once only, when the sheriff had pointed
across the street at the figure of Mr. Clay, he had looked quickly in
that direction with a kindling light in his eye and a passing flush on
his face. For the rest, he seemed like a man who has drained his cup of
human life and has nothing left him but to fill again and drink without
the least surprise or eagerness.
The bidding between the man of the factory and the student had gone
slowly on. The price had reached ten dollars. The heat was intense, the
sheriff tired. Then something occurred to revivify the scene. Across the
market place and toward the steps of the court-house there suddenly
came trundling along in breathless haste a huge old negress, carrying on
one arm a large shallow basket containing apple-crab lanterns and fresh
gingerbread. With a series of half-articulate grunts and snorts she
approached the edge of the crowd and tried to force her way through. She
coaxed, she begged, she elbowed and pushed and scolded, now laughing,
and now with the passion of tears in her thick, excited voice. All at
once, catching sight of the sheriff, she lifted one ponderous brown arm,
naked to the elbow, and waved her hand to him above the heads of
those in front.
"Hole on marster! hole on!" she cried in a tone of humorous entreaty.
"Don' knock 'im off till I come! Gim _me_ a bid at 'im!"
The sheriff paused and smiled. The crowd made way tumultuously, with
broad laughter and comment.
"Stan' aside theah an' let Aun' Charlotte in!"
"_Now_ you'll see biddin'!"
"Get out of the way foh Aun' Charlotte!"
"Up, my free niggah! Hurrah foh Kentucky."
A moment more and she stood inside the ring of spectators, her basket on
the pavement at her feet, her hands plumped akimbo into her fathomless
sides, her head up, and her soft, motherly eyes turned eagerly upon the
sheriff. Of the crowd she seemed unconscious, and on the vagrant before
her she had not cast a single glance.
She was dressed with perfect neatness. A red and yellow Madras kerchief
was bound about her head in a high coil, and another over the bosom of
her stiffly starched and smoothly ironed blue cottonade dress. Rivulets
of perspiration ran down over her nose, her temples, and around her
ears, and disappeared mysteriously in the creases of her brown neck. A
single drop accidentally hung glistening like a diamond on the circlet
of one of her large brass earrings.
The sheriff looked at her a moment, smiling but a little disconcerted.
The spectacle was unprecedented.
"What do you want heah, Aun' Charlotte?" he asked kindly. "You can't
sell yo' pies an' gingerbread heah."
"I don' _wan_' sell no pies en gingerbread," she replied,
contemptuously. "I wan' bid on _him_," and she nodded sidewise at the
vagrant. "White folks allers sellin' niggahs to wuk fuh _dem_; I gwine
to buy a white man to wuk fuh _me_. En he gwine t' git a mighty hard
mistiss, you heah _me_!"
The eyes of the sheriff twinkled with delight.
"Ten dollahs is offahed foh ole King Sol'mon. Is theah any othah bid.
Are you all done?"
"Leben," she said.
Two young ragamuffins crawled among the legs of the crowd up to her
basket and filched pies and cake beneath her very nose.
"Twelve!" cried the student, laughing.
"Thirteen!" she laughed, too, but her eyes flashed.
"_You are bidding against a niggah_" whispered the student's companion
in his ear.
"So I am; let's be off," answered the other, with a hot flush on his
proud face.
Thus the sale was ended, and the crowd variously dispersed. In a distant
corner of the courtyard the ragged urchins were devouring their
unexpected booty. The old negress drew a red handkerchief out of her
bosom, untied a knot in a corner of it, and counted out the money to the
sheriff. Only she and the vagrant were now left on the spot.
"You have bought me. What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly.
"Lohd, honey!" she answered, in a low tone of affectionate chiding, "I
don' wan' you to do _no thin_'! I wuzn' gwine t' 'low dem white folks to
buy you. Dey'd wuk you till you dropped dead. You go 'long en do ez
you please."
She gave a cunning chuckle of triumph in thus setting at naught the ends
of justice, and in a voice rich and musical with affection, she said, as
she gave him a little push:
"You bettah be gittin' out o' dis blazin' sun. G' on home! I be 'long
by-en-by."
He turned and moved slowly away in the direction of Water Street, where
she lived; and she, taking up her basket, shuffled across the market
place toward Cheapside, muttering to herself the while:
"I come mighty nigh gittin' dar too late, foolin' long wid dese pies.
Sellin' _him_ 'ca'se he don' wuk! Umph! if all de men in dis town dat
don' wuk wuz to be tuk up en sole, d' wouldn' be 'nough money in de town
to buy em! Don' I see 'em settin' 'roun' dese taverns f'om mohnin'
till night?"
Nature soon smiles upon her own ravages and strews our graves with
flowers, not as memories, but for other flowers when the spring returns.
It was one cool, brilliant morning late in that autumn. The air blew
fresh and invigorating, as though on the earth there were no corruption,
no death. Far southward had flown the plague. A spectator in the open
court square might have seen many signs of life returning to the town.
Students hurried along, talking eagerly. Merchants met for the first
time and spoke of the winter trade. An old negress, gayly and neatly
dressed, came into the market place, and sitting down on a sidewalk
displayed her yellow and red apples and fragrant gingerbread. She hummed
to herself an old cradle-song, and in her soft, motherly black eyes
shone a mild, happy radiance. A group of young ragamuffins eyed her
longingly from a distance. Court was to open for the first time since
the spring. The hour was early, and one by one the lawyers passed slowly
in. On the steps of the court-house three men were standing: Thomas
Brown, the sheriff; old Peter Leuba, who had just walked over from his
music store on Main Street; and little M. Giron, the French
confectioner. Each wore mourning on his hat, and their voices were low
and grave.
"Gentlemen," the sheriff was saying, "it was on this very spot the day
befoah the cholera broke out that I sole 'im as a vagrant. An' I did the
meanes' thing a man can evah do. I hel' 'im up to public ridicule foh
his weakness an' made spoht of 'is infirmities. I laughed at 'is povahty
an' 'is ole clo'es. I delivahed on 'im as complete an oration of
sarcastic detraction as I could prepare on the spot, out of my own
meanness an' with the vulgah sympathies of the crowd. Gentlemen, if I
only had that crowd heah now, an' ole King Sol'mon standin' in the midst
of it, that I might ask 'im to accept a humble public apology, offahed
from the heaht of one who feels himself unworthy to shake 'is han'! But
gentlemen, that crowd will nevah reassemble. Neahly ev'ry man of them is
dead, an' ole King Sol'mon buried them."
"He buried my friend Adolphe Xaupi," said François Giron, touching his
eyes with his handkerchief.
"There is a case of my best Jamaica rum for him whenever he comes for
it," said old Leuba, clearing his throat.
"But, gentlemen, while we are speakin' of ole King Sol'mon we ought not
to forget who it is that has suppohted 'im. Yondah she sits on the
sidewalk, sellin' 'er apples an' gingerbread."
The three men looked in the direction indicated.
"Heah comes ole King Sol'mon now," exclaimed the sheriff.
Across the open square the vagrant was seen walking slowly along with
his habitual air of quiet, unobtrusive preoccupation. A minute more and
he had come over and passed into the court-house by a side door.
"Is Mr. Clay to be in court to-day?"
"He is expected, I think."
"Then let's go in: there will be a crowd."
"I don't know: so many are dead."
They turned and entered and found seats as quietly as possible; for a
strange and sorrowful hush brooded over the court-room. Until the bar
assembled, it had not been realized how many were gone. The silence was
that of a common overwhelming disaster. No one spoke with his neighbor;
no one observed the vagrant as he entered and made his way to a seat on
one of the meanest benches, a little apart from the others. He had not
sat there since the day of his indictment for vagrancy. The judge took
his seat, and making a great effort to control himself, passed his eyes
slowly over the court-room. All at once he caught sight of old King
Solomon sitting against the wall in an obscure corner; and before any
one could know what he was doing, he had hurried down and walked up to
the vagrant and grasped his hand. He tried to speak, but could not. Old
King Solomon had buried his wife and daughter,--buried them one clouded
midnight, with no one present but himself.
Then the oldest member of the bar started up and followed the example;
and then the other members, rising by a common impulse, filed slowly
back and one by one wrung that hard and powerful hand. After them came
the other persons in the court-room. The vagrant, the gravedigger, had
risen and stood against the wall, at first with a white face and a dazed
expression, not knowing what it meant; afterwards, when he understood
it, his head dropped suddenly forward and his tears fell thick and hot
upon the hands that he could not see. And his were not the only tears.
Not a man in the long file but paid his tribute of emotion as he stepped
forward to honor that image of sadly eclipsed but still effulgent
humanity. It was not grief, it was not gratitude, nor any sense of
making reparation for the past. It was the softening influence of an
act of heroism, which makes every man feel himself a brother hand in
hand with every other;--such power has a single act of moral greatness
to reverse the relations of men, lifting up one, and bringing all others
to do him homage.
It was the coronation scene in the life of 'Ole' King Solomon of
Kentucky.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
(1828-1889)
Each form of verse has, in addition to its laws of structure, a subtle
quality as difficult to define as the perfume of a flower. The poem, 'An
Evening,' given below, may be classified both as a song and as a lyric;
yet it needs no music other than its own rhythms, and the full close to
each verse which falls upon the ear like a soft and final chord ending a
musical composition. A light touch and a feeling for shades of meaning
are required to execute such dainty verse. In 'St. Margaret's Eve,' and
in many other ballads, Allingham expresses the broader, more dramatic
sweep of the ballad, and reveals his Celtic ancestry.
The lovable Irishman, William Allingham, worked hard to enter the
brotherhood of poets. When he was only fourteen his father took him from
school to become clerk in the town bank of which he himself was manager.
"The books which he had to keep for the next seven years were not those
on which his heart was set," says Mr. George Birkbeck Hill. But this
fortune is almost an inevitable part, and probably not the worst part,
of the training for a literary vocation; and he justified his ambitions
by pluckily studying alone till he had mastered Greek, Latin, French,
and German.
Mr. Hill, in his 'Letters of D.G. Rossetti' (Atlantic Monthly, May,
1896), thus quotes Allingham's own delightful description of his early
home at Ballyshannon, County Donegal:--
"The little old town where I was born has a voice of its own,
low, solemn, persistent, humming through the air day and
night, summer and winter. Whenever I think of that town I
seem to hear the voice. The river which makes it rolls over
rocky ledges into the tide. Before spreads a great ocean in
sunshine or storm; behind stretches a many-islanded lake. On
the south runs a wavy line of blue mountains; and on the
north, over green rocky hills rise peaks of a more distant
range. The trees hide in glens or cluster near the river;
gray rocks and bowlders lie scattered about the windy
pastures. The sky arches wide over all, giving room to
multitudes of stars by night, and long processions of clouds
blown from the sea; but also, in the childish memory where
these pictures live, to deeps of celestial blue in the
endless days of summer. An odd, out-of-the-way little town,
ours, on the extreme western edge of Europe; our next
neighbors, sunset way, being citizens of the great new
republic, which indeed, to our imagination, seemed little if
at all farther off than England in the opposite direction."
Of the cottage in which he spent most of his childhood and youth he
writes:--
"Opposite the hall door a good-sized walnut-tree leaned its
wrinkled stem towards the house, and brushed some of the
second-story panes with its broad, fragrant leaves. To sit at
that little upper window when it was open to a summer
twilight, and the great tree rustled gently, and sent one
leafy spray so far that it even touched my face, was an
enchantment beyond all telling. Killarney, Switzerland,
Venice, could not, in later life, come near it. On three
sides the cottage looked on flowers and branches, which I
count as one of the fortunate chances of my childhood; the
sense of natural beauty thus receiving its due share of
nourishment, and of a kind suitable to those early years."
At last a position in the Customs presented itself:--
"In the spring of 1846 I gladly took leave forever of
discount ledgers and current accounts, and went to Belfast
for two months' instruction in the duties of Principal Coast
Officer of Customs; a tolerably well-sounding title, but
which carried with it a salary of but £80 a year. I trudged
daily about the docks and timber-yards, learning to measure
logs, piles of planks, and, more troublesome, ships for
tonnage; indoors, part of the time practiced customs
book-keeping, and talked to the clerks about literature and
poetry in a way that excited some astonishment, but on the
whole, as I found at parting, a certain degree of curiosity
and respect. I preached Tennyson to them. My spare time was
mostly spent in reading and haunting booksellers' shops
where, I venture to say, I laid out a good deal more than
most people, in proportion to my income, and managed to get
glimpses of many books which I could not afford or did not
care to buy. I enjoyed my new position, on the whole, without
analysis, as a great improvement on the bank; and for the
rest, my inner mind was brimful of love and poetry, and
usually all external things appeared trivial save in their
relation to it."
Of Allingham's early song-writing, his friend Arthur Hughes says:--
"Rossetti, and I think Allingham himself, told me, in the
early days of our acquaintance, how in remote Ballyshannon,
where he was a clerk in the Customs, in evening walks he
would hear the Irish girls at their cottage doors singing old
ballads, which he would pick up. If they were broken or
incomplete, he would add to them or finish them; if they were
improper he would refine them. He could not get them sung
till he got the Dublin Catnach of that day to print them, on
long strips of blue paper, like old songs, and if about the
sea, with the old rough woodcut of a ship on the top. He
either gave them away or they were sold in the neighborhood.
Then, in his evening walks, he had at last the pleasure of
hearing some of his own ballads sung at the cottage doors by
the blooming lasses, who were quite unaware that it was the
author who was passing by."
In 1850 Allingham published a small volume of lyrics whose freshness and
delicacy seemed to announce a new singer, and four years later his 'Day
and Night Songs' strengthened this impression. Stationed as revenue
officer in various parts of England, he wrote much verse, and published
also the 'The Rambles of Patricius Walker,' a collection of essays upon
his walks through England; 'Lawrence Bloomfield in Ireland,' the tale of
a young landlord's efforts to improve the condition of his tenantry; an
anthology, 'Nightingale Valley' (1862), and an excellent collection of
English ballads, 'The Ballad Book' (1865).
In 1870 he gladly embraced an opportunity to leave the Customs for the
position of assistant editor of Fraser's Magazine under Froude, whom he
afterward succeeded as editor. He was now a member of a brilliant
literary circle, knew Tennyson, Ruskin, and Carlyle, and was admitted
into the warm friendship of the Pre-Raphaelites. But in no way does he
reflect the Pre-Raphaelite spirit by which he was surrounded; nor does
he write his lyrics in the metres and rhythms of mediaeval France. He is
as oblivious of rondeaux, ballades, and roundels, as he is of fair
damosels with cygnet necks and full pomegranate lips. He is a child of
nature, whose verse is free from all artificial inspiration or
expression, and seems to flow easily, clearly, and tenderly from his
pen. Some of it errs in being too fanciful. In the Flower-Songs, indeed,
he sometimes becomes trivial in his comparison of each English poet to a
special flower; but his poetry is usually sincere with an undercurrent
of pathos, as in 'The Ruined Chapel,' 'The Winter Pear,' and the 'Song.'
For lightness of touch and aerial grace, 'The Bubble' will bear
comparison with any verse of its own _genre_. 'Robin Redbreast' has many
delightful lines; and in 'The Fairies' one is taken into the realm of
Celtic folklore, which is Allingham's inheritance, where the Brownies,
the Pixies, and the Leprechauns trip over the dew-spangled meadows, or
dance on the yellow sands, and then vanish away in fantastic mists.
Quite different is 'Lovely Mary Donnelly,' which is a sample of the
popular songs that made him a favorite in his own country.
After his death at Hampstead in 1889, his body was cremated according to
his wish, when these lines of his own were read:--
"Body to purifying flame,
Soul to the Great Deep whence it came,
Leaving a song on earth below,
An urn of ashes white as snow."
THE RUINED CHAPEL
By the shore, a plot of ground
Clips a ruined chapel round,
Buttressed with a grassy mound;
Where Day and Night and Day go by
And bring no touch of human sound.
Washing of the lonely seas,
Shaking of the guardian trees,
Piping of the salted breeze;
Day and Night and Day go by
To the endless tune of these.
Or when, as winds and waters keep
A hush more dead than any sleep,
Still morns to stiller evenings creep,
And Day and Night and Day go by;
Here the silence is most deep.
The empty ruins, lapsed again
Into Nature's wide domain,
Sow themselves with seed and grain
As Day and Night and Day go by;
And hoard June's sun and April's rain.
Here fresh funeral tears were shed;
Now the graves are also dead;
And suckers from the ash-tree spread,
While Day and Night and Day go by;
And stars move calmly overhead.
From 'Day and Night Songs.'
THE WINTER PEAR