Along the road I met a red-nosed man
Who stumbled as he walked. He said to me:
‘You keep away from that pub if you can;
It’s all gone queer.’ I said I didn’t see
What could be wrong with Doolan’s. ‘I can’t think,’
Said he, ‘what we’ll have next. I went in there,
Five minutes since; I’d scarcely got my drink
Before three angels with long shining hair
Came in. The first two took the dominoes
And played daft tunes upon them, while the third
Sang songs and balanced bottles on his nose.
’Fore Stephens’ time, such things never occurred!
I said I didn’t believe him. But I did.
He only whispered: ‘Got a tanner, kid?’
A LECTURE NOT YET WRITTEN OR DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR SIR A. T.
QUILLER-COUCH: ON THE DIRECT METHOD
(_To be included afterwards in_ ‘The Art of Lecturing’)
Bear with me, gentlemen, while I return, not unrefreshed by an eight
months’ interval--‘apart sat on a hill retired,’ to the argument of my
last lecture but one, wherein we found that the Capital Difficulty of
Criticism consisted in keeping to the matter in hand. ‘When you wander,
as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such
satisfaction as the curious time requires.’ So Bacon, in his letter of
expostulation to Coke; and we shall do well to perpend the passage
without taking to ourselves that plea of ‘having a large and fruitful
mind’ which Bacon, in his wisdom, presented to Coke. Let us hold by the
words of a writer whom our Tripos is gradually restoring to popular
favour, Quintilian--‘it is enough for us to mind our present business.’
Suffer me then to proffer a personal experience. Once, when an
undergraduate, I ... [_anecdote omitted_] ... an unforgettable
experience, at least to one who is willing to pass among you as a
sentimental old Victorian. But let us tune our instruments. And this
brings me--for, believe me, gentlemen, I must eventually arrive
somewhere--to the point I wish to make. It is this, that if we examine
our literature curiously, we shall find there a certain thread, a cord
of silver, twisting its way through all Letters and linking up one noble
author with another. Let me remind you that this thread was first spun
in Greece ... [_passages on compulsory Greek, the Education Act of 1870,
and the Teaching of English in Schools--omitted_]. You may realise,
gentlemen, how this tradition has been kept alive by men often sundered
from one another by generations, if you allow me to bring before you
several illuminating passages from diverse authors whose names are not
pronounced here for the first time.... [_Quotations from Aristotle,
Longinus, Cervantes, Lessing, Sainte-Beuve, Newman, and Walter de la
Mare omitted._] One and all of these craftsmen, whom it is our business
to study, tell us that we shall abjure the direct method only at our
peril, that ultimately we shall come by more profit if we keep to the
narrow road and leave the hedgerows and fields beyond innocent of our
feet. It will not be easy. But--and I thank heaven for it!--literature
is not easy; and even in these days, when the Correspondence School
flourisheth and Pelman is in the land, no one, not I nor another, can
make it so.
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI: NEW STYLE. AS IT MIGHT POSSIBLY BE WRITTEN BY
MR LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
_Snavel_
O what can ail you, Blogg? These days you sit
Here with your pint as mum as a dead rat,
And sick-faced too. Like an old man you look.
The harvest’s in, the moon’s up, girls are out;
What’s got you, man?
_Blogg_ Strange fleering things
Are working in my blood. I’ll tell you this:
The other night I went down Magger’s Lane,
And saw a woman there. Stood still she was,
Eating out of a paper cold wet tripe,
And drinking from a bottle. When I came
Close up to her, the clouds slid from the moon;
I saw her plain. Her greasy shawl slipt back:
Skinny and small she was. Her matted hair
Hung down about her face, but her two eyes
Burnt through like forest fires. She had a look
Of foreign parts, wild lands where witches thrive--
_Snavel_
O crimini! These are the tales for me.
_Blogg_
She lookt at me, shook back her hair and smiled.
The tripe slid noiselessly out of the paper--
A sudden gleam and it was gone. She paid
No heed, but held the bottle out to me
And spoke. Her foreign tongue made fiddlers’ tunes
Not words to me; but then all women’s words
At sometime are but tunes to fill their men
With moonlit madness. By now the chill air
To me came more like warmed old ale: my head
Was humming round. I grabbed the bottle neck
And drank deep, while the woman smiled and smiled,
But spoke no word. It was a witches’ brew.
We plunged into the night that now was lit
With dancing fires, and roared like a great sea--
Etc., Etc.
THE LATER MANNER OF
MR W. B. YEATS
Because the fairies died in ’Ninety-nine
A queen or two, a beggar or a fool
Now serve the turn of this slow craft of mine;
Old Paudeen’s rags cover the three-legged stool
Of ancient prophecy. A host of faces,
Foolish as dust, now mouth the reed-born song
At Clooth-na-bare and other windy places
Of three quaint syllables. It is a wrong
Not to be borne. What poet shall put the blame
Upon me that I now love best to sing
And dream my dream of him that had no name
Yet suddenly confronted the High King,
And cried: _Sisters and brothers have I none,
Yet this man’s father is my father’s son?_