EACH GENERATION HAS ITS OWN CRITICAL CANONS IN POETRY AS WELL AS IN
POLITICAL CREEDS, FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, OR WHATEVER OTHER CHANGEABLE
MATTERS OF TASTE ARE CALLED “SETTLED QUESTIONS” AND “FIXED OPINIONS.”
George, musing much over all that his uncle had said respecting Darrell,
took his way to Lionel’s lodgings. The young man received him with the
cordial greeting due from Darrell’s kinsman to Colonel Morley’s nephew,
but tempered by the respect no less due to the distinction and the
calling of the eloquent preacher.
Lionel was perceptibly affected by learning that Darrell had thus
suddenly returned to the gloomy beech-woods of Fawley; and he evinced
his anxious interest in his benefactor with so much spontaneous
tenderness of feeling that George, as if in sympathy, warmed into the
same theme. “I can well conceive,” said he, “your affection for Mr.
Darrell. I remember, when I was a boy, how powerfully he impressed me,
though I saw but little of him. He was then in the zenith of his career,
and had but few moments to give to a boy like me; but the ring of his
voice and the flash of his eye sent me back to school, dreaming of fame
and intent on prizes. I spent part of one Easter vacation at his house
in town; he bade his son, who was my schoolfellow, invite me.”
LIONEL.--“You knew his son? How Mr. Darrell has felt that loss!”
GEORGE.--“Heaven often veils its most provident mercy in what to man
seems its sternest inflictions. That poor boy must have changed his
whole nature, if his life had not, to a father like Mr. Darrell,
occasioned grief sharper than his death.”
LIONEL.--“You amaze me. Mr. Darrell spoke of him as a boy of great
promise.”
GEORGE.--“He had that kind of energy which to a father conveys the idea
of promise, and which might deceive those older than himself--a fine
bright-eyed, bold-tongued boy, with just enough awe of his father to
bridle his worst qualities before him.”
LIONEL.--“What were those?”
GEORGE.--“Headstrong arrogance--relentless cruelty. He had a pride which
would have shamed his father out of pride, had Guy Darrell detected its
nature--purse pride! I remember his father said to me with a half-laugh:
‘My boy must not be galled and mortified as I was every hour at
school--clothes patched and pockets empty.’ And so, out of mistaken
kindness, Mr. Darrell ran into the opposite extreme, and the son was
proud, not of his father’s fame, but of his father’s money, and withal
not generous, nor exactly extravagant, but using money as power-power
that allowed him to insult an equal or to buy a slave. In a word, his
nickname at school was ‘Sir Giles Overreach.’ His death was the result
of his strange passion for tormenting others. He had a fag who could
not swim, and who had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while
driving this child into the river out of his depth that cramp seized
himself, and he was drowned. Yes, when I think what that boy would
have been as a man, succeeding to Darrell’s wealth--and had Darrell
persevered (as he would, perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public
career--to the rank and titles he would probably have acquired and
bequeathed--again, I say, in man’s affliction is often Heaven’s mercy.”
Lionel listened aghast. George continued: “Would that I could speak as
plainly to Mr. Darrell himself! For we find constantly in the world that
there is no error that misleads us like the error that is half a truth
wrenched from the other half; and nowhere is such an error so common as
when man applies it to the judgment of some event in his own life, and
separates calamity from consolation.”
LIONEL.--“True; but who could have the heart to tell a mourning father
that his dead son was worthless?”
GEORGE.--“Alas! my young friend, the preacher must sometimes harden his
own heart if he would strike home to another’s soul. But I am not sure
that Mr. Darrell would need so cruel a kindness. I believe that his
clear intellect must have divined some portions of his son’s nature
which enabled him to bear the loss with fortitude. And he did bear it
bravely. But now, Mr. Haughton, if you have the rest of the day free,
I am about to make you an unceremonious proposition for its disposal. A
lady who knew Mr. Darrell when she was very young has--a strong desire
to form your acquaintance. She resides on the banks of the Thames, a
little above Twickenham. I have promised to call on her this evening.
Shall we dine together at Richmond? and afterwards we can take a boat to
her villa.”
Lionel at once accepted, thinking so little of the lady that he did not
even ask her name. He was pleased to have a companion with whom he could
talk of Darrell. He asked but delay to write a few lines of affectionate
inquiry to his kinsman at Fawley, and, while he wrote, George took out
Arthur Branthwaite’s poems, and resumed their perusal. Lionel having
sealed his letter, George extended the book to him. “Here are some
remarkable poems by a brother-in-law of that remarkable artist, Frank
Vance.”
“Frank Vance! True, he had a brother-in-law a poet. I admire Frank so
much; and, though he professes to sneer at poetry, he is so associated
in my mind with poetical images that I am prepossessed beforehand in
favour of all that brings him, despite himself, in connection with
poetry.”
“Tell me then,” said George, pointing out a passage in the volume, “what
you think of these lines. My good uncle would call them gibberish. I am
not sure that I can construe them; but when I was your age, I think I
could--what say you?”
Lionel glanced. “Exquisite indeed!--nothing can be clearer--they express
exactly a sentiment in myself that I could never explain.”
“Just so,” said George, laughing. “Youth has a sentiment that it cannot
explain, and the sentiment is expressed in a form of poetry that middle
age cannot construe. It is true that poetry of the grand order interests
equally all ages; but the world ever throws out a poetry not of the
grandest; not meant to be durable--not meant to be universal, but
following the shifts and changes of human sentiment, and just like those
pretty sundials formed by flowers, which bloom to tell the hour, open
their buds to tell it, and, telling it, fade themselves from time.”
Not listening to the critic, Lionel continued to read the poems,
exclaiming, “How exquisite!--how true!”