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Page 21
Thus, by God's blessing, it befell thee
Nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec cithara carentem.
I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems. Those
recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of Dr. Donne and
others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of thy kind heart than thy
fancy. But what or whose was the pastoral poem of 'Thealma and Clearchus,'
which thou didst set about printing in 1678, and gavest to the world in 1683?
Thou gavest John Chalkhill for the author's name, and a John Chalkhill of thy
kindred died at Winchester, being eighty years of his age, in 1679. Now thou
speakest of John Chalkhill as 'a friend of Edmund Spenser's,' and how could
this be?
Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a friend,
borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to cover poetry of thine
own inditing? When Mr. Flatman writes of Chalkhill, 't is in words well fitted
to thine own merit:
Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows
Except himself, who charitably shows
The ready road to virtue and to praise,
The road to many long and happy days.
However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green pastures, thou
didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, who stray into thy path
out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy hand, and listen to thy
cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, may our content be equal, and our
praise, therefore, none the less. Father, if Master Stoddard, the great fisher
of Tweed-side, be with thee, greet him for me, and thank him for those songs
of his, and perchance he will troll thee a catch of our dear River.
Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound,
They know not, they dream not, who linger around,
How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin
From thee-- the bliss withered within.
Or perhaps thou wilt better love,
The lanesome Tala and the Lyne,
And Mahon wi' its mountain rills,
An' Etterick, whose waters twine
Wi' Yarrow frae the forest hills;
An' Gala, too, and Teviot bright,
An' mony a stream o' playfu' speed,
Their kindred valleys a' unite
Amang the braes o' bonnie Tweed!
So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old anglers, like
Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age.
X.
To M. Chapelain.
Monsieur,--You were a popular writer, and an honourable, over-educated,
upright gentleman. Of the latter character you can never be deprived, and I
doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are, than the laurels which
flourished so gaily, and faded so soon.
Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day,
But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel out-lives not May.
I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but _your_ laurel
certainly outlived not May, nor can we hope that you dwell where Orpheus and
where Homer are. Some other crown, some other Paradise, we cannot doubt it,
awaited _un si bon homme_. But the moral excellence that even Boileau
admitted, _ladfoi, l'honneur, la probiite',_ do not in Parnassus avail the
popular poet, and some luckless Musset or The'ophile, Regnier or Villars
attains a kind of immortality denied to the man of many contemporary editions,
and of a great commercial success.
If ever, for the confusion of Horace, any Poet was Made, you, Sir, should have
been that fortunately manufactured article. You were, in matters of the Muses,
the child of many prayers. Never, since Adam's day, have any parents but yours
prayed for a poet-child. Then Destiny, that mocks the desires of men in
general, and fathers in particular, heard the appeal, and presented M.
Chapelain and Jeanne Corbie're his wife with the future author of 'La
Pucelle.' Oh futile hopes of men, _O pectora caeca!_ All was done that
education could do for a genius which, among other qualities, 'especially
lacked fire and imagination,' and an ear for verse--sad defects these in a
child of the Muses. Your training in all the mechanics and metaphysics of
criticism might have made you exclaim, like Rasselas, 'Enough! Thou hast
convinced me that no human being can ever be a Poet.' Unhappily, you succeeded
in convincing Cardinal Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your
powers, you received a pension of one thousand crowns, and were made Captain
of the Cardinal's minstrels, as M. de Tre'ville was Captain of the King's
Musketeers.
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