Jonson was then but green in judgment, and, perhaps, had not yet mastered the great art of smoking, so we will excuse him for fancying that the great plant tends to mournfulness instead of serenity. We find a certain artlessness of youth-the youth both of the dramatist and the drama at the close of the sixteenth century-in the way in which the catastrophe is hurried and huddled. Paulo Firenze, after a short burst of indignation, pardons off-hand his false friend Angelo, who had abducted Paulo's true love, confided to his care. The tablet which identifies Gaspar as Camillo is ready at a moment's notice, Chamont having carried it about him for years, conserving it secret from his bosom friend Gaspar himself. Tobacco is mentioned but two or three times in the masques, most significantly in that of the "Metamorphosed Gipsies," thrice presented to King James, 1621, of which the MS. in the author's own writing is preserved, a good fortune shared by no other of his compositions. It is very clever, graceful, and courtier-like; but we are sorry to say that, to please the counterblasting king, our poet descends to vilify tobacco. The first mention occurs in the long famous and popular song, "Cocklorel would needs have the devil his guest." The tobacco stanzas are the last three, and are not in the MS., so they must have been tacked on specially for "Solomon, the son of David." Afterwards the Patrico jingles about it in the same strain, using the same metaphor, and giving it the same accompaniments, being those of the well-known story: "Three things to which James had a dislike, and with which, he said, he would treat the devil were he to invite him to a dinner, were a pig, a poll of ling with mustard, and a pipe of tobacco for digesture." I wonder with what the devil has treated him since inviting him to dinner! Well, the indignation of Diva Nicotina confounded Jonson in these acts of servile hypocrisy, so alien from his stout, honest character-the first lines are doggrel, and the others mere patter, both destitute alike of wit and humour; and the metaphor with which the herb of herbs and its censer are associated, is so coarse that I dare not reproduce the verses in these our dainty days. A righteous retribution, O Ben! In the rich Epigram 101, "Inviting a Friend to Supper," from which I have already quoted in Section vii., we have the following lines :— "But that which most doth take my Muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine : Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted. Are all but Luther's beer, to this I sing." Every Brave old Ben! we know you here again! man has the right to have his own particular idol, and to exalt it in hyperbole by depreciating the most precious things or most noble natures in comparison therewith. Wherefore, we quarrel not with this extreme devotion to Canary, nor with the supremacy claimed for it. Rather we welcome our glorious convivialist of the Mermaid Tavern, our boon Delphic god of the Apollo room, seeing how rightly he ranks our rich Indian vapour with nectar and the Thespian spring. Aught more precious he could not find to name with the very darling of his heart. big Ben ! Brave old With these generous lines we must close our excerpts, although we could glean a few others of minor importance. I can scarcely better conclude this long series of papers than with some sentences from Mr. Swinburne's very fine Introduction to the works of George Chapman (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875), which has also been reprinted separately: “Even the Atlantean shoulders of Jonson, fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies, have been hardly tasked to support and transmit to our own day the fame of his great genius, overburdened as it was with the twofold load of his theories on art and his pedantries of practice.* And Chapman, though also a brother of the giant brood, had not the Herculean sinews of his younger friend and fellow-student. The weight that could but bend the back that carried the vast world of invention whose twin hemispheres are 'Volpone' and the 'Alchemist,' was wellnigh enough to crush the staggering strength of the lesser Titan. . . . The learning of Jonson, doubtless far wider and sounder than that of Chapman, never allowed or allured him to exchange for a turbid and tortuous jargon the vigorous purity of his own English spirit and style. when on a fresh reading we skip over these blocks [the savourless interludes of buffoonery, too common in even our best old plays, whether comedies or tragedies: gross baits for the gross But * Per contra: Lamb, for whose critical genius Mr. Swinburne has a most righteous admiration, says of the "Poetaster": "This Roman play seems written to confute those enemies of Ben, in his own day and ours, who have said that he made a pedantical use of his learning. He has here revived the whole court of Augustus by a learned spell. We are admitted to the society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus converse in our own tongue more finely and poetically than they were used to express themselves in their native Latin," &c. ... groundlings] laid as if on purpose in our way through so magnificent a gallery of comic and poetic inventions, the monument of a mind so mighty, the palace of so gigantic a genius as Ben Jonson's, we are more than content to forget such passing and perishable impediments to our admiration of that sovereign intellect which has transported us across them into the royal presence of its ruling and informing power. Here, again, we find that Jonson and Chapman stand far apart from their fellow-men of genius. The most ambitious and the most laborious poets of their day, conscious of high aims and large capacities, they would be content with no crown that might be shared by others; they had each his own severe and haughty scheme of study and invention, and sought for no excellence which lay beyond or outside it; that any could lie above, past the reach of their strong arms and skilful hands, past the scope of their keen and studious eyes, they would probably have been unable to believe or to conceive. And yet there were whole regions of high poetic air, whole worlds of human passion and divine imagination, which might be seen by humbler eyes than theirs and trodden by feebler feet, where their robust lungs were powerless to breathe, and their strenuous song fell silent." The reader will do well to study the whole of this Introduction, which is not unworthy in its sphere of the author of "Atalanta in Calydon," being the fit reverse of the golden medallion of which that is the noble obverse. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE * "I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance, and not action. . . . I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it." "The angel who presided at my birth Said Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go, love without the help of anything on earth." BEFORE the publication of these volumes I knew but one of Blake's poems, that on the Human Form, or Divine Image, quoted by James John Garth Wilkinson in his great work. The wisdom and the celestial simplicity of this little piece prepared one to love the author and all that he had done; yet the selections from his poems and other writings were a revelation * "Life of William Blake, Pictor Ignotus, with Selections from his Poems and other Writings." By the late Alexander Gilchrist, author of the "Life of William Etty." Illustrated from Blake's own works, in facsimile, by W. J. Linton, and in photolithography, with a few of Blake's original plates. In 2 vols. London: Macmillan & Co., 1863. I give the full title, in recommending the work to all good readers. The first volume contains the Life and a noble supplementary chapter by Mr. D. G. Rossetti; the second volume contains the Selections, admirably edited by Mr. D. G. Rossetti, with the assistance of Mr. W. M. Rossetti. There is magnificent prose as well as poetry in the selections, and the engravings in themselves are worth more than most books. |