English Lands Letters and Kings Part 17

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I think we must always respect the name and the work of William Cowper.

In our next chapter we shall listen to the music of a different singer, and to the story of a jollier, and yet of a far sadder life.

[1] As a matter of curiosity I give what appears to be the corresponding Gaelic in a couplet of lines, from the version in Rev.

Archibald Clerk's Ossian:--

"A's gile na 'n cobhar,' tha sgavilte Air muir o ghaillinn nan sian."

l. 75, Duan 1, Fionnghal.

[2] James Macpherson: b. 1736; d. 1796.

[3] Mr. Mackenzie (_Diss. lx.x.xvii., Edit. Highland Soc._, London, 1807) says that he (Macpherson) took some of his Gaelic MSS. to Florida with him and many were lost there.

[4] Macpherson had translated and published the Iliad in 1773. It will interest my readers to know that a copy of this letter in Johnson's hand-writing, was sold in 1875 for 50--five times the sum which he received for the tale of Ra.s.selas!

[5] Sir John Sinclair, a voluminous agricultural writer of Scotland, was strenuous supporter of Macpherson's claims--respecting Ossianic origin, etc. The best exhibit, however, of the Gaelic side of the question may be found in the prefatory _Dissertation_ by Rev. Archibald Clerk, to the beautiful edition of Ossian published by Blackwood & Sons in 1870.

[6] George Halket, a Jacobite schoolmaster, d. 1756; Alexander Ross, minister, b. 1699; d. 1784; John Skinner, Episcopal clergyman, b. 1721; d. 1807.

[7] George Crabbe: b. 1754; d. 1832. _The Village_, _The Borough_, and _Tales of the Hall_, are his best-known works. _Life_, by his son (1834), is a very full and filially devout book of interesting reading.

[8] So late as 1808, the Edinburgh Review, after speaking of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, etc., continues in language which I suppose is Jeffery's own:--

"From these childish and absurd affectations we turn with pleasure to the manly sense and correct picturing of Mr. Crabbe; and after being dazzled and made giddy with the elaborate raptures and obscure originalities of these new artists, it is refres.h.i.+ng to meet again with the spirit and nature of our old masters in the nervous pages of the author [Crabbe] now before us." Vol. xii., p. 131, Edinboro' Edition.

[9] The old castle was burned in 1816, but has been rebuilt with more than its old splendor.

[10] Smiles, in his _Memoirs of John Murray_--the publisher in question--intimates, however, that the sum was far too large, and Murray a loser by the bargain. Chap. xxii., p. 72, vol. ii. See also Murray's own statement to that effect, p. 385, vol. ii.

[11] William Cowper, b. 1731; d. 1800. Life by Hayley, 1804; another, by Southey (regarded as standard), published with edition of his works in 1833-37. A recent life by Thomas Wright, chiefly valuable for its local details.

[12] Lady Austen married some years later a French gentleman, M. de Tardif, and died in Paris in 1802. She may be counted almost joint-author (with Cowper) of _The Task_.

[13] P. 325, Life, etc., by Thomas Wright, London, 1892.

[14] William Hayley, b. 1745; d. 1820. Life of Cowper, 1803.

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CHAPTER VII

Beyond Dunkeld--which is the southern gateway of the Scottish Highlands--there stretches a great wood, within the domain of the Duke of Athole, where one can wander for miles; the path sometimes mossy, always inviting; now threading dark glens, and again winding under h.o.a.ry forest trees that grow on uplands; now giving glimpses of brook or pool, and now of gra.s.sy glade on which some group of century-old larches slant their shadows; one may hear noises of chattering squirrels, of whirring pheasants, of roaring wood-streams, of pines soughing in the wind; and at last, going up a side-path, the visitor will come to the door of a Hermitage, bedded in densest ma.s.s of foliage. Fifty years ago--to a month--the guide opened that door for me, entered with me, and closed it behind us. I then {258} observed that the whole inner surface of the door was one great mirror, and that there were other mirrors around; while directly opposite was a life-size painting of Ossian fingering his harp; and as I was scanning the details of this picture, the guide touched some hidden spring; Ossian straightway disappeared, sliding into the wall, and through the chasm one looked out upon clouds of spray, behind which an Alpine water-fall with roar and foam plunged down sheer forty feet into a seething pool below. The water-fall through an artful collocation of mirrors seemed to pour down behind you as well; and from the ceiling to pour down above you, and to gird you all about with its din and splash and spray. With the cliffs and the pine boughs it made a pretty grouping of Ossianic charms; and I am sorry to hear that since 1869 or thereabout, the Hermitage, by reason of some vandal outrage, has wholly disappeared.

The only memorial the traveller will find now in that region of the Ossianic harping, of which we spoke in the last chapter, is the Macpherson Stone, which some twenty-five miles farther northward, {259} on the Highland trail, peers out from green copses in the upper valley of the Spey.

I spoke also in our last talk of the literary ferment that had declared itself, and was in active progress along the Scottish border, and in Edinboro'. We had somewhat to say of the poet Crabbe, and of his long and successful poems--now little read; and of those other poems by Cowper, some of which will be always read, and which, when their art shall grow old-fas.h.i.+oned and out of date, will show a tender humanity and a kindly purpose, which I trust will never go out of date.

_Parson White._

[Sidenote: White of Selborne.]

You will remember that we found both of the last-named poets in the country; and that their work concerned itself largely with country life and with country scenes. And now we sidle into the country again, for our first studies to-day;--into the county of Hamps.h.i.+re, where lived, toward the close of the last century, two personages--not far apart in that pleasant region of rolling downs; unknown to each other; their ages, indeed, {260} differing by more than a score of years; but both leaving books you ought to know something about.

The first of these personages was a quiet clergyman[1] of very simple tastes and simple habits, who lived in a beautiful parsonage--still standing, and still overgrown with ivies and banked about with great waving heaps of foliage--where he wrote _The Natural History of Selborne_. It is not a formal book or an ambitious book; it is simply a bundle of short letters extending over dates that cover twenty years in their stretch; and yet the book is so small you could carry it in your pocket. Its t.i.tle describes the book; it tells what this quiet old gentleman saw and learned through twenty odd years of observation, about the birds, the beasts, the fishes, the trees, the flowers, the storms, the suns.h.i.+ne and the clouds of that little country parish of Selborne. And yet that simple story is told with such easy frankness, such delicacy, such simplicity, such truthfulness, such tender feeling for all G.o.d's creatures, whether beast or bird, that the little book has become almost as much a cla.s.sic {261} as _Walton's Complete Angler_; and the name of Gilbert White, which scarce a hundred Londoners knew when he died, is now known to every well-equipped English library everywhere. I have compared it with _Walton's Complete Angler_, though it has not the old fisherman's dalliance with the muses; nor has it much literary suggestiveness. There are no milkmaids courtesying to its periods, nor any songs, except those of the birds.

Good old Parson White is simpler (if maybe); he is more homely; he is more direct; and by his tender particularity of detail he has given to the winged and creeping creatures of his pleasant Hamps.h.i.+re downs the freedom of all lands.

It is true, indeed--as I have said in another connection--that we Americans do not altogether recognize his chaffinches and his t.i.tlarks; his daws and his fern-owl are strange to us; and his robin red-breast--though undoubtedly the same which in our nursery days flitted around the dead "Children in the Wood" (while tears stood in our eyes) and

"Painfully Did cover them with leaves,"

{262} is by no means our American red-breast. For one, I wish it were otherwise; I wish with all my heart that I could identify the old pitying, feathered mourners in the British wood, with the rollicking, joyous singer who perches every sunrise, through all the spring, upon some near tree, within stone's throw of my window, and stirs the dewy air with his loud _bravura_.

Another noticeable thing about this old country parson is his freedom from all the artifices and buckram and abbreviations of learning, so that he is delightfully comprehensible by everybody. If only we could have an edition of Gray's Botany--for instance--with some ten lines of Parson White's homely descriptive English about the height and bigness, and color and habit of the flowers, instead of symbols and Latin genealogies and scholastic reticence--what a G.o.d-send it would be to the average country gentleman or country woman!

I want specially to call the attention of those young people in whose interest I am supposed to talk--to that homely truthfulness, and unabating care of this old gentleman, as giving value to a {263} book or to any literary work whatever. They are not qualities, to be sure, which of themselves carry performance to a high poetic level; but they are qualities which give to it practical and picturesque values, and which--well laid in--will make work survive.

If I were to undertake on any occasion the direction of the composition-writing of young people, I should surely counsel painstaking and minute description of homely natural objects. Nature is better than millinery. Yet out of ten young ladies of average culture you shall be able to pick nine who shall tell a listener flowingly of the last new dress she has seen, and the stuff, and the train, and the lace, and the sleeves, and the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and all the mysteries of its fit--to one who shall give a simple, clear-drawn, and intelligible account of a new flower, or new tree, or a strange bird.

Thus you will perceive that I have made of this old gentleman--whom I greatly respect--a stalking horse, to fire a sermon at my readers; and I am strongly of opinion that there are a great many country clergymen of our time and day, who, if they would bring old Parson White's zeal to the {264} encouragement of a love and a study of natural objects, would do as much thereby to humanize and Christianize the younger members of their flocks as they can possibly do by Vanity Fairs or parochial oyster suppers.

The modest house of Gilbert White[2] was occupied very many years by the venerable Professor Bell, late president of the Linnean Society, who died in 1880. The study of the old naturalist remained long as the master left it; his oaken book-case was still there; so was the thermometer attached to the shelves by which he made his observations; his dial by which he counted the hours stands at the foot of the garden; and in the churchyard near by is his grave; while within the quaint old church, to the right of the altar, is a tablet in his honor; and in his honor, too, all the birds of Selborne will sing night and morning year after year.

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_A Hamps.h.i.+re Novelist._

[Sidenote: Jane Austen.]

And now for that other Hamps.h.i.+re personage, of whom I gave you a hint, as being also guiltless of London life and almost of London acquaintances; it is a lady now of whom I have to speak,[3] and one who deserves to be well known. She lived, when her books were published, only three or more miles away from Selborne, across the hills northward--at the village of Chawton, which lies upon the old coach road from Farnham to Winchester. Miss Austen was much younger--as I have said--than our old friend the parson; indeed she was only beginning to try her pen when Gilbert White was ready to lay his down.

She had all his simplicities of treatment and all his acuteness of observation--to which she added a charming humor and large dramatic power; but her subjects were men and women, and not {266} birds. She wrote many good old-fas.h.i.+oned novels which people read now for their light and delicate touches, their happy characterizations, their charming play of humor, and their lack of exaggeration. She makes you slip into easy acquaintance with the people of her books as if they lived next door, and would be pulling at your bell to-morrow, or to-night. And you never confound them; by the mere sound of their voices you know which is Ellinor, and which is Marianne; and as for the disagreeable people in her stories, they are just as honestly and naturally disagreeable as any neighbor you could name--whether by talking too much, or making puns, or prying into your private affairs.

Walter Scott, who read her books over and over, says, "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." Macaulay, too, admired her intensely; ventured even to speak of her amazing, effective naturalness--in the same paragraph with Shakespeare. Miss Mitford confided to a young niece of the auth.o.r.ess, that "she would {267} give her hand," if she could write a story like Miss Austen. We may not and must not doubt her quality and her genius, whatever old-time stiffness we may find in her conversations. One book of hers at least you should read, if only to learn her manner; and as you read it remember that it was written by a young woman who had pa.s.sed nearly her whole life in Hamps.h.i.+re--who knew scarce any of the literary people of the day; who had only made chance visits to London, and a stay of some four years in the lively city of Bath. She was very winning and beautiful--if her portrait[4] is to be relied upon--with a piquant, mischievous expression--looking very capable of making a great many hearts ache, beside those which ache in her books.

It would be impossible to cite fragments from her stories that would give any adequate notion of her manner and accomplishment; it would be very like showing the feather of a bird, to give an {268} idea of its swoop of wing. Perhaps _Pride and Prejudice_, though her first written work, is the one most characteristic. You do not get lost in its sentimental strains; you do not find surfeit of immaculate conduct.

There are fine woods and walks; but there is plenty of mud, and bad-going. The very heroines you often want to clutch away from their uncomely surroundings; and as for the elderly Mrs. Bennett, whose tongue is forever at its "click-clack," you cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that she might--innocently--get choked off the scene, and appear no more.

But that is not the deft Miss Austen's way; that gossiping, silly, irritating _mater familias_, goes on to the very end--as such people do in life--making your bile rise; and when the rainbows of felicity come at last to arch over the scenes of _Pride and Prejudice_, Mrs.

Bennett's clacking tongue is still strident, and still reminds you in the strongest possible way, that Miss Austen has been busy with the veriest actualities of life, and not with its pretty, s.h.i.+mmering vapors.

_Persuasion_ is a less interesting book, and less complete than _Pride and Prejudice_; its heroine, {269} Anne Eliot, is not possessed of very salient qualities; hardly gaining or holding very earnest attention; yet with a quiet sense of duty, and such every-day fulfilment of it, as makes her righteously draw toward her all the triumphs of the little drama; a lost love is reclaimed by these quiet forces, and victory comes to crown her easy gentleness. _Northanger Abbey_ is weaker, but with bold, striking naturalism in it; all the littlenesses and plottings and vain speech of the Bath Pump-Room seem to come to life in its pages; to just such life as we may find about our Cape Mays, and Pequod, and Ocean houses, every blessed summer's day! Miss Austen's earlier novels, which made her reputation, were written before she was twenty-five, and published later, and under many difficulties--anonymously; so she had none of that public incense regaling her, which was set ablaze for the less capable Miss Burney; and it was almost as an unknown, strange, quiet gentlewoman that she went down, in the later years of her life, to the sh.o.r.es of the beautiful Southampton Waters--seeking health there; and again, on the same search to the higher lands of the {270} Hamps.h.i.+re downs--where she died, only forty-two, and lies buried under a black marble slab, which you may find under the vaults of the interesting old Cathedral of Winchester.

The recognition of her high qualities was not so extended in her life-time, as it is now; and thirty years after her death, a visitor to the great Hamps.h.i.+re Cathedral was asked by the respectable verger: "What there was _particular_ about Miss Austen, that so many people should want to see her grave?" Even the most wooden of vergers would hardly ask the question now; her extraordinary quickness and justness of observation astonish every intelligent reader. All the more, since her life was lived within narrow lines; but what she saw, she saw true, and she remembered. That wonderful masterly Shakespearian alertness of mind in seizing upon traits and retaining their relations and colors, is what distinguishes her, as it distinguishes every kindred genius. I can understand how many people cannot overmuch relish the stories of Miss Austen--because they do not relish the people to whom she introduces us; but I cannot understand how any reader can fail to be {271} impressed and electrified by her marvellous photographic reproduction of social shades of conduct. How delightful is that indignation of Sir John Middleton, when he learns of the villainy and falsity of Willoughby. "To think of it! and he had offered the scoundrel one of Follies' puppies!" And then--reflectively--"A pretty man he was too, and owner of one of the finest pointer b.i.t.c.hes in England! The devil take him!" What a synopsis of the man's qualities, and of Sir John's measurement of them!