Canterbury Pieces Part 4

A NOTE ON "THE TEMPEST"

Act III, Scene I

The following brief essay was contributed by Butler to a small miscellany ent.i.tled LITERARY FOUNDLINGS: VERSE AND PROSE, COLLECTED IN CANTERBURY, N.Z., which was published at Christ Church on the occasion of a bazaar held there in March, 1864, in aid of the funds of the Christ Church Orphan Asylum, and offered for sale during the progress of the bazaar. The miscellany consisted entirely of the productions of Canterbury writers, and among the contributors were Dean Jacobs, Canon Cottrell, and James Edward FitzGerald, the founder of the PRESS.

When Prince Ferdinand was wrecked on the island Miranda was fifteen years old. We can hardly suppose that she had ever seen Ariel, and Caliban was a detestable object whom her father took good care to keep as much out of her way as possible. Caliban was like the man cook on a back-country run. "'Tis a villain, sir," says Miranda. "I do not love to look on." "But as 'tis," returns Prospero, "we cannot miss him; he does make our fire, fetch in our wood, and serve in offices that profit us." Hands were scarce, and Prospero was obliged to put up with Caliban in spite of the many drawbacks with which his services were attended; in fact, no one on the island could have liked him, for Ariel owed him a grudge on the score of the cruelty with which he had been treated by Sycorax, and we have already heard what Miranda and Prospero had to say about him. He may therefore pa.s.s for n.o.body. Prospero was an old man, or at any rate in all probability some forty years of age; therefore it is no wonder that when Miranda saw Prince Ferdinand she should have fallen violently in love with him. "Nothing ill," according to her view, "could dwell in such a temple--if the ill Spirit have so fair an house, good things will strive to dwell with 't." A very natural sentiment for a girl in Miranda's circ.u.mstances, but nevertheless one which betrayed a charming inexperience of the ways of the world and of the real value of good looks. What surprises us, however, is this, namely the remarkable celerity with which Miranda in a few hours became so thoroughly wide awake to the exigencies of the occasion in consequence of her love for the Prince. Prospero has set Ferdinand to hump firewood out of the bush, and to pile it up for the use of the cave. Ferdinand is for the present a sort of cadet, a youth of good family, without cash and unaccustomed to manual labour; his unlucky stars have landed him on the island, and now it seems that he "must remove some thousands of these logs and pile them up, upon a sore injunction." Poor fellow! Miranda's heart bleeds for him. Her "affections were most humble"; she had been content to take Ferdinand on speculation. On first seeing him she had exclaimed, "I have no ambition to see a goodlier man"; and it makes her blood boil to see this divine creature compelled to such an ignominious and painful labour. What is the family consumption of firewood to her? Let Caliban do it; let Prospero do it; or make Ariel do it; let her do it herself; or let the lightning come down and "burn up those logs you are enjoined to pile";--the logs themselves, while burning, would weep for having wearied him. Come what would, it was a shame to make Ferdinand work so hard, so she winds up thus: "My father is hard at study; pray now rest yourself--HE'S SAFE FOR THESE THREE HOURS."

Safe--if she had only said that "papa was safe," the sentence would have been purely modern, and have suited Thackeray as well as Shakspeare. See how quickly she has learnt to regard her father as one to be watched and probably kept in a good humour for the sake of Ferdinand. We suppose that the secret of the modern character of this particular pa.s.sage lies simply in the fact that young people make love pretty much in the same way now that they did three hundred years ago; and possibly, with the exception that "the governor" may be subst.i.tuted for the words "my father" by the young ladies of three hundred years hence, the pa.s.sage will sound as fresh and modern then as it does now. Let the Prosperos of that age take a lesson, and either not allow the Ferdinands to pile up firewood, or so to arrange their studies as not to be "safe" for any three consecutive hours.

It is true that Prospero's objection to the match was only feigned, but Miranda thought otherwise, and for all purposes of argument we are justified in supposing that he was in earnest.

THE ENGLISH CRICKETERS

The following lines were written by Butler in February, 1864, and appeared in the PRESS. They refer to a visit paid to New Zealand by a team of English cricketers, and have kindly been copied and sent to me by Miss Colborne-Veel, whose father was editor of the PRESS at the time that Butler was writing for it. Miss Colborne-Veel has further permitted to me to make use of the following explanatory note: "The coming of the All England team was naturally a glorious event in a province only fourteen years old. The Mayor and Councillors had 'a car of state'--otherwise a brake--'with postilions in the English style.' Cobb and Co. supplied a six-horse coach for the English eleven, the yellow paint upon which suggested the 'glittering chariot of pure gold.' So they drove in triumph from the station and through the town. Tinley for England and Tennant for Canterbury were the heroes of the match. At the Wednesday dinner referred to they exchanged compliments and cricket b.a.l.l.s across the table. This early esteem for cricket may be explained by a remark made by the All England captain, that 'on no cricket ground in any colony had he met so many public school men, especially men from old Rugby, as at Canterbury.'"

[To the Editor, the Press, February 15th, 1864.]

Sir--The following lines, which profess to have been written by a friend of mine at three o'clock in the morning after the dinner of Wednesday last, have been presented to myself with a request that I should forward them to you. I would suggest to the writer of them the following quotation from "Love's Labour's Lost."

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, S.B.

"You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent; let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret . . . Imitari is nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider."

Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV, S. 2.

HORATIO . . .

. . . The whole town rose Eyes out to meet them; in a car of state The Mayor and all the Councillors rode down To give them greeting, while the blue-eyed team Drawn in Cobb's glittering chariot of pure gold Careered it from the station.--But the Mayor - Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man, And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smiles With which he beamed upon them.

His beard, by nature tawny, was suffused With just so much of a most reverend grizzle That youth and age should kiss in't. I a.s.sure you He was a Southern Palmerston, so old In understanding, yet jocund and jaunty As though his twentieth summer were as yet But in the very June o' the year, and winter Was never to be dreamt of. Those who heard His words stood ravished. It was all as one As though Minerva, hid in Mercury's jaws, Had counselled some divinest utterance Of honeyed wisdom. So profound, so true, So meet for the occasion, and so--short.

The king sat studying rhetoric as he spoke, While the lord Abbot heaved half-envious sighs And hung suspended on his accents.

CLAUD. But will it pay, Horatio?

HOR. Let Shylock see to that, but yet I trust He's no great loser.

CLAUD. Which side went in first?

HOR. We did, And scored a paltry thirty runs in all.

The lissom Lockyer gambolled round the stumps With many a crafty curvet: you had thought An Indian rubber monkey were endued With wicket-keeping instincts; teazing Tinley Issued his treacherous notices to quit, Ruthlessly truthful to his fame, and who Shall speak of Jackson? Oh! 'twas sad indeed To watch the downcast faces of our men Returning from the wickets; one by one, Like patients at the gratis consultation Of some skilled leech, they took their turn at physic.

And each came sadly homeward with a face Awry through inward anguish; they were pale As ghosts of some dead but deep mourned love, Grim with a great despair, but forced to smile.

CLAUD. Poor souls! Th' unkindest heart had bled for them.

But what came after?

HOR. Fortune turned her wheel, And Grace, disgraced for the nonce, was bowled First ball, and all the welkin roared applause!

As for the rest, they scored a goodly score And showed some splendid cricket, but their deeds Were not colossal, and our own brave Tennant Proved himself all as good a man as they.

Through them we greet our Mother. In their coming, We shake our dear old England by the hand And watch s.p.a.ce dwindling, while the shrinking world Collapses into nothing. Mark me well, Matter as swift as swiftest thought shall fly, And s.p.a.ce itself be nowhere. Future Tinleys Shall bowl from London to our Christ Church Tennants, And all the runs for all the stumps be made In flying baskets which shall come and go And do the circuit round about the globe Within ten seconds. Do not check me with The roundness of the intervening world, The winds, the mountain ranges, and the seas - These hinder nothing; for the leathern sphere, Like to a planetary satellite, Shall wheel its faithful orb and strike the bails Clean from the centre of the middle stump.

Mirrors shall hang suspended in the air, Fixed by a chain between two chosen stars, And every eye shall be a telescope To read the pa.s.sing shadows from the world.

Such games shall be hereafter, but as yet We lay foundations only.

CLAUD. Thou must be drunk, Horatio.

HOR. So I am.

Footnotes:

{1} We were asked by a learned brother philosopher who saw this article in MS. what we meant by alluding to rudimentary organs in machines. Could we, he asked, give any example of such organs? We pointed to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl of our tobacco pipe. This organ was originally designed for the same purpose as the rim at the bottom of a tea-cup, which is but another form of the same function. Its purpose was to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table on which it rested. Originally, as we have seen in very early tobacco pipes, this protuberance was of a very different shape to what it is now. It was broad at the bottom and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table. Use and disuse have here come into play and served to reduce the function to its present rudimentary condition. That these rudimentary organs are rarer in machinery than in animal life is owing to the more prompt action of the human selection as compared with the slower but even surer operation of natural selection. Man may make mistakes; in the long run nature never does so. We have only given an imperfect example, but the intelligent reader will supply himself with ill.u.s.trations.