Love's Meinie Part 2

Now, I hope you are getting accustomed to the general method in which I give you the a.n.a.lysis of all forms--leaf, or feather, or sh.e.l.l, or limb. First, the plan; then the profile; then the cross-section.

I take next, the profile of my feather (B, Fig. 1), and find that it is twisted as the sail of a windmill is, but more distinctly, so that you can always see the upper surface of the feather at its root, and the under at its end. Every primary wing-feather, in the fine flyers, is thus twisted; and is best described as a sail striking with the power of a cimeter, but with the flat instead of the edge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

(Twice the size of reality.)

A

_a_ 1

_a_ 2

B]

32. Further, you remember that on the edges of the broad side of feathers you find always a series of undulations, irregularly sequent, and lapping over each other like waves on sand. You might at first imagine that this appearance was owing to a slight ruffling or disorder of the filaments; but it is entirely normal, and, I doubt not, so constructed, in order to insure a redundance of material in the plume, so that no accident or pressure from wind may leave a gap anywhere. How this redundance is obtained you will see in a moment by bending any feather the wrong way. Bend, for instance, this plume, B, Fig. 2, into the reversed curve, A, Fig. 2; then all the filaments of the plume become perfectly even, and there are no waves at the edge. But let the plume return into its proper form, B, and the tissue being now contracted into a smaller s.p.a.ce, the edge waves are formed in it instantly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.

A

B]

Hitherto, I have been speaking only of the filaments arranged for the strength and continuity of the energetic plume; they are entirely different when they are set together for decoration instead of force.

After the feather of the robin's wing, let us examine one from his breast.

33. I said, just now, he might be at once outshone by a brickbat.

Indeed, the day before yesterday, sleeping at Lichfield, and seeing, the first thing when I woke in the morning, (for I never put down the blinds of my bedroom windows,) the not uncommon sight in an English country town of an entire house-front of very neat, and very flat, and very red bricks, with very exactly squared square windows in it; and not feeling myself in anywise gratified or improved by the spectacle, I was thinking how in this, as in all other good, the too much destroyed all. The breadth of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious, but a whole house-front of brick-red as vivid, is alarming. And yet one cannot generalize even that trite moral with any safety--for infinite breadth of green is delightful, however green; and of sea or sky, however blue.

You must note, however, that the robin's charm is greatly helped by the pretty s.p.a.ce of gray plumage which separates the red from the brown back, and sets it off to its best advantage. There is no great brilliancy in it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is exquisite.

34. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like a transparent hollow sh.e.l.l than a feather (so delicately rounded the surface of it),--gray at the root, where the down is,--tinged, and only tinged, with red at the part that overlaps and is visible; so that, when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, all together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the color determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. There are about thirty of these glowing filaments on each side, (the whole being no larger across than a well-grown currant,) and each of these is itself another exquisite feather, with central quill and lateral webs, whose filaments are not to be counted.

The extremity of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you see in the peac.o.c.k's, and many other such decorative ones. The transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed green leaf to the dual, or heart-shaped, petal of many flowers. I shall return to this part of our subject, having given you, I believe, enough of detail for the present.

35. I have said nothing to-day of the mythology of the bird, though I told you that would always be, for us, the most important part of its natural history. But I am obliged, sometimes, to take what we immediately want, rather than what, ultimately, we shall need chiefly.

In the second place, you probably, most of you, know more of the mythology of the robin than I do, for the stories about it are all northern, and I know scarcely any myths but the Italian and Greek. You will find under the name "Robin," in Miss Yonge's exhaustive and admirable "History of Christian Names," the various t.i.tles of honor and endearment connected with him, and with the general idea of redness,--from the bishop called "Bright Red Fame," who founded the first great Christian church on the Rhine, (I am afraid of your thinking I mean a pun, in connection with robins, if I tell you the locality of it,) down through the Hoods, and Roys, and Grays, to Robin Goodfellow, and Spenser's "Hobbinol," and our modern "Hob,"--joining on to the "goblin," which comes from the old Greek [Greek: Kobalos]. But I cannot let you go without asking you to compare the English and French feeling about small birds, in Chaucer's time, with our own on the same subject. I say English and French, because the original French of the Romance of the Rose shows more affection for birds than even Chaucer's translation, pa.s.sionate as he is, always, in love for any one of his little winged brothers or sisters. Look, however, either in the French or English at the description of the coming of the G.o.d of Love, leading his carol-dance, in the garden of the Rose.

His dress is embroidered with figures of flowers and of beasts; but about him fly the _living_ birds. The French is:

Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx De rossignols et de papegaux De calendre, et de mesangel.

Il semblait que ce fut une angle Qui fuz tout droit venuz du ciel.

36. There are several points of philology in this transitional French, and in Chaucer's translation, which it is well worth your patience to observe. The monkish Latin "angelus," you see, is pa.s.sing through the very unpoetical form "angle," into "ange;" but, in order to get a rhyme with it in that angular form, the French troubadour expands the bird's name, "mesange," quite arbitrarily, into "mesangel." Then Chaucer, not liking the "mes" at the beginning of the word, changes that unscrupulously into "arch;" and gathers in, though too shortly, a lovely bit from another place about the nightingales flying so close round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves off his crown of roses; so that the English runs thus:

But nightingales, a full great rout That flien over his head about, The leaves felden as they flien And he was all with birds wrien, With popinjay, with nightingale, With chelaundre, and with wodewale, With finch, with lark, and with archangel.

He seemed as he were an angell, That down were comen from Heaven clear.

Now, when I first read this bit of Chaucer, without referring to the original, I was greatly delighted to find that there was a bird in his time called an archangel, and set to work, with brightly hopeful industry, to find out what it was. I was a little discomfited by finding that in old botany the word only meant "dead-nettle," but was still sanguine about my bird, till I found the French form descend, as you have seen, into a mesangel, and finally into mesange, which is a provincialism from [Greek: meion], and means, the smallest of birds--or, specially here,--a t.i.tmouse. I have seldom had a less expected or more ignominious fall from the clouds.

37. The other birds, named here and in the previous description of the garden, are introduced, as far as I can judge, nearly at random, and with no precision of imagination like that of Aristophanes; but with a sweet childish delight in crowding as many birds as possible into the smallest s.p.a.ce. The popinjay is always prominent; and I want some of you to help me (for I have not time at present for the chase) in hunting the parrot down on his first appearance in Europe. Just at this particular time he contested favor even with the falcon; and I think it a piece of good fortune that I chanced to draw for you, thinking only of its brilliant color, the popinjay, which Carpaccio allows to be present on the grave occasion of St. George's baptizing the princess and her father.

38. And, indeed, as soon as the Christian poets begin to speak of the singing of the birds, they show themselves in quite a different mood from any that ever occurs to a Greek. Aristophanes, with infinitely more skill, describes, and partly imitates, the singing of the nightingale; but simply as beautiful sound. It "fills the thickets with honey;" and if in the often-quoted--just because it is _not_ characteristic of Greek literature--pa.s.sage of the Coloneus, a deeper sentiment is shown, that feeling is dependent on a.s.sociation of the bird-voices with deeply pathetic circ.u.mstances. But this troubadour finds his heart in heaven by the power of the singing only:--

Trop parfoisaient beau servise Ciz oiselles que je vous devise.

Il chantaient un chant ytel Com fussent angle esperitel.

We want a moment more of word-chasing to enjoy this. "Oiseau," as you know, comes from "avis;" but it had at this time got "oisel" for its singular number, of which the terminating "sel" confused itself with the "selle," from "ancilla" in domisella and demoiselle; and the feminine form "oiselle" thus s.n.a.t.c.hed for itself some of the delightfulness belonging to the t.i.tle of a young lady. Then note that "esperitel" does not here mean merely spiritual, (because all angels are spiritual) but an "angle esperitel" is an angel of the air. So that, in English, we could only express the meaning in some such fashion as this:--

They perfected all their service of love, These maiden birds that I tell you of.

They sang such a song, so finished-fair, As if they were angels, born of the air.

39. Such were the fancies, then, and the scenes, in which Englishmen took delight in Chaucer's time. England was then a simple country; we boasted, for the best kind of riches, our birds and trees, and our wives and children. We had now grown to be a rich one; and our first pleasure is in shooting our birds; but it has become too expensive for us to keep our trees. Lord Derby, whose crest is the eagle and child--you will find the northern name for it, the bird and bantling, made cla.s.sical by Scott--is the first to propose that wood-birds should have no more nests. We must cut down all our trees, he says, that we may effectively use the steam-plow; and the effect of the steam-plow, I find by a recent article in the _Cornhill Magazine_, is that an English laborer must not any more have a nest, nor bantlings, neither; but may only expect to get on prosperously in life, if he be perfectly skillful, sober, and honest, and dispenses, at least until he is forty-five, with the "luxury of marriage."

40. Gentlemen, you may perhaps have heard me blamed for making no effort here to teach in the artisans' schools. But I can only say that, since the future life of the English laborer or artisan (summing the benefits to him of recent philosophy and economy) is to be pa.s.sed in a country without angels and without birds, without prayers and without songs, without trees and without flowers, in a state of exemplary sobriety, and (extending the Catholic celibacy of the clergy into celibacy of the laity) in a state of dispensation with the luxury of marriage, I do not believe he will derive either profit or entertainment from lectures on the Fine Arts.

LECTURE II.[8]

THE SWALLOW.

41. We are to-day to take note of the form of a creature which gives us a singular example of the unity of what artists call beauty, with the fineness of mechanical structure, often mistaken for it. You cannot but have noticed how little, during the years of my past professorship, I have introduced any questions as to the nature of beauty. I avoided them, partly because they are treated of at length in my books; and partly because they are, in the last degree, unpractical. We are born to like or dislike certain aspects of things; nor could I, by any arguments, alter the defined tastes which you received at your birth, and which the surrounding circ.u.mstances of life have enforced, without any possibility of your voluntary resistance to them. And the result of those surrounding circ.u.mstances, to-day, is that most English youths would have more pleasure in looking at a locomotive than at a swallow; and that many English philosophers would suppose the pleasure so received to be through a new sense of beauty. But the meaning of the word "beauty" in the fine arts, and in cla.s.sical literature, is properly restricted to those very qualities in which the locomotion of a swallow differs from that of an engine.

[8] Delivered at Oxford, May 2d, 1873.

42. Not only from that of an engine; but also from that of animals in whose members the mechanism is so complex as to give them a resemblance to engines. The dart of the common house-fly, for instance, in full strength, is a more wonderful movement than that of a swallow. The mechanism of it is not only more minute, but the swiftness of the action so much greater, that the vibration of the wing is invisible.

But though a school-boy might prefer the locomotive to the swallow, he would not carry his admiration of finely mechanical velocity into unqualified sympathy with the workmanship of the G.o.d of Ekron; and would generally suppose that flies were made only to be food for the more graceful fly-catcher,--whose finer grace you will discover, upon reflection, to be owing to the very moderation and simplicity of its structure, and to the subduing of that infinitude of joints, claws, tissues, veins, and fibers which inconceivably vibrate in the microscopic[9] creature's motion, to a quite intelligible and simple balance of rounded body upon edged plume, maintained not without visible, and sometimes fatigued, exertion, and raising the lower creature into fellowship with the volition and the virtue of humanity.

[9] I call it so because the members and action of it cannot be seen with the unaided eye.

43. With the virtue, I say, in an exceedingly qualified sense; meaning rather the strength and art displayed in overcoming difficulties, than any distinct morality of disposition. The bird has kindly and homely qualities; but its princ.i.p.al "virtue" for _us_, is its being an incarnate voracity, and that it moves as a consuming and cleansing power. You sometimes hear it said of a humane person that they would not kill a fly: from 700 to 1,000 flies a day are a moderate allowance for a baby swallow.

44. Perhaps, as I say this, it may occur to some of you to think, for the first time, of the reason of the bird's name. For it is very interesting, as a piece of language study, to consider the different power on our minds,--nay, the different sweetness to the ear,--which, from a.s.sociation, these same two syllables receive, when we read them as a noun, or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first, nothing would appear more natural than that the name should have been given to the bird from its reckless function of devouring. But if you look to your Johnson, you will find, to your better satisfaction, that the name means "bird of porticos," or porches, from the Gothic "swale;"

"subdivale,"--so that he goes back in thought as far as Virgil's, "Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circ.u.m, stagna sonat." Notice, in pa.s.sing, how a simile of Virgil's, or any other great master's, will probably tell in two or more ways at once. Juturna is compared to the swallow, not merely as winding and turning swiftly in her chariot, but as being a water-nymph by birth,--"Stagnis quae, fluminibusque sonoris, praesidet." How many different creatures in one the swallow is by birth, as a Virgilian simile is many thoughts in one, it would take many more lectures than one to show you clearly; but I will indicate them with such rough sketch as is possible.

45. It belongs, as most of you know, to a family of birds called Fissirostres, or, literally, split-beaks. Split heads would be a better term, for it is the enormous width of mouth and power of gaping which the epithet is meant to express. A dull sermon, for instance, makes half the congregation "fissirostres." The bird, however, is most vigilant when its mouth is widest, for it opens as a net to catch whatever comes in its way,--hence the French, giving the whole family the more literal name, "Gobble-fly"--Gobe-mouche, extend the term to the open-mouthed and too acceptant appearance of a simpleton.

46. Partly in order to provide for this width of mouth, but more for the advantage in flight, the head of the swallow is rounded into a bullet shape, and sunk down on the shoulders, with no neck whatever between, so as to give nearly the aspect of a conical rifle bullet to the entire front of the body; and, indeed, the bird moves more like a bullet than an arrow--dependent on a certain impetus of weight rather than on sharp penetration of the air. I say dependent on, but I have not yet been able to trace distinct relation between the shapes of birds and their powers of flight. I suppose the form of the body is first determined by the general habits and food, and that nature can make any form she chooses volatile; only one point I think is always notable, that a complete master of the art of flight must be short-necked, so that he turns altogether, if he turns at all. You don't expect a swallow to look round a corner before he goes round it; he must take his chance. The main point is that he may be able to stop himself, and turn, in a moment.

47. The stopping, on any terms, is difficult enough to understand; nor less so, the original gaining of the pace. We always think of flight as if the main difficulty of it were only in keeping up in the air;--but the buoyancy is conceivable enough, the far more wonderful matter is the getting along. You find it hard work to row yourself at anything like speed, though your impulse-stroke is given in a heavy element, and your return-stroke in a light one. But both in birds and fishes, the impelling stroke and its return are in the same element; and if, for the bird, that medium yields easily to its impulses, it secedes as easily from the blow that gives it. And if you think what an effort you make to leap six feet, with the earth for a fulcrum, the dart either of a trout or a swallow, with no fulcrum but the water and air they penetrate, will seem to you, I think, greatly marvelous. Yet of the mode in which it is accomplished you will as yet find no undisputed account in any book on natural history, and scarcely, as far as I know, definite notice even of the rate of flight. What do you suppose it is?

We are apt to think of the migration of a swallow, as we should ourselves of a serious journey. How long, do you think, it would take him, if he flew uninterruptedly, to get from here to Africa?

48. Michelet gives the rate of his flight (at full speed, of course,) as eighty leagues an hour. I find no more sound authority; but do not doubt his approximate accuracy;[10] still how curious and how provoking it is that neither White of Selborne, Bewick, Yarrell, nor Gould, says a word about this, one should have thought the most interesting, power of the bird.[11]

[10] I wrote this some time ago, and the endeavors I have since made to verify statements on points of natural history which I had taken on trust have given me reason to doubt everybody's accuracy. The ordinary flight of the swallow does not, a.s.suredly, even in the dashes, reach anything like this speed.