On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 23

Then, secondly, of quant.i.ty, there is scarcely any fixed law. The meters may be timed as the minstrel chooses--fast or slow--and the iambic current checked in reverted eddy, as the words chance to come.

But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no matter how simply got, so only that the words jingle and tingle together with due art of interlacing and answering in different parts of the stanza, correspondent to the involutions of tracery and illumination. The whole twelve-line stanza is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each, thus arranged:

A A B A A B B B A B B A

dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent and descent, or _descant_ more properly; and doubtless with correspondent phases in the voice-given, and duly accompanying, or following, music; Thomas the Rymer's own precept, that "tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,"

being always kept faithfully in mind.[65]

42. Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant of the Christian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself into the four great forms; Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of Love, and Song of Battle; praise, however, being the keynote of pa.s.sion through all the four forms; according to the first law which I have already given in the "Laws of Fesole"; "all great Art is Praise," of which the contrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, [Greek: diabole]: "She gave me of the tree and I did eat" being an entirely museless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential contrary of Love-song.

With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which we may take for pure examples the "Te Deum," the "Te Lucis Ante," the "Amor che nella mente,"[66] and the "Chant de Roland," are mingled songs of mourning, of Pagan origin (whether Greek or Danish), holding grasp still of the races that have once learned them, in times of suffering and sorrow; and songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly the sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin: while through the entire system of these musical complaints are interwoven moralities, instructions, and related histories, in ill.u.s.tration of both, pa.s.sing into Epic and Romantic verse, which gradually, as the forms and learnings of society increase, becomes less joyful, and more didactic, or satiric, until the last echoes of Christian joy and melody vanish in the "Vanity of human wishes."

43. And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the different branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. For one thing, the reader must please put for the present out of his head all thought of the progress of "civilization"--that is to say, broadly, of the subst.i.tution of wigs for hair, gas for candles, and steam for legs. This is an entirely distinct matter from the phases of policy and religion.

It has nothing to do with the British Const.i.tution, or the French Revolution, or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain subtle relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice, which makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that which makes her prefer a gazetteer to a duke; but these relations are not at all to be dealt with until we solemnly understand that whether men shall be Christians and poets, or infidels and dunces, does not depend on the way they cut their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr.

Johnson might have worn his wig in fullness conforming to his dignity, without therefore coming to the conclusion that human wishes were vain; nor is Queen Antoinette's civilized hair-powder, as opposed to Queen Bertha's savagely loose hair, the cause of Antoinette's laying her head at last in scaffold dust, but Bertha in a pilgrim-haunted tomb.

44. Again, I have just now used the words "poet" and "dunce," meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human nature. Men are eternally divided into the two cla.s.ses of poet (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, unmaker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages they have the power of making faithful and formative creatures of themselves, or unfaithful and _de_-formative. And this distinction between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and evermore _benedicti_, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and evermore maledicti, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian in Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the question for the public of any given period is not whether they are a const.i.tutional or unconst.i.tutional vulgus, but whether they are a benignant or malignant vulgus. So also, whether it is indeed the G.o.ds who have given any gentleman the grace to despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it is indeed the rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons.

45. But yet again. This difference between the persons to whom Heaven, according to Orpheus, has granted "the hour of delight,"[67] and those whom it has condemned to the hour of detestableness, being, as I have just said, of all times and nations,--it is an interior and more delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of _Christian_ as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another division, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which has hope of the Resurrection.

_This_ is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian harmony, whether of word or instrument; and so literally, that in precise manner as this hope disappears, the power of song is taken away, and taken away utterly. "When the Christian falls back out of the bright hope of the Resurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known the hope is blameless: one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or Philomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to declare that the human wishes, which are summed in that one--"Thy kingdom come"--are vain! The Fates ordain there shall be no singing after that denial.

46. For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim hope of yet once more Eurydice,--the Philomela song--granted after the cruel silence,--the Halcyon song--with its fifteen days of peace, were all sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to Johnson--accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope--triumphantly and with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-whistles, proclaimed for the glorious discovery of the civilized ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no G.o.d, but have we not invented gunpowder?--who wants a G.o.d, with that in his pocket?[68] There is no Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but have we not paper and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne? There is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in everlasting mud, and great was the day in which our worships were born. And there is no gospel, but only, whatever we've got, to get more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. And are not these discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed of, and fiddled of, and generally made melodiously indubitable in the eighteenth century song of praise?

47. The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, in that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long enough without dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough without piping, suddenly Astraea returns to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious triplet of Amphisbaenic ryme, "_ca ira_."

Amphisbaenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying Ercildoune's precept, "Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye," to the syllable.--Don Giovanni's. .h.i.therto fondly chanted "Andiam, andiam," become suddenly impersonal and prophetic: IT shall go, and you also. A cry--before it is a song, then song and accompaniment together--perfectly done; and the march "towards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty thousand--they to the sound of stringed music--preceded by young girls with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldierwise their shovels and picks, and with one throat are singing _ca ira_."[69]

Through all the springtime of 1790, from Brittany to Burgundy, on most plains of France, under most city walls, there march and const.i.tutionally wheel to the ca-iraing mood of fife and drum--our clear glancing phalanxes;--the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand, virgin-led, is in the long light of July. Nevertheless, another song is yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers having gone--amphisbaenic,--on the 28th of August, 1792, "Dumouriez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_."[70]

48. "And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night Dumouriez a.s.sembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan.

Prussians here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and little hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and there--what to advise?" The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses _them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent thus, when needful, yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor quality, of a rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to the fastidious ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows--the cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris _this_ time, the autumnal hours of fate pa.s.s on--_ca ira_--and on the 6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. "Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Ma.r.s.eillaise, ten thousand tenor or ba.s.s pipes joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action." Thus, through the lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle.[71] "Aux armes--marchons." Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning--in what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan!

49. While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung, and danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.

Different also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord, and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this main point--that while the _Ca ira_ and Ma.r.s.eillaise were essentially songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the priests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists, of their day;--not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with the most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and monk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not but appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and specifically the praisers--Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and Byron of the devil.

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having long ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific, and finding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and tw.a.n.gle from their native trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than religious, verses of the school recognized as that of the English Lakes; very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined; observing the errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a pitying and tender indignation, and arriving in lacustrine seclusion at many valuable principles of philosophy, as pure as the tarns of their mountains, and of corresponding depth.[72]

50. I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew Arnold's arrangement of Wordsworth's poems; and read with sincere interest his high estimate of them. But a great poet's work never needs arrangement by other hands; and though it is very proper that Silver How should clearly understand and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we must not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.

Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a single exclamation:

"What was the great Parna.s.sus' self to thee, Mount Skiddaw?"

Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the great masters of the Muse's teaching and the pleasant fingerer of his pastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.

Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably less shrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit; and no sense of humor: but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much doubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards; but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were inferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear themselves talk.

With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a wholesome contentment in modest circ.u.mstances, and such sufficient ease, in that accepted state, as permitted the pa.s.sing of a good deal of time in wishing that daisies could see the beauty of their own shadows, and other such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series of studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country, which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and precious; but they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality in many ways more beautiful than its picture.

51. But the other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one of our country people of old statesman cla.s.s; cottage lying nearly midway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. "Why do not you go to the nearer church?" I asked. "Don't you like the clergyman?"

"Oh no, sir," she answered, "it isn't that; but you know I couldn't leave my mother." "Your mother! she is buried at H---- then?" "Yes, sir; and you know I couldn't go to church anywhere else."

That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not of c.u.mberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives forth her fruit for the living, and receives her dead to peace, might perhaps have been, to our great and endless comfort, discovered before now, if Wordsworth had been content to tell us what he knew of his own villages and people, not as the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but simply as a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of primroses, kind to the parish children, and reverent of the spade with which Wilkinson had tilled his lands: and I am by no means sure that his influence on the stronger minds of his time was anywise hastened or extended by the spirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven rymed to seven, and Foy to boy.

52. Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and frankly acknowledge him; and our English literature enriched with a new and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of his quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its privacy of light.

A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless creatures and scathless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at least, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children--incurious to see in the hands the print of the Nails.

A gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills, fragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel wilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of Dodona.

[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next month,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion; as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints [now corrected, ED.], p. 203, l. 23, of "scarcely" to "securely," and p. 206, l. 6, "full," with comma to "fall," without one; noticing besides that "Redgauntlet" has been omitted in the list, pp. 198, 199; and that the reference to note should not be at the word "imagination," p. 198, l. 6, but at the word "trade," l. 15. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from Jamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one of my difficulties:--"Coup the crans." The language is borrowed from the "cran," or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is sometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward a.s.sistant. Thus it signifies to be _completely_ upset.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 62: August, 1880.]

[Footnote 63: The following fragments out of the letters in my own possession, written by Scott to the builder of Abbotsford, as the outer decorations of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns.

"ABBOTSFORD: _April_ 21, 1817.

"DEAR SIR,--Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself." [The sundial had just been erected.] "Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on the 12th of May. Your former favors (which were weighty as acceptable) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great effect."

"ABBOTSFORD: _July_ 30th.

"I fancy the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche above the door; and though many a man has got a niche _in_ the Tolbooth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and to remain very much your obliged humble servant,

"WALTER SCOTT."

"_August 16._

"MY DEAR SIR,--I trouble you with this [_sic_] few lines to thank you for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbotsford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutcheons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well in character." [Alas--Sir Walter, Sir Walter!] "I intend the old lion to predominate over a well which the children have christened the Fountain of the Lions.

His present den, however, continues to be the hall at Castle Street."

"_September 5._

"DEAR SIR,--I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my carts for the stones; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the door itself" [he means the wooden one] "will be kept for the new jail; if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess it.

Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pa.s.s through the celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore."

"_September 8._

"I should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of Porteous-mob.