Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 73

Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude.

3 No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green.

Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress' name.

Little, alas, they know or heed, How far these beauties her exceed!

Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found.

4 What wondrous life in this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head.

The luscious cl.u.s.ters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine.

The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach.

Stumbling on melons as I pa.s.s, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on gra.s.s.

5 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness.

The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.

6 Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.

7 Such was the happy garden state, While man there walked without a mate: After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet!

But 'twas beyond a mortal's share To wander solitary there: Two paradises are in one, To live in paradise alone.

8 How well the skilful gard'ner drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new!

Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?

SATIRE ON HOLLAND.

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but the offscouring of the British sand; And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots when they heaved the lead; Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell, Of shipwrecked c.o.c.kle and the mussel-sh.e.l.l; This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, They, with mad labour, fished the land to sh.o.r.e: And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if't had been of ambergris; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away; Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll, Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

How did they rivet, with gigantic piles, Thorough the centre their new-catched miles; And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; Building their watery Babel far more high To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky.

Yet still his claim the injured Ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played; As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what's their _mare liberum_.

A daily deluge over them does boil; The earth and water play at level-coil.

The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest; And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw Whole shoals of Dutch served up for Cabillau; Or, as they over the new level ranged, For pickled herring, pickled heeren changed.

Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck and drake, Therefore necessity, that first made kings, Something like government among them brings.

For, as with Pigmies, who best kills the crane, Among the hungry he that treasures grain, Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns, So rules among the drowned he that drains.

Not who first see the rising sun commands, But who could first discern the rising lands.

Who best could know to pump an earth so leak, Him they their lord, and country's father, speak.

To make a bank was a great plot of state; Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Hence some small dikegrave unperceived invades The power, and grows, as 'twere, a king of spades; But, for less envy some joined states endures, Who look like a commission of the sewers: For these half-anders, half-wet and half-dry, Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.

'Tis probable religion, after this, Came next in order; which they could not miss.

How could the Dutch but be converted, when The apostles were so many fishermen?

Besides, the waters of themselves did rise, And, as their land, so them did re-baptize; Though herring for their G.o.d few voices missed, And Poor-John to have been the Evangelist.

Faith, that could never twins conceive before, Never so fertile, sp.a.w.ned upon this sh.o.r.e More pregnant than their Marg'ret, that laid down For Hands-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.

Sure, when religion did itself embark, And from the east would westward steer its ark, It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground, Each one thence pillaged the first piece he found: Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew, Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew; That bank of conscience, where not one so strange Opinion, but finds credit, and exchange.

In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear: The universal church is only there. * * *

IZAAK WALTON.

This amiable enemy of the finny tribe was born in Stafford, in August 1593. We hear of him first as settled in London, following the trade of a sempster, or linen-draper, having a shop in the Royal Burse, in Cornhill, which was 'seven feet and a half long, and five wide,' and where he became possessed of a moderate fortune. He spent his leisure time in fishing 'with honest Nat and R. Roe.' From the Royal Burse, he removed to Fleet Street, where he had 'one half of a shop,' a hosier occupying the other half. In 1632, he married Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken of Furnival's Inn, and sister of Dr Ken, the celebrated Bishop of Bath and Wells. Through her and her kindred, he became acquainted with many eminent men of the day. His wife, 'a woman of remarkable prudence and primitive piety,' died long before him. He retired from business in 1643, and lived, for forty years after, a life of leisure and quiet enjoyment, spending much of his time in the houses of his friends, and much of it by the still waters, which he so dearly loved. Walton commenced his literary career by writing a Life of Dr Donne, and followed with another of Sir Henry Wotton, prefixed to his literary remains. In 1653 appeared his 'Complete Angler,' four editions of which were called for before his decease. He wrote, in 1662, a Life of Richard Hooker; in 1670, a Life of George Herbert; and, in 1678, a Life of Bishop Sanderson--all distinguished by _navete_ and heart. In 1680, he published an anonymous discourse on the 'Distempers of the Times.' In 1683, he printed, as we have seen, Chalkhill's 'Thealma and Clearchus;' and on the 15th of December in the same year, he died at Winchester, while residing with his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, Prebendary of Winchester Cathedral.

Walton is one of the most loveable of all authors. Your admiration of him is always melting into affection. Red as his and is with the blood of fish, you pant to grasp it and press it to yours. You go with him to the fishing as you would with a bright-eyed boy, relishing his simple-hearted enthusiasm, and leaning down to listen to his precocious remarks, and to pat his curly head. It is the prevalence of the childlike element which makes Walton's 'Angler' rank with Bunyan's 'Pilgrim,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and White's 'Natural History of Selborne,'

as among the most delightful books in the language. Its descriptions of nature, too, are so fresh, that you smell to them as to a green leaf.

Walton would not have been at home fishing in the Forth or Clyde, or in such rivers as are found in Norway, the milk-blue Logen, or the gra.s.s- green Rauma, uniting, with its rich mediation, Romsdale Horn to the tremendous Witch-Peaks which lower on the opposite side of the valley; --the waters of his own dear England, going softly and somewhat drowsily on their path, are the sources of his inspiration, and seem to sound like the echoes of his own subdued but gladsome spirit. Johnson defined angling as a rod with a fish at one end, and a fool at the other; in Walton's case, we may correct the expression to 'a rod with a fish at one end, and a fine old fellow--the "ae best fellow in the world"--at the other'--

'In wit a man, simplicity a child.'

We have given a specimen of the verse he intersperses sparingly in a book which _is itself a complete poem._

THE ANGLER'S WISH.

1 I in these flowery meads would be: These crystal streams should solace me, To whose harmonious bubbling noise I with my angle would rejoice: Sit here and see the turtle-dove Court his chaste mate to acts of love:

2 Or on that bank feel the west wind Breathe health and plenty: please my mind To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers, And then washed off by April showers!

Here hear my Kenna sing a song, There see a blackbird feed her young,

3 Or a leverock build her nest: Here give my weary spirits rest, And raise my low-pitched thoughts above Earth, or what poor mortals love; Or, with my Bryan[1] and my book, Loiter long days near Shawford brook:

4 There sit by him and eat my meat, There see the sun both rise and set, There bid good morning to next day, There meditate my time away, And angle on, and beg to have A quiet pa.s.sage to the grave.

[1] Probably his dog.

JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER

We hear of the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but, if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is one of the chief marvels of this marvellous world.

John Wilmot was the son of Henry, Lord Rochester, and was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. He was taught grammar at the school of Burford. He then 'entered a n.o.bleman' into Wadham College, when twelve years old, and at 1661, when only fourteen, he was, in conjunction with some others of rank, made M.A. by Lord Clarendon in person. Pursuing his travels in France and Italy, he went in 1665 to sea with the Earl of Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen in an attack on the Dutch fleet. Next year, while serving under Sir Edward Spragge, his commander sent him in the heat of an engagement with a reproof to one of his captains--a duty which Wilmot gallantly accomplished amidst a storm of shot. With this early courage some of his biographers have contrasted his subsequent reputation for cowardice, his slinking away out of street-quarrels, his refusing to fight the Duke of Buckingham, &c. This diversity at different periods may perhaps be accounted for on the ground of the nervousness which continued dissipation produces, and perhaps from his poetical temperament. A poet, we are persuaded, is often the bravest, and often the most pusillanimous of men. Byron was unquestionably in general a brave, almost a pugnacious man; and yet he confesses that at certain times, had one proceeded to horsewhip him, he would not have had the hardihood to resist. Sh.e.l.ley, who, in a tremendous storm, behaved with dauntless heroism, and who would at any time have acted on the example of his own character in 'Prometheus,'

who, in a shipwreck,

'gave an enemy His plank, then plunged aside to die,'

was yet subject to paroxysms of nervous horror, which made him perspire and tremble like a spirit-seeing steed. Rochester had the same temperament, and a similar creed, with these men, although inferior to them both in _morale_ and in genius.

His character was certainly very depraved. He told Burnet on his deathbed that for five years he had not known the sensation of sobriety, having been all that time either totally drunk, or mad through the dregs of drunkenness. He on one occasion, while in this state, erected a stage on Tower Hill, and addressed the mob as a naked mountebank. Even after he became more temperate, he continued and even increased his licentiousness--one devil went out, and seven entered in. He pursued low amours in disguise; he practised occasionally as a quack doctor; and at other times he retired to the country, and, like Byron, amused himself by libelling all his acquaintances--every line in each libel being a lie. Notwithstanding all this, he was a favourite with Charles II., who made him one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park. In his lucid intervals he recurred to his studies, wrote occasional verses, read in French Boileau and in English Cowley, and is called by Wood the best scholar among all the n.o.bility.

At last, ere he was thirty-one, the 'dreary old sort of feel,' and the 'rigid fibre and stiffening limbs,' of which Byron and Burns, when scarcely older, complained, began to a.s.sail Rochester. He had exhausted his capacity of enjoyment by excess, and had deprived himself of the consolations of religion by infidelity. His unbelief was not like Sh.e.l.ley's--the growth of his own mind, and the fruit of unbridled, though earnest, speculation;--it was merely a drug which he s.n.a.t.c.hed from the laboratories of others to deaden his remorse, and enable him to look with desperate calmness to the blotted Past and the lowering Future. At this stage of his career, he became acquainted with Bishop Burnet, who has recorded his conversion and edifying end in a book which, says Johnson, 'the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.' To this, after Johnson's example, we refer our readers. Eochester died July 26, 1680, before he had completed his thirty-fourth year. He was married, and left three daughters and a son named Charles, who did not long survive his father. With him the male line ceased, and the t.i.tle was conferred on a younger son of Lord Clarendon. His poems appeared in the year of his death, professing on the t.i.tle-page to be printed at Antwerp. They contain much that is spurious, but some productions that are undoubtedly Rochester's. They are at the best, poor fragmentary exhibitions of a vigorous, but undisciplined mind. His songs are rather easy than lively. His imitations are distinguished by grace and spirit.

His 'Nothing' is a tissue of clever conceits, like gaudy weeds growing on a sterile soil, but here and there contains a grand and gloomy image, such as--

'And rebel Light obscured thy reverend dusky face.'

His 'Satire against Man' might be praised for its vigorous misanthropy, but is chiefly copied from Boileau.