Love's Meinie Part 9

92. PHILOSOPHY. The author should at least have given a note or two to explain the sense in which he uses words so wide as this.

The philosophy which begins in pride, and concludes in malice, is indeed _a_ fountain--though not _the_ fountain--of woes, to mankind. But true philosophy such as Fenelon's or Sir Thomas More's, is a well of peace.

98. WORTH. Again, it is not clearly told us what the author means by the worth of a bird's soul, nor how the birds learned it. The reader is left to discern, and collect for himself--with patience such as not one in a thousand now-a-days possesses, the opposition between the "fount of our soul" (line 83) and fountain of philosophy.

124. I could willingly enlarge on these last two stanzas, but think my duty will be better done to the poet if I quote, for conclusion, two lighter pieces of his verse, which will require no comment, and are closer to our present purpose. The first,--the lament of the French Cook in purgatory,--has, for once, a note by the author, giving M.

Soyer's authority for the items of the great dish,--"symbol of philanthropy, served at York during the great commemorative banquet after the first exhibition." The commemorative soul of the tormented Chef--always making a dish like it, of which n.o.body ever eats--sings thus:--

"Do you veesh To hear before you taste, of de hundred-guinea deesh?

Has it not been sung by every knife and fork, 'L'extravagance culinaire a l'Alderman,' at York?

Vy, ven I came here, eighteen Octobers seence, I dis deesh was making for your Royal Preence, Ven half de leeving world, cooking all de others, Swore an oath hereafter, to be men and brothers.

All de leetle Songsters in de voods dat build, Hopped into the kitchen asking to be kill'd; All who in de open furrows find de seeds, Or de mountain berries, all de farmyard breeds,-- Ha--I see de knife, vile de deesh it shapens, Vith les pet.i.ts noix, of four-and-twenty capons, Dere vere dindons, fatted poulets, fowls in plenty, Five times nine of partridges, and of pheasants twenty; Ten grouse, that should have had as many covers, All in dis one deesh, with six preety plovers, Forty woodc.o.c.ks, plump, and heavy in the scales, Pigeons dree good dozens, six-and-dirty quails, Ortulans, ma foi, and a century of snipes, But de preetiest of dem all was twice tree dozen pipes Of de melodious larks, vich each did clap the ving, And veeshed de pie vas open, dat dey all might sing!"

125. There are stiff bits of prosody in these verses,--one or two, indeed, quite unmanageable,--but we must remember that French meter will not read into ours. The last piece I will give flows very differently. It is in express imitation of Scott--but no n.o.bler model could be chosen; and how much better for minor poets sometimes to write in another's manner, than always to imitate their own.

This chant is sung by the soul of the Francesca of the Bird-ordained purgatory; whose torment is to be dressed only in falling snow, each flake striking cold to her heart as it falls,--but such lace invest.i.ture costing, not a cruel price per yard in souls of women, nor a mortal price in souls of birds.

Her 'snow-mantled shadow' sings:

"Alas, my heart! No grief so great As thinking on a happy state In misery. Ah, dear is power To female hearts! Oh, blissful hour When Blanche and Flavia, joined with me, Tri-feminine Directory, Dispensed in lat.i.tudes below The laws of flounce and furbelow; And held on bird and beast debate, What lives should die to serve our state!

We changed our statutes with the moon, And oft in January or June, At deep midnight, we would prescribe Some furry kind, or feathered tribe.

At morn, we sent the mandate forth; Then rose the hunters of the North: And all the trappers of the West Bowed at our feminine behest.

Died every seal that dared to rise To his round air-hole in the ice; Died each Siberian fox and hare And ermine trapt in snow-built snare.

For us the English fowler set The ambush of his whirling net; And by green Rother's reedy side The blue kingfisher flashed and died.

His life for us the seamew gave High upon Orkney's lonely wave; Nor was our queenly power unknown In Iceland or by Amazon; For where the brown duck stripped her breast For her dear eggs and windy nest, Three times her bitter spoil was won For woman; and when all was done, She called her snow-white piteous drake, Who plucked his bosom for our sake."

126. "See 'Hartwig's Polar World' for the manner of taking Eiderdown."--Once more, we have thus much of author's note, but edition and page not specified, which, however, I am fortunately able to supply. Mr. Hartwig's miscellany being a favorite--what can I call it, sand-hill?--of my own, out of which every now and then, in a rasorial manner, I can scratch some savory or useful contents;--one or two, it may be remembered, I collected for the behoof of the Bishop of Manchester, on this very subject, (_Contemporary Review_, Feb. 1880); and some of Mr. Hartwig's half-sandy, half-soppy, political opinions, are offered to the consideration of the British workman in the last extant number of 'Fors.' Touching eider ducks, I find in his fifth chapter--on Iceland--he quotes the following account, by Mr. Shepherd, of the sh.o.r.e of the island of 'Isafjardarjup'--a word which seems to contain in itself an introduction to Icelandic literature:--

127. "The ducks and their nests were everywhere, in a manner that was quite alarming. Great brown ducks sat upon their nests in ma.s.ses, and at every step started up from under our feet. It was with difficulty that we avoided treading on some of the nests. The island being but three-quarters of a mile in width, the opposite sh.o.r.e was soon reached.

On the coast was a wall built of large stones, just above the high-water level, about three feet in height, and of considerable thickness. At the bottom, on both sides of it, alternate stones had been left out, so as to form a series of square compartments for the ducks to make their nests in. Almost every compartment was occupied; and, as we walked along the sh.o.r.e, a long line of ducks flew out one after another. The surface of the water also was perfectly white with drakes, who welcomed their brown wives with loud and clamorous cooing.

When we arrived at the farmhouse, we were cordially welcomed by its mistress. The house itself was a great marvel. The earthen wall that surrounded it and the window embrasures were occupied by ducks. On the ground, the house was fringed with ducks. On the turf-slopes of the roof we could see ducks; and a duck sat in the sc.r.a.per.

"A gra.s.sy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a chess-board, (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed, and a hollow made,) and all were filled with ducks. A windmill was infested, and so were all the out-houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices.

The ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame that we could stroke them on their nests; and the good lady told us that there was scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its eggs without flight or fear."

128. But upon the back of the canvas, as it were, of this pleasant picture--on the back of the leaf, in his book, p. 65,--this description being given in p. 66,--Doctor Hartwig tells us, in his own peculiar soppy and sandy way--half tearful, half Dryasdusty, (or may not we say--it sounds more Icelandic--'Dry-as-sawdusty,') these less cheerful facts. "The eiderdown is easily collected, as the birds are quite tame.

The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest thickly lined with her beautiful down, the collectors, after carefully removing the bird, rob the nest of its contents; after which they replace her. She then begins to lay afresh--though this time only three or four eggs,--and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted, and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her a.s.sistance, who willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot, never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her maternal instinct undisturbed by the avarice of man."

129. Now, as I have above told you, these two statements are given on the two sides of the same leaf; and the reader must make what he may of them. Setting the best of my own poor wits at them, it seems to me that the merciless abstraction of down is indeed the usual custom of the inhabitants and visitors; but that the 'good lady,' referred to by Mr.

Shepherd, manages things differently; and in consequence we are presently farther told of her, (bottom of p. 65,) that "when she first became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks was not more than fifteen pounds weight in the year; but under her careful nurture of twenty years it had risen to nearly one hundred pounds annually. It requires about one pound and a half to make a coverlet for a single bed, and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen s.h.i.+llings per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter consumption, one or two only being left to hatch."

But here, again, pulverulent Dr. Hartwig leaves us untold who 'consumes' all these pickled eggs of the cooing and downy-breasted creatures; (you observe, in pa.s.sing, that an eider-duck coos instead of quacking, and must be a sort of Sea-Dove,) or what addition their price makes to the good old lady's feather-nesting income of, as I calculate it, sixty to seventy-five pounds a year,--all her twenty years of skill and humanity and moderate plucking having got no farther than that. And not feeling myself able, on these imperfect data, to offer any recommendations to the Icelandic government touching the duck trade, I must end my present chapter with a rough generalization of results. For a beginning of which, the time having too clearly and sadly come for me, as I have said in my preface, to knit up, as far as I may, the loose threads and straws of my raveled life's work, I reprint in this place the second paragraph of the chapter on Vital Beauty in the second volume of 'Modern Painters,' premising, however, some few necessary words.

130. I intended never to have reprinted the second volume of 'Modern Painters'; first, because it is written in affected imitation of Hooker, and not in my own proper style; and, secondly, yet chiefly, because I did not think the a.n.a.lytic study of which it mainly consists, in the least likely to be intelligible to the general student, or, therefore, profitable to him. But I find now that the 'general student'

has plunged himself into such abysses, not of a.n.a.lytic, but of dissolytic,--dialytic--or even diarrhoeic--lies, belonging to the sooty and sensual elements of his London and Paris life, that, however imperfectly or dimly done, the higher a.n.a.lysis of that early work of mine ought at least to be put within his reach; and the fact, somehow, enforced upon him, that there were people before _he_ lived, who knew what 'aesthesis' meant, though they did not think that pigs' flavoring of pigs'-wash was enn.o.bled by giving it that Greek name: and that there were also people before his time who knew what vital beauty meant, though they did not seek it either in the model-room, or the Parc aux Cerfs.

Therefore, I will republish (D.V.) the a.n.a.lytic parts of the second volume of 'Modern Painters' as they were written, but with perhaps an additional note or two, and the omission of the pa.s.sages concerning Evangelical or other religious matters, in which I have found out my mistakes.

131. To be able to hunt for these mistakes, and crow over them, in the original volume, will always give that volume its orthodox value in sale catalogues, so that I shall swindle n.o.body who has already bought the book by bringing down its price upon them. Nor will the new edition be a cheap one--even if I ever get it out, which is by no means certain. Here, however, at once, is the paragraph above referred to, quite one of the most important in the book. The reader should know, preparatorily, that for what is now called 'aesthesis,' _I_ always used, and still use, the English word 'sensation'--as, for instance, the sensation of cold or heat, and of their differences;--of the flavor of mutton and beef, and their differences;--of a peac.o.c.k's and a lark's cry, and their differences;--of the redness in a blush, and in rouge, and their differences;--of the whiteness in snow, and in almond-paste, and their differences;--of the blackness and brightness of night and day, or of smoke and gaslight, and their differences, etc., etc. But for the Perception of Beauty, I always used Plato's word, which is the proper word in Greek, and the only possible _single_ word that can be used in any other language by any man who understands the subject,--'Theoria,'--the Germans only having a term parallel to it, 'Anschauung,' a.s.sumed to be its equivalent in p. 22 of the old edition of 'Modern Painters,' but which is not its real equivalent, for Anschauung does not (I believe) _include_ bodily sensation, whereas Plato's Theoria does, so far as is necessary; and mine, somewhat more than Plato's. "The first perfection," (then I say, in this so long in coming paragraph) of the theoretic faculty, "is the kindness and unselfish fullness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high degree the heart of man is incapable; neither what intense enjoyment the angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the part they take in the shedding of G.o.d's kindness upon them, can we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to G.o.d, and are made in measure like unto Him, can we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire essence is in G.o.d only. But even the ordinary exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character; for he who loves not G.o.d, nor his brother, cannot love the gra.s.s beneath his feet, and the creatures which live not for his uses, filling those s.p.a.ces in the universe which he needs not; while, on the other hand, none can love G.o.d, nor his human brother, without loving all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them, every one, as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part be touched more truly. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of S.

Francis of a.s.sisi, who never spoke to bird or cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the Hartleap Well:--

'Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'

And again in the White Doe of Rylstone, with the added teaching, that anguish of our own

'Is tempered and allayed by sympathies, Aloft ascending, and descending deep, Even to the inferior kinds;'

so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports, in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one; and gathers into one continuance of cruelty, for his amus.e.m.e.nt, all the devices that brutes sparingly, and at intervals, use against each other for their necessities."

132. So much I had perceived, and said, you observe, good reader, concerning S. Francis of a.s.sisi, and his sermons, when I was only five-and-twenty,--little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at a.s.sisi,[25] or ever--among such poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries--I should fondly keep a little 'pinch' of his cloak.

[25] See 'Ariadne Florentina,' chap. v., -- 164; compare 'Fors,'

Letter V.

Rough cloak of hair, it is, still at a.s.sisi; concerning which, and the general use of camels' hair, or sackcloth, or briars and thorns, in the Middle Ages, together with seal-skins (not badgers'), and rams' skins dyed gules, by the Jews, and the Crusaders, as compared with the use of the two furs, Ermine and Vair, and their final result in the operations of the Hudson's Bay Company, much casual notice will be found in my former work. And now, this is the sum of it all, so far as I can shortly write it.

There is no possibility of explaining the system of life in this world, on any principle of _conqueringly_ Divine benevolence. That piece of bold impiety, if it be so, I have always a.s.serted in my well-considered books,--I considering it, on the contrary, the only really pious thing to say, namely, that the world is under a curse, which we may, if we will, gradually remove, by doing as we are bid, and believing what we are told; and when we are told, for instance, in the best book we have about our own old history, that "unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord G.o.d make coats of skins, and clothed them," we are to accept it as the best thing to be done under the circ.u.mstances, and to wear, if we can get them, wolf skin, or cow skin, or beaver's, or ermine's; but not therefore to confuse G.o.d with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may const.i.tute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or an aeacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their exclusive business by telegraph.

133. And every hour of my life, since that paragraph of 'Modern Painters' was written, has increased, I disdain to say my _feeling_, but say, with fearless decision, my _knowledge_, of the bitterness of the curse, which the habits of hunting and 'la cha.s.se' have brought upon the so-called upper cla.s.ses of England and France; until, from knights and gentlemen, they have sunk into jockeys, speculators, usurers, butchers by battue; and, the English especially, now, as a political body, into what I have called them in the opening chapter of 'The Bible of Amiens,'--"the scurviest louts that ever fouled G.o.d's earth with their carca.s.ses."

The language appears to be violent. It is simply brief, and accurate.

But I never meant it to remain without justification, and I will give the justification here at once.

Take your Johnson, and look out the adjective Scurvy, in its higher or figurative sense.

You find the first quotation he gives is from 'Measure for Measure,'

spoken of the Duke, in monk's disguise:

"I know him for a man divine and holy; Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler."

In which pa.s.sage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or their walking with G.o.d, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men,--in the sense of "Holy--harmless, undefiled," and more than that, helpful or healthful in action--to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary meddling' as the Crimean war.

134. But, secondly, if you look down Johnson's column, you will find his last quotation is not in the higher or figurative, but the lower and literal sense, from Swift, to the effect that "it would be convenient to prevent the excess of drink, with that scurvy custom of taking tobacco." And you will also find, if you ever have the sense or courage to look the facts of modern history in the face, that those two itches, for the pot and the pipe, have been the roots of every other demoralization of the filthiest and literally 'scurviest' sort among _all_ cla.s.ses;--the dirty pack of cards; the church pavement _running_ with human saliva,--(I have seen the spittings in ponds half an inch deep, in the choir of Rouen cathedral); and the entirely infernal atmosphere of the common cafes and gambling-houses of European festivity, infecting every condition of what they call 'aesthesis,' left in the bodies of men, until they cannot be happy with the pines and pansies of the Alps, until they have mixed tobacco smoke with the scent of them; and the whole concluding in the endurance--or even enjoyment--of the most squalid conditions of filth in our capital cities, that have ever been yet recorded, among the disgraces of mankind.

135. But, thirdly, Johnson's central quotation is again from 'Measure for Measure':--

"He spoke _scurvy_ and _provoking_ terms against your honor."

The debates in the English House of Commons, for the last half-century, having consisted virtually of nothing else!

I next take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of railway companies and public-house keepers); or else--and more strictly I believe in etymology--a form of the German 'leute,' 'common people.'

In either case, its proper cla.s.sical English sense is given by Johnson as "a mean, awkward fellow; a b.u.mpkin, a clown."

Now I surely cannot refer to any general representation of British society more acceptable to, and acknowledged by, that society, than the finished and admirably composed drawings of Du Maurier in _Punch_ which have become every week more and more consistent, keen, and comprehensive, during the issues of the last two years.

I take three of them, as quite trustworthy pictures, and the best our present arts of delineation could produce, of the three Etats, or representative orders, of the British nation of our day.

Of the Working cla.s.s, take the type given in Lady Clara Robinson's garden tea party, p. 174, vol. 79.

Of the Mercantile cla.s.s, Mr. Smith, in his drawing-room after dinner, p. 222, vol. 80.