Sir
Roger—What have we here?
Giles—There is everything under the sun set down
with some show of reason; they run atilt at the world,
and treat men and manners as familiar as an old hat.
Sir Roger—Think you they protest too much? I like
a matter disposed bravely, but—
Giles—Methinks they have a genial tongue. Will
you hear them?
Sir Roger—Well, an’ it be not too long I’ll
have some sack, and you read on.
—
Old Play.
If
the fates ever furnish me with the means of building
a house, and give me the liberty of placing it where
I will, I shall certainly set it either on a lofty hill,
or, if I am not thoroughly suited in that respect, in
a very deep valley. Men who dwell upon the hills should
be cool-blooded and large-minded. The outlook over a
vast stretch of country is magical in its effect upon
the mind, and if we make it the habitual circumstance
of our lives it cannot fail to exercise a permanent
influence over the character. He who looks abroad from
the hills is reminded at every hour of the day of the
largeness and beauty of life, of the variousness of
human labors, of the inexhaustible freshness and loveliness
of this earth. His vision passes to the utmost visible
limit and projects itself into the immensity beyond.
The infinity of space and time, the multitude of worlds,
the strangeness of human destiny, the smallness and
insignificance of the unit which is himself, are always
present to his thought. One can hardly conceive how
he should be a mean man, or harbor thoughts otherwise
than calm and spacious. The dwellers in valleys also
are more fortunate, I think, than those who have built
upon the plain. The upward sweep of the enclosing hills,
especially if they be plumed and ruffled with forest,
leads the mind out of itself, and conducts it to regions
of morning, freshness and beauty.
L.
I
happened to pick up a copy of Gottschalk’s “Notes
of a Pianist” the other day. It is a jumble of
all sorts of remarks about the places he visited and
the incidents of his concert tours. Some of his references
to Canadian towns are interesting. Writing in 1862 he
says of Ottawa, “They are building a House of
Parliament here which, considering the narrowness of
the town and the number of deputies which it is required
to accommodate, give it the appearance of Robinson Crusoe’s
canoe.” He makes great fun of the French spoken
by the Canadians in Montreal and Quebec and the names
of the people he finds very amusing—“Mr.
Cauchon was the Minister of the Interior for some years.”
Then he makes fun of him for his pronunciation. In Quebec
he finds that everything “reflects the sacristy.”
But he everywhere abuses the French Canadians. He calls
them with scant courtesy “ugly and apathetic.”
He spells Caughnawaga “Coylmawaggher,” which
is certainly a very extraordinary attempt. He played
in Toronto on July 18, 1862, but he does not say anything
about the town; he says merely that his concert was
under the patronage of Major-General Napier and that
he met some officers he had known in Paris.
S.
Nothing
more truly American has ever been written than the strong
and original collection of Pike County Ballads, by John
Hay, editor with J.G. Nicolay of the famous Life of
Lincoln. These remarkable poems were first written for
The New York Tribune, and republished in book form in
1871. While these verses show something akin to those
of Bret Harte, they have about them an originality all
their own which makes them unique in American literature.
The ballad “Jim Bludso,” the most characteristic,
is an epic of Mississippi steamboat life, told in strong
and pathetic language, with a quaint humor and a practical
theology evolved from the rude western environment,
and truly human in its freshness and boldness of conception.
The quaint originality of statement in this western
epic, is shown in such lines as:
Wall,
no! I can’t tell whar he lives,
Because he
don’t live, you see;
Leastways,
he got out of the habit
Of livin’
like you and me.
Or,
A keerless
man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward
hand in a row,
But he never
flunked and he never lied—
I reckon he
never knowed how.
Then
the lines relate how the steamer, the Prairie Belle,
who wouldn’t be passed though she was the oldest
craft on the line:
Came
tearing along that night,
With a nigger
squat on her safety valve.
What
could be finer than the description of the fire that
broke out, and—
Burnt
a hole in the night.
Then
is told how the heroic Bludso, after holding “her
nozzle agin the bank,” till “the last galoot”
was “ashore,” went up alone in the smoke
of the Prairie Belle. Then comes the summing up in the
simple and childlike theology of the stanza:
He
weren’t no saint—but at judgment
I’d
run my chance with Jim.
’Longside
of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn’t
shake hands with him.
He seen his
duty, a dead sure thing,
And went for
it thar and then;
And Christ
ain’t agoing to be too hard
On a man that
died for men.
In a similar
vein is “Little Breeches,” with its quaint
humanity; and that remarkably terse relation of a fight
for “whiskey skin,” called the “Mystery
of Gilgal.” Those who have not already perused
these irresistibly charming ballads can obtain them
in a small edition of Routledge’s Companion Poets.
C.
The
late Lord Lytton seemed to have inherited the fatality
which haunted his father when he wrote “King Arthur.”
He seemed predestined to write verse that, practically
at least, is a failure. His long novel in verse, “Glenaveril,”
was in every way a lamentable performance, so tedious
that it has even failed to find a place in the list
of his works. “Lucile” now forms the interior
of many gaudily-bound gift books, and it may be read
by the gentle young ladies who receive it on the anniversaries
and holidays of the year, but I have genuine misgivings
even upon that last point. I fancy even they turn with
a sense of relief to the freer atmosphere of Mr. E.P.
Roe and “The Duchess.” Yes, these books
are immensely dull and have no touch of poetry from
cover to cover. It is hardly possible to consider seriously
the work of a man who could write this stanza:—
Whate’er
the gain by these from love expected,
Whether its
acquisition be in pelf
Or pleasure, it is wholly unconnected
With love
itself.
Yes, that
is true, very true; but then what a bore it is to have
it said that way. Anyone could have said it as well,
and no one would in consequence feel like calling him
a poet. But Mr. Blunt asks us to put “Owen Meredith”
among the immortals. This, of course, prevents us from
putting Mr. Blunt among the critics, and leaves us with
a feeling of bewilderment as to just what to do with
him. It is possible that a poet never existed who could
not charm one ear with his rhyme. This is probably a
provision of considerate Nature, who does not care to
leave any of her children uncomforted, and who recognized
the ultimate of human misery in the man who would write
verses and have no single admirer.
S.
The
art of reading is one which is left for the most part
to take care of itself. Many people go to a teacher
to learn music, but very few ever think of having themselves
taught how to read, i.e., how to read with precision
and effect. The art of elocution might be made to afford
almost as much pleasure and inspiration as that of music
if it were as honestly cultivated and as widely practised.
The systems of professional elocution taught in the
reading schools and practised on our public platforms
seem to be applied only to a very narrow range in literature.
We all know the sort of thing we may expect from the
elocutionist who advertises a public reading. It must
be something affording opportunity for a vehement display
of voice and plenty of vigorous gesticulation—something
dramatic—more often something melodramatic. I
wonder if anyone ever heard the “Ode to a Grecian
Urn” or “The Blessed Damosel” from
the lips of a professional elocutionist. The greatest
part of which is strongest and most beautiful in our
literature remains untouched by this art as an art.
There is no reason why it should be so, except that
its masters are themselves deficient in the deepest
and truest culture, or that they are not content to
undertake the slow and somewhat ungrateful task of reforming
the taste of the thoughtless multitude. However this
may be, there is room for a splendid new departure in
the art of elocution, and there would be a high reward
of ultimate fame, if not of fortune, for the man who
should successfully undertake to fill it. It seems to
me not by any means impossible that great bodies of
people from the general masses might in time be drawn
together for the purpose of listening to the deepest
and subtlest products of thought and imagination, if
only these were rendered by persons possessing at the
same time a high literary faculty of appreciation and
the necessary technical training. What a benefit, too,
to the body of the people would be the establishment
of a system of elocutionary training based upon delicate
and comprehensive literary taste. We meet with very
few people who are able really to read. Not one person
in twenty is able to read plain prose, and not one in
a thousand—I had almost made it more—to
read verse. Yet a great many people have in them the
natural capacity to do both. All that they need is culture,
encouragement and the proper vocal training. Surely
there can hardly be a greater delight than to listen
to some magical story or poem rendered by a sweet and
sonorous voice, perfectly governed and informed by the
spirit of what is read. Every household should have
its reader and every school its competent reading master.
In our higher public schools, I understand, reading
is practically untaught, and the result is made awfully
apparent in the coarse accent and barbarous pronunciation
which torture us daily from our pulpits and platforms.
It would no doubt be unreasonable to expect that these
schools should furnish any very exquisite or elaborate
culture in elocution; but they should at least make
a certain sound and practical exercise in reading under
a trained master a part of their course in order that
their scholars might go forth able to enunciate correctly
and convey something of the sense and feeling of any
ordinary passage of literary English.
L.
We
ought to be very careful how we praise Canadian work,
merely because it is Canadian, but we have a man in
Canada of whom we are all justly proud, and whose genius
is unique in its peculiar originality. I mean Mr. Bengough
of Grip. His work as a caricaturist is considered by
many to be superior in its simple suggestiveness to
any other of the kind in the world. Certainly his work
compares favorably with the elaborate work of the American
and German schools of cartoonists. He always hits the
nail on the head, and while unmerciful on fraud of any
kind is never brutal. But, famous as he is, it is not
as a caricaturist that I would now speak of Mr. Bengough,
but as a literary man. In a late number of Grip I noticed
a strong and simply beautiful poem in memory of Mackenzie
that has touched me very much; a poem that in conception
and style is worthy of the personality it depicts. There
is a stately simplicity about such lines as:
No God-like
gifts were his;
His Scottish tongue could speak unvarnished truth;
Better than great, he stood for what was right,
Just plain Mackenzie—nobly commonplace.
He was a
Christian of that old-time sort—
Unfashionable now and growing rare—
Who knew no sacred barr’d from secular,
But worshipped God by doing honest work.
Such
lines as these need no recommendation other than their
own merit.
C.
|
