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.
“You
know I sometimes write myself,” the young fellow
said.
“Indeed,”
said I, “I am interested.”
“Sometimes
I seem possessed by a familiar spirit, a sort of demon,
and the consequence is—I write.”
“Quite
natural,” said my friend Simon Peter, in his most
caustic tone; he hates a literary man of any kind. I
tried to soften his asperity. “I believe that
is a common experience; all the greatest poets have
certified to it,” the youth blustered. “I
wish you had something here you could read us now,”
I continued. I saw Simon Peter take his pipe out of
his mouth; I knew he was glaring at me. But if he will
smoke in my rooms why should I not have some revenge
on him? “Well, you see I have something,”
said the young fellow, fingering at his pocket. “Well
let us have it,” I said, looking straight at Simon
Peter. That worthy had taken out his cigar case; he
knows of all things I abhor cigar smoke. But the young
fellow had got into his pocket and unfolded his paper,
clearing his throat, which had become choked with Simon
Peter’s vile incense. He read these words:—
Like a demon
sits the cloud,
Alight upon the shoulder of the world,
And tempts her with the promise of renown,
To be the greatest planet of the lot.
If she will have him let his lightnings loose,
And tear the haze from off the dreamy wood
And blast the promise of the fertile year.
But the old world smiles on.
I know you, gentle sir, you are the Fiend,
Begone! for I am well content, being small,
To have a trusty heart; we will go on,
I and my children, doing some good, be sure,
And being contented in our homely way;
And you may flash about from star to star,
Hobble your thunder in the fields of Mars,
Maybe sometime you will be tired, and come
To turn a mill within the gorge of Time;
You will be happier then, but, until then,
Good-bye!
It
was difficult for me to say anything, and I knew there
was no use expecting Simon Peter to say a word, so there
was an awkward silence. Then I asked whether he liked
writing blank verse. I thought this was the easiest
way out of it, and the conversation did drift away from
the peril. Simon Peter was so grateful that he stopped
smoking his cigar. There is something human about that
man. When the youth went away Simon Peter shook hand
with him. I asked him why. “You put him in a beastly
false position,” he said, with some harshness,
“and I was sorry for him.” I thought this
was paying me off with a vengeance.
S.
One
at least of the frequenters of the Mermaid Inn desires
to congratulate Mr. George Martin on his excellent poem
“To my Canary Bird,” in the March number
of The Dominion Illustrated Monthly. Mr. Martin when
he is at his best, as in these stanzas, shows himself
to be a very good craftsman in verse. His lines are
full of feeling, tender and impulsive, and the workmanship
of the entire poem is remarkable for skill of construction
and charm of phrase. Mr. Martin has evidently learned
his art from Keats, whose note we catch in very many
of the lines. I find the following stanza exceedingly
pleasant to the car and the fancy:—
There is
no touch of winter in thy song,
No wall of
winds, my yellow-coated friend;
All beauties of the spring to thee belong,
All blooming
charms, and all the scents that lend
A drowsy gladness to the summer hours;
Again I hear
swift rivulets descend
The
mountain slopes, like children loosed from school;
Again
I see the lily on the pool,
And hear the whispered loves of leaves and flowers.
If
I may judge from such former work of Mr. Martin as I
have seen, he is one of those poets whose gift, like
wine and tobacco pipes, to use Lowell’s comparison,
improves with age. The older he grows the better work
he does. His is surely a happy destiny who can occupy
and amuse a fresh and vigorous old age with the composition
of such eloquent and workmanlike verses as these.
L.
A
great deal has been written as to the comparative merits
of the greater novelists and novels of this century.
And invariably, the first place has been given to such
writers as Scott, Thackeray, Eliot and Dickens. It is
very hard to make a complete list of the greater writers
of fiction in the English language. Many would be inclined
to include Bulwer and others. There is no doubt that
much work of a strong and remarkable character has been
done by such writers as Reade, Collins, Trollope, etc.
I would be tempted to place Kingsley above them all,
and close in rank with the first mentioned, while such
men as Hardy, Blackmore and Norris, form a later and
strongly distinctive school, more akin to the better
American fiction writers of to-day. George Meredith
stands by himself as a strange personality, remaining
from the older school, and yet not of them. It may not
be generally known that one or even two of the greatest
works of fiction of modern days came from a New England
mind, that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Probably the two
greatest novels of this or any other century are the
“Scarlet Letter,” by Hawthorne, and “Silas
Marner,” by George Eliot. Both are simple in construction
and unaffected in manner, but both, and especially the
former, deal with subjects of so great a character and
in such a way as to make them the most remarkable dramas
of human life, in prose or poetry, since Shakespeare.
C.
Now
in the first breaking of spring, when mind and body
take rest after the prolonged struggle with tempest
and frost, and the fair promise of the fruitful year
is before us, there comes upon the natural human soul
of the poor man the longing to possess land, to have
the lordship of some little plot of fertile earth, where
he may plant and tend and know the triumph of harvest.
Next to the care and education of children, I think
that the freshest and happiest occupation is the planting
and rearing of an orchard. In our climate the difficulties
with which the orcharder has to contend and the skill
and intelligence which are required of him perhaps render
this pursuit all the more exhilarating. What can be
more interesting to anyone who loves the soil and all
that grows upon it, than by careful and persistent experiment
to discover what trees and fruit-bearing plants can
be utilised, and how best they can be utilized, to give
to his land that bountiful and fruit-laden aspect which
is so closely associated with the idea of home and the
homestead. The most noticeable defect in the farm land
scenery of Middle and Eastern Ontario is the lack of
orchards. The wild scenery of the forest is beautiful,
and not less lovely in another way are the fields of
our forefathers, mellowed by long years and the patient
and affectionate usage of men. But these bare and almost
desolate farms, where there is neither the wild beauty
of the wilderness nor the genial loveliness of old possession,
beat down the imagination, and their melancholy influence
must tend to harden and depress the generation of young
people growing up among them. Let every man, unless
he be indeed in that degree of poverty that compels
him to devote himself to bread-making alone, do something
for his children and his country by planting trees,
and especially fruit trees. When he has done this he
will have accomplished things which his thought has
probably not patience to follow out. He will have contributed
to the growth of patriotism in a succeeding generation;
he will have established a moral and intellectual influence,
which shall enter into the lives of many hundreds of
his descendants.
L.
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