Claude Duval of ruffians ! One finds it hard to believe in three such. Yet it may be true. It could never have happened in England or America, where the mass of the people know less and care less about their poets than in any other countries. Yet our native tongue boasts the greatest and most universal of poets. The Sicilians paid a greater compliment to Euripides, and Milton has immortalized Alexander's homage to the memory of Pindar. PHILIP. The story of Griselda, of course, you know already; so that I shall need but a short preface to what I read. The first trial which the husband makes of his wife's patience is by taking away her infant daughter, (her only child,) with the avowed purpose of having it murdered. A "Sergeant " is sent to take the babe. At first, Griselda is silent; "But at the last to speak she thus began, And meekly she unto the Sergeant prayed, That she might kiss her child before it died : JOHN. Very sweet and touching. I like, too, what our modern critics would, in all probability, find fault with, the frequent repetition of the word "child." The poet had put himself so in the mother's place, that any less tender epithet would not satisfy him. Now-a-days, an author will wade round through a quagmire of verbiage to avoid using the same word over again. The old poets were more straightforward. PHILIP. I am sorry that we have lost the use of the word "bliss "" as a verb, so much motherliness is conveyed by it. "And thus she said, in her benignant voice: Thy spirit, little child, his care I make, "I trow that for a nurse, in such a case, And meekly to the Sergeant there she said, "Go now,' said she,' and do my lord's behest ; Where neither birds nor beasts may it displace': But to that purpose he no word would say, You are silent. JOHN. I was listening to hear the mother's tears fall upon the face of her child. The first voice that is heard, after the reading of good poetry, comes ordinarily from the shallowest heart in the company. Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave; plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back, till then. I never knew a woman who thought well of Griselda, and I confess I would not choose that woman for a wife who did. Her duty as a mother was paramount to her duty as a wife. As is not uncommon, she betrayed a general principle for the sake of a particular one, which had fastened upon her imagination. Patience, when it is a divine thing, is active, not passive. Chaucer has so tenderly contrived to enlist our pity as to save her from contempt. With what motherly endearment she repeats the word "little," as if to move the sympathy of the stonehearted Sergeant ! PHILIP. What you say reminds me of a passage in the "Yorkshire Tragedy," one of the plays attributed to Shakspeare. I have seen it somewhere quoted as a proof that it was his. The touch of nature in it is worthy of him, but there is nothing in the rest of the drama to sustain the hypothesis. A spendthrift father, in a fit of madness, murders his chil dren. As he seizes one of them, the little fellow, to appease him, calls himself by the name his father had doubtless given him in happier days. "O, what will you do, father? I am your white boy." JOHN. That is very touching. How is it that this simpleness, the very essence of tragic pathos, has become unattainable of late? I know only one modern dramatist capable of it, though nothing would seem easier; I mean Robert Browning. Wordsworth has as deep glances now and then in his poems, but his tragedy of "The Borderers" is as level as a prairie. There is scarce anything tragic about it, except the reading of it; yet what insight has he shown in some parts of "The Excursion"! Among a thousand such passages in Shakspeare, there is one which always struck me as peculiarly fine. It is in the first scene of the second act of "King John." Queen Elinor says to Arthur, "Come to thy grandam, child." Constance replies with sarcastic bitterness, and yet, I fancy, with hot tears in her eyes the while, — "Do, child, go to it' grandam, child; Give grandam kingdom, and it' grandam will Who but Shakspeare would have dared this babytalk in such a place? Yet how admirable! PHILIP. These simplest thoughts, feelings, and experiences, that lie upon the very surface of life, are overlooked by all but uncommon eyes. Most look upon them as mere weeds. Yet a weed, to him that loves it, is a flower; and there are times when we would not part with a sprig of chickweed for a whole continent of lilies. No man thinks his own nature miraculous, while to his neighbour it may give a surfeit of wonder. Let him go where he will, he can find no heart so worth a study as his own. The prime fault of modern poets is, that they are resolved to be peculiar. They are not content that it should come of itself, but they must dig and bore for it, sinking their wells usually through the grave of some buried originality, so that if any water rises it is tainted. Read most volumes of poems, and you are reminded of a French bill of fare, where everything is à la something else. Even a potato au naturel is a godsend. When will poets learn that a grass-blade of their own raising is worth a barrow-load of flowers from their neighbour's garden? JOHN. Men ordinarily wear as many sets of borrowed opinions, as the grave-digger in Hamlet wears waistcoats. They look quite burly, till you strip them; and then, too often, you find but a withered |