1860.] 91 AN OLD ROD FOR NEW POETS. WHAT I wish is, That poets would leave the Brook and Bee alone, Which make sufficient music of their own, Cease singing of the Stars and of the Soul, But ah, my gentle master Tennyson, Thou, with a heart like the sea-sounding shell, Know ye the tribe, O British public? These Their drugs as dull, their impudence as great, Affecting most what least we understand. Have we a heroine, be sure that she, Tawny as Cleopatra, and as free From that poor superstition-modesty Breathes myrrh at least. Her eyes an image take From the dusk panther's in an Indian brake; Her form, embraced in webs of Tyrian dye, Not all impervious to a poet's eye, Like the red rags by gozzerds held in use Still there remain the stars, the moon, the skies, Higg! I forgive you when, with sense at war, Minstrel, reflect-would you avoid the trunk- That such fine frenzies may become too fine, Be decent, though your poem lack the pith Pause here, my pen, we've trifled long enough, 1860.] All poesy An Old Rod for New Poets. should be, to be divine, Like good wheat bread and wholesome steeped in wine: Prefers neat alcohol and rejects the bread? 'Tis but half true; and those who would excuse In that unhappy way the modern Muse, Charge the pretender with a new pretence, And add dishonesty to impudence. Ah me! Time was when poets and the stage In its high deeds of greatness and of grace, Who's Lady Franklin? I'll make bold to say And all that fuss about a husband! Well, A kind, brave man, 'tis undeniable; But while his heroism none can doubt, You won't dispute that he was bald and stout. The test reveals them in another light; And Higg, indeed, may after all be right, As a dead ass. Still will I not despair, But patiently await what Heaven may please F. G. 93 THE LITERARY SUBURB OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER VII. IF my respected ancestor of a century ago had dressed himself in a suit that might not disgrace the presence of a king, had applied the restorative waters of a perfumer to remove the stains contracted in the company of inebriated genius, had 'girt his loins with the sword that smites not, had powdered those locks not his own, had stiffened those features whose openness betrayed his thoughts too honestly, had submitted his tongue to the higher powers of concealment and deceit, then, though he had been at Fielding's, he might have ventured to go to Walpole's. At the brow of a natural hill a few yards from Pope's, stands the ruined hall that re-mediævalized England. To say how it arose, and how it has affected the tastes, temporal and spiritual, of this country, will occupy a portion of our literary day. A cottage built in 1698 on Strawberry-hill Shot, by the Earl of Bradford's coachman (who was enabled to secure this innocent retreat for his honoured age by chopping the straw of his master's horses), and occupied in succession by Colley Cibber, Talbot, Bishop of Durham, the Duke of Chandos, and Mrs. Chenevix (who supplied all our grandfathers with their toys), was bought in 1747 by Horace, the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole. He was at that time one of those applicants for work, not in order to earn a dinner, but to earn an appetite, who float upon the surface of society at all times. It is often out of young gentlemen in waiting upon events, with a good stock in trade of wit and cleverness, and a considerable share of vanity, that occasion makes great men. After his return from Italy, where he had travelled in company with the poet Gray, instead of writing his adventures he built in lath and plaster his architectural reminiscences, and furnished the erection with the results of his tours among the curiosity shops of the continent and the consignments of his foreign friends. He thus in his own lively way describes his first settlement at Chopped Straw Hall : The house is so small that I can send it you in a letter to look at; the prospect is as delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town, and Richmond Park; and being situated on a hill, descends to the Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for becoming the view. And in another letter he says— It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filagree hedges : A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect: but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. He frankly owns that when he began to build he knew nothing of the principles of Gothic architecture, but the idea that was evidently present to his romantic and inexact mind was to raise an edifice that should transport one in imagination to the feudal and ecclesiastical times; and he succeeded well, for his visitors might have doubted whether it were an abbey or a castle. A low monastic doc: way led to a small oratory, where a saint was enshrined. Beyond it was a cloister; the passage gradually widening led to the hall, thence another narrow passage opened into the refectory, which completed the eminently ecclesiastical suite of apartments on the ground-floor. On the first landing we found that we had quitted the monastery for the baronial castle. The Breakfast Room' opened into the Armoury, which led to the Library. The other rooms were the Star Chamber, the Holbein Chamber, the Gallery fitted up after the style of the stalls in Henry VII.'s chapel, the Round Drawing-room, and the Tribune. His chief models for the decorations of these rooms were the cathedral at Rouen, the tomb of Archbishop Wareham at Canterbury, and St. George's chapel at Windsor. From these gloomy monumental apartments he looked upon a garden studiously riant and gay. The lawns reached down to the river, while on the other side of the road up the hill was a small cell-like cottage embosomed in trees, to which he retired when strangers were come besieging and beseeching,' as Milton has it, to look over his abbey, and where he was an apt representative of a hermit at penance. Who that has mixed in polite society has not met with a patronizing dilettante: has not seen him in his well-carpeted library, seated in a modern-antique chair, with a black-lettered book before him in a suit of red morocco turned down with gold, pointing out to the learned attention of his guests the last purchased bronze laid carelessly on the porphyry table, inlaid with medallions, or criticising a small fragment of the antique procured during his recent travels? who that has seen him after dinner, when in every corner lights are held by exhumed figures carved by some cunning Etrurian of ancient days; seen him solving as it occurs every little point of critical and VOL. LXII. NO. CCCLXVII. 95 philological dispute by reference to the neatest copies of the most approved works; settling a doubtful question of fashionable genealogy on the strength of private information from the highest quarter, which, however, at present he is not at liberty to name; taking ont from his ebony scrutoir-which you know formerly belonged to the Emperor Alexipharmic IV. and the celebrated Princess Perukina—taking out the letter which he hopes he may not have misrepresented, but the contents of which are strictly confidential, and on no account to be even hinted in the present state of circumstances; treating with the most polished nonchalance the learned Dr. Macaleph's exposition of the original Hebrew of the first Epistle general of St. Barnabas, chap. ii. v. 17, wrongly interpreted in our version, and just hinting a witticism on the recent ministerial changes, and the marriage in high life now on the tapis? Whoever has seen such a man as this, and so employed, will seek no further illustration of Horace Walpole when on show. But when he would part company with the world for an hour or two-when the mask was off, and the wit alone with his thoughts-Walpole was no more a dilettante but a student. It is in hours like these that industry rejoices in the secret worship of those who publicly profess to scorn her service. Every one has been struck with the revelations in Moore's Life of Sheridan. The light sparkling bon-mot, that seems just fresh drawn from the fountain of Indolence, is seen in the secretaire of the wit sketched in a dozen phases of its development. No mathematician worked harder at a problem, no advocate spent more toil upon an argument, than the gay debauchee on elaborating his jokes. How hard it is to be facile princeps in anything! And Walpole-shall we not point to him as the man who above all others could take a sheet of paper and fill it off-hand with a lively and amusing letter about nothing? He wished us to think so, but he was in reality only like the orator whose head is stored G |