and obscurity. 'A PECK OF TROUBLES' 367 Twiss says he shall try to read it again, not having Goldsmith to refer to. The simile of the floating beehives was lost upon him; and as to the verses to Lady's daughter they are, as he and Parsons agreed, perfectly unintelligible. 'What am I to do? I stand still in horror, and dare not advance a step. Pray console your unhappy friend! 'S. R. 'P.S.-I shall expect you on Saturday at half-past four.' Richard Sharp's response to this appeal is not extant. The simile of the floating beehives is in the following lines, and it is now explained in a note to be an allusion to the floating beehouse, or barge laden with beehives, which is seen in some parts of France and Piedmont.' So, thro' the vales of Loire the beehives glide, The note not only makes the simile perfectly intelligible but renders it impossible for the dullest not to see its appropriateness and beauty. The note to the verses to Lady Jersey's daughter Harriet makes them also intelligible by simply explaining the circumstances in which they were addressed to her. The Epistle' fully justifies in its present shape the long labour spent upon it. It consists of only two hundred and twenty-two lines, but no reader can fail to perceive, as he reads it, that an unusual number of the lines have a strangely familiar sound. As I said of The Pleasures of Memory' so, to a larger extent, it may be said of this much shorter poem that it has many expressions which have passed into literature and have become, as it were, familiar forms of speech. The insect tribes of human kind,' the contrast of home's 'simple comforts and domestic rites' with the season's ' annual round of glitter and perfume;' the lineEach fleeting charm that bids the landscape live; the couplet There let her practise from herself to steal, and other lines such as or Guides in the world, companions in retreat; The cheap amusements of a mind at ease; are surely most felicitously expressed, and have lingered in the recollection of readers and writers who have reproduced them without remembering their origin. 'The clear mirror of his moral page,' and Scorned the false lustre of licentious thought, are happy phrases from those concluding lines which every reader will admit to be entirely worthy of Dr. Warton's praise. Like his other poems An Epistle to a Friend' was well received by the critics. The Monthly Review prided itself that on the first anonymous appearance of the writer it did justice to his talents, and that when after a MR. HAYWARD'S CRITICISM 369 considerable interval, he came before the world again it was again forward to pay its tribute of applause to his taste and genius. The 'Epistle' it regarded as of a more masculine character, without falling below his other compositions in elegance or in feeling. It is at once correct and spirited, classic and original.' The reviewer quotes with approval some original and happy epithets : His spangling shower when frost the wizard flings;' 'the arrowy North;' the murmuring market-place.' Mr. Hayward in the Edinburgh Review, fifty-eight years later, speaks of the description of winter in the 'Epistle,' as marked by the same delicate fancy which is displayed in the "Rape of the Lock" on a different class of phenomena When Christmas revels in a world of snow, Mr. Hayward adds: There is no disputing the eye for Nature which fixed and carried off the image of the silvery foliage woven on the white pane. At one of his Sunday breakfasts Rogers had quoted with decided commendation Leigh Hunt's couplet on a fountain (in Rimini) also selected by Byron as one of the most poetical descriptions of a natural object he was acquainted with: Clear and compact, till at its height o'errun It shakes its loosening silver in the sun. BB "I give my vote," said one of the guests for 'O'er the white pane his silvery foliage weaves; and Rogers looked for a moment as if he were about to re-enact Parr's reception of the flattering visitor from Birmingham.' In the admirable and appreciative article from which this criticism and its illustrative story are taken, Mr. Hayward speaks of the poem, as a whole, as conveying after the manner of Horace and (in parts) of Pope the writer's notions of social comfort and happiness, as dependent upon, or influenced by, the choice of residence, furniture, books, pictures, and companions-subjects on all of which he was admirably qualified to speak.' But Mr. Hayward and those to whom, like Mrs. Norton and Lady Dufferin, he applied for information, were in absolute ignorance of the circumstances out of which the poem had sprung, and of the training which had so admirably qualified the poet to speak on the topics he introduces. He interprets Rogers's feelings in those early days, not by the struggle which called them forth, of which he knew nothing and suspected nothing, but by the altered circumstances of Rogers's later life. Knowing him for many years as the centre of the most brilliant society of the time, Mr. Hayward could not imagine him as he was when the poem was written, standing with the open door before him, considering for a moment whether it was best to enter and mingle with the crowd, or whether he should say to his soul Be thine to meditate a humbler flight, When morning fills the fields with rosy light: GRATTAN ON THE SLAVERY OF OFFICE 371 Be thine to blend-nor thine a vulgar aim— His actual mental attitude was probably that of one who was conscious that he should go forward, yet who cherished an unaffected admiration for much that he should leave behind, and who puts on permanent record his resolution-amid the joyous glare, the maddening strife And all the dull impertinence of life to keep his early faith in 'simple comforts and domestic rites.' Mr. Hayward, however, speaks of his praise of modesty, simplicity, and retirement as being made 'with about the same amount of practical earnestness as Grattan, when he declared he could be content in a small neat house with cold meat, bread, and beer and plenty of claret.' Grattan never made any such declaration. The story is one of Rogers's own, and is told in the Recollections: What a slavery is office!' said Grattan in one of his talks with Rogers, at Fredley Farm, at Tunbridge Wells, or at St. James's Place; to be subject to the whims of those above you, and the persecutions of those beneath you; to dance attendance on the great, to be no longer your own master. No, give me a cottage and a crust-plain fare and quiet, and small beer and -' he added, lowering his voice and smiling with his usual archness-claret!' The contrast between these two versions of Grattan's words is a fair illustration of the difference between Rogers's stories P. 104, second edition. |