Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ throw light upon or amend many obscure passages of poets; for that even those of most name either made egregious blunders, or they were made for them. I could not deny that truth, Eusebius, and yet he wasn't a man to grant any thing to, if you could help it; but I saw there was something rich to come, so I encouraged him; and this remark of his, Eusebius, reminded me of a misery occasioned in the mind of a very sensitive and reverend poet, who preached weekly to a very particular congregation, by the printer's devil mistaking an erasure for a hyphen, which gave to his sonnet a most improper expression. It made him miserable then, and will ever give him a twinge lest he should have suffered in reputation. He has so much reason to be happy now, that to remind him of it, should he happen to read this, is only to make his happiness the greater, by somewhat reducing its quality; as the very atmosphere must be tempered for man's use and health, by somewhat of a noxious ingredient. But I must return to your friend. His cheeks seem ready to burst with common sense, and polished with ruddy conceit. "Do you remember," said I, "any particular passage upon which your observations will bear?" "Why," said he, "there was one in that paper which first struck me as utter nonsense; but a little alteration easily sets it to rights. There was a quotation from Milton: I wasn't very well acquainted with his poems, but I have read since, with much trouble to understand it, that whole scene and passage; it is in a play of his called 'Comus;' – and, by the by, all that part of the prose in the letter relating to the seashore and its treasures, is all stuff; all the roads about the country are made and mended with those pebbles – they are worth nothing. What Milton is supposed to have said, when they wrote down for him, that the billows of the Severn "roll ashore" – "the beryl and the golden ore" – never could have been written by any one who knew the Severn. A beryl is a clear crystal, isn't it? and if the billows should roll one ashore in the muddy Severn, I should like to know who could find it! There are no billows but from the Bristol Channel, and that's mud all the way, miles and miles up; – pretty shores for a beryl to be rolled on. Besides, now, what man of common sense would talk of rolling a bit of a thing, not half so big as a nutmeg, and that upon mud, in which it would sink like a bullet? He would have said 'washed ashore;' but I'll tell you what it was: I understand Milton was blind, and his daughters wrote what he dictated: they say, too, he had a good deal of knowledge of things, and, without doubt, knew very well the trade of the Bristol Channel, and from the Severn into the Avon; and certainly meant 'barrel and the golden ore,' and this word suggested the precious ornament which most women like to think of, and as she, his daughter, minced it in her own mouth, a beryl dropped from her pen. Now, only consider what was the great trade in those parts; the West India and the African trade were both at their height, and didn't one bring barrels of sugar, and the other gold dust – what can be clearer? There you see how proper the word rolling is, for you must have often seen them rolling their barrels from their ships upon planks, and so on their quays; and the golden ore speaks for itself, as plain as can be, gold dust; and there you have a reading that agrees with fact. I don't exactly know when Milton wrote; but I dare say it was at the very time of that notorious merchandize; and don't you think, sir, that the next edition of Milton ought to have this alteration? I do. I forgot to say that the gold dust came over in little barrels too; for no man in his senses would have thought of rolling or washing dust ashore, excepting in a keg or barrel, and so it was, I make no doubt."

      I perfectly assented to every thing he said, Eusebius, by which happy concession on my part, having no food for an obstinate discussion, he soon withdrew. I sat awhile thinking, and now write to you. At least make a marginal note in your Milton of this criticism; and when posterity shall discover it, and forget that Comus was written when Milton was a young man, and had no daughters to write for him, then it will be adopted, and admired as a specimen of the critical acumen of the great and learned Eusebius.

      It reminds me to tell you, that being the other day at the sea-side, and wanting a Horace, I borrowed one from a student of Cambridge. It was a Paris edition. I never should have dreamed of seeing an expurgated or emasculated edition from French quarters; but so it was. I looked for that beautiful little piece, the quarrel between Lydia and Horace. It was not there.

      "Donec gratus eram tibi,

      Nec quisquam potior brachia candide

      Cervici juvenis dabat."

      I suppose the offence lay in these lines, which appear no worse than that old song, (the lovers' quarrel too,)

      "I've kiss'd and I've prattled with fifty fair maids."

      An American lady must not be shocked with the word leg, and we are told they put flounces upon those pedestals of pianofortes; but that a lover throwing his arms around his mistress's neck should offend a Frenchman, is an outrageous prudery from a very unexpected quarter. We can imagine a scholar tutored to this affected purity, who should escape from it, and plunge into the opposite immoralities of our modern French novels, like him

      "Qui frigidus Ætnam

      Insiluit."

      "Plunged cold into Ætnean fires."

      There were many emendations, most of which I forget; but I could not help laughing at an absurdity in the following ode: —

      "Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

      The word puellis is altered to choreis, which nevertheless, as a mark of absurdity, ought to be supposed to contain the puellis; for to say,

      "I lately lived for dances fit,"

      surely implies that the sayer had some one to dance with; or is there any dancing sect of men in France so devoted to celibacy that they will only dance with each other? We are certainly improved in this country, where it should seem that once a not unsimilar practice was compulsory upon the benchers, as will be seen from the following quotation from The Revels at Lincoln's Inn: —

      "The exercise of dancing was thought necessary, and much conducing to the making of gentlemen, more fit for their books at other times; for by an order (ex Registro Hosp. sine. vol. 71, 438 C) made 6th February, 7 Jac., it appears that the under barristers were, by decimation, put out of Commons for example sake, because the whole bar offended by not dancing on Candlemas-day preceding, according to the ancient order of this Society, when the judges were present; with this, that if the like fault was committed afterwards, they should be fined or disbarred." – (D, Revels at Lincoln's Inn, p. 15.) Eusebius, you would go on a pilgrimage, with unboiled peas, to Pump Court or more favourable locality, for these little "brief authorities."

      "To see how like are courts of law to fairs,

      The dancing barristers to dancing bears;

      Both suck their paws indulgent to their griefs,

      These lacking provender, those lacking briefs."

      Shame to him who does not agree with our own delightful Robert Burns, of glorious memory, who "dearly lo'ed the lasses O!" So only "Let the merry dance go round."

      And now, as the dancers are off the stage, and it is the more proper time for gravity and decorum, I feel that irresistible desire to be as wicked as possible – a desire which I have heard you say tormented you in your childhood; for, whenever you were admonished to be remarkably good, you were invariably remarkably bad. So I yield to the temptation, and voluntarily, and with "malice prepense" throw myself into the wickedness of translating (somewhat modernizing I own) the "Tabooed" ode, in defiance of, and purposely to offend, the Parisian, or other editor or editors, who shall ever show themselves such incomparable ninnies as to omit that or any other ode of Horace. Accept the following.

      "Vixi puellis nuper idoneus."

Carmen, 26, lib. iii

      For maiden's love I once was fit,

      But now those fields of warfare quit,

      With all my boast, content to sit

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