"He is not good enough for you." "Did any one tell you to speak to me like this? "Nobody at all." "Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here," she said, intractably. "Yet I must say that Sergeant Troy is an educated man and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born." "His being higher in learning and birth than the rank of soldier is anything but a proof of his worth. It shows his course to be downward." "I cannot see what this has to do with our conversation. Mr. Troy's course is not by any means downward; and his superiority is a proof of his worth." "I believe him to have no conscience at all. And I cannot help begging you, miss, to have nothing to do with him. Listen to me this once- - only this once! I don't say he's such a bad man as I have fancied - I pray to God he is not. But since we don't exactly know what he is, why not behave as if he might be bad, simply for your own safety? Don't trust him, mistress; I ask you not to trust him so." 66 Why, pray?" "I like soldiers, but this one I do not like," he said sturdily. "The nature of his calling may have tempted him astray, and what is mirth to the neighbors is ruin to the woman. When he tries to talk to you again, why not turn away with a short Good day; and when you see him coming one way, turn the other. When he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don't smile, and speak of him before those who will report your talk as 'that fantastical man,' or 'that Sergeant What's-his-name;' ⚫ that man of a family that has come to the dogs.' Don't be unmannerly towards him, but harmless-uncivil, and so get rid of the man." No Christmas robin detained by a window-pane ever pulsed as did Bathsheba now. “I say—I say again—that it doesn't become you to talk about him. Why he should be mentioned passes me quite! " she exclaimed desperately. "I know this, th th-that he is a thoroughly conscientious man- - blunt some times even to rudeness- but always speaking his mind about you plain to your face!" "Oh!" "I am afeared nobody ever saw him there. I never did certainly." "The reason of that is," she said eagerly, "that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so." This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it. Oak was grieved to find how entirely she trusted him. He brimmed with deep feeling as he replied in a steady voice, the steadiness of which was spoilt by the palpableness of his great effort to keep it so : "You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would wish to do no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for money and good things and I am not such a fool as to pretend to you now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me. But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider to keep yourself well honored among the work folk, and in common generosity to an honorable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier." that both "Don't- don't!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice. "Are you not more to me than my own affairs, and even life?" he went on. "Come, listen to me! I am six years older than you, and Mr. Boldwood is ten years older than I; and consider I do beg you to consider before it is too late how safe you would be in his hands !" Oak's allusion to his own love for her lessened, to some extent, her anger at his interference; but she could not really forgive him for letting his wish to marry her be eclipsed by his wish to do her good, any more than for his slighting treatment of Troy. 66 I wish you to go elsewhere," she said, a paleness of face invisible to the eye being suggested by the trembling words. "Do not remain on this farm any longer. I don't want you I beg you, to go! "That's nonsense," said Oak, calmly. "This is the second time you have pretended to dismiss me, and what's the use of it?" "Pretended! You shall go, sir-your lecturing I wil not hear! I am mistress here." - "Go, indeed what folly will you say next? Treating me like Dick, Tom, and Harry, when you know that a short time ago my position was as good as yours! Upon my life, Bathsheba, it is too barefaced. You know too that I can't go without putting things in such a strait as you wouldn't get out of, I can't tell when. Unless, indeed, you'll promise to have an understanding man as bailiff, or manager, or something. I'll go at once if you'll promise that." "I shall have no bailiff; I shall continue to be my own manager," she said decisively. "Very well, then; you should be thankful to me for staying. How would the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? But mind this, I don't wish you to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do, I do. Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place -for don't suppose I'm content to be a nobody. I was made for better things. However, I don't like to see your concerns going to ruin, as they must if you keep in this mind. . . . I hate taking my own measure so plainly, but upon my life your provoking ways make a man say what he wouldn't dream of other times! I own to being rather interfering. But you know well enough how it is, and who she is that I like too well, and feel too much like a fool about to be civil to her." It is more than probable that she privately and unconsciously respected him a little for this grim fidelity, which had been shown in his tone even more than in his words. At any rate she murmured something to the effect that he might stay if he wished. She said more distinctly, “Will you leave me alone now? I don't order it as a mistress I ask it as a woman, and I expect you not to be so uncour teous as to refuse." "Certainly I will, Miss Everdene," said Gabriel, gently. He wondered that the request should have come at this moment, for the strife was over, and they were on a most desolate hill, far from every human habitation, and the hour was getting late. He stood still and allowed her to get far ahead of him till he could only see her form upon the sky. rose A distressing explanation of this anxiety to be rid of him at that point now ensued. A figure apparently from the earth beside her. The shape beyond all doubt was Troy's. Oak would not be even a possible listener, and at once turned back till a good two hundred yards were between the lovers and himself. Gabriel went home by way of the churchyard. In passing the tower he thought of what she had said about the sergeant's virtuous habit of entering the church unperceived at the beginning of service. Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which it stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging in the 'northwestern heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisive proof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy came back to Weatherbury. (To be continued.), THE POETS AT PLAY. If we were not told it by the poets we should not all of us take so readily for granted that childhood was our happiest time. They are so entirely agreed upon it-however much they differ from one another in other matters -they are so unanimous here, that we accept it as true to a truism. "The heart of childhood is all mirth," says the "Christian Year," and its generations of readers have echoed "Of course," without asking each of himself if it were indeed so in his individual case. But whether it be true universally or no, it probably is true with the poets; and if so, then common consent derived from a common experience proves one point, that high animal spirits and exceptional vivacity are as essential to the making of a poet as what we call genius. Considering how exceedingly dismal is some of the poetry of the world, and on the other hand how much lively verse lacks every quality of true poetry, this may not be at once accepted. No doubt mere vivacity hurries many people into mistaking fervor of temperament for inspiration: like Doeg in the satire, who was Too warm on picking work to dwell, And if they rhymed and rattled all was well. But the effort of giving harmonious voice to genuine inspiration cannot be sustained without a constitutional elation, a keen enjoyment in the exercise. Rhymes even will only run when the spirits are serene to gayety. Verse would not be the accepted vehicle for effervescing gayety if the writer did not show himself all alive with the delight of his theme. We do not think of Milton as a man of mirth, but spirits dance and sparkle in "L'Allegro," that perennial fount of cheerfulness. No doubt the temperament capable of exaltation to the point of rapture has its relapses, to be made excellent capital of when the cloud is blown over. But the vivacity which helps poets to make verses does not confine itself to this office. It belongs to their nature, often passing the bounds, and through excessive indulgence, inducing reaction, but still there and part of themselves so long as they write poetry that deserves the name: though it is now not the common fashion of poets to own to this capacity for jollity as frankly as Prior in his epitaph upon himself: And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he! No poetry is written in the dumps, though the remembrance and experience of this gloomy condition are fertile themes. Thus Coleridge, in justifying the egotis n of melancholy verse: "Why then write sonnets or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of the late sufferings it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them." Cowper, who might seem an instance against this view, is in reality a strong support of it: so long as he could keep the despondency of insanity at arm's length, he was the cheerfullest of men. "I never could take a little pleasure in anything," he writes; and his constitutional vivacity ror. We poets begin our life in gladness, 6 But thereof comes in the end satiety and madness. With Cowper they ran side by side, the one quite as marked as the other. Pleasure in his work contended with hor"You remember," he writes to his friend, "the undertaker's dance in the Rehearsal,' which they perform in crape hat-bands and black cloaks to the tune of Hob and Nob,' one of the sprightliest airs in the world. Such is my fiddling and dancing." So long as he could describe his despair in sapphics, and illustrate it in such harmonious stanzas as his "Castaway," we detect pleasure of some sort in the exercise of his gift, just as we see it in Burns, "still caring, despairing," in his beautiful ode. The two influences are in visible contention. Many poets have the stigma in a lesser degree of depression of spirits; but if they wrote well, it was when the incubus was shaken off. Johnson was, he used to say, miserable by himself, and hated going to bed: but while he could get people to sit up with him he exultingly enjoyed life, and constituted the life and inspiration of the company, which no desponding man can possibly be. Grey is a genuine instance of a poet without this exceptional vivacity of temperament. He was witty and humorous, but habitually his spirits were in a low key, and the consequence was, no poet who got himself a name ever wrote so little. He had everything of a poet but social instincts and animal spirits; but these deserted him wholly for long periods, during which his muse was absolutely tongue-tied. When his friends urged him he answered, "It is indeed for want of spirits that my studies lie among the cathedrals, tombs, and ruins. At present I feel myself able to write a catalogue or to read a peerage-book or Millar's Gardeners' Dictionary, and am thankful there are such employments in the world." All this does not prevent the composition of poetry being the hardest work the mind can exercise itself upon: nor does the fact contradict its being the highest form of enjoyment. All vigorous intellectual pleasure needs to be worked up to with effect. We cannot read fine poetry which opens and revives in us a world of keen sensation without a degree of labor from which men too often shrink, preferring lower satisfactions more easily and lazily come by. The poet, knowing what his real achievements cost him, never withholds them from the world of readers. We need expect no discoveries of this nature in the private records he leaves behind him, unless, like Wordsworth, he deliberately postpones the publication of some cherished manuscript till after his death. But if the gift of verse is a pleasure, it will be played with apart from solemn duty either to the world or the poet's own fame. There will be amusement in adapting it to homely purposes - it will break out at odd times and in odd places, and be characteristic of the man often beyond what he designs for a larger and more critical audience. Whatever a man of genius writes because it pleases him to write it, will tell us something of himself; though it be but a direction to his printer, an invitation to dinner, or a receipt for the cook. These little spurts of the muse are quite distinct from the vers de société which amateurs turn off, whether easily or laboriously, as the best they can do specimens of their powers in an unfamiliar field. They are especially not examples; we were never meant to see them; neither "reader" nor critic was in the poet's mind, but something closer and more intimate. The most prosaic doggerel of the true poet stands on a different footing from the rhymes of a writer with whom verse is not a natural medium. He would not commit himself to it, but as the indulgence of some impulse which belongs to his poet nature. With his name attached - and this proviso is sometimes necessary, for we have not all the discrimination to detect the master hand under the homely disguise - we see something that distinguishes it, and stamps his character upon it. An impulse of some kind drives him to express a thought in verse, because it is easier to convey it that way, because it wraps it up so as to allow of a thing being said which might have looked awkward, or bold, or egotistical in prose, or because it best expresses relief from a task or a burden. With the poet, verse is his natural medium for a good deal that the muse is not generally invoked for; and we like to see how far verse is a language, not a task -to see the "numbers come on any stimulus. There are poets who never willingly wrote a careless line. Crabbe might have been thought one of these so careful, so measured, so little egotistical; but we once find him indulging in the repetition of some verses which he acknowledged were not of the most brilliant description, but favorites, because they had amused the irksome restraint of life as chaplain in a great house : Oh! had I but a little hut, -- That I might hide my head in; I'd take the jokes of other folks, And mine should then succeed 'em; With Wordsworth every verse was a brick in the temple his life was building; he would have thought it profanation to despatch an ephemeral jingling joke by post and keep no record. Consequently we have no example of verse from him inspired by the humor of the moment, written on a subject not poetical. But take Sir Walter Scott's correspondence with James Ballantyne as a specimen of what we mean; he suits as an early example, for very rarely are rhymes strung together as he strung them, literally for only one ear, or indeed only for his own; so heartily careless of his poetical credit. Though not poetry, what a great deal these jingling lines tell us of a poet; how they let us into the character and feeling of the man! How much there is that he would not, and perhaps could not, have unveiled in prose! It is through such effusions that we learn something of him as author, about which he was so reticent. After finishing "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk," on whose name he plays somewhat carelessly, we see the "Antiquary" in his mind's eye: Dear James-I'm done, thank God, with the long yarns In simple prose he would never have betrayed this confidence and fondness for any creature of his imagination. He thus rejoices over the completion of "Rob Roy: With great joy I send you Roy; "T was a tough job, But we 're done with Rob; the "tough job," referring to the agonies of cramp and the lassitude of opium under which the novel was written. He was the most patient of men under interruption; only in verse does he indulge in a murmur, his temper really worn to a hair's-breadth: Oh James, oh James, two Irish dames I groaning send one sheet I've penned, In momentary discouragement, when " Quentin Durward" did not go off at the rate anticipated," he did not I have finished my task this morning at half past eleven, easily, early, and I think not amiss. I hope J. B. will make some notes of admiration! ! ! otherwise I shall be disappointed If this work answers if it but answers, it must set us on our legs; I am sure worse trumpery of mine has had a great ruz. I remember with what great difficulty I was brought to think myself anything better than common, and now I will not in mere faintness of heart give up hope. So hey for a Swiftian ism, So good-by, Mrs. Brown, Where below you chairmen drink not, Scott wrote too easily to value himself on his gifts, or to be very sensitive to criticism. The poet, jealous of his reputation, fastidious on his own account, or keenly hurt by adverse opinion, would never commit himself thus, even to the privacy of his diary, secured by lock and key. It thus illustrates a very marked characteristic. hardly fancy Waller, who, somebody said, spent a whole summer in correcting ten lines those written in the Tasso of the Duchess of York - disporting himself in this way. We can Scott here is addressing himself. The poet playing with his gift more commonly adopts the epistolary form, and compliments a friend with some facile careless specimen of his art. We do not want the amusement to become general out of the charmed circle; but where once a name is won, a tribute of verse is felt to be a real token of friendship, and treasured among the most flattering of compliments, as a private communication from Parnassus; especially when it illuminates some grave subject, or assumes an unexpected form, in which the poet selects you as the recipient of a new and choice conceit. It must have been a delightful discovery to the diplomatist when Canning's Despatch first unfolded itself to eye and ear. And that Canning was a universal genius does not prevent the writer of the Anti-Jacobin and the famous Pitt lyric, "The Pilot that Weathered the Storm," being a poet in especial. Canning's general principle, it should be explained, was, that commerce flourished best when wholly unfettered by restrictions; but as modern nations had grown up under various systems, he judged it necessary to discriminate in the application of the principle; hence the Reciprocity Act placing the ships of foreign states importing articles into Great Britain on the same footing of duties as British ships, provided our ships were treated by the same rule in their turn; reserving, however, a retaliative power of imposing increased duties when the principle was resisted or evaded, as it was in the case of Holland-M. Falck, the Dutch Minister, having made a one-sided proposition, much to the advantage of his own country. A tedious negotiation dragging on from month to month ensued, without arriving one step nearer consummation; at last Canning's patience was exhausted. Sir Charles Bagot, our ambassador at the Hague, was one day (as we are told) attending at Court when a despatch in cipher was hastily put into his hand; it was very short, and evidently very urgent, but unfortunately Sir Charles, not expecting such a communication, had not the key of the cipher with him. An interval of intense anxiety followed, until he could obtain the key, when, to his infinite astonishment, he deciphered the following despatch from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs: Tom Moore, subsequently meeting this M. Falck when ambassador of our Court, calls him a fine, sensible Dutchman. Whether he ever knew the form in which the tables were turned upon him is nowhere stated. Surprise constitutes some of the fun and attraction of a very different rhymed letter, where Cowper fills a sheet - prose alike in aspect and matter with a flow of the most ingenious and facile rhymes. It shows remarkable mastery over words; and the little turns of humor, the playing with his own serious aims and with his friend's gravity of calling and reputation, are pleasantly characteristic of the man. letter is long, but does not admit of curtailment, and the lurking rhymes keep up the reader's vigilance and atten tion. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. The July 12, 1781. MY VERY DEAR Friend, I am going to send, what when you have read, you may scratch your head, and say I suppose, there's nobody knows whether what I have got, be verse or not: by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme; but if it be, did you ever see, of late or of yore such a ditty before? The thought did occur to me and to her, as Madam and I, did walk and not fly, over hills and dales, with spreading sails, before it was dark to Weston Park. The news at Oney is little or noney, but such as it is, I send it-viz., poor Mr. Peace cannot yet cease, addling his head with what you have said, and has left Parish Church quite in the lurch, having almost swore, to go there no more. Page and his wife, that made such a strife, we met them twain, in Dog Lane; we gave them the wall, and that was all. For Mr. Scott, we have seen him not, except as he passed in a wonderful haste, to see a friend, in Silver End. Mrs. Jones proposes, ere July closes, that she and her sister and her Jones Mister, and we that are here, our course shall steer, to dine in the Spinney; but for a guinea, if the weather should hold, so the grass there grows, while nobody mows (which is very wrong), hot and so cold, we had better by far stay where we are. For so rank and long, that so to speak, 't is at least a week, if it happens to rain, ere it dries again. I have writ "Charity," not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hopes to do good; and if the Reviewer should say "to be sure, the gentleman's muse wears Methodist shoes; you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard have little regard, for the taste and fashions and ruling passions, and hoydening play of the modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, and now and then wear a tittering air, 't is only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a production on a new construction. She has baited her trap, in hopes to snap all that may come, with a sugar-plum." His opinion in this, will not be amiss; 't is what I intend, my principal end: and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid, for all I have said, and all I have done, though I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence, to the end of my sense, and by hook or crook, write another book, if I live and am here, another year. I have heard before, of a room with a floor, laid upon springs, or such-like things, with so much art in every part, that when air and a grace, swimming about, now in now out, with a deal you went in, you were forced to begin a minuet pace with an of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end, of what I have penned; which that you may do, ere Madam and you are quite worn out, with jigging about, I take my leave, and here you receive, bow profound, down to the W. C. ground, from your humble me, P. S.-When I concluded, doubtless you did think me right, as well you might, in saying what I said of Scott; and then it was true, but now it is due, to him to note, that since I wrote, himself and he has visited we. This was written in a poetical year, when verse and matter crowded upon him. After finishing" Table Talk," we find him resolving to hang up his harp for the remainder of the year, and Since eighty-one has had so much to do, Charles Lamb and Cowper are as little associated in our minds as poets can well be; but there were points, especially of temperament, in common, and the Muse was a handmaid to them both; they each liked to adapt her to domestic uses. Cowper acknowledged homely favors by giving a verse for a dish of fish, apostrophizing a halibut in high-sounding blank verse, and explaining in neatly-turned heroics how the barrel of oysters was delayed on the road by the imprudent kindness of paying the carriage beforehand. Charles Lamb asked a favor through the same medium: By the way, tell me candidly how you relish He thought it vile Was the first who tried it; It does not seem, by the way, to have been Southey's turn, however much he played with fantastic measures, to versify for the amusement of his friends alone. All his composition - even his fun - had its destination for the press; but we find him slipping into rhythm to his friend Bedford : "How mortifying is this confinement of yours! I had planned so many pleasant walks to be made so much more pleasant by conversation; For I have much to tell thee, much to say Of the odd things we saw upon our journey- Charles Lamb was never careless or rapid. It was his amusement to play with his thoughts. The labor of investing a quaint fancy in fit wording was his pleasure. As in many other sports, the fun lay in the dressing. In fact, all that was characteristic in his mind needed exact expression; and now and then verse comes in to give the last point, as, after denouncing a cold spring, and May chilled by east winds, he concludes: Unmeaning joy around appears, And Nature smiles as though she sneers. In complete contrast to this is the rapidity of Scott's habits of composition. His domestic verse has all the air of extempore. He seems to have considered it a duty to his chief to retain the minstrel character in his letters. In them he liked to exercise his pen in unfamiliar measures, him that if he liked he could emulate Dryden in heroics, proving how easy they all were to him. Canning had told his letter from Zetland beginning: Health to the chieftain from his clansman true; is a very happy experiment in them; but his account of the sea-serpent in dancing anapæsts better suits our purpose, as bearing also upon the late reappearance of that tantalizing fable. He writes from Kirkwall: We have now got to Kirkwall, and needs I must stare He dates August the 13th, 1814. In respect that your Grace has commissioned a Kraken, It is January two years, the Zetland folks say, For instance, the modest and diffident swore That 't was sure a live subject of Neptune's dominion; Verse in such easy hands is a very useful instrument for turning a disagreeable incident into a joke; the poet car be imperious in it without giving offence, apologetic with out meanness or servility. Thus in Lockhart's unlucky false quantity which made such a stir over Maida's grave James Ballantyne had run off post-haste with the epitaph thinking it Scott's, and printed it with an additiona blunder of his own. All the newspapers twitted the sup posed author, and Lockhart properly desired that the blame should lie on the right shoulders. Scott, however cared much more for the reputation of his son-in-law, the author of "Valerius," than his own, and rattled off a epistle to Lockhart with many reasons for letting the mat ter rest, of which the third is: Don't you perceive that I don't care a boddle, To remain the sole source of that murderous measure. Invade not, I say, my own dear little dactyl; My own pye-house daughter's good prog to devour, sir; Ergo-peace, on your duty, your squeamishness throttle, And we'll soothe Priscian's spleen with a canny third bottle; A fig for all dactyls, a fig for all spondees, A fig for all dunces and Dominie Grundys. We do not often catch him taking the high line about of his scholarship. Tom Moore has recourse to the epis himself that really lies hidden under this disparagement tolary muse under a very different mortification; though there may be many tingling sensations after giving a bad dinner near akin to the discovery of being even party to a has to give himself a fillip to reinstate himself in his own false quantity. The man in both cases feels lowered, and good opinion. The dinner in question seems to have epicureans were the guests, all can sympathize in the misbeen an utter break-down; and where Luttrell and brother such cases are heavy aggravations of the original ill-usage. hap; while it is only given to poets to express in becoming terms a consciousness of disaster. Prose apologies in Moore sitting down after seeing his guests off, aided by his lantern, and soothing his spirits by an imitation of Horace, might be glad he was a poet; for what trouble does not in a degree dissipate itself under neat definition? That bard had brow of brass, I own, To come and eat a wretched dinner; |