There was another man I should like to have met--Sir Henry Wotton; for he was an ideal angler. Christopher North, too ("an excellent angler and now with G.o.d"!)--how I should love to have explored the Yarrow with him, for he was a man of vast soul, vast learning, and vast wit.
"Would you believe it, my dear Shepherd," said he, "that my piscatory pa.s.sions are almost dead within me, and I like now to saunter along the banks and braes, eying the younkers angling, or to lay me down on some sunny spot, and with my face up to heaven, watch the slow-changing clouds!"
THERE was the angling genius with whom I would fain go angling!
"Angling," says our revered St. Izaak, "angling is somewhat like poetry--men are to be born so."
Doubtless there are poets who are not anglers, but doubtless there never was an angler who was not also a poet. Christopher North was a famous fisherman; he began his career as such when he was a child of three years. With his thread line and bent-pin hook the wee tot set out to make his first cast in "a wee burnie" he had discovered near his home. He caught his fish, too, and for the rest of the day he carried the miserable little specimen about on a plate, exhibiting it triumphantly. With that first experience began a life which I am fain to regard as one glorious song in praise of the beauty and the beneficence of nature.
My bookseller once took me angling with him in a Wisconsin lake which was the property of a club of anglers to which my friend belonged. As we were to be absent several days I carried along a box of books, for I esteem appropriate reading to be a most important adjunct to an angling expedition. My bookseller had with him enough machinery to stock a whaling expedition, and I could not help wondering what my old Walton would think, could he drop down into our company with his modest equipment of hooks, flies, and gentles.
The lake whither we went was a large and beautiful expanse, girt by a landscape which to my fancy was the embodiment of poetic delicacy and suggestion. I began to inquire about the chub, dace, and trouts, but my bookseller lost no time in telling me that the lake had been rid of all cheap fry, and had been stocked with game fish, such as ba.s.s and pike.
I did not at all relish this covert sneer at traditions which I have always reverenced, and the better acquainted I became with my bookseller"s modern art of angling the less I liked it. I have little love for that kind of angling which does not admit of a simultaneous enjoyment of the surrounding beauties of nature. My bookseller enjoined silence upon me, but I did not heed the injunction, for I must, indeed, have been a mere wooden effigy to hold my peace amid that picturesque environment of hill, valley, wood, meadow, and arching sky of clear blue.
It was fortunate for me that I had my "Noctes Ambrosianae" along, for when I had exhausted my praise of the surrounding glories of nature, my bookseller would not converse with me; so I opened my book and read to him that famous pa.s.sage between Kit North and the Ettrick Shepherd, wherein the shepherd discourses boastfully of his prowess as a piscator of sawmon.
As the sun approached midheaven and its heat became insupportable, I raised my umbrella; to this sensible proceeding my bookseller objected--in fact, there was hardly any reasonable suggestion I had to make for beguiling the time that my bookseller did not protest against it, and when finally I produced my "Newcastle Fisher"s Garlands" from my basket, and began to troll those spirited lines beginning
Away wi" carking care and gloom That make life"s pathway weedy O!
A cheerful gla.s.s makes flowers to bloom And lightsome hours fly speedy O!
he gathered in his rod and tackle, and declared that it was no use trying to catch fish while Bedlam ran riot.
As for me, I had a delightful time of it; I caught no fish, to be sure: but what of that? I COULD have caught fish had I so desired, but, as I have already intimated to you and as I have always maintained and always shall, the mere catching of fish is the least of the many enjoyments comprehended in the broad, gracious art of angling.
Even my bookseller was compelled to admit ultimately that I was a worthy disciple of Walton, for when we had returned to the club house and had partaken of our supper I regaled the company with many a cheery tale and merry song which I had gathered from my books. Indeed, before I returned to the city I was elected an honorary member of the club by acclamation--not for the number of fish I had expiscated (for I did not catch one), but for that mastery of the science of angling and the literature and the traditions and the religion and the philosophy thereof which, by the grace of the companionship of books, I had achieved.
It is said that, with his feet over the fender, Macaulay could discourse learnedly of French poetry, art, and philosophy. Yet he never visited Paris that he did not experience the most exasperating difficulties in making himself understood by the French customs officers.
In like manner I am a fender-fisherman. With my shins toasting before a roaring fire, and with Judge Methuen at my side, I love to exploit the joys and the glories of angling. The Judge is "a brother of the angle," as all will allow who have heard him tell Father Prout"s story of the bishop and the turbots or heard him sing--
With angle rod and lightsome heart, Our conscience clear, we gay depart To pebbly brooks and purling streams, And ne"er a care to vex our dreams.
And how could the lot of the fender-fisherman be happier? No colds, quinsies or asthmas follow his incursions into the realms of fancy where in cool streams and peaceful lakes a legion of chubs and trouts and sawmon await him; in fancy he can hie away to the far-off Yalrow and once more share the benefits of the companionship of Kit North, the Shepherd, and that n.o.ble Edinburgh band; in fancy he can trudge the banks of the Blackwater with the sage of Watergra.s.shill; in fancy he can hear the music of the Tyne and feel the wind sweep cool and fresh o"er Coquetdale; in fancy, too, he knows the friendships which only he can know--the friendships of the immortals whose spirits hover where human love and sympathy attract them.
How well I love ye, O my precious books--my Prout, my Wilson, my Phillips, my Berners, my Doubleday, my Roxby, my Chatto, my Thompson, my Crawhall! For ye are full of joyousness and cheer, and your songs uplift me and make me young and strong again.
And thou, homely little brown thing with worn leaves, yet more precious to me than all jewels of the earth--come, let me take thee from thy shelf and hold thee lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to this aged and slow-pulsing heart of mine! Dost thou remember how I found thee half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash?
Did I not joyously possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not cherished thee full sweetly all these years? My Walton, soon must we part forever; when I am gone say unto him who next shall have thee to his own that with his latest breath an old man blessed thee!
VIII
BALLADS AND THEIR MAKERS
One of the most interesting spots in all London to me is Bunhill Fields cemetery, for herein are the graves of many whose memory I revere. I had heard that Joseph Ritson was buried here, and while my sister, Miss Susan, lingered at the grave of her favorite poet, I took occasion to spy around among the tombstones in the hope of discovering the last resting-place of the curious old antiquary whose labors in the field of balladry have placed me under so great a debt of grat.i.tude to him.
But after I had searched in vain for somewhat more than an hour one of the keepers of the place told me that in compliance with Ritson"s earnest desire while living, that antiquary"s grave was immediately after the interment of the body levelled down and left to the care of nature, with no stone to designate its location. So at the present time no one knows just where old Ritson"s grave is, only that within that vast enclosure where so many thousand souls sleep their last sleep the dust of the famous ballad-lover lies fast asleep in the bosom of mother earth.
I have never been able to awaken in Miss Susan any enthusiasm for balladry. My worthy sister is of a serious turn of mind, and I have heard her say a thousand times that convivial songs (which is her name for balladry) are inspirations, if not actually compositions, of the devil. In her younger days Miss Susan performed upon the melodeon with much discretion, and at one time I indulged the delusive hope that eventually she would not disdain to join me in the vocal performance of the best ditties of D"Urfey and his ilk.
If I do say it myself, I had a very pretty voice thirty or forty years ago, and even at the present time I can deliver the ballad of King Cophetua and the beggar maid with amazing spirit when I have my friend Judge Methuen at my side and a bowl of steaming punch between us. But my education of Miss Susan ended without being finished. We two learned to perform the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens very acceptably, but Miss Susan abandoned the copartnership when I insisted that we proceed to the sprightly ditty beginning,
Life"s short hours too fast are hasting-- Sweet amours cannot be lasting.
My physician, Dr. O"Rell, has often told me that he who has a well-a.s.sorted ballad library should never be lonely, for the limitations of balladly are so broad that within them are to be found performances adapted to every mood to which humanity is liable. And, indeed, my experience confirms the truth of my physician"s theory. It were hard for me to tell what delight I have had upon a hot and gusty day in a perusal of the history of Robin Hood, for there is such actuality in those simple rhymes as to dispel the troublesome environments of the present and transport me to better times and pleasanter scenes.
Aha! how many times have I walked with brave Robin in Sherwood forest!
How many times have Little John and I couched under the greenwood tree and shared with Friar Tuck the haunch of juicy venison and the pottle of brown October brew! And Will Scarlet and I have been famous friends these many a year, and if Allen-a-Dale were here he would tell you that I have trolled full many a ballad with him in praise of Maid Marian"s peerless beauty.
Who says that Sherwood is no more and that Robin and his merry men are gone forever! Why, only yesternight I walked with them in that gracious forest and laughed defiance at the doughty sheriff and his craven menials. The moonlight twinkled and sifted through the boscage, and the wind was fresh and cool. Right merrily we sang, and I doubt not we should have sung the whole night through had not my sister, Miss Susan, come tapping at my door, saying that I had waked her parrot and would do well to cease my uproar and go to sleep.
Judge Methuen has a copy of Bishop Percy"s "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" that he prizes highly. It is the first edition of this n.o.ble work, and was originally presented by Percy to Dr. Birch of the British Museum. The Judge found these three volumes exposed for sale in a London book stall, and he comprehended them without delay--a great bargain, you will admit, when I tell you that they cost the Judge but three shillings! How came these precious volumes into that book stall I shall not presume to say.
Strange indeed are the vicissitudes which befall books, stranger even than the happenings in human life. All men are not as considerate of books as I am; I wish they were. Many times I have felt the deepest compa.s.sion for n.o.ble volumes in the possession of persons wholly incapable of appreciating them. The helpless books seemed to appeal to me to rescue them, and too many times I have been tempted to s.n.a.t.c.h them from their inhospitable shelves, and march them away to a pleasant refuge beneath my own comfortable roof tree.
Too few people seem to realize that books have feelings. But if I know one thing better than another I know this, that my books know me and love me. When of a morning I awaken I cast my eyes about my room to see how fare my beloved treasures, and as I cry cheerily to them, "Good-day to you, sweet friends!" how lovingly they beam upon me, and how glad they are that my repose has been unbroken. When I take them from their places, how tenderly do they respond to the caresses of my hands, and with what exultation do they respond unto my call for sympathy!
Laughter for my gayer moods, distraction for my cares, solace for my griefs, gossip for my idler moments, tears for my sorrows, counsel for my doubts, and a.s.surance against my fears--these things my books give me with a promptness and a certainty and a cheerfulness which are more than human; so that I were less than human did I not love these comforters and bear eternal grat.i.tude to them.
Judge Methuen read me once a little poem which I fancy mightily; it is ent.i.tled "Winfreda," and you will find it in your Percy, if you have one. The last stanza, as I recall it, runs in this wise:
And when by envy time transported Shall seek to rob us of our joys, You"ll in our girls again be courted And I"ll go wooing in our boys.
"Now who was the author of those lines?" asked the Judge.
"Undoubtedly Oliver Wendell Holmes," said I. "They have the flavor peculiar to our Autocrat; none but he could have done up so much sweetness in such a quaint little bundle."
"You are wrong," said the Judge, "but the mistake is a natural one.
The whole poem is such a one as Holmes might have written, but it saw the light long before our dear doctor"s day: what a pity that its authorship is not known!"
"Yet why a pity?" quoth I. "Is it not true that words are the only things that live forever? Are we not mortal, and are not books immortal? Homer"s harp is broken and Horace"s lyre is unstrung, and the voices of the great singers are hushed; but their songs--their songs are imperishable. O friend! what moots it to them or to us who gave this epic or that lyric to immortality? The singer belongs to a year, his song to all time. I know it is the custom now to credit the author with his work, for this is a utilitarian age, and all things are by the pound or the piece, and for so much money.
"So when a song is printed it is printed in small type, and the name of him who wrote it is appended thereunto in big type. If the song be meritorious it goes to the corners of the earth through the medium of the art preservative of arts, but the longer and the farther it travels the bigger does the type of the song become and the smaller becomes the type wherein the author"s name is set.
"Then, finally, some inconsiderate hand, wielding the pen or shears, blots out or snips off the poet"s name, and henceforth the song is anonymous. A great iconoclast--a royal old iconoclast--is Time: but he hath no terrors for those precious things which are embalmed in words, and the only fellow that shall surely escape him till the crack of doom is he whom men know by the name of Anonymous!"
"Doubtless you speak truly," said the Judge; "yet it would be different if I but had the ordering of things. I would let the poets live forever and I would kill off most of their poetry."
I do not wonder that Ritson and Percy quarrelled. It was his misfortune that Ritson quarrelled with everybody. Yet Ritson was a scrupulously honest man; he was so vulgarly st.u.r.dy in his honesty that he would make all folk tell the truth even though the truth were of such a character as to bring the blush of shame to the devil"s hardened cheek.
On the other hand, Percy believed that there were certain true things which should not be opened out in the broad light of day; it was this deep-seated conviction which kept him from publishing the ma.n.u.script folio, a priceless treasure, which Ritson never saw and which, had it fallen in Ritson"s way instead of Percy"s, would have been clapped at once into the hands of the printer.
How fortunate it is for us that we have in our time so great a scholar as Francis James Child, so enamored of balladry and so learned in it, to complete and finish the work of his predecessors. I count myself happy that I have heard from the lips of this enthusiast several of the rarest and n.o.blest of the old British and old Scottish ballads; and I recall with pride that he complimented me upon my spirited vocal rendering of "Burd Isabel and Sir Patrick," "Lang Johnny More," "The Duke o" Gordon"s Daughter," and two or three other famous songs which I had learned while sojourning among the humbler cla.s.ses in the North of England.