For one phrase particularly do all good men, methinks, bless burly, bearish, phrase-making old Tom Carlyle. "Of all things," quoth he, "which men do or make here below by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books." And Judge Methuen"s favorite quotation is from Babington Macaulay to this effect: "I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading."
Kings, indeed! What a sorry lot are they! Said George III. to Nicol, his bookseller: "I would give this right hand if the same attention had been paid to my education which I pay to that of the prince."
Louis XIV. was as illiterate as the lowliest hedger and ditcher. He could hardly write his name; at first, as Samuel Pegge tells us, he formed it out of six straight strokes and a line of beauty, thus:
| | | | | | S
--which he afterward perfected as best he could, and the result was LOUIS.
Still I find it hard to inveigh against kings when I recall the goodness of Alexander to Aristotle, for without Alexander we should hardly have known of Aristotle. His royal patron provided the philosopher with every advantage for the acquisition of learning, dispatching couriers to all parts of the earth to gather books and ma.n.u.scripts and every variety of curious thing likely to swell the store of Aristotle"s knowledge.
Yet set them up in a line and survey them--these wearers of crowns and these wielders of scepters--and how pitiable are they in the paucity and vanity of their accomplishments! What knew they of the true happiness of human life? They and their courtiers are dust and forgotten.
Judge Methuen and I shall in due time pa.s.s away, but our courtiers--they who have ever contributed to our delight and solace--our Horace, our Cervantes, our Shakespeare, and the rest of the innumerable train--these shall never die. And inspired and sustained by this immortal companionship we blithely walk the pathway illumined by its glory, and we sing, in season and out, the song ever dear to us and ever dear to thee, I hope, O gentle reader:
Oh, for a booke and a shady nooke, Eyther in doore or out, With the greene leaves whispering overhead, Or the streete cryes all about; Where I maie reade all at my ease Both of the newe and old, For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke Is better to me than golde!
VI
MY ROMANCE WITH FIAMMETTA
My bookseller and I came nigh to blows some months ago over an edition of Boccaccio, which my bookseller tried to sell me. This was a copy in the original, published at Antwerp in 1603, prettily rubricated, and elaborately adorned with some forty or fifty copperplates ill.u.s.trative of the text. I dare say the volume was cheap enough at thirty dollars, but I did not want it.
My reason for not wanting it gave rise to that discussion between my bookseller and myself, which became very heated before it ended. I said very frankly that I did not care for the book in the original, because I had several translations done by the most competent hands.
Thereupon my bookseller ventured that aged and hackneyed argument which has for centuries done the book trade such effective service--namely, that in every translation, no matter how good that translation may be, there is certain to be lost a share of the flavor and spirit of the meaning.
"Fiddledeedee!" said I. "Do you suppose that these translators who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of the art are not competent to interpret the different shades and colors of meaning better than the mere dabbler in foreign tongues? And then, again, is not human life too short for the lover of books to spend his precious time digging out the recondite allusions of authors, lexicon in hand?
My dear sir, it is a wickedly false economy to expend time and money for that which one can get done much better and at a much smaller expenditure by another hand."
From my encounter with my bookseller I went straight home and took down my favorite copy of the "Decameron" and thumbed it over very tenderly; for you must know that I am particularly attached to that little volume. I can hardly realize that nearly half a century has elapsed since Yseult Hardynge and I parted. She was such a creature as the great novelist himself would have chosen for a heroine; she had the beauty and the wit of those Florentine ladies who flourished in the fourteenth century, and whose graces of body and mind have been immortalized by Boccaccio. Her eyes, as I particularly recall, were specially fine, reflecting from their dark depths every expression of her varying moods.
Why I called her Fiammetta I cannot say, for I do not remember; perhaps from a boyish fancy, merely. At that time Boccaccio and I were famous friends; we were together constantly, and his companionship had such an influence upon me that for the nonce I lived and walked and had my being in that distant, romantic period when all men were gallants and all women were grandes dames and all birds were nightingales.
I bought myself an old Florentine sword at Noseda"s in the Strand and hung it on the wall in my modest apartments; under it I placed Boccaccio"s portrait and Fiammetta"s, and I was wont to drink toasts to these beloved counterfeit presentments in flagons (mind you, genuine antique flagons) of Italian wine. Twice I took Fiammetta boating upon the Thames and once to view the Lord Mayor"s pageant; her mother was with us on both occasions, but she might as well have been at the bottom of the sea, for she was a stupid old soul, wholly incapable of sharing or appreciating the poetic enthusiasms of romantic youth.
Had Fiammetta been a book--ah, unfortunate lady!--had she but been a book she might still be mine, for me to care for lovingly and to hide from profane eyes and to attire in crushed levant and gold and to cherish as a best-beloved companion in mine age! Had she been a book she could not have been guilty of the folly of wedding with a yeoman of Lincolnshire--ah me, what rude awakenings too often dispel the pleasing dreams of youth!
When I revisited England in the sixties, I was tempted to make an excursion into Lincolnshire for the purpose of renewing my acquaintance with Fiammetta. Before, however, I had achieved that object this thought occurred to me: "You are upon a fool"s errand; turn back, or you will destroy forever one of the sweetest of your boyhood illusions!
You seek Fiammetta in the delusive hope of finding her in the person of Mrs. Henry Boggs; there is but one Fiammetta, and she is the memory abiding in your heart. Spare yourself the misery of discovering in the hearty, fleshy Lincolnshire hussif the decay of the promises of years ago; be content to do reverence to the ideal Fiammetta who has built her little shrine in your sympathetic heart!"
Now this was strange counsel, yet it had so great weight with me that I was persuaded by it, and after lying a night at the Swan-and-Quiver Tavern I went back to London, and never again had a desire to visit Lincolnshire.
But Fiammetta is still a pleasing memory--ay, and more than a memory to me, for whenever I take down that precious book and open it, what a host of friends do troop forth! Cavaliers, princesses, courtiers, damoiselles, monks, nuns, equerries, pages, maidens--humanity of every cla.s.s and condition, and all instinct with the color of the master magician, Boccaccio!
And before them all cometh a maiden with dark, glorious eyes, and she beareth garlands of roses; the moonlight falleth like a benediction upon the Florentine garden slope, and the night wind seeketh its cradle in the laurel tree, and fain would sleep to the song of the nightingale.
As for Judge Methuen, he loves his Boccaccio quite as much as I do mine, and being somewhat of a versifier he has made a little poem on the subject, a copy of which I have secured surrept.i.tiously and do now offer for your delectation:
One day upon a topmost shelf I found a precious prize indeed, Which father used to read himself, But did not want us boys to read; A brown old book of certain age (As type and binding seemed to show), While on the spotted t.i.tle-page Appeared the name "Boccaccio."
I"d never heard that name before, But in due season it became To him who fondly brooded o"er Those pages a beloved name!
Adown the centuries I walked Mid pastoral scenes and royal show; With seigneurs and their dames I talked-- The crony of Boccaccio!
Those courtly knights and sprightly maids, Who really seemed disposed to shine In gallantries and escapades, Anon became great friends of mine.
Yet was there sentiment with fun, And oftentimes my tears would flow At some quaint tale of valor done, As told by my Boccaccio.
In boyish dreams I saw again Bucolic belles and dames of court, The princely youths and monkish men Arrayed for sacrifice or sport.
Again I heard the nightingale Sing as she sang those years ago In his embowered Italian vale To my revered Boccaccio.
And still I love that brown old book I found upon the topmost shelf-- I love it so I let none look Upon the treasure but myself!
And yet I have a strapping boy Who (I have every cause to know) Would to its full extent enjoy The friendship of Boccaccio!
But boys are, oh! so different now From what they were when I was one!
I fear my boy would not know how To take that old raconteur"s fun!
In your companionship, O friend, I think it wise alone to go Plucking the gracious fruits that bend Wheree"er you lead, Boccaccio.
So rest you there upon the shelf, Clad in your garb of faded brown; Perhaps, sometime, my boy himself Shall find you out and take you down.
Then may he feel the joy once more That thrilled me, filled me years ago When reverently I brooded o"er The glories of Boccaccio!
Out upon the vile brood of imitators, I say! Get ye gone, ye Bandellos and ye Straparolas and ye other charlatans who would fain possess yourselves of the empire which the genius of Boccaccio bequeathed to humanity. There is but one master, and to him we render grateful homage. He leads us down through the cloisters of time, and at his touch the dead become reanimate, and all the sweetness and the valor of antiquity recur; heroism, love, sacrifice, tears, laughter, wisdom, wit, philosophy, charity, and understanding are his auxiliaries; humanity is his inspiration, humanity his theme, humanity his audience, humanity his debtor.
Now it is of Tancred"s daughter he tells, and now of Rossiglione"s wife; anon of the cozening gardener he speaks and anon of Alibech; of what befell Gillette de Narbonne, of Iphigenia and Cymon, of Saladin, of Calandrino, of Dianora and Ansaldo we hear; and what subject soever he touches he quickens it into life, and he so subtly invests it with that indefinable quality of his genius as to attract thereunto not only our sympathies but also our enthusiasm.
Yes, truly, he should be read with understanding; what author should not? I would no more think of putting my Boccaccio into the hands of a dullard than I would think of leaving a bright and beautiful woman at the mercy of a blind mute.
I have hinted at the horror of the fate which befell Yseult Hardynge in the seclusion of Mr. Henry Boggs"s Lincolnshire estate. Mr. Henry Boggs knew nothing of romance, and he cared less; he was wholly incapable of appreciating a woman with dark, glorious eyes and an expanding soul; I"ll warrant me that he would at any time gladly have traded a "Decameron" for a copy of "The Gentleman Poulterer," or for a year"s subscription to that grewsome monument to human imbecility, London "Punch."
Ah, Yseult! hadst thou but been a book!
VII
THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING
I should like to have met Izaak Walton. He is one of the few authors whom I know I should like to have met. For he was a wise man, and he had understanding. I should like to have gone angling with him, for I doubt not that like myself he was more of an angler theoretically than practically. My bookseller is a famous fisherman, as, indeed, booksellers generally are, since the methods employed by fishermen to deceive and to catch their finny prey are very similar to those employed by booksellers to attract and to entrap buyers.
As for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations, and although I have pursued it but little, I concede that doubtless had I practised it oftener I should have been a better man. How truly has Dame Juliana Berners said that "at the least the angler hath his wholesome walk and merry at his ease, and a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers that maketh him hungry; he heareth the melodious harmony of fowls; he seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, cotes, and many other fowls with their broods, which meseemeth better than all the noise of hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And IF the angler take fish--surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit!"
My bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so enthusiastic a fisherman theoretically, I should at the same time indulge so seldom in the practice of fishing, as if, forsooth, a man should be expected to engage continually and actively in every art and practice of which he may happen to approve. My young friend Edward Ayer has a n.o.ble collection of books relating to the history of American aboriginals and to the wars waged between those Indians and the settlers in this country; my other young friend Luther Mills has gathered together a mult.i.tude of books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer nor Mills hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find delectation in recitals of warlike prowess and personal valor. I love the night and all the poetic influences of that quiet time, but I do not sit up all night in order to hear the nightingale or to contemplate the astounding glories of the heavens.
For similar reasons, much as I appreciate and marvel at the beauties of early morning, I do not make a practice of early rising, and sensible as I am to the charms of the babbling brook and of the crystal lake, I am not addicted to the practice of wading about in either to the danger either to my own health or to the health of the finny denizens in those places.
The best anglers in the world are those who do not catch fish; the mere slaughter of fish is simply brutal, and it was with a view to keeping her excellent treatise out of the hands of the idle and the inappreciative that Dame Berners incorporated that treatise in a compendious book whose cost was so large that only "gentyll and n.o.ble men" could possess it. What mind has he who loveth fishing merely for the killing it involves--what mind has such a one to the beauty of the ever-changing panorama which nature unfolds to the appreciative eye, or what communion has he with those sweet and uplifting influences in which the meadows, the hillsides, the glades, the dells, the forests, and the marshes abound?
Out upon these vandals, I say--out upon the barbarians who would rob angling of its poesy, and reduce it to the level of the butcher"s trade! It becomes a base and vicious avocation, does angling, when it ceases to be what Sir Henry Wotton loved to call it--"an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent; a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of pa.s.sions, a procurer of contentedness, and a begetter of habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it!"