32. The trees were interwoven wild And spread their boughs enough about To keep both sheep and shepherd out 33. May beetles hummed the bees murmured the birds sang each in his own way the air was filled with the sounds of song and gladness 34. I myself fortunately once happened to ask her some question concerning As You Like It which had been Mrs Sartoriss favourite play Suddenly as if by a miracle the little room seemed transformed there were the actors no not even actors there stood the Duke there was Orlando in the life and spirit One spoke and then another Rosalind pleading the stern Duke unrelenting Then somehow we were carried to the forest with its depths and its delightful company It all lasted but a few moments and there was Mrs Kemble again sitting in her chair in her usual corner and yet I cannot to this day realise that the whole beautiful mirage did not sweep through the little room with colour and light and motion and the rustling of trees and the glittering of embroidered draperies 35. But far oftener he wore what has come to be the typical costume of the Roumanian gipsy in Transylvania -the blue Austrian infantry tights ragged after long service at first hand and a blue jacket with silver clasps perhaps a tall black sheepskin hat perhaps a straw hat. 36. In Tuscany when we had gone to the vintage the peasants pressed the wines inside dark gloomy cellars in Provence the land of 'sunburnt mirth' the grapes were U crushed by steam in brand-new buildings with all the latest modern improvements It was only in Transylvania that we found the peasants dancing in the old glad free fashion of classic days out in the sunshine to the sound of music We threw ourselves under the shade of a near tree to watch But a woman rose from where she was dining and bade the gipsies sit down near her Then she brought them plates piled high with bread and grapes and seeing us fasting when all the world was feasting filled other plates with her bread and grapes and carried them to us We refused them at first we had been eating grapes all morning we gave for reason But you must not go away and say that from the Roumanian woman you have taken nothing was her answer and she placed the plates between us on the grass. 37. After meeting the real gipsy I felt that I never could be content until I had gone to the real gipsy-land to Hungary where Free is the bird in the air And the fish where the river flows Free is the deer in the forest And the gipsy wherever he goes And the gipsy wherever he goes 38. When she was about eleven or twelve her great epic of the battle of Marathon was written in four books and her proud father had it printed Papa was bent upon spoiling me she writes Her cousin remembers a certain ode the little girl recited to her father on his birthday as he listened shading his eyes the young cousin was wondering why the tears came falling along his cheek It seems right to add on this same authority that their common grandmother who used to stay at the house did not approve of these readings and said she had far rather see Elizabeths hemming more carefully finished off than hear of all this Greek 39. I hear the birthdays noisy bliss My sisters woodland glee My fathers praise I did not miss When stooping down he cared to kiss The poet at his knee 40. Is it not something O Heavens is it not all There lies the Heroic Promised Land under that Heavens light my brethren bloom the Happy Isles there O there thither will we There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew there dwell all Heroes and will dwell thither all ye heroic minded The Heavens Loadstar once clearly in our eye how will each true man stand truly to his work in the ship how with undying hope will all things be fronted all be conquered 41. Mores most famous work the Utopia 1516 was written in Latin but was translated afterwards in 1551 by Ralph Robinson 42. And when the roses say to Spring Your reign is oer when breezes bring The redbreast still is heard to fling His music forth. CH LUDERS The Redbreast 43. The shady walks the flowery borders the cool bowers the plashing waterfalls the rippling stream the singing birds the sunshine and the breeze all seemed to say Stay 44. I am and my father was before me a violent Tory of the old school Walter Scotts school that is to say and Homers says Ruskin in the first lines of Præterita 45. With the Comédie Française they were better pleased although Walpole strange to say unlike Goldsmith ten years later was not able to commend the performance of Molières L'Avare 46. All great song from the first day when human lips contrived syllables has been sincere song With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians with pure and native passage the lyrists fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths Operosa parvus carmina fingo I little thing that I am weave my laborious song 47. We all knew that bright and noble figure the friend of Spenser the lover of Stella the last of the old knights the poet the critic and the Christian who wounded to the death gave up the cup of water to a dying soldier 48. The first two of his great poems The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the re-animation of Border legends 49. To Alfred Tennyson in poetry illustrious and consummate in friendship noble and sincere 50. Already in Henry VIII s time and Edward VI s time ancient authors had been made English and before 1579 Vergil Ovid Cicero Demosthenes and many Greek and Latin plays were translated Among the rest Phaers Vergil 1562 Arthur Goldings Ovids Metam 1565 and George Turbervilles Hist Epist of Ovid 1567 are and especially the first remarkable APPENDIX II. SENTENCES TO BE CORRECTED. 1. She was not won by his title but because she loved him. 2. He only remembered her as she had seemed to him after he had drunk from the mystic waters. 3. Roland knew that this must be the king as soon as he saw him, for there was no man so kingly or who bore himself with such a lordly kind of a grace. 4. He told me that the question raised in this epistle was a fabrication of Lamb to puzzle his young correspondent, and the coolness between him and Robinson referred to was, he said, a fiction also invented by him to carry out his mystification. 5. The ground was covered with diamonds and pearls like the meadows are covered with grass. 6. He was affectionate and gentle, and that is as rare a quality in animals as those who call themselves human beings. 7. He rode by the side of the Duke like he was accustomed to, carrying his shield and the heavier parts of his armour, and he did not think of his own comfort like a trusty knight, but of the duke's who as I say he served. |