128

MOORE'S TWO SILKWORMS !

one exception, from Homer down to Lord Byron, they have been, in their several degrees, restless and solitary spirits "

Shepherd. That's a lee.

North."with minds," he continues, "wrapped up like silkworms in their own tasks".

Shepherd. Oh! Mister Muir, but that's a desperate bad eemage. Homer and Byron-twa silkworms! But wull ye answer me this, sir, dinna silkworms marry? Linnæus says they do and James Wulson showed me a box o' them a’ enjoyin their hinnymoon. If sae, why shouldna poets marry too, as weel's thae bit "restless and solitary spirits" the silkworms, wham they, in their ither warks, it seems, sae nearly resemble?

North. Mr Moore may know more of Homer's life than I do, James; but I for one will never believe that he was a restless and solitary spirit

Shepherd. Wrapped up like a silkworm. Nor me.

North. "A stranger and rebel," Mr Moore insanely adds, 66 to domestic ties, and bearing about with him a deposit for posterity in his soul, to the jealous watching and enriching of which almost all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed."

Shepherd. Says he that o' the ever-rejoicing Homer, wha was equally at hame on the battle-field, the plain o' ocean, the tent-palace o' the king o' men, the sky-dwelling o' the immortal gods?

North. Mr Henry Nelson Coleridge says well, in his Introduction to the Study of the Classics, Part First, "that Homer always seems to write in good spirits, and he rarely fails to put his readers in good spirits also. To do this is a prerogative of genius in all times; but it is especially so of the genius of primitive or heroic poetry. In Homer, head and heart speak, and are spoken to together. Morbid peculiarities of thought and temper have no place in him. He is as wide and general as the air we breathe, and the earth upon which we tread; and his vivacious spirit animates, like a Proteus, a thousand different forms of intellectual production -the life-preserving principle in them all. He is as the mighty strength of his own deep-flowing ocean,

'Whence all the rivers, all the seas have birth,
And every fountain, every well on earth.""

MOORE ON PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS.

129

Shepherd. Oh, sir, what a wonnerfu' memory is yours! You're the only man I ever kent that can repeat aff by heart great screeds o' prose composition on a' manner o' soobjecks, just as if they were extemporaneous effusions o' his ain, thrown aff in the heat o' discoorse. Mr Henry Nelson Coleridge1 maun be a clever fallow.

North. A scholar and a gentleman-though I intend taking him to task for a few trifles one of these days.

Shepherd. What's Hartley about.

North. Dreaming in the leafless woods! Many an article he promises to send me-but I ask "Where are they?" and echo answers, "Where are they?"

Shepherd. Send him to boord wi' me in the Forest.

North. But to return to Mr Moore-he picks out the names o' some great philosophers who died bachelors, and having observed that they all "silently admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy”.

Shepherd. Hoot, toot. That's nae reasonin

North. -he observes, that the fate of poets in matrimony has but justified the caution of the philosophers. "While the latter," he says, "have given warning to genius by keeping free of the yoke, the others have still more effectually done so by their misery under it, the annals of this sensitive race having at all times abounded with proofs, that genius ranks but low among the elements of social happiness-that, in general, the brighter the gift, the more disturbing its influence and that, in the married life particularly, its effects have been too often like that of the 'wormwood star,' whose light filled the waters on which it fell with bitterness."

Shepherd. Screeds o' prose-composition again, I declare! Oh! what'n a storehouse !

North. And then he boldly avers at once, that "on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes, are the four illustrious names of Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, and Dryden-to which we must now add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed beside the greatest of them-Lord Byron."

1 Henry Nelson Coleridge, a nephew of S. T. Coleridge.

2 Hartley Coleridge, the son of S. T. Coleridge, was born in 1797, and died in 1849. He was the author of some poems of considerable merit, of Biographies of Northern Worthies, and a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine. His Miscellanies have been published in two volumes.

VOL. III.

I

130

WEAKNESS OF MOORE'S ARGUMENT.

Shepherd. I never read a word o' Dante's "Comedy o' Hell," sae I sall say nae mair anent it, than that the soobjeck seems better adapted for tragedy and as for Dryden, I'm no sae familiar's I should be wi' "Glorious John "-sae Byron may be equal, inferior, or superior to baith them twa.- But I hae read Shakspeer and Milton mony thousan' times, and, Mister Muir, ye had nae richt, sir, by your ipse-dixe, to place Byron by the side o' them twa, the greatest o' a' the children o' man-he maun sit, in a' his glory, far doun aneath their feet.

North. He must. But Mr Moore had no right to place Shakespeare and Milton on the list of miserable married men. Milton's character and conduct as a husband appear to have been noble and sublime. Of Shakespeare's married life we know nothing-or rather, less than nothing-a few dim and contradictory-seeming expressions, almost unintelligible, on the strength of which Mr Moore has not scrupled to place him as a partner in destiny along with Byron, the most miserable of the miserable, and at last a profligate. The destiny of Dante lay not in his marriage, however unhappy it might have been, -and 'tis a sorry way of dealing with the truth to slur and slobber over all its principal features.

Shepherd. It is that, sir.

North. The idiosyncrasies

Shepherd. What a lang-nebbit polysyllable!
North.

of all the Philosophers and Poets-and men of the higher order of genius-whom Mr Moore adduces as examples of unfitness for marriage, were different, through all the possible degrees of difference-and yet he seeks to subject them all to one general law of life!

Shepherd. Maist illogical, and maist unphilosophic. I was just gaun to say-maist irrational-but that micht be ower strang a word. He was bound to hae taken them ane by ane, and to hae analeezed their specific characters, and to hae illustrated their fortunes and their fates, and their position in the times and places they flourished in, and then to hae applied the upshot o' the haill inquiry to the pint in haun-Were they, or were they not-and why and wherefore-likely or unlikely to hae been wicked or meeserable married men? Having failed to do a' that, and twice as muckle's a' that, why, Mister Muir, let me tell you to your face, ma canty chiel, that you

hae dune naething ava, strang's a spider's wab,

and that your argument's about as that keeps flaffin in the wind beside a broken lozen, feckless even to catch flees-for by comes a great bummer, like Mr North or me, and carries it aff on his doup intil the open sunshine.

North. The subject of Mr Moore's elaborate failure, James, deserves discussion

Shepherd. And it's had it.

North. But a few hints

Shepherd. Sparks struck out by your steel and my flint, which hae only to fa' intil the gunpouther o' the thochtfu' reader's mind, in order to set the heaven o' his imagination in a bleeze, and show him a' the Life-region illuminated far and wide roun' the haill horizon.

North. Heaven and earth! my dear Shepherd, what a libel on the Living Illustrious of our own land! Great men are now among us

Shepherd. Ay, Great Poets-born for a' time, sir-and a' married a' wi' wives and weans that is, the maist feck o' them-an' first-rate husbands and fathers, crouse as ggemcocks on their walks, wi' fierce een, sharp nebs, lang claws, and rainbow tails, crawin till the welkin rings wi' their shrill clarions, and then doun wi' ane o' their wings

North. Stop, James. I suspect Mr Moore, with all his palaver, has been fishing for a compliment

Shepherd. And he shall catch ane-or rather I'll fasten ane on his hyuck—and he may whup it ower his head. A better husband and a better father than Mister Muir-excep, aiblins, it be mysel canna be pictured; and yet, whatever may be the fate o' Lalla Rookh, his sangs 'ill last to a' eternity—that is, as lang's the Eerish nation-and afore it be extinguished, there'll be bluidy wark, for they're deevils for fechtin, and whaever prevails ower them to their utter extermination, wull hae little to brag on--but the twa nations 'ill be fund lyin stane-dead by ane anither's sides, and the dead 'ill hae to bury the dead.

North. One word more, James, and I have done.

Shepherd. Where's Mister Muir? This moment he was sittin at my elbow-and lo and behold he has vanished!

North. A phantom of your imagination, James. Would it were a reality, for Mr Moore is a delightful person, and his

132

THEIR MATRIMONIAL TENDERNESS.

genius glances in conversation bright as the diamond-ring on his little finger.

Shepherd. Weel, I could hae taen ma Bible-oath that he was sittin in this chair, nod-noddin, noo at me, and then at you, wi' a sort o' slicht sardonic smile about the silent but expressive mouth o' him, amaist as much as to say that "what is writ is writ," and maun e'en remain in secula seculorum.

North. I hope better things. But if the passages now gently criticised be retained in the octavo edition,1 I shall tackle to Mr Moore in a different trim, and, natheless my admiration of his genius, his character, and himself, his sconce shall feel the crutch.

Shepherd. What gin he pu't out o' your haun, and gie ye a clour on the side o' the head wi' your ain weapon? Grasp it furm, sir.

North. No-James. He that is cunning of fence—and I have taken lessons from Francalanza-has a fine, easy, seemingly almost loose hold of the hilt-but out of that hold, sleight or strength has never yet beat or twitched my timber.

Shepherd. But you maunna hurt Mr Muir's head ower sair, although he has libelled us married men "o' the higher order o' genius."

North. Married men? By St Benedict, I am but a bachelor of hearts. Had I been double-instead of single-I might have sung small

Shepherd. Sung sma'? Hae I sung sma' on this theorem? Why, sir, it's in the power o' ony ae man o' the higher order o' genius-say poetical genius-to lavish, in the prodigality o' his sowl, mair love on his wife, during ony ae day—ay, ony ae hour, than it's in the capacity o' a coof to bestow on his during fifty years, beginnin wi' the first blink o' the hinnymoon, and endin wi' the last lower o' the nicht that fa's upon her coffin. O! what a fearfu' heap o' passion can the poet cram intil ae embrace-ae kiss-ae smile-ae look-ae whisper-ae word-towards the partner o' his life-the mither o' his weans- -the

North. "You speak to me who never had a wife."

Shepherd. Puir chiel! I pity you. What although the poet's marriage-life be sometimes stormy-what though sometimes

1 The passages here animadverted on are retained in the subsequent editions. 2 See ante, vol. i. p. 70, note 2.