Chapter II (4)

It is however as the poet of 'Emaux et Camees' (Enamels and Cameos) that Theophile Gautier will be chiefly remembered. Every poem but one in this collection is written in short octosyllabic verse, and every one is what the title implies,--a precious stone, a chiseled gem. Gautier's wonderful and admirable talent for grouping together certain words that produce on one's eye and mind the effect of a beautiful picture, his intense love of art, of the outline, the plastic, appear throughout this work. You realize on reading 'Emaux et Camees,' more perhaps than in any other work by this writer, that the poet is fully conscious of his powers and knows just how to use them. Any poem may be selected at random, and will be found a work of art.

The same qualities that distinguish Gautier as a poet are to be found in his novels, narratives of travels, criticisms,--in short, in everything he wrote; intense love for the beautiful,--physically beautiful,--wonderful talent for describing it. Of his novels, properly speaking, there are four that stand out prominently, each very different in its subject,--a proof of Gautier's great versatility,--all perfect in their execution. The first is 'Mademoiselle de Maupin'; it is an immoral book, but it is a beautiful book, not only because written with a rare elegance of style, but also because it makes you love beauty. Briefly, 'Mademoiselle de Maupin' may be called a paean to beauty, sung by its high priest Theophile Gautier.

The other remarkable novels by this writer are 'Le Capitaine Fracasse' (Captain Smash-All), 'Le Roman de la Momie' (The Romance of the Mummy), and 'Spirite.' 'Captain Fracasse,' although not published until 1863, had been announced long beforehand; and Gautier had worked at it, off and on, for twenty years. It belongs to that class of novel known as picaresque--romances of adventures and battles. 'Captain Fracasse' is certainly the most popular of Gautier's works.

'The Romance of the Mummy' is a very remarkable book, in which science and fiction have been blended in the most artistic and clever manner; picturesque, like all of Gautier's writings, but the work of a savant as well as of a novelist. Here more than in any other book by this author,--with the exception perhaps of 'Arria Marcella,'--Gautier has revived in a most lifelike way an entire civilization, so long extinct. 'The Romance of the Mummy' abounds in beautiful descriptions. The description of the finding of the mummy, that of the royal tombs, of Thebes with its hundred gates, the triumphal entrance of Pharaoh into that city, the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites, are all marvelous pictures, that not only fill the reader with the same admiration he would evince at the sight of a painting by one of the great masters, but give him the illusion of witnessing in the body the scenes so admirably described.

'Spirite,' a fantastic story, is a source of surprise to readers familiar with Gautier's other works: they find it hard to conceive that so thorough a materialist as Gautier could ever have produced a work so spiritualistic in its nature. The clever handling of a mystic subject, the richness and coloring of the descriptions, together with a certain ideal and poetical vein that runs through the book, make of 'Spirite' one of Gautier's most remarkable works.

Theophile Gautier has also written a number of _nouvelles_ or short novels, and tales, some of which are striking compositions. 'Arria Marcella' is one of these; a brilliant, masterly composition, in which Gautier gives us such a perfect illusion of the past. Under his magic pen we find ourselves walking the streets of Pompeii and living over the life of the Romans in the first century of our era; and 'Une Nuit de Cleopatre' (A Night with Cleopatra) is a vivid resurrection of the brilliant Egyptian court.

Of his various journeys to Spain, Italy, and the Orient, Gautier has given us the most captivating relations. To many this is not the least interesting portion of Gautier's work. The same qualities that are so striking in his poems and novels--vividness of description, love of the picturesque, wonderful power of expression--are likewise apparent in his relations of travels.

As a literary and especially as an art critic, Gautier ranks high. Bringing to this branch of literature the same qualities that distinguish him in others, he created a descriptive and picturesque method of criticism peculiarly his own. Of his innumerable articles on art and literature, some have been collected under the names of 'Les Grotesques,' a series of essays on a number of poets of the end of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries, ridiculed by Boileau, but in whom Gautier finds some wheat among the chaff. The 'History of Dramatic Art in France for the Last Twenty-five Years,' beginning with the year 1837, will be consulted with great profit by those who are curious to follow the dramatic movement in that country. Of his essays on art, one is as excellent as the other; all the great masters are treated with a loving and admiring hand.

Among the miscellaneous works of this prolific writer should be mentioned 'Menagerie Intime' (Home Menagerie), in which the author makes us acquainted in a most charming and familiar way with his home life, and the various pets, cats, dogs, white rats, parrots, etc., that in turn shared his house with him; _la Nature chez elle_ (Nature at home), that none but a close observer of nature could have written.

The last book written by Gautier before his death was 'Tableaux de Siege' (Siege Pictures, 1871). The subjects are treated just in the way we might expect from such a writer, from a purely artistic point of view.

Gautier has written for the stage only short plays and ballets; but if all he ever wrote were published, his works would fill nearly three hundred volumes. In spite of the quantity and quality of his books, the French Academy did not open her doors to him; but no more did it to Moliere, Beaumarchais, Balzac, and many others. Opinions still vary greatly as to Theophile Gautier's literary merits; but his brilliant descriptive powers, his eminent qualities as a stylist, together with the influence he exercised over contemporary letters as the introducer of the plastic in literature, would seem sufficient to rank him among the great writers of France.

[Signature: Robert Sanderson]

THE ENTRY OF PHARAOH INTO THEBES

From 'The Romance of a Mummy'

At length their chariot reached the manoeuvring-ground, an immense inclosure, carefully leveled, used for splendid military displays. Terraces, one above the other, which must have employed for years the thirty nations led away into slavery, formed a frame _en relief_ for the gigantic parallelogram; sloping walls built of crude bricks lined these terraces; their tops were covered, several rows deep, by hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, whose white or brightly colored costumes blazed in the sun with that perpetually restless movement which characterizes a multitude, even when it appears motionless; behind this line of spectators the cars, chariots, and litters, with their drivers, grooms, and slaves, looked like the encampment of an emigrating nation, such was their immense number; for Thebes, the marvel of the ancient world, counted more inhabitants than did some kingdoms.

The fine, even sand of the vast arena, bordered with a million heads, gleamed like mica dust beneath the light, falling from a sky as blue as the enamel on the statuettes of Osiris. On the south side of the field the terraces were broken, making way for a road which stretched towards Upper Ethiopia, the whole length of the Libyan chain. In the corresponding corner, the opening in the massive brick walls prolonged the roads to the Rhamses-Maiamoun palace....

A frightful uproar, rumbling, deep, and mighty as that of an approaching sea, arose in the distance and drowned the thousand murmurs of the crowd, like the roar of the lion which hushes the barking of the jackals. Soon the noise of instruments of music could be distinguished amidst this terrestrial thunder, produced by the chariot wheels and the rhythmic pace of the foot-soldiers. A sort of reddish cloud, like that raised by the desert blasts, filled the sky in that direction, yet the wind had gone down; there was not a breath of air, and the smallest branches of the palm-trees hung motionless, as if they had been carved on a granite capital; not a hair moved on the women's moist foreheads, and the fluted streamers of their head-dresses hung loosely down their backs. This powdery fog was caused by the marching army, and hung over it like a fallow cloud.

The tumult increases; the whirlwinds of dust opened, and the first files of musicians entered the immense arena, to the great satisfaction of the multitude, who in spite of its respect for his Majesty were beginning to tire of waiting beneath a sun which would have melted any other skulls than those of the Egyptians.

The advance guard of musicians halted for several instants; colleges of priests, deputations of the principal inhabitants of Thebes, crossed the manoeuvring-ground to meet the Pharaoh, and arranged themselves in a row in postures of the most profound respect, in such manner as to give free passage to the procession.

The band, which alone was a small army, consisted of drums, tabors, trumpets, and sistras.

The first squad passed, blowing a deafening blast upon their short clarions of polished brass, which shone like gold. Each of these trumpeters carried a second horn under his arm, as if the instrument might grow weary sooner than the man. The costume of these men consisted of a short tunic, fastened by a sash with ends falling in front; a small band, in which were stuck two ostrich feathers hanging over on either side, bound their thick hair. These plumes, so worn, recalled to mind the antennae of scarabaei, and gave the wearers an odd look of being insects.

The drummers, clothed in a simple gathered skirt, and naked to the waist, beat the onagra-skin heads of their rounded drums with sycamore-wood drumsticks, their instruments suspended by leathern shoulder-belts, and observed the time which a drum-major marked for them by repeatedly turning towards them and clapping his hands.

After the drummers came the sistra-players, who shook their instruments by a quick, abrupt motion, and made at measured intervals the metal links ring on the four bronze bars.

The tabor-players carried their oblong instruments crosswise, held up by a scarf passed around the neck, and struck the lightly stretched parchment with both hands.

Each company of musicians numbered at least two hundred men; but the hurricane of noise produced by trumpets, drums, tabors, and sistras, and which would have drawn blood from the ears inside a palace, was none too loud or too unbearable beneath the vast cupola of heaven, in the midst of this immense open space, amongst this buzzing crowd, at the head of this army which would baffle nomenclators, and which was now advancing with a roar as of great waters.

And was it too much to have eight hundred musicians preceding a Pharaoh who was the best loved of Ammon-Ra, represented by colossal statues of basalt and granite sixty cubits high, whose name was written in cartouches on imperishable monuments, and his history painted and sculptured and painted on the walls of the hypostyle chambers, on the sides of pylons, in interminable _bas-reliefs_, in frescoes without end? Was it indeed too much for a king who could raise a hundred conquered races by the hair of their heads, and from his high throne corrected the nations with his whip; for a living sun burning their dazzled eyes; for a god, almost eternal?

After the musicians came the barbarian captives, strangely formed, with brutish faces, black skins, woolly hair, resembling apes as much as men, and dressed in the costume of their country, a short skirt above the hips, held by a single brace, embroidered in different colors.

An ingenious and whimsical cruelty had suggested the way in which the prisoners were chained. Some were bound with their elbows drawn behind their backs; others with their hands lifted above their heads, in a still more painful position; one had his wrists fastened in wooden cangs (instruments of torture, still used in China); another was half strangled in a sort of pillory; or a chain of them were linked together by the same rope, each victim having a knot round his neck. It seemed as if those who had bound these unfortunates had found a pleasure in forcing them into unnatural positions; and they advanced before their conqueror with awkward and tottering gait, rolling their large eyes and contorted with pain.

Guards walked beside them, regulating their step by beating them with staves.

Tawny women, with long flowing hair, carrying their children in ragged strips of cloth bound about their foreheads, came behind them; bent, covered with shame, exhibiting their naked squalor and deformity: a wretched company, devoted to the most degrading uses.

Others, young and beautiful, with lighter skin, their arms encircled by broad ivory bracelets, their ears pulled down by large metal discs, were enveloped in long tunics with wide sleeves, an embroidered hem around the neck, and falling in small flat folds to their ankles, upon which anklets rattled. Poor girls, torn from country, family, perhaps lovers, smiling through their tears! For the power of beauty is boundless; strangeness gives rise to caprice; and perhaps the royal favor awaited one of these barbarian captives in the depths of the gynaeceum.

They were accompanied by soldiers who kept away the crowd.

The standard-bearers came next, lifting high the gilded staves of their flags, representing mystic baris, sacred hawks, heads of Hathor crowned with ostrich plumes, winged ibexes, inscriptions embellished with the King's name, crocodiles, and other religious or warlike emblems. Long white streamers, spotted with black, were tied to these standards, and floated gracefully with every motion. At sight of the standards announcing the appearance of Pharaoh, the deputations of priests and notables raised towards him their supplicating hands, or let them hang, palm outwards, against their knees. Some even prostrated themselves, with elbows pressed to their sides, their faces in the dust, in attitudes of absolute submission and profound adoration. The spectators waved their large palm-leaves in every direction.

A herald, or reader, holding in one hand a roll covered with hieroglyphics, came forward quite alone between the standard-bearers and the incense-bearers who preceded the King's litter.

He proclaimed in a loud voice, resounding as a brass trumpet, the victories of the Pharaoh; he recounted the results of the different battles, the number of captives and war chariots taken from the enemy, the amount of plunder, the measures of gold dust, and the elephant's tusks, the ostrich feathers, the masses of fragrant gum, the giraffes, lions, panthers, and other rare animals; he mentioned the names of the barbarian chiefs killed by the javelins or the arrows of his Majesty, Aroeris, the all-powerful, the loved of the gods.

At each announcement the people sent up an immense cry, and from the top of the slopes strewed the conqueror's path with long green palm-branches they held in their hands.

At last the Pharaoh appeared!

Priests, turning towards him at regular intervals, stretched out their amschiras to him, first throwing incense on the coals blazing in the little bronze cup, holding them by a handle formed like a sceptre, with the head of some sacred animal at the other end; they walked backwards respectfully, while the fragrant blue smoke ascended to the nostrils of the triumpher, apparently as indifferent to these honors as a divinity of bronze or basalt.

Twelve oeris, or military chiefs, their heads covered by a light helmet surrounded by ostrich feathers, naked to the waist, their loins enveloped in a narrow skirt with stiff folds, their targes suspended from the front of their belts, supported a sort of huge shield, on which rested the Pharaoh's throne. It was a chair, with arms and legs in the form of a lion, high-backed, with large full cushion, adorned on the sides with a kind of trellis-work of pink and blue flowers; the arms, legs, moldings of the seat were gilded, and the parts which were not, flamed with bright colors.

On either side of the litter, four fan-bearers waved enormous semicircular fans, fixed to gilded staves; two priests held aloft a large richly decorated horn of plenty, from which fell bunches of enormous lotus blooms. The Pharaoh wore a mitre-like helmet, cut out to make room for the ear, and brought down over the back of the neck to protect it. On the blue ground of the helmet scintillated a quantity of dots like the eyes of birds, made of three circles, black, white, and red; a scarlet and yellow border ran along the edge, and the symbolic viper, twisting its golden coils at the back, stood erect above the royal forehead; two long curled feathers, purple in color, floated over his shoulders, and completed his majestically elegant head-dress.

A wide gorget, with seven rows of enamels, precious stones, and golden beads, fell over the Pharaoh's chest and gleamed brightly in the sunlight. His upper garment was a sort of loose shirt, with pink and black squares; the ends, lengthening into narrow slips, were wound several times about his bust and bound it closely; the sleeves, cut short near the shoulder, and bordered with intersecting lines of gold, red, and blue, exposed his round, strong arms, the left furnished with a large metal wristband, meant to lessen the vibration of the string when he discharged an arrow from his triangular bow; and the right, ornamented by a bracelet in the form of a serpent in several coils, held a long gold sceptre with a lotus bud at the end. The rest of his body was wrapped in drapery of the finest linen, minutely plaited, bound about the waist by a belt inlaid with small enamel and gold plates. Between the band and the belt his torso appeared, shining and polished like pink granite shaped by a cunning workman. Sandals with returned toes, like skates, shod his long narrow feet, placed together like those of the gods on the temple walls.

His smooth beardless face, with large clearly cut features, which it seemed beyond any human power to disturb, and which the blood of common life did not color, with its death-like pallor, sealed lips, enormous eyes enlarged with black lines, the lids no more lowered than those of the sacred hawk, inspired by its very immobility a feeling of respectful fear. One might have thought that these fixed eyes were searching for eternity and the Infinite; they never seemed to rest on surrounding objects. The satiety of pleasures, the surfeit of wishes satisfied as soon as expressed, the isolation of a demigod who has no equal among mortals, the disgust for perpetual adoration, and as it were the weariness of continual triumph, had forever frozen this face, implacably gentle and of granite serenity. Osiris judging the souls could not have had a more majestic and calm expression.

A large tame lion, lying by his side, stretched out its enormous paws like a sphinx on its pedestal, and blinked its yellow eyes.

A rope, attached to the litter, bound the war chariots of the vanquished chiefs to the Pharaoh. He dragged them behind him like animals in leash. These men, with fierce despairing faces, their elbows drawn together by a strap and forming an ungraceful angle, tottered awkwardly at every motion of the chariots, driven by Egyptians.

Next came the chariots of the young princes royal, drawn by thoroughbred horses, elegantly and nobly formed, with slender legs, sinewy houghs, their manes cut short like a brush, harnessed by twos, tossing their red-plumed heads, with metal-bossed headstalls and frontlets. A curved pole, upheld on their withers, covered with scarlet panels, two collars surmounted by balls of polished brass, bound together by a light yoke bent like a bow with upturned ends; a bellyband and breastband elaborately stitched and embroidered, and rich housings with red or blue stripes and fringed with tassels, completed this strong, graceful, and light harness.

The body of the chariot, painted red and white, ornamented with bronze plaques and half-spheres, something like the umbo of the shields, was flanked with two large quivers placed diagonally opposite each other, one filled with arrows and the other with javelins. On the front of each, a carved, gilded lion, with set paws, and muzzle wrinkled into a frightful grin, seemed ready to spring with a roar upon the enemy.

The young princes had their hair bound with a narrow band, in which the royal viper was twisted; their only garment was a tunic gaudily embroidered at the neck and sleeves, and held in at the waist by a belt of black leather, clasped with a metal plate engraved with hieroglyphics. In this belt was a long dagger, with triangular brass blade, the handle channeled crosswise, terminated by a hawk's head.

In the chariot, by the side of each prince, stood the charioteer, who drove it in battle, and the groom, whose business it was to ward off with the shield the blows aimed at the combatant, while the latter discharged the arrows or threw the javelins which he took from the quivers on either side of the car.

In the wake of the princes followed the chariots, the Egyptian cavalry, twenty thousand in number, each drawn by two horses and holding three men. They advanced ten in a line, the axletrees perilously near together, but never coming in contact with each other, so great was the address of the drivers.

Several lighter chariots, used for skirmishing and reconnoitring, marched at the head and carried one warrior only, who in order to leave his hands free for fighting wound the reins around his body: by bending to the right or the left, or backwards, he guided or stopped his horses; and it was really wonderful to see the noble animals, apparently left to themselves, but governed by imperceptible movements, keep up an undisturbedly regular pace....

The stamping of the horses, held in with difficulty, the thundering of the bronze-covered wheels, the metallic clash of weapons, gave to this line something formidable and imposing enough to raise terror in the most intrepid bosoms. The helmets, plumes, and breastplates dotted with red, green, and yellow, the gilded bows and brass swords, glittered and blazed terribly in the light of the sun, open in the sky, above the Libyan chain, like a great Osirian eye; and it was felt that the onslaught of such an army must sweep away the nations like a whirlwind which drives a light straw before it.

Beneath these innumerable wheels the earth resounded and trembled, as if it had been moved by some convulsion of nature.

To the chariots succeeded the battalions of infantry, marching in order, their shields on the left arm; in the right hand the lance, curved club, bow, sling, or axe, according as they were armed; the heads of these soldiers were covered with helmets, adorned with two horsehair tails, their bodies girded with a cuirass belt of crocodile skin. Their impassible look, the perfect regularity of their movements, their reddish copper complexions, deepened by a recent expedition to the burning regions of Upper Ethiopia, their clothing powdered with the desert sand, they awoke admiration by their discipline and courage. With soldiers like these, Egypt could conquer the world. After them came the allied troops, recognizable from the outlandish form of their head-pieces, which looked like truncated mitres, or were surmounted by crescents spitted on sharp points. Their wide-bladed swords and jagged axes must have produced wounds which could not be healed.

Slaves carried on their shoulders or on barrows the spoils enumerated by the herald, and wild-beast tamers dragged behind them leashed panthers, cheetahs, crouching down as if trying to hide themselves, ostriches fluttering their wings, giraffes which overtopped the crowd by the entire length of their necks, and even brown bears,--taken, they said, in the Mountains of the Moon.

The procession was still passing, long after the King had entered his palace.

FROM 'THE MARSH'

It is a pond, whose sleepy water
Lies stagnant, covered with a mantle
Of lily pads and rushes. . . .
Under the creeping duck-weed
The wild ducks dip
Their sapphire necks glazed with gold;
At dawn the teal is seen bathing,
And when twilight reigns,
It settles between two rushes and sleeps.

FROM 'THE DRAGON-FLY'

Upon the heather sprinkled
With morning dew;
Upon the wild-rose bush;
Upon the shady trees;
Upon the hedges
Growing along the path;

Upon the modest and dainty
Daisy,
That droops its dreamy brow;
Upon the rye, like a green billow
Unrolled
By the winged caprice of the wind,
The dragon-fly gently rocks.

THE DOVES

On the hill-side, yonder where are the graves,
A fine palm-tree, like a green plume,
Stands with head erect; in the evening the doves
Come to nestle under its cover.

But in the morning they leave the branches;
Like a spreading necklace, they may be seen
Scattering in the blue air, perfectly white,
And settling farther upon some roof.

My soul is the tree where every eve, as they,
White swarms of mad visions
Fall from heaven, with fluttering wings,
To fly away with the first rays.

THE POT OF FLOWERS

Sometimes a child finds a small seed,
And at once, delighted with its bright colors,
To plant it he takes a porcelain jar
Adorned with blue dragons and strange flowers.

He goes away. The root, snake-like, stretches,
Breaks through the earth, blooms, becomes a shrub;
Each day, farther down, it sinks its fibrous foot,
Until it bursts the sides of the vessel.

The child returns: surprised, he sees the rich plant
Over the vase's debris brandishing its green spikes;
He wants to pull it out, but the stem is stubborn.
The child persists, and tears his fingers with the pointed arrows.

Thus grew love in my simple heart;
I believed I sowed but a spring flower;
'Tis a large aloe, whose root breaks
The porcelain vase with the brilliant figures.

PRAYER

As a guardian angel, take me under your wing;
Deign to stoop and put out, smiling,
Your maternal hand to my little hand
To support my steps and keep me from falling!

For Jesus the sweet Master, with celestial love,
Suffered little children to come to him;
As an indulgent parent, he submitted to their caresses
And played with them without showing weariness.

O you who resemble those church pictures
Where one sees, on a gold background, august Charity
Preserving from hunger, preserving from cold,
A fair and smiling group sheltered in her folds;

Like the nursling of the Divine mother,
For pity's sake, lift me to your lap;
Protect me, poor young girl, alone, an orphan,
Whose only hope is in God, whose only hope is in you!

THE POET AND THE CROWD

One day the plain said to the idle mountain:--
Nothing ever grows upon thy wind-beaten brow!
To the poet, bending thoughtful over his lyre,
The crowd also said:--Dreamer, of what use art thou?

Full of wrath, the mountain answered the plain:--
It is I who make the harvests grow upon thy soil;
I temper the breath of the noon sun,
I stop in the skies the clouds as they fly by.

With my fingers I knead the snow into avalanches,
In my crucible I dissolve the crystals of glaciers,
And I pour out, from the tip of my white breasts,
In long silver threads, the nourishing streams.

* * * * *

The poet, in his turn, answered the crowd:--
Allow my pale brow to rest upon my hand.
Have I not from my side, from which runs out my soul,
Made a spring gush to slake men's thirst?

THE FIRST SMILE OF SPRING

While to their perverse work
Men run panting,
March that laughs, in spite of showers,
Quietly gets Spring ready.

For the little daisies,
Slyly, when all sleep,
He irons little collars
And chisels gold studs.

Through the orchard and the vineyard,
He goes, cunning hair-dresser,
With a swan-puff,
And powders snow-white the almond-tree.

Nature rests in her bed;
He goes down to the garden
And laces the rosebuds
In their green velvet corsets.

While composing solfeggios
That he sings in a low tone to the blackbirds,
He strews the meadows with snowdrops
And the woods with violets.

By the side of the cress in the brook
Where drinks the stag, with listening ear,
With his concealed hand he scatters
The silver bells of the lilies of the valley.

* * * * *

Then, when his work is done
And his reign about to end,
On the threshold of April, turning his head,
He says, Spring, you may come!

THE VETERANS

From 'The Old Guard'

The thing is worth considering;
Three ghosts of old veterans
In the uniform of the Old Guard,
With two shadows of hussars!

Since the supreme battle
One has grown thin, the other stout;
The coat once made to fit them
Is either too loose or too tight.

Don't laugh, comrade;
But rather bow low
To these Achilles of an Iliad
That Homer would not have invented.

Their faces with the swarthy skin
Speak of Egypt with the burning sun,
And the snows of Russia
Still powder their white hair.

If their joints are stiff, it is because on the battle-field
Flags were their only blankets:
And if their sleeves don't fit,
It is because a cannon-ball took off their arm.

JOHN GAY

(1685-1732)

"In the great society of the wits," said Thackeray, "John Gay deserves to be a favorite, and to have a good place." The wits loved him. Prior was his faithful ally; Pope wrote him frequent letters of affectionate good advice; Swift grew genial in his merry company; and when the jester lapsed into gloom, as jesters will, all his friends hurried to coddle and comfort him. His verse is not of the first order, but the list of "English classics" contains far poorer; it is entertaining enough to be a pleasure even to bright children of this generation, and each succeeding one reads it with an inherited fondness not by any means without help from its own merits. And the man who invented comic opera, one of the most enduring molds in which English humor has been cast, deserves the credit of all important literary pioneers.

Kind, lazy, clever John Gay came of a good, impoverished Devonshire family, which seems to have done its best for the bright lad of twelve when it apprenticed him to a London silk mercer. The boy hated this employment, grew ill under its fret and confinement, went back to the country, studied, possibly wrote poor verses, and presently drifted back to London. The cleverest men of the time frequented the crowded taverns and coffee-houses, and the talk that he heard at Will's and Button's may have determined his profession. Thither came Pope and Addison, Swift and Steele, Congreve, St. John, Prior, Arbuthnot, Cibber, Hogarth, Walpole, and many a powerful patron who loved good company.

Perhaps through some kind acquaintance made in this informal circle, Gay obtained a private secretaryship, and began the flirtation with the Muse which became serious only after some years of coldness on that humorous lady's part. His first poem, 'Wine,' published when he was twenty-three, is not included in his collected works: perhaps because it is written in blank verse; perhaps because his maturer taste condemned it. Three years later, in 1711, when the success of the Spectator was yet new, and Pope had just completed his brilliant 'Art of Criticism,' and Swift was editing the Examiner and working on that defense of a French peace, 'The Conduct of the Allies,' which was to make him the talk of London,--Gay sent forth his second venture; a curious, unimportant pamphlet, 'The Present State of Wit.' Late in 1713 he is contributing to Dicky Steele's Guardian, and sending elegies to his 'Poetical Miscellanies'; and a little later, having become a favorite with the powerful Mr. Pope, he is made to bring up new reinforcements to the battle of that irascible gentleman with his ancient enemy Ambrose Phillips. This he does in 'The Shepherd's Week,' a sham pastoral, which is full of wit and easy versification, and shows very considerable talents as a parodist. This skit the luckless satirist dedicated to Bolingbroke, whose brilliant star was just passing into eclipse. Swift thought this harmless courtesy the real cause of the indifference of the Brunswick princes to the merits of the poet; and in an age when every spark of literary genius was so carefully nursed and utilized to sustain the weak dynasty, most likely he was right.

For this reason or another, indifferent they were; and in a time when court favor counted enormously, poor indolent luxury-loving Gay had to earn his loaf by hard work, or go without it. He produced a tragi-comi-pastoral farce called 'What D'ye Call It?' which was the lineal ancestor of 'Pinafore' and the 'Pirates of Penzance' in its method of treating farcical incidents in a grave manner. But the town did not see the fun of this expedient, and the play failed, though it contained, among other famous songs, ''Twas When the Seas Were Roaring.' In 1716 'Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London,' put some money into the poet's empty pocket, thanks to Pope's good offices. A year later a second comedy of his, 'Three Hours after Marriage,' met with well-deserved failure. And now, as always, when his spirits sank, his good friends showered kindnesses upon him. Mr. Secretary Pulteney carried him off to Aix. Lord Bathurst and Lord Burlington were his to command. Many fine gentlemen, and particularly many fine ladies, pressed him to make indefinite country visits. In 1720 his friends managed the publication of his poems in two quarto volumes, subscribing for ten, twenty, and even fifty copies apiece, some of them, and securing to the poet, it is said, L1,000. The younger Craggs, the bookseller, gave him some South-Sea stock which rose rapidly, and at one time the improvident little gentleman found himself in possession of L20,000. All his friends besought him to sell, but Alnaschar Gay had visions of a splendid ease and opulence. The bubble burst, and poor Alnaschar had not wherewithal to pay his broker.

The Duchess of Queensborough (Prior's "Kitty, beautiful and young") had already annexed the charmer, and now carried him off to Petersham. "I wish you had a little villakin in Mr. Pope's neighborhood," scolds Swift to him; "but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six horses might carry you to Japan;" and again:--"I know your arts of patching up a journey between stagecoaches and friend's coaches--for you are as arrant a cockney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock; and then I shall be in less pain about you. I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half a crown a day." Gay went to Bath with the Queensberrys, and to Oxford. Swift complained to Pope:--"I suppose Mr. Gay will return from Bath with twenty pounds more flesh, and two hundred pounds less money. Providence never designed him to be above two-and-twenty, by his thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen." And his dear Mrs. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk, took him affectionately to task:--"Your head is your best friend: it would clothe, lodge, and feed you; but you neglect it, and follow that false friend your heart, which is such a foolish, tender thing that it makes others despise your head, that have not half so good a one on their own shoulders. In short, John, you may be a snail, or a silkworm; but by my consent you shall never be a hare again."

He lived under other great roofs, if not contentedly, at least gracefully and agreeably. If his dependent state irked him, his hosts did not perceive it. To Swift he wrote, indeed, "They wonder at each other for not providing for me, and _I_ wonder at them all." Yet, for the nine years from 1722 to 1731 he had a small official salary, on which a thriftier or more industrious mortal would have managed to live respectably even in that expensive age; and for at least a part of the time he had official lodgings at Whitehall.

In 1725 was published the first edition of his famous 'Fables,' which had been written for the moral behoof of Prince William, afterward Duke of Cumberland, of unblessed memory. The book did not make his fortune with the court, as he had hoped, and in 1728 he produced his best known work, 'The Beggar's Opera.' Nobody had much faith in this "Newgate Pastoral," least of all Swift, who had first suggested it. But it took the town by storm, running for sixty-three consecutive nights. As the heroine, Polly Peachum, the lovely Lavinia Fenton captured a duchess's coronet. The songs were heard alike in West End drawing-rooms and East End slums. Swift praised it for its morality, and the Archbishop of Canterbury scored it for its condonation of vice. The breath of praise and blame filled equally its prosperous sails, blew it all over the kingdom wherever a theatre could be found, and finally wafted it to Minorca. So well did the opera pay him that Gay wrote a sequel called 'Polly,' which, being prohibited through some notion of Walpole's, sold enormously by subscription and earned Gay L1,200.

After this the hospitable Queensberrys seem to have adopted him. He produced a musical drama, 'Acis and Galatea,' written long before and set to Handel's music; a few more 'Fables'; a thin opera called 'Achilles'; and then his work was done. He died in London of a swift fever, in December 1732, before his kind Kitty and her husband could reach him, or his other great friend, the Countess of Suffolk. Arbuthnot watched over him; Pope was with him to the last; Swift indorsed on the letter that brought him the tidings, "On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death; received on December 15th, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." So faithfully did the "giants," as Thackeray calls them, cherish this gentle, friendly, affectionate, humorous comrade. He seems indeed to have been almost the only companion with whom Swift did not at some time fall out, and of his steadfastness the gloomy great man in his 'Verses on my Own Death' could write:--

"Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day."

The 'Trivia' and the 'Shepherd's Week,' the 'Acis and Galatea' and even the 'Beggar's Opera,' gradually faded into the realm of "old, forgotten, far-off things"; while the 'Fables' passed through many editions, found their place in school reading-books, were committed to memory by three generations of admiring pupils, and included in the most orthodox libraries. Yet criticism now reverts to the earlier standard; approves the songs, and the minute observation, the nice phrasing, and the humorous swing of the pastorals and operas, and finds the fables dull, commonplace, and monotonous. Pope said in his affectionate epitaph that the poet had been laid in Westminster Abbey, not for ambition, but--

"That the worthy and the good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms, '_Here_ lies Gay.'"

If to-day the worthy and the good do not know even where he lies, not the less is he to be gratefully remembered whom the best and greatest of his own time so much admired, and of whom Pope and Johnson and Thackeray and Dobson have written with the warmth of friendship.

THE HARE AND MANY FRIENDS

From the 'Fables'

Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child whom many fathers share
Hath seldom known a father's care.
'Tis thus in friendships: who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.

A Hare, who in a civil way
Complied with everything, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial train
Who haunt the wood or graze the plain.
Her care was, never to offend,
And ev'ry creature was her friend.

As forth she went at early dawn
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
Behind she hears the hunters' cries,
And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies.
She starts, she stops, she pants for breath;
She hears the near advance of death;
She doubles to mislead the hound,
And measures back her mazy round;
Till fainting in the public way,
Half dead with fear, she gasping lay.

What transport in her bosom grew,
When first the horse appeared in view!
"Let me," says she, "your back ascend,
And owe my safety to a friend.
You know my feet betray my flight;
To friendship every burden's light."

The Horse replied:--"Poor honest Puss,
It grieves my heart to see thee thus:
Be comforted, relief is near;
For all your friends are in the rear."

She next the stately Bull implored;
And thus replied the mighty lord:--
"Since every beast alive can tell
That I sincerely wish you well,
I may, without offense, pretend
To take the freedom of a friend.

Love calls me hence; a favorite cow
Expects me near yon barley-mow:
And when a lady's in the case,
You know all other things give place.
To leave you thus might seem unkind;
But see, the Goat is just behind."

The Goat remarked her pulse was high,
Her languid head, her heavy eye;
"My back," says he, "may do you harm:
The Sheep's at hand, and wool is warm."

The Sheep was feeble, and complained
His sides a load of wool sustained:
Said he was slow, confessed his fears;
For hounds eat Sheep, as well as Hares!

She now the trotting Calf addressed,
To save from death a friend distressed.
"Shall I," says he, "of tender age,
In this important care engage?
Older and abler passed you by;
How strong are those! how weak am I!
Should I presume to bear you hence,
Those friends of mine may take offense.
Excuse me then. You know my heart:
But dearest friends, alas! must part.
How shall we all lament! Adieu!
For see, the hounds are just in view."

THE SICK MAN AND THE ANGEL

From the 'Fables'

Is there no hope? the Sick Man said.
The silent doctor shook his head,
And took his leave with signs of sorrow,
Despairing of his fee to-morrow.
When thus the Man with gasping breath:--
I feel the chilling wound of death;
Since I must bid the world adieu,
Let me my former life review.
I grant, my bargains well were made,
But all men overreach in trade;
'Tis self-defense in each profession;
Sure, self-defense is no transgression.
The little portion in my hands,
By good security on lands,
Is well increased. If unawares,
My justice to myself and heirs
Hath let my debtor rot in jail,
For want of good sufficient bail;
If I by writ, or bond, or deed,
Reduced a family to need,--
My will hath made the world amends;
My hope on charity depends.
When I am numbered with the dead,
And all my pious gifts are read,
By heaven and earth 'twill then be known,
My charities were amply shown.
An Angel came. Ah, friend! he cried,
No more in flattering hope confide.
Can thy good deeds in former times
Outweigh the balance of thy crimes?
What widow or what orphan prays
To crown thy life with length of days?
A pious action's in thy power;
Embrace with joy the happy hour.
Now, while you draw the vital air,
Prove your intention is sincere:
This instant give a hundred pound;
Your neighbors want, and you abound.
But why such haste? the Sick Man whines:
Who knows as yet what Heaven designs?
Perhaps I may recover still;
That sum and more are in my will.
Fool, says the Vision, now 'tis plain,
Your life, your soul, your heaven was gain;
From every side, with all your might,
You scraped, and scraped beyond your right;
And after death would fain atone,
By giving what is not your own.
Where there is life there's hope, he cried;
Then why such haste?--so groaned and died.

THE JUGGLER

From the 'Fables'

A juggler long through all the town
Had raised his fortune and renown;
You'd think (so far his art transcends)
The Devil at his fingers' ends.
Vice heard his fame; she read his bill;
Convinced of his inferior skill,
She sought his booth, and from the crowd
Defied the man of art aloud.
Is this, then, he so famed for sleight?
Can this slow bungler cheat your sight?
Dares he with me dispute the prize?
I leave it to impartial eyes.
Provoked, the Juggler cried, 'Tis done.
In science I submit to none.
Thus said, the cups and balls he played;
By turns, this here, that there, conveyed.
The cards, obedient to his words,
Are by a fillip turned to birds.
His little boxes change the grain;
Trick after trick deludes the train.
He shakes his bag, he shows all fair;
His fingers spreads,--and nothing there;
Then bids it rain with showers of gold,
And now his ivory eggs are told.
But when from thence the hen he draws,
Amazed spectators hum applause.
Vice now stept forth, and took the place
With all the forms of his grimace.
This magic looking-glass, she cries
(There, hand it round), will charm your eyes.
Each eager eye the sight desired,
And ev'ry man himself admired.
Next to a senator addressing:
See this bank-note; observe the blessing,
Breathe on the bill. Heigh, pass! 'Tis gone;
Upon his lips a padlock shone.
A second puff the magic broke,
The padlock vanished, and he spoke.
Twelve bottles ranged upon the board,
All full, with heady liquor stored,
By clean conveyance disappear,
And now two bloody swords are there.
A purse she to a thief exposed,
At once his ready fingers closed:
He opes his fist, the treasure's fled:
He sees a halter in its stead.
She bids ambition hold a wand;
He grasps a hatchet in his hand.
A box of charity she shows:
Blow here; and a churchwarden blows.
'Tis vanished with conveyance neat,
And on the table smokes a treat.
She shakes the dice, the board she knocks,
And from her pockets fills her box.

* * * * *

A counter in a miser's hand
Grew twenty guineas at command.
She bids his heir the sum retain,
And 'tis a counter now again.
A guinea with her touch you see
Take ev'ry shape but Charity;
And not one thing you saw, or drew,
But changed from what was first in view.
The Juggler now, in grief of heart,
With this submission owned her art.
Can I such matchless sleight withstand?
How practice hath improved your hand!
But now and then I cheat the throng;
You every day, and all day long.

SWEET WILLIAM'S FAREWELL TO BLACK-EYED SUSAN

A BALLAD

All in the Downs the fleet was moored,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard:
Oh, where shall I my true love find!
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true,
If my sweet William sails among the crew.

William, who high upon the yard
Rocked with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice he heard,
He sighed and cast his eyes below;
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.

So the sweet lark, high poised in air,
Shuts close his pinions to his breast
(If, chance, his mate's shrill call he hear),
And drops at once into her nest.
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lip those kisses sweet.

O Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear;
We only part to meet again.
Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still points to thee.

Believe not what the landmen say,
Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind:
They'll tell thee, sailors when away
In every port a mistress find.
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,
For thou art present wheresoe'er I go.

If to far India's coast we sail,
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright;
Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale,
Thy skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view,
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.

Though battle call me from thy arms,
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Though cannons roar, yet safe from harms,
William shall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye.

The boatswain gave the dreadful word;
The sails their swelling bosom spread;
No longer must she stay aboard:
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head:
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land:
Adieu! she cries; and waved her lily hand.

FROM 'WHAT D'YE CALL IT?'

A BALLAD

T'was when the seas were roaring
With hollow blasts of wind,
A damsel lay deploring,
All on a rock reclined.
Wide o'er the foaming billows
She cast a wistful look;
Her head was crowned with willows,
That tremble o'er the brook.

"Twelve months are gone and over,
And nine long tedious days;
Why didst thou, venturous lover,
Why didst thou trust the seas?
Cease, cease, thou cruel ocean,
And let my lover rest:
Ah! what's thy troubled motion
To that within my breast?

"The merchant robbed of pleasure
Sees tempests in despair;
But what's the loss of treasure,
To losing of my dear?
Should you some coast be laid on,
Where gold and diamonds grow,
You'll find a richer maiden,
But none that loves you so.

"How can they say that nature
Has nothing made in vain;
Why then, beneath the water,
Should hideous rocks remain?
No eyes the rocks discover
That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep."

All melancholy lying,
Thus wailed she for her dear!
Repaid each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear.
When o'er the white wave stooping,
His floating corpse she spied,--
Then, like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head and died.

EMANUEL VON GEIBEL

(1815-1884)

The chief note in Geibel's nature was reverence. A spirit of reverent piety, using the phrase in its widest as well as in its strictly religious sense, characterizes all his poetical utterances. He intended to devote himself to theology, but the humanistic tendencies of the age, combined with his own peculiar endowments, led him to abandon the Church for pure literature. The reverent attitude of mind, however, remained, and has left its impress even upon his most impassioned love lyrics. It appears too in his first literary venture, a volume of 'Classical Studies' undertaken in collaboration with his friend Ernst Curtius, in which is displayed his loving reverence for the great monuments of Greek antiquity. He felt himself an exile from Greece, and like Goethe's Iphigenia, his soul was seeking ever for the land of Hellas. And through the influence of Bettina von Arnim this longing was satisfied; he secured the post of tutor in the household of the Russian ambassador to Athens.

Geibel was only twenty-three years of age when this good fortune fell to his lot. He was born at Luebeck on October 18th, 1815. His poetic gifts, early manifested, secured him a welcome in the literary circles of Berlin. During the two years that he spent in Greece he was enabled to travel over a large part of the Grecian Archipelago in the inspiring company of Curtius; and it was upon their return to Germany in 1840 that the 'Classical Studies' appeared, and were dedicated to the Queen of Greece. Then Geibel eagerly took up the study of French and Spanish, with the result that many valuable volumes were published in collaboration with Paul Heyse, Count von Schack, and Leuthold, which introduced to the German public a vast treasury of song from the literatures of France, Spain, and Portugal. The first collection of Geibel's own poems in 1843 secured for the poet a modest pension from the King of Prussia.

Geibel also made several essays at dramatic composition. He wrote for Mendelssohn the text of a 'Lorelei,' but the composer died before the music was completed. A comedy called 'Master Andrew' was successful in a number of cities; and of his more ambitious tragedies, 'Brunhild' and 'Sophonisba,' the latter won the famous Schiller prize in 1869.