Chapter X: The Great Commentator

"Eccovi un de' compositor di libri bene meriti di republica, postillatori, glosatori, construttori, additatori, scoliatori, traduttori!..,...

... O bella etimologia, e di mio proprio Marte or ora _deprompta_! Or dunque quindi _prope jam versus movo_ il gresso, per che voglio notarla _majoribus literis_ nel mio _propriarum elucubrationum libro_."--GIORDANO BRUNO. _Candelajo_.

During this conversation between the lovers, another pair of undeclared lovers were standing on the steps of the terrace, "talking of lovely things that conquer death," and yielding themselves up to the luxury of a _tête-à-tête_, wherein glances were more eloquent than tongues, and hearts fluttered like new-caught birds, at the most seemingly insignificant phrase.

These were Cecil and Blanche. I call them undeclared lovers, because not only were they ignorant of each other's feelings, but ignorant also of their own. Blanche's love had been of gradual growth. The lively, handsome, accomplished Cecil had early made a deep impression on her, though her shy, retiring disposition gave no signs of it; and his attentions on the evening before had been so delightful that she was still under their influence.

That in relinquishing Violet, he should turn to her complete opposite, Blanche, is nothing but what one may have anticipated. Her charms were brought into stronger relief by the contrast; and it has always been remarked that the heart is never so susceptible to a new impression as when it has been in any way robbed of an old affection. Partly, no doubt, because the feelings are best attuned to love when in that state of unsatisfied excitement; for,--

Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart,

still, the sacrifice is so sweet, that it is with difficulty we forego it; and if the _object_ change, the _feeling_ still remains. Partly, also, because the _amour propre_, outraged by a defeat, is glad to be flattered by the chance of a new success.

There they stood, enchanting and enchanted, when Meredith Vyner put his head out of the glass door of the drawing-room which opened on to the terrace, and said, "Mr. Chamberlayne, you are not doing anything particular, are you?"

"Not at all, sir."

"Then, if you have nothing better to amuse you, just step with me into my study; I have a new discovery to communicate, which will, I think, delight you."

Nothing better to amuse him! to leave Blanche for some twaddle about Horace! was it not provoking? But he was forced to go, there was no escaping, If anything could have compensated him, it would have been the expression of impatience on Blanche's face, and the look with which she seemed to say, "Don't stay too long."

When they were in the study, Meredith Vyner placed his snuff-box on the table, and, resting his left foot on the fender, began stroking his protuberant calf in a very deliberate manner. This was a certain sign of his being at that moment struggling with some conception, which demanded the greatest clearness and composure, adequately to bring forth. His mind was tottering under the weight of an unusual burden. As the left hand slowly descended the inner part of his leg, from the knee to the ankle, and as slowly ascended again the same distance, Cecil saw that he was arranging in his head something of more consequence than a verbal criticism. "The discovery I am about to impart," he said at last, with a slight pomposity, "is not perfectly elaborated in my mind, since the first gleam of it only came to me last night. It kept me sleepless. I have meditated profoundly on it since, and I am now in a condition to communicate it to you."

In spite of the solemnity of this introduction, Cecil, whose thoughts were on the terrace, found great difficulty in assuming a proper air of attentive interest. Vyner did not remark it, but continued:--

"The discovery is so simple when once mentioned--like all truly great discoveries--that one asks oneself, is it possible that hitherto it should have been overseen? It goes, however, to nothing less than the entire revolution of the Horatian Sapphic. Look here: you must often, I am sure, have been disagreeably affected by the absurdity of

Labitur ripa, Jove non probante,
_u_xorius amnis.

"This sort of caprice is very funny in Canning's

_U._
-niversity of Güttingen;

but only tolerable in comic verse: in a serious ode it is detestable, and I cannot believe so careful and fastidious a poet (who was no innovator, recollect! none of your _école romantique!_) guilty of it..."

"You propose a new reading?" suggested Cecil, feeling called upon to make some remark.

"New reading! no: that is the paltry trick of a commentator, who endeavours to escape a difficulty by denying its existence. No, no; my edition will have none of these trivialities. Everything I print shall have a solid substance. I intend my edition _to last_. To the point, however; the difficulty vanishes at once if we suppose, as is most natural to believe, that Horace's Sapphics, were not composed of four lines but of three--the fourth line being really nothing but the Adonic termination to the third--like the tail to an Italian sonnet--or better still, like the lengthening of the concluding line in the Spenserian stanza: which has a magnificent swing and sweep in its amplitude, as if gathering up into its mighty arms the rich redundancy of poetic inspiration. Thus instead of

Iliæ dum se nimium querenti
Jactat ultorem, vagus et sinistra
Labitur ripa, Jove non probante, _u_-orius amnis.

The verses read thus:--

Iliæ dum se nimium querenti
Jactat ultorem, vagus et sinistra
Labitur ripa, Jove non probante, uxorius amnis.

And so throughout. Does not the sweep of this last line carry a fine harmony with it? Is it not incomparably superior to the mean, niggling, clipping versification as we usually receive it? There cannot be a question about it. And if you come to reflect, you will see how the error has crept in by the copyists being cramped for room, and writing the Adonic addition below, as if it were a new line. But it is no more a new line, than the additional syllables in Spenser are new lines; nevertheless, we often see printers forced to break a line into two. Here is an example," taking up a volume, "which occurs in Tennyson, whom I opened this morning." And he read aloud:--

"They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be
Queen _o' the May_."

"There," throwing the book down, "now suppose a few centuries hence all our literature to have perished, except half a dozen poets, some noodle of a commentator will imagine that 'Queen o' the May' is a separate verse, and will write learned twaddle on the versification of the English!"

An ample pinch closed this triumphant peroration; and Vyner holding his head slightly downwards to bring his nose in contact with his finger and thumb, looked up over that finger and thumb at Cecil, who had for some minutes ceased to hear what he was saying, having caught a glimpse of Blanche walking on the lawn with Captain Heath. Cecil disliked the Captain; and now a vague sentiment of jealousy hovered about his mind. No wonder, then, if he paid little heed to his host, and his host's observations on an idle point of philology. Of late he had become horribly bored by these consultations, and had often wished Horace and his amateur editor buried irrecoverably beneath the dust of Herculaneum; but never was his inattention so ill-timed as on that occasion!

"What are you looking at?" inquired Vyner, in a tone which his politeness could not completely subdue.

"Looking at? Nothing," said Cecil embarrassed. "I was reflecting----."

"Oh! on my discovery?"

"Yes. It occurs to me that I have met with it before somewhere."

Cecil said this by way of cutting short the discussion, perfectly aware that Vyner was too much of a commentator to care one straw about an opinion, unless he were the originator.

"Impossible! Im-poss-ible!" ejaculated Vyner, much in the strain that Dominie Sampson may have ejaculated 'prodigious!'

"It's very ingenious," said Cecil, who did not know a word about it, "very; and true."

"Yes, yes, but you think it is not original? Its originality is everything with me."

"Perhaps as some compromise between your theory and the ordinary one, you might say that the _orius amnis_ and the Adonic termination generally is only a termination, not a new verse."

"Compromise!" exclaimed the astonished Vyner, "why that is my theory!"

Cecil was posed. Convicted of such palpable inattention as to have suggested as an improvement the very idea which had just been explained to him, he could but stutter out some incoherent phrases of excuse.

Vyner was doubly hurt. The inattention was one offence, but that was nothing to the careless way in which Cecil had proposed as an indifferent modification the grand discovery he, Vyner, had made, which was to immortalize him. With an air of quiet dignity, which Cecil had never seen before, the offended philologist assuring him he was not ripe yet for such subjects, which could scarcely be a matter of surprise at his age, he bowed him out.