Chapter I: MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is (5)

Or shall I obliterate the lovely color of Bordeaux which, captivating the sense of seeing, thus additionally heightens through the imagination the exquisite bouquet and flavor of the grand growths of the Médoc? Disguised in an opaque receptacle, how may I enjoy the liquid gold of Sauternes or the deep violets and purples which dance and gleam in a glass of Côte Rôtie? Yet more than clear crystal is required in the ideal wine-glass. The most delicious nectar loses half its virtues if drunk from a thick glass or a sharp, rough rim, as the foaming juice of Champagne is deprived of its greatest charm—its bewitching, mantling life—when served in the flat tumbler that deadens its sparkle and its bead.

It was not without just reason that Boileau declared:

On est savant quand on boit bien;
Qui ne sait boire ne sait rien.

Who drinketh well his wisdom shows;
Who knows not drinking nothing knows.

And Jean le Houx, in the dedication of his sparkling Vaux de Vire—anacreontics which are unique in the languages—asserts that his best verses were produced by drinking good wine, while inferior wine was responsible for the poorest. It would be interesting to know what special wines inspired the incomparable tribute to his nose—

... Duquel la couleur richement particippe
Du rouge et violet,

or whether it was white or red wine that drew forth the frolicsome stanzas addressed to Magdaleine.

Le Houx deserves to be classed among the great philosophers. It is to be regretted, however, that his philosophy did not extend to dining as well as wining—though, for that matter, the eight little 18mo volumes of the Almanach des Gourmands,[11] justly classed by Monselet among the great forgotten books, leave nothing to be desired on the subject of epicurism in its most infinitesimal and far-extending details. The humor and _verve_ are exquisite, while La Reynière’s style might come under the definition of Remy Belleau-“well-coupled and properly sewn words, graces and favors of a well-chosen subject, and I do not know what happy chance (_et ne sçay quel heur_), which truly accompanies those who write well.” Only, the Almanach is in prose. With all due regard for Berchoux and his poem in four cantos, La Gastronomie, the editions of which are almost as numerous as the stars in the Milky Way, the French genius is yet to appear who may do full justice in verse to the pleasures of the table.

Footnote 11:

Almanach des Gourmands. Servant de Guide dans les Moyens de Faire
Excellente Chère; Par un Viel Amateur. Troisième Édition. A Paris
1804-1812.

Le Houx, how fine his touch! and how melodiously he plays upon all the strings of the œnologistic harp!

I am brave as a Cæsar in wars where they fight
With a glass in the left hand and jug in the right.
Let me rather be riddled by drinking my fill
Than by those cruel balls that so suddenly kill!

’Tis the clashing of bottles to which I incline;
And the pipes and the rundlets, all full of red wine,
Are my cannon of siege, which are aimed without fault
At the thirst, the true fortress I mean to assault.

———————

’Tis far better in tumbler to shelter one’s nose,
Where ’tis safer than in a war-helmet from blows.
Better leader than trumpet or banner is sign
Of the ivy and yew bush that show where there’s wine.

It is better by fireside to drink muscadel
Than to go on a rampart to mount sentinel.
I would rather the tavern attend without fail
Than I’d follow my captain the breach to assail.

All excesses, however, I hate and disclaim,
Not a toper by nature, but only in name.
Jolly wine, bringing laughter and friendly carouse,
I have promised, and ever will pay you my vows.[12]

Footnote 12:

Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A.

And in another of his mirthful, vinous phantasies:

To flee from my sadness, yet stay in one place,
I take horn and staff, and I practice the chase.
Catch, catch!
Drink, drink!
Hip, hip!
Catch, catch!
Keep watch
Lest it slip!

My game is the thirst, which I don’t want to catch.
But only to make it decamp with dispatch.

The goblet’s my bugle, which splendidly sounds
When I lustily blow; the bottle’s my hounds.

The table’s my forest and hunting-field green
When close set with covers for friends and me seen.

I blow on my bugle, and, loud though he cry,
Thirst soon will break cover, or else he must die.

O sweet-sounding bugle, mouth-instrument dear!
This pastime is charming when bedtime is near.
Catch, catch!
Drink, drink!
Hip, hip!
Catch, catch!
Keep watch
Lest it slip![13]

Footnote 13:

Translation of J. P. Muirhead, M. A.

But Le Houx’s charming eulogies are by no means confined to wine. Cider, among the most refreshing and prophylactic of summer beverages when well made, evokes almost equally the playful strains of his lyre. Not less renowned than the juice of the apple of Devonshire is the potent apple juice of Normandy, and even in his reference to this there constantly occurs the oft-repeated refrain:

Drinking is sweeter than a kiss to me.

The true _raison d’être_ of the Vaux de Vire, it may be stated, was a jealous wife. Since the time of Le Houx there have been other jealous spouses that have driven their husbands to the bottle or to something worse; but none have done so with such smiling effect as the wife of the wine-loving lawyer-poet of Vire.

With the wine at the proper temperature (and this point it is the bounden duty of the host to personally superintend), a few well-prepared courses partaken of with congenial friends amid pleasant surroundings will prove far more agreeable and leave more grateful remembrances than the most elaborate banquet. In dining, more than in anything else, quality rather than quantity paves the way to happiness. The _petit_, and not the _grand dîner_ is the grace of the table. Like many of the accidental things of life—the chance meeting, the suddenly conceived excursion, the unexpected visit from out-of-town friends—it is often the impromptu repast which inspires the most delightful souvenirs.

It was years ago, though I remember it as distinctly as if it were yesterday, when I found my friend St. Ange, after an absence of many months, ensconced in the library, La Gastronomie in one hand and the epicurean epigrams of Martial in the other.

A Julienne soup, some smelt with a tartare sauce, sheep’s tongues _à la Jardinière_, quail, and an endive salad were to compose the dinner. My guest’s rosy face took on an added luster. His eyes brightened perceptibly at the mention of the quail.

“Let me prepare them!” he exclaimed. “I will show you how to make a _salmis_ of quail that is not down in the cook-books; it is composed as you would blend and form an exquisite perfume:

Thy crown of roses or of spikenard be;
A crown of thrushes is the crown for me.[14]

I term it a _salmis à la bourgeois gentilhomme_; like Molière’s _comédie-ballet_, it is piquant and full of delightful surprises. Give me the quail, the shallots, the truffles, the mushrooms, and you will never forget me!”

Footnote 14:

Martial. Elphinston’s translation.

There were four larded quails, freshly roasted.

He took a piece of unsalted butter the size of an egg, placed it in the porcelain sauce-pan, and allowed it to liquefy. When it began to bubble, he put in two shallots and two sprigs of parsley finely minced, stirring until browned, adding a teaspoonful of sifted flour. When well incorporated, he supplemented this with two cupfuls of bouillon, a pinch of salt, and for the _bouquet garni_ a third of a bay-leaf, two cloves, a small piece of cinnamon, a pinch of thyme, a dash of allspice and the merest trifle of nutmeg. Next he added two sliced truffles of Périgord, the juice of a can of button mushrooms, a tablespoonful of cognac, a tablespoonful of water, and a wine-glass each of Chablis and St. Julien.

His face glowed, his hazel eyes sparkled, and every little while he tasted of the savory _liaison_.

After pouring in the wine, he allowed the sauce to boil until reduced to the desired consistency. The can of mushrooms was then added; and about ten minutes before serving, one of the quail was permitted to simmer in the perfumed sauce. Immediately previous to placing the _salmis_ in the chafing-dish, and decorating it with _croutons_, he dropped in a pepper-corn and stirred briskly.

“_‘Voilà qui est bien;’ c’est parfait, mon cher!_” he said with a smile; “_le salmis a bien réussi!_

“I always use a good many herbs and seasonings,” he continued, “though I employ them only in very small quantities. By using them, infinite variety of flavorings may be produced, and they are, moreover, a great tonic to the stomach if dealt out by a judicious hand. Hence the superiority of good French cooking; variety is the spice of digestion. Indeed, pleasing savors or sapid impressions usually exert the greatest influence upon the function of digestion. If they are good and agreeable, the secretion of the gastric juice is abundant, mastication is prolonged, deglutition and chylification are easy and rapid. If they are bad or repugnant, mastication becomes a labor, deglutition difficult, and a distressed feeling is the inevitable result.

“Perfection in cooking consists in rendering all such substances as may be utilized for food as agreeable to the taste as they are easy to digest. The cook, therefore, besides possessing a palate of extreme delicacy, should be thoroughly acquainted with the hygienic properties of all the herbs and seasonings he employs, and this equally with reference to their effect upon the stomach as with regard to their pleasing impression upon the organ of taste. All spices and kindred stimulants should be used with the utmost tact and discrimination.

“But the pleasures that flit about the well-appointed table—the appetite which is, after all, the best of sauces and that leads to good digestion and consequent health and enjoyment of the other pleasures of life—depend upon more than the _chef_ and the _cuisine_. Back of the most seductive dish and piquant sauce, there remains the capacity to enjoy them, which is alone to be attained in its fullest measure by regular habits (habits as regular, at least, as rational pleasure and recreation will allow); and that greatest and purest of tonics and prophylactics—exercise in the open air.”

In due time the _entrée_ was partaken of. The impromptu _chef_ had upset the kitchen from casserole to _pot-au-feu_, but his _salmis_ was worthy of Carème.

There was a great bunch of double violets on the table, the lovely dark blue variety (_Viola odoratissima fl. pl._) with the short stems, freshly plucked from the violet frame of the garden, and the room was scented by their delicious breath.

A bowl of broad-leaved Batavian endive blanched to a nicety and alluring as a siren’s smile was placed upon the table. I almost fancied it was smiling at the violets. A blue-violet salad, by all means! there are violets, and to spare.

On a separate dish there was a little minced celery, parsley, and chives. Four heaping salad-spoonfuls of olive oil were poured upon the herbs, with a dessertspoonful of white-wine vinegar (the best in the world comes from Orléans, France), the necessary salt and white pepper, and a tablespoonful of Bordeaux. The petals of two dozen violets were detached from the stems, and two thirds of them were incorporated with the dressing. The dressing being thoroughly mixed with the endive, the remaining flower petals were sprinkled over the salad and a half-dozen whole violets placed in the center.

The lovely blue sapphires glowed upon the white bosom of the endive! It was the true sequence of the _salmis_.

A white-labeled bottle, capsuled Yquem, and the cork branded “Lur Saluces,” was served with the salad. You note the subtle aroma of pine-apple and fragrance of flower ottos with the detonation of the cork—the fine vintages of Yquem have a pronounced _Ananassa_ flavor and bouquet that steeps the palate with its richness and scents the surrounding atmosphere.

Now try your blue-violet salad.

Is it fragrant? is it cool? is it delicious? is it divine?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X.

FOOTSTEPS OF SPRING.

... The yong Sunn
Hath in the Ramm his halvè cours yrunn.
CHAUCER.

In the earlier year when the chill winds blow
The breath of buds with the breath of snow,
And the climbing sap like a spirit passes
Through trunks unscreened from the noonday glow,
O’er the wind-frayed weeds and the withered grasses
And the leaves that linger in layered masses,
March, the Master of Hounds, doth go
To hunt the hills and the wet morasses.
C. H. LÜDERS.

MY books, my flowers, and my colorful interior surroundings do much to relieve the monotony of the long winter months. Not until _Aries_ appears for his accustomed charge upon the spring do I yearn intently for its advent. Then the days seem the longest—the tedious days of waiting; the longest days, which are to come, will be the shortest. For the days may not be measured by the length, but by the flight of the hours and the beauty they bring; the sun and the shadows shorten the longest day.

Does not a restlessness come to man with the ascending sap in the trees, when he likewise would cast off the inertia that has possessed him, and respond to the magical touch of the sun? There is much that is beautiful in the mythopœic representation of the seasons. All winter, says the legend, the sweet sunshine is chased by the relentless storm, now hiding beneath the clouds, now below the hills, showing herself for a moment merely to flee again. But, finally becoming bolder, the Sunshine advances to meet the Storm, who, captivated by her beauty, woos her as he pursues her, and wins her for his bride. Then is there great rejoicing upon the earth, and from their union are born plants which spring from its surface and spangle it with flowers. But every autumn the Storm begins to frown anew, the Sunshine flees from him, and the pursuit begins again.

Is not the sunshine, more than anything else, the prelude to spring? How it sifts and permeates through the windows into one’s very being, this first March sunshine! Looked at from within it is already spring without, so luminous the atmosphere and so soft the shadows. Perfectly aware am I that it may not continue and that the storm will cause the sunlight to hide itself again, just as it has done so often before when it merely gleamed for a moment from the edge of the cloud. Even now the fickle sun sinks behind a sharp dark band in the west. The mole must retreat to his burrow; to-morrow the storm and the snow! At least the flowers will be shielded from the chilling blasts, and Nature work her own reward. Still must the north wind beat ere the south breeze may blow. But how, while it lasts, the sunlight warms where it falls, drawing a scarlet aureole from the maple, setting the snow-banks free, and liberating the ice-locked streams.

Every morning now must the Sun rise earlier to fulfill his task. The buds of a million forests long for his touch, hillsides of spring beauty and violets are eager for his approach, the flowers in every meadow and woodland are awaiting his alchemy. Already the willow catkins have stirred at his caress. The shrubby dogwood has felt his force, and kindles into flame. The wands of the golden willow are gilded anew; the red horn of the great aroid is peering from the mold.

Think of his task! To clear the earth of its coverlet of snow and clarify the streams; to burst the chrysalis and put forth the leaves; to push up the grass blades and perfume the flowers; to breathe upon and resuscitate all the dormant world of vegetable and animal life. The leaflets upon leaflets and fern fronds upon fern fronds the sunshine must unfold; the acres of grain and the clover fields it must fall upon; the myriad fruits it must ripen!

Lo! how marvelous the task; a smile and a summons for all!

Down in the hollows of the wood where the wind-flowers grow, under the meadow-grasses where the blue flag and lily bulbs wait, below the waters to bid the marsh marigolds and arrowheads rise, into the farthest swamps where the orchid hides, in waste places where tares and teazles crowd, on countless hillsides and in countless valleys must the sunbeams penetrate and quicken to awakened life. And all this gradually, little by little, day by day, hour by hour, bringing forth each blossom at its appointed time, giving the butterfly his wings, providing the bee his sustenance. What is there here on earth to compare with the miracle of returning spring, the labor and strength of the Sun? The power of Hercules a trillion fold is concentrated in the rays that are loosing the fetters of the streams to-day. Lo! the marvel of the renascent year, when Earth renews her youth and Nature is born again.

The March days pass, and more and more is the Sun’s strength felt. His vassals, the showers and the south winds, he calls to aid him in his task; and at once the grasses and larches turn green and arbutus and bloodroot are fanned into bloom. A mile away the sunshine lights the hills; a league away it burnishes and warms the river. Daily the beams stream upon the earth and reveal fresh treasures. Swiftly a shadow steals along the hills. The tempered April rain falls from the gray April sky. Responsive, the sward assumes a brighter green, the daffodil a richer gold. The sap mounts to the topmost branches and penetrates the minutest twigs. Day by day the naked sprays are feathered by the pushing buds. A scarf of green is flung across the copse. The shadblow silvers the woods, columbine and cranesbill throng the slopes, and hepatica and dog-tooth violet nod to the quickening breeze of spring.

The spring days pass, but the miracle remains; hourly a new marvel is wrought by the sunlight and the shower. The oriole appears and orchards burst into bloom; the wood-thrush sings and the dogwood and wild thorn join the flowering pageant. The warm perfumed breath of the new year floats upon the air—the breath of flower and grass and expanding bud. Nature’s color-box opens anew; her brush is laid upon each petal with what consummate address and variety!—pink upon the petals of the peach, a flush on the cheek of the apple bloom, a gloss of gold upon the buttercup. The Trillium thrusts up its snowy triangles, the gold-thread its white stars, and banks become purple with violets. Tiny polypody and oak-fern replume the stumps and bowlders. From the frost-smitten meadows and waste places rise fresh pennants of green. Unfurled is the flag of spring. And the hues and odors that are still in embryo and the sunshine is preparing—all the sweets of June and the infinite beauties of midsummer, the wealth of the roses, the clover bloom, the labyrinthine tangle of wild flowers, even to the asters and colored leaf of autumn. The foam and surge of the apple bloom are but a wave of the color and fragrance that is to be. Æons ago the March sunlight fell upon the flowers and primeval nature. Vegetation welcomed it then as it welcomes it now. Next year and the next year and centuries hence will it fall upon the earth and work out the miracle of spring. Is it not new and ever beautiful, this vernal resurrection? That we, too, possessed this subtle alchemy and might extract this elixir from the April sun!

How the wings of the doves glisten and mirror the rays as I watch them floating by my windows! I love my flock of doves—the dove is so associated with the relentment of the elements and the olive leaf of spring. A monotonous life they lead in their diurnal circlings round the barn and their self-same route over their circumscribed domain—a monotonous life, at least, it appears to the observer, while probably the very reverse to them. Every load of grain which comes to the neighboring barns they may note from their vantage-ground and meditate upon its special virtues. The droppings of the barley now being stored in yonder granary undoubtedly form as weighty a subject to them as the fluctuations in the market do to the maltster himself. Then the incertitude which must attend the obtaining of their supply of food naturally furnishes them with a constant source of speculation; besides, who but they themselves may know what petty bickerings and jealousies form the daily routine of their inner life? The jaunty leader of the flock who curves his iris neck so proudly may be the humblest of hen-pecked fathers in the privacy of his home; and what appears to be the approving cooings of devoted dames may be only a prosaic homily on the part of his exacting wives.

My flock of doves seem alway idling and courting the sunbeam. Now, apparently, they are drifting aimlessly upon the air; again they veer suddenly, to turn a gleaming wing for me to admire. With what indescribable grace the circling forms hover over the eaves after each of their tours of investigation, the swiftly fanning wings seeming to cease their motion simultaneously as the flock alights, and once more preens its iris in the sun. Indecision is a characteristic of my flock of doves—always uncertain of the direction they would take, and apparently never satisfied for more than a passing moment with their surroundings. No sooner have they flown to the meadow beyond the copse than they are back again; and scarcely have they perched upon the roof or discovered fresh pickings ere they take flight in another direction, to return as quickly. Is it that they, like the rest of us, are never content, and that much must have more? I should like to quote them a lyric from John Wilbye’s Second Set of Madrigals, which possibly they may not have heard:

I live, and yet methinks I do not breathe;
I thirst and drink, I drink and thirst again;
I sleep, and yet do dream I am awake;
I hope for that I have; I have and want;
I sing and sigh; I love and hate at once.
Oh tell me, restless soul, what uncouth jar
Doth cause in store such want, in peace such war?

RISPOSTA.

There is a jewel which no Indian mines
Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit;
It makes men rich in greatest poverty,
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,
The homely whistle to sweet music’s strain:
Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,
That much in little, all in naught—Content.[15]

Footnote 15:

The student of French poetical literature will notice the marked
resemblance in expression of a portion of this lovely lyric of
fourteen lines and the following prettily turned _quatorzain_ by a
singer of the sixteenth century:

Ie vis, ie meurs: ie me brule & me noye,
I’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:
La vie m’est & trop molle & trop dure.
I’ay grans ennuis entremeslez de ioye:

Tout à un coup ie ris & ie larmoye,
Et en plaisir maint grief tourment i ’endure:
Mon bien s’en va, & à iamais il dure:
Tout en un coup ie seiche & ie verdoye.

Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine:
Et quand ie pense auoir plus de douleur,
Sans y penser ie me treuue hors de peine.

Puis quand ie croy ma ioye estre certeine,
Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,
Il me remet en mon premier malheur.

ŒUURES DE LOUIZE LABÉ LIONNOIZE. A Lion par Ian de Tournes, M.D.LVI.
Auec Priuilege du Roy.

The first of the migratory flocks have come. Is it the robins or the bluebirds first, or the omnipresent song-sparrow scattering his notes like a shower? Warm as the scarlet of his wings is the greeting of the starling from his haven in the reeds; and ah! how sweet the carol of the meadow-lark from the distant fields. Again I hear the warble which the blackbird dropped when flying over the autumnal stubbles, only it has a cheeriness that is alone brought forth by sunshine and the lengthening days. Little flutings and grace notes rise from sheltered thickets and sunny hollows—assemblages of snow-birds, Canada sparrows, and red-polls practicing their _Fruehlingslied_. The white-throated sparrow’s silver strain I hear on every side, the very beat of the spring-tide and song of the sunshine. Even the voice of the crow has a softer tone. From my study windows I watch the sable hosts returning to their roost in the distant wood. I see them slowly filing by during the winter, at the appointed hour, but less numerously, and seldom audibly. Now they voice their passage; their shadows cast a sound. From time immemorial they have occupied a roost in the same wood, their numbers apparently neither increasing nor diminishing. The first squads fly over early in the evening, re-enforcements arriving continually until dusk. They come from all directions, the total assemblage numbering perhaps a thousand. Above the tree-tops, for half an hour before dark, there ascends a weird chorus of evening, composed of every shade of corvine _basso_, and _basso profondo_. Borne from afar on the still evening air, the hoarse notes come to me mellowed and subdued—a fitting _ave_ of the darkening day.

Later, the first swallow races by, with the first moth in his bill, urged on the wider wings of the south wind—the first swallows, rather; for there is not only one but a score coursing through the ether, exultant in the freedom of existence. Do they, indeed, drop from the sky some bland spring morning—spirits of dead children revisiting their homes—as the fanciful Roman legend has it? How swiftly they cleave the air with their forked tail and sickle-shaped wings! We marvel at the soaring of the hawk, balancing himself in an ever-widening and ascending circle, ever tracing the curve of beauty. We wonder at the agility of the humming-bird, and his power of suspension in mid-air over a flower. But the hawk barely flaps a pinion, sustained through some inexplicable agency in overcoming the natural force of gravity; and the humming-bird every little while rests from the friction of the air. Is not the perpetual flight of the swallow, his unceasing motion and incessant turning upon himself a greater wonder?

I stand on the margin of the stream just before an impending shower, when a concourse of hirundines is intent upon the capture of its prey. The surface is dimpled by the constant rising of feeding trout, and brushed every now and then by a bird drinking on the wing. It is a favorite haunt of both fly-catchers and swallows, lured by the rich insect fauna that congregate above the still expanse of water, the ephemerina dancing their joyous dance of an hour. The stream is scarcely a rod and a half wide. It is almost overarched with bushes and trees, and abounds with curves. There are at least forty swallows hawking over it, all chasing above the glassy surface, ceaselessly coming and going, swift as missiles sprung from a sling. Yet not a catkin of the alder tangle or blade of the rushes is so much as grazed by a wing; not a barbule of one bird ruffled by the feather of another, amid all their lightning turns and curvatures. It is the same in their chase over a field when attracted close to the earth by insects. It is the same in their coursing through the air which I see through my windows, only they have but their fellows, and no other objects to avoid. Yet even then their flight is a perpetual wonder.

Sacred to the _penates_ the swallow was rightly held; it were a Vandal who would harm them. Beloved wherever they roam the sky, Procne has, nevertheless, been comparatively neglected by the Muse, while Philomela has received the greater homage. Is not the swallow’s warble sweet, associated as it is not only with the swallow’s beauty, but with our very houses and barns and the blue sky that bends above them? Best known of all individual “pursuers of the sun” is the bird mentioned in the fifth stanza of the Elegy:

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed;

and his companion of the Winter’s Tale, wheeling between daffodils and violets. Keats’s line is among the most expressive that have been written on the bird:

Swallows obeying the south summer’s call.

Hood’s simile is also fine:

Summer is gone on swallow’s wings.

Gay, in The Shepherd’s Walk, has the swallow do graceful duty as a weather-prophet:

When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air,
He told us that the welkin would be clear.

Athenæus has referred as happily to the bird as any of the old Greek poets in a fragment, The Song of the Swallow:

The swallow is come, she is come to bring
The laughing hours of the blithesome spring—
The youth of the year and its sunshine bright—
With her back all dark and her breast all white.

From the Fables of Lessing I learn that the swallow was originally as harmonious and melodious a songster as the nightingale, until, becoming wearied of dwelling in lonely thickets to be heard and admired only by peasants and shepherds, she forsook her humble friends and took flight to the town. But, in the mad rush of the city, men found no time to listen to her heavenly lay, forgetting which, by and by, instead of singing she learned to build.

I recall no reference to the swallow, however, comparable to Charles Tennyson Turner’s, in one of his many lovely sonnets, Wind on the Corn. Not only the swallow himself is there, wheeling and curveting in all his buoyant grace, but the wind which accelerates his speed, and the rippling wheat field he loves to woo. The sonnet must be read in its entirety, and to recall it calls for no apology; it becomes the more beautiful the more frequently it is read:

Full often as I rove by path or stile
To watch the harvest ripening in the vale,
Slowly and sweetly, like a growing smile—
A smile that ends in laughter—the quick gale
Upon the breadths of gold-green wheat descends;
While still the swallow, with unbaffled grace,
About his viewless quarry dips and bends—
And all the fine excitement of the chase
Lies in the hunter’s beauty; in the eclipse
Of that brief shadow how the barley’s beard
Tilts at the passing gloom, and wild rose dips
Among the white-tops in the ditches reared;
And hedgerow’s flowery breast of lacework stirs
Faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs.

Truly Boileau was right in his affirmation—a faultless sonnet is in itself worth a long poem; and Asselineau—fine sonnets, like all beautiful things in this world, are without price. No less beautiful is Turner’s companion sonnet, A Summer Twilight—an _intaglio_ cut in green jade—where the bat’s flitting shadow, instead of the swallow’s flashing wing, imparts life and motion to the scene.

The first lady-bugs, called forth by the grateful warmth, have left their hibernacle. The first wasps and blue-bottle flies are buzzing and bumping against the south window panes. I catch the first _tremolo_ of the toads and piercing treble of the _hylodes_.

My first green bullfrog, too, “whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye.” Again I hear his grand diapason, just as I heard it last year and every year before as long as I can remember. Apparently from the same place in the marsh, amid the pond-weeds and water-plantains, where he suns himself and dozes by day, and launches his _maestoso_ at night. I wonder if it is really the same frog, with his great yellow ears and blinking eyes, and if ever he grows old? It is the old voice from the old place, more powerful and sonorous than the voices of his fellows. What a fine time he has of it—slumbering in the ooze throughout the winter, while I am shaking with the cold; cool and comfortable throughout the summer, when I am sweltering with the heat; with nothing to do but bask and bathe, or thrust out his long tongue for the flies that are foolish enough to think him asleep. I heard him just two days earlier this year than last, May 14, ten days later than the first swallow to make his presence known. It is said he must thrice put on his spectacles ere he permanently deserts his couch in the mire—i.e., look through the ice three times before he rises with triumphant song. He is invariably the latest of the spring choristers, and at once his magnificent _basso_ completes the vernal pastoral.

I wish I might obtain the recipe of his spring bitters. Is it water-cresses or water-plantain? It is evident he grows younger with advancing years. “The croaking of frogs,” said Martin Luther, “edifies nothing at all; it is mere sophistry and fruitless.” But, unlike the frog, Luther did not relish a Diet of Worms; and I am not sure that the woodcuts of the old reformer do not resemble the head of my friend of the swamp, whose melody floats so serenely through the summer dusks. Horace, generally correct, was wrong with respect to the frog:

... Ranæque palustres
Avertunt somnos.

The frog’s is a somnolent voice if heard at a proper distance. One should not expect harmony from wind instruments in the first row of the orchestra chairs. If one’s frogs annoy one, he should remove his swamp or his house. The orchestra of Nature calls for its bassoon and its cymbals—the bullfrog and the cicada.

A new poet has recently appeared in the Dominion. Among his many poems of pronounced freshness and beauty is one on the frog—more strictly speaking, five poems, for the panegyric consists of five connected sonnets. Not alone does this graceful lyrist and keen interpreter of Nature place the frog as the grand diurnal musician of spring, but he accords him a no less exalted place as a soothing minstrel of the estival night. I should be guilty of ingratitude to my resonant friend of the swamp did I not append the fourth sonnet of the musical quintet:

And when day passed and over heaven’s height,
Thin with the many stars and cool with dew,
The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew
The wonder of the ever-healing night,
No grief or loneliness or rapt delight
Or weight of silence ever brought to you
Slumber or rest; only your voices grew
More high and solemn; slowly, with hushed flight,
Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,
Nor ever stirred, watching with fathomless eyes
And with your countless clear antiphonies
Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,
Last risen, found you with its first pale gleam,
Still with soft throats unaltered in your dream.[16]

Footnote 16:

Among the Millet, and other Poems. By Archibald Lampman. Ottawa: J.
Durie and Son. 1888. Pp. 151.

Clearly Horace was at fault. The Greeks thought better of the musical piper of the marsh; but it has remained for the Canadian poet to chant more sweetly of him than Theocritus and Aristophanes.

After the treble of the _hylodes_, suddenly the first bee hums by in quest of the awaiting flower. The first butterfly flutters past, the first night-hawk booms, the first bat hunts against the crimson afterglow, and, behold! it is spring. “The weather of the _Renouveau_,” old Ronsard hymned it—the miracle of the sunshine, the south wind, and the shower.

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XI.

MAGICIANS OF THE SHELVES.

I.

Around the hardest cark and toil lies the imaginative world of the
poets and romancists, and thither we sometimes escape to snatch a
mouthful of serener air.—ALEXANDER SMITH, DREAMTHORP.

Let that which I borrow be survaied, and then tell me whether I have
made good choice of ornaments to beautify and set forth the
invention.... I number not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I
would have made their number to prevaile, I would have had twice as
many.—MONTAIGNE, OF BOOKES.

IF my rugs and porcelains are a study and delight in color, what shall I say of my books, these manifold colors and hues of the mind that rejoice the inward eye? When what François de Sales terms a “dryness of soul” comes over me, are not the genii of the library alway ready to instruct and charm? Not a myth, but a reality is the fabled lamp of Aladdin, luminous still on many an immortal author’s page.

“_Un bon feu, des livres, et des plumes, que de ressources contre l’ennui!_” exclaims De Maistre. With a well-chosen library, even sickness loses its sting, and often a good book may prove a more efficient remedial agent than a physician’s draught. Somewhere among the volumes there exists a balm for nearly every ill—books to stimulate and books to soothe, books for instruction and books for _ennui_. Every mood of the mind should be reflected from the library shelves, just as Bacon holds it that in the royal ordering of gardens there ought to be gardens for every month in the year. Books there should be in abundance that may be read again and again; books that may be taken in installments, every page of each one of which is a golden page; books to pore over as a miser conns his gold; books to be dipped into, or looked at “with half-shut eyes.” From each page or each chapter of a good book there should be extracted a beautiful thought, as the wind in passing through a wood draws from each tree a musical note. That we possessed the memory of Scheherazade and could remember the books we have read!

No doubt, books are the great instructors, though Gautier’s idea is an excellent one, that each college possess a well-equipped ship to make the voyage around the world to read the universal book, the best written book of all. Unfortunately, every one may not sail round the world, but very many of us must be content, like De Maistre, with a voyage around our room. And wise, far-seeing Pascal long ago told us that nearly all our troubles arose from our not knowing how to remain in our own room. Perhaps, on the whole, this is among the pleasantest ways of journeying. You have but to step on board one of the numerous crafts in waiting, and with no further trouble than that of turning over the pages, set sail for any port of the universe. All this with a merely nominal price for passage, and relieved of every discomfort of travel.

May I not, with Symonds, muse upon the staircase of the Propylæa and wander through the theatre of Dionysus? Do I not visit the most romantic of all castles with Thomson? and what wood so cool and shadowy to stroll in as the forest of Arden? With Jennings I ramble among the Derbyshire hills and breast the breeze of the Sussex Downs; with Hamerton I float down the Unknown River; and with Higginson rock in a wherry and lounge about the Oldport wharves. Arm in arm with sweet Mariette, Murger again leads me through the Latin Quarter and the old lilac-scented gardens of the Luxembourg. Reposing in my easy chair, I may almost make the tour of the world in the sprightliest, most instructive company it is possible to imagine—Dumas _père_, in his inimitable Impressions de Voyage, is my guide, philosopher, and friend. The delightful dinners he invites me to, the delicious wines he sets before me, the sparkling anecdotes that are ever bubbling from his entrancing pen! I mount his easy Pegasus with De Amicis, and exchange the blinding snow for soft Andalusian sunshine. What an entertaining _raconteur_ I have in Francis Francis to explain the traditions of manor and castle, and discourse upon British scenery; and what lovely trout I catch when, rod in hand, I follow him By Lake and River! Hawthorne raises his wand, and I am sauntering through the Borghese gardens. With Jefferies I accompany lovely Amaryllis at the Fair; and with Robinson I wander through an Indian Garden and listen to the bulbul’s song. There is no dust, the sun does not glare, I require no waterproof or courier in these easy voyages. I turn the enchanted pages, and the sun shines for me at just the right angle. My rambles never fatigue, however long the lane or steep the hillside. I need not worry over the arrival or departure of trains, dispute with landlords, or bother with luggage. At a signal, my ship is in waiting, ready to stop at the port I designate; in an hour a smooth roadbed carries me across a kingdom, without a delay, without a jar. There can be nothing more delightful than these imaginary journeys.

“The ever-widening realm of books!” Over two centuries ago, echoing the voice of the ancients, Henry Vaughan decried against their constantly increasing multitude:

... As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more;
And the great task to try, then know the good,
To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance.

What a sifting there must be among them some day, as the volumes continue to accumulate—the mediocre cast aside to make room for the meritorious! Will there not eventually be some invention to preserve old books, an enamel for musty tomes, as wood is vulcanized or bodies are embalmed? Or must many works now existing in numerous volumes be reduced to extracts to find shelf-room for them all?

But to those who may be anxious regarding the accumulation of books, De Merrier offers this consolation: “The indefatigable hand of the grocers, the druggists, the butter merchants, etc., destroy as many books and _brochures_ daily as are printed; the paper-gatherers come next; and all these hands, happily destructive, preserve the equilibrium. Without them the mass of printed paper would increase to an inconvenient degree, and in the end chase all the proprietors and tenants out of their houses. The same proportion is to be observed between the making of books and their decomposition as between life and death—a balm I address to those that the multitude of books worries or grieves.”

What works will survive, and what books shall we read? “If the writers of the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself to them, and leave those of the Augustan age to dust and the bookworms,” says the transcendentalist of Walden. “Something like the woodland sounds,” the same author observes, “will be heard to echo through the leaves of a good book. Sometimes I hear the fresh emphatic note of the oven-bird and am tempted to turn many pages; sometimes the hurried chuckling sound of the squirrel when he dives into the wall.” “In science read by preference the newest works; in literature the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas,” says Bulwer. For knowledge of the world and literature, for polished grace of diction, for elevated and refined thought, and for the rhythm of beautiful prose, Bulwer might have called attention to his own essays, individual in the language. The publisher is yet to be thanked who will present Life, Literature, and Manners in a worthy and convenient form.

We read and learn and forget from the classics and the modern novelist as well. I sometimes wonder how posterity will regard the great writers of the present generation—whether Holmes will hold a more exalted place a century hence, or the Scarlet Letter fade. Will a mightier Shakespeare rise, and a sweeter Tennyson sing? And instead of sending posterity to Addison and Goldsmith for beautiful style, will the twenty-first century mentor refer the reader to a Spectator of an age that is yet to dawn?

The multitude of books one should read! It takes one’s breath away to think of the titles. They are as innumerable as the buttercups of the meadow. Think of them! the miles and leagues of folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos, 16, 18, 24, and 32 mos. on every conceivable subject that are sent out every year! The rows and rows of shelves, fathoms deep, of old books in numberless editions, cut and uncut, in cloth, parchment, sheep, pigskin, and calf, reposing in the book-stalls and libraries! Books grave and gay, comic and serious, storehouses of knowledge that are constantly shifting hands; others precious beyond price that are buried out of sight, their beautiful thoughts unread! The tons and tons of printed pages, in poetry and prose, awake and asleep in the public and private libraries of the great cities! They are as clover-tops in a field.

“The best hundred books!” Who shall single them out from the mighty multitude? It is like attempting to name the most beautiful flower, the most lovely woman—no one may know them all, and every one has his preferences. In life, art, and the study of literature it is at best a difficult question to point out the right way, as there are numerous considerations which require to be left largely to the discrimination of the person most concerned.

To decide on the merits of a work one may not take another’s opinion; one must needs read, mark, and digest it for himself. The reader who blindly submits to the dictum of another rarely does so to advantage. Far better to please one’s self and scout the arbiters. Every person should form his own estimate of the merits or demerits of a work. When Robert Buchanan terms the author of such exquisite verse as Les Tâches Jaunes, and such finished prose as La Morte Amoureuse “a hair-dresser’s dummy of a stylist,” how is one to be governed in the choice of his reading, save from the standpoint of his own taste! Because Sir Oracle admires Gil Blas and the Pantagruel, is no reason why you should do so, and because a Taine may proclaim Pope a purloiner and a mere juggler of phrase it does not necessarily follow that the Essay on Man is not one of the brightest jewels of the language. Wisest is he who maps out his own course of study and reading. The predication of others can not make that pleasing to him which is in utter variance to his tastes and sympathies. “A literary judgment is generally supposed to be formed by canons of criticism,” remarks Van Dyke, “but the canons are generally individual canons, and the criticism is but the synonym of a preference.”

Often the bell-wether leads the flock astray. Carlyle would have had A Midsummer Night’s Dream written in prose, and declared that Tennyson wrote in verse because the schoolmaster had taught him it was great to do so, and had thus been turned from the true path for a man. Emerson was always interested in Hawthorne’s fine personality, but could not appreciate his writings, while, equally strange, the author of the exquisite Prose Idyls extols the labored Recreations of North. Holmes “never felt to appreciate Irving as the majority look upon him,” and thinks the Sketch-Book “an overrated affair.” Fitzgerald did not like In Memoriam, The Princess, or The Idyls, and wished there were nothing after the 1842 volume. In Memoriam has the air, he says, of being evolved by a poetical machine of the very highest order. Voltaire thought the Æneid the most beautiful monument which remains to us of all antiquity. Peignot, in his erudite Traité du Choix des Livres, terms the Georgics the most perfect poem of antiquity, thereby echoing the opinion of Montaigne, who pronounced it “the most accomplished peece of worke of Poesie.”

Edmund Gosse finds Tristram Shandy dull; Bulwer asserts that only writers the most practiced could safely venture an occasional restrained imitation of its frolicsome zoneless graces. Possibly Horace Walpole comes nearer the mark in referring to it as a very insipid and tedious performance, though he might have defined it as a remarkable work on obstetrics.

Skipping Don Quixote and the Vicar of Wakefield, and not having read Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Jane Eyre, My Novel, Rob Roy, The Three Musketeers, The Scarlet Letter, Charles O’Malley, and how many others! La Harpe terms Tom Jones “the foremost novel of the world” (_le premier roman du monde_). So, I believe, does Lowell. Wilkie Collins, shortly before his death, gave the honor to The Antiquary. The same renowned critic (La Harpe), considered the Divine Comedy “a stupidly barbarous amplification” (_une amplification stupidement barbare_); Mézières, another French critic, thinks it deserves to be termed “the epopee of Christian peoples” (_elle mérite d’être appelée l’épopée des peuples chrétiens_).

“We read the Paradise Lost as a task,” growls Dr. Johnson. “Nay, rather as a celestial recreation,” whispers Lamb. “I would forgive a man for not reading Milton,” Lamb naïvely adds, “but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the divine chit-chat of Cowper.” Again, though I myself may see much to praise but less to please in Paradise Lost, infinitely preferring Lycidas, the Allegro, and the Penseroso, I may, nevertheless, admire Lamb; and though I may recognize the worth of Mézières, I may dislike the Divine Comedy. All of us may not care for the Pilgrim’s Progress or Hudibras; and some may prefer Cellini’s or Rousseau’s autobiography to Boswell’s biography,—it is not always so easy to read and admire the books one should read and admire from another’s standpoint.

What two persons look at things precisely the same? Human thought and human opinion are as varied as the expression of the human face. “There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity,” observes Montaigne. “An opinion,” says the sparkling author of Bachelor Bluff, “is simply an angle of reflection, or the facet which one’s individuality presents to a subject, measuring not the whole or many parts of it, but the dimensions of the reflecting surface. It is something, perhaps, if the reflection within its limits is a true one.” There are particular writers that, never widely popular, will always have their particular admirers, and we all of us have our special subjects or predilections that we wish to know most about, or are most interested in.

“_L’histoire c’est mo gibier en matière des liures, ou la poësie que i’ayme d’vne particulière inclinatio_” (history is my game in the chase for books, or poetry, which I especially dote upon), again observes Montaigne. Montaigne is so quaint he should be mused over in an old edition; it is like gathering mushrooms from an old pasture on a hazy autumn day. Plainly, it is out of the question to read everything even on a single subject, and many good books are practically unattainable. The Book-Worm, perched upon his ladder with a duodecimo in one hand, a quarto under his arm, and a folio between his knees, has at least four sealed volumes. Each person will read preferably such books as are in keeping with his tastes and line of thought, though he will greatly stimulate and enlarge his thought by also reading books diametrically opposed to his taste. The somewhat prosy mind will be benefited by familiarity with the poets; the super-poetic is improved by the balance and adjustment to be found in the study of works of reason and criticism.

But even then we may not read “the best hundred books” of some one else’s choosing. “We are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like,” La Rochefoucauld remarks; and his maxim is pertinent to the library. Tastes will ever differ in books and in bindings, in epics and in lyrics. Many nice people one knows, but one has not the time, neither does one care to make bosom friends of them all. Or, to cite Goldsmith, “Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire an intimacy only with a few.” Seldom do we admire in age that which captivates us in youth, and that which moves us in one mood may not appeal to us in another.

The most omnivorous book-worm can read comparatively little. Those who read slowly and digest what they read—if there is time in life to read slowly—may read still less. There is much in Bulwer’s sentence: “Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage garden gives honey to the bee, a king’s garden none to the butterfly.”