CHAPTER VI.
A DIALOGUE, WHICH MIGHT BE DULL IF IT WERE LONGER.
THREE days after the arrival of St. John, I escaped from the crowd ofimpertinents, seized a volume of Cowley, and, in a fit of mingled poetryand melancholy, strolled idly into the park. I came to the margin of thestream, and to the very spot on which I had stood with my uncle on theevening when he had first excited my emulation to scholastic rather thanmanual contention with my brother; I seated myself by the water-side,and, feeling indisposed to read, leaned my cheek upon my hand, andsurrendered my thoughts as prisoners to the reflections which I couldnot resist.
I continued I know not how long in my meditation, till I was roused by agentle touch upon my shoulder; I looked up, and saw St. John.
"Pardon me, Count," said he, smiling, "I should not have disturbedyour reflections had not your neglect of an old friend emboldened meto address you upon his behalf." And St. John pointed to the volume ofCowley which he had taken up without my perceiving it.
"Well," added he, seating himself on the turf beside me, "in my youngerdays, poetry and I were better friends than we are now. And if I hadhad Cowley as a companion, I should not have parted with him as you havedone, even for my own reflections."
"You admire him then?" said I.
"Why, that is too general a question. I admire what is fine in him, asin every one else, but I do not love him the better for his points andhis conceits. He reminds me of what Cardinal Pallavicino said of Seneca,that he 'perfumes his conceits with civet and ambergris.' However,Count, I have opened upon a beautiful motto for you:--
"'Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, Hear the soft winds above me flying, With all their wanton boughs dispute, And the more tuneful birds to both replying; Nor be myself too mute.'
"What say you to that wish? If you have a germ of poetry in you suchverse ought to bring it into flower."
"Ay," answered I, though not exactly in accordance with the truth;"but I have not that germ. I destroyed it four years ago. Reading thededications of poets cured me of the love for poetry. What a pity thatthe Divine Inspiration should have for its oracles such mean souls!"
"Yes, and how industrious the good gentlemen are in debasing themselves!Their ingenuity is never half so much shown in a simile as in acompliment; I know nothing in nature more melancholy than the discoveryof any meanness in a great man. There is so little to redeem the drymass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life arecomposed, that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, thesabbath for the mind. It is better to feel, as we grow older, how therespite is abridged, and how the few objects left to our admirationare abased. What a foe not only to life, but to all that dignifies andennobles it, is Time! Our affections and our pleasures resemble thosefabulous trees described by Saint Oderic: the fruits which they bringforth are no sooner ripened into maturity than they are transformed intobirds and fly away. But these reflections cannot yet be familiar toyou. Let us return to Cowley. Do you feel any sympathy with his prosewritings? For some minds they have a great attraction."
"They have for mine," answered I: "but then I am naturally a dreamer;and a contemplative egotist is always to me a mirror in which I beholdmyself."
"The world," answered St. John, with a melancholy smile, "will soondissolve, or forever confirm, your humour for dreaming; in either case,Cowley will not be less a favourite. But you must, like me, have longtoiled in the heat and travail of business, or of pleasure, which ismore wearisome still, in order fully to sympathize with those beautifulpanegyrics upon solitude which make perhaps the finest passages inCowley. I have often thought that he whom God hath gifted with a loveof retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense. And among what ourpoet so eloquently calls 'the vast and noble scenes of Nature,' we findthe balm for the wounds we have sustained among the 'pitiful shifts ofpolicy;' for the attachment to solitude is the surest preservative fromthe ills of life: and I know not if the Romans ever instilled, underallegory, a sublimer truth than when they inculcated the belief thatthose inspired by Feronia, the goddess of woods and forests, could walkbarefoot and uninjured over burning coals."
At this part of our conference, the bell swinging hoarsely throughthe long avenues, and over the silent water, summoned us to the grandoccupation of civilized life; we rose and walked slowly towards thehouse.
"Does not," said I, "this regular routine of petty occurrence, thisperiodical solemnity of trifles, weary and disgust you? For my part,I almost long for the old days of knight-errantry, and would rather beknocked on the head by a giant, or carried through the air by a flyinggriffin, than live in this circle of dull regularities,--the brute atthe mill."
"You may live even in these days," answered St. John, "without too tamea regularity. Women and politics furnish ample food for adventure, andyou must not judge of all life by country life."
"Nor of all conversation," said I, with a look which implied acompliment, "by the insipid idlers who fill our saloons. Behold themnow, gathered by the oriel window, yonder; precious distillers oftalk,--sentinels of society with certain set phrases as watchwords,which they never exceed; sages, who follow Face's advice to Dapper,--
"'Hum thrice, and buzz as often.'"