The SCENE.-A Villa at Dalkey, overlooking the Sea. Time, Evening. Moon in her third quarter. POPLAR, SLINGSBY, and BISHOP are discovered sitting amid the debris of fruit and flasks; in the midst of the table stands "the red leather box." BISHOP.-Throw open the window, Anthony, and let us breathe the fresh air of the evening. POPLAR (Rises and opens the window). Heavens! what a glorious twilight! What piles of clouds in the west, still blushing like coy beauties from the recent kissings of the Sun's rays, and now paling timidly with a sense of shame, and tearful, withal, as if sorrowing for the flight of the day god. See the haze on the placid sea, and the tiny silver ripples just heaving to the white moonshine. BISHOP.-By the nine muses thou art growing poetical, dear Anthony. Well, well, I often warned you what would come of grog and cigars. SLINGSBY.-Tush, tush, Jack, let the man have his way. Nature is working in him and will out. Go on, Anthony. POPLAR. See how sweetly pensive sails the dwindling moon in the wide expanse of heaven's hazy blue; and you can trace the dim outline of her dusky orbit where the sun's rays fall not on it, like the shadowy tracery of past joys which memory leaves on the brain. Is not the salt breeze from the sea delicious? Hark! to the muffled dash of the long low wave upon the rocky strand, and the plash of the oars of the home-wending fisherman's skiff. Beautiful, beautiful, is all this tranquil world, when the strife and struggle of busy day is passed from her! BISHOP. The man is going clean daft. A song, a song, Jonathan, if you would not have me apply to the Chancellor for a writ "de lunatico inquirendo." SLINGSBY.-Song of mine shalt thou not have this night, Jack. There are other spirits that shall minister to our delectation. Come, dear Anthony, see what thou hast got for us in thy casket. POPLAR.-Reach me over yonder box, Jack, and I will give thee that which shall content thy heart. (POPLAR opens the box and draws forth at a venture., Now may fortune favor me. Ha! said I not soothly. Here is something to the very matter. Are we not now in the midst of bright and beautiful July? Listen, then, how one of the bards of Maga celebrates it for us. (Reads): VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. CCXXIV. K BISHOP.-Most delectably melodious! The words absolutely sing themselves. Wait a moment, till I get to the piano, and I will thrum you off an air incontinently to them. (Plays.) Now, then, Jonathan, what do you say to that? Shall we not have the song for our next symposium at Sackville-street? SLINGSBY.-Happy thought, by Apollo. How say you, most potent Poplar? POPLAR.-Content, say I, and let it be ere we lose "beautiful July." Jonathan shall celebrate the "lusty hay month” with a chant of his own? SLINGSBY.-What need I, when so many bards will sing his praise? Listen to Spenser: "Then comes hot July, boiling like to fire, That all his garments he had cast away; He boldly rode, and made him to obey; The Nemean forest, till Amphytrionide Here again is another picture—a thoroughly rural one : "Now comes July, and with his fervid noon The slow encumbered wain in midday heat." POPLAR.-Leigh Hunt, in his "Months," paints July with the pencil of a master : "There is a sense of heat and quiet over all nature. The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly graceful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest, because latest in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies, looking, as you lie under them, of a strong and emulous green under the blue sky. The cattle get into the shade or stand in the water. The active and air-cutting swallows, now beginning to assemble for migration, seek their prey about the shady places where the insects, though of differently compounded natures, fleshless and bloodless, seem to get for coolness, as they do at other times for warmth. The sound of insects is also the only audible thing now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle contrast." SLINGSBY." Ay, Anthony, 'tis a charming picture, and what say you to Thomson's warm description of pastoral summer sport in merry England:"Now swarms the village o'er the jovial mead The rustic youth BISHOP.-Hold hard, my dear Jonathan. Spare my nerves, if you have any bowels of compassion. Come, Anthony, try your luck at another dive into the red box. POPLAR.-Here goes, then. What have we got here? The handwriting is the same, and I'll be sworn the strain is not less sweet than its sister. A TOXOPHOLITE PICTURE. I. THE summer waters gleam. The summer boughs Are rich with blossoms white as alabaster. The odorous clematis doth espouse This century-stained pilaster. II. Where shines the tranquil lake through pleasant trees, The boatmen move the helm with languid ease, III. Two lovely sisters by the sycamore— One dark as midnight, one more fair than dawn Tell their sweet playful fancies o'er and o'er Upon the shadowy lawn. IV. The Gothic shafts with silken scarfs enfolden, V. Ay, sister beauties! whose long lashes pendant POPLAR.-A charming bit of painting, upon my word; rich, soft, glowing, and spirited. Beshrew my heart but I think the fair archers, one or both, must have sent a shaft to the heart of the poet. SLINGSBY.-I know not how that may be, but I pronounce these two little poems to be full of promise. Let us drink the bard's health, and may we soon hear again from him. POPLAR. Here is a bundle of papers. Let us untie it and see what's within. By the bones of Francis and shade of Smart! translations from Horace. Odes and epodes-satires and epistles. BISHOP.-Away with them, away with them for the love of Heaven. Have they not been all done a thousand times? Ay, and of late, by an able hand in our own Maga. To the trunk-makers and tallow-chandlers with them, say I. "in vicum vendentum thus etodores Et piper, et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis." Besides, I have an old grudge against Flaccus ever since my schoolboy days. "Then farewell Horace, whom I hated so, Not for thy faults but mine." POPLAR. To say the truth, I am not disposed to look with much favour upon new translations of Horace. Perfect success in such an undertaking I hold to be hopeless, in reference to the satires, at all events, though the epistles are, I think, capable of a perfect reproduction in a new language, and the lyrics nearly so. But I quite agree with a modern writer that "the Horatian satire is cast in a mould of such exquisite delicacy-uniting perfect ease with perfect elegance throughout—as has hitherto defied all the skill of the moderns." SLINGSBY. A great moralist; a great lyrist; a great satirist. Were his verses not so polished, the sprightliness of his wit and the keen play of his satire would redeem them, and the sterling morality of his philosophy would render him immortal were his versification not half so elegant, his wit not half so sparkling, or his satire not half so lively. I believe Pope and Byron owed much of their eminence to their admiration of Horace. POPLAR. What illegible pot-hooks are these? Put the candle a little nearer to me, Jack, and I will try to decipher them. "Sonnets by the sad wave." BISHOP. What a lack-a-daisical title-spell away, however. SONNETS BY THE SAD WAVE. BY CALDER CAMPBELL. I. WHAT of the sea, to-day? What of the sea? |