a yeoman’s wife or under, and under the age of forty, but it was extremely her fault if he were not intimately acquainted with her. This made him very popular, always speaking kindly to the husband, brother or father, who was to boot very welcome to his house whenever he came; there he found beef pudding and small beer in great plenty, a house not so neatly kept as to shame him and his dirty shoes, the great hall strewed with marrow bones, full of hawks’ perches, hounds, spaniels and terriers, the upper sides of the hall hung with the fox-skins of this and the last year’s skinning, here and there a polecat intermixed, guns and keepers’ and huntsmen’s poles in abundance. The parlour was a large long room as properly furnished; in a great hearth paved with brick lay some terriers and the choicest hounds and spaniels; seldom but two of the great chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were not to be disturbed, he having always three or four attending him at dinner, and a little white round stick of fourteen inches long lying by his trencher that he might defend such meat as he had no mind to part with to them. The windows which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows, stonebows and other such like accoutrements; the corners of the room full of the best chose hunting and hawking poles; an oyster table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a day all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters before dinner and supper through all seasons; the neighbouring town of Poole supplied him with them. The upper part of this room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a church Bible, on the other the Book of Martyrs; on the tables were hawks’ hoods, bells and such like, two or three old green hats with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry he took much care of and fed himself; tables, dice, cards and boxes were not wanting. In the hole of the desk were store of tobacco pipes that had been used. On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house exactly observed, for he never exceeded in drink or permitted it. On the other side was a door into an old chapel, not used for devotion; the pulpit, as the safest place, was never wanting of a cold chine of beef, pasty of venison, gammon of bacon, or great apple pie with thick crust extremely baked. His table cost him not much, though it was very good to eat at, his sports supplying all but beef and mutton, except Friday, when he had the best sea fish he could get, and was the day that his neighbours of best quality most visited him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it in with “my part lies therein-a.” He drank a glass of wine or two at meals, very often syrup of gilliflower in his sack, and had always a tun glass without feet stood by him holding a pint of small beer, which he often stirred with a great sprig of rosemary. He was well-natured, but soon angry, calling his servants bastard and cuckoldy knaves, in one of which he often spoke the truth to his own knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the same man. He lived to a hundred, never lost his eyesight, but always writ and read without spectacles, and got to horse without help. Until past fourscore he rode to the death of a stag as well as any.

     ANTHONY COOPER,

FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

Mr. Hastings’ house is not my ideal of the earthly paradise. But how dearly I wish, all the same, that I could inhabit it, could feel at home in the great hall and enjoy those dinners at the cat-infested table! There is a large simplicity about the Hastingesque existence, a kind of grandeur in its vigorous mindlessness, most satisfying to contemplate—though, alas, most depressing, as one knows by uncomfortable experience, to meet with in reality.

Through bars once more, and from a distance, I yearn towards the scene which Shaftesbury has painted for us. Painted with what a masterly skill! His eye for the significant fact is unfailing. That great sprig of rosemary, for example, with which Mr. Hastings stirred his beer—how easily that might have been overlooked! But how its omission would have spoilt the picture! Without his rosemary, Mr. Hastings would seem to us distinctly less sympathetic. That sprig of wild incense perfumes his rather gross rustic existence—gives it a certain almost idyllic flavour. Rosemary-scented, the old hunter becomes, as it were, a figure from the mythology of some religion of nature—a Priapus of Hampshire gardens, a New Forest satyr, hairy but half divine.

Æstuans intrinsecus

ira vehementi

in amaritudine

loquar meæ menti:

factus de materia

levis elementi

similis sum folio

de quo ludunt venti.

Cum sit enim proprium

viro sapienti

supra petram ponere

sedem fundamenti,

stultus ego comparor

fluvio labenti,

sub eodem aere

nunquam permanenti

Feror ego veluti

sine nauta navis,

ut per vias aeris

vaga fertur avis,

non me tenent vincula,

non me tenet clavis,

quæro mihi similes,

et adjungor pravis.

Via lata gradior

more juventutis,

implico me vitiis

inmemor virtutis,

voluptatis avidus

magis quam salutis,

mortuus in anima

curam gero cutis.

Præsul discretissime,

veniam te precor:

morte bona morior,

dulci nece necor,

meum pectus sauciat

puellarum decor,

et quas tactu nequeo,

saltem corde mæchor.

THE ARCHPOET.

Lived too consciously by people whose native place is on the mental plane of existence, life in the earthly paradise turns rancid and becomes strangely repulsive. The Archpoet was a person, it is obvious, of enormous intellectual ability. Nature, that is to say, had intended him to live, in the main, mentally, not in the world of sense. Disobeying the fundamental laws of his being, he broke through the confining bars. These stanzas are taken from a long apology for his life in what should have been the earthly paradise. It is an astonishingly brilliant performance—but one which fails, for all its brilliance, to do what it intended to do. So far from justifying the Archpoet in his preferences for wine, woman and song, it makes us uncomfortably feel that (at any rate while such people as he are about) wine is a poison, song a waste of time and woman a defiled defilement. The earthly paradise is a home only for Psyches; Cupids should never be more than passing visitors.

                Take back thy gift;

Why should a man desire in any way

To vary from the kindly race of men,

Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance

Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

O why was I born with a different face?

Why was I not born like the rest of my race?

When I look, each one starts! when I speak, I offend.

Then I’m silent and passive, and lose every friend.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

The answer to Tennyson’s question is implied in Blake’s. Some people are born with different faces. The fact is there, unescapable, and must be accepted.

That thee is sent, receive in buxomnesse,

The wrastling for this world axeth a fal.

Her nis non hoom, her nis but wildernesse:

Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!

Know thy countree, look up, thank God of all;

Hold the hye wey and lat thy gost thee lede,

And trouthe shal delivere, it is no drede.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

O saisons, ô châteaux,

Quelle âme est sans défauts?

O saisons, ô châteaux!

J’ai fait la magique étude

Du bonheur que nul n’élude:

O vive lui! chaque fois

Que chante le coq gaulois

Mais je n’aurai nulle envie,

Il s’est chargé de ma vie.

Ce charme! il prit âme et corps

Et dispersa tous efforts.

Que comprendre à ma parole?

Il fait qu’elle fuit et vole!

O saisons, ô châteaux!

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

Oisive jeunesse

A tout asservie,

Par délicatesse

J’ai perdu ma vie.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

The trouble with the Archpoet was that he lacked the délicatesse de perdre sa vie. (As indeed do most of us.) Rimbaud’s délicatesse was so great that he deliberately lost two lives—the life of sense and the life of the intellect and imagination. Lost an earthly paradise and also (the sacrifice was greater) a mental paradise, in order to undergo privations and misery in the tropical hells that border the Red Sea.

Tell me, ye piebald butterflies, who poise

  Extrinsic with intrinsic joys;

What gain ye from such short-lived, fruitless, empty toys?

Ye fools, who barter gold for trash, report,

  Can fire in pictures warm? Can sport

That stings the mock-sense fill? How low’s your Heaven, how short!

Go, chaffer bliss for pleasure, which is had

  More by the beast than man; the bad

Swim in their mirth (Christ wept, ne’er laughed); the best are sad.

EDWARD BENLOWES.

It is a good thing that people should obey the laws of their being and, when the soul demands it, lose their lives par délicatesse. But that they should mechanically obey some moral drill-sergeant’s order to lose their lives is by no means so desirable. Particularly when the order is justified by an untenable mythology.

I struck the board and cried, No more!

    I will abroad.

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,

Loose as the winds, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

    Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

Before my tears did drown it,

Is the year only lost to me?

    Have I no bays to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?

      All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,

      And thou