LIFE'S MEASURE. From A PINDARIC ODE ON THE DEATH OF SIR H. MORISON. Ben Jonson. I. FOR what is life, if measured by the space, Or masked man, if valued by his face, Here's one outlived his peers, And told forth fourscore years; He vexèd time, and busied the whole state; But ever to no ends: What did this stirrer but die late? How well at twenty had he fallen or stood! For three of his four score he did no good. II. It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be; Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; NOTES. PAGE 1. "The Elegy written in a Country Church-yard' was begun at Stoke-Pogis in the autumn of 1742," writes Mr. Edmund Gosse in his Works of Thomas Gray, "probably on the occasion of the funeral of Jonathan Rogers, on the 31st of October. In the winter of 1749 Gray took it in hand again, at Cambridge, after the death of his aunt, Mary Antrobus. He finished it at Stoke on the 12th of June, 1750. The poem was circulated in MS., and on the 10th of February, 1751, Gray received a letter from the editor of the Magazine of Magazines asking leave to publish it. The poet refused, and wrote next day to Horace Walpole, directing him to bring it out in pamphlet form. Accordingly, so soon as the 16th of February, there appeared anonymously 'An Elegy wrote in a Country Church Yard. London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-Mall; and sold by M. Cooper in Pater Noster Row. 1751. (Price sixpence.)' There was a preface by Horace Walpole." 666 'Gray told me with a good deal of acrimony,' writes Dr. Gregory, 'that the " Elegy "owed its popularity entirely to the subject, and that the public would have received it as well if it had been written in prose.' This is too much to say; the Elegy' is a beautiful poem, and in admiring it the public showed a true feeling for poetry. But it is true that the 'Elegy' owed much of its success to its subject, and that it has received a too unmeasured and unbounded praise.” — Matthew Arnold, in Essays in Criticism. PAGE 6.- "Touching the value and merit of the author," writes Izaak Walton in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, it is "far above our abilities to speak of him in terms equall to his deserving." PAGE 36. In the voluble Reliques of Father Prout, from which the text of the "Groves of Blarney" is taken, the following account (somewhat condensed) is given: "There stands on the borders of his parish, near the village of Blarney, an old castle of the M'Carthy family, rising abruptly from a bold cliff, at the foot of which rolls a not inconsiderable stream- the fond and frequent witness of Prout's angling propensities. The well-wooded demesne, comprising an extensive lake, a romantic cavern, and an artificial wilderness of rocks, belongs to the family of Jeffereys. . . . But none of these natural curiosities has earned such notoriety for the Groves,' as a certain basaltic stone, endowed with the property of communicating to the happy tongue that comes in contact with it, the gift of gentle, insinuating speech, - soft talk, Blarney.” The approximate facts are, it appears, that in 1602, when the Spaniards were exciting our chieftains to harass the English authorities, Cormac M'Dermot Carthy held, among other dependencies, the castle of Blarney, and had concluded an armistice with the lord-president, on condition of surrendering this fort to an English garrison. Day after day did his lordship look for the fulfilment of the compact; while the Irish Pozzo di Borgo, as loath to part with his stronghold as Russia to relinquish the Dardanelles, kept protocolizing with soft promises and delusive delays, until at last Carew became the laughing-stock of Elizabeth's ministers, and "Blarney talk" proverbial. PAGE 39. -"There is reason to think," writes Johnson in his Life of Drayton," he associated on very familiar terms with Jonson, Shakespeare, Selden, and other men of the first eminence for literary character and personal worth. Meres, a divine and poet of considerable note in his time, informs us that Drayton, among scholars, soldiers, poets, and all sorts of people, was held for a man of virtuous disposition, honest conversation, and well-governed carriage, which,' he adds, 'is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times.'"' เ "He was born within a few miles of William Shakespeare, his fellowcountryman and fellow-poet,” says Fuller, in his Worthies of England, "and buried within a few paces of Jeffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser." PAGE 88. And of Richard Hackluyt, Fuller, in his Worthies, writes: "His genius inclined him to the study of history and especially to the marine part thereof. . . . He set forth a large collection of the English sea voyages, ancient, middle, modern; taken partly out of private letters which never were (or without his care had not been) printed; partly out of small treatises, printed, and since irrecoverably lost, had not his providence preserved them. . . . In a word, many of such useful tracts of sea adventures, which before were scattered as several ships, Mr. Hackluit hath embodied in a fleet, divided into three squadrons, so many several volumes : a work of great honor to England; it being possible that many ports and islands in America, which, being base and barren, bear only a bare name for the present, may prove rich places for the future. And then these voyages will be produced, and pleaded, as good evidence of their belonging to England, as first discovered and dominated by Englishmen.” PAGE 108.-"In 1705," says Johnson, in his Life of Walsh, "he began to correspond with Mr. Pope, in whom he discovered very early the power of poetry." Pope mentions him in his Essay on Criticism: "... Walsh - the Muse's judge and friend, "About fifteen," says Pope, reported in Spence's Anecdotes, "I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He used to encourage me much, and used to tell me that there was one way left of excelling: for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct; and he desired me to make that my study and aim." PAGE 115. "Jonson was statutably admitted," writes Fuller in his Worthies, "into Saint John's College in Cambridge (as many years after incorporated an honorary member of Christ Church in Oxford) where he continued but few weeks for want of further maintenance, being fain to return to the trade of his father-in-law. And let them blush not that have, but those who have not, a lawful calling. He helped in the new structure of Lincoln's-Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." And further on: "Many were the wit-combats betwixt Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a great Spanish gallon and an English man-of-war: master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." PAGE 118.- The text of this beautiful Scottish ballad is from the first authentic edition, inscribed to the Bannatyne Club by Sir Walter Scott: "Auld Robin Gray; a Ballad. By the Right Honorable Lady Anne Barnard, born Lady Anne Lindsay of Balcarras. Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co., 1825." Lady Anne imparted to Scott, "the first person whom she had favored with such an explanation," the following interesting account of the origin of the long-contested ballad: "Robin Gray,' so called from its being the name of the old herd at Balcarras, was born soon after the close of the year 1771. My sister Margaret had married, and accompanied her husband to London; I was melancholy, and endeavored to amuse myself by attempting a few poetical trifles. There was an ancient Scotch melody, of which I was passionately fond; who lived before your day, used to sing it to us at Balcarras. I longed to sing old Sophy's air to different words, , 6 and give to its plaintive tones some little history of virtuous distress in humble life, such as might suit it. While attempting to effect this in my closet, I called to my little sister, now Lady Hardwicke, who was the only person near me, I have been writing a ballad, my dear; I am oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes. I have already sent her Jamie to sea- and broken her father's arm-and made her mother fall sick and given her Auld Robin Gray for her lover; but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow within the four lines, poor thing! Help me to one.''Steal the cow, sister Anne,' said the little Elizabeth. The cow was immediately lifted by me, and the song completed. At our fire-side, and amongst our neighbors Auld Robin Gray' was always called for. I was pleased in secret with the approbation it met with; but such was my dread of being suspected of writing anything, perceiving the shyness it created in those who could write nothing, that I carefully kept my own secret. "Happening to sing it one day at Dalkeith-House, with more feeling perhaps than belonged to a common ballad, OUR friend, Lady Frances Scott, smiled, and fixing her eyes on me, said, ' You wrote this song yourself.' The blush that followed confirmed my guilt. . . . The Laird of Dalziel, after hearing it, broke out into the angry exclamation of 'O the villain! O the auld rascal! I ken wha stealt the poor lassie's coo-it was Auld Robin Gray himsell.' I thought it a bright idea, and treasured it up for a future occasion.1 Meantime, little as this matter seems to have been worthy of a dispute, it afterwards became a party question between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. 'Robin Gray' was either a very, very ancient ballad, composed perhaps by David Rizzio, and a great curiosity, or a very, very modern matter, and no curiosity at all. I was persecuted to avow whether I had written it or not — where I had got it. Old Sophy kept my counsel, and I kept my own, in spite of the gratification of seeing a reward of twenty guineas offered in the newspapers to the person who should ascertain the point past a doubt, and the still more flattering circumstance of a visit from Mr. Jerningham, secretary to the Antiquarian Society, who endeavored to entrap the truth from me in a manner I took amiss. Had he asked me the question obligingly, I should have told him the fact distinctly and confidentially. The annoyance, however, of this important ambassador from the Antiquaries, was amply repaid to me by the noble exhibition of the Ballat of Auld Robin Gray's Courtship,' as performed by dancing-dogs under my window. It proved its popularity from the highest to the lowest, and gave me pleasure while I hugged myself in my obscurity.' 1 The "Continuation of Auld Robin Gray," of which there are two versions: one told mainly by Robin on his death-bed, and one "sung by Jenny, softly, at her wheel." In both, Robin dies and she gets her heart's desire, her Jamie. |