hate frogs,' said Dr. Johnson; 'but I prefer not to have them hopping about me.' Let it be said in conclusion, that there may be the most slighting mention, implying the most depreciatory estimate, of a fellow-mortal, while yet no malice is implied in the speaker, and no possible offence could be taken by those depreciated. What is your fare?' was asked, a little ago, of the driver of an omnibus which had conveyed four mortals to a little railway station which need not be specified. A SHILLING FOR THE LOT,' was the prompt reply, with a sharp glance at the persons indicated. The Lot consisted of Canon Liddon, the Earl of Strathmore, Mr. Malcolm MacColl, and one anonymous obscurity. The three eminent members of The Lot were quite delighted.-Fraser's Magazine. THE POETRY OF SEPTEMBER. WE suppose that every month in the year has its own peculiar physiognomy, by which the true lover of nature would at once recognize it were he dropped from the clouds in a balloon after a prolonged absence in some other planet. Months melt into one another imperceptibly, of course; but such a one would know that the middle of July was not the middle of June, or the middle of August the middle of July. And this not by the weather, or the temperature, or by any agricultural operation which might betray the truth, but by the peculiar expression which Nature wears at different seasons of the year. In July she is still young, still soft and fresh, with cooling showers and fickle skies, and clouds and sunshine rapidly chasing each other away. And for the full and perfect beauty of ordinary English scenery there is no period of the year to compare with the six weeks which separate the end of June from the middle of August. In August comes a slight change, we know not what, something to be felt rather than described. Perhaps it is that the face of Nature begins then to wear rather a more set look, to show the first signs of middle age, and that lines of thought become visible in her still lovely countenance. But with the ensuing month the change is very apparent, and it is on the manner in which the expression of nature during an English September affects both the heart and the imagination that it is proposed to dwell in this article. A September landscape is familiar to the majority of Englishmen; but still there is a numerous class of men, comprising many among us who are the best qualified to appreciate it, who rarely see their native country at all during that particular month. The crowd of tourists which flies across the Channel, bound for Alps, or Pyrenees, or Carpathians, or what not, the moment they are free from the claims of business, or politics, or fashion, rarely return till September has passed gently away. Of those others who spend September in the country many, perhaps, are too much absorbed in field-sports to notice the beauty which encircles them; and many more, perhaps, if they did notice it, would never get beyond observing that it was a very fine day. We hope, however, still to find a few readers who have been touched by the same feelings as ourselves under the influence of this particular month, and with their sympathy, if there be such, we shall be satisfied. The actual physical beauty of a September day, though not so luxuriant, it may be, as July or August, stirs us, perhaps, with a deeper emotion. The corn should not be all carried, for the wheat, standing in shocks upon the hillside has a very pretty effect in the distance. There should be meadows within view, in which the rich green aftermath, still ankle deep, has not yet been fed off. There should be the fine stately hedgerow timber of the midland counties, or the hanging copses and long woods of the west and south. There should be the cool dark green of the turnips, contrasting with the pale yellow stubble, looking sheeny and silky in the sun. There should be a farmhouse or two, and a village spire in the hazy distance; and the foliage may be flecked here and there with two or three rust spots as a foil to the surrounding verdure. Here is an ordinary view enough. But lie lazily on your back where the eye can take in all these varied contrasts, and you will allow that the same scene at an earlier period of the year would have wanted many of the charms which it exhibits now. If by the poetry of September we meant principally its suitability for descriptive poetry we might enlarge on these charms in some detail. As it is, I shall merely observe on the singularity of the fact that descriptive poets should have turned to so little account the peculiar beauties of this season of the year. It is not so with painters. September has sat for her portrait to many eminent hands, and we would call particular attention to a picture in last year's (1876) Academy, by Mr. Vicat Cole, called "The Day's Decline," which is evidently intended for September, and which, though it does not give the variety which I have just described, brings out many of the special characteristics of the month with marvellous fidelity. But Thomson is our classic on such subjects; and, though he could not fail to catch the dominant characteristic of the month, he hardly seems to have drunk in the full beauty of it. The following lines, however, show that he was not without appreciation : A serener blue, With golden light enlivened, wide invests The happy world. Attempered suns arise, Sweet beamed, and shedding oft through lucid clouds A pleasing calm; while broad and brown below This is truly fine. The epithets applied to the ripe cornfields, "rich, silent, deep," are most felicitous. But the primary idea of Autumn with Thomson was what its name denotes, that of a season of abundance and rejoicing. Crowned with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf, While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain, Comes jovial on, the Doric reed once more Well pleased I tune. And we do not remember at the present moment either in Wordsworth, Tennyson, or Keats, the meed of even one melodious verse to the sweetest "daughter of the year," which dwells on her pathetic beauty. NEW SERIES, Vol. XXVI., No. 5 For it is not the mere beauty of feature which characterizes September, great as that is, on which we are about to dwell; in this it is surpassed by other months. It is the expression which is worn by this one-all that it suggests, all the spell which it seems to lay upon us which we hope to be able to describe, so that some few readers, as we have said, may recognize the likeness. We are presupposing, of course, that we have a seasonable September, the miid, warm, sunny month which it is four years out of five, and neither parched by drought nor yet drenched with constant rain : September, in fact, in her normal and natural condition. Then let the sky be perfectly blue, the air perfectly hushed, and the whole landscape bathed in a flood of pensive sunshine, and "on such a day" the mind becomes conscious of a mixture of melancholy and sweetness which is wholly peculiar to this season. The sweetness of September is, indeed, one of its most prominent attributes. No month in the year seems literally to smile upon one like September. It is so gentle, so soft, so mellow. It seems to look at one out of mild hazel eyes with an almost human love and tenderness, and an equable serenity which gives assurance of unchanged affection. And this it is which leads us by degrees to become conscious of the melancholy of September. The contrast between the sense of repose, tranquillity, and permanence which is inspired by her aspect, and the sense of the approaching termination of all summer weather which we feel at the same time, naturally gives rise to this sentiment. We feel in gazing on September what we might feel in looking upon a beautiful and sweet-tempered woman, in perfect health and strength, whom we knew had but a short time to live. It is, however, difficult to separate the elements which constitute the sweetness from those which constitute the melancholy of this beautiful season. The profound brooding stillness of a September day, when you may even hear the beetles dropping from the bean shocks in the adjoining field, must have struck many of our readers, and one can barely say whether it contributes more to the sadness or the joy with which we are inspired at such moments. 40 Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease, In still small accents whispering from the ground, A grateful earnest of eternal peace. How frequently have we experienced the exact sensations here described by Gray, on a soft hazy September afternoon, when, if the harvest is completed, there is often not a sound to be heard, while the soft warm glow of all around prevents the silence from being gloomy. That is a time at which to lie on the grass and "dream and dream;" when, without the help of any stimulant, you may kiss the lips you once have kissed, and recall your college friendship from the grave gliding by degrees into a kind of dreamy feeling, which you care not to analyse too closely, that this ineffable peace of nature, which passes all description, may be a type, perhaps, of that peace of God which passes all understanding. It is curious that September should be the one month in which we feel the strongest assurance of settled calm; have more reason to believe that to-morrow will be like to-day than at any other season of the year; and yet that it should be the last month of summer with which all the really green, warm, pleasant days practically depart. The poetry of decay is brought before us in October and November, but not in the month we are speaking of. In three seasons out of four September is green to the last, or sufficiently so to prevent one from noting much change. And it is this contrast, no doubt, a contrast we have already spoken of, which constitutes one of its chief charms: the deep stillness before the equinoctial tempest. But the same contrast may be regarded from an other point of view. If there is one idea more than another which the aspect of September awakes in us, it is one of mellowness and maturity. It seems to speak of the strength and fulness of ripe and sunny middle age, the warmth of youth without its fever, the sobriety of age without its frost. The ideas of plenty and abundance, moreover, with which we associate this month come in to corroborate the impression which its outward aspect is calculated to produce; and a momentary fancy will sometimes flit across the mind that September can It not really be passing away, or that its life will be prolonged like Hezekiah's. seems so difficult to suppose that the warm, genial, yet calm withal and tranquil weather, so redolent of life, health, and permanence, is so soon to leave us. But then come up the words of George Herbert," But thou must die," and with thee all the lasting beauty of our brief English summer. October has its fine days, but the days are short and the nights are cold. It is as much an indoor month as an outdoor month. With September come to an end all the molles sub arbore somni in the happy afternoons, the moonlight stroll in the shrubbery, or the lounge by the garden gate, with perhaps some fair companion whom the softness of the scene makes doubly scft herself. After September these become pleasures of the past; and though of course they are as appropriate to any other summer month as they are to September, yet September is the month in which people in the country see more of each other than they do in June and July, and when, consequently, there are more opportunities for the poetry of moonlight flirtation. And this leads us away to some lighter considerations than those which we have hitherto indulged in. Hitherto we have been trying to depict, however feebly, what may be called the moral beauty of this season of the year. We have dwelt on the particular emotions which the aspect of nature at such a time awakens in us; on the contrast between the sensations of sweetness and of sadness, of repose and of transitoriness, of maturity and of decay, which it suggests to us. But there is an artificial and social poetry also about the month of September at which we have just glanced in the last paragraph, and of which a little more has still to be said. September, in fact, has, owing to a gradual change of habits, appropriated to itself many of the associations which formerly belonged to May, and which are still assigned to her in the conventional language of poetry. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century September is the lover's month. We are now, of course, speaking only of rural love-making. One month is the same as another in the life of cities, but in country life, and especially in the life of country houses, September bears away the palm. Whether any change has really taken place in our English seasons since the days of Milton, Dryden, and Addison, we cannot say, but the Laureate contends that "those old Mays had thrice the life of ours ;" and most certain it is that Dryden's well-known description of that month, if applied to any May we have had for the last twenty years, would seem simply ridiculous. We mean the lines beginning: For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear, If not the first, the fairest, of the year. Winter in the lap of May is now the rule and not the exception, and "Society" does well, in our opinion, to spend it in the capital. Fashion, it may be, after all, has been only unconsciously adapting herself to nature and following in the footsteps of the seasons. When May was a warm and melting month, when the "groves" were full of leaf overhead, and when every bank was "a bed of flowers" on which a lady might throw herself without any fear of the rheumatism, the upper ten thousand did right to end their season in April. There has been, however, a change of dynasty since those days. May is no longer the Queen of love and beauty, and the crown is for the present in commission. But the period of the year which now corresponds more closely than any other to what May was formerly is certainly to be found in the latter end of August and September. Then are croquet and archery in all their glory. Then it is that we get our only spell of settled fine weather; the woods are dry, the nights are warm, and long rides and walks furnishing innumerable opportunities for courtship under the most favorable circumstances are of daily occurrence. Then again there is that old-fashioned amusement of nutting, so admirably described in Tom Brown, and which contains a world of poetry in itself. What a vision of glades and dingles, and steep woodland paths, and high mossy banks, and cool dank depths of impenetrable shade, it conjures up before us. sense of seclusion, of complete isolation from the world, of security and irresponsibility creeps over us in the centre of a thick wood, surrounded on all sides by the tall hazel bushes whose tangled branches form an arch over our heads, through which we just discern the great spreading limbs of the oak and the beech up above! Then if 'you, and the lady of the hour, can only lose your way and wander into some deep leafy hollow, where a half-seen brooklet just trickles over the pebbles, and where no other sound is heard but the flight of the ringdove, or its soft appealing note from the neighboring elm, you will own the dangerous fascination, the melting influence of the season, nor would give a fig for all your merry months of May. Then the ground would be wet and the trees bare, and very probably an east wind lying in wait for you round the corner. Now all is soft and warm and sheltered. A thick leafy girdle shuts you in; here and there, through the openings, gleam the mossy trunks of anciert trees and gnarled old thorns and hollies; while beyond again all is green darkness-the very home of the fauns and the nymphs, and of the god Silvanus. And is not this a scene more fitting for the whispers of love, for the arm stealing softly round the waist, for the lips at last venturing to the glowing half-expectant cheek, than all the village greens or May bespangled meads in the world? Our friend Thomson understood this feature of September at all events: The clustering nuts for you The lover finds amid the secret shade; A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown, As are the ringlets of Melinda's hair, Melinda formed with every grace complete. Of course! But seriously, the poetry of nutting is a large part of that second form of the poetry of September with which we are now engaged. At such a moment your wish is assuredly for what Dryden has painted better than Virgil, for the simple reason that Virgil never painted it at all: A country cottage near a crystal flood, What a Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum Let them rave! the peace of September the raw, half-clad, chilly month of May, with all her frost-bitten flowers, give you in exchange for this? We were wrong, perhaps, in saying that in the depth of that cool green wood you would hear no sound but the loving coo or the noisy pinion of the wood-pigeon. You may hear at intervals the distant gun of the partridge-shooter; and little as such a sport may seem at first sight to have to do with "the soul-subduing sentiment harshly styled flirtation,"* the reader of Whyte Melville's charming novel All Down Hill will know better, if he has not known it at first hand. In partridge-shooting there is such a thing as luncheon, which it needs little feminine dexterity to convert into a picnic of an exceptionally free and easy character. What more natural than for the daughters of the house to bring out their papa's luncheon in the pony carriage, who meets them with his two young friends in such and such a lane, or under such and such a big hedge? Paterfamilias himself is not unlikely to go to sleep when he has finished his share of pigeonpie and smoked his allotted pipe. But whether he does or not, he will certainly not get up to help the young ladies gather blackberries; and as that is one of the fruits of the earth of which they happen at this moment to be particularly fond, and as it grows too high on these hedges to be reached without assistance, they pair off easily and naturally in quest of this delicacy coming back-strange to say—with neither lips nor fingers show ing any traces of the coveted refreshment, though what other fruit may have been tasted in the mean time it would perhaps be impertinent to inquire. Oh, yes! partridge-shooting-the sport par excellence of September-has a great deal of poetry in it. It is answerable for numerous love affairs of all kinds-serious or trifling, innocent or otherwise. And while we are on the poetry of September we must never forget that it is of * Coningsby. all months in the year the month of honeymoons. We might expatiate on this topic to any extent: on the raptures which September has beheld by lake or mountain, by the blue sea, or in the green retreats of some patrician home. There is some evidence in the context to show that it may have been September when the Lady of Shalott began to grow sick of shadows. The long fields of barley, the reapers reaping early, the sheaves through which Sir Launcelot rode, all point to this conclusion: Or when the moon was overhead, It must have been so. Hence, vain deluding May! We will none of thee. If the Italian Venus loves best the "ivory moonlight of April," our English goddess is clearly most gracious in September. If the transition from grave to gay in the above pages has been somewhat of the suddenest, I can only say that it reflects to some extent the character of the month I have been describing. The still, deep, eloquent calm of a September day speaking to us in a language which cannot be written down-at once so sweet, so soft, and so sad-may be exchanged in a moment for all the jocund activity of a harvest field, the rough pleasantries of the mowers, and the merry tones of girls and children. Thus there are two aspects of September which present themselves to us alternately, contrasting very strongly with each other, and not shaded off by any very gentle gradations. From one point of view September is merrier than May, from another it is sadder than December. Nothing can be gayer than the human life of the month, with all the bustle and license of the harvest: nothing more calculated to inspire us with serious emotions than the face of nature. Melancholy and gladness share the month between them; and whichever mood we may be in, September can always sympathise with us. |