Bridge on the Road to Beckenham.
Bridge on the Road to Beckenham.
—Ancient Charity let flow this brook
Across the road, for sheep and beggar-men
To cool their weary feet, and slake their thirst.
*
On our way from Penge,[204] W. thought [this object] worth sketching. He occupied himself with his pencil, and I amused myself with dropping grains of dust among a fleet of tadpoles on the yellow sands, and watching their motions; a few inches from them, in a clearer shallow, lay a shoal of stickle-backs as on their Dogger-bank: a thread and a blood-worm, and the absence of my friend, and of certain feelings in behalf of the worms, would have afforded me excellent sport. The rivulet crosses the road from a meadow, where I heard it in its narrow channel, and muttering inwardly “the rapids are near,” from the “Canadian Boat-song,” I fell into a reverie on Wilson’s magnificent painting of the falls of Niagara, in Mr. Landseer’s painting-room. While I seated myself by the wayside, and, among ground-ivy and periwinkle, discriminating the diminutive forms of trees in the varied mosses of an old bank, I recollected descriptions I had read of transatlantic scenery, and the gigantic vegetation on the Ohio and Mississipi.
A labourer told us, that this little brook is called “Chaffinch’s River,” and that it springs from “the Alders,” near Croydon, and runs into the Ravensbourne.
Garrick Plays.
No. XX.
[From “Bussy D’Ambois his Revenge,” a Tragedy, by George Chapman, 1613.]
Plays and Players.
Guise.—I would have these things
Brought upon Stages, to let mighty Misers
See all their grave and serious mischiefs play’d,
As once they were in Athens and old Rome.
Clermont. Nay, we must now have nothing brought on Stages
But puppetry, and pied ridiculous antics.
Men thither come to laugh, and feed fool-fat:
Check at all goodness there, as being profaned:
When, wheresoever Goodness comes, she makes
The place still sacred, though with other feet
Never so much ’tis scandal’d and polluted.
Let me learn any thing, that fits a man,
In any Stables shewn, as well as Stages.—
Baligny. Why, is not all the World esteem’d a Stage?
Clermont. Yes, and right worthily; and Stages too
Have a respect due to them, if but only
For what the good Greek Moralist says of them:
“Is a man proud of greatness, or of riches?
Give me an expert Actor; I’ll shew all
That can within his greatest glory fall:
Is a man ’fraid with poverty and lowness?
Give me an Actor; I’ll shew every eye
What he laments so, and so much does fly:
The best and worst of both.”—If but for this then,
To make the proudest outside, that most swells
With things without him, and above his worth,
See how small cause he has to be so blown up;
And the most poor man, to be griev’d with poorness;
Both being so easily borne by expert Actors:
The Stage and Actors are not so contemptful,
As every innovating Puritan,
And ignorant Swearer out of jealous envy,
Would have the world imagine. And besides
That all things have been liken’d to the mirth
Used upon Stages, and to Stages fitted;
The Splenetive Philosopher, that ever
Laugh’d at them all, were worthy the enstaging:
All objects, were they ne’er so full of tears,
He so conceited, that he could distill thence
Matter, that still fed his ridiculous humour.
Heard he a Lawyer, never so vehement pleading,
He stood and laugh’d. Heard he a Tradesman, swearing
Never so thriftily, selling of his wares,
He stood and laugh’d. Heard he a Holy Brother,
For hollow ostentation, at his prayers
Ne’er so impetuously, he stood and laugh’d.
Saw he a Great Man, never so insulting,
Severely inflicting, gravely giving laws,
Not for their good but his—he stood and laugh’d.
Saw he a Youthful Widow,
Never so weeping, wringing of her hands
For her dead Lord, still the Philosopher laugh’d.—
Now, whether he supposed all these Presentments
Were only maskeries, and wore false faces,
Or else were simply vain, I take no care;
But still he laugh’d, how grave soe’er they were.
Stoicism.
—— in this one thing all the discipline
Of manners and of manhood is contain’d;
A Man to join himself with the Universe
In his main sway; and make (in all things fit)
One with that All; and go on, round as it:
Not plucking from the whole his wretched part,
And into straits, or into nought revert;
Wishing the complete Universe might be
Subject to such a rag of it as He.
Apparitions before the Body’s Death Scotice, Second Sight.
—— these true Shadows of the Guise and Cardinal,
Fore-running thus their Bodies, may approve,
That all things to be done, as here we live,
Are done before all times in th’ other life.
[From “Satiromastix,” a Comedy, by Thomas Decker, 1602: in which Ben Jonson, under the name of Horace, is reprehended, in retaliation of his “Poetaster;” in which he had attacked two of his Brother Dramatists, probably Marston and Decker, under the names of Crispinus and Demetrius.]
Horace. What could I do, out of a just revenge,
But bring them to the Stage? they envy me,
Because I hold more worthy company.
Demetrius. Good Horace, no; my cheeks do blush for thine,
As often as thou speaks’t so. Where one true
And nobly-virtuous spirit for thy best part
Loves thee, I wish one ten even from my heart.
I make account I put up as deep share
In any good man’s love, which thy worth owns,
As thou thyself; we envy not to see
Thy friends with bays to crown thy Poesy.
No, here the gall lies; we that know what stuff
Thy very heart is made of, know the stalk
On which thy learning grows, and can give life
To thy (once dying) baseness, yet must we
Dance antics on thy paper.
Crispinus. This makes us angry, but not envious.
No; were thy warpt soul put in a new mould,
I’d wear thee as a jewel set in gold.
[From the “Antipodes,” a Comedy, by Richard Brome, 1633.]
Directions to Players.
Nobleman. ———My actors
Are all in readiness, and I think all perfect,
But one, that never will be perfect in a thing
He studies; yet he makes such shifts extempore,
(Knowing the purpose what he is to speak to),
That he moves mirth in me ’bove all the rest.
For I am none of those Poetic Furies,
That threats the actor’s life, in a whole Play
That adds a syllable, or takes away.
If he can fribble through, and move delight
In others, I am pleased.—****
Let me not see you now,
In the scholastic way you brought to town with you,
With see-saw sack-a-down, like a sawyer;
Nor in a comic scene play Hercules Furens,
Tearing your throat to split the audients’ ears;—
And you, Sir, you had got a trick of late
Of holding out your breech in a set speech;
Your fingers fibulating on your breast,
As if your buttons or your bandstrings were
Helps to your memory; let me see you in’t
No more, I charge you. No, nor you, Sir,
In that o’er-action of your legs I told you of,
Your singles and your doubles—look you—thus—
Like one of the dancing-masters of the bear-garden;
And when you’ve spoke, at end of every speech,
Not minding the reply, you turn you round
As tumblers do, when betwixt every feat
They gather wind by firking up their breeches.
I’ll none of these absurdities in my house;
But words and actions married so together,
That shall strike harmony in the ears and eyes
Of the severest, if judicious, critics.
Players. My Lord, we are corrected.
Nobleman. Go, be ready.—
But you, Sir, are incorrigible, and
Take licence to yourself to add unto
Your parts your own free fancy; and sometimes
To alter or diminish what the writer
With care and skill composed; and when you are
To speak to your Co-actors in the scene,
You hold interloqutions with the audients.
Player. That is a way, my Lord, has been allowed
On elder stages, to move mirth and laughter.
Nobleman. Yes, in the days of Tarleton and Kemp,
Before the Stage was purged from barbarism,
And brought to the perfection it now shines with.
Then Fools and Jesters spent their wits, because
The Poets were wise enough to save their own
For profitabler uses.—
C. L.