“Am I right,” I asked, “in thinking that your humour and temperament lay chiefly in a keen enjoyment of rural nature, the delineation of love between men and women, and philosophic reflections on the various passions of human beings?”
“You put it rather flatteringly,” he said. “But I will not deny that what you say concerning one’s disposition is true. The external world is so beautiful, loving and being loved are so delightful, and human beings are so interesting, that it is a writer’s own defect if he does not make them appear beautiful, delightful, and interesting to others, no matter in what form he presents them. If he has what you call the way with him, he will make you accept as true almost any story, so long as he is telling it, no matter what you may think of it afterwards. As a famous poet and critic said long ago, Incredulus odi. Men naturally turn away from what seems incredible. But what seems somewhat incredible when only read, appears credible enough when acted, if acted well; and Ellen Terry was so attractive and winning in her treatment of Polixenes, that the conjugal jealousy of Leontes becomes, at least, almost intelligible.”
“That was exactly what I myself felt the other day, when I went to see the performance,” I said. “But I observe you quote Horace, though many persons have maintained that you had little Latin, if any.”
“Rather a mistake that, arising, I imagine, from their not knowing what Grammar Schools were like in my time, when we were taught something more than the rudiments of Latin, with the assistance of prompt corporal chastisement if we showed a disinclination to master them. Nowadays, I see, the birch, the ferule, and the cane, have fallen into disfavour, with the result that many English boys, at schools supposed to be very superior in the education they provide, refuse to learn anything except cricket and rowing; two excellent accomplishments, but not quite covering the whole ground of a liberal education.”
“May I inquire,” I said, “if you, among others, had a liberal application of the cane?”
“My fair share,” he said, “but not for refusing to learn, since I enjoyed being taught, and, still more, teaching myself; and a very little learning, though some people have said it is a dangerous thing, goes a long way if you only know how to turn it to account. My thrashings, which were richly deserved, were given for being behindhand of a morning because I had loitered with some rustic sight or sound that arrested me, and suchlike irregularities of conduct. But what was taught us was taught thoroughly, and I have sometimes thought that men deemed poets may be taught and learn too much, as, for instance, my good friend Ben Jonson, who has been justly compared to a heavy galleon, though a very well trimmed and steered one, but which perhaps would sometimes have benefited by a portion of its dead weight being cast overboard. Still he was a rare poet all the same.”
“Who is that, may I ask, with the pointed beard, that has just been joking with a rubicund friar whom I no longer see, and then more gravely with a seemly and tender-looking young woman, also vanished ‘into air, into thin air,’ while he now stoops to gather daisies from the grass? I seem to know his face.”
“That is a delightful fellow, perhaps of all my companions here the most congenial; the morning star of English song, Geoffrey Chaucer. He could, and did, delineate character consistently if you like. I think it is his cheerful, kindly sense of humour that recommends him so strongly to me. But a nearer contemporary of mine in the other world whom you see there, wearing an aspect of stately distinction, essentially what English folk call a perfect gentleman, likewise enters much into the study of my imagination. See! Now he turns his face towards you.”
“Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?”
“Yes, the Poet’s poet. His verse is at once so natural and so noble, as to be irresistible. I often repeat to myself two exquisitely musical and briefly descriptive lines of his: