It may be noted that Lamb treats Lyciscus, which was evidently intended merely as a name, as referring to the species of dog; Virgil uses Lycisca as a dog's name in the third Eclogue. Probably Bourne was thinking of a fox-terrier, and the term wolf-dog is pompous and incongruous. Lamb's last line but three is a very lame one; it is a difficult point to determine, but did not he mean "no ungrateful hand"? The true sense of the original line is, "the slender gift of a hand which although poor is not ungrateful."
Bourne shows also a remarkable observation of street life, the quaint water-side manners, the odd obscure life that eddied near the river highway and round about the smoky towers of Wren. Absent-minded he may have been, but observant he was to a peculiar degree, and that not of broad poetical effects, but of the minute detail and circumstance of every-day life. It would be easy to multiply instances, but this extract from the "Iter per Tamisin," of the bargeman lighting his pipe, will serve to show what I mean. Why does he call tobacco pœtum, it may be asked? The only solution that I can suggest is that Pink-eye, or Squint-eye, was a cant term for some species of the weed at the time. It can hardly be, I think, the word peat Latinised. The version, as in the case of those which follow, is my own.
His ita dispositis, tubulum cum pyxide magna
Depromit, nigrum longus quem fecerat usus.
Hunc postquam implêrat pæto, silicemque pararat,
Excussit scintillam; ubi copia ponitur atri
Fomitis, hinc ignem sibi multum exugit, et haustu
Accendens crebro, surgentes deprimit herbas
Extremo digito: in cineres albescere pætum
Incipit et naso gratos emittit odores.
———
This thus disposed, a pipe with ample bowl
He handles, blackened with familiar use;
Stuffs with the fragrant herb, and flint prepares
To strike the spark: and thence from fuel stored,
Black provender, he spouts a plenteous flame,
Kindling with frequent gusts of breath indrawn:
Meanwhile he tends with cautions finger-tip
The rising fibres; into lightest ash
Whitening, they pour the aromatic fumes.
Vincent Bourne had that passionate sympathy with and delight in youth that is the surest testimony to a heart that does not grow old. The pretty ways and natural gestures of childhood pleased him. He was fond of his boys, and allowed that fondness to be evident, at a time when brow-beating and insolent severity were too much the fashion. In his epitaphs it is curious to note how many deal with the young, and touch on the immemorial fragrance of early death with a peculiar pathos. There is an epitaph on a Westminster boy of twelve years old, where he most touchingly alludes to the thought that he died both beautiful and innocent; and an epitaph on a little girl who, he said in quaint phrase, had the modest red of roses and the pure whiteness of lilies in her face. Again the inscription to the memory of the young Earl of Warwick, who died at the age of twenty-four, is full of delicate beauty; but I will give in full what seems to me the sweetest of all. It is printed among the authentic epitaphs, but it is, I imagine, purely fanciful.
EPITAPHIUM IN SEPTEM ANNORUM PUELLULAM.
Quam suavis mea Chloris, et venusta,
Vitæ quam fuerit brevis, monebunt
Hic circum violæ rosæque fusæ:
Quarum purpura, vix aperta, clausa est.
Sed nec dura nimis vocare fata,
Nec fas est nimium queri caducæ
De formæ brevitate, quam rependit
Aeterni diuturnitas odoris.
———
My pretty Chloris—ah, how sweet
The roses o'er your head shall show;
The violets, strewn above your feet
How brief the life that sleeps below.
We must not chide the grudging fates.
Nor say how short a lot was thine,
For, ah, how amply compensates
The eternal fragrance of thy shrine.