She deposited half a dozen volumes on the chair beside him and left the room. Neal took them up one by one. There was a volume of “Voltaire,” Tom Paine’s “Rights of Man,” “The Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” by Mackintosh, Godwin’s “Political Justice,” Montesquieu’s “Esprit des Lois,” and a volume of Burns’ poetry, not long out from a Belfast printer. Neal already knew Godwin’s works and the “Esprit des Lois.” They stood on his father’s bookshelves. He glanced at the pages of the others, and finally settled down to read Burns’ poetry. The Scottish dialect presents little difficulty to a man bred among County Antrim people. The love songs, with their extraordinary freshness and vivid emotion, delighted Neal. Like many lovers of poetry, he tasted the full pleasure of verse best when he read it aloud. One after another he declaimed the marvellous songs, returning again and again to one which seemed peculiarly suited to his circumstances—
“It’s not the roar o’ sea or shore
Wad make me longer wish to tarry;
Nor shouts o’ war that’s heard afar—
It’s leaving thee, my bonny Mary.”
He read the song aloud for the fourth time. As he uttered the last words he heard a laugh, and, looking up, saw his host, Felix Matier, standing at the door of the room.
“Well, Neal, good morrow to you. You’re well enough in body, to judge by your voice. But if that poem’s a measure of the state of your mind you’re sick at heart. Never mind Mary, man. There’s better stuff in Burns than that. He’s no bad poet, is Rabbie Burns. Listen to this now. Here’s one I’m fond of.”
He took the book out of Neal’s hand, and read him “Holy Willie’s Prayer.” His dry intonation’, his perfect rendering of the dialect of the poem, the sly twinkle of his eyes as he read, added exquisite malice to the satire.
“But maybe,” he said, “I oughtn’t to be reading the like of that to you that’s the son of the Manse, though nobody would think of Holy Willie and your father together. I’m not very fond of the clergy myself, Neal, either of your Church or another. I’m much of John Milton’s opinion that new presbyter is just old priest writ large, but if there’s one kind of minister that’s not so bad as the rest it’s the New Light men of the Ulster Synod, and your father’s one of the best of them. But here’s something now that Micah Ward would approve of. Just let me read you this. I’ll have time enough before your uncle comes in. He’s not a man of books, that uncle of yours, and I’d be ashamed if he caught me reading at this hour of the day. But listen to me now.”
He took up the volume of “Voltaire” and read—
L’âme des grands travaux, l’objet des nobles voeux,
Que tout mortel embrasse, ou désire, ou rapelle,
Qui vit dans tous les coeurs, et dont le nom sacré
Dans les cours des tyrans est tout bas adoré, La Liberté!
J’ai vu cette déesse altière
Avec égalité répandant tous les biens,
Descendre de Morat en habit de guerrière,
Les mains teintes du sang des fiers Autrichiens
Et de Charles le Téméraire.”
Felix Matier’s manner of pronouncing French was somewhat painful to listen to. Voltaire would probably have failed to recognise his solitary lyric if he had heard it read by Mr. Matier. But if the poet had discovered that the verses were his own and had got over his shudder at a mangling of French sounds worse than the worst he can have heard at Potsdam from the courtiers of Frederick William, he would probably have been well enough satisfied with the spirit of the rendering. Mr. Matier, of the North Street, Belfast, was obviously a sincere worshipper of the déesse altière, and would have been delighted to see her hands teintes du sang of the men who had torn down his sign the night before. Neal, though he could read French easily, did not understand a single word he heard. He took the book from his host to see what the poem was about. Mr. Matier did not seem the least vexed, although he understood what Neal was doing.
“The French are a great people,” he said. “Europe owes them all the ideas that are worth having. I’d be the last man to breathe a word against them, but I must say that it requires some sort of a twisted jaw to pronounce their language properly. I understand it all right when it’s printed, but as for Speaking it or following it when a Frenchman speaks it——”