Here is another picture, still homelier, but equally complete, and as robust in its full-grown strength as the other is light and boyish:—
As when a smith and’s man (lame Vulcan’s fellows),
Called from the anvil or the puffing bellows
To clap a well-wrought shoe, for more than pay,
Upon a stubborn nag of Galloway,
Or unback’d jennet, or a Flanders mare,
That at the forge stands snuffing of the air;
The swarthy smith spits in his buck-horn fist,
And bids his men bring out the five-fold twist,
His shackles, shacklocks, hampers, gyves, and chains,
His linkèd bolts; and with no little pains
These make him fast; and lest all these should faulter,
Unto a post, with some six-doubled halter,
He binds his head; yet all are of the least
To curb the fury of the headstrong beast;
When, if a carrier’s jade be brought unto him,
His man can hold his foot while he can shoe him;
Remorse was so enforced to bind him stronger.
This is a Dutch picture, or one that Mr. Crabbe might have admired. The following might have adorned the pages of Spenser himself. The ascension of the fogs and mists, and the cessation of all noise, are in a true—nay, in a high spirit of grandeur; and the very delicacy of the conclusion adds to it. The sense of hushing solemnity is drawn to the finest point:—
Now great Hyperion left his golden throne,
That on the dancing waves in glory shone;
For whose declining on the western shore
The oriental hills black mantles wore;
And thence apace the gentle twilight fled,
That had from hideous caverns usherèd
All-drowsy Night; who in a car of jet,
By steeds of iron-grey (which mainly sweat
Moist drops on all the world) drawn through the sky,
The helps of darkness waited orderly.
First, thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains;
Then mists from marishes, and grounds whose veins
Were conduit-pipes to many a crystal spring;
From standing pools and fens were following
Unhealthy fogs; each river, every rill,
Sent up their vapours to attend her will.
These pitchy curtains drew ’twixt earth and heaven,
And as Night’s chariot through the air was driven,
Clamour grew dumb; unheard was shepherd’s song,
And silence girt the woods: no warbling tongue
Talk’d to the echo; satyrs broke their dance,
And all the upper world lay in a trance;
Only the curling streams soft chidings kept:
And little gales, that from the green leaf swept
Dry summer’s dust, in fearful whisp’ring stirr’d
As loth to waken any singing bird.
Browne was a Devonshire man, and is supposed to have died at Ottery St. Mary, the birthplace of Coleridge. He was not unworthy to have been the countryman of that exquisite observer of Nature, himself a pastoral man, though he wrote no pastorals; for Coleridge not only preferred a country to a town life, but his mind as well as his body (when it was not with Plato and the schoolmen) delighted to live in woody places, “enfolding,” as he beautifully says,
Sunny spots of greenery.
And how many other great and good men have there not been, with whom the humblest lover of Arcady may, in this respect, claim fellowship?—men, nevertheless, fond of town also, and of the most active and busy life, when it was their duty to enter it. The most universal genius must of necessity include the green districts of the world in his circle, otherwise he would not run it a third part round. Shakspeare himself, prosperous manager as he was, retired to his native place before he was old. Do we think that, with all his sociality, his chief companions there were such as a country town afforded? Depend upon it, they were the trees, and the fields, and his daughter Susanna. Be assured, that no gentleman of the place was seen so often pacing the banks of the Avon, sitting on the stiles in the meadows, looking with the thrush at the sunset, or finding
Books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Cervantes, the Shakspeare of Spain, (for if his poetry answered but to one small portion of Shakspeare, his prose made up the rest,) proclaims his truly pastoral heart, notwithstanding his satire, not only in his Galatea, but in a hundred passages of Don Quixote, particularly the episodes. He delighted equally in knowledge of the world and the most ideal poetic life. It is easy to see, by the stories of Marcella and Leandra, that this great writer wanted little to have become a Quixote himself, in the Arcadian line! Nothing but the extremest good sense supplied him a proper balance in this respect for his extreme romance.
Boccaccio was another of these great child-like minds, whose knowledge of the world is ignorantly confounded with a devotion to it. See, in his Admetus, and Theseid, and Genealogia Deorum, &c., and in the Decameron itself, how he revels in groves and gardens; and how, when he begins making a list of trees, he cannot leave off. Doubtless, he had been of a more sensual temperament than Cervantes; but his faith remained unshaken in the highest things. His veins might have contained an excess of the genial; but so did his heart. When the priest threatened him in advanced life with the displeasure of Heaven, he was shocked and alarmed, and obliged to go to Petrarch for comfort.