“Oh, you must be jesting, Mr. Bernard,” said the old lady, “for although I am always begging Virginia to pay more attention to the garden, there are scarcely any flowers there worth speaking of, except a few roses that I planted with my own hands, and a bed of violets.”
“You mistake me, my dear madam,” returned Bernard, still gazing on Virginia with an affectation of rapture, “the roses to which I refer bloom on fair young cheeks, and the violets shed their sweetness in the depths of those blue eyes.”
“Oh, you are at your poetry, are you?” said the old lady.
“Not if poetry extends her sway only over the realm of fiction,” said Bernard, laying his hand upon his heart.
“Indeed, Mr. Bernard,” said Virginia, not displeased at flattery, which however gross it may appear to modern ears, was common with young cavaliers in former days, and relished by the fair damsels, “I have been taught that flowers flourish far better in the cultivated parterre, than in the wild woods. I doubt not that, like Orlando, you are but playing off upon a stranger the sentiments, which, in reality, you reserve for some faithful Rosalind whom you have left in England.”
“You now surprise me, indeed,” returned Bernard, “for do you know that among all the ladies that grace English society, there are but few who ever heard of Rosalind or her Orlando, and know as little of the forest of Ardennes as of your own wild forests in Virginia.”
“I have heard,” said the Colonel, “that old Will Shakspeare and his cotemporaries—peers he has none—have been thrown aside for more modern writers, and I fear that England has gained nothing by the exchange. Who is now your prince of song?”
“There is a newly risen wit and poet, John Dryden by name, who seems to bear the palm undisputed. Waller is old now, and though he still writes, yet he has lost much of his popularity by his former defection from the cause of loyalty.”
“Well, for my part, give me old wine, old friends and old poets,” said the Colonel. “I confess I like a bard to be consecrated by the united plaudits of two or three generations, before I can give him my ready admiration.”
“I should think your acquaintance with Horace would have taught you the fallacy of that taste,” said Bernard. “Do you not remember how the old Roman laureate complains of the same prejudice existing in his own day, and argues that on such a principle merit could be accorded to no poet, for all must have their admirers among cotemporaries, else their works would pass into oblivion, before their worth were fairly tested?”