ON KING WILLIAM'S RETURN OUT OF FLANDERS. Rejoice, yee fops, yor idoll's come agen To pick yo' pocketts, and to slay yo' men; Give him yo' millions, and his Dutch yo' lands; Don't ring yo' bells, yee fools, but wring yo' hands. GRENDON. EXECUTION OF CHARLES I. In Lilly's History of his Life and Times, is the following interesting account in regard to the vizored execution of Charles I., being part of the evidence he gave when examined before the first parliament of King Charles II. respecting the matter: Liberty being given me to speak, I related what follows, viz.: That the next Sunday but one after Charles I. was beheaded, Robert Spavin, Secretary to Lieutenant-general Cromwell at that time, invited himself to dine with me, and brought Anthony Pearson and several others along with him to dinner. That their principal discourse all dinner time was only who it was that beheaded the King. One said it was the common hangman; another, Hugh Peters; others were also nominated, but none concluded. Robert Spavin, as soon as dinner was done, took me by the hand, and carried me to the south window. Saith he, "They are all mistaken; they have not named the man that did the fact: it was Lieutenant-colonel Joice. I was in the room when he fitted himself for the work; stood behind him when he did it; when done, went in with him again: there is no man knows this but my master, viz., Cromwell, Commissary Ireton, and myself." "Doth Mr. Rushworth know it?” saith I. "No, he doth not know it," saith Spavin. The same thing Spavin since has often related to me, when we were alone. A NOTE ON "SMALL WORDS." "And ten low words creep on in one dull line." Most ingenious! most felicitous! but let no man despise little words, despite of the little man of Twickenham. He himself knew better, but there was no resisting the temptation of such a line as that. Small words, he says, in plain prosaic criticism, are generally "stiff and languishing, but they may be beautiful to express melancholy." The English language is a language of small words. It is, says Swift, overstocked with monosyllables." It cuts down all its words to the shortest possible dimensions: a sort of half-Procrustes, which lops but never stretches. In one of the most magnificent passages in Holy Writ, that, namely, which describes the death of Sisera : At her feet he bowed, he fell at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; where he bowed, there he fell down dead. There are twenty-two monosyllables to three of greater length, or rather to the same dissyllable thrice repeated; and that, too, in common parlance pronounced as a monosyllable. The passage in the Book of Ezekiel, which Coleridge is said to have considered the most sublime in the whole Bible,— And He said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest, contains seventeen monosyllables to three others. And in that most grand passage which commences the Gospel of St. John, from the first to the fourteenth verses, inclusive, there are polysyllables twenty-eight, monosyllables two hundred and one. This, it may be said, is poetry, but not verse, and therefore makes but little against the critic. Well, then, out of his own mouth shall he be confuted. In the fourth epistle of his Essay on Man, a specimen selected purely at Random from his works, and extending altogether to three hundred and ninety-eight lines, there are no less than twenty-seven (that is, a trifle more than one out of every fifteen) made up entirely of monosyllables: and over and above these, there are one hundred and fifteen which have in them only one word of greater length; and yet there are few dull creepers among the lines of Pope. The early writers, the "pure wells of English undefiled," are full of small words." Hall, in one of the most exquisite of his satires, speaking of the vanity of "adding house to house, and field to field," has these most beautiful lines: Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And he that cares for most shall find no more! "What harmonious monosyllables!" says Mr. Gifford; and what critic will refuse to echo his exclamation? The same writer is full of monosyllabic lines, and he is among the most energetic of satirists. By the way, it is not a little curious that in George Webster's White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, almost the same thought is also clothed in two monosyllabic lines:— His wealth is summ'd, and this is all his store : This poor men get, and great men get no more. Listen, for it is indeed a Was Young dull? sound: " The bell strikes one. We take no note of time Save by its loss; to give it then a tongue Was wise in man. "solemn Was Milton tame? Hear the "lost archangel" calling upon Hell to receive its new possessor :— One who brings A mind not to be chang'd by place or time, The mind is in its own place, and in itself A great conjunction of little words! Are monosyllables pas- sionless? Thou may'st, thou shalt! I will not go with thee! I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout; To me, and to the state of my great grief, Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great, That no supporter but the huge firm earth Can hold it up; here I and sorrow sit; Here is my throne: bid kings come bow to it. Six polysyllables only in eight lines! Hear Lear— Lear. Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air, We wawl, and cry:-I will preach to thee; mark me. [Gloster. Alack! alack the day!] Lear. When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.-This a good block ?-King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6. In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each other consecutively. In King John, Act III. Sc. 3, where the king is pausing in his wish to incense Hubert to Arthur's murder, he says: Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet: But thou shalt have; and creep time ne'er so slow, I had a thing to say,-But let it go :— forty monosyllables. Again : but through his lips do throng Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart's aid, Rape af Lucreece, Stanza 255. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Boadicea, Act III. Sc. 1 (Edinburgh, 1812), are the following lines in Caratach's Apostrophe to "Divine Andate," and which seem to corroborate the theory on the employment of monosyllables by Shakspeare, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming emotion; at least they appear to be used much in the same way by these celebrated dramatists: Give us this day good hearts, good enemies, Good blows on both sides, wounds that fear or flight And warlike executions fit thy viewing. Let Rome put on her best strength, and thy Britain, Meet her as strong as she, as proud, as daring! And then look on, thou red-eyed God; who does best, Unarm for ever, and brand with infamy! This passage contains one hundred and twenty-six words, one hundred and ten of which are monosyllables, and the remainder words of only two syllables. New light new love, new love new life hath bred; A life that lives by love, and loves by light; A love to Him to whom all loves are wed; A light to whom the sun is darkest night: Eye's light, heart's love, soul's only life He is; He eye, light, heart, love, soul; He all my joy and bliss. In seventy words only one of more than a syllable; the alliteration in the second line is likewise noticeable. In the following passage in Churchill, the structure of the second couplet must surely have been suggested by Pope's line:Conjunction, adverb, preposition, join To add new vigour to the nervous line:— He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul. Censure on Mossop. |