have told, in part of them, such unpleasant truths, -in that Epistle to Satan, for instance... A. "Poichè la carità del natio loco Mi strinse." (1) W. Very fine. But did you ever know affection to afford a sufficient plea for frankness, — with anybody? Well then, how do you suppose it will answer any better with a community of persons? A. But what if I am willing to abide the consequences? the motto on your seal. A. But was first engraven on my heart, I thank Heaven and the conjunction of my parents. Yes, contra audentior (2). “The gods forbid," said SOCRATES, "that I should be silent, when my fellow-citizens prove so clearly how much they still need that I should speak." W. Ha, ha! if you be turning sage already, without a wrinkle, I have done. And Socrates too! with roses on your table, and your feet in velvet slippers! Look on that standish : a little bronze Cupid, holding an inkstand in one hand, and pointing with the other over his shoulder, to a quiver filled with-pens! Had pens and inkstands been in fashion in old ATHENS, Would SOCRATES have used such an implement? Bah! you only want a gray beard, or a bald pate, like the Abbé CHAULIEU (3), and you would make a better Anacreon. Socrates! One will hear next of his grandmother's turning Sappho ! (1) For that affection for my native place (2) Part of a passage in the sixth Æneid: DANT. Inf. xiv. 1. "Tu ne cede malis; sed contra audentior ito Quam tua te fortuna sinet." Yield not to evils thou; but strive to breast them, Even in the face of Fortune. (3) A poet, and contemporary of VOLTAIRE's, called, by an equivocal panegyric, the Anacreon of the Temple. A. Ah! mauvais plaisant que tu es! I'll brain thee with this pineapple. W. Thank you, that would not be so pleasant as a lady's fan; and my pineal gland has no occasion of being reminded of its godparent. A. O, the devil! If you take to quibbling, I am vanquished; for I can punish you for one bad pun only by giving you a worse one; and that I fear would set you to repining. There! let that choke you: or, wash it down with this remaining glass of claret. But, pitching my Epistle to its destination, tell me what you think of my Novel. W. Of Arthur? Hum! A. What, not like it? W. I did not say that. Why, there too, you must be strewing, every now and then, your satire, though indeed more sparingly. That poor nightingale of Arcadia, your ass of asses," you must give him more than one sly blow in passing. A. Where's the harm? his back will bear my packstaff. Do you think he will get nearer the crown of the highway for all that? W. No; for "though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his foolishness depart from him;" or, what is more to the point, à laver la tête d'un âne on y perd sa lessive (1). But are you not afraid that people will think you have an actual fit of the Stone? A. Not at all; for it is very easy to distinguish between the pleasantry of easy contempt and the execration forced by suffering; and there is no one of common judgment who will not perceive that it is my own amusement that calls forth my sarcasms, and not the twinges of any particular disorder. Stone! I am afraid you are gravel-blind that you cannot see the difference. W. Allowing this, you will suffer the imputation of malice; for, though sport to you, your sarcasms are death to the hearts (1) French proverb. To wash the head of an ass is to lose one's lye. REVENGE NOT ALWAYS MALICE. xlvii of your victims. The world, ERNEST, will say you are revengeful. Did A. Let them. They will one day find the contrary. the world ever do justice to a living man's character. But for you, W. -, you who know what I have endured, and what I do endure at this moment, without complaining, though I need but raise my hand to crush at a single blow my ungrateful and most treacherous assailant, for you, my friend, to believe me revengeful!... W. I do not, I do not, ERNEST. I spoke but to warn you of what the world, the world, for whose good opinion you are toiling, what it would think. A. And I say again; let it. You know the circumstances which made and make me notice what at any other time I should despise. In a man of established reputation, to pay regard to ignorant censure or to mendacious malice, would be mere frenzy, or the spleen of a woman; but I am and have been differently situated, as the world will one day know as surely as yourself, and for me to disregard it, or to wait till it evaporated, would be cowardice. "E saria la matura tarditate, Che in altri è providenza, in noi viltate.” (1) But come, let alone BALAAM's teacher, and his congeners. What say you to my verse? W. I have noticed a peculiarity in certain of the rhymes. A. What? why, I pique myself upon precision there! Any thing but that, and I'll forgive you. W. But I do not say that you are wrong in the peculiarity; which is this. It is the custom of all other poets, that rhyme in English, to make such words as end in a unaccented accord with gray, way, play, and the like; but you, by a bold innovation, make a rhyme with er, as in the following examples, which I can recall: (1) And the deliberation, which would be In others foresight, were foul shame in me. TASSO. G. L. v. 6. "Hence travell'd swains would whisper, gazing on her, In graphic rapture, Cristo a Madonna!"" "He was a chevalier, hatch'd in Colonna, And wore the riband of the cross of honor." And where you use the Italian word principessa, in the same canto; "Such lot BIANCA found. Heaven seem'd to bless her, So in that madrigal, which is such a favorite of mine: Come, little image of Calista!' And, leaning o'er the babe, I kiss'd her." A. And who is right? With which sound has the final a, when short and unaccented, most affinity; with long and accented a; or with er, with or (sounded as ur), and the like? Madonna, for example, cannot, without the grossest impropriety be sounded Madonnay, still less Madonnay; its sound, in English, is almost perfectly that which I make it. Why, the very placards which you noticed in the street, sometime ago, might tell you that. You there saw announced the opera of Norma burlesqued with the title of Mrs. Normer, and La Gazza Ladra converted into Cat's in the Larder. How was this buffoonery managed, if the English pronunciation of words ending in a unaccented, whether vernacular or foreign, did not assimilate the sounds? W. True. I remember, also, seeing on the railings of the Park in Broadway, about the same time, a long board whereon the proprietor of a cosmorama had announced his show with its name spelled cosmoramer. But are not these vulgar sounds? A. Ask yourself. Pronounce cosmorama, if you can, correctly, without giving such a sound to the final a, that it would require good ears for a foreigner to distinguish it from er. You certainly would not sound it as a final in papa, nor as a in huzza. Why, your very language, my dear Wing the question, is proof against you; for how can 66 a unaccented," rhyme with a accented, idea with "gray, way, play"? in stat W. I believe that you are right. But you have all the world of versifiers against you. A. That will not make me less right. I remember too that the rhyme of Rubeta with Peter you demurred at. You said, ther in Peter was heard; and I answered, do you recollect what? W. That it certainly was, but very slightly; without the roughness which is heard in r initial, as in rose, or in r mediate, as in arrow; and that the a in Rubeta would receive in English pronunciation a corresponding sound of r, as though it were spelled Rubeter. A. Just. And I might have told you, that though misled by fashion you criticized that rhyme, you would never have hesitated to accord Peter with beat her, or neater with treat her; yet there an aspirate would intervene. Now I have, in Arthur Carryl, used, for the sake of the innovation, the rhymes whose novelty surprised you. Colonna, for example, was sought out to rhyme with honor, not honor found for Colonna. But it is not wonderful that you should find such a barbarism in English verse, as this supposed accord of the short a final with gray, and the like, when there is scarcely a poet that makes any of his double rhymes more accurate. The whole object seems to be to rhyme in the penultima, which is the accented syllable; and the other is made to be of no consequence. I could give you a volume of examples, but let us take some few at random. Here is Byron. In Beppo, we have jealous rhyming with Othello's and fellows: and, what is particularly in point, polacca rhyming with tobacco, (tobacco being always pronounced tobacker by the vulgar.) Then, in Don Juan, we have children rhyming with bewildering, new one with Juan, problem with ennoble 'em, nothing with doting and both in. But to multiply more instances from the vagabond, but healthy and vigorous, and witty muse of BYRON would be superfluous. Let us turn to Swift. Here, in two successive couplets, are picking with chicken, and tell us with fellows; here, bubbling |
