 | A sketch of old England |  |
LETTER III.
Almost the first thing that strikes an American, used to the
clear skies and glowing sunshine of his own country, is the humidity
of the atmosphere, and the frequent absence of the god
here. It rains or snows about one hundred and fifty days in
the year; and of the remainder, between fifty and sixty are
cloudy. The result is, that the verdure of the country is excessively
luxuriant, although, to my mind, the landscapes rather
weep than laugh. The grass and the foliage are so deadly
green, that they almost look blue, and resemble the effect of
distance, which, you know, communicates a bluish tint to the
landscape. But the grass grows and the cattle get fat, and the
roast beef of Old England is the better for it, undoubtedly.
To me, however, who you know love the sunshine like a terrapin,
there is something chilly and ungenial in the English
summer, and it offends me hugely to hear a fat, puffing, beer-drinking
fellow, bawling out to his neighbour, “A fine day,”
when the sun looks as if it might verify the theory of one of the
old Greeks, that it was nothing more than a great round ball
of copper. Whether this melancholy character in the climate,
or the practice of drinking beer in such enormous quantities, or
both combined, have given that peculiar cast of bluff and gruff
stupidity, observable in the common people of England, I
cannot say; but certainly, if “a man who drinks beer thinks
beer,” the question is decided at once.
To describe, or even to name, all the villages and seats which
I passed, in going out of London at different times, is a task I
shall not undertake, and which indeed can only be done by a
person with more time on his hands than he knows what to do
with, and more patience than time.
Richmond Hill and village, with Twickenham on the opposite
side of the Thames, about ten or twelve miles from London,
is all classic ground, and worthy to be so. It is, to my
mind, the most charming scenery in the old world. What
makes it the more agreeable to my eye is, that there is plenty
of wood, which is wanting in most of the English landscapes,
except about the great forests. What with their smooth lawns
and trim edges, the landscapes put one in mind of a well
shaven beard. But what gives the charm to these scenes is,
that they are connected with the shades of Pope and Thomson.
The latter lies buried in Richmond church; and thither I went
on a pilgrimage, the least a man can do in gratitude for the
many hours his genius has embellished and consecrated to pure
and innocent enjoyment.
Until the year 1792, there was no inscription over his grave,
which is in the north-easterly corner of the church. The
Earl of Buchan, Washington's old correspondent, at that time
placed over it, against the wall, a brass plate with this inscription:
“In the earth, beneath this tablet, are the remains of James
Thomson, author of the beautiful poems of the Seasons, the
Castle of Indolence, &c. &c., who died at Richmond on the
27th day of August, and was buried on the 29th, O. S. 1748.
The Earl of Buchan, unwilling so good a man, and so admirable
a poet, should be without a memorial, has denoted the
place of his interment, for the satisfaction of his admirers, in
the year of our Lord 1792.”
But such memorials are rather benefits bestowed upon the
giver, than the receiver. No one will ever want a memorial
of Thomson, whose Seasons will continue while those he has
painted shall roll on their course, and men can read and relish
nature and truth. But for this memorial, it might, however,
have been speedily forgotten that such a man as my Lord of
Buchan ever existed.
I afterwards visited a house called Rossdale, where the poet
resided, and wrote the Seasons, and where many reliques are
still preserved. I was particularly struck with a little, round,
old-fashioned table, on which he was accustomed to write, and
which excited my reverence infinitely more than Arthur's
Round Table, which I afterwards saw at Winchester. There
are also two brass hooks, where he always hung his hat and
cane, for he was a man of habits, and seldom deviated from
them. In the garden was his favourite haunt, a summer-house,
overshadowed with luxuriant vines. Solitude and
solitary rambling constituted the pleasures of Thomson; and
it was doubtless from these habits of walking alone, observing
all the latent, and inherent, and even accidental charms of
nature, and reflecting upon them as he rambled along, that he
was enabled to combine natural and moral beauties so delightfully
in his pictures. I wish he had been buried somewhere in
the fields, where the grass and the flowers might have sprung
on his grave, and realized the inimitable beauty of the verses
of Collins to his memory—
Where slowly winds the stealing wave,
The year's best fruit shall duteous rise
To deck their Poet's sylvan grave.”
Twickenham, where Pope's villa once was, is a village opposite
Richmond, to which you pass by a bridge. The house
which the poet inhabited is pulled down, but the famous grotto
remains, a pretty and fantastic monument of expensive folly.
Pope had better have held his tongue about “Timon's villa,”
and its fripperies; for, to my taste, this grotto is totally unworthy
of any reputable nymphs of either wood or water. It is
and is, in truth, an excellent place for keeping milk and butter
cool. I felt no reverence whatever for it, and heartily wished
the grotto, rather than the house, had been destroyed.
Perhaps I am singular; but though I am one of Pope's
greatest admirers, and think him in many, very many respects,
unequalled, as well as inimitable, his name, somehow or other,
does not carry with it those warm and affecting feelings of
admiration, as well as regret, which are conjured up by the
recollection of many other bards. It is true, he was rich,
was cherished by the great, and lived all his days in sunshine.
He reaped, during his life, that fame, as well as fortune, the
one of which few poets receive till after death, and the other
most want while alive. There was nothing in his whole life
either romantic or affecting, nothing to call forth sympathy.
But these circumstances, of themselves, are not sufficient to
account for my want of enthusiasm at visiting the spot where
he lived, wrote, and died.
It is for these reasons, probably, combined with the causes
before mentioned, that Twickenham and Pope's grotto does not
elevate the heart with those affecting, yet lofty emotions, that
arise from contemplating the little round table, and the vinecovered
summer-house, of the author of Liberty, the Seasons,
and the Castle of Indolence. Pope is the poet of those who
reason rather than feel; the poet of the understanding, and of
men past the age of romantic delusions: Thomson is the poet
of youth, nature, and an uncorrupted heart. The one is a
man of the world, the other a druid of the woods and melancholy
streams, the beautiful and sublime of nature.
I do not know any thing more affecting than a passage in
Fielding's Tom Jones, which is recalled to my mind by these
speculations. He was always poor, and in his latter days a
martyr to disease, slow, yet sure in its progress. It was,
perhaps, while tasting in advance the immortality he has
since attained that he broke out into the following invocation:
“Come, bright love of fame, inspire my glowing breast!
Not thee I call, who over swelling tides of blood and tears
dost bear the hero on to glory, while sighs of millions waft his
swelling sails; but thee, fair, gentle maid, whom Mnesis, happy
nymph, first on the banks of Hebrus did produce; thee, whom
Mæonia educated, whom Mantua charmed, and who, on that
fair hill, which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain,
satest with thy Milton tuning the heroic lyre—fill my ravished
fancy with the hope of charming ages yet to come. Foretell
me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn,
the real worth that once existed in my Charlotte, shall from
her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh! Do thou
teach me not only to foresee, but feed on future praise! Comfort
me by a solemn assurance, that when the little parlour, in
which I sit at this instant, shall be reduced to a worse-furnished
box, I shall be read with honour, by those who never
knew or saw me, and whom I shall never see or know.”
The man who could dream, and dream truly too, could not
be miserable, even amid the neglect of fortune and the scorn of
fools. This secret consciousness is the staff which supports
and rewards genius in its weary pilgrimage.
| A sketch of old England | |