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Goose-Quill Papers

<h2 class="nobreak">NOTES MADE BY TROILUS GENTLY.</h2> <div><ANTIMG class="decocap" src="images/deco-g.jpg" width-obs="60" height-obs="59" alt="G" title="G" /></div> GENTLY was a middle-aged, bookish friend of ours, in no way remarkable save that he unconsciously nullified Emerson's smiling prediction, and wore off a pencil-point in writing down the disconnected fancies of a few days. Poor T.G. has long been gathered to his fathers. In justice to the pencil, we transcribe some of his memoranda:— <hr class="short" /> No pleasure or success in life quite meets the capacity of our hearts. We take in our good things with enthusiasm, and think ourselves happy and satisfied; but afterward, when the froth and foam have subsided, we discover that the goblet is not more than half-filled with the golden liquid that was poured into it. -57- <hr class="short" /> Reciprocity of good-will, and not compatibility of tastes, is the first requisite of friendship. <hr class="short" /> How singularly fresh and sweet is Mozart's music!—like the cadence of waters over a rocky bed, or the bird-chorus of a May morning. His melodies and those of Nature have always some subtle association. It is as if we knew the noble mother, and walked often by her side, and some fine day we meet the intelligent and sportive child, finding in his voice, his gestures, his salutation, something foreshadowed to us in that other, and beautiful in both. <hr class="short" /> Life is a breathing-space between two eternities, a holiday with appalling realities behind and before. <hr class="short" /> Barbarians "speak with naked hearts together:" we have polite conversation. <hr class="short" /> I am fond of smelling the spring,—detecting growth before it shows itself by the delicious damp odor in the fields. Snow and rain have their separate fragrance. I know at a distance the aromatic pine, the eatable whiff of-58- birch-bark, the oily sweetness of sappy maples, the tart goodness of a sorrel-patch, and the scent of crushed tansy. <hr class="short" /> The Chinese countenance is impassive, as if the old, old weight of Asiatic civilization had blunted and oppressed it. <hr class="short" /> Vandyck deified his sitters. He is like the sun in Shakespeare's line,— "Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." <hr class="short" /> A good dinner is not to be despised. It paves the way for all the virtues. <hr class="short" /> B. knew a little French girl who always insisted, with a pretty extravagance of intonation, that pigs in their grunt were saying, "Nous aurons congé." <hr class="short" /> When a soul finds nothing to reverence among its common surroundings, it is blind indeed. <hr class="short" /> The beauty of youth is inconstant and shifting as the tint at the heart of a rose, not two mornings the same; or the fall of snow-flakes, blown by every wind into new and airy relationships. -59- <hr class="short" /> The Brook Farmer is extinct now as the dodo. It would be a delight to come across one who is sensitive yet on the subject of that Arcadian failure. <hr class="short" /> When genius seems to work disregarding rule, we may be sure that it has assimilated to itself whatever is best in every rule. <hr class="short" /> The undertaker ostensibly reverses the venerable truism that "the young may die, the old must," by thrusting forward the smaller coffins in his awful windows, and keeping the others (in the subjunctive mood, as it were) well in the background. <hr class="short" /> The mind is fearless so long as there is no reproach of conscience. When that comes, come breakage and bondage and a host of terrors. <hr class="short" /> Shelley was all fire and air. His eye had perpetually the fixed light of a day-dreamer's. There is a marked resemblance between the portrait of him taken at Rome in 1819, by Miss Curran, and that of Sir Philip Sidney, engraved from the original and prefixed to Grosart's edition,—a resemblance not astonishing save to-60- those unacquainted with both mild and "heroick spirits." <hr class="short" /> It seems a little difficult to discern clearly the happiness or misery of those very near to us in affection. Souls have their perspective, and need to be removed from the eye, that it may scan them justly. <hr class="short" /> Sickness is such a humiliation that some cannot survive its first infliction. <hr class="short" /> We try hard to cure superstition, which has been defined as the surplus of faith, the mere foam and scum of what is valuable. Over-confidence and enthusiasm, which are in the same degree the excess of hope and love, we do not try to cure at all. <hr class="short" /> Thomson, the poet, was so lazy that he used to eat peaches off the trees, standing with his hands contentedly plunged in his pockets. <hr class="short" /> Would not the weather hang itself in despair if no notice were taken of it, and if every man, woman, and child forbore to speak of it for three successive days? -61- <hr class="short" /> "Frostling" used to signify a bough, blossom, or fruit nipped by the cold; and "windling" one blown from its natural support; two sweet and expressive words, now obsolete and without synonymes. It is hard to account for their being left behind in the race for the development of our English. <hr class="short" /> W., whose beliefs are quite fixed, vacillates nobly in matters of opinion. In a group of debaters he holds with no one long, but must needs jump at a conclusion so liberal and sure that it reconciles all hostilities. <hr class="short" /> All lovers are bewitched, steeped in illusions, versed in the oracles,—the riddle themselves of the whole world. <hr class="short" /> "Ye smiler with ye knif under ye cloke!" What a picture in that line of Chaucer! <hr class="short" /> The Puritan was a man of severities. He never forgot that God struck Oza and buried Pharaoh in the sea. He went through the world wearing his creed, like a sword, solely for aggressive purposes. -62- <hr class="short" /> The deficiency of gentle manners, in one not bred to their practice, can nearly always be supplied by sensibility or by tact. <div class="center"> <div class="poem"> "Take them, O great eternity! Our little life is but a gust Which bends the branches of thy tree And trails its blossoms thro' the dust." </div> </div> I never knew a critic to note the metaphor in these musical lines of Longfellow, but it seems to me quite haunting and overpowering, and of extraordinary beauty. <hr class="short" /> When you wear your old and shabby coat, anticipating a continued storm; and the sun shines, making you out of place with your ill-chosen garb, how natural it is to trace the analogy from dress to manners, and to reflect how poor a show premeditated surliness and sourness make in the broad light of the world! <hr class="short" /> We die and are forgotten; but must we forget? <hr class="short" /> The Greek pastoral compliment, "Thou singest better than a cicada," would do very well now-a-days for an amiable old lady to address to her tea-kettle on the hob. -63- <hr class="short" /> Thoreau greatly rejoiced in what he called his "invisible suit," a sort of mottled brown-and-green stuff in which he could cross a field undetected. <hr class="short" /> There was once a golden age because golden hearts beat in it. If it come again, it will scarcely be through scientific progress. <hr class="short" /> What an excellent, high-minded motto would the last words of Walter Raleigh make: "So the heart be straight, it matters nought how the head lieth." It is an echo of that celestial text, "Be ye not solicitous," and implies serene disregard of all but things essential. <hr class="short" /> It may be exacting, but not a whit so beyond justice, when I feel that if I serve the king, he must repay me in love and trust, or my allegiance cannot thrive. <hr class="short" /> I came of late across a newly told jest of C. Lamb's concerning Stilton cheese, which pleased me tremendously, having the indubitable flavor of his wit, and being (what is rarely the case with floating anecdotes of him) unmistakably his. -64- <hr class="short" /> I cannot recall faces or forms that I have seldom met, or recognize them again with ease, unless some revealed trait or expression of soul has made gait, contour, and presence memorable. <hr class="short" /> Pride is the distorter of souls; cheerfulness the helper; love the beautifier; sorrow the redeemer. <hr class="short" /> If I ever had the heroic strain, it has receded beyond my own perception; and like an athlete out of practice, I have to "brace" before doing that which is right, in defiance of inclination. <hr class="short" /> "The pure in heart shall see God,"—severe and lovely touchstone for mankind. <hr class="short" /> I saw once two sisters, the younger resembling the other as the translation of a poem does its original, moving by the same laws of beauty, yet inevitably lacking something of the earlier grace and flavor. <hr class="short" /> Twenty-third May, 1881. Hawthorne buried seventeen years ago to-day. "Who henceforth shall sing to thy pipe, O thrice-lamented? Who shall set mouth to thy reeds?" -65- <hr class="short" /> How very considerate of the failings of others must that man be who remembers constantly the Infinite Mercy he himself needs! <hr class="short" /> A good temper is a jewel extraordinary, and a worker of wonders. One of the old chroniclers tells of an irresistibly amiable monk who for some misdemeanor was sent to hell and released again, because Satan could not provoke or torment him. <hr class="short" /> The sight of a hearse against the joyous streets is always depressing: a dark line drawn through thoughtless festivity, like the dread writing on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. <hr class="short" /> C.'s poetry has much simplicity, calmness, pastoral sense, and beauty; his prose is jerky and barbaric. He is a sort of medal having the king's head finished on one side, the rough uncouth surface wanting a stamp on the other. <hr class="short" /> An odd and good resolve,—to carry the right hand always ungloved, lest one should meet a friend, and be off one's cordiality, so to speak; or a foe, and be off one's self-defence. -66- <hr class="short" /> Reserve is made sometimes of chain-mail, sometimes of solid plate steel. One is as good armor as the other, though not so obvious. <hr class="short" /> Some people wear out everything quickly and naturally,—clothes, acquaintanceship, books, pleasures, even dear life itself. <hr class="short" /> I am delighted at Lowell's saying that our modern terms, "the deuce" and "Old Scratch," were evidently derived from dus and scrat, hairy wood-demons among the Celts and Teutons. <hr class="short" /> The best of everything is the only individual of that thing. We should ignore the rest. <hr class="short" /> I think one of the drollest stories I ever heard of absent-mindedness, is this of old P., the barrister. He and his friend M. were sitting close together about the hearth of a winter night. There was no light; they were alone and silent. Suddenly P. got thinking of some project, and according to his villanous and immemorial habit, meditatively began to scratch his cranium. He came to a pause; but recovering the sequence of his thoughts, felt compelled likewise to resume-67- the physical operation. But this time P. wildly clutched not his own, but M.'s profuser locks, and furiously recommenced. M. stood it for a moment, inwardly convulsed with laughter, then lightly removed the offending hand; and P. roared out angrily, faltering in the middle of his speech with a bewilderment beautiful to see: "Great George! don't you suppose I have a right, a right to— to— You don't mean to say that wasn't my own head!" <hr class="short" /> Standing is the most royal and natural pose. I have a sympathy for that Roman emperor who sprang to his feet to meet the quick death that came upon him. <hr class="short" /> Spenser: "The noblest mind the best contentment has." Thoreau, by way of exemplification: "I shall not fret to be a giant, but be the biggest pygmy that I can." <hr class="short" /> Hawthorne wrote with his conscience. It was a sort of celestial-colored ink which he kept by him, and into which ever and anon he dipped his pen. -68- <hr class="short" /> I was struck anew, of late, with the complete ideality of the Venus of Melos, its charm of detail, out-naturing Nature: the head so delicately moulded, the neck so slender yet so strong, the scarce-deviating outline from shoulder to hip; the very apotheosis of health and beauty, with a spirituality over all that sets you thinking of a sweet and ample heart within. <hr class="short" /> There is scarcely a blow in after life comparable to that first sad intimation (perhaps in early youth), that human nature is not what we thought it, not the thing of our dreams; little else than a tissue of frailties woven together. <hr class="short" /> Shakespeare's "Rosalind" is not very dissimilar to the best type of the much-maligned American girl. She is full of "frolic parley," self-reliant, tender, womanly. <hr class="short" /> "Old hushed Egypt." Put down that golden phrase, along with many another, to Leigh Hunt. When a delightsome author threatens to be forgotten, credit him at least with what he has-69- added to the soul of literature, and let him be buried "with all his travelling glories round him." <hr class="short" /> The French language is eau sucré; the German "A cup o' thy small beer, sweet hostess." <hr class="short" /> If I have a friend, though absent many years, I hold a true treasure with fear and trembling, knowing that whatever losses come, I have been blessed beyond measure with the wealth no chance can take away. <hr class="short" /> Love is unlike the bow of Ulysses, in that it can be drawn to its full capacity of magnificence or destruction not only by the greatest. <hr class="short" /> I know a man who looks like Boccaccio, and does not appreciate it. <hr class="short" /> Genius, like the lowly insect having prophetic stirrings of the beauty it is to evolve, needs solitude, and must build it unaided for itself. If it come forth in due time winged and lovely to the sun, or if it die in the dark, unsuspected of its aim, either end will be found best relatively to the life it affects. -70- <hr class="short" /> There is no participator who serves so well in any conversation as an adept in commonplaces and "words, words, words." <hr class="short" /> Milton's "charm of half-awakened birds" means charm in the pretty old English sense of "twittering," "piping softly and confusedly." <hr class="short" /> Much of Thomas Hood's more serious work is overlooked by the public eye. Some one will be obliged to come forth by and by to say, and to say truly, that nobler poems than the "Haunted House," the "Poet's Portion," and "Death" were never written. <hr class="short" /> In the matter of reform, I should choose often to be a crab-reformer, and to move backward after many wish-worthy things of yesterday. <hr class="short" /> Thackeray says somewhere that "we see the world, each of us, with our own sight, and make from within us the world we see." <hr class="short" /> By way of experiment, a youngling of scholarly race might be kept wholly from books, etc., to see if the ancestral learning would not revive of itself. -71- <hr class="short" /> It pains me to see coarseness predominant in the human countenance,—a thing so ethereal and divine of itself. Think of the forerunning wrongs back in the generations which have prompted and helped it to its present degradation! <hr class="short" /> The poets, in chronicling strong emotion over things actual or imagined, must frequently outgo the force of the emotion in the expression of it, so that they have the power of draining off the whole supply and depth of their feeling. <hr class="short" /> Coleridge should have lived in the times of the oracles. He would have "drawn," as we say, better than Delphi. <hr class="short" /> At the funeral of a celebrated artist, wherein I took no part whatever, and had only a genuine sorrow for the public loss to excuse my slipping into the church, the sexton wanted to seat me conspicuously, taking me for a chief mourner, for a relative at least, he said. I was pleased at the limiting clause. <hr class="short" /> Children are born optimists, and we slowly educate them out of their heresy. -72- <hr class="short" /> We are stricken mute by an heroic death. Praise is poor and vain if the life forerunning it was heroic too; and if it was not, love and forgiveness seem not half good enough to offer at the ruined shrine, where at last a divinity has descended. <hr class="short" /> In sensitive natures, just as the ordinary blessings of life cast an aggrandized shadow and result in supreme pleasure, so their denial becomes a matter of deep pain, equally disproportionate to the cause. <hr class="short" /> It is better to fall into added disrepute with an enemy than to alienate a would-be friend. <hr class="short" /> Frankness prevents troubles that only time can cure. <hr class="short" /> A good and worthy life cannot be detached or wholly useless, because unfinished. When you throw a number of broken rings on the floor, on lifting one you find it casually joined with another, and each, in turn, with many more. So must a man's endeavor co-operate with a-73- predecessor's, and be linked again with some life-work to be ended to-morrow, in beautiful, enduring sequence; though to outward vision all three were but severally a fragment and a failure. <ANTIMG src="images/footer03.jpg" width-obs="153" height-obs="100" alt="footer" title="footer" /> <hr /> -74- <ANTIMG src="images/header06.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="142" alt="header" title="header" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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