Read Ebook: Short stories from Life: The 81 prize stories in Life's Shortest Story Contest by Masson Thomas L Author Of Introduction Etc

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Ebook has 1555 lines and 78251 words, and 32 pages

Meres says that "Piers Plowman was the first that observed the true quality of our verse without the curiositie of rime" but he was not followed.

The new character of the "Splendid Shilling" caused it to bring more fame to its author than has been gained by any other work so short and simple. It was no doubt an inspiration of the moment, and was written by John Philips at the age of twenty. There is considerable freshness and strength in the poem, which commences--

"Happy the man, who void of cares and strife In silken or in leathern purse retains A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale; But with his friends, when nightly mists arise To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff. Regale chilled fingers, or from tube as black As winter chimney, or well polished jet Exhale mundungus, ill-perfuming scent."

He goes on to relate how he is besieged by duns, and what a chasm there is in his "galligaskins." He wrote very little altogether, but produced a piece called "Blenheim," and a sort of Georgic entitled "Cyder."

During his two year's imprisonment by the Whigs on a charge of high treason--from which he was liberated without a trial--he prepared a collection of his works, for which he obtained a large sum of money. He then retired from office, but died shortly afterwards in his fifty-eighth year.

Prior is remarkable for his exquisite lightness and elegance of style, well suited to the pretty classical affectations of the day. He delights in cupids, nymphs, and flowers. In two or three places, perhaps, he verges upon indelicacy, but conceals it so well among feathers and rose leaves, that we may half pardon it. Although always sprightly he is not often actually humorous, but we may quote the following advice to a husband from the "English Padlock"

"Be to her virtues very kind, And to her faults a little blind, Let all her ways be unconfined, And clap your padlock on her mind."

"How old may Phyllis be, you ask, Whose beauty thus all hearts engages? To answer is no easy task, For she has really two ages.

"Stiff in brocade and pinched in stays, Her patches, paint, and jewels on: All day let envy view her face, And Phyllis is but twenty-one.

"Paint, patches, jewels, laid aside, At night astronomers agree, The evening has the day belied, And Phyllis is some forty-three."

"Helen was just slipt from bed, Her eyebrows on the toilet lay, Away the kitten with them fled, As fees belonging to her prey."

"For this misfortune, careless Jane, Assure yourself, was soundly rated: And Madam getting up again, With her own hand the mouse-trap baited.

"On little things as sages write, Depends our human joy or sorrow; If we don't catch a mouse to-night, Alas! no eyebrows for to-morrow."

He wrote the following impromptu epitaph on himself--

"Nobles and heralds by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and of Eve, Can Bourbon or Nassau go higher."

But he does not often descend to so much levity as this, his wing is generally in a higher atmosphere. Sir Walter Scott observes that in the powers of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled, if indeed he has ever been equalled.

Prior wrote a parody called "Erle Robert's Mice," but Pope is more prolific than any other poet in such productions. His earlier taste seems to have been for imitation, and he wrote good parodies on Waller and Cowley, and a bad travesty on Spencer. "January and May" and "The Wife of Bath" are founded upon Chaucer's Tales. Pope did not generally indulge in travesty, his object was not to ridicule his original, but rather to assist himself by borrowing its style. His productions are the best examples of parodies in this latter and better sense. Thus, he thought to give a classic air to his satires on the foibles of his time by arranging them upon the models of those of Horace. In his imitation of the second Satire of the second Book we have--

"He knows to live who keeps the middle state, And neither leans on this side nor on that, Nor stops for one bad cork his butler's pay, Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away, Nor lets, like Naevius, every error pass, The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass."

There is a slight amount of humour in these adaptations, and it seems to have been congenial to the poets mind. Generally he was more turned to philosophy, and the slow measures he adopted were more suited to the dignified and pompous, than to the playful and gay. Occasionally, however, there is some sparkle in his lines, and, we read in "The Rape of the Lock"--

"Now love suspends his golden scales in air, Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair, The doubtful beam long nods from side to side, At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside."

Again, his friend Mrs. Blount found London rather dull than gay--

"She went to plain work and to purling brooks, Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks, She went from opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks and prayers three hours a day, To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea, To muse and spill her solitary tea, Or o'er cold coffee trifle with a spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon, Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, tell stories to the Squire, Up to her Godly garret after seven, There starve and pray--for that's the way to Heaven."

He was seldom able to bring a humorous sketch to the close without something a little objectionable. Often inclined to err on the side of severity, he was one of those instances in which we find acrimonious feeling associated with physical infirmity. "The Dunciad" is the principal example of this, but we have many others--such as the epigram:

"You beat your pate and fancy wit will come, Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."

At one time he was constantly extolling the charms of Lady Wortley Montagu in every strain of excessive adulation. He wrote sonnets upon her, and told her she had robbed the whole tree of knowledge. But when the ungrateful fair rejected her little crooked admirer, he completely changed his tone, and descended to lampoon of this kind--

"Lady Mary said to me, and in her own house, I do not care for you three skips of a louse; I forgive the dear creature for what she has said, For ladies will talk of what runs in their head."

He is supposed to have attacked Addison under the name of Atticus. He says that "like the Turk he would bear no brother near the throne," but that he would

"View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And with our sneering teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike, Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend, Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obleeging that he ne'er obleeged."

Pope at first praised Ambrose Philips, and said he was "a man who could write very nobly," but afterwards they became rivals, and things went so far between them that Pope called Philips "a rascal," and Philips hung up a rod with which he said he would chastise Pope. He probably had recourse to this kind of argument, because he felt that he was worsted by his adversary in wordy warfare, having little talent in satire. In fact, his attempts in this direction were particularly clumsy as--"On a company of bad dancers to good music."

"How ill the motion with the music suits! So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes."

Still there is a gaiety and lightness about many of his pieces. The following is a specimen of his favourite style. Italian singers, lately introduced, seem to have been regarded by many with disfavour and alarm.

"Little syren of the stage, Charmer of an idle age, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Wanton gale of fond desire, Bane of every manly art, Sweet enfeebler of the heart; O! too pleasing is thy strain, Hence, to southern climes again, Tuneful mischief, vocal spell, To this island bid farewell, Leave us, as we ought to be, Leave the Britons rough and free."

To parody a work is to pay it a compliment, though perhaps unintentionally, for if it were not well known the point of the imitation would be lost. Thus, the general appreciation of Gray's "Elegy" called forth several humorous parodies of it about the middle of the last century. The following is taken from one by the Rev. J. Duncombe, Vicar of Bishop Ridley's old church at Herne in Kent. It is entitled "An Evening Contemplation in a College."

"The curfew tolls the hour of closing gates, With jarring sound the porter turns the key, Then in his dreamy mansion, slumbering waits, And slowly, sternly quits it--though for me.

"Now shine the spires beneath the paly moon, And through the cloister peace and silence reign, Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune, Or copious bowls inspire a jovial strain.

"Save that in yonder cobweb-mantled room, Where lies a student in profound repose, Oppressed with ale; wide echoes through the gloom, The droning music of his vocal nose.

"Within those walls, where through the glimmering shade, Appear the pamphlets in a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow bed till morning laid, The peaceful fellows of the college sleep.

"The tinkling bell proclaiming early prayers, The noisy servants rattling o'er their head, The calls of business and domestic cares, Ne'er rouse these sleepers from their drowsy bed.

"No chattering females crowd the social fire, No dread have they of discord and of strife, Unknown the names of husband and of sire, Unfelt the plagues of matrimonial life.

"Oft have they basked along the sunny walls, Oft have the benches bowed beneath their weight, How jocund are their looks when dinner calls! How smoke the cutlets on their crowded plate!

"Oh! let not Temperance too disdainful hear How long their feasts, how long their dinners last; Nor let the fair with a contemptuous sneer, On these unmarried men reflections cast.

"Far from the giddy town's tumultuous strife, Their wishes yet have never learned to stray, Content and happy in a single life, They keep the noiseless tenor of their way.

"E'en now their books, from cobwebs to protect, Inclosed by door of glass, in Doric style, On polished pillars raised with bronzes decked, Demand the passing tribute of a smile."

Another parody of this famous Elegy published about the same date, has a less pleasant subject--the dangers and vices of the metropolis. It speaks of the activities of thieves.

"Oft to their subtlety the fob did yield, Their cunning oft the pocket string hath broke, How in dark alleys bludgeons did they wield! How bowed the victim 'neath their sturdy stroke!

"Let not ambition mock their humble toil, Their vulgar crimes and villainy obscure; Nor rich rogues hear with a disdainful smile, The low and petty knaveries of the poor.

"Beneath the gibbet's self perhaps is laid, Some heart once pregnant with infernal fire, Hands that the sword of Nero might have swayed, And midst the carnage tuned the exulting lyre.

"Ambition to their eyes her ample page Rich with such monstrous crimes did ne'er unroll, Chill penury repressed their native rage, And froze the bloody current of their soul.

"Full many a youth, fit for each horrid scene, The dark and sooty flues of chimneys bear; Full many a rogue is born to cheat unseen, And dies unhanged for want of proper care."

Gay dedicated his first poem to Pope, then himself a young man, and this led to an intimacy between them. In 1712 he held the office of Secretary to Ann, Duchess of Monmouth; and in 1714 he accompanied the Earl of Clarendon to Hanover. In this year he wrote a good travesty of Ambrose Philips' pastoral poetry, of which the following is a specimen--

The following is not without point at the present day--

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