Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861», sayfa 11
"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol, and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that pistil, and yeon fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I'll have this here fellah fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."
Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,—stupidly and mechanically, for he was but half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.
"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while this man puts the rope raound y'r wrists."
Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of twists and knots.
"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his feet.
"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time.
"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' stan' aäskin' questions over 'n' over;—'t beats all I ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"
As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.
"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute, Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."
Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck of the miserable Dick Venner, who made no sign of resistance,—whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,—since resistance seemed of no use.
"I'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "th' ol' Doctor, he's got a gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,—off that way, will ye?—'n I'll hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."
He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.
"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a boss on th' full spring at t'other eend!"
He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg which had been caught under the horse.
"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r boot?"
It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly relieved him of.
The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.
They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.
"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.
He fired.
Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal headdresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments of the Night-blooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily, from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what had happened.
"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what's all this noise about?"
"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"
The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.
"Richard Venner!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"
Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.
"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.—Oh, yes!—wait a minute and it will all come back to me."
"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two,—will come right by to-morrow."
"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."
Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results,—none slain, one captured.
The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.
"What's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know,—fell on it when his horse came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his clothes.
"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel."
By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people like a hawk with a broken wing.
When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.
"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's females and children standin' near."
This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of hair looked like a last-year's crow's-nest.
But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate remonstrance.
"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."
"Stop," said Deacon Soper,—"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be safer—for the women-folks—jest to wait till mornin', afore you put that j'int into the socket?"
Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at this moment.
"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I'll resk him, j'int in or out."
"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in quick enough."
"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;—"do what you like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,—I can walk, and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but I. Damn the shoulder!—let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
Mr. Bernard came forward.
"My friends," he said, "I am not injured,—seriously, at least. Nobody need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."
The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had the bone replaced in a very few moments.
"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends and neighbors, leave this young man to me."
"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper, "and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a'n't so clear that it won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."
"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel Sprowle,—which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually settled the question.
"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I'll answer for it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I can tell you, whatever else they are."
The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left the prisoner with him.
Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door, with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night, out of the limits of the State.
"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.
Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.
"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"
Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was going, to take passage for a port in South America.
"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from to-night's lesson."
The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick Venner disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four hours' stretch of the last night.
Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.
"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah's Squire Venner's relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while, till I come back? The' 's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead hoss that's layin' daown there in the road, 'n' I guess the' a'n't no use in lettin' on 'em spile,—so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em along. I kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n' hide off to-night,—'n' the' won't be much iron on that hoss's huffs an haour after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."
"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard;—"I feel as if I could get along well enough now."
So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this time. His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,—sharp, but thin, like bad cider-vinegar.
"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring down a pair of pinchers and a file,—and—stop—fetch a pair of shears, too; there's hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster with."
"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah goes out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to let another fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a double-berril gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I should like to see the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle, excep' the one th't hez a fair right to the whole concern!"
Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina, as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.
Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together.
"Here they be," said the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"
Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.
All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval. He took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse which had led him so suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him; the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.
It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.
"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,—"and no wonder. A beautiful, wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner's. If he does not want them, you may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel, bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place. You'll see to it,—won't you, Abel?"
Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with wine.
Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with the aid of two of three others, he removed him to the place indicated. Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in the far village among the hills of New England.
* * * * *
THE TEST
Musa loquitur
I hung my verses in the wind;
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through;
Five lines lasted sound and true;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot.
These the Siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And their meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor Time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five thousand could survive?
RECOLLECTIONS OF KEATS
BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW
In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road from London, was my father, John Clarke's school. The house had been built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of the domestic architecture of that period,—the whole front being of the purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect finish of the structure were such as to secure its protection, when a branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield. The old school-house was converted into the station-house, and the railway company had the good taste to leave intact one of the few remaining specimens of the graceful English domestic architecture of long-gone days. Any of my readers who may happen to have a file of the London "Illustrated News," may find in No. 360, March 3, 1849, a not prodigiously enchanting wood-cut of the edifice.
Here it was that John Keats all but commenced and did complete his school-education. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795; and I think he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be readily conceived difficult to recall from the "dark backward and abysm" of nearly sixty years the general acts of perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters; and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember than that he had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly with my mother.
His maternal grandfather, Jennings, was proprietor of a large livery-stable, called "The Swan and Hoop," on the pavement in Moorfields, opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus. He had two sons at my father's school. The elder was an officer in Duncan's ship in the fight off Camperdown. After the battle, the Dutch Admiral, De Winter, pointing to young Jennings, told Duncan that he had fired several shots at that young man, and always missed his mark;—no credit to his steadiness of aim; for Jennings, like his own admiral, was considerably above the ordinary dimensions of stature.
Keats's father was the principal servant at the Swan and Hoop Stables,—a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. He was short of stature and well-knit in person, (John resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit to the school. John's two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger than himself, were like the mother,—who was tall, of good figure, with large, oval face, sombre features, and grave in behavior. The last of the family was a sister,—Fanny, I think, much younger than all,—of whom I remember my mother once speaking with much fondness, for her pretty, simple manners, while she was walking in the garden with her brothers. She married Mr. Llanos, a Spanish refugee, the author of "Don Estéban," and "Sandoval, the Free-Mason." He was a man of liberal principles, attractive manners, and more than ordinary accomplishments.—This is the amount of my knowledge and recollection of the family.
In the early part of his school-life, John gave no extraordinary indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit in all his undertakings; and, although of a strong and impulsive will, I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and beauty.
My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of voluntary extra work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school, that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that was at seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at play, I have seen him in the school,—almost the only one,—at his Latin or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes driven out by one of us for the purpose.
I have said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions—off the stage—I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean—whom, by the way, he idolized—was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,—who could have put him into his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, when he was in "one of his moods" and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who had known him, superior or equal.
The latter part of the time—perhaps eighteen months—that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his whole time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school—library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor's Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson's Histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for youth, not necessary to be enumerated. The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's "Pantheon," Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary," which he appeared to learn, and Spence's "Polymetis." This was the store whence he acquired his perfect intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled In that creed outworn"; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the "Aeneid"; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that before leaving school he had voluntarily translated in writing a considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early age,—mayhap under fourteen,—notwithstanding and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better publications in the school-library, for he asked me to lend him some of my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio volume of Burnet's "History of his own Time" between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt's "Examiner" newspaper,—which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats,—I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father's school.
When he left us,—I think at fourteen years of age,—he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street, Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement appeared to give him satisfaction; and I fear that it was the most placid period of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to perform in the surgery, and which was by no means an onerous one, his whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his passion for reading and translating. It was during his apprenticeship that he finished the latter portion of the "Aeneid."
The distance between our residences being so short, I encouraged his inclination to come over, when he could be spared; and in consequence, I saw him about five or six times a month, commonly on Wednesdays and Saturdays, those afternoons being my own most leisure times. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one with him to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in an arbor at the end of a spacious garden, and, in Boswellian phrase, "we had good talk."
I cannot at this time remember what was the spark that fired the train of his poetical tendencies,—I do not remember what was the first signalized poetry he read; but he must have given me unmistakable tokens of his bent of taste; otherwise, at that early stage of his career, I never could have read to him the "Epithalamion" of Spenser; and this I perfectly remember having done, and in that (to me) hallowed old arbor, the scene of many bland and graceful associations,—all the substances having passed away. He was at that time, I should suppose, fifteen or sixteen years old; and at that period of life he certainly appreciated the general beauty of the composition, and felt the more passionate passages; for his features and exclamations were ecstatic. How often have I in after-times heard him quote these lines:—
"Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesses her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks!
And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain,
Like crimson dyed in grain,
That even the angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service, and about her fly,
Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
The more they on it stare;
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governèd with goodly modesty,
That suffers not one look to glance awry,
Which may let in a little thought unsound."
That night he took away with him the first volume of the "Faery Queen," and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, "as a young horse would through a spring meadow,—ramping!" Like a true poet, too,—a poet "born, not manufactured,"—a poet in grain,—he especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said,—"What an image that is,—'Sea-shouldering whales'!"
It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once, when reading the "Cymbeline" aloud', I saw his eyes fill with tears, and for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him
"till the diminution
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay, followed him till he had melted from
The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
Have turned mine eye and wept."
I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his career,—which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave me the sonnet entitled, "Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison." Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I recall the conscious look with which he hesitatingly offered it! There are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life. I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer, that "the lines in imitation of Spenser,
"'Now Morning from her orient charger came,
And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,' etc.,
"are the earliest known verses of his composition"; from the subject being the inspiration of his first love—and such a love!—in poetry, it is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet commencing,
'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell';
and that will be found in the "Examiner," some time, as I conjecture, in 1816,—for I have not the paper to refer to, and, indeed, at this distance, both of time and removal from the means of verification, I would not be dogmatical.
When we both had come to London,—he to enter as a student of St. Thomas's Hospital,—he was not long in discovering that my abode was with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He, therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author of the "Urn Burial" says, "we were acting our antipodes,—the huntsmen were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to London, near to St. Thomas's Hospital. I find his address in a letter which must have preceded my appointing him to come and lighten my darkness in Clerkenwell. At the close of the letter, he says,—"Although the Borough is a beastly place in dirt, turnings, and windings, yet No. 8, Dean Street, is not difficult to find; and if you would run the gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul saith, is the father of all the virtues. At all events, let me hear from you soon: I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers." I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a memorable night it was in my life's career.
A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman's Homer had been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great reputation of the "Times" newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he conducted the money-market department of that journal. At the time when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite Horsemonger-Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt's being sentenced for the libel, his first day's dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager. He was a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated taste and judgment in the fine arts and music. He succeeded Hazlitt, (which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental music, which he used to import from Germany.
Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to work we went, turning to some of the "famousest" passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book, beginning at the 237th line,—
