Lavengro, George Borrow [i love reading books txt] 📗

small. I consider nothing too high or too low. I have written verses upon the king, and upon a prize ox; for the first I got nothing, but the owner of the ox at Christmas sent me the better part of the chine.”

“In fact, you write on all kinds of subjects.”

“And I carry them to the people whom I think they’ll please.”

“And what subjects please best?”

“Animals; my work chiefly lies in the country, and people in the country prefer their animals to anything else.”

“Have you ever written on amatory subjects?”

“When young people are about to be married, I sometimes write in that style; but it doesn’t take. People think, perhaps, that I am jesting at them, but no one thinks I am jesting at his horse or his ox when I speak well of them. There was an old lady who had a peacock; I sent her some lines upon the bird; she never forgot it, and when she died she left me the bird stuffed and ten pounds.”

“Mr. Parkinson, you put me very much in mind of the Welsh bards.”

“The Welsh what?”

“Bards. Did you never hear of them?”

“Can’t say that I ever did.”

“You do not understand Welsh?”

“I do not.”

“Well, provided you did, I should be strongly disposed to imagine that you imitated the Welsh bards.”

“I imitate no one,” said Mr. Parkinson; “though if you mean by the Welsh bards the singing bards of the country, it is possible we may resemble one another; only I would scorn to imitate anybody, even a bard.”

“I was not speaking of birds, but bards⁠—Welsh poets⁠—and it is surprising how much the turn of your genius coincides with theirs. Why, the subjects of hundreds of their compositions are the very subjects which you appear to delight in, and are the most profitable to you⁠—beeves, horses, hawks⁠—which they described to their owners in colours the most glowing and natural, and then begged them as presents. I have even seen in Welsh an ode to a peacock.”

“I can’t help it,” said Parkinson, “and I tell you again that I imitate nobody.”

“Do you travel much about?”

“Aye, aye. As soon as I have got my seed into the ground, or my crop into my barn, I lock up my home and set out from house to house and village to village, and many is the time I sit down beneath the hedges and take out my pen and inkhorn. It is owing to that, I suppose, that I have been called the flying poet.”

“It appears to me, young man,” said Parkinson, “that you are making game of me.”

“I should as much scorn to make game of anyone, as you would scorn to imitate anyone, Mr. Parkinson.”

“Well, so much the better for us both. But we’ll now talk of my affair. Are you man enough to give me an opinion upon it?”

“Quite so,” said I, “Mr. Parkinson. I understand the case clearly, and I unhesitatingly assert that any action for battery brought against you would be flung out of court, and the bringer of said action be obliged to pay the costs, the original assault having been perpetrated by himself when he flung the liquor in your face; and to set your mind perfectly at ease I will read to you what Lord Chief Justice Blackstone says upon the subject.”

“Thank you,” said Parkinson, after I had read him an entire chapter on the rights of persons, expounding as I went along. “I see you understand the subject, and are a respectable young man⁠—which I rather doubted at first from your countenance, which shows the folly of taking against a person for the cast of his face or the glance of his eye. Now, I’ll maintain that you are a respectable young man, whoever says to the contrary; and that some day or other you will be an honour to your profession and a credit to your friends. I like chapter and verse when I ask a question, and you have given me both; you shall never want my good word; meanwhile, if there is anything that I can oblige you in⁠—”

“There is, Mr. Parkinson, there is.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It has just occurred to me that you could give me a hint or two at versification. I have just commenced, but I find it no easy matter, the rhymes are particularly perplexing.”

“Are you quite serious?”

“Quite so; and to convince you, here is an ode of Ab Gwilym which I am translating, but I can get no farther than the first verse.”

“Why, that was just my case when I first began,” said Parkinson.

“I think I have been tolerably successful in the first verse, and that I have not only gotten the sense of the author, but that alliteration, which, as you may perhaps be aware, is one of the most peculiar features of Welsh poetry. In the ode to which I allude the poet complains of the barbarity of his mistress, Morfydd, and what an unthankful task it is to be the poet of a beauty so proud and disdainful, which sentiment I have partly rendered thus:⁠—

Mine is a task by no means merry,

in which you observe that the first word of the line and the last two commence with the same letter, according to the principle of Welsh prosody. But now cometh the difficulty. What is the rhyme for merry?”

“Londonderry,” said the poet without hesitation, “as you will see by the poem which I addressed to Mr. C.,93 the celebrated Whig agriculturist, on its being reported that the king was about to pay him a visit:⁠—

But if in our town he would wish to be merry
Pray don’t let him bring with him Lord Londonderry,

which two lines procured me the best friend I ever had in my life.”

“They are certainly fine lines,” I observed, “and I am not at all surprised that the agriculturist was pleased with them; but I am afraid that I cannot turn to much account the hint which they convey. How can I possibly introduce