"Let no man value at a little price

A virtuous woman's counsel; her winged spirit
Is feathered oftentimes with heavenly words,
And, like her beauty, ravishing and pure;
The weaker body still the stronger soul.

O what a treasure is a virtuous wife,
Discreet and loving! not one gift on earth
Makes a man's life so highly bound to heaven;
She gives him double forces to endure
And to enjoy by being one with him."
Then, after comparing her with power,
wealth, music, and delicate diet, which
delight but imperfectly,

But a true wife both sense and soul delights,
And mixeth not her good with any ill.
All store without her leaves a man but poor,
And with her poverty is exceeding store."
Chapman himself, in a passage of his
Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, condemns
the very kind of comedy he wrote as a
concession to public taste:

"Nay, we must now have nothing brought on stages
But puppetry, and pied ridiculous antics;
Men thither come to laugh and feed fool-fat,
Check at all goodness there as being profaned;
When wheresoever goodness comes, she makes
The place still sacred, though with other feet
Never so much 'tis scandaled and polluted.
Let me learn anything that fits a man,
In any stables shown, as well as stages."

Of his tragedies, the general judgment has pronounced Biron's Conspiracy and Biron's Tragedy to be the finest, though they have less genuine poetical ecstasy than his d'Ambois. The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France, is almost wholly from his hand, as all its editors agree, and as is plain from internal evidence, for Chapman has some marked peculiarities of thought and style which are unmistakable. Because Shirley had some obscure share in it, it is printed with his works, and omitted by the latest editor of Chapman. Yet it is far more characteristic of him than Alphonsus, or Cæsar and Pompey. The character of Chabot has a nobility less prompt to vaunt itself, less conscious of itself, less obstreperous, I am tempted to say, than is common with Chapman. There is one passage in the play which I will quote, because of the plain allusion in it to the then comparatively recent fate of Lord Bacon. I am not sure whether it has been before remarked or not. The Lord Chancellor of France is impeached of the same crimes with Bacon. He is accused also of treacherous cruelty to Chabot, as Bacon was reproached for ingratitude to Essex. He is sentenced like him to degradation of rank, to a heavy fine, and to

imprisonment at the King's pleasure.
Like Bacon, again, he twice confesses his
guilt before sentence is passed on him,
and throws himself on the King's mercy:
"Hear me, great Judges; if you have not lost
For my sake all your charities, I beseech you
Let the King know my heart is full of penitence;
Calm his high-going sea, or in that tempest
I ruin to eternity. O, my lords,

Consider your own places and the helms
You sit at; while with all your providence
You steer, look forth and see devouring quick-
sands!

My ambition now is punished, and my pride
Of state and greatness falling into nothing;
I, that had never time, through vast employments,
To think of Heaven, feel His revengeful wrath
Boiling my blood and scorching up my entrails.
There's doomsday in my conscience, black and
horrid,

For my abuse of justice; but no stings
Prick with that terror as the wounds I made
Upon the pious Admiral. Some good man
Bear my repentance thither; he is merciful,
And may incline the King to stay his lightning,
Which threatens my confusion, that my free
Resign of title, office, and what else

My pride look'd at, would buy my poor life's
safety;

Forever banish me the Court, and let

Me waste my life far-off in some mean village."

After the Chancellor's sentence, his secretary says:

"I could have wished him fall on softer ground For his good parts."

Bacon's monument, in St. Michael's Church at St. Alban's, was erected by his secretary, Sir Thomas Meautys. Bacon did not appear at his trial; but there are several striking parallels between his letters of confession and the speech you have just heard.

Another posthumously published tragedy of Chapman's, the Revenge for Honor, I shall notice here, as my time will allow me to make no extracts from it. It is, in conception, the most original of them all, and the plot seems to be of his own invention. It has great improbabilities, but as the story is oriental, we find it easier to forgive them. It is, on the whole, a very striking play, and with more variety of character in it than is common with Chapman.

In general he seems to have been led to the choice of his heroes (and these sustain nearly the whole weight of the play in which they figure) by some half-conscious sympathy of temperament. They are impetuous, have an overweening selfconfidence, and an orotund way of expressing it that fitted them perfectly to

be the mouth-pieces for an eloquence always vehement and impassioned, sometimes rising to a sublimity of self-assertion. Where it is fine, it is nobly fine, but too often it raves itself into a kind of fury recalling Hamlet's word robustious, and seems to be shouted through a speaking-trumpet in a gale of wind. He is especially fond of describing battles, and the rush of his narration is then like a charge of cavalry. Of his first tragedy, Bussy d'Ambois, Dryden says, with that mixture of sure instinct and hasty judgment which makes his prose so refreshing: "I have sometimes wondered in the reading what has become of those glaring colors which amazed me in Bussy d'Ambois upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a falling star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly, nothing but a cold dull mass, which glit tered no longer than it was shooting; a dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words, repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperbole; the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and, to sum up all, incorrect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry and true nonsense; or, at best, a scantling of wit which lay gasping for life and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish."

There is hyperbole in Chapman, and perhaps Dryden saw it the more readily and disliked it the more that his own tragedies are full of it. But Dryden was always hasty, not for the first time in speaking of Chapman. I am pretty safe in saying that he had probably only run his eye over Bussy d'Ambois, and that it did not happen to fall on any of those finely inspired passages which are not only more frequent in it than in any other of Chapman's plays, but of a more purely poetical quality. Dryden was ir ritated by a consciousness of his own former barbarity of taste, which had led him to prefer Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas. What he says as to the success of Bussy d'Ambois on the stage is interesting.

In saying that the sense of "one line is prodigiously expanded into ten," Dryden certainly puts his finger on one of Chapman's faults. He never knew when to stop. But it is not true that the sense is expanded, if by that we are to understand that Chapman watered his thought to make it fill up. There is abundance of

thought in him, and of very suggestive thought too, but it is not always in the right place. He is the most sententious of our poets-sententious to a fault, as we feel in his continuation of "Hero and Leander." In his annotations to the sixteenth book of his translation of the Iliad, he seems to have been thinking of himself in speaking of Homer. He says: "And here have we ruled a case against our plain and smug writers, that, because their own unwieldiness will not let them rise themselves, would have every man grovel like them.... But herein this case is ruled against such men that they affirm these hyperthetical or superlative sort of expressions and illustrations are too bold and bumbasted, and out of that word is spun that which they call our fustian, their plain writing being stuff nothing so substantial, but such gross sowtege or hairpatch as every goose may eat oats through.... But the chief end why I extend this annotation is only to entreat your note here of Homer's manner of writing, which, to utter his after-store of matter and variety, is so presse and puts on with so strong a current that it far overruns the most laborious pursuer if he have not a poetical foot and Poesy's quick eye to guide it.”

Chapman has indeed a "great afterstore of matter" which encumbers him, and does sometimes "far overrun the most laborious pursuer," but many a poetical foot, with Poesy's quick eye to guide it, has loved to follow. He has kindled an enthusiasm of admiration such as no other poet of his day except Shakespeare has been able to kindle. In this very play of Bussy d'Ambois there is a single line of which Charles Lamb says that "in all poetry I know nothing like it." When Chapman is fine, it is in a way all his own. There is then an incomparable amplitude in his style, as when, to quote a phrase from his translation of Homer, the Lightener Zeus "lets down a great sky out of heaven." There is a quality of northwestern wind in it, which, if sometimes too blusterous, is yet taken into the lungs with an exhilarating expansion. Hyperbole is overshooting the mark. No doubt Chapman sometimes did this, but this excess is less depressing than its opposite, and at least proves vigor in the bowman. His bow was like that of Ulysses, which none could bend but he, and even where the arrow went astray, it

sings as it flies, and one feels, to use his own words, as if it were

"the shaft

Shot at the sun by angry Hercules,

And into splinters by the thunder broken." Dryden taxes Chapman with "incorrect English." This is altogether wrong. His English is of the best, and far less licentious than Dryden's own, which was also the best of its kind. Chapman himself says (or makes Montsurry in Bussy d'Ambois say for him):

"Worthiest poets

Shun common and plebeian forms of speech,
Every illiberal and affected phrase,
To clothe their matter, and together tie
Matter and form with art and decency."

And yet I should say that if Chap man's English had any fault, it comes of his fondness for homespun words, and for images which, if not essentially vulgar, become awkwardly so by being forced into company where they feel themselves out of place. For example, in the poem which prefaces his Homer, full of fine thought, fitly uttered in his large way, he suddenly compares the worldlings he is denouncing to "an itching horse leaning to a block or a May-pole.' He would have justified himself, I suppose, by Homer's having compared Ajax to an ass, for I think he really half believed that the spirit of Homer had entered into him and replaced his own. So, in Bussy,

"Love is a razor cleansing if well used, But fetcheth blood still being the least abused." But I think the incongruity is to be explained as an unconscious reaction (just as we see men of weak character fond of strong language) against a partiality he felt in himself for costly phrases. His fault is not the purple patch upon frieze, but the patch of frieze upon purple. general, one would say that his style was impetuous like the man himself, and wants the calm which is the most convincing evidence of great power that has no misgivings of itself. I think Chapman figured forth his own ideal in his Biron:

In

"Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is; there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law."

Professor Minto thinks that the rival poet of whom Shakespeare speaks in his eighty-sixth sonnet was Chapman, and enough confirmation of this theory may be racked out of dates and other circumstances to give it at least some probability. However this may be, the opening line of the sonnet contains as good a characterization of Chapman's style as if it had been meant for him:

"Was it the proud full sail of his great verse ?”

I have said that Chapman was generally on friendly terms with his brother poets. But there is a passage in the preface to the translation of the Iliad which marks an exception. He says: "And much less I weigh the frontless detractions of some stupid ignorants, that, no more knowing me than their beastly ends, and I ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind me vilifyings of my translation, out of the French affirming them, when both in French and all other languages but his own our with-all-skillenriched Poet is so poor and unpleasing that no man can discern from whence flowed his so generally given eminence and admiration." I know not who was intended, but the passage piques my curiosity. In what is said about language there is a curious parallel with what Ben Jonson says of Shakespeare, and the "generally given eminence and admiration " applies to him also. The "with-all-skillenriched" reminds me of another peculiarity of Chapman--his fondness for compound words. He seems to have thought that he condensed more meaning into a phrase if he dovetailed all its words together by hyphens. This sometimes makes the verses of his translation of Homer difficult to read musically, if not metrically.

Chapman has been compared with Seneca, but I see no likeness in their manner unless we force an analogy between the rather braggart Hercules of the one and d'Ambois of the other. The most famous passage in Seneca's tragedies is, I suppose, the answer of Medea when asked what remains to her in her desertion

and danger: "Medea superest." This is as unlike Chapman as he is unlike Marlowe or Webster. His genius never could have compressed itself into so laconic a casket. Here would have been a chance for him to dilate like Teneriffe or Atlas, and he would have done it ample justice.

If ever there was a case in which Buffon's saying that the style is the man fitted exactly, it is in that of Chapman. Perhaps I ought to have used the word mannerism instead of style, for Chapman had not that perfect control of his matter which style implies. On the contrary, his matter seems sometimes to do what it will with him, which is the characteristic of mannerism. I can think of no better example of both than Sterne, alternately victim of one and master of the other. His mannerism at last becomes irritating affectation, but when he throws it off, his style is perfect in simplicity of rhythm. There is no more masterly page of English prose than that in the Sentimental Journey describing the effect of the chorus, "O Cupid, King of Gods and Men," on the people of Abdera.

As a translator, and he translated a great deal besides Homer, Chapman has called forth the most discordant opinions. It is plain from his prefaces and annotations that he had discussed with himself the various theories of translation, and had chosen that which prefers the spirit to the letter. "I dissent," he says, speaking of his translation of the Iliad, "from all other translators and interpreters that ever essayed exposition of this miraculous poem, especially where the divine rapture is most exempt from capacity in grammarians merely and grammatical critics, and where the inward sense or soul of the sacred muse is only within eyeshot of a poetical spirit's inspection." This rapture, however, is not to be found in his translation of the Odyssey, he being less in sympathy with the quieter beauties of that exquisite poem. Cervantes said long ago that no poet is translatable, and he said truly, for his thoughts will not sing in any language but their own. Even where the languages are of common parentage, like English and German, the feat is impossible. Who ever saw a translation of one of Heine's songs into English from which the genius had not utterly vanished? We cannot translate the music; above all, we can not translate the indefinable associations which have gathered round the poem, giving it more meaning to us, perhaps, than it ever had for the poet himself. In turning it into our own tongue the translator has made it foreign to us for the first time. Why, we do not like to hear any one read aloud a poem that we love,

because he translates it into something unfamiliar as he reads. But perhaps it is fair, and this is sometimes forgotten, to suppose that a translation is intended only for such as have no knowledge of the original, and to whom it will be a new poem. If that be so, there can be no question that a free reproduction, a transfusion into the moulds of another language, with an absolute deference to its associations, whether of the ear or of the memory, is the true method. There are no more masterly illustrations of this than the versions from the Greek, Persian, and Spanish of the late Mr. Fitzgerald. His translations, however else they may fail, make the same vivid impression on us that an original would. He has aimed at translating the genius, in short, letting all else take care of itself, and has succeeded. Chapman aimed at the same thing, and I think has also succeeded. You all remember Keats's sonnet on first looking in his Homer:

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken." Whether Homer or not, his translation is at least not Milton, as those in blank verse strive without much success to be. If the Greek original had been lost, and we had only Chapman, would it not enable us to divine some of the chief qualities of that original? I think it would; and I think this perhaps the fairest test. Commonly we open a translation as it were the door of a house of mourning. It is the burial-service of our poet that is going on there. But Chapman's poem makes us feel as if Homer late in life had married an English wife, and we were invited to celebrate the coming of age of their only son. The boy, as our country people say, and as Chapman would have said, favors his mother; there is very little Greek in him; and yet a trick of the gait now and then, and certain tones of voice, recall the father. If not so tall as he and without his dignity, he is a fine stalwart fellow, and looks quite able to make his own way in the world. Yes, in Chapman's poem there is life, there is energy, and the consciousness of them. Did not Dryden say admirably well that it was such a poem as we might fancy Homer to have written before he arrived at years of discretion? Its defect is, I should say, that in it Homer is translated into Chapman rather than into English.

Chapman is a poet for intermittent rather than for consecutive reading. He talks too loud and is too emphatic for continuous society. But when you leave him, you feel that you have been in the company of an original, and hardly know why you should not say a great, man. From his works, one may infer an individuality of character in him such as we can attribute to scarce any other of his

M

contemporaries, though originality was far cheaper then than now. A lofty, impetuous man, ready to go off without warning into what he called a "holy fury," but capable of inspiring an almost passionate liking. Had only the best parts of what he wrote come down to us, we should have reckoned him a far greater poet than we can fairly call him. His fragments are truly Cyclopean.

R. JAMES INGERSOL, a trim specimen of the modern young man about town, was off for Boston, and with the consciousness of a daintily served breakfast, settled where a breakfast should be at that hour of the morning-nine o'clock -he turned the key in his bachelor suite of apartments, and strode lightly off to the station, a block or so away.

"Old fellow, off to B., eh?" Some one on the platform clapped him lightly on the back, and Ingersol turned to see a young bank man.

"Hulloa, chappie; yes," said Ingersol. Then they fell to talking, not noticing the two-minute warning-bell, until the banker pulled up suddenly-"There goes your train, Jim!"-to watch the other's mad career, ending in a wild plunge up to the rear-car platform, from which he waved back a triumphant " Ta-ta!"

66

Pushing his way in past two or three belated women, all of them stout and persistently huddling together in the aisle, Mr. James Ingersol made his way down the car length, to find every seat taken. Then he remembered with disgust that it was the Old Homestead day, and he had been careless enough to light on an excursion train.

Presently a hand, large and determined, above the intervening big hats of the women, beckoned him. "I say, mister"—and Ingersol made sure he was being talked to—“here's a seat.'

"Thanks," said young Ingersol, dropping into it, and unconsciously pulling his fawn-colored top-coat well away; then he relapsed into a deep silence, while the old man on the other half of the seat stowed a big black bag underneath his feet.

"I didn't see ye," he said, lifting a red face when this was accomplished, "when

ye passed, or I'd 'a' took this off an' give ye the seat then."

Ingersol bowed, as if it were a matter of no consequence, and looked out the opposite window, wholly lost to the landscape.

"Ye see, I thought I'd better take 'dvantage of the cheap rate," said his seatmate, after a resonant blow of his nose on his red bandanna. "I warn't 'xactly ready to come to-day, but ma and Hetty wanted to see th'Old Homestead, an' so I concluded I'd let 'em. Ever seen it?" and he brought a pair of keen blue eyes under their shaggy beetling brows to bear on the young man.

"Yes," said Ingersol, in a low voice, in an agony lest some of his set should catch the monosyllable. Then he turned decidedly away to get a better view of the autumn foliage past which the train was whirling.

"Sho, now! ye have?" exclaimed the old man, in what seemed to Ingersol stentorian tones. "I want to know! Now ye can tell me suthin' about it.”

"I don't care to talk, sir," declared Ingersol, abruptly, and glaring into the interested face.

The old man's heavy jaw fell. "Ye needn't get mad 'cause I asked ye a civil question," he said. "Gosh durn it! I don't want ye to talk if ye don't want to. Ye can set, an' I won't trouble ye agin;" and he hunched up the square shoulder next to Ingersol.

The newsboy coming in at the moment, Ingersol fell upon the morning paper, and tried to lose himself in its columns. But it was soon used up, as he had lost all interest in the latest bank "smash-ups," of which the paper was full, so he allowed it to drop to the floor, and finding no special pleasure in the di