they not been deficient in these points the former
would certainly have equalled, the latter infinitely
outshone the merits of his countryman. Our author
was undoubtedly possessed of that power which they
wanted, and was cautious not to indulge too far the
sallies of a lively imagination. Omitting, therefore,
any mention of sultry Sirius, sylvan shade, sequestered
glade, verdant hills, purling rills, mossy mountains,
gurgling fountains, &c., he simply tells us that it
was “All on a summer’s day”.
For my own part I confess that I find myself rather
flattered than disappointed, and consider the poet
as rather paying a compliment to the abilities of his
readers, than baulking their expectations. It
is certainly a great pleasure to see a picture well
painted; but it is a much greater to paint it well
oneself. This, therefore, I look upon as a stroke
of excellent management in the poet. Here every
reader is at liberty to gratify his own taste, to
design for himself just what sort of “summer’s
day” he likes best; to choose his own scenery,
dispose his lights and shades as he pleases, to solace
himself with a rivulet or a horse-pond, a shower or
a sunbeam, a grove or a kitchen-garden, according to
his fancy. How much more considerate this than
if the poet had, from an affected accuracy of description,
thrown us into an unmannerly perspiration by the heat
of the atmosphere, forced us into a landscape of his
own planning, with perhaps a paltry good-for-nothing
zephyr or two, and a limited quantity of wood and
water. All this Ovid would undoubtedly have done.
Nay, to use the expression of a learned brother commentator—
quovis
pignore decertem, “I would lay any wager”,
that he would have gone so far as to tell us what
the tarts were made of, and perhaps wandered into
an episode on the art of preserving cherries.
But
our poet, above such considerations, leaves
every reader to choose his own ingredients, and sweeten
them to his own liking; wisely foreseeing, no doubt,
that the more palatable each had rendered them to
his own taste, the more he would be affected at their
approaching loss.
“All on a summer’s
day.”
I cannot leave this line without remarking that one
of the Scribleri, a descendant of the famous Martinus,
has expressed his suspicions of the text being corrupted
here, and proposes instead of “all on”
reading “alone”, alleging, in favour of
this alteration, the effect of solitude in raising
the passions. But Hiccius Doctius, a high Dutch
commentator, one nevertheless well versed in British
literature, in a note of his usual length and learning,
has confuted the arguments of Scriblerus. In
support of the present reading he quotes a passage
from a poem written about the same period with our
author’s, by the celebrated Johannes Pastor[230],
intituled “An Elegiac Epistle to the Turnkey
of Newgate”, wherein the gentleman declares
that, rather indeed in compliance with an old custom
than to gratify any particular wish of his own, he
is going—