Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844

From book or simple music,
And awake his hawk’s large eyes,
(Almost as large as Mabel’s)
Teasing out its dumb replies,

“In sulky sidelong glances,
And reluctantly flapp’d wings,
Or looks of slow communion,
To the lightsome questionings
That broke the drowsy sameness,
And the sense, like fear, which springs

“At night, when we are conscious
Of our distance from the strife
Of cities; and the memory
Of the spirit of all things rife,
Endues the chairs and tables
With a disagreeable life.”

A Scotch lyrist, who, we are told, sings his own songs to perfection, has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued “with a disagreeable life.” One of his best ballads, in which he describes the bickerings which, even in the best-regulated families, will at times take place between man and wife, and in which various domestic missiles come into play, contains the following very excellent line—

“The stools pass the best o’ their time i’ the air”—

than which no sort of life appertaining to a stool can be more disagreeable, we should imagine—to the head which it is about to come in contact with. We doubt whether Mr Patmore’s, or rather Sir Hubert’s, chairs and tables ever acquired such a vigorous and unpleasant vitality as that. What may have happened to the “stools” after Mabel was married to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer the Scotch poet’s description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic, and intelligible of the two. The coincidence, however, is remarkable.

After Sir Hubert has retired to his farm, the state of his feelings is described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to unravel the meaning of some of them.

“He gather’d consolation,
As before, where best he might:
But though there was the difference
That he now could claim a right
To grieve as much as pleased him,
It was six years, since his sight

“Had fed on Mabel’s features;
So that Hubert scarcely knew
What traits to give the vision
Which should fill his eyes with dew:—
For she must needs, by that time,
Have become another, who,

“In girlhood’s triple glory,
(For a higher third outflows
Whenever Promise marries
With Completion,) troubled those
That saw, with trouble sweeter
Than the sweetest of repose.

“It, therefore, was the business
Of his thoughts to try to trace
The probable fulfilment
Of her former soul and face,—
From buds deducing blossoms.
For, although an easy space

“Led from the farm of Hubert
To where Mabel’s castle stood,
Closed in, a league on all sides.
With wall’d parks and wealthy wood,
No chance glimpse could be look’d for,
So recluse her widowhood.

“Hence seasons past, and Hubert
Earn’d his bread, but leisure spent
In loved dissatisfaction,
Which he made his element
Of choice, as much as, till then,
He had sought it in content.”

If the verses above would have baffled the sagacity of the father of Italian literature, what would he have thought of the following, in which the interview between Sir Hubert and Mabel is described, when the lady comes to negotiate with him about the hawk? She accosts him, “Sir Hubert!” and then there is presented to our imaginations such a picture of female loveliness, as (thank Heaven!) can only be done justice to in the language which is employed for the occasion.

“‘Sir Hubert!’—and, that instant,
Mabel saw the fresh light flush
Out of her rosy shoulders,
And perceived her sweet blood hush
About her, till, all over,
There shone forth a sumptuous blush—

“‘Sir Hubert, I have sought you,
Unattended, to request
A boon—the first I ever
Have entreated.’ Then she press’d
Her small hand’s weight of whiteness
To her richly-sloping breast.”

At first we thought that it should have been Hubert, and not Mabel, who saw “the fresh light flush out of her rosy shoulders”—particularly if the blush extended, as no doubt it did, to the lady’s back: but on further consideration we saw that we were wrong; for Sir Hubert could not have perceived “her sweet blood hush about her”—this hushing of the blood about one being, as all great blushers know, a fact discernible only by the person more immediately concerned in the blush. The propriety, therefore, of making Mabel perceive the blush, rather than Sir Hubert, is undeniable. The writer must either have left out the hushing altogether, which would have been a great blemish in the picture, or he must have written as he has done. How profoundly versed in the physiology of blushing he must be! We are doubtful, however, whether the costume of the picture is altogether appropriate; for we question very much whether the Italian ladies of the thirteenth, or any other century, were in the habit of paying forenoon visits in low-necked gowns; and whether Mabel could have walked all the way from her castle to Sir Hubert’s cottage, in an attire which revealed so many of her charms, without attracting the general attention of the neighbourhood. She had no time, be it observed, to divest herself of shawl or mantilla in order to show how sumptuously she could blush—for her salutation is made to Sir Hubert, and its roseate consequences ensue the very first moment she sees him. But let that pass. We should have been very sorry if such a “splendiferous” phenomenon had been obscured by envious boa or pelisse, or lost to the proprieties of costume. The Lady then

“Said that she was wearied
With her walk—would stay to dine,
And name her wishes after.”

Meanwhile the poet asks—

“How was it with Sir Hubert?
—Beggarly language! I could burst
For impotence of effort:
Those who made thee were accurst!
Dumb men were gods were all dumb.
But go on, and do thy worst!—