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I heard the other day of a serious dahlia grower who had called his seedlings after his favourite preachers, so that we shall have the Reverend Edward So-and-so, and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternising with the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Me-doras of the old catalogue. So much the better.
He finds the Clown and Fool upon the stage, he makes them the tools of his pleasantry, his satire, and even his pathos; he finds a fading rustic superstition, and shapes out of it ideal Pucks, Titanias, and Ariels, in whose existence statesmen and scholars believe forever.
After saying that Chopin idealised the fugitive poesy inspired by fugitive apparitions like "La Fee aux Miettes," "Le Lutin d'Argail," &c., to such an extent as to render its fibres so thin and friable that they seemed no longer to belong to our nature, but to reveal to us the indiscreet confidences of the Undines, Titanias, Ariels, Queen Mabs, and Oberons, Liszt proceeds thus:
"Bid him come on himself!" cried Barnstable, maddened to desperation by his disappointment; "'tis not his whole corps that can disarm me let them come on! Hear, there, you Ariels! rally around your captain."
These fugitive poems are so idealized, rendered so fragile and attenuated, that they scarcely seem to belong to human nature, but rather to a fairy world, unveiling the indiscreet confidences of Peris, of Titanias, of Ariels, of Queen Mabs, of the Genii of the air, of water, and of fire, like ourselves, subject to bitter disappointments, to invincible disgusts.
But we find this faculty of his in the very essence of his intellect; and trace it alike in the quiet cunning epigram, the allegory, the quaint device, reminding us of some Quarles or Bunyan; and in the /Fausts/, the /Tassos/, the /Mignons/, which in their pure and genuine personality, may almost remind us of the /Ariels/ and /Hamlets/ of Shakespeare.
For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him as Fata Morgana, ugly masks, in fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels.
Ariels there!" shouted Tom, in a voice that the growing tempest carried to the ears of the retreating soldiers, who quickened their footsteps, as they listened to sounds which their fears taught them to believe supernatural. "Who hails?" cried the well-known voice of Barnstable. "Once your master, now your servant," answered the cockswain with a watchword of his own invention.
He finds the Clown and Fool upon the stage, he makes them the tools of his pleasantry, his satire, and even his pathos; he finds a fading rustic superstition, and shapes out of it ideal Pucks, Titanias, and Ariels, in whose existence statesmen and scholars believe forever.
"You are the prince of philosophers, Master Coffin!" cried Barnstable; "there is some hope in that; let the Englishmen talk away, and, my life on it, the Ariels don't believe it is thunder; hand me a musket I'll draw another shot." The piece was given to Barnstable, who discharged it several times, as if to taunt their enemies; and the scheme was completely successful.
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