plunderers of the orchard and the corn-field, are, in fact, Nature's carriers to disperse and perpetuate her blessings. In like manner, the beauties and fine thoughts of ancient and obsolete authors are caught up by these flights of predatory writers, and cast forth again to flourish and bear fruit in a remote and distant tract of time. Many of their works, also, undergo a kind of metempsychosis, and spring up under new forms. What was formerly a ponderous history, revives in the shape of a romance an old legend changes into a modern play and a sober philosophical treatise furnishes the body for a whole series of bouncing and sparkling essays. Thus it is in the clearing of our American woodlands; where we burn down a forest of stately pines, a progeny of dwarf oaks start up in their place and we never see the prostrate trunk of a tree mouldering into soil, but 27 it gives birth to a whole tribe of fungi. 28 Let us not, then, lament over the decay and oblivion into which ancient writers descend; they do but submit to the great law of nature, which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter 29 shall be limited in their duration, but which decrees, also, that their elements shall never perish. Generation after generation, both in animal and vegetable life, passes away, but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity, and the species continue to flourish. Thus, also, do authors beget authors; and having produced a numerous progeny, in a good old age they sleep with their fathers, that is to say, with the authors who preceded them and from whom they had stolen. Whilst I was indulging in these rambling fancies 30, I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to 81 the soporific emanations from these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously afflicted; so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my imagination continued busy, and indeed the same scene remained before my mind's eye, only a little changed in some of the details. I dreamt that the chamber was still decorated with the portraits of ancient authors, but that the number was increased. The 27) but 29) matter, fr. matière v. lat. materia Stoff, Materie. 30) Zu rambling fancy 31) to be owing to = Träumerei vergl. S. 2, Anm. 10. herrühren von. long tables had disappeared, and in place of the sage magi, 1 beheld a ragged, threadbare throng, such as may be seen plying about that great repository of cast-off clothes, Monmouth Street 32 Whenever they seized upon a book, by one of those incongruities common to dreams, methought it turned into a garment of foreign or antique fashion, with which they proceeded to equip themselves. I noticed, however, that no one pretended to clothe himself from any particular suit, but took a sleeve from one, a cape from another, a skirt from a third, thus decking himself out piecemeal, while some of his original rags would peep out from among his borrowed finery. There was a portly, rosy, well-fed parson, whom I observed ogling several mouldy polemical writers through an eye-glass. He soon contrived to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old fathers, and having purloined the grey beard of another, endeavoured to look exceedingly wise; but the smirking common-place of his countenance set at nought 34 all the trappings of wisdom. One sickly-looking gentleman was busied embroidering a very flimsy garment with gold thread drawn out of several old court dresses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Another had trimmed himself magnificently from an illuminated manuscript, had stuck a nosegay in his bosom, culled from ,,The Paradise of Dainty Devices 35", and having put Sir Philip Sidney's 36 hat on one side of his head, strutted off with an 32),,The great mart for second-hand apparel was, in the last century, in Monmouth Street; now, by one of those arbitrary, and almost always inappropriate, changes in the nomenclature of streets, termed Dudley Street, Seven Dials. Monmouth Street finery was a common term to express tawdriness (Flitterstaat) and pretence. Now Monmouth Street, for its new name is hardly legitimated, has no finery. Its second-hand wares are almost wholly confined to old boots and shoes, which are vamped up (aufgestutzt) with a good deal of trickery. (Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, aus Hoppe's Supplem.-Lex.). Vergl. den Mühlendamm in Berlin. 33) to purloin entwenden; altengl. purlongyn verlängern, entfremden, altf. porloignier, purloignier hinausschieben. verlängern, von d. franz. loin, lat. longus lang; die Begriffsentwickelung war etwa: verlängern, entfernen, entfremden, entwenden. 34) Ueber to set at nought vergl. S. 43, Anm. 58. 35) The Paradise (mit scharf. s) of Dainty Devices ist eine nach dem Vorbilde von Tottel's Miscellany im J. 1576 herausgegebene Gedichtsammlung, zu der hauptsächlich Lord Vaux, Richard Edwards u. William Hunnis Beiträge lieferten. 36) Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) schrieb im J. 1580 zur Unterhaltung seiner Schwester, der Gräfin von Pembroke, auf deren Landsitz Wilton das Hirtengedicht The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Das exquisite air of vulgar elegance. A third, who was but of puny dimensions, had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy, so that he had a very imposing front; but he was lamentably tattered in rear, and I perceived that he had patched his small-clothes with scraps of parchment from a Latin author. There were some well-dressed gentlemen, it is true, who only helped themselves to a gem or so, which sparkled among their own ornaments, without eclipsing them. Some, too, seemed to contemplate the costumes of the old writers, merely to imbibe their principles of taste, and to catch their air and spirit; but I grieve to say, that too many were apt to array themselves from top to toe, in the patchwork manner I have mentioned. I shall not omit to speak of one genius, in drab breeches and gaiters, and an Arcadian hat 37, who had a violent propensity to the pastoral, but whose rural wanderings had been confined to the classic haunts of Primrose Hill, and the solitudes of the Regent's Park 38. He had decked himself in wreaths and ribands from all the old pastoral poets; and hanging his head on one side, went about with a fantastical lack-adaisical 39 air,,,babbling about green fields" 40. But the per Buch wurde im J. 1590 veröffentlicht und erlebte bis zum Jahre 1633 acht Auflagen. Seine übrigen Werke sind An Apologie for Poetry, später The Defence of Poesie genannt, und Sonette. 37) Arcadian hat, so genannt nach dem in der vor. Anm. erwähnten Buche Sidneys. 38) Regent's Park, so genannt zu Ehren des damaligen Regenten, späteren Königs Georg IV., früher Marylebone Park. Zu den Zeiten Elisabeths war der Marylebone Park ein Wild- und Jagdrevier. Unter der Republik wurde der Wald niedergehauen und das nun entstandene Wiesenland als Viehweide verpachtet; später wurden wieder Bäume angepflanzt und Wege und ein künstlicher Teich angelegt. Der Park umfasst 472 Acres (1 Acre 1,585 Morgen) und erstreckt sich von York Gate neben der New Road bis nach Primrose Hill. In ihm ist der zoologische Garten und der Garten der Gesellschaft der Bogenschützen. Nördlich von Regent's Park, nur durch den Regent's Canal und eine Strasse davon getrennt, ist Primrose Hill, ein Hügel, welcher nach Osten und Süden hin eine weite Aussicht über die unabsehbar sich ausdehnende Stadt bietet. Pr. Hill bietet deu Bewohnern Londons, welche Sonntags der Stadt entfliehen, mannigfach Raum und Gelegenheit, sich im Freien zu ergehen und frische Luft einzuathmen. 39) Von alack-a-day! lackaday! (alack ist volksthümliche Entstellung von alas, aus franz. hélas von lat. ai, gr. ai und lassus, fr. las müde, elend, unglücklich); hieraus entstand die scherzhafte Weiterbildung lackadaisy, lackadaisical affectedly pensive, sentimental, empfindsam. 40) babbling about green fields: Nach Theobalds Conjectur in Shakspere's Henry V, Act II, Scene 3, Worte der Mistress Quickly in sonage that most struck my attention was a pragmatical old gentleman, in clerical robes, with a remarkably large and square, but bald head. He entered the room wheezing and puffing, elbowed his way through the throng, with a look of sturdy selfconfidence, and having laid hands upon a thick Greek quarto, clapped it upon his head, and swept majestically away in a formidable frizzled wig. In the height of this literary masquerade, a cry suddenly resounded from every side of,,Thieves! thieves!" I looked, and lof the portraits about the wall became animated! The old authors thrust out, first a head, then a shoulder from the canvas 41, looked down curiously, for an instant, upon the motley throng, and then descended, with fury in their eyes, to claim their rifled property. The scene of scampering and hubbub that ensued baffles all description. The unhappy culprits endeavoured in vain to escape with the plunder. On one side might be seen half a dozen old monks, stripping a modern professor; on another, there was sad devastation carried into the ranks of modern dramatic writers. Beaumont and Fletcher 42, side by side, raged round the field like Castor and Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonson 48 enacted more wonders than when a volunteer with the army in Flanders. As to the dapper little compiler of dem Bericht von Falstaffs letzten Augenblicken: and 'a (= he) babbled of green fields und er schwatzte von grünen Feldern. Die Folioausgabe hat a table of green fields. 41) canvas Hanfleinen, Leinewand zu Zelten, Segeln, Gemälden (so hier), fr. canevas, mlat: canevasium zu d. lat. cannabis Hanf, urverwandt mit engl. hemp. 42) Francis Beaumont (1585-1616) und John Fletcher (1576–1625), 10 Jahre lang in engster Geistesarbeit verbunden, schrieben unter Shakspereschem Einfluss, doch ohne sclavische Abhängigkeit von ihm, gemeinschaftlich eine grosse Anzahl Dramen, welche grossen Beifall fanden. Die bekanntesten sind: Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, The Woman-hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle u. a. Fletcher allein schrieb 3 Tragödien, 9 Comödien und ein Schauspiel, The Faithful Shepherdess. 43) Ben Jonson (1573-1637), Sohn eines Geistlichen in Westminster, trieb anfangs, wie sein Stiefvater, das Gewerbe eines Maurers, liess sich dann anwerben und machte den Feldzug in Flandern mit, in dem er sich durch Tapferkeit auszeichnete. Nach seiner Rückkehr studierte er kurze Zeit in Cambridge. Bald wandte er sich zur Bühne und schrieb im J. 1596 sein erstes Lustspiel Every Man in his Humour, welches 1598 auf dem Globe Theater unter Shaksperes Mitwirkung aufgeführt wurde. Sodann erschienen u. a. Every Man out of his Humour; Cynthia's Revels; The Poetaster; Volpone, or the Fox; Epicene, or the Silent Woman; The Alchemist; die Tragödien Sejanus und Catiline. farragos 44, mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colours as Harlequin, and there was as fierce a contention of claimants about him as about the dead body of Patroclus 45. I was grieved to see many men, to whom I had been accustomed to look up with awe and reverence, fain 46 to steal off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness. Just then my eye was caught by the pragmatical old gentleman in the Greek grizzled wig, who was scrambling away in sore affright with half a score of authors in full cry after him. They were close upon his haunches; in a twinkling off went his wig; at every turn some strip of raiment was peeled away; until, in a few moments, from his domineering pomp, he shrunk into a little, pursy,,,chopp'd bald shot" 47, and made his exit with only a few tags and rags fluttering at his back. There was something so ludicrous in the catastrophes of this learned Theban 49, that I burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, which broke the whole illusion. The tumult and the scuffle were at an end. The chamber resumed its usual appearance. The old authors shrunk back into their picture-frames, and hung in shadowy solemnity along the walls. In short, 1 found myself wide awake in my corner, with the whole 44) farràgo (lat. farrago v. far Dinkel, Spelt, Schrot, grobes Mehl Mengfutter, gemischter Inhalt, das Mancherlei, Gemengsel) bildet als noch nicht völlig eingebürgertes Fremdwort den Plural ohne e. 45) Auch im Englischen hat das Wort die der griechischen widersprechende Betonung auf der vorletzten Silbe: Patròclus. Zu dem Kampf um den Leichnam des Patroclus vergl. Ilias Buch XVII. 46) fain froh, gern (ags. faegen, ahd. fagin, dazu die Zeitwörter goth. faginon sich freuen, ags. faegnian, fagnian) = content to accept, for lack of any thing better, as the more desirable of two alternatives (Webster) oder glad in taking a certain course under circumstances of necessity to take that or worse (Smart); to see many men fain to steal off =zu sehen, wie viele Männer froh waren, sich wegstehlen zu können. 47) Worte Fallstaffs in Henry IV, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2 in Bezug auf die von ihm ausgemusterten Soldaten: 0, give me always a little, Jean, old, chopped, bald shot; shot Schütze; to chop (vgl. d. dtsch. kappen u. d. frz. couper) spalten, schneiden; chopped split with toil or age, dtsch. etwa verwittert. 48) spr. catástrophe. = = rent and 49) Learned Theban; vergl. King Lear Act III, Scene 4, wo Lear in Bezug auf den sich wahnsinnig stellenden Edgar sagt: I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban, wozu Delius bemerkt: „Einen learned Theban, und bald darauf good Athenian, also irgend einen griechischen Philosophen des Alterthums aus Theben oder Athen, nennt er den Edgar, wie vorher und nachher philosopher". |