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Title: Gay
Author: William Ernest Henley [
More Titles by Henley]
The Fabulist.
Gay the fabulist is only interesting in a certain sense and to a small extent. The morality of the Fables is commonplace; their workmanship is only facile and agreeable; as literature--as achievements in a certain order of art--they have a poor enough kind of existence. In comparison to the work of La Fontaine they are the merest journalism. The simplicity, the wit, the wisdom, the humanity, the dramatic imagination, the capacity of dramatic expression, the exquisite union of sense and manner, the faultless balance of matter and style, are qualities for which in the Englishman you look in vain. You read, and you read not only without enthusiasm but without interest. The verse is merely brisk and fluent; the invention is common; the wit is not very witty; the humour is artificial; the wisdom, the morality, the knowledge of life, the science of character--if they exist at all it is but as anatomical preparations or plants in a hortus siccus. Worse than anything, the Fables are monotonous. The manner is consistently uniform; the invention has the level sameness of a Lincolnshire landscape; the narrative moves with the equal pace of boats on a Dutch canal. The effect is that of a host of flower-pots, the columns in a ledger, a tragedy by the Rev. Mr. Home; and it is heightened by the matchless triteness of the fabulist's reflections and the uncommon tameness of his drama. It is hard to believe that this is indeed the Gay of Polly and The Beggars' Opera. True, the dialects of his Peachum and his Lockit are in some sort one; his gentlemen of the road and his ladies of the kennel rejoice in a common flippancy of expression; there is little to choose between the speech of Polly and the speech of Lucy. But in respect of the essentials of drama the dialogue of the Beggars' Opera is on the whole sufficient. The personages are puppets; but they are individual, and they are fairly consistent in their individuality. Miss Lockit does not think and feel like Miss Diver; Macheath is distinguishable from Peachum; none is exactly alive, but of stage life ail have their share. The reverse of this is the case with the personages of the Fables. They think the thoughts and speak the speech of Mr. Gay. The elephant has the voice of the sparrow; the monkey is one with the organ on which he sits; there is but a difference of name between the eagle and the hog; the talk of Death has exactly the manner and weight and cadence of the Woodman's; a change of label would enable the lion to change places with the spaniel, would suffice to cage the wolf as a bird and set free the parrot as a beast of prey. All are equally pert, brisk, and dapper in expression; all are equally sententious and smart in aim; all are absolutely identical in function and effect. The whole gathering is stuffed with the same straw, prepared with the same dressing, ticketed in the same handwriting, and painted with the same colours. Any one who remembers the infinite variety of La Fontaine will feel that Gay the fabulist is a writer whose work the world has let die very willingly indeed.
The Moralist.
And Gay is not a whit less inefficient as a moralist. He is a kindly soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt something of the tricks of the world and something of the hearts of men. He writes as an unsuccessful courtier; and in that capacity he has remarks to offer which are not always valueless, and in which there is sometimes a certain shrewdness. But the unsuccessful courtier is on the whole a creature of the past. Such interest as he has is rather historical than actual; and neither in the nursery nor in the schoolroom is he likely to create any excitement or be received with any enthusiasm. To the world he can only recommend himself as one anxious to make it known on the smallest provocation and on any occasion or none that Queen Anne is dead. Open him where you will, and you find him full of this important news and determined on imparting it. Thus, in The Scold and the Parrot:
'One slander must ten thousand get,
The world with int'rest pays the debt';
that is to say, Queen Anne is dead. Thus, too, in The Persian, the Sun, and the Cloud:
'The gale arose; the vapour tost
(The sport of winds) in air was lost;
The glorious orb the day refines.
Thus envy breaks, thus merit shines';
in The Goat without a Beard:
'Coxcombs distinguished from the rest
To all but coxcombs are a jest';
in The Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf:
'An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse';
and so to the end of the chapter. The theme is not absorbing, and the variations are proper to the theme.
After All.
How long is it that the wise and good have ceased to say (striking their pensive bosoms), 'Here lies Gay'? It is--how long? But for all that Gay is yet a figure in English letters. As a song-writer he has still a claim on us, and is still able to touch the heart and charm the ear. The lyrics in Acis and Galatea are not unworthy their association with Handel's immortal melodies, the songs in The Beggars' Opera have a part in the life and fame of the sweet old tunes from which they can never be divided. I like to believe that in the operas and the Trivia and The Shepherd's Week is buried the material of a pleasant little book.
[The end]
William Ernest Henley's essay: Gay
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