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read in Arcadia the other day that Thomas Cooper the
Chartist, as he loved to call himself, had been granted
a pension by the English Government. I read this with
unmixed gratification. Thomas Cooper is usually referred
to as the author of the "Purgatory of Suicides,"
but this poem will hardly give him the fame he deserves.
It was the life he lived, a life full of fightings,
imprisonment, and trouble of all kinds that is his real
claim to remembrance, and his most interesting book
is his own account of his life: "The Life of Thomas
Cooper, written by himself." It is a thoroughly
entertaining book, written in a simple style full of
energy. Anyone might profitably spend the few hours
required to read it in following the struggles of this
intrepid old man, who would never give in if he thought
he was right, no matter what hardship he had to undergo
in consequence. He was at one time of his life an enthusiastic
musician, and before the "Chartist" times
he spent his energies in organising the choral societies
in Lincoln, England. But his zeal raised up enemies
against him, and after making the society a success
he was forced to resign. He was also forced out of the
Wesleyan Church by one or two men who have their types
in every religious community. It was shortly before
this time that my late father knew him, and I have before
me now four letters addressed by him to my father, with
reference to the work in which they were then engaged.
One of the most entertaining portions of his "Life"
is that describing his efforts in finding a publisher
for the "Purgatory of Suicides." He had the
usual experience of persons seeking a market for verse.
He was refused by all the publishers with whom he most
desired to deal. At last Douglas Jerrold found him a
publisher, and his book reached the public. I think
he had a success which gratified him, and the connections
he formed with famous men gave him huge pleasure. He
dedicated the poem to Mr. Carlyle, and the philosopher
wrote him a letter which no one else could have written.
He found in the poem traces of genius, "a dark
Titanic energy struggling there, for which we hope there
will be clearer daylight by-and-bye." But he advises
that Mr. Cooper write his next work in prose. "We
have too horrible a practical chaos round us; out of
which every man is called by the birth of him to make
a bit of cosmos; that seems to me the real poem for
a man, especially at present. I always grudge to all
any portion of a man's musical talent (which is the
real intellect, the real vitality or life of him) expended
on making mere words rhyme. These things I say to all
my poetic friends, for I am in real earnest about them;
but get almost nobody to believe me thitherto."
Carlyle afterwards assisted Cooper in many ways, and
the latter says: "Twice he put a five-pound note
in my hand when I was in difficulties, and told me with
a look of grave humor that if I could never pay him
again he would not hang me."
If Mr. Cooper
lives until the 20th of March next he will be 88 years
of age, and I hope he will live for many years yet to
enjoy his pension.
S.
Among
the chief glories of the natural scenery of a country
are its forests and trees, and among the countries of
the world Canada may be said to be supreme in this respect.
But all of her native trees the maple, the fitting emblem
she has chosen, is by far the most beautiful and most
suited to the high, dry atmosphere of her climate. In
our city and village streets the maple is unique in
beauty because of the sunny splendor of its foliage,
as if the sunlight not only fell on it, but pervaded
and lighted it up, till the whole tree seems aglow with
warmth. But to see the maple in all its native splendor
you want to seek the virgin woods of Northwestern Ontario,
which, I am sorry to say, are yearly growing less and
less with the development of the country. Here its rugged
and massive trunk, its spreading, skyward branches and
gold-green foliage make it the supreme monarch of the
Canadian forest. We have many beautiful trees, but none
in the Canadian forest can compare with the maple.
C.
The
river winds down from the dim country ways, creeping
and sliding over pebbly shallows that glint and sparkle
in the sun, then glides, turbid and deep, round steep
curves where elms lean and mirror in its inky depths.
Now and again a kingfisher swoops down from a decayed
branch and skims the water with his purplish wings.
Far out where the river winds in a thin haze, in sunlight
and shadow, lie the country lands, undulating in hill
and hollow, with level meadow lands, dotted with trees
and sleepy cattle, who lazily gaze, or stand meditatively
chewing their cuds and whisking their tails under the
trees in the fence corners. A road like a brown riband
winds over one of the hills from the eastern horison,
and crosses the river by means of dilapidated wooden
bridge. Now and then the stillness of the sleepy summer
afternoon is disturbed by a stray waggon that rumbles
over the bridge and up the eastern hill, raising a cloud
of dust as it disappears.
Near the bridge
there is a small, dilapidated frame house by the roadside.
Two lilac bushes fringe the fence in front, and a thin,
care-worn woman moves within, now and again coming to
the door with an anxious look on her sallow face. A
sickly dog lies in the dirt in front, and thumps his
tail in the dust as he leers contemplatively at an old
hen and a brood of active chickens in a coop near. The
sky grows closer and blacker. Great clouds roll up over
the farm lands. The cows have ceased to low and the
birds to twitter, and nature has grown intensely still.
Soon a patter of large drops is felt, that comes faster
and faster, the dog has crawled under a corner of the
house, the chickens can be heard twittering in the coop
under the old hen's wings, and the rain descends with
a roar and rush on the fields, river and roof-tops,
till the roads run in rivulets and the hollows turn
into pools, while a fine mist shuts out the distant
landscape of farms, woodland and horison.
After a while
a voice is heard singing snatches of a maudlin song,
coming round the bend of the hill beyond the bridge,
and the figure of a drunken man reels round the bend,
staggering from side to side as he approaches the bridge.
His clothes are drenched and muddy and his hat is jammed
over his eyes. He reels for a moment and, losing his
balance, completely tumbles into a muddy pool. With
a muttered exclamation he staggers to his feet, looks
for a moment with a sort of indignant reproach at the
spot where he had fallen, and then zigzags slowly and
methodically over the bridge, braiding his way till
he comes to the dilapidated house, where the sad-faced
woman who is waiting opens the door and ushers him in
from the storm. The day declines, the rain is harder
and comes with a steady pour, till night gradually lets
its misty curtains down in murky folds about the wet,
lonely and bedraggled world.
C.
It
is a common saying of the ordinary Englishman that in
America we have no singing birds. It is true that we
have no singer possessing the fire and compass of the
nightingale or the sky-lark, i.e., I believe we have
not, for I have never listened to either of the latter
birds myself, but I am inclined to think, from what
we read on the subject, that not even in England have
they as great a variety of dainty and appealing voices
as are to be met with on any summer day in our Canadian
fields—the song-sparrow, and the robin, and the
blue bird that come before the wind-flower and the lilium—the
vesper sparrow, tenderest and most lyric of singers,
whose song seems most touching and most in season as
his name implies, when we hear it from the dusky, scarce
distinguishable fields at evening; the bob-o-link, who
is the merry love-making, gay-coated cavalier of our
breezy meadows, forever joyous and alert, thinking that
his life is intended for nothing but the old-fashioned
troubador business of strumming the guitar and singing
rondeaus and villanettes to one's lady love; the white-throat
sparrow, the piper of that strange, clear, long-drawn,
meditative note that comes to us from the swamp or clearing,
and embodies the very mood of him who whiles away a
long May day in idle stroll and meditation; the grave
thrushes, the veery, with his revolving, metallic note,
having something in it like the sound of shot running
round and round in a gun barrel, a note suggestive of
midsummer quiet and heat; the hermit according to Burroughs
the finest of our songsters, whose distant, lingering
music, heard in the forest depths or from the untilled
mountain-side, is the very voice of the spirit of solitude,
laden with the memories of forgotten flowers, and fading
away into a silence and shadow as remote and spectral
as they; the wood-thrush, not so common with us, and
the brown thrush, a singer of great energy and variety;
the catbird, the vivacious mimic and eccentric songster;
the peweet, with its peculiar infantine, appealing note:
the great highholder or higho, whose jolly, flute-like
laughter rings far away out of the woodside or the rough
field; the drawling pipe and silvern sputter of the
meadow lark; and many another of the warblers, flycatchers,
vireos, and the rest, too numerous to recount. All these
voices from April to August, and later, are a perpetual
delight to the ear, and just as each man will have his
favorite poet or his favorite story-teller, so each
will have his favorite songster of the wood or field.
I myself have almost concluded that I find most pleasure
in the song of the little vesper sparrow. There is an
abandon, a fitting tenderness, a lyrical gush in the
utterances of this exquisite little bird that causes
him to grow upon the heart of the hearer. The ear seeks
his song at morning and eventide, and if it is misisng
we feel the loss of something that tempers our thoughts
with a gentle and humane emotion.
L.
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