If the Season has had its laureates, so has the Recess. Why not? Of the two, the latter has the more numerous elements of poetry. Town has its charms for the versifier; there is much to say about its streets, its parks, its belles, its balls, its many diversions. But there is even more, surely, to say about the country, with its ancestral halls, its watering-places, and its shootings, as well as about the seaside and the various attractions outre-mer. Surely, of the two, life out of town has even more delights, for the poet, at any rate, than life in town. Sylvester is reported to have said that people, after tiring in town, go to re-tire in the country. But the saying, if epigrammatic, is not strictly true. No doubt some of us feel bored, The Recess, as spent in London, has been drawn by the rhymers in depressing tints. The picture painted by Haynes Bayly remains—for the fashionable world, at least—almost as true as it ever was. As he said: ‘In town, in the month of September, This may be compared with the soliloquy put by H. S. Leigh in the mouth of ‘the last man’ left in London: ‘The Row is dull, as dull can be; ‘He’ll seek you with shame and with sorrow, He will tell you that he is in general request—that the difficulty is to know where not to go: ‘So odd you should happen to meet him; The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on ‘the Twelfth,’ the other on ‘the First.’ The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges. And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of these facts. ‘Don’t talk of September,’ she says; ‘a lady
And she goes on to say: ‘Oh, marriage is hard of digestion, Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet. Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left town—how ‘She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks, Lord Lyttelton’s ‘beauty in the country’ complains that ‘Now with mamma at tedious whist I play, ‘Left in the lurch, Agreeably descriptive of rural pleasures is Lord Chesterfield’s ‘Advice to a Lady in Autumn.’ Of recent years the subject has been treated by a versifier who has at least a measure of the neatness of Praed, and who enumerates among the typical guests at a country house ‘A sporting parson, good at whist, and, again: ‘A lady who once wrote a book, As for the daily round: ‘We dance, we flirt, we shoot, we ride, and so on. There are, of course, the county ‘There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle It was to the county ball, as well as to the theatricals at Fustian Hall, that Praed’s ‘Clarence’ was so prettily invited. As for fancy balls: ‘Oh, a fancy ball’s a strange affair! Of inland watering-places, Bath and Cheltenham have been perhaps most often poetized. Bath found its vates sacer in the author of the ‘New Bath Guide’; it has rarely found one since; its glories have virtually departed. It was at Cheltenham— ‘Where one drinks one’s fill ‘Year by year do Beauty’s daughters Praed has a poem called ‘Arrivals at a Watering-Place,’ but it is not one of the most successful of his efforts. Nor have seaside places in general been made the subject of very excellent verse. Brighton is the one exception. Of that ‘favoured spot,’ James Smith, of ‘Rejected Addresses’ fame, was, perhaps, the first to write flatteringly. ‘Long,’ he declared— ‘Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn, The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets still conspire ‘If you approve of flirtations, good dinners, Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic. Brighton in November, he says, ‘is what one should remember’: ‘If spirits you would lighten, Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr. Locker’s graceful ‘Invitation to Rome’ and ‘The Reply’ to it, from which I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital: ‘Some girls, who love to ride and race, |