her son. The young gentleman dies on finding that he cannot obtain what he wants; and Mabel marries Sir Hubert, and settles upon him all her possessions, as a reward for his magnanimity in sacrificing that which (next to herself) he held dearest in the whole world, rather than that she should go without a dinner.
Such is a short sketch of Boccacio’s tale of the Falcon—a good enough story in its way; and more creditable than many that were circulated among the loose fish, male and female, that play their parts in the Decameron. This novel has been versified by Mr Patmore, and versified (as our specimens shall show) as he alone could have versified it. The following is his description of the much-longed-for, but sorely-ill-treated, hawk of Sir Hubert.
“It served him, too, of evenings:
On a sudden he would rise,
From book or simple music,
And awake his hawk’s large eyes,
(Almost as large as Mabel’s)
Teasing out its dumb replies,
“In sulky sidelong glances,
And reluctantly flapp’d wings,
Or looks of slow communion,
To the lightsome questionings
That broke the drowsy sameness,
And the sense, like fear, which springs
“At night, when we are conscious
Of our distance from the strife
Of cities; and the memory
Of the spirit of all things rife,
Endues the chairs and tables
With a disagreeable life.”
A Scotch lyrist, who, we are told, sings his own songs to perfection, has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued “with a disagreeable life.” One of his best ballads, in which he describes the bickerings which, even in the best-regulated families, will at times take place between man and wife, and in which various domestic missiles come into play, contains the following very excellent line—
“The stools pass the best o’ their time i’ the air”—
than which no sort of life appertaining to a stool can be more disagreeable, we should imagine—to the head which it is about to come in contact with. We doubt whether Mr Patmore’s, or rather Sir Hubert’s, chairs and tables ever acquired such a vigorous and unpleasant vitality as that. What may have happened to the “stools” after Mabel was married to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer the Scotch poet’s description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic, and intelligible of the two. The coincidence, however, is remarkable.
After Sir Hubert has retired to his farm, the state of his feelings is described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to unravel the meaning of some of them.
“He gather’d consolation,
As before, where best he might:
But though there was the difference
That he now could claim a right
To grieve as much as pleased him,
It was six years, since his sight
“Had fed on Mabel’s features;
So that Hubert scarcely knew
What traits to give the vision
Which should fill his eyes with dew:—
For she must needs, by that time,
Have become another, who,
“In girlhood’s triple glory,
(For a higher third outflows
Whenever Promise marries
With Completion,) troubled those
That saw, with trouble sweeter
Than the sweetest of repose.
“It, therefore, was the business
Of his thoughts to try to trace
The probable fulfilment
Of her former soul and face,—
From buds deducing blossoms.
For, although an easy space
“Led from the farm of Hubert
To where Mabel’s castle stood,
Closed in, a league on all sides.
With wall’d parks and wealthy wood,
No chance glimpse could be look’d for,
So recluse her widowhood.
“Hence seasons past, and Hubert
Earn’d his bread, but leisure spent
