was Mirabeau. "Monsieur le Comte," said his secretary, "the thing you require is impossible." "Impossible!" cried Mirabeau, starting from his chair; never mention that stupid word again!" ("Ne me dites jamais ce bête de mot!") And, before Mirabeau, Lord Chatham, in a fit of the gout, received one of the admirals in his sick-room, only to be told that to get the required expedition afloat was "impossible." "It must sail, sir, this day week," the eagle-eyed man's fire-flashing reply. As he rose from his chair, the beaded perspiration burst from his forehead with the agony caused him as he firmly planted the gouty foot upon the floor, and, suiting the action to the word, added, "I trample on impossibilities!" He fell back fainting, but he conveyed his lesson, and the fleet sailed. Wellington once exclaimed, "Impossible! Is anything impossible? Read the newspapers." And here are other analogous expressions: To him that wills, nothing is impossible.-KOSSUTH. Nothing is impossible; there are ways which lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means.-La Rochefoucauld. Maxim 255. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.—JOHNSON: Rasselas, ch. xii. It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. SHELLEY: Juliar and Maddolo. A most extraordinary illustration of Shelley's words might be found in the career of Benjamin Disraeli. Once when Premier of England he addressed the boys at Rugby in these words: “Boys, you can be anything you determine to be. Thirty years ago, when I was a boy, I determined to be Premier of England." But to return. Napoleon's accredited phrase, "Impossible, a word found only in the dictionary of fools," is the obvious origin of Bulwer-Lytton's famous lines in "Richelieu" (Act ii., Sc. 2): In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves The superior judgment of the multitude has once more been evidenced in the persistent misquotation, "In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail," which is good prose substituted for bad verse. After all, what are all the above quotations but more or less splendid paraphrases of the old saw, "Nothing is impossible to a willing heart"? This may be found in Heywood. Impromptus. Litera scripta manet, but bons mots are creatures of an hour, soon sinking into oblivion, to be born again, by a species of metempsychosis, under a different form and another parentage. Readiness, originality, are the rarest gifts of the gods. "The impromptu is precisely the touchstone of all wit," said Molière, truly enough. "There is nothing so unready as the readiness of wit," repeats that "Frenchman par excellence," as Voltaire called him, Comte de Rivarol. The man whose happy thoughts all come on the stairs is a proverbial figure. If ready wit is so exceedingly rare, the ability to improvise songs, to extemporize in verse, is as rare, if not still rarer. The very small number of genuine instances that have been preserved testify to this. A very few pages would suffice to print all the well-authenticated examples in the language. It will not do to judge most of them by any very high literary standard: such a proceeding would be as foolish, and as fatal, as to analyze a joke. It is their spontaneity which tells: thoroughly to appreciate one must approach them with a predisposition to be surprised or amused, and in a mood not too critical; the moment and the occasion that gave them life and point must, if possible, be recalled, and the scene and circumstance in which they originated re-enacted in the imagination. You must hear the hum of conversation at Miss Reynolds's ("Renny dear's") tea, when, suddenly, Dr. Johnson's sonorous "To be sure, sir," attracts all ears, or imagine you are at a jovial reunion of sparks in the early years of the century, and, midst the clinking of glasses and roars of laughter, Hook, at the piano, is pouring forth his delicious nonsense. If many are here included of no very high merit, the answer is, that this is not a collection of elegant extracts, but of impromptus, and that a too rigor. ous critique would have attenuated to vacuity an already sufficiently limited class of literary curiosities. There are, indeed, quite a number of very clever alleged impromptus floating among the drift-wood of literature, but they are mostly without sufficient voucher of genuineness. The remark of De Quincey applies with peculiar force to this genre, that "Universally it may be received as a rule, that when an anecdote involves a stinging repartee, a collision of ideas fancifully and brilliantly relating to each other by resemblance or contrast, then you may challenge it as false." The fathers of these supposed sun-bursts of smartness are usually desig nated by some indefinite phrase, as, "a celebrated Irish wit," or "a clerical gentleman in Blankshire," et cæteris paribus. The first of these great unknowns is responsible for the following. During a discussion at a dinnerparty, Lord E, who, much better than he deserved, was blessed with a beautiful and accomplished wife, dropped the remark that "a wife was only a tin canister tied to one's tail." Here was the "Irish wit's" opportunity; he seized it, and, hastily scribbling something on a scrap of paper, presented it to the mortified wife of his foolish lordship. The truthful eye-witness that invented this story forgets to say that the wit was rewarded by the lady's most grateful smile when she read this: Lord E, at woman presuming to rail, Calls a wife a "tin canister" tied to one's tail; And poor Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on, But wherefore degrading? Considered aright, A canister's polished, and useful, and bright: To the category of invented impromptus probably also belongs that of the two scholastics who had frequent disputes on the divinity of Christ. Chancing to meet in a convivial company, one of them wrote the following lines, and, with assumed severity, handed them to the other: Tu Juda similis Dominumque Deumque negasti ; ("You, Judas-like, your Lord and God denied: Whereupon the "heretic" retorted, Tu simul et similis Judæ, tu dissimilisque; Judæ iterum similis sis, laqueumque petas. ("You are like Judas, yet unlike that elf; Once more like Judas be, and hang yourself.") The same must in all likelihood be said of this next, which involves, however, a very good pun. A clergyman of Hartford, having opened the session of the Connecticut House of Representatives by a prayer, was requested by the Speaker to remain seated by him during the sitting. At the time the State of Connecticut had no general law of divorce, and to obtain annulment of the bonds of matrimony it was necessary for the parties to make application to the legislature. The clerical gentleman, having witnessed an instance of this process of legislative unmarrying, wrote and handed the following to the Speaker: For cutting all connections famed All that history records of the following is that it was written on the window of an inn at Huddersfield: "The queen is with us," Whigs exulting say, How long she'll keep you when she finds you out. And the following is said to have been dashed off in a court-room by a flippant young barrister while the tedious and ruddy-faced Serjeant C, bewigged and clothed in purple gown, was making an interminable argument: The serjeant pleads with face on fire, His purple garment comes from Tyre, It is the generally-accepted theory that the earlier poets, the Homeridæ, the Bards, Skalds, Troubadours, Jongleurs, Minnesingers, or whatever other names they go by, were mostly extemporizers and their songs improvisations. If true, then in one respect at least the human intellect has degenerated. The gentlemen that write with ease, and write well, are, according to the best authorities, a literary myth. To prove the popular theory incorrect is as difficult as it is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and practically the whole question reduces itself to a balancing of probabilities. The folk-loristic ballad is the product of generation upon generation of accretion and polish. Of the true genesis of the most ancient poetry extant we have plenty of theory and correspondingly little historic fact. Of the well-authenticated examples of extemporizing the most notable are probably the Italian, particularly the Florentine, improvvisatori. These dainty rhymers, who never would permit their songs to be written down,-"cosi se perderebbe la poca gloria,"-making the Italian summer nights melodious with the tinkle of the guitar, flourished down to nearly modern times. Their themes, however, were extremely limited. Their most common subjects were the commendation of their several mistresses, or the contending of two swains for the same maiden, or a debate which was the best poet, after the manner of eclogues; indeed, they put one in mind of Virgil's third, fifth, and seventh eclogues, where the shepherds contend in alternate verse; and Virgil's shepherds seem sometimes to be tied down by the thoughts in the preceding stanza, just as these Tuscan extempore poets were by the rhyme of the one who had immediately preceded. The immediate influence of these canzonari on English literature is beautifully portrayed in the idyllic picture of Sir Walter Raleigh and himself as painted by Edmund Spenser, when the two were neighbors and visitors on their Irish estates. He sings of their song-contests, when He sitting me beside in that same shade Yet æmuling, my pipe he took in hond,- He pip'd, I sung: and when he sung I pip'd; So piped we, until we both were weary. Some of the feats, however, of the improvvisatori are astonishing enough. "When I was at Florence, at our resident's Mr. C.," writes Spence, "I first thought it impossible for them to go on so readily as they did without having arranged things beforehand. He said it amazed everybody at first; that he had no doubt it was all fair, and desired me, to be satisfied of it, to give them some subject myself, as much out of the way as I could think of. As he insisted, I offered a subject on which they could not be well prepared. It was but a day or two before that a band of musicians and actors set out from Florence to introduce operas for the first time at the Empress of Russia's court. This advance of music, and that sort of dramatic poetry which the Italians at present look upon as the most capital parts of what they call virtù, so much farther north, was the subject I offered them. They shook their heads a little, and said it was a very difficult one. However, in two or three minutes' time one of them began with his octave upon it; another answered him immediately, and they went on for five or six stanzas, alternately, without any pause, except that very short one which is allowed them by giving off of the tune on the guitar at the end of each stanza. They always improvise to music." It is a pity that the relator did not preserve a record of this contest; it would have proved a veritable curiosity. Something in this line were the exhibitions of the Signora Taddi in 1824 at Naples and elsewhere of her wonderful power of improvising lyric poetry and melody at the same time. She would not only adopt whatever stories or incidents might be suggested as her subjects, but would utter her improvisations in any metre prescribed and fit her words to music the time or measure of which should be dictated at the moment. Returning to England and Raleigh, the story is about as well authenticated as any of the details of his career, that when a young adventurer, seeking the queen's favor, he wrote on a window which she must pass the line,— Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall, which catching her eye, Elizabeth immediately completed the couplet by adding, If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all. Other prompt rejoinders are attributed to Queen Elizabeth. When asked by a priest whether she allowed the real presence in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, she adroitly replied,— Christ was the word that spake it; Even more clever was her reply, and in a Latin hexameter too, to the insolent message of Philip II., delivered by the Spanish ambassador in these lines: Te, veto, ne pergas bello defendere Belgas; Quæ Dracus eripuit, nunc restituantur, oportet; She instantly answered,— Ad Græcas, bone rex, fiant mandata, calendas. Much more doubtful is the tradition which, without sufficient reason, seeks to fasten on Shakespeare the epitaph on a rich usurer, one Combe, said to have been extemporized by the poet in a tavern at Stratford : Ten in a hundred the devil allowes, But Combe will have twelve he swears and vowes. If any aske who lies in this tombe, "Hoh," quoth the devil, "'tis my John-O-Combe." Another version, which at least gives the jest more point, is that John Combe was a rich Stratford burgess and intimate friend of Shakespeare. During a discourse, not unaccompanied, we may imagine, with a discussion of beer, Mr. Moneybags remarked to the poet that in all likelihood he would write his epitaph, and if he postponed it until it was actually needed the interlocutor would never see it; therefore he would have him compose it, whatever it was, at once. With a laugh Shakespeare immediately complied by reciting this verse : Ten in the hundred lies here engraved, 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved. If any man ask who lies in this tomb, "Oho," quoth the devil, "'tis my John-a-Combe." In the Warwickshire dialect "a combe" means "has come." Was it in memory of this jeu-d'esprit that Combe left the poet a legacy of five pounds? Only less apocryphal than the foregoing is that ascribed to Ben Jonson. It appears that "rare Ben" had been invited to a conviviality at the Falcon Tavern. At the time he was heavily in debt at the hostelry. Mine host's heart softening, he offered to accept payment in the poet's own coin,-to wit, he would wipe out the score if he would instanter compose a rhyme in which he would tell what God and the devil, what the world and mine host himself, would be most pleased with: to which the poet promptly responded, God is best pleased when men forsake their sin; Leaving now the mythological and advancing into the historical ages of the impromptu, it may be remarked by way of preface that, the spontaneousness of their creation apart, impromptus are in all other respects a most heterogeneous lot. They assume every imaginable form, and their contents may be a parody or a polemic, a clever thought epigrammatically expressed, a bit of drollery, grotesquerie, or persiflage. The object is generally to elicit an approbatory smile or to raise a laugh. A very effective impromptu was that of the Duke of Dorset. The duke, John Dryden, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield were in the habit of spending their evenings together. On one occasion it was proposed that the three aristocrats should each write a something and place it under the candlestick, and that Dryden (who was at that period in very indifferent circumstances) should determine who had written the best thing. No sooner proposed than agreed to. The scrutiny commenced, judgment was given. "My lords," said Dryden, addressing Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, “you each of you have proved your wit, but I am sure you will, nevertheless, agree with me that his Grace the Duke of Dorset has excelled; pray attend, my lords: 'I promise to pay to John Dryden, Esq., on demand, One Hundred Pounds.— DORSET." It scarcely need be observed that the noble wits subscribed to the judgment. Not a whit less effective, however, was the well-timed speech by a mechanic. At the time when Sir Richard Steele was preparing his great room in "York Building" for public orations, he happened to be considerably behind.. x ii 45 |