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POETS' HOUSES.

PAPER in Mr. Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature," upon "Literary Residences," is very amusing and curious: but it begins with a mistake in saying that "men of genius have usually been condemned to compose their finest works, which are usually their earliest ones, under the roof of a garret ; " and the author seems to think that few have realized the sort of house they wished to live in. The combination of "genius and a garret" is an old joke, but little more. Genius has been often poor enough,

but seldom so much so as to want what are looked upon as the decencies of life. In point of abode, in particular, we take it to have been generally lucky as to the fact, and not at all so grand in the desire as Mr. Disraeli seems to imagine. Ariosto, who raised such fine structures in his poetry, was asked, indeed, how he came to have no greater one when he built a house for himself; and he answered, that "palaces are easier built with words than stones." It was a pleasant answer, and fit for the interrogator: but Ariosto valued himself much upon the snug little abode which he did build, as may be seen by the inscription still remaining upon it at Ferrara ; * and we will venture to say for

* See an engraving of the house itself, with its "Gallery of Portraits," No. 28, article "Ariosto." garden-ground which belonged to it.

inscription, in the But it wants the

the cordial, tranquillity-loving poet, that he would rather live in such a house as that, and amuse himself with building palaces in his poetry, than have undergone the fatigue, and drawn upon himself the publicity, of erecting a princely mansion full of gold and marble. No mansion which he could have built would have equalled what he could fancy: and poets love nests from which they can take their flights, not worlds of wood and stone to strut in, and give them a sensation. If so, they would have set their wits to get rich, and live accordingly; which none of them ever did yet, - at any rate, not the greatest. Ariosto notoriously neglected his "fortunes," in that sense of the word. Shakespeare had the felicity of building a house for himself, and settling in his native town; but, though the best in it, it was nothing equal to the "seats" outside of it (where the richer men of the district lived) and it appears to have been a "modest mansion;" not bigger, for instance, than a good-sized house in Red-Lion Street, or some other old quarter in the metropolis. Suppose he had set his great wits to rise in the state, and accumulate money, like Lionel Cranfield, for example, or Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son. We know that any man who chooses to begin systematically with a penny, under circumstances at all favorable, may end with thousands. Suppose Shakespeare had done it: he might have built a house like a mountain. But he did not, it will be said, because he was a poet; and poets are not getters of money. Well, and for the same reason, poets do not care for the mightest things which money can get. It cannot get them health and freedom, and a life in

:

the green fields, and mansions in Fairyland; and they prefer those, and a modest visible lodging.

Chaucer had a great large house.to live in, a castle, — because he was connected with royalty; but he does not delight to talk of such places: he is all for the garden, and the dasied fields, and a bower like a "pretty parlor." His mind was too big for a great house; which challenges measurement with its inmates, and is generally equal to them. He felt elbowroom, and heart-room, only out in God's air, or in the heart itself, or in the bowers built by Nature, and reminding him of the greatness of her love.

Spenser lived at one time in a castle,—in Ireland, — a piece of forfeited property, given him for political services; and he lived to repent it: for it was burnt in civil warfare, and his poor child burnt with it; and the poet was driven back to England, broken-hearted. But look at the houses he describes in his poems, even he who was bred in a court, and loved pomp, after his fashion. He bestows the great ones upon princes and allegorical personages, who live in state and have many servants (for the largest houses, after all, are but collections of small ones, and of unfitting neighborhoods too); but his nests, his poetic bowers, his delicia and amanitates, he keeps for his hermits and his favorite nymphs, and his flowers of courtesy: and observe how he delights to repeat the word “little," when describing them. His travellers come to "little valleys," in which, through the tree-tops, comes reeking up a "little smoke" (a "chearefull signe," quoth the poet), and

"To little cots in which the shepherds lie;"

and though all his little cots are not happy, yet he is ever happiest when describing them, should they be so, and showing in what sort of contentment his mind delighted finally to rest.

A little lowly heritage it was,

Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side,
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travel to and fro. A little wide
There was an holy chappell edifyde,
Wherein the hermit dewly wont to say
His holy things each morn and eventide :
Thereby a crystall streame did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountain wellèd forth alway.

Arrived there, the little house they fill,

Nor look for entertainment where none was;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will:
The noblest mind the best contentment has."

Milton, who built the Pandemonium, and filled it with

"A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,"

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was content if he could but get a garden-house" to live in, as it was called in his time; that is to say, a small house in the suburbs, with a bit of garden to it. He required nothing but a tree or two about him to give him "airs of Paradise." His biographer shows us that he made a point of having a residence of this kind. He lived as near as he could to the woodside and the fields, like his fellow-patriot, M. Beranger, who would have been the Andrew Marvell of those times, and adorned his great friend as the other did, or like his Mirth (l'Allegro) visiting his Melancholy.

And hear beloved Cowley, quiet and pleasant as the sound in his trees: "I never had any other de

sire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always,

that I might be

master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and study of nature; and there, with no design beyond my wall,

'Whole and entire to lie,

In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty."

The Garden.

"I confess," says he in another essay (on Greatness), “I love littleness almost in all things, a little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if ever I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it), it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty."

(What charming writing! - how charming as writing, as well as thinking! and charming in both respects, because it possesses the only real perfection of either, truth of feeling.)

Cowley, to be sure, got such a house as he wanted, "at last," and was not so happy in it as he expected to be; but then it was because he did only get it "at last," when he was growing old, and was in bad health. Neither might he have ever been so happy in such a place as he supposed; (blessed are the poets, surely, in enjoying happiness even in imagination!) yet he would have been less comfortable in a house less to his taste.

Dryden lived in a house in Gerrard Street (then almost a suburb), looking, at the back, into the gar