Loves Meinie | Page 2

which live only to slack themselves into slang, or bloat themselves
into bombast, must one day have new grammars written for their
license, and new laws for their insolence.
[2] Greek is now a living nation's language, from Messina to
Delos--and Latin still lives for the well-trained churchmen and
gentlemen of Italy.
Observe, however, that the recast methods of classification adopted in
this book, and in 'Proserpina,' must be carefully distinguished from
their recastings of nomenclature. I am perfectly sure that it is wiser to
use plain short words than obscure long ones; but not in the least sure
that I am doing the best that can be done for my pupils, in classing
swallows with owls, or milkworts with violets. The classification is
always given as tentative; and, at its utmost, elementary: but the
nomenclature, as in all probability conclusive.

For the rest, the success and the service of all depend on the more or
less thorough accomplishment of plans long since laid, and which
would have been good for little if their coping could at once have been
conjectured or foretold in their foundations. It has been throughout my
trust, that if Death should write on these, "What this man began to build,
he was not able to finish," God may also write on them, not in anger,
but in aid,
"A stronger than he, cometh."

LOVE'S MEINIE.
"Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx."
Romance of the Rose.

LECTURE I.[3]
THE ROBIN.
1. Among the more splendid pictures in the Exhibition of the Old
Masters, this year, you cannot but remember the Vandyke portraits of
the two sons of the Duke of Lennox. I think you cannot but remember
it, because it would be difficult to find, even among the works of
Vandyke, a more striking representation of the youth of our English
noblesse; nor one in which the painter had more exerted himself, or
with better success, in rendering the decorous pride and natural grace of
honorable aristocracy.
[3] Delivered at Oxford, March 15th, 1873.
Vandyke is, however, inferior to Titian and Velasquez, in that his effort
to show this noblesse of air and persons may always be detected; also
the aristocracy of Vandyke's day were already so far fearful of their
own position as to feel anxiety that it should be immediately

recognized. And the effect of the painter's conscious deference, and of
the equally conscious pride of the boys, as they stood to be painted, has
been somewhat to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the
dignity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the
youths' beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all
splendors of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear questioning
with myself what the true value was, in the scales of creation, of these
fair human beings who set so high a value on themselves; and,--as if
the only answer,--the words kept repeating themselves in my ear, "Ye
are of more value than many sparrows."
2. Passeres, [Greek: strouthos]--the things that open their wings, and
are not otherwise noticeable; small birds of the land and wood; the food
of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own
kind,--that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of
beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death of
one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been the
subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much
sentiment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aimless, and
the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the
leisure of mankind has been found in the destruction of the creatures
which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see
perish without pity; and, in recent days, it is fast becoming the only
definition of aristocracy, that the principal business of its life is the
killing of sparrows.
Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum mille
perdrices plumbo confecit;"[4] that is, indeed, too often the sum of the
life of an English lord; much questionable now, if indeed of more value
than that of many sparrows.
[4] The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in "Sartor Resartus."
3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for the last
two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the farmers of
Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein?[5] Is it not
one equally strange that, master of the forests of England for a thousand
years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left the natural history of

birds to be written by a card-printer's lad of Newcastle?[6] Written, and
not written, for indeed