This Mortal Coil | Page 2

Cornwall or the crofter-clad recesses of the Isle of Skye could have doubted for a moment the patent fact that Hugh Massinger was a distinguished (though unknown) poet of the antique school, so admirbly did he fit his part in life as to features, dress and neral appearance Indeed, malicious persons were times unkindly to insinuate that Hugh was a poet, because he found in himself any special aptitude for the buildin of rhyme, but because and bearing imperatively compelled him to adopt the thankless profession of bard in self-justification and self-defense. This was ill-natured, and it was also untrue; for Hugh Massinger had lisped in numbers at least iu penny ones ever since he v. - as able to lisp in print at all. Elizabethan or nothing, he had taken to poetry almost from his very cradle; and had astonished his father at sixteen by a rhymed version of an ode of Horace, worthy the inspiration of the great Dr. Watts himself, and not, perhaps, far below the poetic standard of Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper. At Oxford he had perpetrated a capital Xewdigate; and two years after gaining his fellowship at Oriel, he had published anonymously, in parchment covers, "Echoes from Callimachus, and other Poems" in the style of the early romantic school which had fairly succeeded by careful nursing in attaining the dignity of a second edition under his own name. So that Massinger's claim to the sodality of the craft whose workmen are "born not made" might perhaps be considered as of the genuine order, and not entirely dependent, as cynics averred, upon his long hair, his pensive eyes, his darkbrown cheek, or the careless twist of his necktie and his shirt-collar.
Nevertheless, even in these minor details of the poetical character, it must candidly be confessed that Hugh Massinger outstripped by several points many of the more recognized bards whose popular works are published in regulation green-cloth octavos, and whose hats and cloaks, of unique build, adorn with their presence the vestibule pegs of the Athenaeum itself. He went back to the traditions of the youth of our century. The undistinguished author of "Echoes from Callimachus" was tall and pale, and a trifle Byronic. That his face was beautiful, extremely beautiful, even a hostile reviewer in the organ of another clique could hardly venture seriously to deny: those large gray eyes, that long black hair, that exquisitely chiseled and delicate mouth, would alone have sufficed to attract attention and extort admiration anywhere in the universe, or at the very least in the solar system.
Hugh Massinger, in short, was (like Coleridge) a noticeable man. It would have been impossible to pass him by, even in a crowded street, without a hurried glance of observation and pleasure at his singularly graceful and noble face. He looked and moved every inch a poet; delicate, refined, cultivated, expressive, and sicklied o'er with that pale cast of thought which modern aestheticism so cruelly demands as a proof of attachment from her highest votaries. Yet at the same time, in spite of deceptive appearances to the contrary, he was strong in muscular strength: a wiry man, thin, but well knit: one of those fallacious, uncanny, long-limbed creatures, who can scale an Alp or tramp a score or so of miles before breakfast, while looking as if a short stroll through the Park would kill them outright with sheer exhaustion. Altogether, a typical poet of the old-fashioned school, that -dark and handsome Italianesque man: and as he sat there carelessly, with the paper held before him, in an unstudied attitude of natural grace, many a painter might have done worse than choose the author of "Echoes from Callimachus" for the subject of a pretty Academy pot-boiler.
So Warren Relf, the unknown marine artist, thought to himself in his armchair opposite, as he raised his eyes by chance from the etchings in the "Portfolio,'' and glanced across casually with a hasty look at the undiscovered poet.
'Has the 'Charing Cross' reviewed your new volume yet?" he asked politely, his glance meeting Massinger's while he flung down the paper on the table beside him.
The poet rose and stood with his hands behind his back in an easy posture before the empty fireplace. "I believe it has deigned to assign me half a column of judicious abuse," he answered, half yawning, with an assumption of profound indifference" and contempt for the Charing Cross Review" and all its ideas or opinions collectively. "To tell you the truth, the subject's one that doesn't interest me. In the first place, I care very little for my own verses. And in the second place, I don't care at all for reviewers generally, or for the 'Charing Cross Snarler and its kind in particular. I disbelieve altogether n reviews, in fact. Familiarity breeds contempt.