The Portrait

: Literary Fables Of Yriarte

A spreading contagion, defacing our tongue

With phrases outlandish, our critics bemoan.

But some fools have their notions of purity hung

Upon obsolete terms superseding our own.

Living words they despise as a vulgar intrusion,

And forgotten ones rake from oblivion's gloom.

For a word of advice on such stupid conclusion,

In phrase like their own, we here must find room;
/> In two dialects, jostling in motley confusion.



Of our own times a Painter--who jealousy felt

That some portraits antique, of a day long bygone

From the connoisseurs won both lauding and gelt--

Determined to make some antiques of his own.

So essaying, one day, the portrait to limn

Of a certain rich man, in high estimate held,

He deemed that a dress of antiquity grim

Would give to his limning the impress of eld.



For a second Velasquez he counted to stand--

When the traits of the sitter, to perfect content,

Having deftly depicted--with grave collar and band,

And glittering gauds, he a costume besprent

That had figured, whilom, as stately and grand.



To his patron the work he carries with speed.

He, his form thus yclad with wonderment saw;

By such odd gear full sorely astounded, I rede,--

Though the face of the portrait showed dainty and braw.



This antick his patron, to quip him, devised--

The Painter a guerdon to grant, to his gree--In

a chest, as heir-loom from his ancestry prized,

Some old coins had been lying for centuries three;

Of the first of the Charles' and fifth Ferdinand,

Of Philip the second and Philip the third:

A purse full of these he placed in the hand

Of the Painter abashed--but ne'er said a word.



"With these coin--or, as certes, I rather might say--

These medals, to market if I chance for to his,"--

Quoth our limner,--"when victuals I needed, I pray,

How, with such, could I chaffer my cheer to supply?



"But sith," said the other, "you've pranked me out there

In a guise, that was once brave and lordly,--'tis true,

But which no living man but a beadle would wear;

As you 've painted me, so I have paid you.

Take your picture again, and paint round my throat

A cravat, instead of that collar and band--Yon

satin slashed doublet exchange for my coat,

And my rapier, too, for that basket-hilt brand;

Not one, in the city's whole compass, there is

Who, in trappings like these, would guess at my phiz.

Paint me like myself, and the price I'll lay down

In good money, current in country or town."



* * * * *



Hold, now. If we laugh at the farcical notion

Of this modern Painter, and deem it so droll,

Why may we not laugh at the Author's devotion,

His ideas who drapes in antiquity's stole;--

Who shocks us with phrases all mouldy with age;

Thinks oddity graceful;--and purity's self

Considers his style, when he darkens his page

With expressions forgotten and laid on the shelf;--

And believes that no term by pure taste is forbid,

If it only were good in the time of the Cid?



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