Murder in Grub Street by Bruce Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

brilliant. But here, let me demonstrate.”
    Dr. Johnson brought it within inches of his poor eyes, shuffled a leaf or two, and stopped. “This will do,” said he. “It is a section of the longer poem which provides title to the rest. This one is given as ‘February.’ “
    And then he read, his loud voice filling the listening room: ‘ ‘When winter heaves a sigh and makes to go / From country lands and fields all ripe with snow
    He lowered the book then and looked from Sir John to me. Conversation resumed around us. “Such words as these,” said he, ” ‘fields all ripe with snow,’ may make no literal sense — snow does not grow from the earth; it is not a crop—yet they present a firm and definite picture to the mind. Clayton’s verse is full of arresting figures in this mode. He is, truly enough, a poet. Perhaps he will develop so as to give such phrases greater meaning.”
    Sir John lowered his head and leaned across the table toward his partner in conversation. “My inquiries of this man,” said he, “have brought back to me the suggestion that he may also be a mad poet. Do you know anything of this?”
    Dr. Johnson’s attitude changed quite abruptly. I noted him straighten and stiffen in his chair. He said nothing for a moment, and when at last he did speak, it was in a quiet, somewhat guarded manner: “Sir, why do you ask me that?”
    (His sensitivity regarding this matter may be explained by rumors bruited since his death, that he was at this very time himself experiencing bouts of severe melancholia and had fears for his sanity.)
    “Because,” said Sir John, “as I have said, you have special knowledge of these men and their humors. Take no offense, Dr. Johnson, but was it not Plato who said that all poets were mad and should therefore be banished?”
    “He meant that, sir, in a hypothetical sense: be banished, that is, from an ideal republic. Besides, Plato was half a poet himself and guilty of vagaries of overstatement.”
    “That is as it may be, but what of this man Clayton?”
    Both men had of a sudden become a bit tetchy.
    “Well, what of him?” demanded Dr. Johnson. “The man is a bumpkin, sir — he talks as a bumpkin, mispronouncing some words, and he moves about as one. He is shy, well-meaning, respectful, yet as tall as I and quite strong from years of labor in the field. He is, in short, a peasant, quite unexceptional in all ways but one, and that is, he is also a poet — which makes him something of a freak. It was as a freak he was presented to us by Crabb, and thus his book was sold and sold remarkablv well. I have heard that there is a second on the way. It is quite difficult to see how such a man, which is to say the man I met briefly, could be held in suspect for a crime such as has been described to me. And as for madness, I … well, indeed, I …”
    At this point, Dr. Johnson’s vociferous response sputtered in anticlimax. Sir John did not prompt nor question; he simply waited until that great master of words had found the proper ones with which to continue, and eventually he did:
    “Indeed, I did hear something at a dinner some months ago from a Somerset gentleman of no special consequence. Having nothing in common with the man, I made a remark on the sudden success of John Clayton and his descriptions of the beauty of his native place. The man responded in rather mean fashion, saying that as far as he knew, Clayton was not much respected there, that he had a reputation as a toper thereabouts, and other such irrelevant slander. But then, sir, he capped his recital by telling me that he had heard that a few years past, long before the ‘peasant poet’ had even begun to achieve some degree of renown, he had been confined for a period of weeks in the shire’s mad hospital. Quite frankly, I did not credit the report. I considered it false and malicious gossip, inspired by the envy of the gentry for the sudden fame of one of a much lower station. I have never