"IMMEASURABLE LAUGHTER."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1
Sin,—If you do not consider this subject sufficiently exhausted may I point out that it is more fully discussed in the "Life of R. S. Hawker" by his son-in-law, Mr. 0. E. Byles, pp. 191, 192, 317, 373?
On p. 192 Hawker writes :—
" We (Tennyson and R. S. H.) discussed worrtaw Ts sopcbrom, 'and I was glad to find that he half agreed with a thought I have long cherished, that these words relate to the Ear and not to the Nye. He (Tennyson) did not disdain a verse of mine made long ago:
Hark ! how old Ocean laughs with all his waves" (i.e., the line quoted by Mr. W. Holmden is stated definitely by R. S. H. to be one of his own). At p. 317 of the Life is an interesting letter from the Earl of Harrowby to R. S. H. comparing Catullus, lxiv. 273 (. . . letnter resonant plan gore caehinni) with the line of ./Eschylus. Other references with the same or similar idea are Lucretius, v. 1003 :
le . ridentibus undis." Milton, "Paradise Lost," iv. 10 :— "Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles." Byron, "The Giaour," lines 12 seq.:— "There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheelc Reflects the tints of many a peak," &e.
Keble may have had in his mind, when he wrote of "the many-
twinkling smile of Ocean," the lines in Gray's "Progress of Poesy"
" To brisk notes of cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet."
P.8.—The line quoted (Spectator, March 9th, p. 391) by Mr, W. Holmden, viz. :— " Hark ! how old Ocean laughs with all his waves" is to be found in a dedicatory poem addressed to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales prefixed to a book by — Blight on the "Ancient Crosses and other Antiquities in East and South Cornwall" (1858).
The poem is included in the "Poetical Works of R. S. Hawker . . . edited ... by Alfred Wallis" (p. 158), published by John Lane, 1899.
In a footnote Hawker quotes the line of 2Eschylus (" Prom. Vinct.," 89) in a footnote, and remarks :—
" Is not all the imagery of this striking passage drawn from the ear P "
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