Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-07-22
TO BE CONTINUED.
BLUE EYES AND GRAY.
What Poets and ROmancers Have to Say About
Them
New York Commercial Advertiser.

Them.
New York Commercial Advert
A newspaper has found fault with Mr..
Stockton for speaking of his heroine in
''The Late Mrs. Null" as blue-eyed on one
page and grey-eyed on another. But if
this was an inadvertence, which we NAV
doubt, the author can cite the most illus
trious precedents in his defense. The
authority of Shakespeare, for example,
supports him. The dramatist describes
the eyes of Vents first as gray and then
as blue; commenting on which, Malone
writes:
"What we now call blue eyes were in
Shakespeare time called gray eyes. and
were considered beautiful"
Elsewhere in Shakespeare we find Julia
in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
given eyes ''as gray as glass;" and Olivia,
in ''Twelfth Night" when making out a
schedule of her beauty, inserts as one
item ''two gray eyes with lids on them"
Byron, who loved the eye and studied
it, favored gray eyes. eff they have
SOUL" as a safe and happy medium be-
tween blue and black. He gives this tint
to Mary, Queen of Scots. But Byron
trips as blandly as our author of to-day,
for in one place he speaks of Minerva as
'the blue-eyed maid of heaven" and
elsewhere as a goddess ''too wise to look
through optics black Or blue"
One reason, perhaps, why the poets and
romancers are little shy of the gray
eye is because it approaches perilously
near to the green. Yet, now that the
green is the literary fashion, that objec-
ton does not have its accustomed force.
We shall not enter on a defence of the
green eye, but its popularity in contem-
pOrary fiction is well known, and the
fashion, be it good or bad, has respect
able line of literary precedents. Long
fellow iustifes it's use in ''The Spanish
Student" by foot note which explains
that ''the green-eye is much esteemed in
some parts of Spain" Juliet's nurse
tells her that Romeo is naught in COM
parison with his rival Paris, of whom
she says:
An eagle, madam,
Hath not SO green, so quick, so fair an
eye.
Chaucer also gives Emeritus, in the
"'Nnight's Tale" eyes of lemon or citron
hue. But as a rule, in spite of these and
other instances that might be cited the
green eye is not admired. Most people
will agree with Burns in his scOrn of the
wife of Willie WassIe:
She had an ee, she has but ane.
The cat has twa the very color.
If space permitted US to go into this
subject more in detail we might show
that English writer's have generally
associated the blue or gray eye with a
mild and truthful nature. But we may be
allowed to doubt if the blondes are as
gentle and the brundle are as ferocious
as they are painted. In an interview
which appeared recently in western
newspaper a sheriff who had dealings
with most of the "bad men" of the plains
said that these outlaws were almost I'M
iformly blends with light blue and gray
eyes. And Byron notes, to return to
literature, that the cruel and icentions
Catherine of Russia had very blue eyes.
Evidently the ''heavenly" hue of some
eyes is simply a coincidence.
Brutreality there are very few blue eyes
that outlast childhood. The ''baby blue
is soon lost and the eyes become a gray
or green, until possibly they again assume
a peculiar glory of heavenly radiance in
the eyes of some one particular person of
the opposite sex.