Chapter V: Part 5

Not lingering upon his many minor works--works now of no interest to the reader--we will pass on to his three greater ones--"Revenge," a tragedy--the "Night Thoughts"--and "Love of Fame," a series of satirical poems. Of the first it will be unnecessary to say more than that it still keeps possession of the stage. Of the "Night Thoughts," Blair and Johnson have both spoken in high terms. These, say they, are great poems, abounding with "rich and fervid thought expressed in a manner seldom turgid--often noble." And with this very brief notice, mindful of the long path before me, I will content myself and proceed to his satires. These, it strikes me, perhaps singularly, are our poet's best works. Swift has said of them that they should have been either "more merry or more severe," and the sententious brevity of this criticism has made it a popular one. Boileau sacrificed Tasso to an antithesis; wits suffer an epigrammatic point to outweigh real merit. We must make allowance therefore for the Dean's professional indifference to truth of criticism. Young's satires were much labored. They show it,--_ars_ NON _celat artem_; but this in satire is hardly a fault. We distrust the severity which we believe born of the hour's anger: we say the poet will repent of this hollow and unmerited invective when cool. But when a work bears about it the mark of labor, we hold it to be the offspring of a judicious and settled hatred of all that it castigates. Such a work oftenest has truth upon its face. This exposure of the laboring hand, then, is a merit in the satires before us. Of their epigrammatic {103} sententiousness, the reader may judge from a distich or two which I mean now to select from an indifferent page. Speaking of noblemen:

"These stand for fame on their forefathers' feet,
By heraldry proved valiant or discreet."

* * * * *

"Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase--
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race."

* * * * *

"Titles are marks of honest men and wise--
The fool or knave that wears a title lies."

* * * * *

"They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt, instead of their discharge."

These are perhaps too frigid and naked. They have the cold insulation of the blocks in Mosaic. This in satire may be called "the being meritorious to a fault."

Young was something of an improvisatore, and almost the prettiest thing that I remember is a little sketch of a garden-scene during his courtship. One of the ladies referred to was Elizabeth, daughter of Lee, Earl of Litchfield; she afterwards became his wife.

"Sometime before his marriage, the poet walking in his garden at Welwyn, with his lady and another, a servant brought him word that a great person wished to speak with him. 'Tell him,' said the doctor, 'I am too happily engaged to change my situation.' The ladies insisted he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his patron and his friend; and as persuasion had no effect on him, they took him, one by the right hand, the other by the left, and led him to the garden gate. He then laid his hand upon his heart, and in the expressive manner for which he was so remarkable, uttered the following lines:

"Thus Adam looked when from the garden driven,
And thus disputed orders sent from heaven;
Like him I go, but yet to go am loth--
Like him I go, for angels drove us both.
Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind--
His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind."

Passages occurred between our Poet and Voltaire while the latter was in England, and in these his powers of improvisation stood him in good stead. I will not quote instances.

Dr. Young has been reckoned an example of primeval piety, but gloom was mingled with it. When at his house in the country, he spent many hours among the tombs of his own churchyard. I have noticed his mode of study while at Oxford. These peculiarities betokened gloominess of temper, in spite of his occasional fondness for hunting and the bowling-green. "His wit was" more crushing than "poignant"--his poetic faculties were rather strong than beautiful.--Indeed his works often display a dark, stern roughness. In a word, he was a writer of a vast and sombre imagination--full of metaphor--rather metaphysical--sometimes obscure, and this rather from idea than expression; for his diction (as that of most great writers is,) was simple and healthy. He had the force of the later Pollock, without his extravagance--the melancholy of Kirke White, without his proneness to inane complaint; and in a word, possessed many merits with few failings.

Edward Young died in April, 1765, aged eighty-four years, and was buried beside his wife under the altarpiece of the church at Welwyn.

III. William Shenstone, of the Leasowes, in Hales Owen, a detached portion of Shropshire, was born in November, 1714. In early youth he manifested a great fondness for books--a fondness which increased upon him with years.

Shenstone did not write from necessity; and until summoned by the death, in 1745, of Mr. Dolman--a gentleman who appears to have been _in loco parentis_--to the management of his own estate, he lived "a restless life, flying to places of fashionable resort, and from one to another of these."

Four years before the death of Mr. Dolman, he had published two poems--The Judgment of Hercules, and The Schoolmistress--the latter of considerable merit. After retiring to his estate in Hales Owen, he wrote his elegies, odes, ballads, levities, &c. &c, the first of which have, more than any thing else, gained him his renown as a poet.

Shenstone passed many years of his life in embellishing his grounds at the Leasowes. Improving on the admirable lessons of Lord Bacon, he formed an Utopia at the foot of the Wrekin, and "became famous even on the continent for his taste in gardening." But with Shenstone as a gardener I have nothing to do. Of his poems, the Schoolmistress is the most amiable and natural. We find the simplicity of this combined with a querulous tenderness in his elegies. I scarcely know of any thing in the elegiac order so pretty and touching as the little poem in which he refers to the murder of Kenelm the Saxon boy, by a sister who had been his nurse, and who had doted on him--until an ambitious yearning after the crown of Mercia, and the words of a paramour, made her, while hunting among the Clent hills, "do murder on him"--on him whom an old chronicler has quaintly yet touchingly styled "the sunnye hayred brotherr of her hearte."

Shenstone was a poet of refined tastes. His fancy was polished, and he had trained himself well in the art of expression--if expression can be called an art. Like his brother poets, he worshipped at the shrine of love--often mingling the myrtle with the cypress. His Delia was no creature of the imagination. And like the Althea of Lovelace--like the nameless bringer of "wilde unrest" to Shakspeare--like her who was as a long-toothed viper at the heart of poor Lope de Vega; in fine, without multiplying "likes," Delia, if we are to judge from the poet's tone and life, did not love where she was best loved. Alas! when was woman as the rose which the nightingale serenades? When opened she her heart to song? Dante sung to Beatrice--Tasso made the name of Leonora D'Este famous on earth--Petrarch spun his heart into melody, and immortalized his Laura--Wyatt rhymed to Anne Boleyn. And how ended their wooings? Some worse--none better than that of Shenstone.

The letters of our author were thought by himself his best writings. Those to his friend Mr. Whistler, which he wrote with most care, were (to the poet's bitter regret) destroyed by Whistler's brother, "a Goth of a fellow."

William Shenstone died in February, 1763.

He is said to have been a man above the middle stature; somewhat clumsy in his appearance; careless in his dress, "as in every thing else but his grounds and his hair," which latter he adjusted in a particular {104} manner in defiance of fashion; kind to his domestics; generous to strangers; slow to take offence, and slow to forgive it.

His tomb is in the churchyard of Hales Owen.

IV. "Thomas Gray, eminent for a few poems that he has left, was born in London in 1716, and died in 1771. He was perhaps the most learned man in Europe, equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science. A new arrangement of his poems, with notes and additions, was made and printed in 8vo. in 1799."

V. I pass over several great names, and come to one whose life was too short for the attainment of the fame to which nature gave him a title. Thomas Chatterton, "the marvellous boy," realized the fable of the nightingale, and sang with his breast against a thorn; but he grew weary of the world at eighteen, and removed himself from it. And we can hardly wonder that he should have done so, when we remember the sad end to which his boyish dreamings came among the garrets and filthy alleys of London. To fall at once from the high atmosphere, whither a poet's early longings draw him as with a golden chain--to find one's castles in air tumbling about one's ears--to feel the veins ache for want of a little bread--to be driven by that ache to the very cellars and stews of literature--to rake from some foul corner wherewithal to support life--are enough to break a spirit stouter even than that of Chatterton. It did break his spirit, and subvert the pure principles with which he began life. What stronger proof do we need of this, than that most amusing yet villainous instance of his calculating powers, in which he feels "thirteen shillings and sixpence worth of joy at the Lord Mayor's death?" A charity student in Bristol; an apprentice sleeping up in an attic with a foot-boy--"the marvellous youth" had dreams, and adventured to London in search of their fulfilment. Here he published a volume of poems purporting to be the remains of "one Rowley." These were full of crabbed spelling and black-letter phrases, and had so much the appearance of genuine antiquity, that the world was long divided upon the question of their origin. These poems are certainly known at the present day to have been forgeries by Chatterton. He wrote many other poems, chiefly characterized by a reckless and fiery tone of feeling--by a restless yearning after "a something to fill the void of a hurt spirit withal"--and by a dark melancholy, only at rare times lighted up by a gleam of his wild heart's yet wilder hopes. In London he entered upon the field of politics, and soon became a caterer for a party newspaper. Then followed the grinding meanness of booksellers and editors; and maddened by the consciousness that his genius was poured out only as water on the dust--that the exertions which he had trusted would make him great among men, did not suffice to clothe him and allay hunger,--maddened with the knowledge of these sad truths, are we to marvel that poor Chatterton should "have done his own death?"

Chatterton was not unlike Byron. The morbid misanthropy hanging unfixedly about the former--fully developed in the latter--was in both but a retort upon their fellows. Both had hearts which only detraction or cold neglect could harden into a hatred of humanity. Both threw out venom against their enemies. But whence came this venom? The affections of both were at one time as pure as the sap of the fabled honey-tree. It was only by a fermentation produced by the hot atmosphere of hostility or cruel slight, that the sap, once blander than honey, became a bitter poison.

Chatterton was like Byron too in many other respects,--in his hunger after immortality--in his alternations of excess and abstinence--in his self-consciousness of genius--and in the most dark and deistic views of death. Need I, after all that I have said of his ambition, his struggles, and his most reckless tone of writing, say that Chatterton's was a fiery and determined spirit? "His affections were subordinate to the sterner leanings of the brain. He had the stout soul and the tender heart of the old-time troubabour; but his heart was less tender than his soul was stout."

Chatterton could never have been happy. The presence of ambition--that brain-ache--would have made him miserable, had he lived beyond the green season of youth even to its gratification. But why do I say that he could have never been happy? There are surely more kinds of happiness than the one quiet kind of which Darby and Joan are a fit instance. Is there _not_ a thunder-storm kind? The mysterious joy which we see thrown from the heart to the face in the picture of "Byron on the sea-shore," is surely a species of happiness. Chatterton, with hope to support him, might have been happy in the darkest struggles of a dark career. With hope to support him! But "that was the misery." Despair came to him and he died, (not out of his boyhood) with no thought of future renown--with no thought but of present obscurity and present wretchedness.

But although he committed suicide with "no thought of future renown," he had scarcely been buried in a shell in the burying-ground of Shoe-lane Workhouse, before "honors began to gather about his memory." The famous Tyrwhitt published his poems, with a preface, introduction and glossary; a few years after, a very splendid edition was published by Dr. Mills, Dean of Exeter, with a dissertation and commentary; more lately, Southey, the best biographer of the age, has collected his works and written his life--and incidental tributes, without number, have been offered by great names at the pauper-shrine of "the boy of Bristol." There are some verses of his minstrel's song in "Ella," which may be considered as a personal elegy.

"O sing unto my roundelay--
O drop the briny tears with me;
Dance no more at holiday--
Like a running river be.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree.

Black his hair as the summer night,
White his brow as the winter snow,
Red his face as the morning light,
Cold he lies in the grave below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree.

Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note,
Quick in the dance as thought can be--
Deft his tabor--cudgel stout--
O he lies by the willow tree.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree. {105}

Hist, the raven flaps his wing
To the night-mares as they go,
And the death-owl hoarse doth sing,
From the briared dell below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree."

I have little or no more to say of Thomas Chatterton; I have already said too much. But the heart rules the head when we look upon the wretched career--least wretched in its wretched end--of one fitted for the loftiest achievements. A rocket with "the wide sky" before it--the blaze and the flight of his genius was scarcely beyond the fogs that lie near earth. It fell, blackened, and scorched, and lightless, to the dust. Had "the marvellous boy" feared death more than he had been taught to fear life, the rocket would have been in "the wide sky," not in the dust--the wonder of men, not their pity.

Thomas Chatterton died in 1770, aged seventeen years and nine months.

VI. From the days of old Thomas the Rhymer the barren glens and bleak hills of Scotland have been holy earth. An essence strong and mystic, an invisible presence, a something undefined, but powerful, hangs above and rests upon them. "The mantle of _historic poetry_ is upon her soil!" and the floating and fragmentary images on this mantle--in their influence, like those upon the Arras tapestry in the haunted chamber of Monkbarns--fashion the dreams of one looking upon it rarely. The dreamer dreams of Wallace wight, and of the deeds of the Bruce--of Douglas "tender and true," and of the hardy feats of the moss troopers, whose homes were from Inck Colm to the Solway.

But the mantle of a milder poesy is too upon the Scottish valleys and hills! Shepherds have tuned the pipe to love among the hollows of Ettrick Wood--on the levels beside Yarrow--down by the shores of Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch Leven and Loch ---- Apollo knows what! A poet has sat on Eildon hill, and forgotten the hand of Michael the conjurer in a vision of love. Move where you may you will see the marks of these. Their songs ring in your ears, as the voices of the musical doves of the Bahamas haunt him who visits their pebbly islets. I have now to speak of one who wound these two mantles together:--mingling the spirit of _martial frolic_[2] with the softer one of Eros.

[Footnote 2: There is a dash of merry _rattlingsomeness_ in the old Scottish spirit--that spirit which carried the Kerr and the Scott into the cattle lands South of the Tweed--rendering it a spirit rather of _martial frolic_ than of chivalry.]

Most readers are familiar with the life as well as poetry of Robert Burns. The son of a gardener--brought up to "the plough, scythe and reap-hook"--his mind took upon itself the sturdy simplicity of his occupation. Scarcely a moderate English scholar, unversed in "lore of books," he won himself a place as an author among the greatest men of his time. Burns, like Scott, was much indebted to the nursery tales of his childhood for his success in after life. The oak springs from an acorn--and an old crone's vagaries had a great share in making our ploughman a poet. "She had," he tells us in his brief autobiography, "the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kedyers, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery."

The earliest composition that he read with pleasure was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning

"How are thy servants blest, O Lord."

These he met with in Mason's English Collection, one of his school-books. He next read the Life of Hannibal, which taught him to strut after the recruiting drum and bagpipe; and the Life of Wallace, which made "his veins boil with a Scottish prejudice." From fourteen to sixteen he lived after a most wretched fashion--toiling at the plough, and oppressed by poverty.

At sixteen he fell in love, and his own description of the affair is so characteristic that I will quote it. "In my sixteenth autumn, my partner (in the harvest field) was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. She was a _bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass_. In short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointments, gin-horn prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be first of human joys--our dearest blessing here below. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell. Yet medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly--and it was her favorite reel which I attempted giving an imbodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin: but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a country laird's son on one of his father's maids with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he--for excepting he could shear sheep and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months my highest enjoyment."

His nineteenth summer was spent on a smuggling coast, where he learned "mensuration, surveying, dialling," &c. and improved in his knowledge of love and whiskey-drinking. "Yet early ingrained piety and virtue kept him for several years afterward rather within the line of innocence," notwithstanding that _Vive l'Amour et Vive la Bagatelle_ was his sole principle of action.

Harassed at length by pecuniary difficulties, and driven to the border of despair, Burns determined on running off to Jamaica to avoid "the horrors of a jail." Before putting this resolve into execution, he published a small edition of his poems by subscription. He cleared by this 20_l_. and gained some reputation. This sum came very seasonably, as without it he would have been compelled to indent himself for want of money to pay his passage. He had taken his place in a ship about to sail from the Clyde, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, by "opening new prospects to {106} his poetic ambition," overthrew his runaway schemes, and led him to Edinburgh. There the Earl of Glencairn became his patron. His after life is well known.

Burns died in July 1796, and was buried with much state in the southern church yard of Dumfries.

The great misfortune of our poet's life was to want an aim. Without this, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark, a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm made him shun solitude. Add to these incentives to social life, a reputation for bookish knowledge, (comparatively) a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought something like the rudiments of good sense, and it will seem no great wonder that "he was ever one in each companie where jollity and pleasaunce were held in esteeme."

Burns was full of a seeming independence of spirit. He breaks out into the most fiery expressions of contempt for the rich and the great. But we recognize in these rather the man of genius than the man of real independence. If in his real feelings he had been independent of the rich and the great, they might have gone their way and he would have gone his, we should have heard nothing of his scorn and disdain. These were dictated, not as they professed to be, by a spirit of independence, but by that which, wherever it exists, comes in abatement of independence--by pride.[3]

[Footnote 3: "A keen desire of aggrandizement in the eyes of others, a sensitive apprehension of humiliation in their eyes are the constituents of pride."]

Scotland has had an Allan Ramsay to revive the pastoral visions of Colin Clout--an earlier Drummond to transmit to posterity the _fresh philosophy_ of the olden time--a Leyden to haunt the "far east countries" with the pleasant traditions of Teviotdale--an Allan Cunningham to embody the spirit of the ancient Scottish romaunt in the sturdiest language of our own day--a Hogg to fill the Ettrick valleys with the echoes of his "trueful song"--a Scott to restore to the hills of Moffat and to the banks of the Annan the lance and the eye-haunting plume--a Scott to restore knight and monk, to castle and abbey, from the Skye to Melrose--a Scott to tell of old-time woes by Gallawater and by Yarrow--but Robert Burns has no master among these. The "Robin of Ayr had the richest song of them all."

SCENES FROM AN UNPUBLISHED DRAMA.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

I.

ROME. A Hall in a Palace. Alessandra and Castiglione.

_Alessandra_. Thou art sad, Castiglione.

_Castiglione_. Sad!--not I.
Oh, I'm the happiest, happiest man in Rome,
A few days more thou knowest, my Alessandra,
Will make thee mine. Oh, I am very happy!

_Alless_. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing
Thy happiness!--what ails thee, cousin of mine?
Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

_Cas_. Did I sigh?
I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
A silly--a most silly fashion I have
When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh? (_sighing_.)

_Aless_. Thou didst. Thou art not well. Thou hast indulged
Too much of late, and I am vexed to see it.
Late hours and wine, Castiglione,--these
Will ruin thee! thou art already altered--
Thy looks are haggard--nothing so wears away
The constitution as late hours and wine.

_Cas_. (_musing_.) Nothing, fair cousin, nothing--not ev'n deep
sorrow--
Wears it away like evil hours and wine.
I will amend.

_Aless_. Do it. I would have thee drop
Thy riotous company too--fellows low born!
Ill suit the like with old Di Broglio's heir
And Alessandra's husband.

_Cas_. I will drop them.

_Aless_. Thou must. Attend thou also more
To thy dress and equipage--they are over plain
For thy lofty rank and fashion--much depends
Upon appearances.

_Cas_. I'll see to it.

_Aless_. Then see to it!--pay more attention, sir,
To a becoming carriage--much thou wantest
In dignity.

_Cas_. Much, much, oh much I want
In proper dignity.

_Aless_. (_haughtily_.) Thou mockest me, sir!

_Cas_. (_abstractedly_.) Sweet, gentle Lalage!

_Aless_. Heard I aright?
I speak to him--he speaks of Lalage!
Sir Count! (_places her hand on his shoulder_) what art thou
dreaming? he's not well!
What ails thee, sir?

_Cas_. (_starting_.) Cousin! fair cousin!--madam!
I crave thy pardon--indeed I am not well--
Your hand from off my shoulder, if you please.
This air is most oppressive!--Madam--the Duke!

_Enter Di Broglio_.

_Di Broglio_. My son, I've news for thee!--hey?--what's the matter?
(_observing Alessandra_.)
I' the pouts? Kiss her, Castiglione! kiss her,
You dog! and make it up I say this minute!
I've news for you both. Politian is expected
Hourly in Rome--Politian, Earl of Leicester!
We'll have him at the wedding. 'Tis his first visit
To the imperial city.

_Aless_. What! Politian
Of Britain, Earl of Leicester?

_Di Brog_. The same, my love.
We'll have him at the wedding. A man quite young
In years, but grey in fame. I have not seen him,
But Rumor speaks of him as of a prodigy
Pre-eminent in arts and arms, and wealth,
And high descent. We'll have him at the wedding.

_Aless_. I have heard much of this Politian.
Gay, volatile, and giddy--is he not?
And little given to thinking.

_Di Brog_. Far from it love.
No branch, they say, of all philosophy
So deep abstruse he has not mastered it,
Learned as few are learned.

_Aless_. 'Tis very strange,
I have known men have seen Politian
And sought his company. They speak of him
As of one who entered madly into life, {107}
Drinking the cup of pleasure to the dregs.

_Cas_. Ridiculous! Now, _I_ have seen Politian
And know him well--nor learned nor mirthful he.
He is a dreamer and a man shut out
From common passions.

_Di Brog_. Children, we disagree.
Let us go forth and taste the fragrant air
Of the garden. Did I dream, or did I hear
Politian was a _melancholy_ man? (_exeunt_.)

II.

The suburbs. Politian alone.

This weakness grows upon me. I am faint
And much I fear me ill--it will not do
To die ere I have lived!--Stay--stay thy hand
O Azrael, yet awhile!--Prince of the Powers
Of Darkness and the Tomb, O pity me!
O pity me! let me not perish now,
In the budding of my hopes--give me to live,
Give me to live yet--yet a little while:
'Tis I who pray for life--I who so late
Demanded but to die!--what sayeth the Count?

_Enter Baldazzar_.

_Bal_. That knowing no cause of quarrel or of feud
Between the Earl Politian and himself,
He doth decline your cartel.

_Pol_. What didst thou say?
What answer was it you brought me, good Baldazzar?
With what excessive fragrance the zephyr comes
Laden from yonder bowers!--a fairer day,
Or one more worthy Italy, methinks
No mortal eyes have seen!--_what_ said the Count?

_Bal_. That he, Castiglione, not being aware
Of any feud existing, or any cause
Of quarrel between your lordship and himself,
Cannot accept the challenge.

_Pol_. It is most true--
All this is very true. When saw you, sir,
When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid
Ungenial Britain which we left so lately,
A heaven so calm as this--so utterly free
From the evil taint of clouds?--and he did say?

_Bal_. No more, my lord, than I have told you, sir,
The Count Castiglione will not fight,
Having no cause for quarrel.

_Pol_. Now this is true--
All very true. Thou art my friend, Baldazzar,
And I have not forgotten it--thou'lt do me
A piece of service? wilt thou go back and say
Unto this man, that I, the Earl of Leicester,
Hold him a villain--thus much, I prythee, say
Unto the Count--it is exceeding just
He should have cause for quarrel.

_Bal_. My lord!--my friend!------

_Pol_. (_aside_.) 'Tis he--he comes himself! (_aloud_.) thou reasonest
well.
I know what thou wouldst say--not send the message--
Well!--I will think of it--I will not send it.
Now prythee, leave me--hither doth come a person
With whom affairs of a most private nature
I would adjust.

_Bal_. I go--to-morrow we meet,
Do we not?--at the Vatican.

_Pol_. At the Vatican. (_exit Bal_.)
If that we meet at all, it were as well
That I should meet him in the Vatican--
In the Vatican--within the holy walls
Of the Vatican. (_Enter Castiglione_.)

_Cas_. The Earl of Leicester here!

_Pol_. I _am_ the Earl of Leicester, and thou seest,
Dost thou not? that I am here.

_Cas_. My lord, some strange,
Some singular mistake--misunderstanding--
Hath without doubt arisen: thou hast been urged
Thereby, in heat of anger, to address
Some words most unaccountable, in writing,
To me, Castiglione, the bearer being
Baldazzar, Duke of Surrey. I am aware
Of nothing which might warrant thee in this thing,
Having given thee no offence. Ha!--am I right?
'Twas a mistake?--undoubtedly--we all
Do err at times.

_Pol_. Draw, villain, and prate no more!

_Cas_. Ha!--draw?--and villain? have at thee--have at thee then,
Proud Earl! (_draws_.)

_Pol_. (_drawing_.) Thus to th' expiatory tomb,
Untimely sepulchre, I do devote thee
In the name of Lalage!

_Cas_. (_dropping his sword and recoiling to the extremity of the
stage_.)
Of Lalage!
Hold off--hold off thy hand!--Avaunt I say!
Avaunt--I will not fight thee--I dare not--dare not.

_Pol_. Thou wilt not fight with me didst say, Sir Count?
Shall I be baffled thus?--now this is well,
Exceeding well!--thou darest not fight with me?
Didst say thou _darest_ not? Ha!

_Cas_. I dare not--dare not--
Hold off thy hand--with that beloved name
So fresh upon thy lips I will not fight thee--
I cannot--dare not.

_Pol_. Now by my halidom
I do believe thee!--Coward! I do believe thee!
Thou darest not!

_Cas_. Ha!--coward!--this may not be! (_clutches his sword and staggers towards Politian, but his purpose is changed before reaching him, and he falls upon his knee at the feet of the Earl_.) Alas! alas! It is--it is--most true. In such a cause I am--I am--a coward. O pity me!

_Pol_. (_greatly softened_.) Alas!--I do--indeed I pity thee.

_Cas_. And Lalage------

_Pol_. Scoundrel!--arise and die!

_Cas_. It needeth not be--thus--thus--O let me die
Thus on my bended knee. It were most fitting
That in this deep humiliation I perish.
For in the fight I will not raise a hand
Against thee, Earl of Leicester. Strike thou home--
(_baring his bosom_.)
Here is no let or hindrance to thy weapon--
Strike home. I _will not_ fight thee.

_Pol_. Now s'Death and Hell!
Am I not--am I not sorely--grievously tempted
To take thee at thy word? But mark me, sir!
Think not to fly me thus. Do thou prepare {108}
For public insult in the streets--before
The eyes of the citizens. I'll follow thee--
Like an avenging spirit I'll follow thee
Even unto death. Before those whom thou lovest--
Before all Rome I'll taunt thee, villain,--I'll taunt thee,
Dost hear? with _cowardice_--thou _wilt not_ fight me?
By God! thou _shalt!_ (_exit_.)

_Cas_. Now this--now this is just!
Most righteous, and most just, avenging Heaven!

VIRGINIA.

Extracts from an unpublished Abridgment of the History of Virginia.

BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD.

This man's memory is closely identified with the history of this country, and his death was a sensible shock to the struggling destinies of Virginia. In the language of one of the historians, "Virginia had its origin in the zeal and exertions of Bartholomew Gosnold." He had early patronised the settlement of the Colony, while it was yet in embryo. He possessed a knowledge of the country not exceeded by any man of his time, which had been acquired by actual voyages to that region; and on his return, to the accuracy of his details of its real advantages, and to the ardor of his speculations upon its brilliant perspective, is mainly to be attributed the revival of the enterprise which had drooped with the misfortunes of Raleigh. The importance of the services of a man like Smith had not escaped his penetration, and he enlisted him in the expedition, by means most likely to engage the attention of an ardent and adventurous mind like Smith's--by opening to him schemes full of enterprise and danger, but full also of the promise of lasting fame. He had been the steadfast friend of Smith in all his persecutions before the Council; and although unable entirely to protect him, his known high standing with the company in England, to which they were all responsible, joined to his moderation and firmness on the spot, contributed much to assuage their dissensions, and operated as a partial check to the reckless depravity of Wingfield and his creatures.

SIR T. DALE.

Upon the whole this man's government in the colony, will rather be tolerated upon considerations of its expediency and utility, than applauded for its moderation and justice--impartiality will assent to the wisdom of his economy, illustrated by his subversion of the system of common stock, by which, without diminishing the amount of contribution exacted from the idle, he offered inducements and encouragements to the diligent, and thus effected the assurance of ample provision, independent of the natives--but aggressions upon the chartered and natural rights of mankind, find willing apologists enough among the sycophants and satellites of power, without receiving the sanction of history; and however his conduct may be extenuated by the admission that his office was rather one of ministry than authority, and that the forbidden power was precedent in the colony, that he rarely resorted to it, and only in extreme instances, there yet remains much to condemn in the adoption of martial law, and much to deplore in the fate of Abbot.

CAPTIVITY OF POCAHONTAS.

Pocahontas was among this people, (the Potommacks;) the reason of her absence from her father's court, is imperfectly afforded by the early historians. Stith conjectures "it was to withdraw herself from being a witness to the frequent butcheries of the English, whose folly and rashness after Smith's departure put it out of her power to save them." Probably she had been exiled by the displeasure of her father, for her partiality to the English; or he had confided her to the protection of the neighboring king, to secure her from the dangers of the war in which he was involved with the whites.

The temptation of possessing such an hostage as the princess, was too powerful to be restrained, by the few scruples of conscience that arise in the breast of a rude English sailor. Argall seduced Jappassas, by a paltry bribe, and Pocahontas was betrayed by her perfidious host into the hands of the English, to be led into captivity. Power was never yet at a loss for plausible pretexts to palliate its outrage on virtue: policy, expediency, necessity, are the hackneyed themes resorted to, to mitigate the merited reprobation; but the human heart will not be answered so. Insulted, not convinced, by the proffered palliative, it recoils from the false and unnatural subterfuge, and true to its connate susceptibilities, entertains forever the same sentiment of instinctive abhorrence. As long as the memory of the compassionate Pocahontas shall be cherished by a remote and admiring posterity in Virginia, so long will the unhallowed names of Argall and Jappassas be associated with deep and bitter execrations.

DEATH AND MEMORY OF POCAHONTAS.

The Princess died at Gravesend, on the eve of her departure for Virginia. The office of her panegyrist is confined to the merest details. The simplest narrative of her life, is the profoundest eulogy to her memory. Born in an age too rude to afford her the precepts and the instructions of virtue, while the condition of her sex seemingly precluded her from opportunities for the display of shining merit, she has yet left examples so signal, that after-times will best evince their progress to refinement, by their successful emulation of her mercy, redeeming and saving from captivity and death--and of her capacious charity, feeding a famished people from her hand--and that people a stranger and an enemy. The eye and the bosom of beauty suffused, and throbbing under the compassionate influence of pity--the prostrate attitude--the dishevelled hair--and the impassioned gaze of Pocahontas suing for the life of Smith at the feet of Powhatan--the timid and delicate maiden, heedless of the wonted terrors of her sex, rushing to save, through darkness and danger--Pocahontas at Ratcliffe's massacre, sheltering in her bosom the head of the boy Spillman, and warding with her naked hands the glancing tomahawks; these are passages of her eventful life, beyond the efforts of the pencil or the pen; and, without the aid of any coloring in the representation, melt the coldest hearts into acknowledgments of their moral influence and beauty.

JOHN SMITH.

History is replete with examples of the vulgar great who have obtained high consideration in the world, by their lucky association with moving incidents, and who, without any intrinsic impulse, have tamely lent {109} themselves to the current of swelling events; nor are the instances rare, although rarely appreciated, of great virtue and capacity struggling in the tide of adversity, and sinking, not from any defect of their own resources, but by the depression of their fortune, and who have thus forfeited the world's applause, which awaits rather the prosperous than the deserving. But such is not the estimate of men and events which history owes to posterity; and in transmitting worth to fame, she should pay no adulation to fortune. In her discriminating page the character of John Smith will stand conspicuous, unclouded by the obscurity of the times, and the adversity of the events in which he acted and suffered--conspicuous for a constellation of high and shining attributes, such as at once inspire their possessor with the conception of great designs, and qualify him for their consummation. And his claims to reputation will not be tested merely by his achievements, when it is considered that his destinies confined him to a range of action too narrow for his capacity. How unjust to circumscribe his fame to the limits of a colony, whose faculties were capable to remove and extend the confines of empires! His glory dilates itself beyond the sphere to which it had been assigned by circumstances, and lays claim to the merit of any achievement possible to the greatest virtue.

CAPTIVITY OF SMITH.

Captain Smith was not aware of the stealthy approach of the Indians; a slight wound by an arrow was the first intimation he had of their presence.

In this peril, of a nature to quell the greatest courage, because its exercise must be hopeless, his energies did not desert him; seizing his Indian guide, he constrained him to serve as a shield against the missiles of the assailants--and interposing the Indian's person between himself and his enemies, he commenced his retreat in the direction of the canoe; but being obliged to make face to the Indians, his progress was consequently retrograde, and thus not being able to pick his way, he sunk through the ice to the waist in a morass. Here, embarrassed as he was, he slew with his musket three of the Indians, and for several hours kept the others at a distance, until fatigued with his fruitless efforts to extricate himself from the morass, and benumbed by the cold, he desisted from the idle contest. The Indians dared not yet approach him, until he had thrown his arms to a distance from him, when they raised him and carried him to a fire at the canoe, near which lay the dead bodies of his companions.

Smith, with the vague intention of gaining time, and of making a favorable impression upon his captors, endeavored to establish a communication with their chief, whom he propitiated by the offering of his pocket compass. The curiosity of the savage was forcibly roused by the apparent life in the vibrations of the needle, the motions of which were visible through the crystal, although it eluded his touch; but when the prisoner, by signs, and so much of their language as he had acquired, engaged his attention to the description of its properties and uses--how, by its indication alone, the solitary hunter could track his pathless way, in darkness, through the deepest forests, and direct his canoe through the expanse of waters to its destined point, and this by mysterious and inscrutable influence between the heavenly bodies and the little talisman he held in his hands, the Indian's faculties were absorbed in the recital, and he remained fixed in an attitude of mute and vague wonder.

* * * * *

LADY LEONORE AND HER LOVER.

FYTTE I.

_Leonore_. Why art thou sad?

_Lover_. Sweet Leonore
Come hither and list! On their golden shore
Yon waters sing. The winds are nigh;
They have swept all cloud from the starry sky;
And a rare song-woof their fingers weave
On earth--in air. 'Tis a pleasant eve!
A magic is in wind, moon and star--
A magic that winneth hearts afar
To the days that are past. Come, best beloved,
Look forth from this lattice: own the spell
Which hath moved a spirit long unmoved--
While I tell thee a tale I love to tell.

_Leon_. A tale thou lovest!

_Lover_. Aye, by my word!
As her wail is dear to the shadow bird,
Whose haunt is low in yon Linden glen,
I love the tale of my grievous pain.
The bird of the shadow will wail her wail--
Come hither, sweet Lady, and list my tale;
No word of my lip shall wound thine ear.

_Leon_. I will list thy story--but O, _not here!_
This lattice!--Hast thou----

_Lover_. Forgotten?--no.
Here--erst--when the moon--a bended bow--
Rained its ray-arrows on wave and air,
And their jewelled points illumed thy hair,
I saw thy lips part, and heard thee say,
Thou wouldst love me well till thy dying day.
I am happy!--But Lady, thou wilt not blame
This lip that sad words--sad words--brim o'er
At thought of one whom I may not name.
Wilt thou list my dark story, sweet Leonore?

_Leon_. I hear thee.

_Lover_. The stars and the white-armed moon
Are bright in heaven; and the breath of June
In the faint wind liveth. On such a night,
With the sky as blue, with the moon as bright,
I roved with one by a lonely shore;
_I have loved another_, sweet Leonore!

_Leon_. I hear thee!

_Lover_. Wan were the brow and cheek
Of her whose name I may not speak;
And gentle the flow of her long fair hair;
And her azure eye had a beauty rare.
I won that girl to my doting heart:
But a rival came, and his fiendish art
Fell witheringly--as falls the dew
On Brandon night. Her kinsman knew
That 'twas a sinful and deadly stain--
This last wild love--so not again
Met they--the lovers--in peace or pain!
--He who had won by his fiendish art
Died mad; and _she_ of a broken heart. {110}
They made her a grave by our love's lone shore,
And I laughed in strange mirth, sweet Leonore.

_Leon_. Alas!

_Lover_. Yet a burning and restless pain
Lived evermo' at my heart and brain.
What balm sought I?--Forgetfulness,
Ah!--wo is me! I had none to bless
My desolate heart: no soothing tone
To cheer my spirit seared and lone:
No hand of love to clasp mine own.
And anguish--great anguish dogged my step,
Till I did swear me that a fiend
Spake in mine ear with a hissing lip.
I bared my brow to the haunted wind
On wintry hills; and then in fear
Would seek my couch most lone and drear,
And mutter a name for the dead to hear.
And in my mad dreams, sweet Leonore,
I shuddered and moaned--"Pain evermore!"

_Leon_. Alas!

_Lover_. But time wore fleetly on,
And the lines were less deep on my forehead wan.
I sought to bury my wrongs in wine;
And I sought in the crowd where star-eyes shine
For my thwarted heart a second shrine:--
Yet _this_ in vain! I found it not,
For naught from the book of Time mote blot
The one black page, and Memory ever
Dwelt, till my temples throbbed with fever,
On that stained page and its letters wild.

_Leon_. And yet thou lovedst!

_Lover_. A dream beguiled
My life from anguish. Leonore!
Canst thou unlock the mystic lore
Of sleep and its visions dim and bright?
I slumbered--in pain: the lingering blight
Still lay on my spirit. I dreamed a dream!
Like motes on the swell of a noonday beam,
A thousand vague forms passed me by,
Wheeling and circling hurriedly.
These passed, and methought a lady bright
Leant on my arm, and clasped my hand:
Her chiselled temples were high and white;
But her life did seem as a name in sand,
With the waters near:--For her eyes were wild,
And her long teeth glittered as she smiled,
And her cheek was sunken. I ne'er had seen
That lofty brow with its lily sheen,
In my waking hours, and ne'er till then
Had I heard what I yearned to hear again--
That lady's voice!--Sweet Leonore,
'Twas a gentle joy to linger o'er
That dying one so fair and meek.
While I gazed in love on her faded cheek,
She shuddered and--died! I sprang, aghast,
From my couch, and moaned.
The strange dream passed--
Passed from its seat on my troubled brain.
I awoke to the forms of earth again.
Time flew his soar, as Time aye flies;
And I basked in the light of earthly eyes,
Till, joyous of heart, and light of mood,
I fled from naught save solitude.
I laughed, and many a hoary head
Shook thoughtfully, and wise men said--
As stole vague fears of a stormy morrow--
"Naught knoweth yon gallant _yet_ of sorrow."
In a crowded hall, on a festive night--
Aloof from the fears of dotard eld--
I spake in the ear of a Lady bright,
Whom--awake--I had ne'er, till then, beheld.
_Thine_ was that ear: and much it moved
The chords of my spirit, best beloved,
To gaze on the peerless Leonore.
Thou--_thou_ wast the Lady of the dream;
And I unriddled the mystic lore
Which mortal men a madness deem,
And said, while my heart leapt joyously,
"The dream was the voice of destiny.
Kind Heaven hath sent this gentle one--
This being of beauty--of beauty to atone
For the viper's tooth: and she will be
Through sorrow and joy, mine faithfully,
Till the days of her life on earth are o'er"--
And I wooed and won thee, Leonore.

He ceased. The Lady turned her head,
Her soft cheek flushed with a ruby fever--
But she gazed in his face and meekly said,
"As I love thee now will I love thee ever."

Then passion came to the Lover's eye,
And as he bowed him, tenderly,
To kiss the brow of his Leonore,
These words spake he--"Bliss evermore!"

But constancy dwelleth not on earth,
And this world's joy is of little worth,
For we know that ere the birth of morrow,
The cup may be changed for one of sorrow.
This is a truth my heart hath learned,
From one who loved, and then falsely spurned:
This is a truth which all must know
Whose lots are cast in this world of wo.

A poet's thanks for thy courtesy,
Thou gentle one, whose step with me
Hath kindly been!

One fytte is done--
Yet sith thus far we twain have gone,
I'll "ply my wrest,"[1] then tell thee more
Of the loves of the Lady Leonore.

L. L.

[Footnote 1: _Wrest_ was the name of the key used in tuning his harp by the ancient _Songleur_ or minstrel. "Ply my wrest" is an expression to be met with frequently in the early English poets.]

ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA.

The preservation of a pure English diction is not sufficiently aimed at in America. Some are so entirely Britannic, as to receive every thing for legal tender in letters, which comes across the water. This is thenceforward duly '_marqué au coin_.' Others are so patriotically republican, as to set about the task of nursing the countless brood of cis-Atlantic words, into literary respectability. Both are in error. It is not enough to avoid Amercanisms; nor is it expedient to manufacture a pye-bald dialect, of vulgarisms and provincialisms, for the mere satisfaction of calling it our own. In England, no less than here, the language is growing to an unhealthy exuberance, and many of the words which {111} are fathered on the poor Americans, are distempered excrescences of the overgrown British trunk. Nothing but the appeal to a standard of former golden days of literature and classic taste, can save the noble tongue of freemen from becoming an unwieldy, cacophonious, inconsistent mass of crudities. How much more is there danger, lest the other party, by encouraging unauthorized and American inventions in language, lay the foundation for provincial dialects, which shall hopelessly diverge from one another, until the Mississippian and the Virginian shall be as diverse as were the Athenian and the Macedonian. What this difference was, may be seen at a glance even in Demosthenes on the crown; where the orator blunders in Attic, while he reads in the same breath a decree of the Byzantes in broad-mouthed Doric.

To some minds this may seem a trifling subject; like the countryman's nightingale in Catullus, '_vox et praeterea nihil_.' But, as Mirabeau said, _Words are things._ Language and thought act reciprocally. Unity of speech presupposes unity of thinking; but it also propagates it. Where provincial dialects begin to grow into languages, there is a corresponding divergence of national feeling. In our boundless country, after all our attempts to the contrary, this diversity of language will take place. It is now taking place. We begin to distinguish by his idiom and his pronunciation, the New Englander, the Southron, and the native of the great Western Valley. And there is no possibility of avoiding a separation of greater moment, without some common and acknowledged standard to which the appeal may be made; a standard not fabricated, but adopted--which shall be maintained by men of letters, in opposition to the immensely varying license of the illiterate mass in the respective districts of America.

Such a standard exists in the authorized classics of Great Britain. If we depart from this, we not only fall to pieces at home, but eventually sever our literature from that of the mother country; a mishap to be deprecated by every man who wishes his posterity to drink at "the well-spring of English, pure and undefiled," or who desires our American authors to be honored in Great Britain. We would not be such purists in language, as to stigmatize every word not found in Johnson. There is a fastidiousness on one side, as evil as the recklessness on the other. Fox rejected all words not found in Dryden, and Bulwer speaks of one so addicted to the Saxon element of our tongue, that his English stalks abroad "as naked as a Pict." New objects are discovered in nature, new distinctions are taken in science, new relations are discerned in ancient truths, and all these justify new words. But we are not in danger of pruning too close in this land of universal license. The purity and melody of our language are threatened from the side of indiscriminate adoption of needless words and phrases. The basest provincialisms begin to install themselves in works of reputed elegance; and grammatical solecisms are daily "being engrafted" on our stock. The last phrase is here inserted as a specimen, with our challenge to all the sciolists and misses who use it, to furnish an instance of a similar construction, in any writer of merit, from Robert of Gloucester to Sir James Mackintosh.

Provincialisms are cited abroad as Americanisms. Though "_I guess_" is often used by Locke in the Yankee acceptation, yet even in America it is confined to a particular region, where un-English phraseology is rife. So the sad abuse of that poetical word _evening_ to mean _afternoon_--an abuse which makes mere prose of such a verse as

"Like a bright exhalation in the evening,"