Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard

the victim.

The "licentiousness" of the story was not Pope's, -it was a fact. All that it had of gross, he has softened ;-all that it had of indelicate, he has purified; all that it had of passionate, he has beautified; -all that it had of holy, he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this, in a few words (I❘ quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. "I fear," says he, "that had the subject of Eloisa fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given us but a coarse draft of her passion." Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts and the letters of Eloisa he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)—all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production.

Let us hear no more of this trash about "licentiousness." Is not Anacreon taught in our schools?translated, praised, and edited? Are not his Odes the amatory praises of a boy? Is not Sappho's Ode on a girl? Is not this sublime and (according to Longinus) fierce love, for one of her own sex? And is not Phillips's translation of it in the mouths of all your women? And are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire, it will be time to denounce the moderns. "Licentiousness!"-there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned, or poured forth, since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are so, because they sap the principles, by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism.

Mr. Bowles now has the goodness "to point out the difference between a traducer and him who sincerely states what he sincerely believes." He might have spared himself the trouble. The one is a liar, who lies knowingly; the other (I speak of a scandal-monger of course) lies, charitably believing that he speaks truth, and very sorry to find himself in falsehood;

because he

"Would rather that the dean should die

the reviewer of “a certain poet of nature, his praise and blame are equally contemptible." Mr. Bowles, who has a peculiarly ambiguous style, where it suits him, comes off with a "not to the poet, but the cri tic," etc. In my humble opinion, the passage referred to both. Had Mr. Bowles really meant fairly, he would have said so from the first-he would have been eagerly transparent. "A certain poet of nature" is not the style of commendation. It is the very prologue to the most scandalous paragraphs of the newspapers, when

"Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike." "A certain high personage,"—" a certain peeress,”— "a certain illustrious foreigner, "--what do these words ever precede, but defamation? Had he felt a spark of kindling kindness for John Clare, he would have named him. There is a sneer in the sentence as it stands. How a favourable review of a deserving poet can "rather injure than promote his cause" is dif ficult to comprehend. The article denounced is able and amiable, and it has "served" the poet, as far as poetry can be served by judicious and honest criticism.

With the two next paragraphs of Mr. Bowles's pamphlet it is pleasing to concur. His mention of "Pennie," and his former patronage of "Shoel," do him honour. I am not of those who may deny Mr. Bowles to be a benevolent man. I merely assert, that he is not a candid editor.

Mr. Bowles has been "a writer occasionally upwards of thirty years," and never wrote one word in reply in his life, "to criticisms, merely as criticisms." This is Mr. Lofty in Goldsmith's Good-natured Man; * and I vow, by all that's honourable, my resentment bas never done the men, as mere men, any manner of harm; that is, as mere men."

"The letter to the editor of the newspaper" owned; but "it was not on account of the criticism It was because the criticism came down in a frank directed to Mrs. Bowles!!!"-(the italics and three notes of admiration, appended to Mrs. Bowles, are copied verbatim from the quotation), and Mr. Bowles was not displeased with the criticism, but with the frank and the address. I agree with Mr. Bowles that the intention was to annoy him; but I fear that this was answered by his notice of the reception of the criticism. An anonymous letter-writer has but one means of knowing the effect of his attack. In this he has the superiority over the viper; he knows that his poison has taken effect, when he hears the victim cry; the adder is deaf. The best reply to an anonymous intimation is to take no notice, directly nor indirectly. I wish Mr. Bowles could see only one or two of the thousand which I have received in the course of a literary life, which, though begun early, has not yet extended to a third part of his existence as an author. I speak of literary life only. Were I to add personal, I might double the amount of anonymous letters. If he could but see the violence, the threats, the absurdity of the whole thing, he would laugh, and so should I, and thus be both gainers.

Than his prediction prove a lie." After a definition of a “traducer,” which was quite superfluous (though it is agreeable to learn that Mr. Bowles so well understands the character), we are assured, that "he feels equally indifferent, Mr. Gilchrist, for what your malice can invent, or your impudence utter." This is indubitable; for it rests not only on Mr. Bowles's assurance, but on that of Sir Fretful Plagiary, and nearly in the same words,--"and I shall treat it with exactly the same calm indifference To keep up the farce,—within the last month of this and philosophical contempt, and so your servant." present writing (1821), I have had my life threatened "One thing has given Mr. Bowles concern." It is in the same way which menaced Mr. Bowles's fame, 66 a passage which might seem to reflect on the patron--excepting that the anonymous denunciation was ad age a young man has received." MIGHT seem!! The dressed to the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of passage alluded to expresses, that if Mr. Gilchrist be to Mrs. Bowles. The Cardinal is, I believe, the elder

lady of the two. 1 append the menace, in all its barbaric but literal Italian, that Mr. Bowles may be convinced; and as this is the only "promise to pay" which the Italians ever keep, so my person has been at least as much exposed to a "shot in the gloaming," from "John Heatherblutter" (see Waverley), as ever Mr. Bowles's glory was from an editor. I am, nevertheless, on horseback and lonely for some hours (one of them twilight) in the forest daily; and this, because it was my "custom in the afternoon," and that I believe if the tyrant cannot escape amidst his guards (should it be so written?), so the humbler individual would find precautions useless.

Mr. Bowles has here the humility to say, that "he must succumb; for with Lord Byron turned against him, he has no chance,"— -a declaration of self-denial not much in unison with his "promise," five lines afterwards, that "for every twenty-four lines quoted by Mr. Gilchrist, or his friend, to greet him with as many from the Gilchristiad;" but so much the better. Mr. Bowles has no reason to "succumb" but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the author of The Missionary may compete with the foremost of his contemporaries. Let it be recollected, that all my previous opinions of Mr. Bowles's poetry were written long before the publication of his last and best poem; and that a poet's last poem should be his best, is his highest praise. But, however he may duly and honourably rank with his living rivals, there never was so complete a proof of the superiority of Pope, as in the lines with which Mr. Bowles closes his "to be concluded in our next."

Mr. Bowles is avowedly the champion and the poet of nature. Art and the arts are dragged, some before and others behind his chariot. Pope, where he deals with passion, and with the nature of the naturals of the day, is allowed even by themselves to be sublime; but they complain that too soon

"He stoop'd to truth and moralised his song ;" and there even they allow him to be unrivalled. He has succeeded, and even surpassed them, when he chose, in their own pretended province. Let us see what their Coryphæus effects in Pope's. But it is too pitiable, it is too melancholy, to see Mr. Bowles "sinning" not "up" but "down" as a poet to his lowest depth as an editor. By the way, Mr. Bowles is always quoting Pope. I grant that there is no poet-not Shakspeare himself-who can be so often quoted, with reference to life;-but his editor is so like the devil quoting Scripture, that I could wish Mr. Bowles in his proper place, quoting in the pulpit. And now for his lines. But it is painful-painful -to see such a suicide, though at the shrine of Pope. I can't copy them all:

"Shall the rank loathsome miscreant of the age
Sit, like a night-mare, grinning o'er a page."
"Whose pye-bald character so aptly suit
The two extremes of Bantam and of Brute,
Compound grotesque of sullenness and show,
The chattering magpie, and the croaking crow."
"Whose heart contends with thy Saturnian head,
A root of hemlock, and a lump of lead.
Gilchrist! proceed," etc. etc.

"And thus stand forth, spite of thy venom'd foam,
To give thee bite for bite, or lash thee limping home."
With regard to the last line, the only one upon which
I shall ven ture for fear of infection, I would advise Mr.

Gilchrist to keep out of the way of such reciprocal morsure-unless he has more faith in the "Ormskirk medicine" than most people, or may wish to anticipate the pension of the recent German professor (I forget his name, but it is advertised, and full of consonants), who presented his memoir of an infallible remedy for the hydrophobia to the German diet last month, coupled with the philanthropic condition of a large annuity, provided that his cure cured. Let him begin with the editor of Pope, and double his demand.

[blocks in formation]

P.S.-Amongst the above-mentioned lines there occurs the following, applied to Pope

"The assassin's vengeance, and the coward's lie."

And Mr. Bowles persists that he is a well-wisher to Pope!!! He has, then, edited an "assassin" and a "coward," wittingly, as well as lovingly. In my forfulness of Pope's benevolence. But where he mentions mer letter I have remarked upon the editor's forgethis faults it is "with sorrow"—his tears drop, but they do not blot them out. The "recording angel" editor is pardonable though tiresome, like a panegyridiffers from the recording clergyman. cal son, whose pious sincerity would demi-deify his father. But a detracting editor is a parricide. sins against the nature of his office and connection—

A fulsome

He

he murders the life to come of his victim. If his author is not worthy to be mentioned, do not edit at all: if he be, edit honestly, and even flatteringly. The reader will forgive the weakness in favour of mortality, and correct your adulation with a smile. But to sit down "mingere in patrios cineres," as Mr. Bowles has done, merits a reprobation so strong that I am as incapable of expressing as of ceasing to feel it.

Further Addenda.

It is worthy of remark that, after all this outcry about "in-door nature" and "artificial images," Pope was the principal inventor of that boast of the English, Modern Gardening. He divides this honour with Milton. Hear Warton:-"It hence appears, that this enchanting art of modern gardening, in which this kingdom claims a preference over every nation in Europe, chiefly owes its origin and its improvements to two great poets, Milton and Pope."

Walpole (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed Kent's taste, and that Kent was the artist to whom the English are chiefly indebted for diffusing "a taste in laying out grounds." The design of the Prince of Wales's garden was copied from Pope's at Twickenham. Warton applauds "his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres." Pope was the first who ridiculed the "formal, French, Dutch, false and unnatural taste in gardening," both in prose and verse. (See, for the former, The Guardian.)

"Pope has given not only some of our first but best rules and observations on Architecture and Gardening." (See Warton's Essay, vol. ii. p. 237, etc. etc.)

Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers, in "Kendal green," and our bucolical Cockneys, crying out (the latter in a wilderness of bricks and mortar) about "Nature," and Pope's "artificial in-door habits?" Pope had seen all of nature that

England alone can supply. He was bred in Windsor Forest, and amidst the beautiful scenery of Eton; he lived familiarly and frequently at the country-seats of Bathurst, Cobham, Burlington, Peterborough, Digby, and Bolingbroke; amongst whose seats was to be numbered Stowe. He made his own little "five acres" a model to princes, and to the first of our artists who imitated nature. Warton thinks "that the most engaging of Kent's works was also planned on the model of Pope's, at least in the opening and retiring shades of Venus's Vale."

over half Europe, and seen Nature in most of her va rieties (although I think that they have occasionally not used her very well); but what on earth—of earth, and sea, and Nature-have the others seen? Not a half nor a tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his Windsor Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its brick?

The most rural of these gentlemen is my friend Leigh Hunt, who lives at Hampstead. I believe that I need not disclaim any personal or poetical hostility against that gentleman. A more amiable man in soIt is true that Pope was infirm and deformed; but ciety I know not; nor (when he will allow his sense he could walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford to prevail over his sectarian principles) a better writer. from London at a stretch), and he was famous for an When he was writing his Rimini, I was not the last exquisite eye. On a tree at Lord Bathurst's is carved to discover its beauties, long before it was published. "Here Pope sang,"-he composed beneath it. Boling- Even then I remonstrated against its vulgarisms; which broke, in one of his letters, represents them both are the more extraordinary, because the author is any writing in the hay-field. No poet ever admired Na-thing but a vulgar man. Mr. Hunt's answer was, that ture more, or used her better, than Pope has done; as I will undertake to prove from his works, prose and verse, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable a labour. I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to a man who had long served Pope in his grounds: "I understand, sir," he replied: "you would have them hang down, sir, somewhat poetical." Now, if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would suffice to prove Pope's taste for Nature, and the impression which he had made on a common-minded man. But I have already quoted Warton and Walpole (both his enemies), and, were it I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to Nature as no poet of the present day has even approached.

necessary,

His various excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, doublepost-and-rail, Hounslow Heath and Clapham Common sort of country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in general, far from a picturesque country. The case is different with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and I except also the lake counties and Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear Harrow on the Hill, and some spots near the coast. In the present rank fertility of "great poets of the age," and "schools of poetry"—a word which, like "schools of eloquence" and of "philosophy," is never introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the number of its professors-in the present day, then, there have sprung up two sorts of Naturals;-the Lakers, who whine about Nature because they live in Cumberland; and their under-sect (which some one has maliciously called the "Cockney School"), who are enthusiastical for the country because they live in London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers, whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish fellows, bad writers, and other hard names not less ungrateful than unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentle

men of Windermere to what Mr. Braham terms " en

tusumusy," for lakes, and mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative brethren to the same high argument." Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled

[ocr errors]

he wrote them upon principle; they made part of his "system!!" I then said no more. When a man talks of his system, it is like a woman's talking of her virtue. I let them talk on. Whether there are writers who could have written Rimini, as it might have been written, I know not; but Mr. Hunt is, probably, the only poet who could have had the heart to spoil his own capo d'opera.

With the rest of his young people I have no ac quaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the fall extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's Ode to Shakspeare, they “defy criticism." These are the personages who decry Pope. One of them, a Mr. John Ketch, has written some lines against him, of which it were better to be the subject than the author. Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone, that I would not "march through Coventry with them, that's flat!" were I in Mr. Hunt's place. To be sure, he has led his ragamuffins where they will be well peppered;" but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen life—when they have felt it-when they have travelled beyand the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesexwhen they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River-then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to the to despise Pope; who had, if not in Wales, been near it, when he described so beautifully the "artificial” works of the Benefactor of Nature and mankind, the Man of Ross, whose picture, still suspended in the parlour of the inn, I have so often contemplated with reverence for his memory, and admiration of the poet, without whom even his own still existing good works could hardly have preserved his honest renown.

I would also observe to my friend Hunt, that I shall be very glad to see him at Ravenna, not only for my sincere pleasure in his company, and the advantage which a thousand miles or so of travel might produce to a "natural" poet, but also to point out one or two little things in Rimini, which he probably would not have placed in his opening to that poem, if he had ever seen Ravenna;-unless, indeed, it made part of his system!!" I must also crave his indulgence for having spoken of his disciples-by no means an agre able or self-sought subject. If they had said no thing of Pope, they might have remained alone with their glory" for aught I should have said or thought

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

about them or their nonsense.

But if they interfere with the "little nightingale" of Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it-I won't. Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom, clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, "that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any in story." Here is a statesman's opinion of poetry: it is honourable to him and to the art. Such a "poet of a thousand years" was Pope. A thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our literature. But it can want them-he himself is a literature.

of their manners from their verses. They may be ho-
nourable and gentlemanly men, for what I know; but
the latter quality is studiously excluded from their pub-
lications. They remind me of Mr. Smith and the Miss
Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly, in Evelina.
In these things (in private life, at least,) I pretend
to some small experience; because, in the course of
my youth, I have seen a little of all sorts of society,
from the Christian prince and the Mussulman sultan
and pacha, and the higher ranks of their countries,
down to the London boxer, the "flash and the swell,"
the Spanish muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise,
the Scotch highlander, and the Albanian robber;-to
say nothing of the curious varieties of Italian social
life. Far be it from me to presume that there ever was,
or can be, such a thing as an aristocracy of poets; but
there is a nobility of thought and of style, open to all
stations, and derived partly from talent, and partly
from education,-which is to be found in Shakspeare,
and Pope, and Burns, no less than in Dante and Al-
fieri, but which is nowhere to be perceived in the mock
birds and bards of Mr. Hunt's little chorus. If I
were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I
should say that it is only to be defined by examples-
of those who have it, and those who have it not.
life, I should say that most military men have it, and
few naval;-that several men of rank have it, and few
lawyers;-that it is more frequent among authors than
divines (when they are not pedants); that fencing-mas-
ters have more of it than dancing-masters, and singers
than players; and that (if it be not an Irishism to say

In

One word upon his so brutally-abused translation of Homer. "Dr. Clarke, whose critical exactness is well known, has not been able to point out above three or four mistakes in the sense through the whole Iliad. The real faults of the translation are of a different kind." So says Warton, himself a scholar. It appears by this, then, that he avoided the chief fault of a translator. As to its other faults, they consist in his hav-so) it is far more generally diffused among women than ing made a beautiful English poem of a sublime Greek It will always hold. Cowper, and all the rest of the blank pretenders, may do their best and their worst: they will never wrench Pope from the hands of a single reader of sense and feeling.

one.

The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but "shabby-genteel," as it is termed. A man may be coarse and yet not vulgar, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never vulgar. Chatterton is never vulgar, nor Wordsworth, nor the higher of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all its branches. It is in their finery that the new under school are most vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow "a Sunday blood" might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened, of the two;—probably because he made the one, or cleaned the other, with his own hands.

In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter, I know nothing; of the former, 1 judge as it is found. Of my friend Hunt, I have already said, that he is any thing but vulgar in his manners; and of his disciples, therefore, I will not judge

among men. In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never make entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be good for any thing without it. It is the salt of society, and the seasoning of composition. Vulgarity is far worse than downright blackguardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, "signifying nothing." It does not depend upon low themes, or even low language, for Fielding revels in both;-but is he ever vulgar? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar, sporting with his subject,— its master, not its slave. Your vulgar writer is always most vulgar, the higher his subject; as the man who showed the menagerie at Pidcock's was wont to say,"This, gentlemen, is the eagle of the sun, from Archangel, in Russia; the otterer it is, the igherer he flies.". But to the proofs. It is a thing to be felt more than explained. Let any man take up a volume of Mr. Hunt's subordinate writers, read (if possible) a couple of pages, and pronounce for himself, if they contain not the kind of writing which may be likened to "shabby-genteel" in actual life. When he has done this, let him take up Pope;—and when he has laid him down, take up the cockney again--if he can.

Miscellaneous Poems.

ON AN OLD LADY.(1)

IN Nottingham county there lives, at Swan Green, As curst an old lady as ever was seen;

And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, She firmly believes she will go to the moon!

THE ADIEU.

WRITTEN UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THE AUTHOR
WOULD SOON DIE.

ADIEU, thou Hill! (2) where early joy
Spread roses o'er my brow;
Where Science seeks each loitering boy
With knowledge to endow.
Adieu, my youthful friends or woes,
Partners of former bliss or foes,

No more through Ida's paths we stray;
Soon must I share the gloomy cell,
Whose ever-slumbering inmates dwell
Unconscious of the day.

Adieu, ye hoary regal fanes,

Ye spires of Granta's vale,
Where Learning, robed in sable, reigns,
And Melancholy pale.

Ye comrades of the jovial hour,
Ye tenants of the classic bower,

On Cama's verdant margin placed,
Adieu! while memory still is mine,
For, offerings on Oblivion's shrine,

These scenes must be effaced.
Adieu, ye mountains of the clime

Where grew my youthful years;
Where Loch-na-Garr in snows sublime
His giant summit rears.
Why did my childhood wander forth
From you, ye regions of the North,

With sons of pride to roam? *
Why did I quit my Highland cave,
Marr's dusky heath, and Dee's clear wave,
To seek a Southeron home?

Hall of my Sires! a long farewell—

Yet why to thee adieu?

Thy vaults will echo back my knell,

Thy towers my tomb will view:

The faltering tongue which sung thy fall,
And former glories of thy Hall, (3)

Forgets its wonted simple note-
But yet the lyre retains the strings,
And sometimes, on Æolian wings,
In dying strains may float.

(1) These lines are said to have been written by Byron at ten years of age, and, as such, are not a little remarkable, as exhibiting his early talent for rhyming. The subject of them, an old dame, who, while on a visit to his mother, had drawn forth the satirical powers of the infantine poet by some expression that very much affronted him, entertained some curious notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to the moon after death.-P. E.

Fields, which surround yon rustic cot,
While yet I linger here,

Adieu! you are not now forgot,

To retrospection dear. Streamlet! (4) along whose rippling surge, My youthful limbs were wont to urge,

At noontide heat, their pliant course; Plunging with ardour from the shore, Thy springs will lave these limbs no more, Deprived of active force.

And shall I here forget the scene,

Still nearest to my breast?
Rocks rise, and rivers roll between

The spot which passion blest;
Yet, Mary, (5) all thy beauties seem
Fresh as in Love's bewitching dream,

To me in smiles display'd:
Till slow Disease resigns his prey
To Death, the parent of decay,
Thine image cannot fade.

And thou, my Friend! (6) whose gentle love
Yet thrills my bosom's chords,
How much thy friendship was above

Description's power of words!
Still near my breast thy gift I wear,
Which sparkled once with Feeling's tear,
Of Love the pure, the sacred gem;
Our souls were equal, and our lot
In that dear moment quite forgot;

Let Pride alone condemn!

All, all, is dark and cheerless now!
No smile of Love's deceit
Can warm my veins with wonted glow,
Can bid Life's pulses beat:
Not e'en the hope of future fame
Can wake my faint exhausted frame,
Or crown with fancied wreaths
Mine is a short inglorious race,—
To humble in the dust my face,

And mingle with the dead.

my

Oh Fame! thou goddess of my heart; On him who gains thy praise Pointless must fall the Spectre's dart,

Consumed in Glory's blaze; But me she beckons from the earth, My name obscure, unmark'd my birth,

My life a short and vulgar dream: Lost in the dull ignoble crowd, My hopes recline within a shroud, My fate is Lethe's stream.

(2) Harrow.-L. E.

(3) See antè, pp. 3, 28.-P. E.

head.

[blocks in formation]
« FöregåendeFortsätt »