countess was at dinner: he locked the door of her : With what pleasure did we visit the house, in which Chatterton was born; that in which Milton Marais. wrote his Samson Agonistes, and the castle of Ludlow, where he wrote his Masque of Comus. When we have beheld the cottage, overlooking the Towy, in which STEELE buried the remembrance of his inconveniences; or the hermitage of St. Iltid, near the windings of the Usk: when we have stood near the tombstone over the celebrated monk of Lydgate; paused near the birth-place of Chaucer (Woodstock), where also was born the most accomplished prince, that England has produced; who can describe the various sensations with which we have been moved? Emotions enjoyed with equal force at Rushcomb in Berkshire, where died the admirable PENN; and at Thurcaston, where the mild, elegant, and benevolent HURD spent many years in studious retirement. He was afterwards a bishop, and-content! Even the see of Canterbury was beneath his acceptance: "Too happy am I, said he, when offered the translation, "too happy am I, to form a wish to change!" VII. If it is a subject of pride to be born in the same town or village, with an illustrious character, it is a still greater subject for the indulgence of our pride to repose near their ashes. What Frenchman would not rejoice to sleep beneath the same roof with Fenelon, Malesherbes, Sully and Bossuet? How charmed were Wieland and Schiller and Goëthe, were fortune to permit them to mingle in the same earth with the ashes of Gessner, Haller, and Klopstock. Men of different genius, indeed, and of different countries; but animated with the same love of the beautiful, and the same admiration of the sublime. How grateful to the shade of Sannazarius to ensure immortality for his eclogues, by reposing near the tomb of Virgil! And how proud a circumstance for the spirits of Gray, Mason and Cumberland, to hear Handel's anthems rolling, in magnificent volumes, in the society of Chaucer and Spenser, Dryden, Shakespear, and Milton ! The desire of literary distinction is the most innocent of all ambitions. No city is sacked; no country is laid waste; not a tear flows;-no blood is shed. The fame of virtue is alone superior to it. The Roman emperors frequently sighed for the loss of an army, a famine, an earthquake, or a pestilence, in order to constitute an era in the page of history. Caligula set the example. "I wish for all these," said he; "for there is so great a prosperity throughout the empire, Subjects on which the Imagination loves to dwell. 107 that my name and my reign are in danger of being utterly forgotten!" What a contrast to those, who desired to be remembered only for the splendour of their genius, or the multitude of their virtues. VIII. . The imagination often delights in making excursions into the regions of poesy. With what various impressions does it become impregnated, when, in the page of Euripides we behold Orestes entering the groves of Delphi in a traveller's garb; with a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other : when we see Beatrice, in Dante's Paradisio, welcoming him to the happy regions;-and when we behold Una's arrival among the satyrs, in the wild mazes of the Fairy Queen, At those times, Euripides, Dante, and Spenser, rise to the fancy, like angels of light. Shakespeare too!--Desdemona eagerly listening to the oft-told tale of Othello; or remembering, with melancholy interest, the fate of her mother's maid named Barbara :-the meeting of Ferdinand and Miranda in the Tempest :-the ill-fated Imogen at Milford Haven:→→the flowers, the tresses, and the wild warblings of Ophelia :-the language of Lorenzo and Jessica in the garden :-the wild touches and descriptions in Midsummer Night's Dream:-the wit, the beauty, and the love of Rosalind; with the pastoral scenes of the Winter's Tale, pass over the imagination like the rainbows of heaven. With what pleasure, too, does the imagination picture Numa among the woods of Etruria; Pindar 108 Subjects on which the Imagination loves to dwell. under the shades of Delphi; and Cicero amid the temples of Athens! The soul is equally impregnated with rich images, when the mind pictures Michael Angelo anticipating the completion of his design beneath the dome of St. Peter's ;-Gibbon before the coliseum and the arch of Titus ;-Barthelemy in the cabinets of Italy and France ;-and Handel, Haydn, Pleyel, and Mozart, listening to the symphonies, they had themselves embodied, through the medium of voices and instruments of exquisite sweetness, and variety of compass. How agreeably, also, are our delusions, when fancy paints Linnæus surrounded by his families of plants; -Swammerdam among herbs, covered with insects of various kinds; or Hubert, blind, yet contemplating the manners and economy of bees.-Buffon seated in his summer-house, investigating the instincts of animals ;-Pallas amid the solitudes of the Crimea ;or Humboldt, analizing the natural productions of Chili, Mexico, and Peru; while thunder rolls and lightning flashes, in awful sublimity, at his feet. IX. But not to towns and cities only do these associates belong. Amid the wild scenes of Nature the mind is perpetually reverting to similar intellectual influences. A woodman, returning from the forest, or a peasant measuring his steps to his cot, remind us of several passages in the Georgics, the Seasons, and Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy.-A harvest scene recals the history of Ruth, the Lavinia of Thompson, and one of the compartments in the shield of Achilles. A shepherd, tending his flocks, reminds the painter of Corregio's picture of the Adoration of the Shepherds. See we a stag bounding in a forest? The mind instantly recurs to the fate of the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV., and Richard III.':-or to the killing of the stag by Ascanius,2 that occasioned the war in Italy:-a passage, in which Virgil has exhibited his almost unequalled powers of engaging the affections. Silvia, the daughter of Latinus's deer-ranger, having a stag, she cherished it with the tenderest care: bathing its body every day; and decorating its horns with wreathes of ribbons. She fed it at the board of her father; and permitted it to wander in the neighbouring forest, during the chief part of the day; since it regularly returned every night.— As this stag was swimming along the stream to quench the heat of its body, Ascanius saw it; and bending his bow, discharged an arrow into its side. The stag feels the wound; rushes out of the water; and flies to the hearth of the ranger, where it dies in the arms of its mistress. The whole country rings with the injury-and a bloody war succeeds. : Many spots are there in the counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, Montgomery, and Carnarvon, in which we might meditate with delight on the memories of Linus, Orpheus, and Musæus and in which the enthusiast might read, with a corresponding glow of pleasure, Marmontel's Shepherdess of the Alps, Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigné, St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia, Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest, or the Mysteries of her Castle at Udolpho. Spots, in which suiting the 1 Rapin, vol. 1, p. 623, folio. ? En. vii. |