The Honourable John Wingfield of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra (May 14, 1811). I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction : Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his soft er qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. Part of the Acropolis was destroy by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian Ege. We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the expitals of empires, are beheld: the reflection, suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapi 5lation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to fend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the re II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? [things that were: Gone glimmering through the dream of First in the race that led to Glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away-is this the whole? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering [of power. Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade tower, cord of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines:- When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin em ployed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, Teλos-1 was present. The Discar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar. According to Zosin s, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.-Sce Chandler. XXVI. But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, Minions of splendour shrinking from distress! None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less, Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought, and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! XXVII. More blest the life of godly eremite, Such as on lonely Athos may be seen, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been Will wistful linger on that hallow'd spot; Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene, Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot, Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot. XXVIII. Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind; Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, [wind; And each well-known caprice of wave and Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find, Coop'd in their winged sea-girt citadel; The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind, As breezes rise and fall and billows swell, Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well. 'Tis an old lesson: Time approves it true, XXXVI. Away! nor let me loiter in my song, To teach man what he might be, or he ought; If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught. See a long characteristic Note by Lord Byron at the end of the volume. + Ithaca. Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho is said to have thrown herself. $ Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to battle of Lepanto, equally bloody and considerable, but less please. known, was fought in the gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his left hand. |