drops of port wine to bathe the relic, he is all the while robbing old Clement Marôt, who thus disposes of his remains: But I won't strain at a gnat, when I can capture a camela huge dromedary laden with pilfered spoil; for, would you believe it if you had never learned it from Prout, the very opening and foremost song of the collection, "Go where glory waits thee," is but a literal and servile translation of an old French ditty, which is among my papers, and which I believe to have been composed by that beautiful and interesting "ladye," Françoise de Foix, Comtesse de Chateaubriand, born in 1491, and the favourite of Francis I., who soon abandoned her indeed, the lines appear to anticipate his infidelity. They were written before the battle of Pavia. : Lorsque cette étoile, Quand la feuille d'automne Pense alors à moi! Pense encore à moi! Et ravit tes sens, Think, when home returning, Once so loved by thee, When around thee, dying, Oh, then remember me! Draw one tear from thee; Any one who has the slightest tincture of French literature must recognise the simple and unsophisticated style of a genuine love-song in the above, the language being that of the century in which Clement Marôt and Maître Adam wrote their incomparable ballads, and containing a kindly admixture of gentleness and sentimental delicacy, which no one but a "ladye" and a lovely heart could infuse into the composition. Moore has not been infelicitous in rendering the charms of the wondrous original into English lines adapted to the measure and tune of the French. The air is plaintive and exquisitely beautiful; but I recommend it to be tried first on the French words, as it was sung by the charming lips of the Countess of Chateaubriand to the enraptured ear of the gallant Francis I. The following pathetic strain is the only literary relic which has been preserved of the unfortunate Marquis de Cinqmars, who was disappointed in a love affair, and who, "to fling forgetfulness around him," mixed in politics, conspired against Cardinal Richelieu, was betrayed by an accomplice, and perished on the scaffold. Moore has traus planted it entire into his "National Melodies;" but is very careful not to give the nation or writer whence he translated it. Every thing was equally acceptable in the way of a song to Tommy; and provided I brought grist to his mill, he did not care where the produce came from-even the wild oats and the thistles of native growth on Watergrasshill, all was good provender for his Pegasus. There was an old Latin song of my own, which I made when a boy, smitten with the charms of an Irish milkmaid, who crossed by the hedgeschool occasionally, and who used to distract my attention from "Corderius" and "Erasm folloquia." I have often laughed at my juvenile gallantry when my eye has met the copy of verses in overhauling my papers. Tommy saw it, grasped it with avidity; and I find he has given it, word for word, in an English shape in his "Irish Melodies." Let the intelligent reader judge if he has done common justice to my young muse. In pulchram Lactiferam. Carmen, Auctore Prout. Lesbia semper hinc et indè Quis ametur nemo novit. Sed sinceri lux amoris. Jure omnium dux esto! Lesbia vestes auro graves Co a beautiful Milkmaid, A Melody, by Thomas Moore. Lesbia hath a beaming eye, But no one knows for whom Right and left its arrows fly, Sweeter 'tis to gaze upon My Norah's lid, that seldom Few her looks, but every one In many eyes But Love's in thine, my Norah Lesbia wears a robe of gold; But all so tight the nymph hath laced it. Not a charm of beauty's mould O, my Norah's gown for me, Leaving every beauty free To sink orswell as Heaven pleases. Is loveliness The dress you wear, my Noralı |