Page images
PDF
EPUB

Och hone! like an owl,
Day is night,
Dear, to me without you!

Och hone!

Don't provoke me to do it ;
For there's girls by the score
That loves me, and more.

And you'd look very queer,
If some morning you'd meet
My wedding all marching
In pride down the street.
Throth you'd open your eyes,
And you'd die of surprise
To think 'twasn't you
Was come to it.

And faith! Katty Naile

And her cow, I go bail,
Would jump if I'd say,
Katty Naile, name the day."

And though you're fair and fresh
As the blossoms of May,
And she's short and dark
Like a cowld winter's day,
Yet, if you don't repent
Before Easter,-when Lent
Is over-I'll marry
For spite.

Och hone! and when I
Die for you,

'Tis my ghost that you'll see every

night!

Heu! heu! nisi tu
Coràm sis

Cæcus sim: eleleu !

Heu! heu!

Non me provocato,
Nam virginum sat, o!
Stant mihi amato

Et stuperes planè,
Si aliquo manè
Me

[ocr errors]

sponsum videres
Hoc quomodo ferres?
Quid diceres, si cum
Triumpho per vicum,
Maritus it ibi,
Non tibi!

Et pol! Catharine
Cui vacca, (tu, sine)
Si proferem hymen
Grande esset discrimen ;
Tu quamvis, hìc aio,
Sis blandior Maio,
Et hæc calet rariùs
Quàm Januarius;
Si non mutas brevi,
Hanc mihi decrevi
(Ut sic ultus forem)
Uxorem ;

Tum posthac diù
Me spectrum
Verebere tu...

Eleleu !

THE PAINTER, BARRY.

"Rome, 1769.

"Nothing could have made me more really happy than your very kind letter. It came most opportunely to support my spirits at a time when I was ill of a fever, which I believe was occasioned by a cold caught while working in the Vatican."

James Barry (R.A.) to (Sir) Joshua Reynolds. "Apparet domus intus et atria longa patescunt,

Apparent Priami et veterum penetralia regum.”—Æneid II.
His magic wand Prout waves again, and opes
Those hallowed halls inhabited by Popes;

Where (through an odd rencontre that befell) he

66

Enjoys some table talk" with Ganganelli.-O. Y.

THE historian on whom will devolve the task of tracing, "à la Gibbon," the decline and fall of English literature, must devote an ample chapter to writers of romance. This class has obtained an undue predominance. A motley and undisciplined horde, emerging from their native haunts on the remote boundary of the literary domain, have rushed down with a simultaneous war-whoop on the empire of learning, and threaten not to leave a vestige of sober knowledge or classic taste throughout the range of their Vandal incursions; no memorable transaction of bygone centuries is held sacred from the rude inroad and destructive battle-axe of the "HISTORICAL" novelist. The ghost of Froissart revisits nightly the glimpses of the moon to complain of those who molest and torture his simple spirit; Rapin, Matthew Paris, Hollinshed, De Thou, Hume, Clarendon, and Robertson, undergo a post mortem persecution, which those chroniclers scarce anticipated as the fruit of their learned labours. The sisterhood of the sacred valley have taken the affair sadly to heart; and each Muse in her turn sheds a tear of condolence over the disfigured page of CLIO.

Nor has individual biography been exempt from devastation. Richelieu, Cromwell, Will. Wallace, Henri Quatre, Cardinal Borromeo, Queen Elizabeth, Brinsley Sheridan, and a host of victims, have been immolated with barbarous rites on the shrine of Colburn and Bentley. After disinterring by dozens the memorable dead who fain would sleep in Westminster Abbey, these goules have traversed the continent, with vampire voracity, in quest of prey; few are the characters of European celebrity that have not fed their indiscriminate insatiate maw. Nay, as if modern history did not afford scope for the exercise of their propensities, they have invaded the privacy of ROMAN life, to insult the "lares,' to desecrate the household gods of ancient Italy; and in the Last Days of Pompeii, an attempt is made to impute modern foppery, with all its concomitant peculiarities, to the masters of the world.

"Et, sous des noms Romains, faisant notre portrait—
Peindre Caton galant, et Brutus dameret."

BOILEAU, A. P. chant iii.

All this is done for the purpose of being read by sentimental

spinsters, school-governesses, and linendrapers' apprentices, to whom "circulating libraries" look for support and encou ragement.

The poet Lucan has a passage in his Pharsalia, wherein he relates that when rude peasants sought to disturb the sepulchre of MARIUS, the old Roman skeleton started up in anger, and with a posthumous glance scared the sacrilegious wretches from his grave.

"Tristia Syllani cecinere oracula manes,

Tollentemque caput gelidas Anienis ad undas,

Agricolæ fracto MARIUM effugêre sepulchro."—(Lib. i. ad finem.) Which the French professor, Laharpe, has so beautifully rendered

"Du soc de la charrue, on dit, qu'un laboureur
Entr'ouvrit une tombe, et saisi d'epouvante
Vit MARIUS lever sa tête menaçante,

Et les cheveux épars, le front cicatrisé,

S'asseoir pale et tremblant sur son tombeau brisé."

Ought not apprehension of outbreak from the injured tenants. of the tomb to deter those resurrection-men from practising their horrid trade on the classic subjects of Greece and Rome ?

It is unfair to accuse Sir Walter Scott of being the parent of this literary monster: it was full grown, or in its teens, when HE adopted it, flinging the mantle of his genius over its native deformity. Towards the close of the last century, the muse of a French abbé, MARMONTEL, brought it forth in les Incas and Belisaire; Florian stood sponsor to the urchin in Numa Pompilius and Gonsalve de Cordoue; Jane Porter acted the part of wet nurse in Thaddeus of Warsaw.

We have been led into these remarks by the circumstance of meeting among the papers of our sacerdotal sage a singular account of men and of things which now belong to history-a narrative which, did we not deprecate the imputation, might be taken for an "historical romance."

OLIVER YORKE.

Watergrasshill, March, 1830.

I have been a sojourner in many lands. In youth I felt the full value of that vigorous period's unwasted energies,

and took care that my faculties of body and mind should not be sluggishly folded in a napkin, and hidden beneath the clod of my native isle. Hence, wafted joyfully o'er the briny barrier that encloses this unfortunate "gem of the western world," I early landed on the shores of continental Europe, and spent my best and freshest years in visiting her cities, her collegiate halls, her historic ruins, her battle fields. Moore and I may say with truth, that

"We have roamed through this world."

But my proceedings (unlike Tommy's) bore no resemblance to the conduct of " a child at a feast." It was not in pursuit of pleasure that I rambled through distant provinces: neither, like "Childe Harold," did I travel to stifle the voice of remorse-to

"Fling forgetfulness around me."

I had other views. A transient, but not unobservant pilgrim, I have kept the even tenor of my way through many a foreign tract of interesting country; rarely mingling in the busy hum of men, though carefully noting down with meditative mind the discrepancies of national thought and feeling as I went along. Keenly awake to each passing occurrence in the cities where I dwelt, though, like the stranger at Carthage, myself unperceived:

"Per medios, miscetque viris neque cernitur ulli."—(Æneid I.)

But I have paused longest at Rome. Not that other cities were divested of attraction; but at no inferior threshold, at no minor shrine, could I be induced to depose the staff, the scrip, and the scallop shell. Even now, in the decrepitude of age, the reminiscences of the seven hills, refreshing the verdant enthusiasm of my boyhood, return sweetly, welcomed like the visits of early friendship; although I had an opportunity of renewing my acquaintanceship with the cities of France some thirty years ago, at the peace of Amiens, still the recollections of my Roman sojourn, bearing the remote millessimo of 1769, have kept themselves (to use a consecrated expression) "greener" in my soul. O Rome! how much better and more profitable do I feel it to dwell in spirit, amid the ruins of thy monumental soil, than corpo

really to reside in the most brilliant of modern capitals. Quanto minùs est cùm reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!

There is a splendid song by some English bard, highly expressive of the patriotic attachment that he must have felt for the island of his birth-enhanced by a reference to the proud position it holds among the countries of Europe in arms, in arts, in all the comforts of civilisation, commerce, and freedom; the soul of the composition is exhaled in that brief condensation of impassioned eulogy, "England, the Home of the World!" What this country now is, Rome was. Seneca terms it (in his treatise De Consolatione, cap. 6) communem gentibus patriam; the idea is re-echoed by the naturalist Pliny (lib. 35, cap. 5). The sensitive Mantuan shepherd dwells on it with complacency.

"Rerum pulcherrima Roma!"

Nor less perceptible are Horace's affections, when that genuine specimen of a Roman " man on town" sly.y exhorts some friend to try the effects of rustication

"Omitte mirari beatæ

Fumum et opes strepitumque Roma!"

Ovid's case is more peculiarly interesting. He who had formed the chief ornament of polished society, the soughtfor and the caressed of every Roman boudoir, the arbiter of refinement and elegance at the brilliant court of Augustus, is suddenly banished to Scythia; a province much resembling the bogs of modern Iveragh, or the wilderness of Connemara. In so woful a predicament, is it to be wondered that he should envy his books, which would go through so many editions in the capital, and be handed about in every circle, while he himself was pining among the tasteless brutes and ignorant savages of the paludes Propontidis?

"Parve... sine me liber ibis in Urbem,

Hei mihi, quo Domino non licet ire tuo!"

In the decline of the empire, that eminent scholar and highly-gifted writer, St. Jerome, having withdrawn from the fascinations of the Eternal City to a romantic hermitage in Palestine, complained sadly that his retirement was invaded, and his solitude perpetually haunted, by certain fairy visions of Rome, as is recorded by Erasmus in the life of the saint

« PreviousContinue »