Chapter 3

If, dumb too long, the drooping muse hath stayed, And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, oh judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected suits but ill with art, Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart.

Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave? How silent did his old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead, Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings! What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire; The pealing organ, and the pausing choir; The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid: And the last words that dust to dust conveyed! While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend, Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend. Oh, gone for ever! take this long adieu; And sleep in peace, next thy loved Montague. To strew fresh laurels, let the task be mine, A frequent pilgrim at thy sacred shrine; Mine with true sighs thy absence to bemoan, And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone. If e'er from me thy loved memorial part, May shame afflict this alienated heart; Of thee forgetful if I form a song, My lyre be broken, and untuned my tongue, My grief be doubled from thy image free, And mirth a torment, unchastised by thee!

Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone, Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown, Along the walls where speaking marbles show What worthies form the hallowed mould belew; Proud names, who once the reins of empire held; In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled; Chiefs, graced with scars, and prodigal of blood; Stern patriots, who for sacred freedom stood; Just men, by whom impartial laws were given; And saints, who taught and led the way to heaven; Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation came a nobler guest; Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.

In what new region, to the just assigned, What new employments please the embodied mind? A winged Virtue, through the ethereal sky, From world to world unwearied does he fly? Or curious trace the long laborious maze Of Heaven's decrees, where wondering angels gaze? Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell How Michael battled, and the dragon fell; Or, mixed with milder cherubim, to glow In hymns of love, not ill essayed below? Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, A task well suited to thy gentle mind? Oh! if sometimes thy spotless form descend, To me thy aid, thou guardian genius, lend! When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart; Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more.

That awful form, which, so the heavens decree, Must still be loved and still deplored by me, In nightly visions seldom fails to rise, Or, roused by fancy, meets my waking eyes. If business calls, or crowded courts invite, The unblemished statesman seems to strike my sight; If in the stage I seek to soothe my care, I meet his soul which breathes in Cato there; If pensive to the rural shades I rove, His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove; 'Twas there of just and good he reasoned strong, Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song: There patient showed us the wise course to steer, A candid censor, and a friend severe; There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high The price for knowledge,) taught us how to die.

Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace, Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race, Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears, O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears? How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair, Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air! How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees, Thy noontide shadow, and thy evening breeze! His image thy forsaken bowers restore; Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more; No more the summer in thy glooms allayed, Thy evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade.

From other ills, however fortune frowned, Some refuge in the Muse's art I found; Reluctant now I touch the trembling string, Bereft of him who taught me how to sing; And these sad accents, murmured o'er his urn, Betray that absence they attempt to mourn. Oh! must I then (now fresh my bosom bleeds, And Craggs in death to Addison succeeds,) The verse, begun to one lost friend, prolong, And weep a second in the unfinished song!

These works divine, which, on his death-bed laid, To thee, O Craggs! the expiring sage conveyed, Great, but ill-omened, monument of fame, Nor he survived to give, nor thou to claim. Swift after him thy social spirit flies, And close to his, how soon! thy coffin lies. Blest pair! whose union future bards shall tell In future tongues: each other's boast! farewell! Farewell! whom, joined in fame, in friendship tried, No chance could sever, nor the grave divide.

JAMES HAMMOND.

This elegiast was the second son of Anthony Hammond, a brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole, and a man of some note in his day. He was born in 1710; educated at Westminster school; became equerry to the Prince of Wales; fell in love with a lady named Dashwood, who rejected him, and drove him to temporary derangement, and then to elegy-writing; entered parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, in 1741; and died the next year. His elegies were published after his death, and, although abounding in pedantic allusions and frigid conceits, became very popular.

ELEGY XIII.

He imagines himself married to Delia, and that, content with each other, they are retired into the country.

1 Let others boast their heaps of shining gold, And view their fields, with waving plenty crowned, Whom neighbouring foes in constant terror hold, And trumpets break their slumbers, never sound:

2 While calmly poor I trifle life away, Enjoy sweet leisure by my cheerful fire, No wanton hope my quiet shall betray, But, cheaply blessed, I'll scorn each vain desire.

3 With timely care I'll sow my little field, And plant my orchard with its master's hand, Nor blush to spread the hay, the hook to wield, Or range my sheaves along the sunny land.

4 If late at dusk, while carelessly I roam, I meet a strolling kid, or bleating lamb, Under my arm I'll bring the wanderer home, And not a little chide its thoughtless dam.

5 What joy to hear the tempest howl in vain, And clasp a fearful mistress to my breast! Or, lulled to slumber by the beating rain, Secure and happy, sink at last to rest!

6 Or, if the sun in flaming Leo ride, By shady rivers indolently stray, And with my Delia, walking side by side, Hear how they murmur as they glide away!

7 What joy to wind along the cool retreat, To stop and gaze on Delia as I go! To mingle sweet discourse with kisses sweet, And teach my lovely scholar all I know!

8 Thus pleased at heart, and not with fancy's dream, In silent happiness I rest unknown; Content with what I am, not what I seem, I live for Delia and myself alone.

* * * * *

9 Hers be the care of all my little train, While I with tender indolence am blest, The favourite subject of her gentle reign, By love alone distinguished from the rest.

10 For her I'll yoke my oxen to the plough, In gloomy forests tend my lonely flock; For her, a goat-herd, climb the mountain's brow, And sleep extended on the naked rock:

11 Ah, what avails to press the stately bed, And far from her 'midst tasteless grandeur weep, By marble fountains lay the pensive head, And, while they murmur, strive in vain to sleep!

12 Delia alone can please, and never tire, Exceed the paint of thought in true delight; With her, enjoyment wakens new desire, And equal rapture glows through every night:

13 Beauty and worth in her alike contend, To charm the fancy, and to fix the mind; In her, my wife, my mistress, and my friend, I taste the joys of sense and reason joined.

14 On her I'll gaze, when others' loves are o'er, And dying press her with my clay-cold hand-- Thou weep'st already, as I were no more, Nor can that gentle breast the thought withstand.

15 Oh, when I die, my latest moments spare, Nor let thy grief with sharper torments kill, Wound not thy cheeks, nor hurt that flowing hair, Though I am dead, my soul shall love thee still:

16 Oh, quit the room, oh, quit the deathful bed, Or thou wilt die, so tender is thy heart; Oh, leave me, Delia, ere thou see me dead, These weeping friends will do thy mournful part:

17 Let them, extended on the decent bier, Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, While pitying maids our wondrous loves relate.

We may here mention Dr George Sewell, author of a Life of Sir Walter Haleigh, a few papers in the _Spectator_, and some rather affecting verses written on consumption, where he says, in reference to his garden--

'Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green, (For vanity's in little seen,) All must be left when death appears, In spite of wishes, groans, and tears; Not one of all thy plants that grow, But rosemary, will with thee go;'--

Sir John Vanbrugh, best known as an architect, but who also wrote poetry;--Edward Ward (more commonly called Ned Ward), a poetical publican, who wrote ten thick volumes, chiefly in Hudibrastic verse, displaying a good deal of coarse cleverness;--Barton Booth, the famous actor, author of a song which closes thus--

'Love, and his sister fair, the Soul, Twin-born, from heaven together came; Love will the universe control, When dying seasons lose their name. Divine abodes shall own his power, When time and death shall be no more;'--

Oldmixon, one of the heroes of the 'Dunciad,' famous in his day as a party historian;--Richard West, a youth of high promise, the friend of Gray, and who died in his twenty-sixth year;--James Eyre Weekes, an Irishman, author of a clever copy of love verses, called 'The Five Traitors;'--Bramston, an Oxford man, who wrote a poem called 'The Man of Taste;'--and William Meston, an Aberdonian, author of a set of burlesque poems entitled 'Mother Grim's Tales.'

RICHARD SAVAGE.

The extreme excellence, fulness, and popularity of Johnson's Life of Savage must excuse our doing more than mentioning the leading dates of his history. He was the son of the Earl of Rivers and the Countess of Macclesfield, and was born in London, 1698. His mother, who had begot him in adultery after having openly avowed her criminality, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband, placed the boy under the care of a poor woman, who brought him up as her son. His maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, however, took an interest him and placed him at a grammar school at St Alban's. He was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. On the death of his nurse, he found some letters which led to the discovery of his real parent. He applied to her, accordingly, to be acknowledged as her son; but she repulsed his every advance, and persecuted him with unrelenting barbarity. He found, however, some influential friends, such as Steele, Fielding, Aaron Hill, Pope, and Lord Tyrconnell. He was, however, his own worst enemy, and contracted habits of the most irregular description. In a tavern brawl he killed one James Sinclair, and was condemned to die; but, notwithstanding his mother's interference to prevent the exercise of the royal clemency, he was pardoned by the queen, who afterwards gave him a pension of L50 a-year. He supported himself in a precarious way by writing poetical pieces. Lord Tyrconnell took him for a while into his house, and allowed him L200 a-year, but he soon quarrelled with him, and left. When the queen died he lost his pension, but his friends made it up by an annuity to the same amount. He went away to reside at Swansea, but on occasion of a visit he made to Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and in the prison he sickened, and died on the 1st of August 1743. He was only forty-five years of age.

After all, Savage, in Johnson's Life, is just a dung-fly preserved in amber. His 'Bastard,' indeed, displays considerable powers, stung by a consciousness of wrong into convulsive action; but his other works are nearly worthless, and his life was that of a proud, passionate, selfish, and infatuated fool, unredeemed by scarcely one trait of genuine excellence in character. We love and admire, even while we deeply blame, such men as Burns; but for Savage our feeling is a curious compost of sympathy with his misfortunes, contempt for his folly, and abhorrence for the ingratitude, licentiousness, and other coarse and savage sins which characterised and prematurely destroyed him.

THE BASTARD.

INSCRIBED, WITH ALL DUE REVERENCE, TO MRS BRETT, ONCE COUNTESS OF MACCLESFIELD.

In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran, The Muse exulting, thus her lay began: 'Blest be the Bastard's birth! through wondrous ways, He shines eccentric like a comet's blaze! No sickly fruit of faint compliance he! He! stamped in nature's mint of ecstasy! He lives to build, not boast a generous race: No tenth transmitter of a foolish face: His daring hope no sire's example bounds; His first-born lights no prejudice confounds. He, kindling from within, requires no flame; He glories in a Bastard's glowing name.

'Born to himself, by no possession led, In freedom fostered, and by fortune fed; Nor guides, nor rules his sovereign choice control, His body independent as his soul; Loosed to the world's wide range, enjoined no aim, Prescribed no duty, and assigned no name: Nature's unbounded son, he stands alone, His heart unbiased, and his mind his own.

'O mother, yet no mother! 'tis to you My thanks for such distinguished claims are due; You, unenslaved to Nature's narrow laws, Warm championess for freedom's sacred cause, From all the dry devoirs of blood and line, From ties maternal, moral, and divine, Discharged my grasping soul; pushed me from shore, And launched me into life without an oar.

'What had I lost, if, conjugally kind, By nature hating, yet by vows confined, Untaught the matrimonial bonds to slight, And coldly conscious of a husband's right, You had faint-drawn me with a form alone, A lawful lump of life by force your own! Then, while your backward will retrenched desire, And unconcurring spirits lent no fire, I had been born your dull, domestic heir, Load of your life, and motive of your care; Perhaps been poorly rich, and meanly great, The slave of pomp, a cipher in the state; Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown, And slumbering in a seat by chance my own.

'Far nobler blessings wait the bastard's lot; Conceived in rapture, and with fire begot! Strong as necessity, he starts away, Climbs against wrongs, and brightens into day.' Thus unprophetic, lately misinspired, I sung: gay fluttering hope my fancy fired: Inly secure, through conscious scorn of ill, Nor taught by wisdom how to balance will, Rashly deceived, I saw no pits to shun, But thought to purpose and to act were one; Heedless what pointed cares pervert his way, Whom caution arms not, and whom woes betray; But now exposed, and shrinking from distress, I fly to shelter while the tempests press; My Muse to grief resigns the varying tone, The raptures languish, and the numbers groan.

O Memory! thou soul of joy and pain! Thou actor of our passions o'er again! Why didst thou aggravate the wretch's woe? Why add continuous smart to every blow? Few are my joys; alas! how soon forgot! On that kind quarter thou invad'st me not; While sharp and numberless my sorrows fall, Yet thou repeat'st and multipli'st them all.

Is chance a guilt? that my disastrous heart, For mischief never meant; must ever smart? Can self-defence be sin?--Ah, plead no more! What though no purposed malice stained thee o'er? Had Heaven befriended thy unhappy side, Thou hadst not been provoked--or thou hadst died.

Far be the guilt of homeshed blood from all On whom, unsought, embroiling dangers fall! Still the pale dead revives, and lives to me, To me! through Pity's eye condemned to see. Remembrance veils his rage, but swells his fate; Grieved I forgive, and am grown cool too late. Young, and unthoughtful then; who knows, one day, What ripening virtues might have made their way? He might have lived till folly died in shame, Till kindling wisdom felt a thirst for fame. He might perhaps his country's friend have proved; Both happy, generous, candid, and beloved, He might have saved some worth, now doomed to fall; And I, perchance, in him, have murdered all.

O fate of late repentance! always vain: Thy remedies but lull undying pain. Where shall my hope find rest?--No mother's care Shielded my infant innocence with prayer: No father's guardian hand my youth maintained, Called forth my virtues, or from vice restrained. Is it not thine to snatch some powerful arm, First to advance, then screen from future harm? Am I returned from death to live in pain? Or would imperial Pity save in vain? Distrust it not--What blame can mercy find, Which gives at once a life, and rears a mind?

Mother, miscalled, farewell--of soul severe, This sad reflection yet may force one tear: All I was wretched by to you I owed, Alone from strangers every comfort flowed!

Lost to the life you gave, your son no more, And now adopted, who was doomed before; New-born, I may a nobler mother claim, But dare not whisper her immortal name; Supremely lovely, and serenely great! Majestic mother of a kneeling state! Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before Agreed--yet now with one consent adore! One contest yet remains in this desire, Who most shall give applause, where all admire.

THOMAS WARTON THE ELDER.

The Wartons were a poetical race. The father of Thomas and Joseph, names so intimately associated with English poetry, was himself a poet. He was of Magdalene College in Oxford, vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and twice chosen poetry professor. He was born in 1687, and died in 1745. Besides the little American ode quoted below, we are tempted to give the following

VERSES WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WINDSOR CASTLE.

From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls, Where Edward's chiefs start from the glowing walls, To my low cot, from ivory beds of state, Pleased I return, unenvious of the great. So the bee ranges o'er the varied scenes Of corn, of heaths, of fallows, and of greens; Pervades the thicket, soars above the hill, Or murmurs to the meadow's murmuring rill; Now haunts old hollowed oaks, deserted cells, Now seeks the low vale-lily's silver bells; Sips the warm fragrance of the greenhouse bowers, And tastes the myrtle and the citron flowers;-- At length returning to the wonted comb, Prefers to all his little straw-built home.

This seems sweet and simple poetry.

AN AMERICAN LOVE ODE.

FROM THE SECOND VOLUME OF MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS.

Stay, stay, thou lovely, fearful snake, Nor hide thee in yon darksome brake: But let me oft thy charms review, Thy glittering scales, and golden hue; From these a chaplet shall be wove, To grace the youth I dearest love.

Then ages hence, when thou no more Shalt creep along the sunny shore, Thy copied beauties shall be seen; Thy red and azure mixed with green, In mimic folds thou shalt display;-- Stay, lovely, fearful adder, stay.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

In contemplating the lives and works of the preceding poets in this third volume of 'Specimens,' we have been impressed with a sense, if not of their absolute, yet of their comparative mediocrity. Beside such neglected giants as Henry More, Joseph Beaumont, and Andrew Marvell, the Pomfrets, Sedleys, Blackmores, and Savages sink into insignificance. But when we come to the name of Swift, we feel ourselves again approaching an Alpine region. The air of a stern mountain-summit breathes chill around our temples, and we feel that if we have no amiability to melt, we have altitude at least to measure, and strange profound secrets of nature, like the ravines of lofty hills, to explore. The men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be compared to Lebanon, or Snowdown, or Benlomond towering grandly over fertile valleys, on which they smile--Swift to the tremendous Romsdale Horn in Norway, shedding abroad, from a brow of four thousand feet high, what seems a scowl of settled indignation, as if resolved not to rejoice even over the wide- stretching deserts which, and nothing but which, it everlastingly beholds. Mountains all of them, but what a difference between such a mountain as Shakspeare, and such a mountain as Swift!

Instead of going minutely over a path so long since trodden to mire as the life of Swift, let us expend a page or two in seeking to form some estimate of his character and genius. It is refreshing to come upon a new thing in the world, even though it be a strange or even a bad thing; and certainly, in any age and country, such a being as Swift must have appeared an anomaly, not for his transcendent goodness, not for his utter badness, but because the elements of good and evil were mixed in him into a medley so astounding, and in proportions respectively so large, yet unequal, that the analysis of the two seemed to many competent only to the Great Chymist, Death, and that a sense of the disproportion seems to have moved the man himself to inextinguishable laughter,--a laughter which, radiating out of his own singular heart as a centre, swept over the circumference of all beings within his reach, and returned crying, 'Give, give,' as if he were demanding a universal sphere for the exercise of the savage scorn which dwelt within him, and as if he laughed not more 'consumedly' at others than he did at himself.

Ere speaking of Swift as a man, let us say something about his genius. That, like his character, was intensely peculiar. It was a compound of infinite ingenuity, with very little poetical imagination--of gigantic strength, with a propensity to incessant trifling--of passionate purpose, with the clearest and coldest expression, as though a furnace were fuelled with snow. A Brobdignagian by size, he was for ever toying with Lilliputian slings and small craft. One of the most violent of party men, and often fierce as a demoniac in temper, his favourite motto was _Vive la bagatelle_. The creator of entire new worlds, we doubt if his works contain more than two or three lines of genuine poetry. He may be compared to one of the locusts of the Apocalypse, in that he had a tail like unto a scorpion, and a sting in his tail; but his 'face is not as the face of man, his hair is not as the hair of women, and on his head there is no crown like gold.' All Swift's creations are more or less disgusting. Not one of them is beautiful. His Lilliputians are amazingly life-like, but compare them to Shakspeare's fairies, such as Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Mustardseed; his Brobdignagians are excrescences like enormous warts; and his Yahoos might have been spawned in the nightmare of a drunken butcher. The same coarseness characterises his poems and his 'Tale of a Tub.' He might well, however, in his old age, exclaim, in reference to the latter, 'Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!' It is the wildest, wittiest, wickedest, wealthiest book of its size in the English language. Thoughts and figures swarm in every corner of its pages, till you think of a disturbed nest of angry ants, for all the figures and thoughts are black and bitter. One would imagine the book to have issued from a mind that had been gathering gall as well as sense in an antenatal state of being.