Part 2

I saw a picture not long since, in Edinburgh, copied from an engraving in Boydell's Shakspeare; subject,--"Lear (and suite) in the storm," but coloured according to the imagination and taste of the artist; its name ought assuredly to have been _Redcap and the blue-devils_, for the venerable and lamented monarch had fine streaming locks of the real _carrot hue_, whilst his very hideous companions showed _blue_ faces, and blue armour; and with their strangely contorted bodies seemed meet representatives of some of the infernal court.--In a highly adorned prayer book, published in the reign of William III., the engravings of which are from _silver-plates_, one print illustrates our Lord's simile of the mote and beam, by a couple of men aiming at each other's visual organs, ineffectually enough, one having a great _log of wood_ growing from his eye, and the other being blind in one eye from a _cataract_; at least, though I think I do not err in saying, a _moat_ and castle, in it--I have seen an old edition of Jeremy Taylor's "Life and Death of Christ," illustrated with many remarkably good engravings. Of one of these the subject is, the Impotent Man at the Pool of Bethesda; the fore ground is occupied by our Saviour, the cripple, and other invalids; and in the distance appears a small _pond_ palisaded by slender pilasters; over it hovers an angel, who, with _a long pole_, is, to the marvel of the beholders, dexterously "troubling the waters." In the same volume, some of the figures are clad in the garb of the time when drawn, and St. Jude is reading the _New Testament_ in a _pair of spectacles_!--In Holyrood House, and in one of the rooms added in the days of Charles II., is a panel-painting of "the Infant Hercules strangling the serpents;" and leaping up in front of the cradle, appears one of those pretty and rare spaniels called _King Charles's breed_. In the same palace, and in one of the chambers, once occupied by the unfortunate Mary, is a very old painting, intended, as the guide assures visitors, to represent St. Peter's vision of the great sheet; it may be, but if so, _one_ archangel in _military sandals_, holding in his hands a _small towel_, represents (by a _figure_ in _painting_ I presume,) St. Peter, the sheet, and its innumerable living contents. He must have taken a hint, from the artist who painted for the passage through the Red Sea nothing but ocean, assuring his employer, that the Israelites could not be seen, because they were all gone over, and the Egyptians were every one drowned!--"I once saw," writes a friend, "a full length portrait of _Wordsworth_, in a modern painting of 'Christ riding into Jerusalem;' it was amongst a group of Jews, and next to a likeness of _Voltaire_. I believe the painter intended to contrast the countenances of the Christian and infidel poets, and thus pay a handsome compliment to the former; but the taste that placed the ancients and moderns together, remind me of a fine old painting of the Flemish school; a 'David with Goliah's head,' in the fore-ground of which were a number of fat _Dutchmen_, dressed in _blue coats and leather breeches_, with _pipes_ in their mouths."--"Raphael," says a little French work on painting, in my possession, speaking of _unity_ of time, "_A peché contre cette regle, dans son tableau d'Heliodore, ou il fait intervenir le Pape Jules 2 dans le Temple de Jerusalem porte sur les epaules, des Gonfalonniers_." The same work notices a breach of the _unity of design_ in Paul Veronese, "_qui dans la partie droite d'un de ses tableaux, a represente Jesus Christ benissant l'eau, dont il va être baptise par St. Jean Baptiste; et dans la partie gauche notre Seigneur tente par le diable_."--Upon the celebrated "Transfiguration" of Raphael, I heard an artist remark, "undoubtedly it is the first picture in the world, yet the painter has erred in these respects:--the upper portion of the picture is occupied by the subject, but the lower and fore-ground by the _Healing of the Demoniac_. Now that event did not happen until after the transfiguration, and we infringe upon our Saviour's _ubiquity_ by supposing it to occur (contrary to the sacred story) at the same time. _He_ may, indeed, as _God_ be _omnipresent_, but as _man_, the New Testament no where asserts that the Incarnate Presence was in different places at the same moment." Instances of erroneous judgment are frequent in those who illustrate holy writ. Some have attempted to embody _Him_, "whom no man hath seen at any time." Some have filled their skies with beings as little aerial as possible, or apotheoses of the Virgin and sundry saints. Angels, as some represent them, even in whole lengths, are by _anatomists_ regarded as _monsters_; but what then are the chubby winged heads _without bodies_, with which some artists etherealize their works. Some err by mingling on the same canvass the sacred and profane; scripture characters and the non-descripts of heathen mythology. Nor is poetry free from the latter error, as is exemplified in the major and minor epics, &c., of many Christian poets. The drawings of the monks, splendid in colouring and beautiful in finish, are mostly ludicrous in design, from glaring anachronisms, erroneous perspective, &c. I saw a print in Montfauçon, where fish were gamboling like porpusses on the surface of the sea, and one or two were visible _through the paddles_ of a boat. In the same volume was a print of the apotheosis of St. Louis, from an illumination. The holy prince was represented dying in the fore-ground, but over head were a couple of angels flying away with his soul, (under the figure of a wretched infant, skinny and naked, save the glory that covered his head,) in a kind of sheet, or rather sack.

But to detail all the absurdities and indecencies of these revered artists, whether limners, or carvers in wood, were endless. Their anachronisms, however, have been of considerable service to the antiquary. Sculpture has its monstrosities, architecture its incongruities, though not so palpable as those of painting, because the art is less generally understood by the common observer, or rather pictorial errors are in general easily detected by the eye alone, and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose compositions are fraught with beauty and genius, sings:--

"Then swooped the winds, that hurl the _giant oak_ From _Snowdon's altitude_."

And another, in stanzas of extreme strength and eloquent description, describes a storm at night "among the mountains of Snowdon," with these expressions:--

----"The bird of night Screams from her straw-built nest, as from the womb Of infant death, and wheels her drowsy flight Amid _the pine-clad rocks_, with wonder and afright."

----"The night-breeze dies Faint, on _the mountain-ash leaves that surround Snowdon's dark peaks_."

Now, a painful pilgrimage of eleven hours, up Snowdon and back again, enables me to declare that had oaks, pines, and service-trees adorned that appalling and volcanic chaos, five or six years since, some storm sufficient to have shattered the universe, must have swept them all away, ere I looked upon that dreary assemblage of rocks which seems like the _ruins of a world_. I ascended from the Capel Cerig side of the mountain, and therefore venture not to say what may be the aspect of the Llanberries; but the only verdure I beheld, was that of short, brown heathy grass, a few stunted furze-bushes, and patches of that vividly green moss, which is spongy and full of water. The only living inhabitants of these wilds were a few ruffian-like miners, two or three black slugs, and a scanty flock of straggling half-starved mountain sheep, with their brown, ropy coats. The guide told me, that even _eagles_, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for _owls_, neither bird nor mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts, and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere regard for the fraternity, but Snowdon is not adorned with pines, firs, larches, and service-trees, like parts of the Alps; it is _not_ wooded like the romantic Pyrenees, nor luxuriantly fertile in fruits, flowers, and grain, like the terrible, but sylvan Etna.

M.L.B.

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OLD POETS

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DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

["A Lover of Old English Poetry," has, in the last _London Magazine_, a short paper on DRUMMOND of HAWTHORNDEN, a name dear to every poetical mind, and every lover of early song. His intention, he says, is "rather to excite than satiate" the taste of his readers for the poetry of Drummond,--an object in which we cordially agree, and would contribute our offering, had not the task, in the present instance, been already so ably performed. We cannot, therefore, do better than introduce to our readers a few of his judicious selections. They are exquisite specimens of the evergreen freshness of old poetry, and by their contrast with contemporary effusions will contribute to the mosaic of our sheet. By the way, we hear of a sprinkling of the antique world of letters in some of the "Annuals"--an introduction which reflects high credit on the taste of the editors, and serves to prove that sicklied sentimentalities, like all other sweets, when enjoyed to excess, will cloy the fancy, but not so as entirely to unfit the mind for a higher species of intellectual enjoyment. We would have _old and new alternate_ in the literary wreath, lest, by losing the comparison, the "bright lights" of other times should be treated with irreverence and neglect.]

FROM THE "HYMN ON THE FAIREST FAIR."

I feel my bosom glow with wonted fires: Raised from the vulgar press, my mind aspires, _Wing'd with high thoughts_, unto His praise to climb From deep Eternity who call'd forth time:-- That ESSENCE, which, not mov'd, makes each thing move,-- Uncreate beauty--all-creating love... Ineffable, all-powerful GOD, all free,-- Thou only liv'st, and all things live by thee... Perfection's sum--prime cause of every cause, Midst and beginning, where all good doth pause... Incomprehensible, by reachless height; And unperceived, by _excessive light_. O King! whose greatness none can comprehend, Whose boundless goodness does to all extend,-- Light of all beauty, ocean without ground, _That standing, flowest--giving, dost abound_... Great Architect--Lord of this universe,-- That sight is blinded would thy greatness pierce.

Then follows this noble simile, nobly sustained, and with a flow and harmony of verse not common in the poets of his period:--

Ah! as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass, Or Atlas' temples crown'd with winter glass,-- The airy Caucasus, the Apennine, Pyrenees' cliffs, where sun doth never shine;-- When he some craggy hills hath overwent, Begins to think on rest, his journey spent, Till mounting some tall mountain he do find More heights before him than he left behind,-- With halting pace so while I would me raise To the unbounded limits of Thy praise, Some part of way I thought to have o'errun; But now I see how scarce I have begun-- With wonders new my spirits range possest, And, wandering wayless, in a maze them rest.

Oh! that the cause which doth consume our joy Would the remembrance of it too destroy!

LIFE.

Woods cut again do grow: Bud doth the rose and daisy, winter done, But we, once dead, do no more see the sun! What fair is wrought Falls in the prime, and passeth like a thought.

SONNET.--SPRING.

Sweet Spring, thou com'st with all thy goodly train,-- Thy head with flame, thy mantle bright with flowers: _The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain_,-- The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers;-- Sweet Spring, thou com'st--but ah! my pleasant hours, And happy days, with thee come not again! The sad memorials only of my pain Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours. Thou art the same which still thou wert before, _Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair_, But she whose breath embalmed thy wholesome air Is gone--nor gold, nor gems can her restore, Neglected virtue--seasons, go and come, When thine, forgot, lie closed in a tomb.

SONNET.

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours, Of winters past, or coming, void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are,-- Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers, To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leavy bowers Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare, And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,-- A stain to human sense in sin that lowers. What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs (Attir'd in sweetness) sweetly is not driven Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs, And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven? Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise To airs of spheres--yes, and to angels lays!

SLEEP.

Now while the Night her sable veil hath spread, And silently her resty coach doth roll, Rousing with her, from Thetis' azure bed, Those starry nymphs which dance about the pole; While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad. The Latmian shepherd in a trance descries, And, looking pale from height of all the skies, She dyes her beauties in a blushing red; While Sleep, in triumph, closed hath all eyes, And birds and beasts a silence sweet do keep, And Proteus' monstrous people in the deep,-- The winds and waves, hush'd up, to rest entice,-- I wake, I turn, I weep, oppress'd with pain, Perplex'd in the meanders of my brain.

Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest, Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings, Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, Sole comforter of minds which are oppress'd-- Lo! by thy charming rod, all breathing things Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd, And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest. Since I am thine, O come,--but with that face To inward light, which thou art wont to shew-- With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe; Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace, Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath I long to kiss the image of my death!

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Hark, happy lovers, hark! This first and last of joys, This sweetener of annoys, This nectar of the gods, You call a kiss, is with itself at odds: And half so sweet is not, In equal measure got At light of sun as it is in the dark: Hark, happy lovers, hark!

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NOTES OF A READER

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INDIAN FEAST OF SOULS.

Every three or four years, by a general agreement, the Indians disinter the bodies of such as have died within that time; finding the soft parts mouldered away, they carefully clean the bones, and each family wrap up the remains of their departed friends in new fur. They are then laid together in one mound or barrow, and the ceremony concludes with a feast, with dances, songs, speeches, games, and mock combats.

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PALEY.

We think it next to impossible for a candid unbeliever to read the Evidences of Paley, in their proper order, unshaken. His Natural Theology will open the heart, that it may understand, or at least receive the Scriptures, if any thing can. It is philosophy in its highest and noblest sense; scientific, without the jargon of science; profound, but so clear that its depth is disguised. There is nothing of the "budge Doctor" here; speculations which will convince, if aught will, that "in the beginning _God_ created the heaven and the earth," are made familiar as household words. They are brought home to the experience of every man, the most ordinary observer on the facts of nature with which he is daily conversant. A thicker clothing, for instance, is provided in winter for that tribe of animals which are covered with _fur_. Now, in these days, such an assertion would be backed by an appeal to some learned Rabbi of a Zoological Society, who had written a deep pamphlet, upon what he would probably call the _Theory of Hair_. But to whom does Paley refer us? To any dealer in rabbit skins. The curious contrivance in the bones of birds, to unite strength with lightness, is noticed. The bore is larger, in proportion to the weight of the bone, than in other animals; it is empty; the substance of the bone itself is of a closer texture. For these facts, any "operative" would quote Sir Everard Home, or Professor Cuvier, by way of giving a sort of philosophical éclat to the affair, and throwing a little learned dust in the eyes of the public. Paley, however, advises you to make your own observations when you happen to be engaged in the scientific operation of picking the leg or wing of a chicken. The very singular correspondence between the two sides of any animal, the right hand answering to the left, and so on, is touched upon, as a proof of a contriving Creator, and a very striking one it is. Well! we have a long and abstruse problem in chances worked out to show that it was so many millions, and so many odd thousands to one, that accident could not have produced the phenomenon; not a bit of it. Paley, who was probably scratching his head at the moment, offers no other confirmation of his assertion, than that it is the most difficult thing in the world to get a _wig made even_, seldom as it is that the _face_ is made awry. The circulation of the blood, and the provision for its getting from the heart to the extremities, and back again, affords a singular demonstration of the Maker of the body being an admirable Master both of mechanics and hydrostatics. But what is the language in which Paley talks of this process?--technical?--that mystical nomenclature of Diaforius, which frightens country patients out of their wits, thinking, as they very naturally do, that a disease must be very horrid which involves such very horrid names? Hear our anatomist from Giggleswick.

"The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main-pipe of the water-works at London Bridge; and the roaring in the passage through that pipe is inferior, in impetus and velocity, to the blood gushing from the whale's heart."

He cares not whence he fetches his illustrations, provided they are to the purpose. The laminae of the feathers of birds are kept together by teeth that hook into one another, "as a _latch_ enters into the catch, and fastens a door." The eyes of the mole are protected by being very small, and buried deep in a cushion of skin, so that the apertures leading to them are like _pin-holes in a piece of velvet_, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. The snail without wings, feet, or thread, adheres to a stalk by a provision of _sticking-plaster_. The lobster, as he grows, is furnished with a way of uncasing himself of his buckler, and drawing his legs out of _his boots_ when they become too small for him.

In this unambitious manner does Paley prosecute his high theme, drawing, as it were, philosophy from the clouds. But it is not merely the fund of entertaining knowledge which the Natural Theology contains, or the admirable address displayed in the adaption of it, which fits it for working conviction; the "sunshine of the breast," the cheerful spirit with which its benevolent author goes on his way ([Greek: kudei gaion],) this it is that carries the coldest reader captive, and constrains him to confess within himself, and even in spite of himself, "it is good for me to be here."

...We mourn over the leaves of our peaches and plum-trees, as they wither under a blight. What does Paley see in this? A legion of animated beings (for such is a _blight_) claiming their portion of the bounty of Nature, and made happy by our comparatively trifling privation, We are tortured by bodily _pain_,--Paley himself was so, even at the moment that he was thus nobly vindicating God's wisdom and ways. What of that? Pain is not the object of contrivance--no anatomist ever dreamt of explaining any organ of the body on the principle of the thumb screw; it is itself productive of good; it is seldom both violent, and long continued; and then its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. "It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which I believe," says this true philosopher, "few enjoyments exceed." The returns of an hospital in his neighbourhood lie before him. Does he conjure up the images of Milton's lazar-house, and sicken at the spectacle of human suffering? No--he finds the admitted 6,420--the dead, 234--the _cured_, 5,476; his eye settles upon the last, and he is content.

There is nothing in the world which has not more handles than one; and it is of the greatest consequence to get a habit of taking hold by the best. The bells speak as we make them; "how many a tale their music tells!" Hogarth's industrious apprentice might hear in them that he should be "Lord Mayor of London"--the idle apprentice that he should be hanged at Tyburn. The landscape looks as we see it; if we go to meet a friend, every distant object assumes his shape--

"In great and small, and round and square, 'Tis Johnny, Johnny, every where."

Crabbe's lover passed over the very same heath to his mistress and from her; yet as he went, all was beauty--as he returned all was blank. The world does not more surely provide different kinds of food for different animals, than it furnishes doubts to the sceptic and hopes to the believer, as he takes it. The one, in an honest and good heart, pours out the box of ointment on a Saviour's head--the other, in the pride of his philosophy, only searches into it for a dead fly.--_Q. Rev._

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"ALL FOR THE BEST."

When Bernard Gilpin was summoned up to London to give an account of himself and his creed before Bonner, he chanced to break his leg on the way; and, on some persons retorting upon him a favourite saying of his own, "that nothing happens to us but what is intended for our good," and asking him whether it was for his good that he had broken his leg, he answered, "that he made no question but it was." And so it turned out, for before he was able to travel again, Queen Mary died, and he was set at liberty.

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Men keep their word simply because it is _right_ to do so. They feel it is right, and ask no further questions. Conscience carries along with it its own authority--its own credentials. The depraved appetites may rebel against it, but they are aware that it is rebellion.--_Q. Rev._

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ARAB HOSPITALITY.

M. Pacho, the African traveller, lately arrived at Marmorica, when the rains had commenced, and the ground was preparing for the seed, and was admitted to all the rites of Arab hospitality. Invited to a great feast, he was regaled with the usual dainty of a sheep roasted whole, and eaten with the fingers; while girls, dressed as Caryatides, presented a large vase of milk, which was passed round to the company. All that was expected in return was to cover bits of paper with writing, and thus convert them into amulets; for, in his capacity of sorcerer, the Christian is supposed to possess supernatural powers.--_Edinburgh Rev._