many actual shipwrecks in prose, selecting such | while the great tide is still rolling on and gainmaterials as were most striking. Gibbon makes ing ground with every breaker. Mr. Southey it a merit in Tasso "to have copied the minutest accuses us of attacking the religion of the coundetails of the siege of Jerusalem from the Chro-try; and is he abetting it by writing lives of nicles." In me it may be a demerit, I presume; let it remain so. Whilst I have been occupied In defending Pope's character, the lower orders of Grub-street appear to have been assailing mine: this is as it should be, both in them and In me. One of the accusations in the nameless epistle alluded to is still more laughable: it states seriously that I "received five hundred pounds for writing advertisements for Day and Martin's patent blacking!" This is the highest compliment to my literary powers which I ever received. It states also "that a person has been trying to make acquaintance with Mr. Townsend, a gentleman of the law, who was with me on business in Venice three years ago, for the purpose of obtaining any defamatory particulars of my life from this occasional visitor." Mr. Townsend is welcome to say what he knows. I mention these particulars merely to show the world in general what the literary lower world contains, and their way of setting to work. Another charge made, I am told, in the "Literary Gazette" is, that I wrote the notes to "Queen Mab;" a work which I never saw till some time after its publication; and which I recollect showing to Mr. Sotheby as a poem of great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the notes, nor ever saw them except in their published form. No one knows better than their real author, that his opinions and mine differ materially upon the metaphysical portion of that work; though in common with all who are not blinded by baseness and bigotry, I highly admire the poetry of that and his other publications. Mr. Southey, too, in his pious preface to a poem, whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the "legislature to look to it," as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the "Satanic School." This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Bastille, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to attribute every thing to the French revolution, and the French revolution to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious-the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without the occurrence of a single alteration. And the English revolution-(the first, I mean) -what was it occasioned by? The puritans were surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biographer? Acts-acts on the part of government, and not writings against them, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future. I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist: I wish to see the English constitution restored and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present property in the funds, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have more to lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. The government may exult over the repression of petty tumults; these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the shore, Wesley? One mode of worship is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever will be, a country without a religion. We shall be told of France again: but it was only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theophilanthropy. The church of England, if overthrown, will be swept away by the sectarians, and not by the sceptics. People are too wise, too well-informed, too certain of their own immense importance in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There may be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of human reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never gain proselytes-unless indeed, they are persecuted: that, to be sure, will increase any thing. Mr. S., with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated "death-bed repentance" of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant "Vision of Judgment," in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. S.'s sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, I have not waited for a "death-bed" to repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the "diabolical pride" which this pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him. Whether, upon the whole, the good or evil of my deeds may preponderate is not for me to ascertain; but, as my means and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present defence to an assertion (easily proved, if necessary,) that I, "in my degree, have done more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence. There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a hireling. There are others to which I recur with sorrow and repentance; but the only act of my life of which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in contact with a near connexion of his own, did no dishonour to that connexion nor to me. I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad, on his return from Switzerland, against me and others: they have done him no good in this world; and, if his creed be the right one, they will do him less in the next. What his "death-bed" may be, it is not my province to predicate: let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works, sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of "Gebir," whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, "be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten." I for one neither envy hím "the friendship," nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelusson's fortune in the third and fourth generation. This friendship will probably be as memorable as his own epics, which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in "English Bards") Porson said "would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then." For the present, I leave him. 762 NOTES TO SARDANAPALUS. And thou, my own Ionian Myrrha. [p. 474. "The Ionian name had been still more comprehensive, having included the Achaians and the Bœotians, who, together with those to whom it was afterwards confined, would make nearly the whole of the Greek nation, and among the orientals it was always the general name for the Greeks."-MITFORD'S Greece, vol. 1, p. 199. -Sardanapalus The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes, "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still in Arrian's time, bore the character of greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: "Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip." Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy deserts and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious; but it may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance. Amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe, whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there, whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commouly ascribed to him; but that monarch having been the last of a dynasty, ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partisans. The inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him." MITYORD. NOTE TO THE DEFORMED TRANS- NOTES TO THE PROPHECY OF FORMED. This production is founded partly on the story of a Novel, called "The Three Brothers," published many years ago, from which Lewis's "Wood-Demon" was also taken - and partly on the "Faust" of the great Goethe. The present publication contains the first two Parts only, and the opening chorus of the third. The rest may perhaps appear hereafter. NOTE TO THE LAMENT OF TASSO. At Ferrara (in the library) are preserved the original MSS. of Tasso's Gierusalemme and of Guarini's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from Titian to Ariosto, and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house, of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the cotemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. Anna attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of Ariosto-at least it had this effect on me. There are two inscriptions, one on the outer gate, the second over the cell itself, inviting, unnecessarily, the wonder and the indignation of the spectator. Ferrara is much decayed and depopulated; the castle still exists entire; and I saw the court where Parisina and Hugo were beheaded, according to the annal of Gibbon. DANTE. My Paradise had still been incomplete. (p. 572. Che fanno in Cielo il sole e l'altre stelle Pensar ben dèi ch' ogni terren' piacere. Canzone, in which Dante describes the persoR of Beatrice. I would have had my Florence great and free. [p. 572. L'Esilio che m'è dato onor mi tegno. Cader tra' buoni è pur di lode degno. Sonnet of Dante, in which he represents Right, Generosity, and Temperance as banished from among men, and seeking refuge from Love, who inhabits his bosom. [p. 572. The dust she dooms to scatter. "Ut si quis predictorum ullo tempore in fortiam dicti communis pervenerit, talis perveniens igni comburatar, sic quod moriatur." Second sentence of Florence against Dante, and the fourteen accused with him. - The Latin is worthy of the sentence. Where yet my boys are, and that fatal she. [p. 573. This lady, whose name was Gemma, sprung from one of the most powerful Guelf families, named Donati. Corso Donati was the principal adversary of the Ghibelincs. She is described De being "Admodum morosa, ut de Xantippe So. cratis philosophi conjuge scriptum esse legimus," according to Giannozzo Manetti. But Lionardo Aretino is scandalized with Boccace, in his life of Dante, for saying that literary men should not marry. "Qui-il Boccaccio non ha pazienza, e dice, le moglie esser contrarie agli studj; e non si ricorda che Socrate il più nobile filosofo che mai fosse ebbe moglie, e figliuoli, e uffici della Repubblica nella sua Citta; e Aristotele ebbe due mogli in varj tempi, ed ebbe figliuoli, e ricchezze assai. - E Marco Tullio e Catone-e Varone-e Seneca-ebbero moglie." It is odd that honest Lionardo's examples, with the exception of Seneca, and, for any thing I know, of Aristotle, are not the most felicitous. Tully's Terentia, and Socrates', Xantippe, by no means contributed to their husbands, happiness, whatever they might do to their philosophy - Cato gave away his wife - of Varro's we know nothing-and of Seneca's, only that she was disposed to die with him, but recovered, and lived several years afterwards. But, says Lionardo, "L' uomo è animale civile, secondo piace a tutti i filosofi." And thence concludes that the greatest proof of the animal's civism is "la prima congiunzione, dalla quale multiplicata nasce la Città." pen in the last chapter of Don Quixote. Oh! that our voluminous gentry would follow the example of Cid Hamet Benengeli! Nine moons shall rise oer scenes like this and set. [p. 574. See "Sacco di Roma," generally attributed to Guicciardini. There is another written by a Jacopo Buonaparte, Gentiluomo Samminiatese che vi si trovò presente. Conquerors on foreign shores and the far wave. [p. 576. Alexander of Parma, Spinola, Pescara, Eugene of Savoy, Montecucculi. Discoverers of new worlds, which take their name. [p. 576. Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Sebastian Cabot. He who once enters in a tyrant's hall. [p. 576. A verse from the Greek tragedians, with which Pompey took leave of Cornelia on entering the boat in which he was slain. And the first day which sees the chain enthral. [p. 576. The verse and sentiment are taken from Homer. SONNETTO. Di Giovanni Battista Zappt. Chi è costui, che in dura pietra scolto, Siede gigante; e le più illustre, e conte Prove dell' arte avvanza, e ha vive, e pronte Le labbia sì, che le parole ascolto? Quest' è Mosè; ben me 'l diceva il folto Onor del mento, e 'l doppio raggio in fronte, Quest' è Mosè, quando scendea dell monte, E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto. Tal era allor, che le sonanti, e vaste Acque ci sospese a se d'intorno, e tale Quando il mar chiuse, e ne fè tomba altrui. E voi sue turbe un rio vitello alzate ? Alzata aveste imago a questa eguale! Ch' era men fallo I adorar costui. Over the damn'd before the Judgment throne. [p. 578. The last Judgment in the Sistine chapel. The stream of his great thoughts shall spring from me. [p. 578. I have read somewhere (if I do not err, for I cannot recollect where) that Dante was so great a favourite of Michel Angelo's, that he had designed the whole of the Divina Commedia: but that the volume containing these studies was lost by sea. Her charme to pontiffs proud, who but employ. [p. 578. See the treatment of Michel Angelo by Julius II. and his neglect by Leo X. What have I done to thee, my people? [p. 579. "E scrisse più volte non solamente a particolari cittadin del reggimento, ma ancora al popolo, e intra l'altre un Epistola assai lunga che comincia:-"Popule mi, quid feci tibi? Vita di Dante scritta da Lionardo Aretino. NOTES TO THE ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. The rapture of the strife(p. 691 Certaminis gaudia, the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus. Or like the thief of fire from heaven. [p. 591. Prometheus. The very Fiend's arch mock. [p. 591. "The fiend's arch mock"To lip a wanton, and suppose her chaste." SHAKOPEARE. NOTES TO ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS. Still must I hear-shall hoarse Fitzgerald baul His creaking couplets in a tavern-hall. [p. 593. Semper ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reVexatus toties ranci Theseide Codri? ponam JUVENAL. Mr. Fitzgerald, facetiously termed by Cobbett the "Smail-Beer-Poet," inflicts his annual tri masters, but not disgrace his genius, which ts undoubtedly great, by a repetition of black-letter ballad imitations. The single wonder of a thousand years. (p. 595. As the Odyssey is so closely connected with the story of the Iliad, they may almost be class By Jeffrey's heart, or Lamb's Baotian head. From soaring Southey down to groveling Stott. (p. 594. Stott, better known in the "Morning Post" by the name of Hafiz. This personage is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos. I remember, to the reigning family of Portugal, a special ode of Master Stott's, beginning thus: (Stott loquitur quoad Hibernia.) Princely offspring of Braganza, Also a Sonnet to Rats, well worthy of the subject, and a most thundering ode commencing as follows: Oh! for a lay! loud as the surge Lord have mercy on us! the "Lay of the Last Thus Lays of Minstrels-may they be the last![p. 594. See the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," passim. Never was any plan so incongruous and absurd as the ground-work of this production. The entrance of Thunder and Lightning, prologuising to Bayes' tragedy, unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell, in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark mosstrooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheepstealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction, not to read, can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, although, to use his own elegant phrase, "twas his neckverse at hairibee," i. e. the gallows. And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood. [p. 594. The Biography of Gilpin Horner, and the marvellous pedestrian page, who travelled twice as fast as his master's horse, without the aid of seven-leagued boots, are chefs-d'œuvre in the improvement of taste. For incident we have the invisible, but by no means sparing, box on the ear bestowed on the page, and the entrance of a Knight and Charger into the castle, under the very natural disguise of a wain of hay, Marmion, the hero of the latter romance, is exactly what William of Deloraine would have been, had he been able to read or write. The Poem was manufactured for Messrs. Constable, Murray, and Miller, worshipful Booksellers, in consideration of the receipt of a sum of money, and, truly, considering the inspiration, it is a very creditable production. If Mr. Scott will write for hire, let him do his best for his pay to Milton and Tasso, we consider the "Paradise Lost," and "Gierusalemme Liberata," as their standard efforts, since neither the "Jerusalem Conquered" of the Italian, nor the "Paradise Regained of the English Bard, obtained a proportionate celebrity to their former poems. Query: Which of Mr. Southey's will survive? Next see tremendous Thalaba come on. [p. 593. Thalaba, Mr. Southey's second poem, is writ ten in open defiance of precedent and poetry. Mr. S. wished to produce something novel, and succeeded to a miracle. Joan of Arc was marvellous enough, but Thalaba was one of those poems "which (in the words of Porson) will be read when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but -not till then." Thou wilt devote old women to the devil. (p. 595. See The old Woman of Berkley, a Ballad by Southey, wherein an aged Gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub, on a "high trotting horse." And quit his books, for fear of growing double. [p. 595. Lyrical Ballads: "The tables turned." Up, up my friend, and clear your looks- "Awake a louder and a loftier strain." (р. 596. "Awake a louder. and a loftier strain," is the first line in Bowles's "Spirit of Discovery; " a very spirited and pretty Dwarf Epic. Among other exquisite lines we have the following: --A Kiss Stole on the list'ning silence, never yet Here heard; they trembled even as if the power -That is, the woods of Madeira trembled to a kiss, very much astonished, as well they might be, at such a phenomenon. (See "Letter on Bowles's Strictures on Pope.") Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curl. [p. 597. Curl is one of the heroes of the Dunciad, and was a Bookseller. Lord Fanny is the poetical name of Lord Hervey, author of "Lines to the Imitator of Horace." And do from hate what Mallet did for hire. [p. 597. Lord Bolingbroke hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the Poet had retained some copies of a work by Lord Bolingbroke (the Patriot King), which that splendid but malignant genius had ordered to be destroyed. To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme. [p. 597. Dennis the critic and Ralph the rhymester. Silence ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, Making night hideous-answer him ye owls! DUNCIAD. And link'd thee to the Dunciad for thy pains. [p. 597. See Bowles's late edition of Pope's works, for which he received 300L: thus Mr. B. has experienced how much easier it is to profit by the reputation of another, than to elevate his own. [p. 597. Poor Montgomery, though praised by every English Review, has been bitterly reviled by the Edinburgh. After all, the Bard of Sheffield is a man of considerable genius: his "Wanderer of Switzerland" is worth a thousand "Lyrical Ballads," and at least fifty "Degraded Epics." Nor hunt the bloodhounds back to Arthur's Seat? [p. 597. Arthur's Seat, the hill which overhangs Edinburgh. And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by? [p. 598. In 1806, Messrs. Jeffrey and Moore met at Chalk-Farm. The duel was prevented by the Interference of the magistracy; and, on examination, the balls of the pistols, like the courage of the combatants, were found to have evaporated. This incident gave occasion to much waggery in the daily prints. The other half pursued its calm career. [p. 598. The Tweed here behaved with proper decorum: it would have been highly reprehensible in the English half of the river to have shown the smallest symptom of apprehension. If Jeffrey died, except within her arms. [p. 598. This display of sympathy on the part of the Tolbooth (the principal prison in Edinburgh), which truly seems to have been most affected on this occasion, is much to be commended. It was to be apprehended, that the many unhappy criminale executed in the front, might have rendered the edifice more callous. She is said to be of the softer sex, because her delicacy of feeling on this day was truly feminine, though, like most feminine impulses, perhaps a little selfish. The travell'd Thane! Athenian Aberdeen. [p. 598. His lordship has been much abroad, is a member of the Athenian Society, and reviewer of "Gell's Topography of Troy." Herbert shall wield Thor's hammer, and sometimes. [p. 598. Mr. Herbert is a translator of Icelandic and other Poetry. One of the principal pieces is a "Song on the Recovery of Thor's Hammer:" the translation is a pleasant chaunt in the vulgar tongue, and ended thus: Instead of money and rings, I wot, And classic Hallam, much renown'd for Greek. [p. 598. Mr. Hallam reviewed Payne Knight's Taste, and was exceedingly severe on some Greek verses therein: it was not discovered that the lines were Pindar's, till the press rendered it impossible to cancel the critique, which still stands an everlasting monument of Hallam's ingenuity. The said Hallam is incensed, because he is falsely accused, saying that he never dineth at Holland-House. If this be true, I am sorrynot for having said so, but on his account, as I understand his lordship's feasts are preferable to his compositions. If he did not review Lord Holland's performance, I am glad, because it must have been painful to read, and irksome to praise it. If Mr. Hallam will tell me who did review it, the real name shall find a place in the text, provided, nevertheless, the said name be of two orthodox musical syllables and will come into the verse: till then, Hallam must stand for want of a better. While gay Thalia's luckless votary, Lamb. [p. 598. The Hon. G. Lamb reviewed "Beresford's Miseries," and is moreover author of a Farce enacted with much applause at the Priory, Stanmore, and damned with great expedition at the late Theatre Covent-Garden. It was entitled "Whistle for it." sale. Beware lest blundering Brougham destroy the [p. 598. Mr. Brougham, in No. XXV. of the EdinburghReview, throughout the article concerning Don Pedro de Cevallos, has displayed more politics than policy: many of the worthy burgesses of Edinburgh being so incensed at the infamous principles it evinces, as to have withdrawn their subscriptions. It seems that Mr. Brougham is not a Pict, as I supposed, but a Borderer, and his name is pronounced Broom, from Trent to Tay. So be it. Her son, and vanish'd in a Scottish mist. [p. 599. I ought to apologise to the worthy Deities for introducing a new Goddess with short petticoats to their notice: but, alas! what was to be done? I could not say Caledonia's Genius, it being well known there is no Genius to be found from Clackmannan to Caithness: yet, without supernatural agency, how was Jeffrey to be saved ? The "national Kelpies," are too unpoetical, and the "Brownies" and "Gude Neighbours" (Spirits of a good disposition), refused to extricate him. A Goddess therefore has been called for the purpose, and great ought to be the gratitude of Jeffrey, seeing it is the only communication he ever held, or is likely to hold, with any thing heavenly. Declare his landlord can translate, at least ! [p. 598. Lord Holland has translated some specimens of Lope de Vega, inserted in his life of the Author: both are bepraised by his disinterested guests. Reforms each error and refines the whole. [p. 598. Certain it is, her ladyship is suspected of having displayed her matchless wit in the EdinburghReview: however that may be, we know from good authority that the manuscripts are submitted to her perusal-no doubt for correction. Puns, and a prince within a barrel pent. [p. 598. In the melo-drame of Tekeli, that heroic prince is clapt into a barrel on the stage-a new asylum for distressed heroes. While Reynolds vents his "dammes, poohs, and zounds." [p. 598. All these are favourite expressions of Mr. R. and prominent in his Comedies, living and defunct. A tragedy complete in all but words? [p. 598. Mr. T. Sheridan, the new Manager of DruryLane Theatre, stripped the Tragedy of Bonduca of the Dialogue, and exhibited the scenes as the spectacles of Caractacus. Was this worthy of his sire, or of himself? Her flight to garnish Greenwood's gay designs. [p. 599. Mr. Greenwood is, we believe, Scene-Painter to Drury-Lane Theatre: as such Mr. S. is much indebted to him. |