Page images
PDF
EPUB

to burn it, or to hand it down to our children's children as a memorial of the folly and wickedness of the age of their grandsires,-we have compiled an actual volume of what we will call, for want of a better name, the Poetry of Puffs. We would fain cry it down, but we dare not poetry is, like womankind, sacred; and blistered be our tongue when we abuse either! Our Bookie lacks not contributors; but among all the bards whose "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" combine to gem its pages, commend us most especially to him whose Parnassus is the Strand,-the Strand is n't a hill, but it can't be helped, and whose tutelar Apollo is Robert Warren! The infinite variety of his conceptions and his metres, the melody of his cadences and his rhymes, and the evident enthusiasm with which he treats his subject, contribute to constitute him at once our prime favourite: "micat inter ignes luna minores,” a bright and a full moon is he,—and his surrounding galaxy emulates him nobly. The gentleman who "does" the spirited lyric, the burden of which is "Reform your Tailors' Bills!" for Messrs. Doudney and Son, deserves no slight encomium: and there are three stanzas, omitted by some strange chance from the description of Donna Inez in the first Canto of Don Juan, in praise of Rowland's Macassar, Kalydor, and Odonto, whose genuineness is incontrovertibly attested by that free, easy, and captivating style which so peculiarly distinguishes their noble author. We have, moreover, a little bijou of a poem,-thrice happy Rowland! for thy Kalydor is again the theme!-by "the Lady E. S. W." And didst thou fondly deem, fair votaress of the Nine, that thy name, honoured as it is by the whole sisterhood of educated ladies'-maids,-revered as it is in fashionable finishing schools,-worshiped, ay, worship

ed as it is by all the lately "come-out" female aristocracy, could lie perdue beneath so slight a veil? Oh! Lady Emmeline, Lady Emmeline! grievous, yet doubtless gratifying, hath been thy error! Thou hast thought to "do good by stealth"; nay, deny it not! Even now, in our mind's eye we see thee; ay, in the inmost recesses of thy most holy bower of poesy, surrounded by flowerets of a thousand hues and perfumes of a million odours, tracing on the delicately-tinted page with thy more delicately-chiselled fingers, the thoughts which gush, bright as a stream of Paradise, from the overflowing well-spring of thy heart of hearts: even thus, even now as we write, with all the tumultuous agitation of feelings which is the glorious heritage of the child of song, do we see thee "blush to find it fame!" There is also

A thought, a maddening thought, has struck us! We are perhaps at this very moment contributing unintentionally to the success of the wretches for whose discomfiture we pray every night and morning. We shall view, like the dying eagle, our own feather on the shaft that pierces us. (The simile is our own; we lent it long ago to Byron, and he, like many others of his craft, never acknowledged the loan.) As to our paper, we'll throw it at once behind; no we won't; we'll walk upon it, and decide as we go along. Bring us our hat and cane! we shall be back punctually to lunch. We-"Oh, fool! we shall go mad!"

TO A LADY.

OH! woo'd too long, and loved too well!
Let other tongues thy praises tell;
Let others vie thy chains to wear ;
I heed thee not, imperious fair.

Beauty's bright and peerless eyes
Subdue the weak, torment the wise;
But be she lovely as the morn,
Shall man submit to woman's scorn?

No; the spell that still beguiles,
Is the light of woman's smiles;

But once contemn'd, our hearts are free:
Farewell to tyranny and thee!

And fondly at thy feet I gave
My captive heart, a willing slave;
But when the mistress tyrant grew,
My rebel heart bade love adieu.

ESSAY TOWARDS A BIOGRAPHY OF HORACE. PERHAPS our readers may expect that we should begin our opus, according to approved custom, with an elaborate discussion on the rise and progress of poetry, or at least of satire, among the Romans. If so, we fear they will be disappointed, as such is, in no sort, our intention; and we claim exemption therefrom on the score, that the said opus is not a biography, but an essay towards a biography,' i. e. a biography wanting the tail or the head, as the case may be; whether such a discussion do constitute the head or the tail, the world

6

must decide, and with its decision we pledge ourselves to abide content. We therefore proceed at once to open our attack on the above-mentioned amiable personification of the public, commonly called the gentle reader.

The poet tells us that his father was a coactor (Serm. I. vi. 86.); but Suetonius, (whom from his cognomen, Tranquillus, one may call Steady for shortness,) or the gentleman who writes under his name, says "natus patre exactionum coactore, at vero creditum est salsamentario," and quotes a nasty joke in proof of his assertion. Now no one, in the present day, would deny that Steady was much more likely to know the truth of the matter than Horace himself; and moreover, knowing, in the first place, the respect paid by the Romans to the salinum, (need we quote vivitur parvo, &c.?) and in the second, of the poet, how sale multo Urbem defricuit, i. e. "not only salted the town, but peppered it," we incline to the opinion that old Horace was a man of salt rather than of excise. Our poet was born on the land debateable betwixt Lucania and Apulia; whether indeed he lisped in numbers, we cannot safely depose; but as it is customary for incipient bards so to do, suppose that he followed the fashion in this respect. At any rate, papa thought a private school was not good enough for him; he would not leave his boy to blossom unseen amongst the sons of the tall serjeants, who sent them to take their quarter's Latin at the doubtless fashionable classical and commercial academy which owned Signor Flavio for its conductor; he would not stoop to sacrifice his son's rising genius on the shrine, in behalf of which the youthful aristocrats of the village,

"With slate and copy-book array'd,
Their monthly pennies duly paid."

He scorned the penny-a-month system, and boldly resolved to send his son to a public school in town, where, with the sons

"Of Parliament men of rank and station,
His boy might take his education."

He was a sensible man that Governor Horace, a pattern to parents and guardians in the present age; he had no silly notions about "confined situations," "town unhealthy," &c., &c., but wisely determined to give his son the best education he could, and take his chance for the rest. The old gentleman too took lodgings in town, (it appears, hence, that they received day-scholars at this excellent school,) in order that he might himself watch over his son's conduct. We hope the omnes circum doctores aderat does not mean that he was perpetually fidgeting about the masters; and indeed we are convinced that he was much too sensible to do anything of the kind.

Of the time between Horace's school days and his first introduction to Mæcenas we have no certain account. Steady affirms that he served with Brutus at Philippi as tribune of a legion; in fact, Horace tells us, 1. that he did once fill the rank of tribune, and 2. that he served at Philippi; and therefore, combining the two facts, we must, in deference to the superior authority of the biographer over that of the poet, admit the account. With this admission we may remark, by the way, that it seems Roman patrons rewarded their poets much in the same way as he "of glorious and immortal memory" wished to reward his, when he offered him a captaincy of horse; for though it be not recorded that the poet mounted Pegasus, on this occasion, literally as well as metaphorically; yet it doth appear that he did

« PreviousContinue »