Page images
PDF
EPUB

CAUTION.

WHEN clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth;

All may be well; but if God sort it so,
'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.

-Shakespeare.

LOVE OF HOME.

THE traveler from his native land,
The veriest wanderer 'neath the sun,
When from his glass of life the sand
Has nearly its full volume run,
Turns to the land that gave him birth,

Though banished from his mind for years,

And sighs to see that spot of earth

That knew his childhood's smiles and tears.

LXXI.-COST OF WRITING WELL.

EXCELLENCE is not matured in a day, and the cost of it is an old story. The beginning of Plato's "Republic," it is said, was found in an old tablet, written over and over in a variety of ways.

Addison, we are told, wore out the patience of his printer frequently; when nearly a whole impression of the "Spectator" was worked off, he would stop the press to insert some new proposition.

Lamb's most admired essays were the result of intense brain labor; he used to spend days in elaborating a single humorous letter to a friend.

Tennyson is reported to have written "Come into the Garden, Maud," more than fifty times over before it pleased him; and his "Locksley Hall," the first draught of which was written in two days, he spent the better part of six weeks, for eight hours a day, in altering and polishing.

Dickens, when he intended to write a Christmas story, shut himself up for six weeks, living the life of a hermit, and came out as haggard as a murderer.

Balzac, after he had thought out thoroughly one of his philosophical romances, and amassed his materials in a most laborious manner, retired to his study, and from that time until his book went to press society saw him no more. The manuscript was afterward altered and copied, when it passed into the hands of the printer, from whose slips the book was rewritten the third time. Again it went to the printer, two, three, sometimes four separate proofs being required before the author's leave could be got to send the perpetually rewritten book to press, at last, to have it done.

Moore thought it quick work if he wrote seventy lines of "Lalla Rookh" in a week. Kinglake's "Eothen," we are told, was rewritten five or six times, and was kept in the author's writing-desk almost as long as Wordsworth kept the "White Doe of Rylsone," and kept like that, to be taken out for review and correction almost every day.

Buffon's "Story of Nature" cost him fifty years of labor before he sent it to the printer. "He composed it in a singular manner, writing on large-sized paper, in which, as in a ledger, five distinct columns were ruled. In the first column he wrote down the first thoughts; in the second he corrected, enlarged and pruned it; and so on until he reached the fifth column, within which he finally wrote the results of his labor. But even after this he would compose a sentence twenty times, and once devoted fourteen hours to finding the proper word to round off a period."

John Foster often spent hours on a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the commencement of Goldsmith's "Traveler" and its completion.

Le Rochefoucald spent fifteen years in preparing his little book of maxims, altering some of them, Segaris says, nearly thirty times.

We all know how Sheridan published his wit and finished

his jokes, the same things being found on different bits of paper, differently expressed.

Rogers showed Crabb Robinson a note to his "Italy," which he said took him two weeks to write. It consists of a very few lines.

LXXII. THE HYPOCRITE.

He was a man,

Who stole the livery of the court of heaven,

To serve the devil in; in virtue's guise,
Devoured the widow's house and orphan's bread
In holy phrase, transacted villainies

That common sinners durst not meddle with.

At sacred feast he sat among the saints,

And with his guilty hands touched holiest things;
And none of sin lamented more, or sighed
More deeply, or with graver countenance,
Or longer prayer, wept o'er the dying man,
Whose infant children, at the moment, he
Planned how to rob. In sermon style he bought,
And sold, and lied; and salutation made

In Scripture terms. He prayed by quantity,
And with his repetitions, long and loud,

All knees were weary.

With one hand he put

A penny in the urn of poverty,

And with the other took a shilling out.

On charitable lists,-those trumps which told

The public ear who had, in secret, done

The poor a benefit, and half the alms

They told of took themselves to keep them sounding—
He blazed his name, more pleased to have it there

Than in the book of life.

Seest thou the man!

A serpent with an angel's voice! a grave,

With flowers bestrewed! and yet, few were deceived.

His virtues, being overdone, his face

Too grave, his prayers too long, his charities
Too pompously attended, and his speech
Larded too frequently, and out of time,
With serious phraseology, were rents

That in his garments opened in spite of him,
Thro' which the well-accustomed eye could see
The rottenness of his heart.

THE MISER.

BUT there is one in folly farther gone,
With eye awry, incurable, and wild,

The laughing-stock of demons and of men,
And by his guardian angel quite given up-
The miser, who with dust inanimate

Holds wedded intercourse.

Ill-guided wretch

-Pollok.

Thou mayst have seen him at the midnight hour-
When good men sleep, and in light-winged dreams
Send up their souls to God-in wasteful hall,
With vigilance and fasting worn to skin
And bone, and wrapt in most debasing rags—
Thou mayst have seen him bending o'er his heaps,
And holding strange communion with his gold;
And as his thievish fancy seems to hear
The night-man's foot approach, starting alarmed,
And in his old, decrepit, withered hand,
That palsy shakes, grasping the yellow earth
To make it sure.

Of all God made upright,

And in their nostrils breathed a living soul,

Most fallen, most prone, most earthy, most debased;
Of all that sell Eternity for Time,

None bargain on so easy terms with Death.
Illustrious fool! nay, most inhuman wretch!
He sits among his bags, and, with a look

Which hell might be ashamed of, drives the poor
Away unalmsed, and midst abundance dies,
Sorest of evils! dies of utter want.

-Pollok.

LXXIII.—SHORT SELECTIONS.

A MERRY HEART.

THE merry heart, the merry heart,
Of heaven's gifts I hold thee best;
And they who feel its pleasant throb,
Though dark their lot, are truly blest.
From youth to age it changes not,

In joy and sorrow still the same;
When skies are dark, and tempests scowl,
It shines a steady beacon flame.

It gives to beauty half its power,

The nameless charm worth all the rest,

The light that dances o'er the face,
And speaks of sunshine in the breast.

If beauty ne'er have set her seal,

It well supplies her absence, too,
And many a cheek looks passing fair,
Because a merry heart shines through.

TRIUMPH.

NoT he who rides through conquered city's gate, At head of blazoned hosts, and to the sound Of victors' trumpets, in full pomp and state

Of war, the utmost pitch has dreamed or found To which the thrill of triumph can be wound;

Not he who by a nation's vast acclaim

Is sudden sought and singled out alone,
And while the people madly shout his name,
Without a conscious purpose of his own
Is swung and lifted to the nation's throne;
But he who has all single-handed stood,
With foes invisible on every side,

And, unsuspected of the multitude,

The force of fate itself has dared defied, And conquered silently. Ah, that soul knows In what white heat the blood of triumph glows!

« PreviousContinue »