RICHARD HENRY WILDE. [Born 1789. Died 1847.] I BELIEVE Mr. WILDE is a native of Baltimore, and that he was born about the year 1789.* His family are of Saxon origin, and their ancient name was DE WILDE; but his parents were natives of Dublin, and his father was a wholesale hardware merchant and ironmonger in that city during the American war; near the close of which he emigrated to Maryland, leaving a prosperous business and a large capital in the hands of a partner, by whose bad management they were in a few years both lost. The childhood of RICHARD HENRY WILDE was passed in Baltimore. He was taught to read by his mother, and received instruction in writing and Latin grammar from a private tutor until he was about seven years old. He afterward attended an academy; but his father's affairs becoming embarrassed, in his eleventh year he was taken home and placed in a store. His constitution was at first tender and delicate. In his infancy he was not expected to live from month to month, and he suffered much from ill health until he was fifteen or sixteen. This induced quiet, retiring, solitary, and studious habits. His mother's example gave him a passion for reading, and all his leisure was devoted to books. The study of poetry was his principal source of pleasure, when he was not more than twelve years old. About this time his father died; and gathering as much as she could from the wreck of his property, his mother removed to Augusta, Georgia, and commenced there a small business for the support of her family. Here young WILDE, amid the Irudgery of trade, taught himself book-keeping, and became familiar with the works in general literature which he could obtain in the meagre libraries of the town, or from his personal friends. The expenses of a large family, and various other causes, reduced the little wealth of his mother; her business became unprofitable, and he resolved to study law. Unaole, however, to pay the usual fee for instruction, he kept his design a secret, as far as possible; borrowed some elementary books from his friends, and studied incessantly, tasking himself to read fifty pages, and write five pages of notes, in the form of questions and answers, each day, besides attending to his duties in the store. And, to overcome a natural diffidence, increased by a slight impediment in his speech, he appeared frequently as an actor at a dramatic society, which he had called into existence for this Most of the facts in this notice of Mr. WILDE were communicated to me by an eminent citizen of Georgia, who has long been intimately acquainted with him. He was uncertain whether Mr. W. was born before the arrival of his parents in America, but believed he was not. purpose, and to raise a fund to establish a public library. All this time his older and graver acquaintances, who knew nothing of his designs, naturally confounded him with his thoughtless companions, who sought only amusement, and argued badly of his future life. He bore the injustice in silence, and pursued his secret studies for a year and a half; at the end of which, pale, emaciated, feeble, and with a consumptive cough, he sought a distant court to be examined, that, if rejected, the news of his defeat might not reach his mother. When he arrived, he found he had been wrongly informed, and that the judges had no power to admit him. He met a friend there, however, who was going to the Greene Superior Court; and, on being invited by him to do so, he determined to proceed immediately to that place. It was the March term, for 1809, Mr. Justice EARLY presiding; and the young applicant, totally unknown to every one, save the friend who accompanied him, was at intervals, during three days, subjected to a most rigorous examination. Justice EARLY was well known for his strictness, and the circumstance of a youth leaving his own circuit excited his suspicion; but every question was answered to the satisfaction and even admiration of the examining committee; and he declared that "the young man could not have left his circuit because he was unprepared." His friend certified to the correctness of his moral character; he was admitted without a dissenting voice, and returned in triumph to Augusta. He was at this time under twenty years of age. His health gradually improved; he applied himself diligently to the study of belles lettres, and to his duties as an advocate, and rapidly rose to eminence; being in a few years made attorney-general of the state. He was remarkable for industry in the preparation of his cases, sound logic, and general urbanity. In forensic disputation, he never indulged in personalities, then too common at the bar, unless in self-defence; but, having studied the characters of his associates, and stored his memory with appropriate quotations, his ridicule was a formidable weapon against all who attacked him. In the autumn of 1815, when only a fortnight over the age required by law, Mr. WILDE was elected a member of the national House of Representatives. At the next election, all the representatives from Georgia, but one, were defeated, and Mr. WILDE returned to the bar, where he continued, with the exception of a short service in Congress in 1825, until 1828, when he again became a representative, and so continued until 1835. I have not room to trace his character as a politician very closely. On the occasion of the Force Bill, as i was called, he seceded from a majority of Congress, considering it a measure calculated to produce civil war, and justified himself in a speech of much eloquence. His speeches on the tariff, the relative advantages and disadvantages of a small-note currency, and on the removal of the deposites by General JACKSON, show what are his pretensions to industry and sagacity as a politician.* Mr. WILDE's opposition to the Force Bill and the removal of the deposites rendered him as unpopular with the JACKSON party in Georgia, as his letter from Virginia had made him with the nullifiers, and at the election of 1834 he was left out of Congress. This afforded him the opportunity he had long desired of going abroad, to recruit his health, much impaired by long and arduous public service, and by repeated attacks of the diseases incident to southern climates. He sailed for Europe in June, 1835, spent two years in travelling through England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, and settled during three years more in Florence. Here he occupied himself entirely with literature. The romantic love, the madness, and imprisonment of Tasso had become a subject of curious controversy, and he entered into the investigation "with the enthusiasm of a poet, and the patience and accuracy of a case-hunter," and produced a work, published since his return to the United States, in which the questions concerning Tasso are most ably discussed, and lights are thrown upon them by his letters, and by some of his sonnets, which last are rendered into English with rare felicity. Having completed his work on Tasso, he turned his attention to the life of DANTE; and having learned incidentally one day, in conversation with an artist, that an authentic portrait of this great poet, from the pencil of GIOTTO, probably still existed in the Bargello, (anciently both the prison and the palace of the republic,) on a wall, which by some strange neglect or inadver tence had been covered with whitewash, he set on foot a project for its discovery and restoration, which, after several months, was crowned with complete success. This discovery of a veritable portrait of DANTE, in the prime of his days, says Mr. IRVING, produced throughout Italy some such sensation as, in England, would follow the sudden discovery of a perfectly well-authenticated likeness of SHAKSPEARE. Mr. WILDE returned to the United States in 1840, and was engaged in literary studies and in the practice of his profession until his death, in the summer of 1847, at New Orleans, where he held the professorship of law in the University of Louisiana. Mr. WILDE's original poems and translations are always graceful and correct. Those that have been published were mostly written while he was a member of Congress, during moments of relaxation, and they have never been printed collectively. Specimens of his translations are excluded, by the plan of this work. His versions from the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, are among the most elegant and scholarly productions of their kind that have been published. ODE TO EASE. I NEVER bent at Glory's shrine; Sister of Joy and Liberty, Like those where once I found thee, when, And made thee mistress of my choice! I chose thee, EASE! and Glory fled; *To show his standing in the House of Representa. tives, it may be proper to state, that, in 1834, he was voted for as Speaker, with the following result, on the first ballot:-R. H. WILDE, 64; J. K. POLK, 42; J. B. SUTHERLAND, 34; JOHN BELL, 30; scattering, 32. Ultimately Mr. BELL was elected. And when within the narrow bed, My senseless corpse is thrown: Shall mark the grave I own. On History's page shall ever shine: + Knickerbocker Magazine, October, 1841. I chose thee, EASE! and Wealth withdrew, My scorn with tenfold scorn repaid. Are comforts I must never know: Their souls are abject, base, and low. To mark my train, and pomp, and show: No war-worn soldier, shatter'd tar, Nor hapless friend of former years, It did but heighten all her charms; I woo'd thee to my longing arms: Its love in faltering accents tell; I chose thee, EASE! and yet to me But come again, and I will yet O! come again! thy witching powers A sweet variety of joys; And Glory's crown, and Beauty's smile, SOLOMON AND THE GENIUS.* SPIRIT OF THOUGHT! LO! art thou here? Thy doom?-the doom of all who fell? Be thy behests or good or ill, No matter what or whence thou art! If thou hast power to yield my heart I know thee, Spirit! thou hast been My dreams-my thoughts-and what are they, All! all were thine-and thine between Plunged to the depths of wo and crime, And live, the ETERNAL reigns sublime, And I have sought, with thee have sought, The Moslem imagine that SOLOMON acquired dominion over all the orders of the genii-good and evil. It is even believed he sometimes condescended to converse with his new subjects. On this supposition he has been represented interrogating a genius, in the very wise, but very disagreeable mood of mind which led to the conclusion that "All is vanity!" Touching the said genius, the author has not been able to discover whether he or she (even the sex is equivocal) was of Allah or Eblis, and, therefore, left the matter where he found it-in discreet doubt. The patriarchs of ages fled- And I have task'd my busy brain To learn what haply none may know, Thy birth, seat, power, thine ample reign O'er the heart's tides that ebb and flow, Throb, languish, whirl, rage, freeze, or glow Like billows of the restless main, Amid the wrecks of joy and wo By ocean's caves preserved in vain. And oft to shadow forth I strove, To my mind's eye, some form like thine, Return'd, but brought, alas! no sign: Thou art indeed, a thing divine; And an angelic look are thine, Ready to seize, compare, combine Essence and form-and yet a trace Of grief and care-a shadowy line Dims thy bright forehead's heavenly grace. Yet thou must be of heavenly birth, Where naught is known of grief and pain; Though I perceive, alas! where earth And earthly things have left their stain: From thine high calling didst thou deign To prove-in folly or in mirth With daughters of the first-born CAIN, How little HUMAN LOVE is worth? Ha! dost thou change before mine eyes! Such as our heart's despair can frame, Like HERS, who from the sea-foam came, And lives but in the heart, or skies. SPIRIT OF CHANGE! I know thee too, By thy cheek's ever-shifting hue, By sighs that burn, and tears that glow- Saidst thou not once, that all the charms Was all men knew of heaven above? No more! no more my heart they move, For I, alas! have proved them vain! Didst thou not then, in evil hour, Light in my soul ambition's flame? Didst thou not say the joys of power, Unbounded sway, undying fame, A monarch's love alone should claim? And did I not pursue e'en these? And are they not, when won, the same? All VANITY OF VANITIES! Didst not, to tempt me once again, Bid new, deceitful visions rise, What is the value of the prize? It too, alas! is VANITY! Then tell me since I've found on earth And in our heart and soul is nursed; Thou speak'st not!--Let me know the worst! Thou pointest!—and it is to HEAVEN! A FAREWELL TO AMERICA.* FAREWELL! my more than fatherland! Home of my heart and friends, adieu! Lingering beside some foreign strand, How oft shall I remember you! How often, o'er the waters blue, The loving and beloved few, There are some thoughts we utter not, It must be months,-it may be years,― It may-but no!-I will not fill Fond hearts with gloom,-fond eyes with tears, "Curious to shape uncertain ill." Though humble,-few and far,—yet, still Those hearts and eyes are ever dear; Theirs is the love no time can chill, The truth no chance or change can sear! Only endears them more and more; Roam where I will, what I deplore To leave with them and thee behind! * Written on board ship Westminster, at sea, off the Highlands of Neversink, June 1, 1835 NAPOLEON'S GRAVE. FAINT and sad was the moonbeam's smile, As I stood by the side of NAPOLEON's grave. And is it here that the hero lies, Whose name has shaken the earth with dread? And is this all that the earth supplies A stone his pillow-the turf his bed? Is such the moral of human life? Are these the limits of glory's reign? Have oceans of blood, and an age of strife, And a thousand battles been all in vain ? Is nothing left of his victories now But legions broken-a sword in rust- Of all the chieftains whose thrones he rear'd, Did Prussia cast no repentant glance? Did Austria shed no remorseful tear, No holy leagues, like the heathen heaven, Was doom'd to his vulture, and chains, and rock. And who were the gods that decreed thy doom? Men call'd thee Despot, and call'd thee true; Were freer from treason and guilt than thou! Shame to thee, Gaul, and thy faithless horde! Where was thy veteran's boast that day, But, no, no, no!-it was Freedom's charm Gave them the courage of more than men; You broke the spell that twice nerved each arm, Though you were invincible only then. Yet St. Jean was a deep, not a deadly blow; STANZAS. My life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, That trembles in the moon's pale ray, Its hold is frail-its date is brief, Restless and soon to pass away! Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree, But none shall breathe a sigh for me! My life is like the prints, which feet Have left on Tampa's desert strand; Soon as the rising tide shall beat, All trace will vanish from the sand; Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea, But none, alas! shall mourn for me! TO LORD BYRON. BYRON! 'tis thine alone, on eagles' pinions, Thought, beauty, eloquence, and wisdom storing: O! how I love and envy thee thy glory, To every age and clime alike belonging; Link'd by all tongues with every nation's glory. Thou TACITUS of song! whose echoes, thronging O'er the Atlantic, fill the mountains hoary And forests with the name my verse is wronging. TO THE MOCKING-BIRD. WING'D mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe: For such thou art by day-but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song Like to the melancholy JACQUES complain, Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong, And sighing for thy moticy coat again. |