Chapter XI: Part I: Concluded (3)

In truth, such was the prostration of the strength of Rome by these terrible defeats, that the republic was gone but for the jealousy of the Carthaginian government, which hindered them from sending any efficient succours to Hannibal, and the unconquerable spirit of the Roman aristocracy, which rose with every disaster which ensued, and led them to make efforts in behalf of their country which appear almost superhuman, and never have been equalled by any subsequent people on earth. Republican as he is in his ideas, Arnold, with his usual candour as to facts, admits, in the strongest manner, those prodigious efforts made by the patricians of Rome on this memorable occasion; and that the issue of the contest, and with it the fate of the civilized world, depended on their exertions. Out of 270,000 men, of whom the citizens of Rome consisted before the war, no less than seventy thousand were in arms in its fourth year. No such proportion, has ever since been heard of in the world. One in a hundred of the whole population is the utmost which experience has shown a state is capable of bearing, for any length of time, in her regular army. "As Hannibal," says he, "utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the contrary, Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as nothing when compared to the spirit, and wisdom, and power of Rome. The senate, which voted its thanks to its political enemy Varro, 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth,' and which disdained either to solicit, or to reprove, or to threaten, or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused to send their accustomed supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honoured than the conqueror of Zama. Never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be conquered; his triumph would have stopped the progress of the world. For great men can only act permanently by forming great nations, and no one man, even though it were Hannibal himself, can, in one generation, effect such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated it; and the nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body to which magic power had for a moment given an unnatural life; when the charm has ceased, the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama, should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when Hannibal must, in the course of nature, have been dead; and consider how the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved, the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe."[30]

Such was Hannibal; a man capable by his single capacity of arresting and all but overturning a nation, destined by Providence for such mighty achievements, such lasting services to the human race. His combat with Rome was not that of a general with a general, of an army with an army; it was like the subsequent contest between Napoleon and England, the contest of a man with a nation; and in both cases, the nation, after being reduced to the most grievous straits, proved victorious over the man. But Hannibal was not supported as the French emperor was during the great part of his splendid career; no nation with forty millions of souls laid its youth at his feet; no obsequious senate voted him two millions of men in fifteen years; he did not march with the military strength of the half of Europe at his back. Alone, unaided, unbefriended, with the Roman legions in front, and the jealous Carthaginian senate in rear, without succour, reinforcements, or assistance from home, he maintained the contest for fifteen years in Italy, against the might, the energy, and the patriotism of Rome. Such was the terror inspired by his name and exploits, that it rendered even the fierce plebeians of Rome, usually so jealous of patrician interference with their rights, obsequious even in the comitia to their commands. "Go back," said Fabius, when the first centuries had returned consuls of their own choice, whom he knew to be unfit for the command, "and bid them recollect that the consuls must head the armies, and that Hannibal is in Italy." The people succumbed, the votes were taken anew, and the consuls whom he desired were returned.

After the battle of Cannae had rendered hopeless any further contest in the field, the war in Italy degenerated into a mere succession of attempts to gain possession of fortified towns. Hannibal's total want of siege artillery left him no resource for this but stratagem or internal assistance, and in gaining both his great capacity was eminently conspicuous. Capua, Beneventum, Tarentum, and a great many others, were successively wrested or won from the Romans; and it at one period seemed exceedingly doubtful whether, in this war of posts and stratagems, the Carthaginian would not prevail over them, as he had done in the field. This war, and from the influence of the same necessity in both cases, much resembled the wars of the League and Henry IV. in France; and the military conduct of Hannibal bore alternately a striking resemblance to the skill and resources of the chivalrous king of Navarre, and the bold daring of the emperor Napoleon. The gallant irruption, in particular, of the Carthaginian general, by which he relieved Capua when closely besieged by the Roman forces, bears, as Arnold has observed, the most remarkable resemblance to the similar march of Napoleon from Silesia to relieve Dresden, when beset by the Allied armies under the command of Schwartzenberg in 1813. Nor did the admirable skill of the consul Nero--who took advantage of his interior line of communication, and brought a decisive superiority of force from the frontiers of Apulia to bear on the army which Hamilcar had led across the Pyrenees and the Alps, to aid his brother in the south of Italy, and thus decide the war in Italy--bear a less striking analogy to Napoleon's cross marches from Rivoli to the neighbourhood of Mantua in 1796, to the able movement of the Archduke Charles on the Bavarian plains to the banks of the Maine, which proved the salvation of Germany in 1796, or to the gallant irruption of Napoleon, first into the midst of Blucher's scattered columns on the plains of Champagne, and then against the heads of Schwartzenberg's weighty columns at the bridge of Montereau in 1814, during his immortal campaign in France.

Eight years have now elapsed since we had the gratification of reviewing, on its publication, the first volume of Arnold's Rome; and we then foretold the celebrity which that admirable writer was qualified to attain.[31] The publication since that period of two additional volumes has amply verified that prediction; and augmented the bitterness of the regret which, in common with all his countrymen, we felt at his untimely death. It is clear that he was qualified beyond any modern writer who has yet undertaken the glorious task, to write a history of the Rise and Progress of the Roman Republic. What a work would eight volumes such as that before us on Hannibal have formed, in conjunction with Gibbon's immortal Decline and Fall! His ardent love of truth, his warm aspiration after the happiness of the human race, his profound and yet liberal religious feeling, as much gave him the spirit requisite for such an undertaking, as his extensive scholarship, his graphic power, his geographical eye, and brilliant talents for description, fitted him for carrying it into execution. It is one of the most melancholy events of our times, which has reft one of the brightest jewels from the literary crown of England, that such a man should have been cut off at the zenith of his power, and the opening of his fame. Arnold was a liberal writer; but what then? We love and respect an honest opponent. He was candid, ingenuous, and truth-loving; and if a historian is such, it matters not what his political opinions are, for he cannot avoid stating facts that support the conservative side. His errors, as we deem them, in politics, arose from the usual causes which mislead men on human affairs, generosity of heart and inexperience of mankind. He could not conceive, with an imagination warmed by the heroes of antiquity, what a race of selfish pigmies the generality of men really are. No man of such an elevated cast can do so, till he is painfully taught it by experience. Arnold died of a disease of the heart, which physicians have named by the expressive words "_angina pectoris_." They were right: it was anxiety of the heart which brought him to an untimely grave. He died of disappointed hope, of chilled religious aspirations, of mortified political expectations of social felicity. Who can estimate the influence, on so sensitive and enthusiastic a disposition, of the heart-rending anguish which his correspondence proves he felt at the failure of his long-cherished hopes and visions of bliss in the Reform Bill, and all the long catalogue of political and social evils, now apparent to all, it has brought in its train?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: _History of Rome._ By THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. London: 1843. Vol. 3.]

[Footnote 21: Hannibal was born in the year 247 before Christ, or 2092 before this time.]

[Footnote 22: _Virtus_ from _vir_--_exercitus_ from _exerceo_.]

[Footnote 23: Arnold, iii. 89.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._ iii. 486, note.]

[Footnote 25: Livy, xxi. 33.]

[Footnote 26: Polybius, iii. 52.]

[Footnote 27: _Ibid._ iii. 54.]

[Footnote 28: "The way on every side was utterly impassable, through an accident of a peculiar kind, which is peculiar to the Alps. The snows of the former years _having remained_ unmelted upon the mountains, were now covered over by that which had fallen in the present autumn, and when the soldiers feet went through the latter they fell, and slid down with great violence."--POLYBIUS, iii. 54. This shows the place was within the circle of perpetual snow; whereas that on the Little St Bernard is much below it, and far beneath any avalanches.]

[Footnote 29: Polybius, iii. 54.]

[Footnote 30: Arnold, iii. 64, 65]

[Footnote 31: See Arnold's Rome, Blackwood's Magazine, July 1837.]

STANZAS WRITTEN AFTER THE FUNERAL OF ADMIRAL SIR DAVID MILNE, G.C.B.

BY DELTA.

Another, yet another! year by year,
As time progresses with resistless sweep,
Sever'd from life, the patriots disappear,
Who bore St George's standards o'er the deep;--

Heroic men, whose decks were Britain's trust,
When banded Europe scowl'd around in gloom;
Nor least, though latest Thou, whose honour'd dust
Our steps this day live follow'd to the tomb.

Yet, gallant Milne, what more could'st thou desire,
Replete in fame, in years, and honours, save
To wrap thy sea-cloak round thee, and expire,
Where thou had'st lived in glory, on the wave?

From boyhood to thy death-day, 'mid the scenes
Where love is garner'd, or the brave have striven,
With scarce a breathing-time that intervenes,
Thy life was to our country's service given.

A British sailor! 'twas thy proud delight
Up glory's rugged pathway to aspire;
Ready in council, resolute in fight,
And Spartan coolness temper'd Roman fire!

Yes; sixty years have pass'd, since, in thy prime,
Plunging from off the shatter'd Blanche, o'erboard
Amid the moonlight waves, twas thine to climb
La Pique's torn side, and take the Frenchman's sword.

And scarcely less remote that midnight dread,
Or venturous less that daring, when La Seine
Dismay'd, dismasted, cumber'd with her dead,
Struck to the ship she fled--and fought in vain.

And veterans now are all, who, young in heart,
Burn'd as they heard, how o'er the watery way,
Compell'd to fight, yet eager to depart,
The Vengeance battled through the livelong day--

Battled with thee, who, steadfast, on her track,
Not to be shaken off, untiring bent;
And how awhile the fire from each grew slack,
The shatter'd masts to splice, and riggings rent,--

And how, at dawn, the conflict was renew'd,
Muzzle to muzzle, almost hand to hand,
Till useless on the wave, and carnage-strew'd,
The foe lay wreck'd on St Domingo's strand,--

And how huzza'd his brave triumphant crew!
And how the hero burn'd within his eye,
When Milne beheld upon the staff, where flew
The Tricolor, the flag of Britain fly!!

And yet once more thy country calls!--beneath
The towers and demi-lune of dark Algiers
The Impregnable is anchor'd, in the teeth
Of bomb-proof batteries, frowning, tiers on tiers.

Another day of triumph for the right,--
Of laurels fresh for Exmouth and for thee,--
When Afric's Demon, palsied at the sight
Of Europe's Angel, bade the slave go free!

But when away War's fiery storms had burn'd,
And Peace re-gladden'd Earth with skies of blue,
Thy sword into the pruning-hook was turn'd,
And Caesar into Cincinnatus grew.

The poor's protector, the unbiass'd judge,
'Twas thine with warm unwearied zeal to lend
Time to each duty's call, without a grudge;
The Christian, and the Patriot, and the Friend.

Farewell! 'tis dust to dust within the grave;
But while one heart beats high to Scotland's fame,
Best of the good, and bravest of the brave,
The name of Milne shall be an honour'd name.

STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD.

BY B. SIMMONS.

I.
Take back into thy bosom, Earth,
This joyous, May-eyed morrow,
The gentlest child that ever Mirth
Gave to be rear'd by Sorrow.
'Tis hard--while rays half green, half gold,
Through vernal bowers are burning,
And streams their diamond-mirrors hold
To Summer's face returning--
To say, We're thankful that His sleep
Shall never more be lighter,
In whose sweet-tongued companionship
Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter!

II.
But all the more intensely true
His soul gave out each feature
Of elemental Love--each hue
And grace of golden Nature,
The deeper still beneath it all
Lurk'd the keen jags of Anguish;
The more the laurels clasp'd his brow,
Their poison made it languish.
Seem'd it that like the Nightingale
Of his own mournful singing[32],
The tenderer would his song prevail
While most the thorn was stinging.

III.
So never to the Desert-worn
Did fount bring freshness deeper,
Than that his placid rest this morn
Has brought the shrouded sleeper.
That rest may lap his weary head
Where charnels choke the city,
Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed
The wren shall wake its ditty:
But near or far, while evening's star
Is dear to hearts regretting,
Around that spot admiring Thought
Shall hover unforgetting.

IV.
And if _this_ sentient, seething world
Is, after all ideal,
Or in the Immaterial furl'd
Alone resides the Real,
FREED ONE! there's wail for thee this hour
Through thy loved Elves' dominions[33];
Hush'd is each tiny trumpet-flower,
And droopeth Ariel's pinions;
Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing[34],
To plan, with fond endeavour,
What pretty buds and dews shall keep
Thy pillow bright for ever.

V.
And higher, if less happy, tribes--
The race of earthly Childhood,
Shall miss thy Whims of frolic wit,
That in the summer wild-wood,
Or by the Christmas hearth, were hail'd
And hoarded as a treasure
Of undecaying merriment
And ever-changing pleasure.
Things from thy lavish humour flung,
Profuse as scents are flying
This kindling morn, when blooms are born
As fast as blooms are dying.

VI.
Sublimer Art own'd thy control,
The minstrel's mightiest magic,
With sadness to subdue the soul,
Or thrill it with the Tragic.
How, listening Aram's fearful dream,
We see beneath the willow,
That dreadful THING,[35] or watch him steal,
Guilt-lighted, to his pillow.[36]
Now with thee roaming ancient groves,
We watch the woodman felling
The funeral Elm, while through its boughs
The ghostly wind comes knelling.[37]

VII.
Dead Worshipper of Dian's face,
In solitary places
Shalt thou no more steal, as of yore,
To meet her white embraces?[38]
Is there no purple in the rose
Henceforward to thy senses?
For thee has dawn, and daylight's close
Lost their sweet influences?
No!--by the mental might untamed
Thou took'st to Death's dark portal,
The joy of the wide universe
Is now to thee immortal!

VIII.
How fierce contrasts the city's roar
With thy new-conquer'd Quiet!
This stunning hell of wheels that pour
With princes to their riot,--
Loud clash the crowds--the very clouds
With thunder-noise are shaken,
While pale, and mute, and cold, afar
Thou liest, men-forsaken.
Hot Life reeks on, nor recks that One
--The playful, human-hearted--
Who lent its clay less earthiness
Is just from earth departed.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: In his beautiful _Ode to Melancholy;_ originally published in Blackwood's Magazine.]

[Footnote 33: See his _Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, a poem perfectly unrivalled for the intimate sense of nature, tender fancy, and pathetic playfulness displayed in it.]

[Footnote 34:

"Pity it was to hear the Elfins' wail
Rise up in concert from their mingled dread,
Pity it was to see them all so pale
Gaze on the grass as for a dying bed.
But Puck was seated on a spider's thread
That hung between two branches of a brier,
And 'gan to swing and gambol, heels o'er head,
Like any Southwark tumbler on a wire,
For him no present grief could long inspire."

_Plea of the Midsummer Fairies._]

[Footnote 35: Witness the terror of Aram _after_ his victim lies dead before him--(we quote from memory.)

"Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone
That could not do me ill!
And yet I fear'd him all the more
For lying there so still;
_There was a manhood in his look_
_That murder could not kill._"

_Dream of Eugene Aram._]

[Footnote 36:

"For Guilt was my grim chamberlain
Who lighted me to bed,
And drew my midnight curtains round
With fingers bloody red."

_Dream of Eugene Aram._]

[Footnote 37: See his impressive poem on _The Elm-Tree_. It appeared, a couple of years back, in _The New Monthly Magazine_.]

[Footnote 38:

"Before I lived to sigh,
Thou wert in Avon, and a thousand rills,
Beautiful Orb! and so, _whene'er I lie_
_Trodden_, thou wilt be gazing from thy hills.
Blest be thy loving light, where'er it spills,
And blessed be thy face, O Mother Mild!"

_Ode to the Moon, published likewise in Blackwood_, 1829.]

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

NO. V.

DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.--_Concluded._

Dryden's poetical power appears most of all, perhaps, in his translations; and his translation of the most vulgar renown is that which unites his name to that of the great Roman epopeist; but it is not his greatest achievement. The tales modernized and paraphrased from Chaucer, and those filled up into poetical telling from Boccacio, as they are the works of Dryden's which the most fasten themselves with interest upon a mind open to poetry and free from preconceived literary opinion, so do they seem to us to be, after all, those which a versed critic must distinguish as stamped, beyond the others, with the skilled ease, the flow as of original composition, the sustained spirit, and force, and fervour--in short, by the mastery, and by the keen zest of Writing. They are the works of his more than matured mind--of his waning life; and they show a rare instance of a talent so steadfastly and perseveringly self-improved, as that, in life's seventh decennium, the growth of Art overweighed the detriment of Time. But, in good truth, no detriment of time is here perceptible; youthful fire and accomplished skill have the air of being met in these remarkable pieces. Chaucer, in his last and greatest labour, the _Canterbury Tales_, first effectually creating his own style, and his translator, Dryden, at about the same years, excelling himself to infuse renovated life into the _Canterbury Tales_--are brought singularly together.

The age of Chaucer was widely and variously different from that of Dryden. Knowledge, taste, art, had advanced with strides between the two dates; and the bleak and stormy English political atmosphere of the fourteenth century had changed, notwithstanding the commotion of the later civil war, into a far milder and more settled element when the seventeenth drew towards close. Genius, likewise, in the two poets, was distinguished by marked differences. Strength, simplicity, earnestness, human affection, characterize Chaucer. Dryden has plenty of strength, too, but it shows itself differently. The strength of Chaucer is called out by the requisition of the subject, and is measured to the call. Dryden bounds and exults in his nervous vigour, like a strong steed broke loose. Exuberant power and rejoicing freedom mark Dryden versifying--a smooth flow, a prompt fertility, a prodigal splendour of words and images. Old Chaucer, therefore, having passed through the hands of Dryden, is no longer old Chaucer--no longer Chaucer. But the well-chosen, and well-disposed, and well-told tale, full of masculine sense, lively with humour, made present with painting--for all this Chaucer brings to Dryden--becomes, by nothing more than the disantiquating and the different hand, a new poem.

Place the two side by side, and whilst you feel that a total change has been effected, you shall not always easily assign the secret of the change wrought. There then comes into view, it must be owned, something like an unpractised awkwardness in the gait of the great elder bard, which you less willingly believe, or to which you shut your eyes, when you have him by himself to yourself. The step of Dryden is rapid, and has perfect decision. He knows, with every spring he takes, where he shall alight. Now Chaucer, you would often say, is retarded by looking where he shall next set down his foot. The old poetry details the whole series of thinking. The modern supposes more. That is the consequence of practice. Writer and reader are in better intelligence. A hint goes further--that which is known to be meant needs not be explicitly said. Style, as the art advances, gains in dispatch. There is better keeping, too, in some respects. The dignity of the style--the purpose of the Beautiful--is more considerately maintained. And perhaps one would be justified in saying, that if the earnestness of the heart, which was in the old time the virtue of virtues, is less--the glow of the fancy, the tone of inspiration, is proportionally more. And if any where the thought is made to give way to the straits of the verse, the modern art more artfully hides the commission.

In our preceding paper, in which we spoke at large of the genius of Chaucer, we gave some very noble extracts from Dryden's version of the Knight's Tale. But we did not then venture to quote any long passages from the original, unassured how they might look on our page to the eyes of Young Britain. Having good reason to know that Young Britain desires some veritable Chaucer from the hands of Maga, we shall now indulge her with some specimens; and as we have been given to understand that Dryden's versions of the same passages will be acceptable for comparison, they shall be now produced, while the wishes of Young Britain shall be further gratified with an occasional running commentary from our popular pen on both poets. We shall confine ourselves to the Knight's Tale, with which all who love us are by this time familiar.

Let us lead off with one or two short specimens, and be not frightened, Fair-eyes, with the seemingly strange, mayhap obsolete-looking, words of the ancient bard. Con them over a few times, and they will turn into letters of light.

CHAUCER.

Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,
That Emelie, that fayrer was to sene
Than is the lilie upon the stalke grene,
And fressher than the May with floures newe
(For with the rose colour strof hire hewe;
I n'ot which was the finer of hem two)
Er it was day, as she was wont to do,
She was arisen, and all redy dight,
For May wol have no slogardie a-night.
The seson priketh every gentil herte,
And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte,
And sayth 'arise, and do thin observance.'

This maketh Emelie have remembrance
To don honour to May, and for to rise.
Yclothed was she fresshe for to devise.
Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse,
Behind hire back, a yerde long I guess.
And in the garden at the sonne uprist
She walketh up and down where as hire list.
She gathereth floures, partie white and red,
To make a sotel gerlond for hire hed,
And as an angel hevenlich she sang, &c.

DRYDEN.

Thus year by year they pass, and day by day,
Till once--'twas on the morn of cheerful May--
The young Emilia, fairer to be seen
Than the fair lily on the flowery green,
More fresh than May herself in blossoms new,
For with the rosy colour strove her hue,
Waked, as her custom was, before the day,
To do the observance due to sprightly May;
For sprightly May commands our youth to keep
The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep;
Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves,
Inspires new flames, revives extinguish'd loves.

In this remembrance, Emily, ere day,
Arose, and dress'd herself in rich array;
Fresh as the month, and as the morning fair,
Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair;
A ribband did the braided tresses bind,
The rest was loose, and wanton'd in the wind:
Aurora had but newly chased the night,
And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light,
When to the garden-walk she took her way,
To sport and trip along in cool of day,
And offer maiden vows in honour of the May.

At every turn she made a little stand,
And thrust among the thorns her lily hand
To draw the rose; and every rose she drew,
She shook the stalk, and brush'd away the dew;
Then party-colour'd flowers of white and red
She wove, to make a garland to her head.
This done, she sung and caroll'd out so clear,
That men and angels might rejoice to hear.
Even wondering Philomel forgot to sing,
And learn'd from her to welcome in the spring.

What can you wish more innocently beautiful than Chaucer's--what more graceful than Dryden's Emelie? And now look at Arcite--how he, too, does his observance of the May.

CHAUCER.

The besy lark, the messenger of day,
Saleweth in hire song the morwe gray;
And firy Phoebus riseth up so bright
That all the orient laugheth of the sight,
And with his stremes drieth in the greves
The silver dropes hanging on the leves,
And Arcite that is in the court real
With Theseus the squier principal,
Is risen, and loketh on the mery day.
And for to don his observance to May,
Remembring on the point of his desire
He on his courser, sterting as the fire,
Is ridden to the feldes him to play,
Out of the court, were it a mile or tway.
And to the grove of which that I you told,
By aventure his way he 'gan to hold,
To maken him a gerlond of the greves,
Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leves,
And loud he song agen the sonne shene.

O May, with all thy floures and thy grene,
Right welcome be thou faire freshe May,
I hope that I some grene here getten may.

DRYDEN.

The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted, in her song, the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose with beams so bright,
That all the horizon laugh'd to see the joyous sight.
He, with his tepid rays, the rose renews,
And licks the drooping leaves, and dries the dews;
When Arcite left his bed, resolved to pay
Observance to the month of merry May:
Forth, on his fiery steed, betimes he rode,
That scarcely prints the turf on which he trode:

At ease he seem'd, and prancing o'er the plains,
Turn'd only to the grove his horse's reins,
The grove I named before, and lighting there
A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair;
Then turn'd his face against the rising day,
And raised his voice to welcome in the May:--
For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year:
For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours,
And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers:
When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.
So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight,
Nor goats, with venom'd teeth, thy tendrils bite.
As thou shalt guide my wandering feet to find
The fragrant greens I seek my brows to bind.

In Chaucer, Arcite's address to the "mery May" is but of three plain lines, and they suffice; in Dryden, of ten ornate, and they suffice too--"alike, but oh! how different!" The plain three are more in character, for Arcite was thinking of Emelie all the while--but the ornate ten are in season now, for summer has come at last, and recite them to yourself and Amaryllis in the shade.

But now for a loftier strain. Palamon and Arcite are about to fight for Emelie--and lo and behold their auxiliar kings!

Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace:
Blake was his berd, and manly was his face.
The cercles of his eyen in his head
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,
And like a griffon loked he about,
With kemped heres on his browes stout;
His limmes gret, his brawnes hard and stronge,
His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe.
And as the guise was in his countree,
Full high upon a char of gold stood he,
With foure white bolles in the trais.
Instead of cote-armure on his harnais,
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,
He had a beres-skin, cole-blake for old.
His longe here was kempt behind his bak,
As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.
A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,
Upon his hed sate ful of stones bright,
Of fine rubins and of diamants.
About his char ther wenten white alauns
Twenty and mo, as great as any stere,
To hunten at the leon or the dere,
And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound,
Colered with gold, and torettes filed round.
A hundred lordes had he in his route,
Armed full wel with hertes sterne and stoute.

With Arcite, in stories as men find,
The gret Emetrius, the King of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapered well,
Came riding like the god of armes, Mars.
His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, white, and round, and grete.
His sadel was of brent gold new ybete:
A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging,
Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.
His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
And that was yelwe, and glittered as the sonne.
His nose was high, his eyen bright eitrin,
His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,
A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint,
Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint,
And as a leon he his loking caste.
Of five-and-twenty yere his age I caste.
His berd was wel begonnen for to spring;
His vois was as a trompe thondering.
Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
A gerlond fresshe, and lusty for to sene.
Upon his hond he bare for his deduit
An egle tame, as any lily whit.
An hundred lordes had he with him there
All armed save hir hedes in all hir gere,
Full richely in alle manere thinges.
For trusteth wel, that erles, dukes, kinges,
Were gathered in this noble compagnie,
For love, and for encrease of chevalrie.
About this king ther ran on every part
Full many a tame leon and leopart.

What a plenitude of brilliant and powerful description! Every verse, every half verse, adds a characterizing circumstance, a vivifying image. And what an integrity and self-completeness has the daring and large conception of either martial king! And how distinguishably the two stand apart from each other! But above all, what a sudden and rich addition to our stock of heroic poetical portraitures! Here is no imitation. Neither Lycurge nor Emetrius is any where in poetry but here. Not in the _Iliad_-not in the _AEneid_. You cannot compose either of them from the heroes of antiquity. Each is original--new--self-subsisting. The monarch of Thrace is invested with more of uncouth and savage terror. He is bigger, broader. Might for destroying is in his bulk of bone and muscle. Bulls draw him, and he looks taurine. A bear-skin mantles him; and you would think him of ursine consanguinity. The huge lump of gold upon his raven-black head, and the monster hounds, bigger than the dog-kind can be imagined to produce, that gambol about his chariot, all betoken the grosser character of power--the power that is in size--material. The impression of the portentous is made without going avowedly out of the real. His looking is resembled to that of a griffin, because in that monster imagined at or beyond the verge of nature, the ferocity of a devouring, destroying creature can be conceived as more wild, and grim, and fearful than in nature's known offspring, in all of whom some kindlier sparkles from the heart of the great mother, some beneficently-implanted instincts are thought of as tempering and qualifying the pure animal fierceness and rage.

The opposed King of Inde has also of the prodigious, within the limits of the apparently natural. He is also a tremendous champion; but he has more fire, and less of mere thewes, in the furnishing of his warlike sufficiency. There is more of mind and fancy about him. His fair complexion at once places him in a more gracious category of death-doers. Compare to the car drawn by four white bulls, the gallant bay charger barded with steel, and caparisoned with cloth of gold. Compare to that yellow-nailed, swart bear-skin, the coat-armour made with cloth of Tars, the mantelet thick-sown with rubies; for the locks like the raven's plumage, the curls like Apollo's tresses. He is in the dazzling prime of youth. Black Lycurge, without question, has more than twice his years. The beard that yet springs, joined close to the voice that is like a trumpet, is well found for raising the expression of native power in that thundering voice. The laurel wreath for the ponderous golden diadem--the white eagle on the wrist for the snowy alauns, are all studied to carry through the same opposition. Emetrius is a son of chivalry; Lycurge might be kin or kith, with a difference for the better, of that renowned tyrant Diomedes, who put men's limbs for hay into his manger, and of whom Hercules had, not so long ago, ridded the world. _His_ looking, too, is paralleled away from humanity, but it is by the kingly and generous lion. Observe that the companions of the two kings are described, whether through chance or choice, in terms correspondingly opposite. The Thracian leads a hundred lords, with hearts stern and stout. The Indian's following, earls, dukes, kings, have thronged to him, for the love and increment of chivalry. The lions and leopards, too, that run about him have been tamed. They finish the Indian picture.

How does Dryden acquit himself here? Grandly.

DRYDEN.

With Palamon, above the rest in place,
Lycurgus came, the surly king of Thrace;
Black was his beard, and manly was his face:
The balls of his broad eyes roll'd in his head,
And glared bewixt a yellow and a red;
He look'd a lion with a gloomy stare,
And o'er his eye-brows hung his matted hair;
Big-boned, and large of limbs, with sinews strong,
Broad-shoulder'd, and his arms were round and long.
Four milk-white bulls (the Thracian use of old,)
Were yoked to draw his car of burnish'd gold.
Upright he stood, and bore aloft his shield,
Conspicuous from afar, and overlook'd the field.
His surcoat was a bear-skin on his back;
His hair hung long behind, and glossy raven-black.
His ample forehead bore a coronet
With sparkling diamonds, and with rubies set;
Ten brace, and more, of greyhounds, snowy fair,
And tall as stags, ran loose, and coursed around his chair,
A match for pards in flight, in grappling for the bear.
With golden muzzles all their mouths were bound,
And collars of the same their necks surround.
Thus through the field Lycurgus took his way;
His hundred knights attend in pomp and proud array.

To match this monarch, with strong Arcite came
Emetrius, king of Inde, a mighty name!
On a bay courser, goodly to behold,
The trappings of his horse emboss'd with barbarous gold.
Not Mars bestrode a steed with greater grace;
His surcoat o'er his arms was cloth of Thrace,
Adorn'd with pearls, all orient, round, and great;
His saddle was of gold, with emeralds set;
His shoulders large a mantle did attire,
With rubies thick, and sparkling as the fire;
His amber-coloured locks in ringlets run,
With graceful negligence, and shone against the sun.
His nose was aquiline, his eyes were blue,
Ruddy his lips, and fresh and fair his hue;
Some sprinkled freckles on his face were seen,
Whose dusk set off the whiteness of the skin.
His awful presence did the crowd surprise,
Nor durst the rash spectator meet his eyes,
Eyes that confess'd him born for kingly sway,
So fierce, they flash'd intolerable day.
His age in nature's youthful prime appear'd,
And just began to bloom his yellow beard.
Whene'er he spoke, his voice was heard around,
Loud as a trumpet, with a silver sound;
A laurel wreath'd his temples, fresh and green,
And myrtle sprigs, the marks of love, were mix'd between.
Upon his fist he bore, for his delight,
An eagle well reclaim'd, and lily white.

His hundred knights attend him to the war,
All arm'd for battle, save their heads were bare.
Words and devices blazed on every shield,
And pleasing was the terror of the field.
For kings, and dukes, and barons you might see,
Like sparkling stars, though different in degree,
All for the increase of arms, and love of chivalry.
Before the king tame leopards led the way,
And troops of lions innocently play.
So Bacchus through the conquer'd Indies rode,
And beasts in gambols frisk'd before the honest god.

Dryden, you will have noticed, smooths down, in some places, a little the savagery of the Thracian. He has let go the fell gryphon, borrowing instead the lion's glances of Emetrius. For the more refined poetical invention of the advanced world, the opposition of the two animals for contrasting the two heroes, had possibly something of the burlesque. To Chaucer it was simply energetic. Or Dryden perhaps had not taken up a right view of the gryphon's looking, or he thought that his readers would not. He compensates Emetrius with plainly describing his eyes, in four very animated verses. Lycurge's combed eye-brows are a little mitigated, as is his ferocious bear-skin; and the ring of gold, as thick as a man's arm, has become merely a well-jewelled coronet. The spirit of the figure is, notwithstanding, caught and given. Dryden intends and conveys the impression purposed and effected by Chaucer.

If the black and sullen portrait loses a little grimness under the rich and harmonious pencil of Dryden, the needful contradistinction of the two royal auxiliars is maintained by heightening the favour of the more pleasing one. Throughout, Dryden with pains insists upon the more attractive features which we have claimed for the King of Inde. Grace is twice attributed to his appearance. He has gained blue eyes. His complexion is carefully and delicately handled, as may be especially seen in the management of the freckles. The _blooming_ of his yellow beard, the thundering of the trumpet changed into a silvery sound, the myrtle sprigs mixed amongst the warlike laurel--all unequivocally display the gracious intentions of Dryden towards Emetrius--all aid in rendering effective the opposition which Chaucer has deliberately represented betwixt the two kings. Why the surly Thracian should be rather allied to the knight who serves Venus, and the more gallant Emetrius to the fierce Arcite, the favourite of the War-god, is left for the meditation of readers in all time to come.

The two opposed pictures are perhaps as highly finished as any part of the version. The words fall into their own places, painting their objects. The verse marches with freedom, fervour, and power. Translation has then reached its highest perfection when the suspicion of an original vanishes. The translator makes the matter his own, and writes as if from his own unassisted conception. The allusion to Bacchus is Dryden's own happy addition.

Now read with us--perhaps for the first time--the famous recital of the death of Arcite.

CHAUCER.

Nought may the woful spirit in myn herte
Declare o point of all my sorwes smerte
To you, my lady, that I love most;
But I bequethe the service of my gost
To you aboven every creature,
Sin that my lif ne may no longer dure.
Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge
That I for you have suffered, and so longe!
Alas the deth! Alas min Emilie!
Alas departing of our compagnie!
Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif!
My hertes ladie, ender of my lif!
What is this world? what axen men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Alone withouten any compagnie.
Farewel my swete, farewel min Emilie,
And softe take me in your armes twey,
For love of God, and herkeneth what I sey.

I have here with my cosin Palamon
Had strif and rancour many a day agon
For love of you, and for my jealousie.
And Jupiter so wis my soule gie,
To speken of a servant proprely,
With alle circumstance trewely,
That is to sayn, trouth, honour, and knighthede,
Wisdom, humblesse, estat, and high kinrede,
Fredom, and all that longeth to that art,
So Jupiter have of my soule part,
As in this world right now ne know I non
So worthy to be loved as Palamon,
That serveth you, and wol don all his lif.
And if that ever ye shal ben a wif,
Foryete not Palamon, the gentil man.

And with that word his speech faille began.
For from his feet up to his brest was come
The cold of death, which had him overnome.
And yet moreover in his armes two,
The vital strength is lost, and all ago.
Only the intellect, withouten more,
That dwelled in his herte sike and sore,
Gan faillen, whan the herte felte deth;
Dusked his eyen two, and failled his breth.
But on his ladie yet cast he his eye;
His laste word was: Mercy, Emilie!
His spirit changed hous, and wente ther,
As I came never I cannot tellen wher.
Therefore I stent, I am no divinistre;
Of soules find I not in this registre.
Ne me lust not th' opinions to telle
Of hem, though that they writen wher they dwelle.
Arcite is cold, ther Mars his soule gie.
Now wol I speken forth of Emilie.

Shright Emilie, and houleth Palamon,
And Theseus his sister toke anon
Swouning, and bare hire from the corps away.
What helpeth it to tarien forth the day,
To tellen how she wep both even and morwe?
For in swiche cas wimmen haven swiche sorwe,
Whan that hir housbondes ben fro hem ago,
That for the more part they sorwen so,
Or elles fallen in swiche maladie,
That atte laste certainly they die.

Infinite ben the sorwes and the teres
Of olde folk, and folk of tendre years
In all the toun for deth of this Theban:
For him, ther wepeth bothe child and man:
So gret a weping was there non certain,
When Hector was ybrought, all fresh yslain
To Troy: alas! the pitee that was there,
Cratching of chekes, rending eke of here.
Why woldest thou be ded? the women crie,
And haddest gold enough, and Emilie.

The death of Arcite is one of the scenes for which the admirers of Chaucer feel themselves entitled to claim, that it shall be judged in comparison with analogous passages of the poets that stand highest in the renown of natural and pathetic delineation. The dying words of the hero are as _proper_ as if either great classical master of epic propriety--the Chian or the Mantuan--had left them to us. They are thoroughly sad, thoroughly loving, and supremely magnanimous. They have a perfect simplicity of purpose. They take the last leave of his Emelie; and they find for her, if ever she shall choose to put off her approaching estate of unwedded widowhood, a fit husband. They have answerable simplicity of sentiment and of language. He is unable to utter any particle of the pain which he feels in quitting her; but since the service which living he pays her, draws to an end, he pledges to her in the world whither he is going, the constant love-fealty of his disembodied spirit. He recalls to her, with a word only, the long love-torments he has endured for her, exchanged, in the hour when they should have been crowned with possession, for the pains of death. He heaps endearing names upon her. He glances at the vanity of human wishes imaged in himself, and he bids her farewell. That is his first heart-offering towards herself. Can a death-severed heart's elocution be imitated more aptly, more touchingly? He then turns to praising his rival. The jealousy, which had so long been the madness of both, filling the two kindred, brotherly, once-affectionate bosoms with hate, has, in his, melted away with life, thence melting away; and Arcite, with his last intelligible breath, describes Palamon briefly, point by point, as he knew him when he best loved him. He does not implore Emelie to remain for his sake single. He does not pretend, if she shall marry, to govern her choice; but he simply requests her, if the season shall ever arrive of such a choice, that she will not "forget Palamon." But the death-frost creeps on--his eyes darken--and the suspiration which finally wafts the soul from the body, beseeches the favour of her, only to earn whose favour he lived, and with earning whose favour he dies. Her name leaves his lips last. Could Shakspeare have helped Chaucer? The whole speech is admirably direct and short. We shall presently have to deal with one from the same poem, which wants that virtue.

The clamorous outbreak that follows, first of the private, and, supervening upon that, of the public grief, if not altogether couched in Homeric phraseology or numbers, has an air, however, of the Homeric painting. But, indeed, neither is the language deficient in fanciful significancy, nor the measure in good old melody.

DRYDEN.

No language can express the smallest part
Of what I feel, and suffer in my heart,
For you, whom best I love and value most:
But to your service I bequeath my ghost;
Which, from this mortal body when untied,
Unseen, unheard, shall hover at your side;
Nor fright you waking, nor your sleep offend,
But wait officious, and your steps attend.
How I have loved--excuse my faltering tongue!
My spirit's feeble and my pains are strong:
This I may say I only grieve to die,
Because I lose my charming Emily.
To die when heaven had put you in my power!
Fate could not choose a more malicious hour.
What greater curse could envious fortune give,
Than just to die when I began to live?
Vain men, how vanishing a bliss we crave,
Now warm in love, now withering in the grave!
Never, O never more to see the sun!
Still dark, in a damp vault, and still alone!
This fate is common; but I lose my breath
Near bliss, and yet not bless'd, before my death.
Farewell! but take me dying in your arms,
'Tis all I can enjoy of all your charms:
This hand I cannot but in death resign;
Ah, could I live! but while I live 'tis mine.
I feel my end approach, and thus embraced,
Am pleased to die; but hear me speak my last.
Ah, my sweet foe! for you, and you alone,
I broke my faith with injured Palamon:
But love the sense of right and wrong confounds;
Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds.
And much I doubt, should Heaven my life prolong,
I should return to justify my wrong;
For, while my former flames remain within,
Repentance is but want of power to sin.
With mortal hatred I pursued his life,
Nor he, nor you, were guilty of the strife;
Nor I, but as I loved; yet all combined,
Your beauty, and my impotence of mind;
And his concurrent flame that blew my fire;
For still our kindred souls had one desire.
He had a moment's right, in point of time;
Had I seen first, then his had been the crime.
Fate made it mine, and justified his right;
Nor holds this earth a more deserving knight,
For virtue, valour, and for noble blood,
Truth, honour, all that is comprised in good;
So help me Heaven, in all the world is none
So worthy to be loved as Palamon.
He loves you, too, with such a holy fire,
As will not, cannot, but with life expire;
Our vow'd affections both have often tried,
Nor any love but yours could ours divide.
Then, by my love's inviolable band,
By my long-suffering, and my short command,
If e'er you plight your vows when I am gone,
Have pity on the faithful Palamon.

This was his last; for Death came on amain,
And exercised below his iron reign.
Then upward to the seat of life he goes;
Sense fled before him, what he touch'd he froze:
Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,
Though less and less of Emily he saw;
So, speechless for a little space he lay;
Then grasp'd the hand he held, and sigh'd his soul away.
But whither went his soul, let such relate
Who search the secrets of the future state:
Divines can say but what themselves believe;
Strong proofs they have, but not demonstrative;
For, were all plain, then all sides must agree,
And faith itself be lost in certainty.
To live uprightly, then, is sure the best;
To save ourselves, and not to damn the rest.
The soul of Arcite went where heathens go,
Who better live than we, though less they know.

In Palamon a manly grief appears;
Silent he wept, ashamed to show his tears.
Emilia shriek'd but once; and then, oppress'd
With sorrow, sunk upon her lover's breast:
Till Theseus in his arms convey'd, with care,
Far from so sad a sight the swooning fair.
'Twere loss of time her sorrow to relate;
Ill bears the sex a youthful lover's fate,
When just approaching to the nuptial state:
But, like a low-hung cloud, it rains so fast,
That all at once it falls, and cannot last.
The face of things is changed, and Athens now,
That laugh'd so late, becomes the scene of woe:
Matrons and maids, both sexes, every state,
With tears lament the knight's untimely fate.
Nor greater grief in falling Troy was seen
For Hector's death, but Hector was not then.
Old men with dust deform'd their hoary hair;
The women beat their breasts, their cheeks they tear:
Why wouldst thou go, (with one consent they cry,)
When thou hadst gold enough, and Emily?

Dryden, you observe, exhibits various changes. Are they for the better or the worse? In the first place, he introduces a new motive into the conduct of Arcite--remorse of conscience. When fate has declared against him, and he finds that he cannot enjoy the possession of the prize which he has wrongfully won, his eyes open upon his own injustice, and he acknowledges the prior right of Palamon, who first had seen Emilie.