Chapter IX: Letter V: ROANOKE, June 2d, 1813 (2)

So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace:
Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;
But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.

* * * * *

His form had not yet lost
All _her_ original brightness,

is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein a _person is personified_.

* * * * *

It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.

* * * * *

Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua. {578}

Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcæ.
Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce,
Fessaque jam terris, cœli requiescat in arce.

* * * * *

“Statua Statuæ” was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV, begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also,

Bouchardon est un animal
Et son ouvrage fait pitié:
Il place les vices à cheval
Et les vertus à pied.

And another,

Voila notre roi comme il est à Versailles
Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles.

* * * * *

Bochart derives Elysium from the Phœnician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek Ἠλυσιον. Circe from the Phœnician Kirkar, to corrupt—Siren from the Phœnician Sir, to sing—Scylla from the Phœnician Scol, destruction—Charybdis from the Phœnician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.

* * * * *

Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been “the forbidden.” It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.

* * * * *

The following quaint sentence is found in Saint Evremond. “I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus.”

* * * * *

The standard of Judas Maccabæus displayed the words “Mi camoca baelim Jehovah”—Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being afterwards intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P. Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabæus—for the initials in Hebrew form “Maccabi.”

* * * * *

Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be compounded of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between soul and spirit is an essential point in ancient philosophy.

* * * * *

Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two dialogues, in the first of which the personages were the Savior and Socrates, in the second king David and Cæsar Borgia.

* * * * *

Dante gives the name of _sonnet_ to his little canzone or ode beginning

O voi che per la via d'Amor passate.

* * * * *

Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch ‘qui est regardé comme le pere du sonnet’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304.

* * * * *

The learned Menage has this epitaph on Sannazarius

Ci git, dont l'esprit fût si beau,
Sannazar, ce poete habile,
Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile,
Plus encore que par son tombeau.

* * * * *

The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,

Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;
No—make me mistress to the man I love

are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa—at least the thought.

* * * * *

Mercier, in “L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and J. D'Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.

* * * * *

One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III,

Ut canerent data multa olim sunt vatibus æra
Ut taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?

* * * * *

Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,

——when the _scourge_
Inexorably, and the _torturing hour_
Call us to penance.

Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has

Thou tamer of the human breast
Whose iron _scourge_, and _torturing hour_
The bad affright.

* * * * *

Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where

Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air

was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of Hudibras is also likened to a meteor,

This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns.

* * * * *

The lines

For he that fights and runs away
May live to fight another day,
But he that is in battle slain
Will never rise to fight again

are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras. Butler's verses ran thus;

For he that flies may fight again
Which he can never do that's slain.

The former are in a volume of ‘Poems’ by Sir John Mennes, reign of Charles II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. Ανερ ο φεογων και παλιν μαχησεται.

* * * * *

“Semel insanivimus omnes” is not from Horace but from Mantuanus, an Italian. In a work entitled “De honesto amore” is this line,

Id commune malum, semel insanivimus omnes.

* * * * *

Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines,

David for him his tuneful harp had strung
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.

Pope in his Epistle to Arbuthnot has

Friend of my life which did not you prolong
The world had wanted many an idle song.

* * * * *

Tickell's lines

While the charmed reader with thy thought complies
And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes,

are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau,

En vain contre ‘Le Cid’ un ministre se ligue;
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue.

* * * * *

The expression, ‘nemorumque noctem’ occurring in one of Gray's Latin odes, has been repeatedly found fault with—yet Virgil has ‘medio nimborum in nocte.’

* * * * *

{579} Selden observes of Henry VIII, that he was a king with a pope in his belly.

* * * * *

In the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, there are several Greek verses in _rhyme_.

* * * * *

Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca, (the only Roman tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects.

* * * * *

Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was.

Il pover' huomo che non s'en era accorto,
Andava combattendo, e era morto.

* * * * *

The author of ‘La Maniere de bien Penser’ speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text, ‘Prœcucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentum.’

* * * * *

There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.

Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem,
Tot bellis quæsita viro, tot cœdibus armat
Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora
Cannas et Trebium ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta,
Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram.

* * * * *

Giace l'alta Cartago: à pena i segni
De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba:
Muoino le città, muoino i regni;
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba:
E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni.

These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery—being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy

Jam tota teguntur
Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ:

and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara, Egina, Corinth, &c.—“Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.”

* * * * *

An epigram upon the subject of Francois de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richelieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit.

Enfin dans l'arriere saison
La fortune d'Armand s'accorde avec la mienne:
France, Je sors de ma prison
Quand son ame sort de la sienne.

The line, “France, Je sors de ma prison,” is the anagram of Francois de Bassompiere.

* * * * *

The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized more by _náiveté_ than point. They are for the most part insipid.

* * * * *

Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts, “reveries of Jupiter”—insomnia Jovis.

* * * * *

A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to Richelieu in terms of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his expectations, he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and re-dedicated his volume “_á Jesus Christ_.”

* * * * *

The following inscription intended for the Louvre, possesses both simplicity and dignity:

Pande fores populis, sublimis Lupara: non est
Terrarum imperio dignior ulla domus.

* * * * *

Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some Italian wrote these words, “Egli è vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.” Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint Catherine.

* * * * *

A fine sample of _galimatias_ is to be found in an epigram of Miguel de Cervantes:

Van muerte tan escondida,
Que no te sienta venir;
Porque el plazer del morir
No me torne à dar la vida.

* * * * *

Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who was wont to say to his scholars, “This is excellent—I do not understand it myself.”

* * * * *

An Italian metaphysician to disprove that greatness of mind is proportioned to the size of the skull, argues thus: “Non sano, che la mente è il centro del capo; e il centro non cresce per la grandezza del circolo.”

* * * * *

A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments. Caylus quotes a passage from Passeri, “de animæ transvectione,” implying that the horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium.

* * * * *

The Satyre Menippée of the French is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme.

* * * * *

A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is to be seen in the following stanza by M. Anton. Flaminius:

Ast amans charæ thalamum puellæ
Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit
Aspera amplexu teneræ cupito a—
—vulsus amicæ.

* * * * *

Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on Tragedy, prefixed to Brutus, he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman senate on the stage in red mantles. “The Greeks,” as he asserts, “font paraitre ses acteurs (tragic) sur des especes d'echasses, le visage couvert d'un masque qui exprime la douleur d'un coté et la joye de l'autre!” The only circumstance upon which he could possibly have founded such an accusation is, that in the _new comedy_ masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, to denote a busy-body or inquisitive medler.

* * * * *

Several ancient tragedies, viz: Eumenides, Philoctetes, and Ædipus et Colonos, besides many pieces of Euripides, have a happy and enlivening termination.

* * * * *

The only historical tragedies by Grecian authors {580} were The Capture of Miletus by Phrynicus and the Persians of Æschylus.

* * * * *

The foundation of all the erroneous opinions on the subject of the old Greek comedy (Voltaire's opinion particularly) may be found in the comparison between Aristophanes and Menander, in Plutarch.

* * * * *

Schlegel says justly, that Harlequin and Pulcinello descend in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans. On Greek vases are seen also dresses like theirs—long breeches and waistcoats with arms, articles worn by neither Greeks nor Romans except upon the stage. At present Zanni is one of the names of Harlequin, and Sannio in the Latin farces was a buffoon who had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of all colors.

* * * * *

In Racine's _Berenice_ Antiochus says to the queen

——Je me suis tû cinq ans
Madame, et vais encore me taire plus long tems,

and to give a direct proof of his intention, recites immediately no less than fifty verses in a breath.

* * * * *

In Voltaire's scruples about unity of place he has committed a thousand blunders. In the Mort de Cæsar the scene is in the Capitol, but the people seem not to know their precise situation. On one occasion Cæsar exclaims, “Courons au Capitole!”

* * * * *

Denis de Sallo's “Journal des Sçavans,” in 1665 may be considered as the origin of Literary Journals or Reviews.

* * * * *

Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage abattu
Par le ciseau de la Parque importune,
S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune
Il fut toujours ami de la vertu,

was Le Sage's epitaph.

* * * * *

These lines although extremely French are forcible,

Et comme un jeune cœur est bientot enflammé
Il me vit, il m'aima, je le vis, je l'aimai.

* * * * *

On Cardinal Richelieu, Benserade made the following epitaph:

Cy gist—ouy gist par la mort bleu
Le Cardinal de Richelieu,
Et ce qui cause mon ennuy
Ma pension avec lui.

* * * * *

The Jesuits called Crebillon ‘Puer ingeniosus, sed insignis nebulo.’

* * * * *

Dr. E. Young published “A true Estimate of Human Life, Part I,” dedicated to Queen Anne, and describing the _shades_ of existence. The second part, however, which should have contained the lights never appeared.

* * * * *

The “Batrachomyomachia,” is nothing more than a burlesque poem, much in the manner of Aristophanes, and doubtfully attributed to Homer. Philip Melancthon however, wrote a commentary to prove the poet's object was to excite a hatred for tumults and sedition. Pierre La Seine going a step farther, thinks the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and drinking.

* * * * *

“Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur,” is not Seneca's as generally supposed.

* * * * *

The heathen poets are mentioned three times in the New Testament. Aratus in the seventeenth chapter of Acts—Menander in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians—also Epimenides.

* * * * *

“Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit,”

was a line written during the pontificate of Alexander VI. Sextus Tarquinius provoked by his tyranny the expulsion of the kings of Rome. Urban VI began the great schism of the West. Alexander VI astonished the world by the enormity of his crimes, and Pius VI did not falsify the saying.

* * * * *

A letter was once addressed from Rome “Alla sua Excellenza Seromfidevi,” in London. It caused much perplexity at the Post-office and British Museum, and after foiling the acumen of a minister of state, was found to be intended for Sir Humphrey Davy.

* * * * *

The vulgar Christian era is the invention of Dionysius Exiguus.

* * * * *

The book of Judith was originally written in Chaldee, and thence translated into Latin by St. Jerom. There are several particulars in our English version which are not to be found in St. Jerom's, and which seem to be those readings which he professes to omit as vicious corruptions.

* * * * *

The proverb, “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” which is found in Corinthians, is a quotation, intended as such, from Euripides.

* * * * *

Varro reckons three epochs: the first from the beginning of the world to the first flood, which he calls _uncertain_; the second from the flood to the first Olympiad, _fabulous_; the third from the first Olympiad to his own time, _historical_.

* * * * *

Politian, the poet and scholar, was an admirer of Alessandra Scala, and addressed to her this extempore:

To teach me that in hapless suit
I do but waste my hours,
Cold maid, whene'er I ask for fruit,
Thou givest me naught but flowers.

* * * * *

In the Latin version of Herodotus, the lowest of the towers forming the temple of Belus, is said to be a furlong thick and a furlong high; and some writers concluding each of the eight to be as high, make the whole one mile in height. In the Greek text, however, the lowest tower is merely said to be a furlong _through_—nothing is said of its height. Strabo makes the temple a furlong altogether in altitude.

* * * * *

Jacobus Hugo was of opinion that by the Harpies Homer intended the Dutch; by Euenis, John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther; and by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general.

* * * * *

{581} “Impune quæ libet facere id est esse regem,” is a definition of a king to be found in Sallust.

* * * * *

The first collection of the Iliad was by Pisistratus, or some of the Pisistratidæ. There were, after this, innumerable editions—but Aristarchus in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer, B.C. 150, published from a collection of all the copies then existing, a new edition, the text of which has finally prevailed.

* * * * *

Some one after the manner of Santeuil, composed the following quatrain for the gates of the market to be erected on the site of the famous Jacobin Club at Paris,

Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patriâ, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit, vita salusque patent.

* * * * *

A version of the Psalms was published in 1642 by William Slatyer, of which this is a specimen:

The righteous shall his sorrow scan
And laugh at him, and say ‘Behold!
What hath become of this here man
That on his riches was so bold.’

* * * * *

At the bottom of an obelisk which Pius VI was erecting at great expense near the entrance of the Quirinal Palace in 1783, while the people were suffering for bread, were found written these words,

Signore, di a questa pietra che divenga pane.
Lord, command that these stones be made bread.

* * * * *

Constantine Koliades wrote a book to prove that Homer and Ulysses were one and the same—but Joshua Barnes attributes the authorship of the Iliad to Solomon.

* * * * *

In Σ. xviii. 192, of the Iliad, Achilles says none of the armor of the chieftains will fit him except the shield of Ajax: how then did his own armor fit Patroclus?

* * * * *

In the reign of Edward VI, Dr. Christopher Tye turned the Acts of the Apostles into rhyme. They begin thus,

In the former epistle to thee
Dear friend Theophilus
I have written the veritie
Of the Lord Christ Jesus.

* * * * *

Empedocles professed the system of four elements, and added thereto two principles which he called ‘principium amicitiæ and principium contentionis.’ What are these but attraction and repulsion?

* * * * *

The Count Bielfeld's definition of poetry is ‘L'art d'exprimer les pensées par la fiction.’ The German terms Dichtkunst, _the art of fiction_, and Dichten to _feign_, which are used for _Poetry_, and _to make verses_, are in full accordance with his definition.

* * * * *

The Germans have epic poems composed in metre of sixteen and seventeen syllables.

* * * * *

The following Vaudeville is one of the drollest of its kind:

Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac
Je suis plus savant que Balzac—
Plus sage que Pibrac.
Mon bras seul faisant l'attaque
De la nation Cossaque
La mettroit au sac.
De Charon Je passerois le lac
En dormant dans son bac.
J'irois au fier Eac
Sans que mon cœur fit tic ni tac
Présenter du tabac.

* * * * *

On ancient monuments are often found the letters A. E. R. A. meaning Annus erat Regni Augusti. The ignorance of copyists may probably have formed of these letters the single word ÆRA. Would it not be a better derivation than the Latin ÆS?

* * * * *

The work of John Albert Fabricius, the Hamburg professor, entitled Bibliotheca Græca, in which his sole object is to render an account of the _Greek_ authors _extant_, occupies fourteen thick volumes in quarto.

* * * * *

The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustained. _Meta physicam_ is tortured into meaning _super physicam_, and the science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics, and this order he considers the rational order of study. His Ethics consequently commence with the words Μετα τα φυσικα, &c. from which the word Metaphysics.

* * * * *

The commentators upon Mr. Beckford's Vathek say that the _locusts_ derive their name from having been so called by the first English settlers in America. The word comes evidently from _loco usto_, the havoc they made wherever they passed leaving the appearance of a place desolated by fire.

* * * * *

M. Patru was convinced that in all his prose writings no sentence or part of a sentence could be found so _cadenced_ as to form a verse. A friend, however immediately pointed out to him the words in his ‘Plaidoyers’

Septième plaidoyer pour un jeune Allemand.

* * * * *

Despreaux speaking of the cæsura in French versification, asserts,

Que toujours dans nos vers—le sens coupant les mots,
Suspende l'hemistiche—en marquant le repos.

M. Despreaux seems to have forgotten that hemistich is a composite Greek word signifying a demi-line, and that consequently his own admired verses have no meaning at all.

* * * * *

Every one is acquainted with the excellent _commencement_ of the Annals of Tacitus. From this, principally he has acquired his reputation for concision. It is singular that no notice has ever been taken of the extreme prolixity of their _conclusion_.

* * * * *

There is a dissertation upon Hebrew, or Samaritan medals by Père Soucier, in which he proves the existence of Hebrew money struck by the Jews upon the model of the coins current before the captivity. All the Hebrew medals, however, bearing a head of Moses or of Christ, are manifestly forgeries.

* * * * *

{582} There is a book by a Jesuit, Père Labbe, entitled La Bibliothèque des Bibliothèques. It is a catalogue of all authors in all nations who have written catalogues of books.

* * * * *

Lucretius, lib. v. 93, 96, has the words,

——terras—
Una dies dabit exitio.

Ovid the lines,

Carmine sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti
Exitio terras cum dabit una dies.

* * * * *

Albert in his Hebrew Dictionary, pretends to discover in each word, in its root, in its letters, and in the manner of pronouncing them, the reason of its signification. Loescher in his treatise De causis Linguæ Hebreæ, carries the matter even farther.

* * * * *

In Judges is this expression, ‘And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.’ The phrase ‘to smite hip and thigh’ arises from these words. No meaning, however, can be attached to them as they stand—but the original will admit of a different signification, viz: ‘He smote them with his leg on the thigh,’ and alludes to the wrestling matches which were common in the east. In this sense the phrase exactly answers to the ‘crus femori impingere’ and the σκελιξειν or αποσκελιξειν of the ancients.

* * * * *

It is a remarkable fact, that during the whole period of the middle ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing.

* * * * *

The silver shekel of the Hebrews has on its face the rod of Aaron with the inscription, Jeruschalaim Hakkedoucha, Jerusalem the Holy, and on the reverse a cup with the words Chekel Ischrael, money of Israel.

* * * * *

The Masoretical punctuation is a kind of critique upon the Hebrew text invented by the Jewish teachers to prevent its alteration. The first original being lost, recourse was had to the Masore as an infallible method of fixing the text. The verses, words, and even letters are there counted, and all their variations recorded.

* * * * *

Among the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are mingled a few passages of Chaldaic. _All the characters_ as we have them now, are properly speaking Chaldaic.

* * * * *

A version of the Psalms in 1564, by Archbishop Parker, has the following—

Who sticketh to God in stable trust
As Sion's mount he stands full just
Which moveth no whit, nor yet can reel,
But standeth for ever as stiff as steel.

* * * * *

A part of the 137th Psalm runs thus: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,’ which has been thus paraphrased in a version of the Psalms,

If I forget thee ever
Then let me prosper never,
But let it cause
My tongue and jaws
To cling and cleave together.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW.

_The Old World and the New; or, a Journal of Reflections and Observations made on a Tour in Europe. By the Reverend Orville Dewey. New York: Harper & Brothers._

Mr. Dewey assures us, in the beginning of his _Preface_, that his volumes are not offered to the public as an itinerary—but it is difficult to say in what other light they should be regarded. To us they appear as strictly entitled to the appellation as any book of travels we have perused. They are indeed an itinerary of the most inartificial character—a journal in which unconnected remarks follow one upon another—object upon object—day upon day—and all with a scrupulous accuracy in regard to dates. Not that we have much objection to this methodical procedure, but that we cannot understand Mr. Dewey in declaring his book not to be what it most certainly is, if it is any thing at all. His subsequent remark, that every American traveller to the old world enjoys a vantage ground for surveying the institutions, customs, and character of his own country is what we can readily appreciate. We think, also, that in many respects our author has made excellent use of this advantage. But we would be doing our conscience a great wrong in recommending the work before us _as a whole_. Here is some amusement—great liberality—much excellent sense—a high spirit of sound morality and genuine philanthropy; but indeed very little, so we think, of either novelty or profundity. These two latter qualities are, however, of a nature so strictly relative, and liable to so many modifications from the acquirements or character of the reader, that we feel some hesitation in what we say—and would prefer leaving a decision where it _must_ finally be left—to the voice of the public opinion.

One remarkable feature in the _Old World and the New_, is its amusing _naiveté_ of manner—a feature which will immediately arrest the attention of every reader. We cannot do better than give a few specimens.

What a pity it is [says Mr. D., and so it is undoubtedly] that cities, or at least streets in cities, could not, like single edifices, be built upon some regular and well considered plan! Not that the result should be such regularity as is seen in Philadelphia or Dublin; the plan indeed would embrace irregularity. But there might be an arrangement, by which a block of buildings, a street, or indeed a whole city, might stand before us as one grand piece of architecture. If single specimens of architecture have the effect to improve, humanize, and elevate the ideas of a people; if they are a language, and answer a purpose kindred to that of literature, poetry and painting, why may not a whole city have this effect? To secure this result, there must, I am afraid, be a power like that of the autocrat of Russia, who, I am told, when a house is built in his royal city of St. Petersburg which does not conform to his general plan, sends word to the owner that he must remove that building and put up another of a certain description.

And again, speaking of the Menai bridge—

A celebrated lady (since dead) in speaking of this stupendous work, said that she first saw it from the Isle of Anglesea, so that it was relieved against the lofty mountains of North Wales; and she added in a strain {583} of eloquent and poetical comparison familiar to her, that Snowdon seemed to her a fit back ground for the Menai Bridge.

All this may be very true, but then only think of the _eloquent and poetical comparison_ of Snowdon being a back ground for the Menai Bridge!

Mrs. Hemans and our author go to church together.

She spoke (says he) of the various accompaniments of the service, and when she came to the banners she said ‘they seemed to wave as the music of the anthem rose to the lofty arches!’ I ventured here to throw in a little dash of prose—saying that _I was afraid that they did not wave, that I wished they might, and looked up to see if they did, but could not see it._

Mr. Dewey does not like oatmeal cake.

In good truth I should never desire to have any thing to do with it save as a specimen; for of all the stuff that ever I tasted, it was the most inedible, impracticable, insufferable, dry, hard, coarse, rasping, gritty, chaffy: I _could_ not eat it, and it seemed to me that if I could, it would be no more nourishing than gravel kneaded into mud, and baked in a lime-kiln. As to drink—whiskey! whiskey! the boatman said was the only thing, and the thing indispensable. I tasted of it—_and truly it had not the usual odious taste of our American whiskey!_

We quote these passages merely as specimens of the singular simplicity—more properly _naiveté_—which is the prevailing feature of the book.

Mr. Dewey left New York for England on the 8th June 1833, and arrived in St. George's channel _on the 24th of the same month_, having a fair wind and smooth sea during the entire passage. Leaving England, he visited Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, Prussia, Switzerland, and Italy. Returning by way of Liverpool, he reached home on the 22d of May, 1834.

RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY.

_A New Dictionary of the English Language: By Charles Richardson. London: William Pickering—New York: William Jackson._

The _periodical_ nature of this publication absolves us from what would otherwise be a just charge of neglect in not speaking of it sooner. Five numbers have been issued, and twenty-five more are to be added, at intervals of a fortnight. These numbers are of quarto form, and contain eighty pages in triple columns. The paper is excellent, and the matter beautifully stereotyped. The whole will form, when the publication is completed, two very large quarto volumes, of which the entire cost will have been fifteen dollars. We say when the publication is completed—the work itself is already so—a consideration of great importance, and sure to be appreciated by the thousands of subscribers to the many costly periodicals which have failed in completing their issue, and thus thrown a number of odd volumes upon the hands of the public. In what farther we have to say of this Dictionary, we shall do little more than paraphrase the very satisfactory prospectus of Mr. Richardson himself.

When Dr. Johnson, in 1747, announced his intention of writing a Dictionary of the English language, he communicated the _plan_ of his undertaking in a letter to Lord Chesterfield. The plan was as follows. He would give, first—the natural and primitive meaning of words; secondly, the consequential—and thirdly the metaphorical, arranging the quotations chronologically. The book, however, was published in 1755, _without the plan_, and strange to say, in utter disregard of the principles avowed in the letter to the Earl of Chesterfield. That these principles were well-conceived, and that if followed out, they would have rendered important service to English lexicography, was not doubted at the time, and cannot be doubted now. Moreover, the necessity for something of the kind which was felt _then_, is more strongly felt now, for no person has as yet attempted to construct a work upon the plan proposed, and the difficulties which were to have been remedied, are greatly aggravated by time. Eighty years have passed, and not only has no new work been written upon the plan of Dr. Johnson—but no systematic work of reform upon the old basis.

The present Dictionary of Mr. Richardson is, distinctly, a _new work_, upon a system never attempted before—upon the principles of Horne Tooke, the greatest of philosophical grammarians, and whose developments of an entirely novel theory of language have excited the most profound interest and respect in the minds of all who think.

In the _Diversions of Purley_, it is positively demonstrated that a word has one meaning and one only, and that from this one meaning all the _usages_ of the word must spring. “To discover this meaning,” says Mr. Richardson, “etymological research was indispensable, and I have stated the results of such research with conciseness, it is true, yet with a fullness that will enable the more learned reader to form a judgment for himself, and the path of deeper investigation is disclosed to the pursuit of the curious inquirer.” In tracing the _usages_ of words, Mr. R. has availed himself of the materials collected by Johnson and his editors, “the various supplements and provincial vocabularies, the notes of editors and commentators upon our older poets, and of abundant treasures amassed for his own peculiar use.” The quotations are arranged chronologically, and embrace extracts from the earliest to the latest writers of English. The etymology is placed distinctly by itself for the convenience of hasty reference. As an example of the arrangement of the work, we will give the word _Calefy_.

CA´LEFY | Lat. _Calefieri_, to be or become hot.
CALEFA´CTION | Calere, Vossius deduces from the Doric
CALI´DITY | Καλεος for Κηλεος, burning.
CA´LIDUCT |

To heat, to be, become, or cause to be hot.

But crystal will _calefie_ into electricity; that is, a power to
attract straws or light bodies and convert the needle freely
placed.—_Brown. Vulgar Errours_, b. ii. c. 1.

As [if] the remembrance of _calefaction_ can warm a man in a cold
frosty night.—_More. Philos. Poems_, c. 2, _Pref._

But ice will dissolve in any way of heat; for it will dissolve with
fire; it will colliquate in water, or warm oyl; nor doth it onely
submit unto an actual heat, but not endure the potential _calidity_
of many waters.—_Brown. Vulgar Errours_. b. ii. c. 1.

Since the subterranean _caliducts_ have been introduced. _Evelyn_.

In his prospectus, Mr. Richardson has had occasion to speak in no measured terms of the Dictionary of Dr. Webster. We here repeat his observations because we think them entirely just.

{584} The author is conscious that he should be chargeable with great want of courtesy if he passed unnoticed the American Dictionary of Dr. Webster. His _censure_ however must be short. Dr. Webster disarmed and stripped himself for the field, and advanced unaided and unshielded to the combat. He abjured the assistance of Skinner and Vossius, and the learned elders of lexicography; and of Tooke he quaintly says, ‘I have made no use of his writings.’ There is a display of oriental reading in his Preliminary Essays, which as introductory to a Dictionary of the English Language, seems as appropriate and useful as a reference to the code of Gentoo laws to decide a question of English inheritance. Dr. Webster was entirely unacquainted with our old authors.

We believe the North American Review has remarked of the work before us, that its definitions are in some measure too scanty, and not sufficiently compact. This defect, which cannot altogether be denied, and which is, to say the truth, of more importance to the mass of readers than to the philologist, will be found, upon examination, a defect inseparable from the plan originally proposed, and which insists upon an arrangement of derivatives under primitives. We are not tempted, however, to wish any modification of the principal design, for the sake of a partial, and not very important amendment.

We conclude in heartily recommending the work of Mr. Richardson to the attention of our readers. It embraces we think, every desideratum in an English Dictionary, and has moreover a thousand negative virtues. Messrs. Mayo and Davis are the agents in Richmond.

BOOK OF GEMS.

_The Book of Gems. The Poets and Artists of Great Britain. Edited by S. C. Hall. London and New York: Saunders and Otley._

This work combines the rich embellishments of the very best of the race of Annuals, with a far higher claim to notice than any of them in its strictly literary department. If we regard this volume as the only one to appear, the title will convey no idea of the design—but we are promised a continuation. The whole, if we comprehend, will contain specimens of _all_ the principal poets and artists of Great Britain. In the present instance we have the poets as far as Prior, including a period of about four hundred years, with extracts from Chaucer, Lydgate, James I, Hawes, Carew, Quarles, Shirley, Habington, Lovelace, Wyatt, Surrey, Sackville, Vere, Gascoigne, Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney, Brooke, Southwell, Daniel, Drayton, Shakspeare, Walton, Davies, Donne, Jonson, Corbet, Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Drummond, Wither, Carew, Browne, Herrick, Quarles, Herbert, Davenant, Waller, Milton, Suckling, Butler, Crashaw, Denham, Cowley, Marvell, Dryden, Roscommon, Dorset, Sedley, Rochester, Sheffield, and Prior. Of these, all the autographs have been obtained and are published collectively at the end of the book, with the exception of the nine first mentioned. The work is illustrated by fifty-three engravings, each by different artists. A sea-side group by Harding, and L'Allegro and Il Penseroso by Parris, are particularly good—but all are excellent.

We had prepared some observations in regard to the book itself, (over which we have been poring for many days with intense delight) and in regard more especially to the character and justice of that deep feeling with which most men, having claim to taste, are wont to look, even through a veil of exceedingly troublesome obscurity and antiquity, upon the writings of the elder poets and dramatists of Great Britain. But we have been so nearly anticipated in our design by a paper in the American Monthly Magazine for July, that what we should now say, and say _con amore_, would be looked upon as little better than a _rifacimento_ of the article we mention. At the same time it would be an ill deed to remodel our thoughts, and proceed to think falsely, for the mere purpose of proving that we can think originally. In this dilemma then, we will merely express our general accordance in the opinions of the Northern Magazine, copy, of its _critique_, a portion which seems to embody, in little compass, much of what we have said less forcibly and more diffusely, and add some few additional observations which have lately suggested themselves.

“Among the early English poets, so called,” says the American Monthly, “there is combined with marked individuality, a sort of general resemblance, not easily defined, but readily perceived by a discriminating reader. They lived in an age of invention, and wrote from a pleasurable impulse which they could not resist. They did not borrow from one another, or from those who had gone before them, nor pass their time in pouring from one vessel into another. Thus, however different their styles, however various their subjects, whether the flight of their genius be high or low, there is the same aspect of truth and naturalness in the poetry of them all; as we can trace a common likeness in all faces which have an open, ingenuous expression, however little resemblance there may be in the several features. Most of them were well acquainted with books, and many of them were deeply learned; and an air of ripe scholarship sometimes degenerating into pedantry, pervades every thing they wrote. As a class too, they are remarkable for a healthy, intellectual tone, defaced neither by moody misanthropy, nor mawkish sentimentality. The manly Saxon character beams out from every line; and that vigorous good sense, so characteristic of the English stock, every where leaves its impress. Another trait which, with a few exceptions, honorably distinguishes them, is the purity of their sentiments, and their high moral feeling, especially in all that touches the relation of the sexes. We shall find many coarse expressions, such as a man would not read aloud to his family; but very rarely any thing bordering upon heartless profligacy, or studied licentiousness, or any intimation of a want of respect for the great principles of the moral law. Due reverence is always shown for those high personal qualities which constitute the best security for the greatness and prosperity of a people. Homage is always paid to honor in man, and chastity in woman. The passion of love, in its multitudinous forms and aspects, supplies a large proportion of their themes, and it is treated with equal delicacy and beauty. In the amatory strains of the old English poets, we perceive a romantic self-forgetfulness, an idealization of the beloved object, a tenderness and respectfulness of feeling, in which the passion is almost wholly swallowed up in the sentiment, and a wooing with the best treasures of the intellect as well {585} as the heart, such as can be found in no other class of poets.”

Notwithstanding the direct truth of what has been here so well advanced, it cannot, we think, be a matter of doubt with any reflecting mind, that at least one-third of the _reverence_, or of the _affection_, with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain, should be credited to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry—we mean to the simple love of the antique—and that again a third of even the proper _poetic sentiment_ inspired by these writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has a strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and also with the particular poems in question, must not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the writers of the poems. Almost every devout reader of the old English bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, undefinable delight. Upon being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and of the grotesque in rhythm. And this quaintness and grotesqueness are, as we have elsewhere endeavored to show, very powerful, and if well managed, very admissible adjuncts to Ideality. But in the present instance they arise independently of the author's will, and are matters altogether apart from his intention. The _American Monthly_ has forcibly painted the general character of the old English Muse. She was a maid, frank, guileless, and perfectly sincere, and although very learned at times, still very learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end—with the two latter the means. The poet of the _Creation_ wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he considered moral truth—he of the _Auncient Mariner_ to infuse the _Poetic Sentiment_ through channels suggested by mental analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception—the other, by a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a certainty and intensity of triumph which is not the less brilliant and glorious because concentrated among the very few who have the power to perceive it. It will now be seen that even the “metaphysical verse” of Cowley is no more than evidence of the straight-forward simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he was in all this but a type of his _school_—for we may as well designate in this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the volume before us, and throughout all of whom runs a very perceptible general character. They used but little art in composition. Their writings sprang immediately from the soul—and partook intensely of the nature of that soul. It is not difficult to perceive the tendency of this glorious _abandon_. To elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind—but again—so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all good things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and utter imbecility, as to render it not a matter of doubt, but of certainty, that the average results of mind in such a _school_, will be found inferior to those results in one (ceteris paribus) more artificial. Such, we think, is the view of the older English Poetry, in which a very calm examination will bear us out. The quaintness in manner of which we were just speaking, is an adventitious advantage. It formed no portion of the poet's intention. Words and their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to day with a vivid delight, and which delight in some instances, may be traced to this one source of grotesqueness and to none other, must have worn in the days of their construction an air of a very common-place nature. This is no argument, it will be said, against the poems _now_. Certainly not—we mean it for the poets _then_. The notion of _power_, of excessive _power_, in the English antique writers should be put in its proper light. This is all we desire to see done.

We cannot bring ourselves to believe that the selections made use of in the _Book of Gems_, are such as will impart to a poetical reader the highest possible idea of the beauty of the _school_. Better extracts might be made. Yet if the intention were merely to show the _character_ of the school the attempt is entirely successful. There are long passages now before us of the most utterly despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond their simple antiquity. And it is almost needless to say that there are many passages too of a glorious strength—a radiant loveliness, making the blood tingle in our veins as we peruse them. The criticisms of the Editor do not please us in a great degree. He seems to have fallen into the common cant in such cases. In one instance the American Monthly accords with him in an unjust opinion touching some verses by Sir Henry Wotton, on the Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I, and about which it is said that “there are few finer things in our language.” Our readers will agree with us, we believe, that this praise is exaggerated. We quote the lines in full.

You meaner beauties of the night
That poorly satisfy our eyes,
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies
What are you when the sun shall rise?

You curious chaunters of the wood
That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents; what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets, that first appear
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year
As if the spring were all your own,
What are you when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen
In sweetness of her looks and mind,
By virtue first, then choice a queen,
Tell me if she were not designed
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

In such lines we can perceive _not one_ of those higher attributes of the Muse which belong to her under all circumstances and throughout all time. Here everything is art—naked or but awkwardly concealed. No prepossession for the mere antique (for in this case we can imagine no other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of Poesy, a series such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments, (threadbare even at the time of their composition) stitched apparently together, without fancy, without {586} plausibility, without adaptation of parts—and it is needless to add, without a jot of imagination.

We have been much delighted with the _Shepherd's Hunting_, by Wither—a poem partaking, in a strange degree, of the peculiarities of the Penseroso. Speaking of Poesy he says—

By the murmur of a spring
Or the least boughs rusteling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Tytan goes to bed,
Or a shady bush or tree
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Something that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness—
The dull loneness, the black shade
That these hanging vaults have made,
The strange music of the waves
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den which rocks emboss
Overgrown with eldest moss,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect
Walled about with disrespect—
From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.

But these verses, however good, do not bear with them much of the general character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found in the following lines by Corbet—besides a rich vein of humor and sarcasm.

Farewell rewards and fairies!
Good housewives now you may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they:
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament, old Abbies,
The fairies' lost command,
They did but change priests' babies,
But some have changed your land;
And all your children stolen from thence
Are now grown Puritanes,
Who live as changelings ever since
For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep and sloth
These pretty ladies had:
When Tom came home from labor
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabor
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late Elizabeth
And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath bin.

By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave Marys,
Their dances were procession;
But now alas they all are dead
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled—
Or else they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure,
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth was punished sure;
It was a just and christian deed
To pinch such black and blue—
O how the commonwealth doth need
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters
A register they have,
Who can preserve their charters—
A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name
Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

To William Churne of Staffordshire
Give laud and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true.
To William all give audience
And pray you for his noddle,
For all the fairies evidence
Were lost if it were addle.

The _Maiden lamenting for her Fawn_, by Marvell, is, we are pleased to see, a favorite with our friends of the American Monthly. Such portion of it as we now copy, we prefer not only as a specimen of the elder poets, but, in itself, as a beautiful poem, abounding in the sweetest pathos, in soft and gentle images, in the most exquisitely delicate imagination, and in _truth_—to any thing of its species.