This extraordinary genius, in his younger life, wrote a very biting
satire against a man of considerable influence in France. The injured
gentleman, on meeting the poet one day in a narrow lane where it was
impossible to escape, gave him a severe drubbing. The enraged author
immediately made his complaint to the Regent, who very shrewdly
replied---“What would you have me do? justice certainly has been done
already,”
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OSMIR.
An Original Essay.
The predecessors of Osmir were ignoble and obscure. For a race of
generations they wept the conflicts of indigence, nor could the toils of
application crown their efforts with advantage, nor the utmost frugality
secure their labours from distress; the importance of command never
owned their authority, and the radiance of splendour never shone on
their dwelling. They eat of the bread of industry, they drank the waters
of perseverence, they lived unnoticed and undistinguished among the
children of poverty, as one atom in the sun-beam is undistinguished from
another, and as the ebullitions of a current which float for a moment on
its surface and die, even so they disappeared and were remembered no
more.
But the tempest of malediction began at length to subside, and the
severity of fortune to abate her resentment. Malevolence was wearied
with undeserved persecution, and prosperity beheld the cot of
wretchedness with an auspicious smile, and determined to lavish upon
Osmir what she had withheld from his ancestors. He was addicted to
industry, to perseverance and toil; his principles were therefore the
surest basis whereon time was to erect the superstructure of gilded
affluence. In a few years Osmir contemplated the fruits of his
application, which animated his endeavours to advance with more hasty
strides in the road of progressive grandeur; riches were accumulated,
possessions were established, his habitation surpassed the pomp of
oriental magnificence, and the report of his opulence was the talk of
every mouth, and wafted through every region on the pinions of fame. In
order to subdue the murmurs of repining adversity, and establish a
position, which though it was probable was yet untrue, that the bounties
of Heaven were bestowed upon deserving virtue alone, he resolved to
cover his imperfections with the mantle of devotion, by which more
liberty was allowed to the passions which lay lurking in secret within
the chambers of his heart. Confirmed in this disposition, he was
impartial and correct in his dealings with all men; the venom of slander
had no influence on his character; for he trod the paths of moral
rectitude with exact scrupulosity. Was propitiation ordained to avert
the wrath of omnipotence?--his head was covered with the ashes of
Bethulia, and his loins were mortified with the sack-cloth of Ninevah;
his piety refused the sustenance which human fragility demands for her
functions, and thrice a day he fell prostrate at the shrine of the God
of nature. Whenever Osmir walked the streets for the purpose of
recreation, he was begirt with attendants who showered gold on the
multitude, and whom he exhorted in their liberality to more extensive
profusion. The widow and the orphan, the desolate and the indigent, all
looked for succour from the bounty of his hand, and all felt the
influence of his generous condescension. Not an act that was performed
escaped the voice of applause, for if Osmir was liberal, compassionate
or just, his merit was instantly registered in the chronicles of fame,
who with her trump of seven thunders, blew a blast round the world which
was echoed through the universe.
Such was the life of a mortal whom prosperity delighted to elevate; such
was his journey through the vales of desolation, uninfested with the
thorns of accident or bitterness, and perfumed with the fragrance of the
rose-buds fortune scattered in his way. But whilst Osmir thus employed
the happy tenor of his days, now feasting on delicacies at the banquet
of plenty, now dancing to the song of happiness in the bowers of ease,
the iron hand of time laid its pressure on his temples, the frost of old
age was expanded through his veins, and the powers of animation hastened
quick to decline. It was in vain to bribe with riches the dreaded
minister of death; it was in vain to protract a moment the awful period
of dissolution. Summoned at the report of sickness his friends assembled
in his chamber, where stretched on the bed of sorrows, human nature was
to be dignified, and human weakness was to be confirmed by an
illustrious portrait of expiring virtue. But how great was the excess of
disappointment and surprize, when, instead of the tranquility of hope,
and ejaculations of charity, their ears were assaulted with the shrieks
of despair, and their eyes were affrighted with terrific wretchedness.
Osmir, whose visage was deformed with terrors, as the brow of heaven
with a tempest, was long unable to hearken to the remonstrances of his
friends; at length, however, collecting the feeble breath, which, like
the flame of a midnight taper, sat quivering on his lips, he uttered
these last accents with emphatic efforts, whilst every voice was
suspended in silence, and every ear was attention.
“Ye, whom vanity has influenced in the operation of good works, and whom
earthly approbation has taught to exult in their merit, let the example
of dying disquietudes abate the security of your confidence. Like you,
I have floated on the ocean of glory, I have felt my senses enraptured
with the melody of praise, and suffered my heart to receive plaudits
which my conscience condemned. Like you, I was liberal, because to be
liberal was to be eminent, and like you also, I estimated the advantages
of heaven by terrestial enjoyments. Prosperity shed around me the
partial beams of her favour, nor harboured a doubt, nor hesitated to
reflect, if the object of her veneration deserved contempt or esteem.
Avarice and vain glory were raging passions of my soul, to heat the
furnace of these desires was the sole object of my aim; by the one I was
rendered odious to the great dispenser of gifts, and by the other
detrimental to the sons and daughters of men. This, by the malignity of
its turpitude, which withheld what it had received with the rapacious
grasp of a vulture, effaced the character of the Deity imprinted by
nature in my soul; and the other by a cruelty more inhuman than murder,
has awakened passions in the breast of indigence, which had slept for
ever undisturbed, and for the mercenary tribute of undeserved
approbation has elevated for a moment to magnificence and state, only to
plunge with keener anguish into the gulphs of despair, the wretch whose
heart had never sickened for the splendours of pomp, and whose days had
moved calm in inglorious obscurity. Yet weak-sighted mortals viewed my
actions and admired, whilst the piercing eye of the everlasting beheld
their motives and abhorred. Happy should I be to amend the past by the
present, or to mitigate the fury of the indignation to come. But the
scymetar of vengeance hangs suspended in my view, I hear the sentence of
malediction which sounds as thunder in my ears, and I feel the last
horrors of agonizing despair. Insulting vanities of a faithless world!
why was my heart enamoured of the graces of thy deceit? Only to look
with pleasure on thy allurements, is to assume the chains of thy
bondage; to seek thy gratifications is to follow pain without profit,
and to persevere in thy pursuits is reprobation without hope. A few
moments space will evince the dreadful truth, for a few moments space
and the life of Osmir is no more. Happy shall you be, my friends, whose
errors are corrected by my fatal mistake, and whose minds shall be
imprinted with this important remembrance, that no action however
splendid can secure the favour of the Deity, unless it correspond with
good designs, which can alone stamp its value, and that though you
mislead the erring judgment of man by fallacious appearances, ’tis
impossible to mislead the unerring judgment of God.”
The hand of the omnipotent sealed his lips at these words, and a
convulsive agony announced the approach of dissolution; his eyes were
averted with horror from the flying javelin of death, and expiring his
last groan, he slept the sleep of his fathers in the tomb of Mahaleel.
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