[579-3] His only fault is that he has none.--PLINY THE YOUNGER:
_Book ix. Letter xxvi._
THOMAS C. HALIBURTON. 1796-1865.
I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Sheil, Russell,
Macaulay, Old Joe, and so on. They are all upper-crust
here.[580-1]
_Sam Slick In England._[580-2] _Chap. xxiv._
Circumstances alter cases.
_The Old Judge. Chap. xv._
FOOTNOTES:
[580-1] Those families, you know, are our upper-crust,--not upper
ten thousand.--COOPER: _The Ways of the Hour, chap. vi._ (1850.)
At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of
the city.--N. P. WILLIS: _Necessity for a Promenade Drive._
[580-2] "Sam Slick" first appeared in a weekly paper of Nova
Scotia, 1835.
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 1797-1835.
I 've wandered east, I 've wandered west,
Through many a weary way;
But never, never can forget
The love of life's young day.
_Jeannie Morrison._
And we, with Nature's heart in tune,
Concerted harmonies.
_Jeannie Morrison._
THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY. 1797-1839.
I 'd be a butterfly born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.
_I 'd be a Butterfly._
Oh no! we never mention her,--
Her name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word.
_Oh no! we never mention her._
We met,--'t was in a crowd.
_We met._
Gayly the troubadour
Touched his guitar.
_Welcome me Home._
Why don't the men propose, Mamma?
Why don't the men propose?
_Why don't the Men propose?_
She wore a wreath of roses
The night that first we met.
_She wore a Wreath._
Friends depart, and memory takes them
To her caverns, pure and deep.
_Teach me to forget._
Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,
Long, long ago, long, long ago.
_Long, long ago._
The rose that all are praising
Is not the rose for me.
_The Rose that all are praising._
Oh pilot, 't is a fearful night!
There 's danger on the deep.
_The Pilot._
Fear not, but trust in Providence,
Wherever thou may'st be.
_The Pilot._
Absence makes the heart grow fonder:[581-1]
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!
_Isle of Beauty._
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall,
The holly-branch shone on the old oak wall.
_The Mistletoe Bough._
Oh, I have roamed o'er many lands,
And many friends I 've met;
Not one fair scene or kindly smile
Can this fond heart forget.
_Oh, steer my Bark to Erin's Isle._
FOOTNOTES:
[581-1] I find that absence still increases love.--CHARLES
HOPKINS: _To C. C._
Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth
it.--HOWELL: _Familiar Letters, book i. sect. i. No. 6._
THOMAS DRUMMOND.[582-1] 1797-1840.
Property has its duties as well as its rights.[582-2]
_Letter to the Landlords of Tipperary._
FOOTNOTES:
[582-1] Captain Drummond was the inventor of the Drummond light.
[582-2] DISRAELI: _Sybil, book i. chap. xi._
McDONALD CLARKE. 1798-1842.
Whilst twilight's curtain spreading far,
Was pinned with a single star.[582-3]
_Death in Disguise. Line 227._ (Boston edition, 1833.)
FOOTNOTES:
[582-3] Mrs. Child says:
"He thus describes the closing day":--
Now twilight lets her curtain down,
And pins it with a star.
SAMUEL LOVER. 1797-1868.
A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.
_The Angel's Whisper._
Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eye.[582-4]
_Rory O'More._
For drames always go by _conthraries_, my dear.[582-5]
_Rory O'More._
"Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure,
For there 's luck in odd numbers,"[583-1] says Rory O'More.
_Rory O'More._
There was a place in childhood that I remember well,
And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell.
_My Mother dear._
Sure the shovel and tongs
To each other belongs.
_Widow Machree._
FOOTNOTES:
[582-4] See Scott, page 482.
[582-5] See Middleton, page 172.
[583-1] See Shakespeare, page 46.
THOMAS HOOD. 1798-1845.
There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,--
In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,
Or in the wide desert where no life is found.
_Sonnet. Silence._
We watch'd her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
_The Death-Bed._
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
_The Death-Bed._
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 't is little joy
To know I 'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
_I remember, I remember._
She stood breast-high amid the corn
Clasp'd by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.
_Ruth._
Thus she stood amid the stooks,
Praising God with sweetest looks.
_Ruth._
When he is forsaken,
Wither'd and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?
_Spring it is cheery._
And there is even a happiness
That makes the heart afraid.
_Ode to Melancholy._
There 's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy.[584-1]
_Ode to Melancholy._
But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.
_The Lady's Dream._
Oh would I were dead now,
Or up in my bed now,
To cover my head now,
And have a good cry!
_A Table of Errata._
Straight down the crooked lane,
And all round the square.
_A Plain Direction._
For my part, getting up seems not so easy
By half as _lying_.
_Morning Meditations._
A man that 's fond precociously of _stirring_
Must be a spoon.
_Morning Meditations._
Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.
_Miss Kilmansegg. Her Christening._
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head!
_Her Dream._
He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way,
Tormenting himself with his prickles.
_Her Dream._
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold.
_Her Moral._
Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould.
_Her Moral._
How widely its agencies vary,--
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,--
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamp'd with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.
_Her Moral._
Another tumble! That 's his precious nose!
_Parental Ode to my Infant Son._
Boughs are daily rifled
By the gusty thieves,
And the book of Nature
Getteth short of leaves.
_The Season._
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags
Plying her needle and thread,--
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
_The Song of the Shirt._
O men with sisters dear,
O men with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you 're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives![585-1]
_The Song of the Shirt._
Sewing at once a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.
_The Song of the Shirt._
O God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
_The Song of the Shirt._
No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief.
_The Song of the Shirt._
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread.
_The Song of the Shirt._
One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.
_The Bridge of Sighs._
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
_The Bridge of Sighs._
Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
_The Bridge of Sighs._
Even God's providence
Seeming estrang'd.
_The Bridge of Sighs._
No sun, no moon, no morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day,
. . . . . .
No road, no street, no t' other side the way,
. . . . . .
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no buds.
_November._
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I 'm pious when I 'm only bilious;
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious,
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
_Ode to Rae Wilson._
The Quaker loves an ample brim,
A hat that bows to no salaam;
And dear the beaver is to him
As if it never made a dam.
_All round my Hat._
FOOTNOTES:
[584-1] See Burton, page 185.
[585-1] See Scott, page 493.
GEORGE LINLEY. 1798-1865.
Ever of thee I 'm fondly dreaming,
Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer.
_Ever of Thee._
Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream,
And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream.
_Thou art gone._
Tho' lost to sight, to mem'ry dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,--
The hope to meet again.
Oh fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wand'ring down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.
Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem'ry thou art dear.
Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.
I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly lov'd,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we rov'd.
Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem'ry thou art dear.
_Song._[587-1]
FOOTNOTES:
[587-1] This song--written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus
Braham, and sung by him--is given entire, as so much inquiry has
been made for the source of "Though lost to Sight, to Memory
dear." It is not known when the song was written,--probably about
1830.
Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was
published in London in 1880, purporting to have been "written by
Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703." It is said to have been published in the
"Magazine for Mariners." No such magazine, however, ever existed,
and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter,
to have copied the song from an American newspaper. There is no
other authority for the origin of this song, and the reputed
author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under the name of C----, in
California in 1882.
COLONEL BLACKER.
Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry.[588-1]
_Oliver's Advice. 1834._
FOOTNOTES:
[588-1] There is a well-authenticated anecdote of Cromwell. On a
certain occasion, when his troops were about crossing a river to
attack the enemy, he concluded an address, couched in the usual
fanatic terms in use among them, with these words: "Put your trust
in God; but mind to keep your powder dry!"--HAYES: _Ballads of
Ireland, vol. i. p. 191._
ROBERT POLLOK. 1799-1827.
Sorrows remember'd sweeten present joy.
_The Course of Time. Book i. Line 464._
He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane,"
And played familiar with his hoary locks.[588-2]
_The Course of Time. Book iv. Line 389._
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.
_The Course of Time. Book viii. Line 616._
With one hand he put
A penny in the urn of poverty,
And with the other took a shilling out.
_The Course of Time. Book viii. Line 632._
FOOTNOTES:
[588-2] See Byron, page 548.
RUFUS CHOATE. 1799-1859.
There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church
without a bishop;[588-3] there was a people governed by grave
magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had
framed.
_Speech before the New England Society, Dec. 22, 1843._
We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and
keep step to the music of the Union.
_Letter to the Whig Convention, 1855._
Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities[589-1]
of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.
_Letter to the Maine Whig Committee, 1856._
FOOTNOTES:
[588-3] The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and
the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.--JUNIUS: _Letter xxxv.
Dec. 19, 1769._
It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a
government without a king.--GEORGE BANCROFT: _History of the
United States, vol. iii. chap. vi._
[589-1] Although Mr. Choate has usually been credited with the
original utterance of the words "glittering generalities," the
following quotation will show that he was anticipated therein by
several years:--
We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left
an impression more delightful than permanent.--FRANKLIN J.
DICKMAN: _Review of a Lecture by Rufus Choate, Providence Journal,
Dec. 14, 1849._
THOMAS K. HERVEY. 1799-1859.
The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free.
_The Devil's Progress._
He stood beside a cottage lone
And listened to a lute,
One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute.
_The Devil's Progress._
A love that took an early root,
And had an early doom.
_The Devil's Progress._
Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.
_The Devil's Progress._
A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,
His eye was dim and cold,
The hairs on his brow were silver-white,
And his blood was thin and old.
_The Devil's Progress._
THOMAS B. MACAULAY. 1800-1859.
(_From his Essays._)
That is the best government which desires to make the people
happy, and knows how to make them happy.
_On Mitford's History of Greece. 1824._
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can
confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
_On Mitford's History of Greece. 1824._
The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is
often best studied in works not professedly historical.
_On Mitford's History of Greece. 1824._
Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it
brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears,
and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there is
exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.
_On Mitford's History of Greece. 1824._
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a
great poem produced in a civilized age.
_On Milton. 1825._
Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the
imposition of a mightier hand.
_On Milton. 1825._
Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and
out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.[590-1]
_On Machiavelli. 1825._
The English Bible,--a book which if everything else in our
language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole
extent of its beauty and power.
_On John Dryden. 1828._
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him
to run, though not to soar.
_On John Dryden. 1828._
A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and
of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected;
a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art,
but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.
_On John Dryden. 1828._
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the
deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.
_On Moore's Life of Lord Byron. 1830._
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one
of its periodical fits of morality.
_On Moore's Life of Lord Byron. 1830._
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics
compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness,--a system in which
the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to
love your neighbour's wife.
_On Moore's Life of Lord Byron. 1830._
That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most
fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to
admire it.
_On Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 1831._
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little
seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
_On Horace Walpole. 1833._
What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!--To
be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a
companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage
which men of genius have in general received only from posterity;
to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known
to their contemporaries!
_On Boswell's Life of Johnson_ (Croker's ed.). _1831._
Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of
letters amongst men of the world.[591-1]
_On Sir William Temple. 1838._
She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished
vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst
of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London
Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.[591-2]
_On Ranke's History of the Popes. 1840._
The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.
_On Warren Hastings. 1841._
In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities
of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has
during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose
minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the
Great Hall.
_On Warren Hastings. 1841._
In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to
defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men
scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
_On Frederic the Great. 1842._
We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human
nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this
haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half
Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in
arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad
verses in the other.
_On Frederic the Great. 1842._
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below
the dignity of history.[593-1]
_History of England. Vol. i. Chap. i._
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles
II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not
seamen.
_History of England. Vol. i. Chap. ii._
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.[593-2]
_History of England. Vol. i. Chap. iii._
I have not the Chancellor's encyclopedic mind. He is indeed a
kind of semi-Solomon. He _half_ knows everything, from the cedar
to the hyssop.
_Letter to Macvey Napier, Dec. 17, 1830._
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
_Lays of Ancient Rome. Horatius, xxvii._
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
_Lays of Ancient Rome. Horatius, lxx._
These be the great Twin Brethren
To whom the Dorians pray.
_The Battle of Lake Regillus._
The sweeter sound of woman's praise.
_Lines written in August, 1847._
Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.[593-3]
_Political Georgics._
FOOTNOTES:
[590-1] See Butler, page 215.
[591-1] See Pope, page 331-332.
[591-2] The same image was employed by Macaulay in 1824 in the
concluding paragraph of a review of Mitford's Greece, and he
repeated it in his review of Mill's "Essay on Government" in 1829.
What cities, as great as this, have . . . promised themselves
immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The
sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others. . . .
Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds; there
their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile;
temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap
of ruins.--GOLDSMITH: _The Bee, No. iv._ (1759.) _A City Night
Piece._
Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself will sit
down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee,
where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are
too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he
will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people
inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name?--VOLNEY:
_Ruins, chap. ii._
At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and
give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions
of Baalbec and Palmyra.--HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Mason, Nov.
24, 1774._
Where now is Britain?
. . . . . .
Even as the savage sits upon the stone
That marks where stood her capitols, and hears
The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks
From the dismaying solitude.
HENRY KIRKE WHITE: _Time._
In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of
bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand
shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh,
when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of
islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their
broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic
commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now
unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells
and the Fudges and their historians.--SHELLEY: _Dedication to
Peter Bell._
[593-1] See Bolingbroke, page 304.
[593-2] Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian:
the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence.--HUME: _History
of England, vol. i. chap. lxii._
[593-3] Macaulay, in a letter, June 29, 1831, says "I sent these
lines to the 'Times' about three years ago."
J. A. WADE. 1800-1875.
Meet me by moonlight alone,
And then I will tell you a tale
Must be told by the moonlight alone,
In the grove at the end of the vale!
_Meet me by Moonlight._
'T were vain to tell thee all I feel,
Or say for thee I 'd die.
_'T were vain to tell._
SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 1800-18--.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
_Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5._
An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.
_Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5._
He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. 'T is an ill cure
For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow 's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.
_Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5._
We figure to ourselves
The thing we like; and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,--
For thought is tired of wandering o'er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.
_Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 5._
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
_Philip Van Artevelde. Part i. Act i. Sc. 7._
WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 1801-1872.
There is a higher law than the Constitution.
_Speech, March 11, 1850._
It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring
forces.
_Speech, Oct. 25, 1858._
W. M. PRAED. 1802-1839.
Twelve years ago I was a boy,
A happy boy at Drury's.
_School and Schoolfellows._
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
And some before the speaker.
_School and Schoolfellows._
I remember, I remember
How my childhood fleeted by,--
The mirth of its December
And the warmth of its July.
_I remember, I remember._
GEORGE P. MORRIS. 1802-1864.
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough![595-1]
In youth it sheltered me,
And I 'll protect it now.
_Woodman, spare that Tree! 1830._
A song for our banner! The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station:
"United we stand, divided we fall!"
It made and preserves us a nation![595-2]
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever,
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the flag of our Union forever!
_The Flag of our Union._
Near the lake where drooped the willow,
Long time ago!
_Near the Lake._
FOOTNOTES:
[595-1] See Campbell, page 516.
[595-2] See Key, page 517.
ALBERT G. GREENE. 1802-1868.
Old Grimes is dead, that good old man
We never shall see more;
He used to wear a long black coat
All buttoned down before.[596-1]
_Old Grimes._
FOOTNOTES:
[596-1]
John Lee is dead, that good old man,--
We ne'er shall see him more;
He used to wear an old drab coat
All buttoned down before.
To the memory of John Lee, who died May 21, 1823.
_An Inscription in Matherne Churchyard._
Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,--
You 'll never see him more;
He used to wear a long brown coat
That buttoned down before.
HALLIWELL: _Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 60._
LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 1802-1880.
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes
as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this
youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of
Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of
Switzerland.
_Supposititious Speech of James Otis. The Rebels, Chap. iv._
DOUGLAS JERROLD. 1803-1857.