"Flow'rets strew'd
By churlish Time, in cheerlier mood;
The sweetness of a second Spring,
Beneath the Autumn of his wing.
Bestowing on the season's gloom
The bliss of a perennial bloom."
Glancing back to the commencement of the nineteenth century, the only
_annual_ record of poetry and prose which we recollect, was "The
Flowers of Literature;" a thick duodecimo, habited in a flesh-coloured
wrapper, and retaining in its print and pages, the quaintness which
characterized "the good old days" of the "Universal Magazine;" and which
still clings, though somewhat modified, to the patriarchal pages of
Sylvanus Urban. The matter was in accordance with the manner--a medley of
prosing articles, from the titles of which we might select, as indicative
of their style, "Ode to Despair;" "Topographical Description of Paris;"
"The Sailor;" more agreeably interspersed with some effusion of Mrs.
Barbauld, or Mrs. Opie; mingled, again, with sundry "Observations on the
Present State of the War," written by some sleepy newspaper editor, whose
language we might assimilate with, "We have received intelligence from,"
&c. Here and there, perhaps, a straggling beam of genius broke through the
mental twilight, in the shape of, "Some Account of the poet, Burns;" a
_Rustique_ by Bloomfield, or an elegant sonnet by Bowles or Charlotte
Smith. The rest of would-be-sonneteers, tragedy-writers, and essayists,
have long ago found, with their mediocrities, a congenial oblivion in
"the tomb of all the Capulets."
But suddenly, and without much premise to warrant the commencement of such
an era, the department of our imaginative literature was established in
patronage and importance; and those "trivial, fond records," which were
wont only to sparkle a brief endurance in the mutable columns of a
newspaper, or doomed, when existing in fragile manuscript, "to die and be
forgot," found a refuge from their Lethean fate in the numerous Magazines
which the increased taste, and avidity for reading, evinced by the public,
had called into existence. Still there was a _desideratum_, which
these adornments of English Literature, "The Annuals," alone supplied. The
casual tones which emanated from the "transcendent masters of the lyre,"
were not to be lost to "the public ear" for want of "a circulating medium;"
and Ackermann, a name familiar to the lovers of pictorial art, had the
honour of first setting England the example of preserving her valuable
anthology, by producing his attractive Annual, "The Forget-Me-Not;" a
species of literature which presents us with the pleasing facility of
holding yearly communion with our poets and authors, without being
subjected to the tedium of awaiting their protracted appearance in a more
voluminous shape. We can now more frequently greet Anacreon Moore,
wreathing his harp with the paternal shamrock, characteristically mingled
with "pansies _for love_;" Montgomery, mourning over our nature's
degradation; telling us of the affections and passions of earth, yet luring
us to higher hopes and brighter consummation; his every line evincing that
chastened sorrow which Byron threw into the portrait of the Sheffield
bard--
"With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale."
Coleridge, dropping "some natural tears," on viewing the altered features
of his native valley; sweetly and affectionately telling of
"The meadow, and its babbling brook,
Where roses in the ripple shook."
Southey, forgetting the ungentler theme of "battle field" amidst the
sublimity of rock and lake. Campbell, pouring from his plaintive shell
a tender eulogy to his northern home--a glowing tissue of
Dreams of the Highland mountains, and echoing streams,
And broken glades, breathing their balm.
--Scott, terrifically depicting a Sassenagh tournament, or inditing a
stirring appeal to the "blue bonnets," to settle some Border broil. James
Hogg, "the Scottish Virgil," on whom has surely fallen the mantle of
inspiration from the Mantuan bard, coming forth in all the richness of the
"Noctes Ambrosianae," from the misty hill where he dominates "the king of
shepherds." Delta, elegantly pensive, sighing beneath the blighted trees
which flourished over his boyhood; and listening to the rhetoric of the
changing seasons. Alaric Watts, "the fireside bard," giving us a touching
apostrophe to his "youngling of the flock," in melting verse, warm from
that kindred fancy
"Whose blessed words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,
And drown in tears of joy the eyes."
T.K. Hervey, following in the same bright path, or enthusiastically rapt
amidst the beauty and bloom of Australia.--Bernard Barton, bringing us
snatches of vernal philosophy, gathered in the silence of murky woods,
and the solitude of perfumed meadows.--John Clare, swearing everlasting
fealty to his beauteous Mary, by the elm-shadowed cottage of her bowery
home; thanking heaven for the benison of love and rurality.--Richardson,
the poet of India, sonnetizing amidst the superb cupolas and temples
which gem the banks of the deified Ganges, longing to exchange his
fevered abode for salubrious England.--Pringle transforming the
repulsive features of a South African desert into matter for piteous
song; and illumining, by the brightness of his genius, the terrible
picture of Caffre barbarity and degradation.--Roscoe, revelling in the
sweets of Italian lore, his own lips "touched with a live coal" from the
altar of poesy.--Washington Irving, grasping at the intellect, and
speculating on the wit and fancy, of all climes; so speedily
transplanting himself (bodily as well as mentally) from the back woods
of America to the land of Columbus--from the vineyards of France to the
valleys of Yorkshire--as almost to induce a belief in his power of
ubiquity.--Allan Cunningham, sympathizing with the sorrows of one "who
never told her love," and weaving a tearful elegy over her flower-strewn
grave, or painting the fiercer incidents of piratical warfare, on the
ocean's solitudes.--Felicia Hemans, her lyre musically blending the song
of sounding streams with the spontaneous melody of the "feathered choir"
composing an epicedium to the memory of departed days, and proving her
glorious claims to the poetic character, "creation's heir."--Mary
Russell Mitford, great in her histrionic portraitures of liberty,
whether patrician or plebeian; yet not forgetting in her dramatic
wanderings, her happy village; but drawing us, "by the cords of love,"
to the rustic scene; amplifying that fine axiom of the Stratford bard--
"Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than does the embroider'd canopy to kings?"
J.H. Wiffen, dating from the sentimental seclusion of Woburn Abbey,
a song replete with all the grace and imagination of his "Ionian
Hours."--Charles Lamb, the "deep-thoughted Elia," introducing us to the
maidenly residence of his cousin Bridget; delighted with delighting; his
fancy expatiating on a copious medley of subjects between the stiff
Mandarins on the old fashioned china, and that _Beaumont and Fletcher_,
the purchase of his rigid economy, ere his talents had brought him fame
and fortune.--Letitia Landon "the English Sappho," a being existing but
in the atmosphere of love and flowers; equally sensitive at the opening
of a violet as at the shutting of a rose. But our list of the living is
too extended; and we will speak of some of the departed.
Interspersed with the emanations of our existing bards, we have,
occasionally, those precious _morceaux_ which have been bequeathed us by
the illustrious dead. Trifles, yet how esteemed! Remembrances of Byron,
with his fiery impetuosity, spurning the trammels of worldly sorrow;
and prescribing death as a _panacea_ for his lamentable despair; yet
subduing us with refined regrets, as he was wont, in his changing mood,
"To sun himself in heaven's pure day."
Shelley, misanthropically commencing with the turbulence of the chainless
sea: a spirit matured to madness by the overawing and supernatural terrors
of German romance: as he asserts himself to be, in his lamentation for the
author of Endymion, one who
"Had gaz'd on Nature's naked loveliness,
Acteon-like, until _he fled away_."
John Keates, forsaking the land of his fame, and prematurely resigning his
"quiet breath," on that spot
"Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour;"
leaving to the less sensitive reviewers to prove, whether he had been
"led astray by the light from heaven, or by his own clouded and
tempestuous genius:"
"That fire within so fiercely burned
That whence it came it soon returned."
Maturin, though corrupted and enervated by the follies and dissipation
of the anti-poetic city, becoming, in his lucid intervals, "himself
again," in the composition of a splendid dramaticle.--Henry Neele, the
"martyr-student," inviting us to share in the intense admiration of
intellect; forcibly demonstrating "that song is but the eloquence of
truth"--but of him no more!
"The churchyard bears an added stone;
The fireside shows a vacant chair."
Yet, however splendid the galaxy of literary stars may be, which illumine
our Annuals, they owe no little of their lustre to _the engravings_.
It fortuitously happens that we have not "a connoisseuring eye," or
we should swell this paper beyond the limits prescribed by editorial
complaisance, in the pages of "THE MIRROR." We are not ignorant, however,
of the incomparable advancement which the science of engraving has made in
the lapse of the last ten years; or how far it has left behind those mere
scratches of the graver which lit up our young admiration when a boy.
Two of these we will be impertinent enough to criticise, in spite of the
affection with which we cherish the visionary recollection of the pictures
of grandmother's parlour. The subjects were "courtship," and "matrimony."
In the former, the Chesterfieldian lover was seen handing his _chere
amie_ (a lusty wench, with red ochre cheeks) over a remarkably low
stile: whether the subject, or the manner of its execution had inspired
the muse, is no matter; but beneath was the following:--
"In _courtship_, Strephon careful hands his lass
Over a stile a child with ease might pass"
The next was "matrimony;" but, oh! "look on _this_ picture and on
_this!_" The careless husband, forgetting his capacious spouse, leaves
her to scramble over a stile of alarming altitude, whilst his attention
seems absorbed in the quarrel of two snarling terriers. Such conjugal
uncourtliness elicits its merited censure in the cool satire of the
accompanying motto:--
"But _wedded_ Strephon now neglects his dame:
Tumble or not, to him 'tis all the same."
The costume of these two figures was in accordance with the date of the
hey-day of Ranelagh Gardens; and the outline of the foliage was about on
a par with those designs we often see cut out of paper, by an ingenious
schoolboy yet they may be adduced as criterions of the average merit
appertaining to the generality of the productions of the burine of "the
old school."
In closing this erratic dissertation on the Annuals, we may remark, that an
interesting article might be written, descriptive of the reformation which
gradually elevated the art of engraving to perfection--a history of its
emerging from the inanities which flaunt in the window of Carver and
Bowles, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and arriving at the exquisite perfection
of such achievements as "Alexander's Visit to Diogenes," and "Quintus
Curtius leaping into the Gulf."
* * H.
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