When gracefull CLEOPATRA spoke and charm’d.
Still the imperial criminal inspires
Some kind compassion for unhallow’d fires,
Tho’ worlds ill-lost o’erwhelm her hero’s fame,
And victim millions curse the guilty flame;
Yet still, beneath her self-inflicted fate[41],
You feel her guilty, but confess her great;
Own the rash deed high-soul’d,--in that dark time
Stampt with no dire reproach, no impious crime.
Long years of error thus the generous mourn,
When Courage clasps the expiatory urn.
A purer spirit now demands acclaim,
True patriot virtue in a female frame,
And more than Roman firmness.--In that cause,
Ye Britons, mitigate the critics’ laws!
For her dear sake, who your own spirit breathes,
Adorn her poet with your honour’d wreaths!
On you his hopes, on you his fears await,
Your smile is glory, and your frown is fate.
PROLOGUE
WRITTEN FOR MR PENN.[42]
With Nature’s truth, be it the actor’s care,
By turns, each passion’s varied form to wear;
Assume the joy, the grief, the fear, the rage,
That charm, and thrill, and fire the scenic page;
Bid Rowe, bid Otway’s magic softness rise,
Steal o’er his form, and languish in his eyes;
Melt in his voice, till Memory hints no more
The woes unreal; but, with forfeit power,
Resigns her empire o’er the yielding soul
To sighs and tears she ceases to controul.
Take heed that energy, sublimely strong,
Imbibe the meteor-fires of gloomy Young;
When, as scorn’d love paternal envy goads,
Fierce PERSEUS invocates the dire abodes;
To aid grim Vengeance, calls their demon hosts
From the red confines of sulphureous coasts;
Or, when fell ZANGA’s sable hand shall spread
“Eternal curtains round ALONZO’s bed.”
Now, as the powers of later genius shine,
And JEPHSON glows along his nervous line,
Ne’er may unskilful acting cloud the rays,
Inferior only to his Shakespear’s blaze!
Whether, with every anguish Love can feel,
Braganza tremble at th’ impending steel;
Or the devoted Narbonne’s passions lead,
Headlong and fierce, to the accursed deed,
While rolls the thunder, and the lightnings glare
On the proud Filiacide’s upstarting hair.
In scenes like these, the just performer draws
The fixed attention, and the mute applause;
Yet most his powers enkindle rising fame
From mighty SHAKESPEAR’s orb of solar flame.
But real grief, the scenic Proteus knows,
Will blunt the mimic joys, the mimic woes.
How hard to breathe, tho’ loftiest themes inspire,
The monarch’s dignity, the warrior’s fire;
The phrenzied passion, in its dreariest glare,
Love’s tender grace, and Hope’s energic air,
When sharp Distress, the bane of studious Art,
Sits, like a vulture, on the bleeding heart.
Long ’twas my fate its ravenous tooth to feel,
Yet, unrepining, every pang conceal;
But, at the public smile, the bird of prey
Spreads his dark wing, and swiftly flies away.
With generous voice, and liberal hands, that know
Warmly to praise, and nobly to bestow,
My honour’d patrons, your protecting power,
So kindly active in this anxious hour,
Soft in my recent wounds pours oil and wine,
And bids the health of peace once more be mine!
PROLOGUE
TO THE CIRCASSIAN,
WRITTEN IN AUTUMN 1782.
Slow from an ebon throne’s majestic height,
A beauteous form glides mournful on my sight,
The floating purple, and the lofty mien,
Proclaim the empress of the tragic scene;
Divine Melpomene!--aggrieved she stands,
Tears fast descending on her folded hands;
The showery clouds thus dim the azure skies,
Thus round the moon the misty halos rise.
But soft!--the Muse of Anguish sighing speaks,
Faint on my ear the murmuring accent breaks;
Low hollow gales the plaintive sounds convey,
And thus the mourner says,--or seems to say:
“Can then the tender female bosom prove
“A keener pang than disappointed love?
“Ah me! for light Thalia more than shares
“My darling Sheridan’s devoted cares!
“On her vain brows his lavish wreaths are thrown,
“His thousand radiant gems emblaze her zone.
“What tho’ her bounty gave to his bright wand
“O’er each gay grace of wit supreme command,
“Yet, with sublimer force, my chemic fire
“With proud distinction deck’d his sacred lyre[43];
“To purest gold its warbling wires I turn’d,
“When their sweet lays o’er lifeless Garrick mourn’d.
“And once he sung, in elevated strain[44],
“My charms superior, and my right to reign;
“When, with the majesty my impulse throws
“In chasten’d splendour, on the poet’s brows,
“He bade the tears, that stream’d o’er Asia’s Queen,
“Flow soft in real Sorrow’s lonely scene;
“And, while they melt the heart, inspire its zeal
“To sooth by pity, or by bounty heal.
“Ah! soon he smiled those graceful tears away,
“And for my frolic Rival wore the lay.
“Yet let me hope the jocund pride of youth
“Alone has warpt from me his love and truth;
“That soon the rover may again be mine,
“And with unfading laurels deck my shrine.
“To-night an humbler hand the meed bestows,
“And on my shrine the cypress garland throws.
“O! may the fost’ring breath of public praise,
“Preserve from cruel blight the votive sprays!”
I hear no more--for, with a pensive smile,
Slow glides the Muse down yonder winding isle.
May you, ye brave, ye wise, ye good, ye fair,
Fulfil, with suffrage kind, her fervent prayer!
And since no force of wit, or comic art,
Can shut to Sorrow’s plaint the British heart,
Hope whispers that your praise may bless the Bard,
His first ambition, and his bright reward.
PROLOGUE
TO
THE FORTUNATE DISAPPOINTMENT.[45]
To teach our ductile youth the pleasing art,
Whose powers persuasive steal into the heart,
When graceful motion, and when accent just,
Prove faithful ever to the writer’s trust,
No idle aim, no light design betrays,
For virtue smiles on generous thirst of praise;
And oft exterior elegance we find
Give added influence to the noble mind!
Since warmest glow the emulative fires,
If, while our sense approves, our taste admires.
But more important, more exalted views
Prompt the kind efforts of our moral muse.
Still (that the youthful maid each fault may scorn,
Of cold reserve, or baser malice born)
Bid fair Ingenuousness each thought reveal,
To the mild guardians of her studied weal,
Whom long experience has empower’d to know,
When fleeting pleasures lead to lasting woe.
Thus, while forewarn’d by them, ye shun the bowers
Where serpents lurk beneath the gaudy flowers,
Oft will their cares the passing hour employ
To ope for you the springs of genuine joy;
Point the safe track where Life’s worst perils cease,
The ways of pleasantness, the paths of peace.
EPILOGUE
TO
THE FORTUNATE DISAPPOINTMENT.
To-night the scene display’d what secret smart,
What self-reproach must wound the virgin’s heart,
Rashly who dares from monitory eyes
Veil her increasing passions, as they rise!--
Ah thankless!--cold!--she has no middle choice,
But long repentance, or enduring vice,
Eliza’s tears, or the detested guile
Of artful Caroline’s betraying smile;
Fault leads to fault, till all the soul’s defiled,
And in base woman, ends the cunning child.
Eliza,[46] drooping, seems a blighted rose,
That, while each sister-bud in beauty blows,
Deep in its core the cankering worm receives,
Whose sickly slime cements the yellowing leaves.
Thus Disingenuousness, with chill controul,
Contracts the worth, the gladness of the soul;
Dims all the rays that light the artless eye,
Pales the soft cheek, and prompts the secret sigh.
But guilty Caroline we shuddering view,
Like the fell spider, weave her treacherous clue.
Emblem of hearts, where Envy’s venom swells,
That dark, sly, solitary reptile dwells;
Bane to the heedless insect of the meads,
That near the gleaming maze of viscous threads
Waves the light wing, which now no more shall bear
The entangled victim thro’ the sunny air.
Thus spirits mischievous, who ne’er can prove
Joys, or of sisterly, or social love,
Stung by their conscious worthlessness, prepare,
For others’ peace, the smooth insidious snare.
O! be it ours to watch each thought betimes,
Ere errors grow, by habit, into crimes!
To think the counsels guardian friends impart
Best shield from ill the inexperienced heart;
Cherish each virtuous impulse, and improve
To fairest flowers the seeds of duteous love!
Flowers of the mind, ye fear no winter’s rage,
Grace our gay prime, adorn our fading age,
If still, to strengthen their yet fragile stems,
And in unfading colours tint their gems[47],
Enlivening Gratitude, and generous Truth,
Shine the warm day-stars of our rising youth.
COMPLAINT
OF AN ARABIAN LOVER.
ODE.
Wide o’er the drowsy world, incumbent Night,
Sullen and drear, his sable wing has spread!
The waning moon, with interrupted light,
Gleams cold and misty on my fever’d bed!
Cold as she is, to her my bursting heart
Shall pour its waste of woe, its unavailing smart.
Thro’ the long hours--ah me! how long the hours!
My restless limbs no balmy languors know;
Grieved tho’ I am, yet griefs assuaging showers
From burning eye-balls still refuse to flow;
Love’s jealous fires[48], kindled by Aza’s frown,
Not the vast watery world, with all its waves can drown.
Slow pass the stars along the night’s dun plain!
Still in their destined sphere serene they move;
Nor does their mild effulgence shine in vain,
Like the fierce blazes of neglected love:
But this--this pang dissolves the galling chain!
Aza, a broken heart defies thy fix’d disdain!
BLINDNESS,
A POEM.
WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF AN ARTIST, WHO LOST HIS SIGHT BY THE GUTTA
SERENA, IN HIS TWENTY-EIGHTH YEAR, AND WHO WAS THEREFORE OBLIGED TO
CHANGE HIS PROFESSION FOR THAT OF MUSIC.
Long for my circling years the Lord of Day
Illumed creation with his glorious ray;
And long of youth and health the rosy hours
Saw liberal toil, with promissory powers,
Preparing, against faded age, the peace
Of modest competence, when strength might cease.
Then,--as with cheerful hope my earnest sight
Imbibed the blessings of the sacred light,
Slow on that sight the mists preclusive stole;
Dim and more dim the gathering shadows roll,
Till, with the last thick drop, the visual boon
Sunk into darkness ’mid the blaze of noon!
How have I loved the changeful year to trace,
Each laughing beauty, each terrific grace;
To see warm Spring her vital influence pour,
Green the bleak field, and gild the balmy shower;
Tint the young foliage with her tenderest hue,
And feed the opening flowers with richest dew!
Charm’d did I see bright Summer climb the sky,
Leave half the river’s pebbly channel dry,
On breathing meads the fragrant haycocks pile,
Till the ripe Year’s consummate glories smile:--
View’d jocund Autumn rear her rival sheaves,
With gold and purple tip the unfaded leaves;
Crown amber morning with serenest noons,
And night’s dark zenith with protracted moons;
Shake the rich fruit from every loaded bough,
And with the wheaten wreath adorn her brow;
Till colder gales the paled horizon roam,
And stain and smear the gold-empurpled bloom,
While sweeping fogs, conglobing as they pass,
Bend with their silent drops the long coarse grass,
And change, as on screen’d plat it timid blows,
To livid hue the lone and lingering rose;
Bare the rude thorns on all the russet hills,
And crust with ice the borders of the rills;--
Pensive I mark’d, when, with reverted eyes,
Disorder’d garments and foreboding sighs,
The last fair season left hill, dale, and plain,
The yielded victims of the iron reign:--
Saw Winter rove the dun and whistling heath,
Swoln floods arresting with petrific breath,
Send round the mountains all his winds to howl,
Pale the slow morn, and bid the long night scowl;
But ah! the glowing hearth, the neat repast,
Derided oft the despot’s power to blast,
Since, if without his furious storms might pass,
Boom thro’ the vales, and rattle on the glass,
Within was the gay talk, the flowing bowl,
And Friendship’s smile, that summer of the soul!
Beloved vicissitudes! to me ye live
Only on memory’s record;--yet ye give
The retrospective pleasure, ne’er to rise
To the sad few, of ever-rayless eyes,
Whose infant orbs, not opening on the light,
From night maternal sprung to ceaseless night;
Lost to their sense each charm kind Nature shews,
That dawns and spreads, that varies and that glows.
Then grateful let me prove, indulged to find
Exemption from those pangs which rack the mind,
Springing from foil’d solicitude to reach
What Genius cannot paint, nor Wisdom teach;
Pangs which the fruitless thirst to know inspires
With ever-craving, never-fed desires!
Comparing thus severer with severe,
Arrested be my groan, exhaled my tear!
Yet, yet Creation stands a blank to me,
Her face now cover’d with a sable sea;
Still am I doom’d thro’ life’s rough paths to stray,
A long, deprived, and desolated way.
But, to relieve inevitable woes,
To my internal sight auspicious rose
A beauteous pair:--Music, the nymph sublime,
With stores increasing from the morn of Time;
Such melodies as, slowly rising, stole
On Saul’s distracted sense with sweet controul,
Till frantic Rage and fell Despair were flown,
And Hope resumed her abdicated throne.
Thus, Music, it was thine, by high behest,
To charm and tranquillize the stormy breast,
Ere harmony began her mazy rounds,
Blending accordant with discordant sounds,
Till thro’ the ear the mingled currents roll,
One sweet, one perfect, one revolving whole;
Its charm with melody and verse combined,
And bade thee, Music, reign o’er every mind.
Rebellious only theirs, who breathe and move,
Palsied to sympathy and dead to love;
Dull as the rank, gross weeds, that feed and sleep,
Where silent Lethe’s opiate waters creep.
Nymph of all climes by Nature, and thy code,
By Art invented, thro’ the wide abode
Of civilized existence, power obtains
Social to spread th’ intelligible strains.
While varying language, in each foreign clime,
Is only known by study and by time,
One are thy symbols, and where’er they come,
At once perceived, escape the Babel doom.
“Sphere-born,” thou com’st from black Despair to save,
And sooth me fall’n into a living grave.
Another comes, of mission more benign,
In mortal semblance, tho’ with soul divine!
And whose the form the gentle Seraph wears,
Scattering her roses o’er this vale of tears?
Example bright to these degenerate times,
Dark with the Ethiop stains of female crimes;
She, whom no levity allures to stray
Near e’en the confines of the faithless way;
Who sooths the wretched and the hungry feeds,
Heaven calls her MERCY, but Earth names her LEEDS;
This morning star, this fair, diffusive light,
That sparkles by, and gilds my live-long night.
VERSES,
SENT WITH SOME ORNAMENTS FOR THE HAIR TO MISS MARGARET KNOWLES,
ON HER RECOVERY FROM INOCULATION FOR THE SMALL POX, IN HER 17TH YEAR.
WRITTEN IN THE SPRING.
Nymph, for the giver’s sake, thy tresses bind
With these slight tokens of her wishes kind,
Mix’d with her praise for having dared disarm
The dread contagion of its power to harm,
Furrow the cheeks, and blast their rising bloom,
Or prove the loathsome escort to the tomb.
Now, blithe as morning larks, thy steps shall stray,
Fearless, tho’ beauty’s demon cross thy way.
His fell effluvia, when it loads the gale,
Thy rosy breath untainted may inhale,
And waft thy pious gratitude to Heaven,
Who with the bane, the antidote has given.
END OF VOLUME FIRST.
EDINBURGH:
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I owe Mr Constable my thanks for having offered me the unlimited
use of this collection, for drawing up the present memoir. The bounds
I had prescribed to myself, did not admit of my profiting to a great
extent by his liberality.
[2] At the period in which these letters were written, Sir William
Jones had not published his Miscellany, containing such very beautiful
specimens, in English, of the ideas and style of that elegant Italian
poet. Neither was his history then so known as it is now.
[3] See the first poem in the author’s Miscellaneous Poems.
[4] They have been much enlarged since the present duke’s marriage, an
event to which this letter was previous.
[5] The late William Seward, Esq. who, in 1795, published “Anecdotes of
Distinguished Persons,” obtained from Mr Longston, of Eyam, copies of
these three letters. They will be found in the second volume of those
compilations; but they are introduced in a cold, uninteresting manner.
Though he personally examined the scenery, neither his heart nor his
imagination seem to have caught the least glow from vestiges so likely
to have warmed them. He does not even mention the beautiful, romantic
dingle, and calls its perforated rock, from whence Mr Mompesson
performed divine service during the contagion, “a cavern near Eyam,
called at this day Cucklet Church.”
[6] The great and good Howard visited Eyam the year before he last left
England, to examine the vestiges of that pestilential calamity which it
had endured, and the records of virtues which resembled his own.
[7] That friendship did remain to the time of Mrs Mompesson’s death, in
the autumn 1798. She died unmarried, and regretted by all who knew her,
for she was worthy the name of _Mompesson_.
[8] The pious author of the above letter could not suppose it would be
comprehended by infants of four and five years old. He certainly meant
it should be preserved for their inspection in riper years, when the
consciousness that it had been written under the immediate impressions
of the affecting scene it describes, would add force to the precepts
and to the example it holds forth.
[9] This was well meant, but it sounds absurd and shocking. Religious
enthusiasm is too prone to violate that subdued and sacred awe with
which the mind ought to contemplate the dispensations of the Deity.
Mr Mompesson’s heart and conduct were all that does honour to human
nature, and to the religion he professed.
[10] This Poem was written on the terrace walk of the Palace garden at
Lichfield, soon after the death of the Author’s only sister, who died
at 19, on the eve of her intended marriage.
This, and all other Poems of this Collection marked j, were written
between the age of 17 and 23.
[11] l. 11. _Grassy vale_--The Vale of Stowe, which slopes down from
Lichfield Cathedral.
[12] l. 19. _Young Honora_--Miss Honora Sneyd, since Mrs Edgeworth, the
daughter of Edward Sneyd, Esq. She was adopted by Mr and Mrs Seward,
and educated in their family. In her 18th year she became the object of
the brave, unfortunate Major André’s unalienable attachment.
[13] Then of Lichfield, and afterwards wife of the Rev. Richard Levett.
This picture, in verse, was drawn by the author at eighteen.
[14] l. 8. _The tender records_--The author had heard, and believed,
that her friend was attached, at the time this poem was written, to a
young lady at Angiers.
[15] These little poems were written in the early youth of the author.
They describe an attachment between a lady of birth, rank, beauty,
and talents, the daughter of wealthy parents, and a gentleman, much
her inferior in family and station, without fortune, and her equal
only in intellect, merit, and affection. Nor is the situation entirely
imaginary; the author was entrusted with the perusal of a prose
correspondence between that unhappy pair, which bore the same sort of
relation to the ensuing poems, as the real letters between Abelard and
Eloisa bear to Pope’s Love-Epistle, “Eloisa to Abelard.”
[16] Written on the terrace walk in the palace garden, Lichfield, the
day on which Miss Honora Sneyd left that place for a month’s residence
in Shropshire, May 1769.
[17] l. 7. _Willow’s ample shade_--This celebrated willow of Stowe
Valley, from its very uncommon magnitude, excites the attention of
naturalists. It is of recorded dearness to Dr Johnson, whence a
mistaken idea arose that he had planted it.
[18] l. 12. _Much beloved_--Miss Sarah Seward, who died in her 19th
year, and on the verge of her purposed nuptials.
[19] l. 3. _Pleasant home_--The Bishop’s Palace at Lichfield.
[20] Miss H. Sneyd was then at Bristol, on account of a consumptive
complaint.
[21] This spot is known to the inhabitants of Lichfield by the name
of BESSY BANKS’ GRAVE. When the author walked thither, in
the year 1791, she found the two trees, which stood on each side the
tumulus, had been recently cut down, and deplored a devastation which
she almost fancied sacrilegious.
[22] l. 1. _Distinguish’d city_--Whose name, and city-arms testify
her military honours in ancient times. Addison’s father being Dean of
Lichfield, the infancy of that celebrated author was probably passed in
her bosom; and it is well known what eminent men, in later days, were
educated beneath her walls.
[23] l. 9. The trees of the cathedral walk at Lichfield are flowering
limes, so beautiful when their branches are left to grow naturally.
It is, however, only very lately that the tasteless custom has been
renounced of lopping them to form a straight line at top. A barbarism,
which existed when Major André was at Lichfield, and to which he
alludes, with so much playful elegance, in the second of those charming
letters subjoined to the Monody.
[24] l. 17. _Mouldering tower_--Stowe Church, said to be the mother
church of this city, is older than its cathedral.
[25] l. 5. _The villa_--Two elegant houses, one at the foot, the other
near the top of that umbrageous rising, which soon, but beautifully,
bounds this valley to the east. They were built in the year 1756, by
a lady of the Aston family, of whom frequent mention is made in Dr
Johnson’s letters to Mrs Piozzi, when she was Mrs Thrale.
[26] l. 11. _Rustic spire_--Green-Hill Church, belonging to the city.
[27] l. 20. _Lovely sister_--Miss Sarah Seward. She died in her 19th
year. The first poem in this collection is an Elegy to her memory.
[28] l. 4. _Village church_--Weston, on the edge of Shropshire.
[29] l. 7. _The lake._ A fine sheet of water near Weston-Hall,
belonging to Lord Bradford.
[30] l. 19. _Life-warm scene_--Newport, the residence of the author’s
amiable friend, Mrs Short.
[31] l. 1. _This vale._--Strow Valley, Lichfield.
[32] This poem was written the day before that lady’s funeral, and in
view of the villa where she died, in the Vale of Stowe, near Lichfield.
[33] This was written when first Sir William’s Oriental Miscellany
appeared.
[34] _Silver Wie_--The river Wie runs through Mensaldale, the loveliest
of the Peak Vallies, and through the rich meads below Bakewell,
where it winds and curves with capricious wantonness. The waters of
the Derwent have a tint of amber, which seems to suit the dark and
luxuriant foliage on their banks, and is well contrasted by the white
foam, almost perpetually formed by its rocky channel. The clearness of
the Wie is still more beautiful. Hence it becomes the mirror of the
exquisite scenery on its borders.
[35] This Ode is an answer to Mr Boothby’s verses on the preceding Ode,
which verses he sent to the author from Tunbridge.
[36] _Garish plain_--Tunbridge.
[37] l. 22. In allusion to his verses which maintain that love may
subsist with rival passions. See the elegant edition of his Poems,
published 1796, by Cadell, page 59.
[38] The first verse is from an old ballad.
[39] Written on request, for music.
[40] l. 11. _Flakes of the snow_--Snow, covering mines, pits, and
pools, slightly frozen, in mountainous countries, is imminently
dangerous, especially where there are no turnpike roads.
[41] l. 22. _Her self-inflicted fate_--Her death, by the application of
the Asp.
[42] An itinerant performer of great ability, whom indiscretion, and an
extravagant wife, had prevented from attaining better situations, which
his talents would have adorned. This prologue was spoken by him very
finely, for his benefit, at Birmingham, in the spring 1782.
[43] l. 8. _Proud distinction_--Parody of one of the lines in Mr
Sheridan’s Monody on Garrick.
[44] l. 11. _Elevated strain_--See his fine Epilogue to Semiramis.
[45] A play written by Mrs Short, then of Newport, and represented by
the pupils of her seminary.
[46] Eliza and Caroline, characters in the play.
[47] l. 2. _Gems_--A term in botany for the first buds of flowers.
[48] l. 11. _Jealous fires_--A critical friend of the author’s seemed
to doubt whether a _frown_ kindling _fire_ was just metaphor; but,
since it is poetically orthodox to say that the flame of love is
lighted by the sunny ray of a smile, that of jealousy may certainly be
said to enkindle from the lightning of a frowning eye. There are lurid
and dismal fires, as well as bright and cheerful ones.