Ye clear and sparkling streams!
(Warm’d by the sunny beams)
Through whose transparent crystal Laura play’d;
Ye boughs that deck the grove,
Where Spring her chaplets wove,
While Laura lay beneath the quivering shade;
Sweet herbs! and blushing flowers!
That crown yon vernal bowers,
For ever fatal, yet for ever dear;
And ye, that heard my sighs
When first she charm’d my eyes,
Soft-breathing gales! my dying accents hear.
If Heav’n has fix’d my doom,
That Love must quite consume
My bursting heart, and close my eyes in death
Ah! grant this slight request,--
That here my urn may rest,
When to its mansion flies my vital breath.
This pleasing hope will smooth
My anxious mind, and soothe
The pangs of that inevitable hour;
My spirit will not grieve
Her mortal veil to leave
In these calm shades, and this enchanting bower
Haply, the guilty maid
Through yon accustom’d glade
To my sad tomb will take her lonely way
Where first her beauty’s light
O’erpower’d my dazzled sight,
When love on this fair border bade me stray:
There, sorrowing, shall she see,
Beneath an aged tree,
Her true, but hapless lover’s lowly bier;
Too late her tender sighs
Shall melt the pitying skies,
And her soft veil shall hide the gushing tear
O! well-remember’d day,
When on yon bank she lay,
Meek in her pride, and in her rigour mild;
The young and blooming flowers,
Falling in fragrant showers,
Shone on her neck, and on her bosom smil’d
Some on her mantle hung,
Some in her locks were strung,
Like orient gems in rings of flaming gold;
Some, in a spicy cloud
Descending, call’d aloud,
“Here Love and Youth the reins of empire hold.”
I view’d the heavenly maid
And, rapt in wonder, said--
“The groves of Eden gave this angel birth,”
Her look, her voice, her smile,
That might all Heaven beguile,
Wafted my soul above the realms of earth
The star-bespangled skies
Were open’d to my eyes;
Sighing I said, “Whence rose this glittering scene?”
Since that auspicious hour,
This bank, and odorous bower,
My morning couch, and evening haunt have been.
Well mayst thou blush, my song,
To leave the rural throng
And fly thus artless to my Laura’s ear,
But, were thy poet’s fire
Ardent as his desire,
Thou wert a song that Heaven might stoop to hear
It is within probability to imagine, that the original of this “ode” may
have been impressed on the paper, by Petrarch’s pen, from the inkstand
of the frontispiece.
Vol. I.--1.
THE
TABLE BOOK.
Formerly, a “Table Book” was a memorandum book, on which any thing was
graved or written without ink. It is mentioned by Shakspeare. Polonius,
on disclosing Ophelia’s affection for Hamlet to the king, inquires
“When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
----------------------- what might you,
Or my dear majesty, your queen here, think,
If I had play’d the desk, or table-book?”
Dr. Henry More, a divine, and moralist, of the succeeding century,
observes, that “Nature makes clean the _table-book_ first, and then
portrays upon it what she pleaseth.” In this sense, it might have been
used instead of a _tabula rasa_, or sheet of blank writing paper,
adopted by Locke as an illustration of the human mind in its incipiency.
It is figuratively introduced to nearly the same purpose by Swift: he
tells us that
“Nature’s fair table-book, our tender souls,
We scrawl all o’er with old and empty rules,
Stale memorandums of the schools.”
Dryden says, “Put into your _Table-Book_ whatsoever you judge
worthy.”[1]
I hope I shall not unworthily err, if, in the commencement of a work
under this title, I show what a _Table Book_ was.
Table books, or tablets, of wood, existed before the time of Homer, and
among the Jews before the Christian æra. The table books of the Romans
were nearly like ours, which will be described presently; except that
the leaves, which were two, three, or more in number, were of wood
surfaced with wax. They wrote on them with a style, one end of which was
pointed for that purpose, and the other end rounded or flattened, for
effacing or scraping out. Styles were made of nearly all the metals, as
well as of bone and ivory; they were differently formed, and resembled
ornamented skewers; the common style was iron. More anciently, the
leaves of the table book were without wax, and marks were made by the
iron style on the bare wood. The Anglo-Saxon style was very handsome.
Dr. Pegge was of opinion that the well-known jewel of Alfred, preserved
in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, was the head of the style sent by
that king with Gregory’s Pastoral to Athelney.[2]
A gentleman, whose profound knowledge of domestic antiquities surpasses
that of preceding antiquaries, and remains unrivalled by his
contemporaries, in his “Illustrations of Shakspeare,” notices Hamlet’s
expression, “My _tables_,--meet it is I set it down.” On that passage he
observes, that the Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a style
was continued through the middle ages; and that specimens of wooden
tables, filled with wax, and constructed in the fourteenth century, were
preserved in several of the monastic libraries in France. Some of these
consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of
parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. He says that in the
middle ages there were table books of ivory, and sometimes, of late, in
the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps; and he
transfers a figure of one of the latter from an old work[3] to his own:
it resembles the common “slate-books” still sold in the stationers’
shops. He presumes that to such a table book the archbishop of York
alludes in the second part of King Henry IV.,
“And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
And keep no tell tale to his memory.”
As in the middle ages there were table-books with ivory leaves, this
gentleman remarks that, in Chaucer’s “Sompnour’s Tale,” one of the
friars is provided with
“A pair of tables all of _ivory_,
And a pointel ypolished fetishly,
And wrote alway the names, as he stood,
Of alle folk that yave hem any good.”
He instances it as remarkable, that neither public nor private museums
furnished specimens of the table books, common in Shakspeare’s time.
Fortunately, this observation is no longer applicable.
A correspondent, understood to be Mr. Douce, in Dr. Aikin’s “Athenæum,”
subsequently says, “I happen to possess a table-book of Shakspeare’s
time. It is a little book, nearly square, being three inches wide and
something less than four in length, bound stoutly in calf, and fastening
with four strings of broad, strong, brown tape. The title as follows:
‘Writing Tables, with a Kalender for xxiiii yeeres, with sundrie
necessarie rules. The Tables made by Robert Triple. London, Imprinted
for the Company of Stationers.’ The tables are inserted immediately
after the almanack. At first sight they appear like what we call
asses-skin, the colour being precisely the same, but the leaves are
thicker: whatever smell they may have had is lost, and there is no gloss
upon them. It might be supposed that the gloss has been worn off; but
this is not the case, for most of the tables have never been written on.
Some of the edges being a little worn, show that the middle of the leaf
consists of paper; the composition is laid on with great nicety. A
silver style was used, which is sheathed in one of the covers, and which
produces an impression as distinct, and as easily obliterated as a
black-lead pencil. The tables are interleaved with common paper.”
In July, 1808, the date of the preceding communication, I, too,
possessed a table book, and silver style, of an age as ancient, and
similar to that described; except that it had not “a Kalender.” Mine was
brought to me by a poor person, who found it in Covent-garden on a
market day. There were a few ill-spelt memoranda respecting vegetable
matters formed on its leaves with the style. It had two antique slender
brass clasps, which were loose; the ancient binding had ceased from long
wear to do its office, and I confided it to Mr. Wills, the almanack
publisher in Stationers’-court, for a better cover and a silver clasp.
Each being ignorant of what it was, we spoiled “a _table-book_ of
Shakspeare’s time.”
The most affecting circumstance relating to a table book is in the life
of the beautiful and unhappy “Lady Jane Grey.” “Sir John Gage, constable
of the Tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on him
some small present, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her:
she gave him her _table-book_, wherein she had just written three
sentences, on seeing her husband’s body; one in Greek, another in Latin,
and a third in English. The purport of them was, that human justice was
against his body, but the divine mercy would be favourable to his soul;
and that, if her fault deserved punishment, her youth at least, and her
imprudence, were worthy of excuse, and that God and posterity, she
trusted, would show her favour.”[4]
* * * * *
Having shown what the ancient table book was, it may be expected that I
should say something about
_My_