Col. 397, line 18, for “_modern_ Europe,” read “_northern_ Europe.”
Col. 430. In the Will of John Keats, for “_losses_ of the sale of
books,” read “_hopes_ of the sale of books.”
Vol. II.--43.
[Illustration: ~Catherine Mompesson’s Tomb at Eyam.~]
Among the verdant mountains of the Peak
There lies a quiet hamlet, where the slope
Of pleasant uplands wards the north-winds bleak;
Below, wild dells romantic pathways ope;
Around, above it, spreads a shadowy cope
Of forest trees: flower, foliage, and clear rill
Wave from the cliffs, or down ravines elope;
It seems a place charmed from the power of ill
By sainted words of old:--so lovely, lone, and still.
And many are the pilgrim feet which tread
Its rocky steeps, which thither yearly go;
Yet, less by love of Nature’s wonders led,
Than by the memory of a mighty woe,
Which smote, like blasting thunder, long ago,
The peopled hills. There stands a sacred tomb,
Where tears have rained, nor yet shall cease to flow;
Recording days of death’s sublimest gloom;
Mompesson’s power and pain,--his beauteous Catherine’s doom.
_The Desolation of Eyam._
Through the seventeenth and half of the eighteenth century the village
of Eyam, three miles east from Tideswell, in Derbyshire, was populous
and flourishing; and all that part of the country thickly sown with
little towns and hamlets, was swarming with inhabitants. Owing to the
exhausted state of the lead mines the scene is altered, and Eyam is now
thinly peopled. It had before endured a dreadful affliction. The year
after “that awful and terrible period, when the destroying angel passed
over this island, and in the cities of London and Westminster swept away
three thousand victims in one night,” the visitation was revived in this
distant village, and four-fifths of the inhabitants perished in the
course of the summer. This calamity is the subject of the title-page to
a poetical volume of eminent merit and beauty, “_The Desolation of
Eyam_, &c. by William and Mary Howitt, Authors of the Forest Minstrel
and other Poems.”
Eyam was the birthplace of the late Anna Seward, and in the “Gentleman’s
Magazine”[383] there is a letter written in her youthful days, which
naturally relates the devoted attachment of the village rector, during
the plague, to his stricken flock; and the affectionate adherence of his
noble wife. Extracts from this letter, with others from the notes to
“The Desolation of Eyam,” and a few stanzas from the poem itself, as
specimens of its worth, may here suffice to convey some notion of the
story. The poets’ “Introduction” is briefly descriptive of “The
Peak”--its romantic rocks and glens--the roar of its flying streams--the
welling-up of its still waters--the silence of its beautiful dells--
Such brightness fills the arched sky;
So quietly the hill-tops lie
In sunshine, and the wild-bird’s glee
Rings from the rock-nursed service tree;
Such a delicious air is thrown,
Such a reposing calm is known
On these delightful hills,
That, as the dreaming poet lies
Drinking the splendour of the skies,
The sweetness which distils
From herbs and flowers--a thrilling sense
Steals o’er his musing heart, intense,
Passive, yet deep; the joy which dwells
Where nature frames her loneliest spells.
And Fancy’s whispers would persuade
That peace had here her sojourn made,
And love and gladness pitched their tent,
When from the world, in woe, they went.
That each grey hill had reared its brow
In peaceful majesty, as now.
That thus these streams had traced their way
Through scenes as bright and pure as they;
That here no sadder strain was heard
Than the free note of wandering bird;
And man had here, in nature’s eye,
Known not a pain, except, to die.
Poets may dream--alas! that they
Should dream so wildly, even by day--
Poets may dream of love and truth,
Islands of bliss, and founts of youth:
But, from creation’s earliest birth,
The curse of blood has raged on earth.
Since the first arm was raised to smite
The sword has travelled like a blight,
From age to age, from realm to realm,
Guiding the seaman’s ready helm.
Go! question well--search far and near,
Bring me of earth a portion here.
Look! is not that exuberant soil
Fraught with the battle’s bloody spoil?
Turn where thou may’st, go where thou wilt,
Thy foot is on a spot of guilt.
The curse, the blight have not passed by
These dales now smiling in thine eye.
Of human ills an ample share,
Ravage, and dearth, domestic care,
They have not ’scaped. This region blest
Knew not of old its pleasant rest.
Grandeur there was, but all that cheers,
Is the fair work of recent years.
The Druid-stones are standing still
On the green top of many a hill;
The fruitful plough, with mining share,
At times lays some old relic bare;
The Danish mell; the bolt of stone,
To a yet ruder people known:
And oft, as on some point which lies
In the deep hush of earth and skies,
In twilight, silence, and alone,
I’ve sate upon the Druid-stone,
The visions of those distant times,
Their barbarous manners, creeds and crimes,
Have come, joy’s brightest thrill to raise,
For life’s blest boon in happier days.
But not of them--rude race--I sing;
Nor yet of war, whose fiery wing,
From age to age, with waste and wail,
Drove from wide champaign, and low vale,
Warrior and woman: child and flock,
Here, to the fastness of the rock.
The husbandman has ceased to hear
Amidst his fields the cry of fear.
Waves the green corn--green pastures rise
Around,--the lark is in the skies.
The song a later time must trace
When faith here found a dwelling-place.
The tale is tinged with grief and scath,
But not in which man’s cruel wrath,
Like fire of fiendish spirit shows,
But where, through terrors, tears, and woes,
He rises dauntless, pure, refined;
Not chill’d by self, nor fired by hate,
Love in his life,--and even his fate
A blessing on his kind.
These latter lines allude to the poem, and it immediately commences.
“Eyam,” says Miss Seward, “is near a mile in length; it sweeps in a
waving line amongst the mountains, on a kind of natural terrace about
303 yards broad; above which, yet higher mountains arise. From that
dale of savage sublimity, which on the Buxton road from Matlock
commences at the end of Middleton, we ascend a quarter of a mile up a
narrow and steep lane on the right hand, which conducts us into Eyam.
About the centre of the village the continuance of the houses is broken
by a small field on the left. From its edge a deep and grassy dingle
descends, not less picturesque, and much more beautiful from its softer
features, than the craggy dale and its walls of barren rocks from which
we had ascended to Eyam, and in which, by a winding course, this dingle
terminates. Its ascent from the middle of Eyam is a steep, smooth, and
verdant turf, with scattered nut-trees, alders, and the mountain ash.
The bottom is scarcely five yards wide, so immediately ascend the noble
rocks on the opposite side, curtained with shrubs, and crowned with
pines that wave over their brows; only that a few bare parts appear in
fantastic points and perforated arches. Always in winter and summer,
after recent showers, a small clear rill ripples along the bottom of
this dell, but after long drought the channel is dry, and its pebbles
are left to bleach in the sun. Cliffs and fields stretch along the tops
of the rocks, and from their heights we descend gradually to the upper
part of Eyam, which, though high, is less elevated
“Than are the summits of those hilly crofts,
That brow the bottom glade.”
At the time of the plague, the rector of Eyam, the Rev. William
Mompesson, was in the vigour of youth; he had two children, a boy and
girl of three and four years old, and his wife Catherine, a young and
beautiful lady:--
There dwelt they in the summer of their love.
He, the young pastor of that mountain fold,
For whom, not Fancy could foretell above,
Bliss more than earth had at his feet unrolled.
Yet, ceased he not on that high track to hold,
Upon whose bright, eternal steep is shown
Faith’s starry coronal. The sad, the cold
Caught from his fervent spirit its warm tone,
And woke to loftier aims, and feelings long unknown.
And she,--his pride and passion,--she, all sun,
All love, and mirth and beauty;--a rich form
Of finished grace, where Nature had outdone
Her wonted skill. Oh! well might Fancy’s swarm
Of more than earthly hopes and visions, warm
His ardent mind; for, joyous was her mood;
There seemed a spirit of gladness to inform
Her happy frame, by no light shock subdued,
Which filled her home with light, and all she touched imbued.
So lived, so loved they. Their life lay enshrined
Within themselves and people. They reck’d not
How the world sped around them, nor divined;
Heaven, and their home endearments fill’d their lot.
Within the charmed boundary of their cot,
Was treasured high and multifarious lore
Of sage, divine, and minstrel ne’er forgot
In wintry hours; and, carolled on their floor,
Were childhood’s happy lays. Could Heaven award them more?
Eyam, as before mentioned, had escaped the contagion in the “Great Year
of the Plague.” It was conveyed thither, however, in the ensuing spring
by infected cloths. Its appearance is vigorously sketched:--
--------------- But, as in the calm
Of a hot noon, a sudden gust will wake;
Anon clouds throng; then fiercer squalls alarm;
Then thunder, flashing gleams, and the wild break
Of wind and deluge:--till the living quake,
Towers rock, woods crash amid the tempest,--so
In their reposing calm of gladness, spake
A word of fear; first whispering--dubious--low,
Then lost;--then firm and clear, a menacing of woe:
’Till out it burst, a dreadful cry of death;
“The Plague! the Plague!” The withering language flew,
And faintness followed on its rapid breath;
And all hearts sunk, as pierced with lightning through.
“The Plague! the Plague!” No groundless panic grew;
But there, sublime in awful darkness, trod
The Pest; and lamentation, as he slew,
Proclaimed his ravage in each sad abode,
Mid frenzied shrieks for aid--and vain appeals to God.
On the commencement of the contagion, Mrs. Mompesson threw herself with
her babes at the feet of her husband, to supplicate his flight from that
devoted place; but not even the entreaties and tears of a beloved wife
could induce him to desert his flock, in those hours of danger and
dismay. Equally fruitless were his solicitations that she would retire
with her infants. The result of this pathetic contest was a resolve to
abide together the fury of the pestilence, and to send their children
away.
They went--those lovely ones, to their retreat.
They went--those glorious ones, to their employ;
To check the ominous speed of flying feet;
To quell despair; to soothe the fierce annoy,
Which, as a stormy ocean without buoy
Tossing a ship distressed, twixt reef and rock,
Hurried the crowd, from years of quiet joy
Thus roused to fear by this terrific shock;
And wild, distracted, mazed, the pastor met his flock.
It was the immediate purpose of this wise and excellent man, to stay his
parishioners from flight, lest they should bear the contagion beyond
their own district, and desolate the country.
They heard, and they obeyed,--for, simple-hearted,
He was to them their wisdom and their tower;
To theirs, his brilliant spirit had imparted
All that they knew of virtue’s loftier power;
Their friend, their guide, their idolized endower
With daily blessings, health of mind and frame;
They heard, and they obeyed;--but not the more
Obeyed the plague; no skill its wrath could tame;
It grew, it raged, it spread; like a devouring flame.
Oh! piteous was it then that place to tread;
Where children played and mothers had looked on,
They lay, like flowers plucked to adorn the dead;
The bright-eyed maid no adoration won;
Youth in its greenness, trembling age was gone;
O’er each bright cottage hearth death’s darkness stole;
Tears fell, pangs racked, where happiness had shone.
From a rational belief, that assembling in the crowded church for public
worship during the summer heats, must spread and increase the contagion,
he agreed with his afflicted parishioners, that he should read prayers
twice a week, and deliver his two customary sermons on the sabbath, from
one of the perforated arches in the rocks of the dingle. By his advice
they ranged themselves on the grassy steep in a level direction to the
rocky pulpit; and the dell being narrow, he was distinctly heard from
that arch.