which nature has amused herself in bestowing the most singular and
anomalous forms. For a period of six weeks, Dr Tschudi took up his
abode at the port of Huacho, with a view to increase his
ichthyological collection. Every morning at five o'clock he rode down
to the beach to await the return of the fishermen from their nocturnal
expeditions. From as far as they could distinguish him, the Indians
would hold up to his notice some strange and newly captured variety of
the finny race. He succeeded in getting together many hundred
specimens of about a hundred and twenty species of sea and river fish;
but ill luck attended this valuable collection. Through the negligence
of the people at the port of Callao, a cask of brandy, in which the
fish were preserved, was left for months upon the mole in the burning
sun, till its contents were completely spoiled. A second cask, in
spite of the most careful packing, arrived in Europe, after a fifteen
months' voyage, in a similar condition. This, however, was not the
only instance, during the doctor's stay in Peru, of the fruits of
great industry, and trouble, and heavy expense, being snatched from
him by untoward accidents. But nothing seems to have discouraged a man
actuated by a sincere love of science and thirst for information, and
possessed, as is made manifest by many parts of his modest and
unegotistical narrative, of great determination and perseverance.
Steadily he continued his researches, in defiance of difficulties and
sufferings that would have driven ordinary men over and over again on
board the first ship sailing for Europe.
We have as yet scarcely referred to those portions of the volume
dedicated to natural history, although the doctor rarely dismisses a
province or district without giving a brief but interesting account of
its most remarkable animals, fruits, and plants. His description of
some of these is very curious. Amongst others, he tells us of a small
bird called the _cheucau_, (Pteroptochus rubecula Kittl,) in connexion
with which the people of Chiloë, of which island it is a native,
entertain a host of superstitious fancies, foretelling good or bad
luck according to the various modulations of its song. "I was one
day," says the doctor, "out shooting with an Indian guide, when we
came upon one of these birds, sitting on a bush and piping out a
shrill _huit-huit-ru_. I had already taken aim at it, when my
companion seized my arm, and begged me not to shoot it, for that it
was singing its unlucky note. Wishing to obtain a specimen, I
disregarded his entreaty and fired. I had leaned my gun against a
tree, and was examining the little bird, when a vicious mule,
irritated probably by the report, came charging down upon us, so that
we had only just time to run behind a hedge in order to escape his
attack. Before we could find means to drive the enraged animal away,
he had thrown down my gun, bitten it furiously, and stamped on it with
his fore-feet. The Indian gravely said that it would be well if no
worse came of it, for that he had told me the bird was whistling bad
luck." There is another bird, about the size of a starling, which
passes its time, and finds its food, upon the backs of the cattle, and
chiefly of horses and jackasses, picking out the insects which there
abound. The beasts seem to feel that he is doing them a service, and
allow him to walk unmolested over their backs and heads. Of the beasts
of prey, the ounce is the most dangerous and bloodthirsty. It attains
a very large size, and Dr Tschudi saw the carcass of one that measured
eight feet and three inches from the nose to the extremity of the
tail. The tail was two feet and eight inches long. It had been killed
after a two days' hunt, during which, three negroes had been
dangerously wounded by it. Of Peruvian fruits, the most delicious is
the chirimoya. It is of a round form, sometimes heart-shaped or
pyramidal, its rind thick and tough, of a green colour streaked with
black. The inside is snow-white, soft and juicy, with black pips or
seeds. Near Lima, they are small and of inferior quality, sometimes
not larger than a man's fist; but in the interior, and especially in
the province of Huanuco, they attain their full perfection, and often
weigh fourteen or sixteen pounds. Their smell is most fragrant, and
their delicious flavour, Dr Tschudi says, he can compare to nothing,
for it is incomparable.
We perceive, on glancing over what we have written, that we have
occupied ourselves chiefly with the lighter portions of this book,
and, by so doing, may have given the reader an erroneous idea of its
value. Although, as already mentioned, the more important and
scientific results of Dr Tschudi's travels are to be found in others
of his works, the one before us must not be set down as a mere amusing
and ephemeral production. It contains a great deal of curious
information, and will be found useful as a book of reference by all
who are interested in the commerce, natural history, and general
statistics of Peru.
Notwithstanding our endeavours to "go a-head," we have got no further
than the conclusion of the first volume. In the second, which is also
the final one, the doctor abandons the coast and the city, and
penetrates into what may be termed the Peruvian back-woods, amongst
the snow-covered Cordilleras and aboriginal forests, the silver mines
and Indians. Of what he there saw and heard we shall give an account
in our next Number.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Peru. Reiseskizzen aus den Jahren 1838-1842._ _Von_ J. J. VON
TSCHUDI. St Gall: 1846.
[2] _Untersuchungen über die Fauna Peruana._ St Gall: 1846.
[3] An Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence
in South America. Containing Travels in Arauco, Chili, Peru, and
Columbia; with an account of the Revolution, its rise, progress, and
results; by W. B. STEVENSON. London: 1825.
[4] Europeans are apt to attach the idea of some particular colour to
the word Creole. It is a vulgar error. Creole (Spanish, Criollo) is
derived from _criar_, to breed or produce, and is applied to native
Americans descended from 'Old World' parents. Thus there are black
Creoles as well as white, and a horse or a dog may be a Creole as well
as a man, so long as the European or African blood is preserved
unmixed.
[5] The day and the event strangely coincide with the passage in
Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell"--
"'s ist Simon und Judä
Da rast der See und will sein Opfer haben."
LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.
LETTER I.
DEAR MR EDITOR--I perceive, by your having requested a second specimen
of N.N.T.'s English hexameters, that you feel an interest in the
question, whether that form of verse can be successfully employed in
our language. Certainly the trial has never yet been made under any
moderate advantages. Sidney, and the other Elizabethans, in their
attempts, hampered themselves with Latin rules of the value of
syllables, which the English ear refuses to recognise, and which drive
them into intolerable harshness of expression and pronunciation.
Stanihurst's _Virgil_ is so laboriously ridiculous in phraseology,
that every thing belonging to it is involved in the ridicule.
Southey's _Vision_ is a poem so offensive in its scheme, that no
measure could have made it acceptable. Yet the beginning of that poem
is, as you, Mr Editor, have remarked, a very happy specimen of this
kind of verse; and would, I think, by a common English reader, be
admired, independently of classical rules and classical recollections.
Now, if we can reach this point, and at the same time give a good
English imitation of the Epic mode of narration in Homer, we shall
have a better image of Homer in our language than we yet possess. Your
contributor appears to me to have advanced a good way towards the
execution of this kind of work; and I should be glad if he, or you,
would allow me, as a reader of English hexameters, to offer a few
remarks on his first book of the _Iliad_, with a view to point out
what appear to me the dangers and difficulties of the task. I do not
say any thing of my general admiration of N.N.T.'s version, for mere
praise you would hardly think worth its room.
I should be glad to discuss with you, Mr Editor, the objections which
are usually made to English hexameters. There is one of these
objections which I will say a few words about at present. It proceeds
upon a misapprehension, now, I hope, pretty generally rectified; I
mean the objection that we cannot have hexameters, "because we have so
few spondees the language." Southey says we have but one, _Egypt_; and
gives this as a reason why the spondees of classical hexameters are
replaced by trochees in German and English. As to Southey's example,
_Egypt_ is no more a spondee than _precept_ or _rescript_; but the
fact is, that we have in English spondees in abundance; and these
spondees have tended more than any thing else to spoil our hexameters.
The universal English feeling of rhythm rejects a spondee at the end
of the verse; and if the syllables there placed are such as would, in
the natural course of pronunciation, form a spondee, we nevertheless
force upon them a trochaic character. This may be worth proving. Read,
then, the following lines of Sidney:--
"But yet well do I find each man most wise in his _own case_."
"And yet neither of [=u]s great [=o]r blest deemeth his _own self_."
"Shall such morning dews be an ease to heat of a _love's fire_?"
"Tush, tush, said Nat[=u]re, this is all but a trifle; a _man's self_
Gives haps or mishaps, ev'n as he ord'reth his heart."
Now, here you have four endings which are naturally spondees; but the
verse compels you to pronounce them as trochees--_[=o]wn c[)a]se_,
_[=o]wn s[)e]lf_, _l[=o]ve's f[)i]re_, _m[=a]n's s[)e]lf_. If you still
doubt whether the last foot of English hexameters is necessarily a
trochee, consider this:--that if you make them rhyme, you must use
double rhymes, in order that the rhyme may include the strong syllable.
Thus take any of the examples given in _Maga_ for April last:--
"See, O citizens! here old Ennius's image pre_sented_.
Honour me not with your tears; by none let my death be la_mented_."
The ear would not be satisfied with a rhyme of one syllable such as
this--
"But yet well do I find each man most wise in his own _case_:
Wisely let each resolve, and meet the event with a calm _face_."
Now, so long as men retain the notion that the most perfect English
hexameters are those which have spondees in the classical places, they
are led to admit such verses as those just quoted; and this being
done, the common reader, and indeed every reader, is compelled to do
some violence to the language in reading. This, more than any thing
else, has made an English hexameter frequently sound forced and
unnatural. N.N.T. has a few such in his first _Iliad_.
"Pressed on the silvery hilt as he spake was the weight of his
_right hand_."
"Two generations complete of the blood of articulate _mankind_."
"Over the split wood then did the old man burn them, and _black wine_
Pour'd."
These forms of English hexameter are to be avoided, if you would
commend the verse to the common ear. And we may exclude them with a
good conscience. Their forced and uneasy movement does not arise from
any imperfection in our English spondees; but from the spondee in
these cases being so perfect, that it cannot without some violence be
made a trochee, which the English verse requires. I do not think you
will find this bad trick in Southey. His habitual feeling of English
rhythm preserved him from it.
But there is another blemish, which Southey, forgetting his classical
rhythm too much, for it ought to have guided his English practice, has
often incurred. It is, the writing lines without a _cæsura_, so that
they divide themselves into half lines. Such as these:--
"Washington, said the monarch, | well hast thou spoken and truly."
"Evil they sow, and sorrow | will they reap for their harvest."
"That its tribute of honour, | poor though it was, was witholden."
"Pure it was and diaphanous. | It had no visible lustre."
N.N.T. has a few of these. One is the last line I quoted from him.
The essential point in English hexameters, especially while they are
imperfectly naturalized, is, that the rhythm should be _unforced_.
Without this, they will always repel and offend the English reader.
And hence, though our rhythm is to be constructed by stress, and not
by Latin rules of long and short, still, if it do not destroy it mars
the verse, to have, for short syllables, those which have long vowels,
clustered consonants, or special emphasis.
Such are the dactyls at the beginning of these lines of Southey:--
"Th[=o]u, t[=o]o, d[)i]dst act with upright heart as befitted a
sovereign."
"H[=e]aven [)i]n th[)e]se things fulfilled its wise though inscrutable
purpose."
"He[=a]r, He[)a]v'n! [)y]e angels hear! souls of the good and the
wicked."
Except you prefer to read it thus--
"Hear, Heav'n! y[=e] [)a]ng[)e]ls hear!"
which is no better. Perhaps the worst of Southey's lines in this way
is this--
"Fl[=o]w'd th[)e] l[)i]ght [=u]ncr[=e][=a]t[)e]d; l[)i]ght all
sufficing, eternal."
And as examples of weak syllables harshly made strong, take these--
"Fabius, [=A]trides, and Solon and Epamininondas."
"Here, then, [=a]t the gate of Heaven we are met! said the Spirit."
"Th[=e] desire of my heart hath been alway the good of my people."
N.N.T. has some examples of this. As a slight one, I notice at the end
of a line, _h[=a]rv[)e]stl[)e]ss ocean_. And these, which are spoiled
by the violation of emphasis:--
"Tr[=u]ly _[)I]_ came not, for one, out of hate for the spearmen of
Troja."
"Mightier even than you, yet am[=o]ng _th[)e]m_ [)I] never was slighted."
Here we have an emphatic _I_ and an emphatic _them_ which are made
short in the rhythm.
N.N.T. has one dactyl which I can hardly suppose was intended--
"Under his ch[=a]st[)i]s[)i]ng hand."
It appears to me that we shall never bring the lovers of English
poetry to like our hexameters, except we can make the verses so that
they _read themselves_. This the good ones among them do. N.N.T. has
whole passages which run off without any violence or distortion.
But the phraseology of English hexameters requires great care, as well
as the rhythm, and especially in such a work as the translation of
Homer. The measure has the great advantage of freeing us from the
habitual chain of "poetical diction." But we must take care that we
are not led, by this freedom, either into a modern prose style, or
into mean colloquialities; or in translating, into phrases which,
though expressive and lively, do not agree with the tone of the poem.
The style must be homely, but dignified, like that of our translation
of the Old Testament. Perhaps you will allow me, for the sake of
example, to notice some of N.N.T.'s expressions:--
"Try not the engine of craft: to _come over me_ thus is _beyond thee_."
"This the _suggestion_, _forsooth_, that thyself being safe with thy
booty,
I shall _sit down_ without mine."
The phrase to "_come over me_" is colloquial, and too low even for a
letter. "Your _suggestion_" is a phrase for a letter, not for an epic
poem. "_Forsooth_" would be good in construing, but not in a poem.
Again, is this passage serious English:--
"Opposite rose Agamemnon in wrath, but before he could _open_?"
I could notice other blemishes of style, as they seem to me; and,
indeed, I could the more easily find them, on account of the very
severe standard of good English, serious and dignified, yet plain and
idiomatic, which I think the case requires. Every phrase should be the
very best that can be found both for meaning and tone. I know that
this requirement is difficult; but I think the thing may be done; and
I do not see why N.N.T. should not do it, and thus give us a better
English Homer than we have yet.
If you can find room for me, I have a few more words to say on this
same matter of English hexameters another day. It appears to me that
there are still very erroneous notions current upon the subject. In
the mean time I subscribe myself your obedient
M. L.
MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES.
1708-1709.
The fall of the external walls of Lille did not terminate the struggle
for that important fortress. Marshal Boufflers still held the citadel,
a stronghold in itself equal to most fortresses of the first order. No
sooner, however, were the Allies in possession of the town, than the
attack on the citadel commenced with all the vigour which the
exhausted state of the magazines would furnish. Detached parties were
sent into France, which levied contributions to a great extent, and
both replenished the stores of the Allies and depressed the spirits of
the French, by making them feel, in a manner not to be misunderstood,
that the war had at length approached their own doors. To divert, if
possible, Marlborough from his enterprise, the Elector of Bavaria, who
had recently returned from the Rhine, was detached by Vendôme, with
fifteen thousand men against Brussels; while he himself remained in
his intrenched camp on the Scheldt, which barred the road from Lille
to that city, at once stopping the communication, and ready to profit
by any advantage afforded by the measures which the English general
might make for its relief. The governor of Brussels, M. Paschal, who
had seven thousand men under his orders, rejected the summons to
surrender, and prepared for a vigorous defence; and meanwhile
Marlborough prepared for its relief, by one of those brilliant strokes
which, in so peculiar a manner, characterize his campaigns.
Giving out that he was going to separate his army into
winter-quarters, he dispatched the field artillery towards Menin, and
he himself set out with his staff in rather an ostentatious way for
Courtray. But no sooner had he lulled the vigilance of the enemy by
these steps, than, wheeling suddenly round, he advanced with the bulk
of his forces towards the Scheldt, and directed them against that part
of the French general's lines where he knew them to be weakest. The
army, upon seeing these movements, anticipated the bloodiest battle,
on the day following, they had yet had during the war. But the skill
of the English general rendered resistance hopeless, and gained his
object with wonderfully little loss. The passage of the river was
rapidly effected at three points; the French corps stationed at
Oudenarde, vigorously assailed and driven back on Grammont with the
loss of twelve hundred men, so as to leave the road uncovered, and
restore the communication with Brussels. Having thus cleared the way
of the enemy, Marlborough sent back Eugene to resume the siege of the
citadel of Lille; while he himself, with the greater part of his
forces, proceeded on to Brussels, which he entered in triumph on the
29th November. The Elector of Bavaria was too happy to escape, leaving
his guns and wounded behind; and the citadel of Lille, despairing now
of succour, capitulated on the 11th December. Thus was this memorable
campaign terminated by the capture of the strongest frontier fortress
of France, under the eyes of its best general and most powerful
army.[6]
But Marlborough, like the hero in antiquity, deemed nothing done while
any thing remained to do. Though his troops were exhausted by marching
and fighting almost without intermission for five months, and he
himself was labouring under severe illness in consequence of his
fatigues, he resolved in the depth of winter to make an attempt for
the recovery of Ghent, the loss of which in the early part of the
campaign had been the subject of deep mortification. The enemy, after
the citadel of Lille capitulated, having naturally broken up their
army into cantonments, under the belief that the campaign was
concluded, he suddenly collected his forces, and drew round Ghent on
the 18th December. Eugene formed the covering force with the corps
lately employed in the reduction of Lille. The garrison was very
strong, consisting of no less than thirty battalions and nineteen
squadrons, mustering eighteen thousand combatants.[7] The governor had
been instructed by Vendôme to defend this important stronghold to the
last extremity; but he was inadequately supplied with provisions and
forage, and this event signally belied the expectations formed of his
resistance. The approaches were vigorously pushed. On the 24th the
trenches were opened; on the 25th a sortie was repulsed; on the 28th
December, the fire began with great vigour from the breaching and
mortar batteries; and at noon, the governor sent a flag of truce,
offering to capitulate if not relieved before the 2d January. This was
agreed to; and on the latter day, as no friendly force approached, the
garrison surrendered the gates and marched out, in such strength that
they were defiling incessantly from ten in the morning till seven at
night! Bruges immediately followed the example; the garrison
capitulated, and the town again hoisted the Austrian flag. The minor
forts of Plassendall and Leffinghen were immediately evacuated by the
enemy. With such expedition were these important operations conducted,
that before Vendôme could even assemble a force adequate to interrupt
the besiegers' operations, both towns were taken, and the French were
entirely dispossessed of all the important strongholds they had gained
in the early part of the campaign in the heart of Brabant. Having
closed his labours with these glorious successes, Marlborough put the
army into now secure winter-quarters on the Flemish frontiers, and
himself repaired to the Hague to resume the eternal contest with the
timidity and selfishness of his Dutch allies.[8]