Imatges de pàgina
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V.

I find that several persons have a notion

That I can write, as ancient maidens chatter,
As easily as chemists mix a lotion,

Or lawyers make a bill, or scolds a clatter:
And if I humbly hint my incapacity

They question both my will and my veracity.

VI.

It is not till with suicidal kindness

I grant their wishes (to my shame and sorrow),
And prove beyond a doubt their partial blindness
By rhymes the meanest plagiarist would not borrow
To save his soul, that gentle maids and matrons
Desert my ranks of literary patrons.

VII.

Though at the risk of changing the opinion
Implied in your request, these hurried stanzas
Shall stand as proof of feminine dominion,

That from Don Quixotes down to Sancha Panzas,
So sways our sex that touched with sweet insanity
We play the fool with infinite urbanity.

VIII.

Who can refuse the fair? Oh! I for one

Feel it impossible; you now must know it,
To your cost and to mine. The deed is done-

The page is blotted,-yet I pray you show it
To all who own an Album-all who ever

Have thought your rhyming friend unkind or clever.

SONNET.

[WRITTEN ON A VISIT TO DEVONSHIRE.]
THY pleasant valleys, groves, and verdant hills
Clothed in their summer beauty, all must own
Unrivalled in the land. But not alone
Thy rich domain, romantic Devon, thrills
Each breast with rapture and the fond eye fills
With nature's fairest hues,-a finer tone
Of fervid thought prevails, as prompt and prone
To share or kindle bliss, or brooded ills

Of darker moods to soothe, with that sweet art
Which pure and gentle spirits only know,
Thy matchless daughters hospitably smile
A welcome to the stranger-who shall throw
His farewell glance in pain, and find the while
A dear home-feeling lingering in his heart!

AUTUMN.

How sadly moans the bleak Autumnal blast
O'er faded Summer's tomb! The drifting shower
Is pattering on the lone deserted bower,

While fitfully the sear leaves rustle past.
Along the troubled sky, lo! gathering fast

In fiercely-frowning hosts, the storm-clouds lower
And shroud the struggling sun! The fearful power

Of Desolation rules, and all is overcast!

Yet mourn not, Wanderer! Though so brief hath been The green Earth's gentle smile; though thus depart

The light and bloom of this delusive scene,

And earthly visions mock the cheated heart,
There are celestial hopes, no fate may part,
And cloudless realms eternally serene !

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DRUMMOND'S POEMS.

It is well known that Ben Jonson was so great an admirer of the genius of Drummond, that he travelled on foot from London to Hawthornden*, to pay him a visit of friendship and respect. During Ben Jonson's stay with Drummond, the latter appears to have occasionally taken down memoranda of the heads of conversations on literary subjects, and to have accompanied them with remarks upon the character of his guest. About half a century after Drummond's death they found their way into print, but there is no evidence to show that he contemplated their publication. Ben Jonson's host naturally felt so great an interest in his guest, that we ought not to be surprised that he should have entered in his private diary these reports of his conversations and notices of his character. Some of the latter may be rather severe, but no one questions their truth, not even Gifford himself, though he so madly accuses Drummond of a desire to blast the memory of his friend. Jonson's manners were rough, dogmatical, and unamiable; but Drummond's were precisely the reverset. Mr. Gifford

The poet's residence," Hawthornden House," was about seven miles from Edinburgh.

"He was a tender father, a kind husband, and one who would not willingly give offence; a man of pleasing habits, alluring conversation, and strict piety. In addition, he was a methodical man, somewhat given to sallies of wit and humorous sayings. Kept books in which he noted down the verses of other men as well as his own: had his letters too in order; and preserved whatever struck him as clever in the remarks of his companions or correspondents, or pleased him in the compositions of his own pen."—P. Cunningham's Life of Drummond.

Is it at all strange that such a man and with such habits should have recorded the conversations of so celebrated a person as Ben Jonson? Would it not have been more strange if he had omitted to do so? Yet, Mr. Gifford can only attribute such an act to personal hatred: He calls Drummond " an accomplished artificer of fraud," and characterizes his conduct as the "blackest perfidy."

has given no shadow of a reason for his absurd and ungenerous assertion that Drummond "inveigled" Jonson into his house with the detestable motive he has attributed to him. As a writer in Blackwood's Magazine has well observed, if this had been Drummond's object he would have painted Ben Jonson in colours far more hideous, and would have published his calumnies either in Jonson's life-time, towards the close of which he was comparatively imbecile and feeble and not in a condition for a literary warfare, or after his death;-for Drummond survived him nearly twelve years. I cannot conceive any reasonable cause for a hostile or malignant feeling in Drummond towards Jonson. The latter's pedestrian pilgrimage from London to Edinburgh, then regarded as a formidable undertaking, was as high a compliment as one poet could well pay to another; and while there is abundant evidence of a reciprocity of kind and cordial sentiment between these distinguished men, there is nothing that can be construed into the slightest indication of an opposite feeling, except Drummond's character of Jonson, which (though drawn with that freedom which almost of itself implies that it was not intended for publication, and those vivid and minute touches that a close intimacy with his subject and a subtle observation would naturally inspire), exhibits nothing like jealousy or falsehood, and betrays no motive that is inconsistent with the reputation for integrity and honour which Drummond is acknowledged to have enjoyed in his life-time, and that nobility of mind which may still be traced in the works which have so long survived him. It is strange that Drummond's notes upon the character of a celebrated contemporary should be so harshly censured by a modern critic, at a time when a similar practice is so generally tolerated, when the minutest actions and the most trivial observations of men of eminence are so commonly recorded by their literary associates,-and when the private history and the personal peculiarities not only of the dead but of the living,

are to be met with in every periodical that is adapted to the public taste*.

It is said that Ben Jonson wrote a poem descriptive of his journey to Scotland, which was inadvertently burned with other papers at his death. Perhaps this accident is unfortunate for the memory of Drummond, and the poem might have included much interesting and valuable evidence as to the manner in which these two eminent contemporaries met and parted.

With respect to the character of Drummond's poetry, the critics are at variance. Phillips, the nephew of Milton, who is supposed to have often echoed the sentiments of his immortal relative, speaks of Drummond's sonnets in the following

terms.

"To say that these poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it be a re

*There never was a period in which eminent literary men were half so public as they are now. No sooner is the breath out of the body of a man of letters, than all his domestic circumstances are as regularly published as his works. Even his female relatives are sometimes severely criticised. Mr. Coleridge's minutest private actions, and all his personal habits and infirmities, are detailed and criticised in newspapers and magazines with quite as much freedom as matters connected more immediately with his public character. His host, Mr. Gilman, does not hesitate to publish to all the world the most confidential communications of his guest and friend. Even in their lives are literary men denied the usual privacies and sanctities of the domestic circle. All their friends and visitors are spies and reporters, and the frank conversations that other men are permitted by the usages of respectable society to indulge in, without the slightest danger of publicity, are esteemed fair game by every literary speculator who is desirous of publishing a book or gaining a few guineas by a gossiping and attractive article in a monthly magazine. Whether this system be strictly honorable or fair I shall not stop to inquire. That the public is a gainer there can be little doubt, and perhaps there is no lover of literary history who has not deeply regretted the personal obscurity of our earlier English writers. Shakespeare, the greatest of all our authors, is known only by his works, and they are for the most part necessarily of a nature so little egotistical that they afford us but few and faint glimpses of his character as a man. The bare mention of his immortal name by a contemporary writer, is regarded with eager interest; but how unspeakably precious would be the discovery of a Boswellian biography of William Shakespeare!

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