Fixit inoffenso gressu; gelidumque sedile Hi mores, hæc vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, These were my manners, this my way of life, These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a wellknown figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sun- 1 which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out of door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salutary, and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights-endless sights -is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturæ indeed, but) Accidentium? What if in fortyand-two years' going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds whom had he injured? whom had he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven-shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful mo tion-he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons' Committee-was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond? There was a Yorick once, that would not have shamed him to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and would have thrown in his benediction, aye, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost thy breed." Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (1 verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind?or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other? I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposturegive, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels. Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to enquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. "Pray God your honour relieve me," said a poor beadswoman to my friend Lone day; "I have seen better days." "So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking up at the welkin which was just then threatening a storm-and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the begga as a tester. It was at all events kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or the parish beadle But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light on some occasions. ELIA. P. S. My friend Hume (not MP.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draught of the celebrated "Beggar's Petition," (who cannot say by heart the "Beggar's Petition?") as it was written by some school usher (as I remember) with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judicious alterationA pamper'd menial drove me from the door. It stood originally, A livery servant drove me, &c. Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language, properly substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against Wordsworth. I think I must get H. to send it to the LONDON, as a corollary to the foregoing. N. B. I am glad to see JANUS veering about to the old quarter. I feared he had been rust-bound. C. being asked why he did not like Gold's "London" as well as oursit was in poor S.'s time-replied-Because there is no WEATHERCOCK, And that's the reason why. CATULLUS, WITH NEW TRANSLATIONS. LEISURE HOURS. No. VIII. The Dedication, the Pinnace, the Peninsula of Sirmio, Hymn to Diana. ENOUGH has been already said of Catullus in the former pages of the LONDON, with the exception of one point, which seems to have escaped the notice of the writers: I allude to the hard treatment which the poet has received from his professed friends. Whenever they light on any poem of peculiar brilliancy and energy, they directly set their mark upon it as a translation from some other poem of a Greek Writer; which other poem happens always to be conveniently lost. Thus the Atys, which is full of allusions to Roman customs, is said to be Greek; and if you appeal to the splendid picturing and animated passion of the Peleus and Thetis, in evidence of the capacity of Catullus to have invented the Atys, you are told, "Oh, the Peleus and Thetis is undoubtedly Greek." The Phaselus, also, where everything in itself inanimate finds a tongue, has life in its motions, and feels the stirrings of human passion, is PS. The character which Juvenal gives of Lucilius resembles his own: if Juvenal was only an imitator, what must have been the archetype? much too bold and picturesque to belong to the class of Roman poetry: it must certainly be Greek. Even Mr. Leigh Hunt, whose version of the Atys, Calve tuâ veniâ, is the most poetical and spirited in the language, takes up the common notion of his inspiring master being a plagiarist; and aware that his favourite theory of the Roman dearth of invention might be opposed by the grand example of Lucretius, he coolly reminds us that Lucretius stole his philosophy from Epicurus: but from whom did he steal his poetry?--He might as well have told us, that Shakspeare could not be an original poet, because the story of his Romeo and Juliet is to be found in Girolamo de la Corte's History of Verona. Reasoning from analogy, we should naturally expect that poets of bolder invention preceded Virgil. The Augustan age was the Roman age of Anne; the era of critical refinement and cautious imitation. The presumption is decidedly in favour of the poetic originality of Lucretius and Catullus. They alone have come down to us; and if they were only retailers of traditionary sentiment and reflected imagery, from whom did the other poets of the Republican era borrow their recorded vigour? Whence came the tragedies of Accius, Pomponius, and Varius? The Thyestes of the latter is said by Quinctilian (x. 513) to be " comparable to any one of the Greeks." The same critic affirms, "Satire is wholly Roman:" how does this consist with the dearth of invention? He takes leave also to dissent from Horace in his flippant censure of Lucilius, and speaks of the nervous genius of the latter in the warmest terms. If it be objected that satire is excluded from the higher order of poetry, let the moral passages of Juvenal furnish the answer. AN IDLER. Ense velut stricto quoties Lucilius ardens Sat. i. 165. But when Lucilius brandishes his pen, Altered from Dryden." DEDICATION OF THE POEMS. To Cornelius Nepos. On whom this new, † spruce, tiny volume bestow, Cornelius, thy own it shall be, For trifles of mine were still something to thee. In three tomes-Jove! what labour! what lore! O patroness virgin! when ages are past. * This masterly old translator having stopped short of the sense, the couplet in Italics is supplied. + Doering will have it that novum and lepidum relate to the contents of the book, not to the outward fashion. In this case Catullus is chargeable with an aukward ambi CONSECRATION OF HIS PINNACE. Strangers! the bark that meets your eye To contravene the tale. Your memories I invoke! And plunged the leafless oar; Or with squared sail-yards right away Scudded the gale before. My better day is gone : Come stealing peaceful on. : TO THE PENINSULA OF SIRMIO. Carm. XXXI. Sirmio! soft eye of island scenery, guity in alluding to the gloss of the pumice, immediately in succession to these epithets. That lepidus and novus are used elsewhere to express facetious in matter, and new in manner, it requires not the ghost of Bentley to inform us: but this furnishes not a shadow of reasonable argument, why they should be so understood here. This is eternally the way with commentators, who, instead of weighing the context, ransack their memories for pedagogical common-places. They seem always to have a dread of circumstantiality; especially when it is picturesque and to the purpose. School-masters agree with them in this: perhaps because school-masters have formed their taste on commentators. I remember they would never let us say that Augustus quaffed the nectar with purple mouth, or that Dido spoke from her rosy lips; beautiful was always the word. In the Atys the emasculated youth is said to touch the timbrel niveis manibus : there is a faint allusion, delicately touched off, to the paleness of effeminated manhood. Then comes Doering with his "hoc est pulchris:" beautiful again!" O seri studiorum!" Let me, however, recommend Doering's edition of Catullus as a very accurate one, and the notes as generally fraught with useful comments and illustrations. : |