University of Virginia Library

This sonnet, and the two following, my earliest attempts at that form of versification, were addressed to R. S. Jameson, Esq., on occasion of meeting him in London after a separation of some years. He was the favourite companion of my boyhood, the active friend and sincere counsellor of my youth. “Though seas between us broad ha' roll'd” since we “travell'd side by side” last, I trust the sight of this little volume will give rise to recollections that will make him ten years younger. He is now Judge Advocate at Dominica, and husband of Mrs. Jameson, authoress of the “Diary of an Ennuyée,” “Loves of the Poets,” and other agreeable productions.

In this and other translations from the Italian, I have not succeeded in preserving the simple purity of the original diction so completely as I could have wished. Italian words are so beautiful, that they are when “unadorned, adorned the most.” English, with all its excellencies, is so deficient in euphony, and so large a part of its vocabulary is debased by association, that it always requires strong or deep pathos, beautiful images, profound thought, rapid and striking interest, or much artifice in composition; something, in short, to withdraw the attention from the coarseness of the vehicle. We cannot emulate the simplicity of the Greeks or the Italians. The poet, indeed, who can and dare, may be austere; but austerity and simplicity are different things. Simplicity is never, austerity is always, conscious of itself. The Sunday habit of a modest country girl is simple—the regulation dress of a nunnery is meant to be austere. Simplicity does not seek what it feels no need of—Austerity rejects what it judges unfit.

But neither simplicity nor austerity are necessarily poetical. The simple must be beautiful, the austere must be great, or they have no place in genuine poetry. A daisy is simple, a turnip still simpler, yet the former belongs to the poetry of Nature, the latter to her most utilitarian prose.

Among the controversies of the day, not the least important is that respecting the song of the Nightingale. It is debated whether the notes of this bird are of a joyous or a melancholy expression. He who has spoken so decisively of “the merry Nightingale,” must forgive my somewhat unfilial inclination toward the elder and more common opinion. No doubt the sensations of the bird while singing are pleasurable, but the question is, What is the feeling which its song, considered as a succession of sounds produced by an instrument, is calculated to carry to a human listener. When we speak of a pathetic strain of music, we do not mean that either the fiddler or his fiddle are unhappy, but that the tones or intervals of the air are such as the mind associates with tearful sympathies. At the same time, I utterly deny that the voice of philomel expresses present pain. I could never have imagined that the pretty creature “sets her breast against a thorn;” and could not have perpetrated the diabolical story of Tereus. In fact, nature is very little obliged to the heathen mythology. The constant anthropomorphism of the Greek religion sorely perplexed the ancient conceptions of natural beauty. A river is turned into a god, who is still too much of a river to be quite a god. It is a statue of ice in a continual state of liquefaction.

The skilful observations of a lady, Madame Power, have lately made known to us several particulars of the nature and habits of the Argonauta or Paper Nautilus, and have confirmed much of what was related by Aristotle and Pliny, which modern naturalists had doubted. It now appears certain that the fish (a species of the sepia or cuttle fish) is the natural occupant, and not, like the parasite crabs, the usurper of the shell which it inhabits. It is furnished with eight arms, between one pair of which there is a thin membrane that is generally stretched over the shell and nearly envelopes it. But in fine still weather, when the animal rises to the surface of the water, and is not conscious of being observed, it erects the two arms with the membrane which then takes the place of a sail, and appears of a silvery hue, with dark spots. The six other arms are at the same time turned down over the edge of the shell, and used as three pairs of oars to steer and balance the creature. If it catches sight of an intrusive observer, the Argonauta turns its sail over the shell, folds in its oar arms, and sinks to the bottom. If pursued, it emits ink, like the other sepias, and thus escapes from its enemy in a cloud of darkness.

I recollect to have seen, in manuscript, a most beautiful copy of verses, founded on this habit of the Nautilus. Had they been in print, mine should never have appeared. The same may be said of the lines “to certain gold fishes.” A real poet, among many strains of “higher mood,” of which he deems the world unworthy, has an exquisite little piece on those beautiful creatures, in which he has exhibited a more than pictorial power of language. It is saying far too little to say, that he makes you see the gold fish—that they flash, in all their effulgence of hue, and complicity of motion, “on that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude”— he makes you feel as if you were a gold fish yourself.

It is said, that the gold fish (Cyprinus Auratus of Linnæus) was originally confined to a little lake of China.

This tale, which was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, was intended to form part of a series of narrative and reflective pieces, which should have been intitled “Lucubrations of an Old Bachelor.” Leonard was to have been an old man in my, i.e. the Old Bachelor's childhood. This, of course, throws the supposed date of the incidents at least a century back, and may obviate the charge of exaggeration which has been alleged against my description of prison sufferings. A debtor's gaol, however, is still, I suspect, pretty much what it always has been—a place of low dissipation or unprincipled luxury for the dishonest; of ruin, and misery, and debasement to the unfortunate.

Blessed be the memory of that benevolent jurist who struggled so manfully against the barbarism of antichristian ordinances! May the softest air of Paradise calm and heal the frenzy which crossed him in an evil hour; and if separated spirits have any perception of what passes in the world they have left, may his spirit be comforted in seeing the good work which he well begun, perfected to a good end. Our Judges are very fond of asserting that “Christianity is parcel of the law:” it will be more to the purpose when we can truly say that the law is parcel of Christianity.

I wish that future ages—on the very improbable supposition that this trifle should exist in a future age—may think the representation of an election a caricature.

No reflection is meant upon Nabobs in general. “Wherever the carcase is, there will the vultures be gathered together.” Wherever there is a new way opened to riches, there will be a concourse of those who own no God but Mammon; a Fiend compared to whom Juggernaut is merciful, and Cotytto is pure. But there will also be many who seek wealth as the means of doing good, and many such have returned from the shores of Hindostan. Such characters as my Nabob were probably more common when the East first became the scene of British enterprise than at present. India is now visited by men of better education, more refined habits, more philosophic minds; and moreover, the press—Heaven's blessing upon it!—forbids any man to be very overtly wicked in any quarter of the globe, who wishes to come back and enjoy his gettings in England.

It is hardly worth while to mention that most of the lugubrious love ditties in this volume were conceived in the character of the love-lorn “old bachelor.” For what many will deem their silly “mock-platonism,” and “querulous egotism,” I am only dramatically answerable. I, does not always mean myself.

In these “piping times of peace,” undergraduates take the place of Ensigns, and the close of the Long Vacation is attended with the same gales of sighs, and showers of tears, as heretofore the sailing of a regiment for actual service. Examinations are as terrible to the fair as battles, and the future first-class man, or wrangler, is as interesting as the possible hero.

There is something very fascinating about an Undergraduate; he is a rose unblown, and wears “the beauty of promise;” he is a member of an ancient establishment, therefore his youth and freshness are at once contrasted and sanctified by beautiful antiquity; he is a spring flower growing on the steeple of a gothic cathedral. He is enough a man to make his notice worth having by a young lady, and yet so much a boy, that ladies of a certain age can make a pet of him. He has the reputation of learning without the odium of displaying it; above all, he has a certificate of gentility, which, let his real rank and fortune be what it will, passes unchallenged everywhere but in his own University. There, indeed, he is under the necessity of proving and maintaining his caste, and the stain of a mercantile or agricultural connection can only be washed out with claret. Everywhere else the “Collegian” is absolute sumptus, a gentleman. But this enviable distinction belongs to Oxford and Cambridge alone. Edinburgh or Glasgow are no recommendation except to phrenological females, and Trinity College, Dublin, is as alien to English associations as Salamanca or Benares. The London University may have its day, but its day is not yet come. At present it is looked upon as coldly by the petticoat as by the gown. Should a youth be introduced to a fair partner at a country ball as a collegian, and prove, after all, to be only a member of Stincomalee, the lady's delicacy would be as much shocked as if she were to find that the very delightful naval officer with whom she had been dancing under the ambiguous title Captain, was the skipper of a small vessel engaged in the Irish butter trade. It is well: the members of the liberal establishment must be gentlemen, if they desire to be accepted as such.

Learning, of itself, confers no rank in England. It does not even give the éclat of a fashionable lion. But, as the passport to learned professions, it enables a man, with good conduct, to overcome any disadvantage of birth, and to achieve a place in the best circles of society. Perhaps this is as it should be.

The peculiar advantage of being an Oxonian or a Cantab is specially felt in the vacation, and in the country. In London they form a pleasant variety indeed, but excite no commotion. They are but as a drop of wine in the ocean. In Liverpool, or Manchester, they are out of place. The academical aristocracy is too strong a discord in the commercial concert. In Bath or Cheltenham they degenerate into mere gentlemen loungers; they partake, but they do not create or authorise, the general dissipation. But in small villages, with a good neighbourhood and romantic scenery, they are just what they should be. The custom of reading parties is one of the favourable signs of the times. They read very little: if men want to read, let them take a back-room in Cheapside, or the county gaol. At Ambleside, in Wales, in the Isle of Wight, or the Highlands, what have Euclid or Aristotle to do? But they gladden the waters with their music, and the fair with their gallantry; and what is better still, fill their imagination with beautiful images, and their hearts with kind feelings.

It was on a rusticating (not a rusticated) Cantab that these lines were composed. He was a poet in thought, but either “wanted the accomplishment of verse,” or which is more probable, concealed his possession of it. Long will his amiable manners and green-ribboned guitar, be remembered in Grasmere.

I know not whether I am not taking an unwarrantable liberty giving publicity to these stanzas; but their appearance in my volume is a pleasant record of a valuable friendship, and I trust my friend will not be displeased to see his pretty and tender effusion along with his old acquaintances of mine, some of which owe their preservation to his kind opinion of their merits.