CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013521004 
 
THE 
 
 WORKS OF FATHER PROUT. 
 
^H 
 
 Iliillfi 
 
 
THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 FATHER PROUT 
 
 (THE REV. FRANCIS MAHONY) 
 
 EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 
 
 CHARLES KENT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited 
 New York: E. P. DUTTON AND CO. 
 
"A tare combination of theTeian lyre and the Irish bagpipe ; 
 of the Ionian dialect blending harmoniously with the Cork 
 brogue ; an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt. 
 
 Olives Yoeke. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FACE 
 
 Biographical Introduction , , vii 
 
 THE RELIQUES OF FATHER PROUT 
 
 Oliver Yorke's Preamble . xxxv 
 
 Father Prout's Apology for Lent i 
 
 His Plea for Pilgrimages 18 
 
 His Carousal ... . • « 39 
 
 Dean Swift's Madness : A Tale of a Churn 64 
 
 The Rogueries of Tom Moors ... 83 
 
 Literature and the Jesuits . 104 
 
 The Songs of France — 
 
 Wine and War 129 
 
 Women and Wooden Shoes , . . 149 
 
 Philosophy . , . 17a 
 
 Frogs and Free Trade , 190 
 
 The Songs of Italy- 
 Chapter the First . sn 
 
 Chapter the Second . 230 
 
 Barry in the Vatican . 249 
 
 The Days of Erasmus 268 
 
 Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry 288 
 
 A Series of Modern Poets— 
 
 Vida's "Silkworm" , 308 
 
 Sarbiewski, Sannazar, and Fracastor 325 
 
 Beza, Vaniere, and Buchanan . 342 
 
 Father Prout's Dirge . , .361 
 
 Mahony on Prout . ... 363 
 
 The Songs of Horace — 
 
 First Decade , 377 
 
 Second Decade 396 
 
 Third Decade 413 
 
 Fourth Decade 429 
 
 Fifth Decade 448 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 
 
 The Epiphany : A Fragment 466 
 
 The Bottle of St. Januariits , .... 468 
 
 The Sabine Farmer's Serenade 469 
 
VI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Hot Wells op Cliftom 
 
 The Original of "Not a Drum was heard" 
 
 The Ides of March 
 
 The Signs of the Zodiac 
 
 Burns and Beranger 
 
 Lover and Ovid 
 
 A Baptismal Chant 
 
 The Piper's Progress 
 
 The Double Barrel 
 
 Poetical Epistle to Boz 
 
 The Mistletoe .... 
 
 The Redbreast of Aquitania 
 
 Inaugural Ode to the "Author of Vaniiv Fair 
 
 473 
 ■475 
 477 
 478 
 48a 
 482 
 48S 
 487 
 489 
 490 
 492 
 495 
 500 
 
pograjjjiicsl Introbwdion : 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE LIFE OP THE REV. FRANCIS MAHONY, 
 "FATHER PROUT." 
 
 An assumed name has often acquired a celebrity in literature, as contrasted 
 with which that of the author himself, down to the very last, dwindles to com- 
 parative insignificance. Thomas Ingoldsby, for example, is far more widely 
 known to the generality of readers than Richard Harris Barham ; while 
 many upon whose ears the name of Bryan Waller Procter might sound 
 but strangely would, nevertheless, be perfectly familiar with his pseudonym 
 as a lyrist, Barry Cornwall. Similarly, it may be taken for granted, that 
 while, as a rule, the Parisians of the days of the Citizen King enjoyed, 
 with the greatest gusto, the fame of Timon, the majority of them either 
 knew nothing whatever, or next to nothing, of the individuality of Louis 
 de Cormenin. With anonymous writers it happens,' perhaps, the most 
 frequently, that the mask having been first allowed to slip awry, is 
 eventually thrown away altogether. Boz, after this fashion, was soon 
 tossed aside like a superfluous domino, when Dickens, still a very young 
 man, quietly stepped to the front, according to Thackeray's expression, and 
 calmly took his place in perpetuity among the first of English humorists. 
 Thackeray himself, as it fell out, required a little longer time before he was 
 enabled, in his own person, to supersede his supposititious alter ego, 
 Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Only very seldom, a nam de flume gets 
 to be so far identified with an author, that it becomes, so to speak, 
 a convertible term with his patronymic. In this way, the merest casual 
 mention, at any time, of Elia, is about equivalent to the express naming 
 of Charles Lamb. Again, it but exceptionally occurs that a writer of 
 note indulges in the luxury of building up for himself two or three distinct 
 pseudonymous reputations. Swift's reduplicated triumph in that way is 
 about the one solitary instance that can be adduced— an instance notably 
 commemorated by Pope's famous apostrophe in the " Dunciad" — 
 
 O thou ! whatever title please thine ear, 
 Bean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver ! 
 
 Otherwise, it has been the general rule, in this particular, among authors — 
 and for that matter, indeed, it may be said, among artists as well — to 
 
viii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 select some imaginary title, and hold to it consistently. In the history of 
 Italian art it is in this manner noteworthy that more than one of the great 
 painters acquired fame under the merest nickname or sobriquet — Maso di 
 San Giovanni being better known to the world at large as Slovenly Tom, 
 otherwise Masaccio, and Jacopo Robusti, by reason of his father's craft, as 
 the Little Dyer, otherwise Tintoretto. In our own time, again, there have 
 been two skilled draughtsmen who have enjoyed a wide popularity, the one 
 in France as a caricaturist, the other in England as a book-illustrator, each 
 of whom in turn has had his real name virtually obliterated — or, at any rate, 
 in a great measure eclipsed — by an eccentric pseudonym. One of these 
 has long been universally known on the other side of the Channel under 
 his fantastic signature of Cham in the Charivari, hardly any but his per- 
 sonal intimates being acquainted with his actual designation, Amedee de Noe. 
 While, with regard to his contemporary and compeer amongst ourselves, 
 though for upwards of forty years he has been familiarly before the public 
 under his grotesque nom de crayon as Phiz, comparatively few have, 
 even as yet, accustomed themselves to identify him under his homely sur- 
 name, Browne. Reverting, however, from the artistic to the purely 
 literary experts who have, at different times, indulged in this innocent kind 
 of masquerading, it may be argued, with some show of reason, that the 
 fashion, afterwards so much in vogue in this country, was first set in earnest 
 when Sir Richard Steele began to discourse in the Spectator as Mr. Short- 
 face, and his associate Addison, through the same medium, from behind the 
 classic mask of C. L. I. O. Improving, from the very outset, upon the design 
 thus happily hit upon between them, those congenial intimates, besides, 
 there and then, by simply harmonizing their fancies, called an entirely new 
 personality into existence : one ever since familiarly known in the world of 
 letters, and instantly recognizable by all to this day as Sir Roger de 
 Coverley. 
 
 What Steele's and Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley was to the Spectator, 
 that, a little more than a hundred years afterwards, was Professor Wilson's 
 Christopher North to Blackwood, and that, a very little later yet, was the 
 Rev. Francis Mahony's Father Prout to Fraser. Each in turn was a 
 creation, each was a central and dominant figure in a group of originals. 
 Each was not only witty and humorous in himself, but the cause of abounding 
 wit or humour, as the case might be, in those with whom he was associated. 
 If around Sir Roger de Coverley there were clustered, not infrequently, 
 in happy commune, such sympathetic characters as Captain Sentry, and 
 Sir Andrew Freeport, and Will Honeycomb, with Christopher North there 
 were hilariously allied, in the carousals of the Blue Parlour, Tickler, and 
 the Ettrick Shepherd, and the English Opium Eater ; while, at Father 
 Prout's bidding, there were brought together — at least upon one memorable 
 occasion— Jack Bellew, Dan Corbet, and Dick Dowden, to chop logic 
 and cap verses, to crack jokes and bottles far on into the small hours, 
 at the hospitable board of the good old parish priest of Watergrasshill. 
 That Christopher North needed no crutch — being, in fact, that stalwart 
 athlete, both physically and intellectually, John Wilson — everybody knew 
 who had the smallest acquaintance with that wonderful repertory of 
 sarcasm, frolic, wit and wisdom, the "Noctes Ambrosianse." With the 
 identity merged in the purely imaginary character of Father Prout, how- 
 ever, it has been from first to last quite otherwise. The author, in this 
 
Biographical Introduction. ix 
 
 instance, has not merely, in a great measure, disappeared from view behind 
 the veil, as it were, of his own productions, but what few glimpses have 
 been caught of him have been obtained through a medium so misted over 
 by prejudice, that nothing has hitherto been secured in his regard but a few 
 distorted outlines of his character. It seems only just and fair, therefore, 
 everything considered, that some effort should at length be made to dissi- 
 pate, so far as may be in any way possible, the haze until now enveloping the 
 reputation of the scholarly Bohemian who was the author of these Reliques. 
 
 Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known among his intimates as 
 Frank Mahony, but best known of all to the outer world as " Father Prout," 
 was born in 1804, at Cork, in Ireland. Although his parentage on both sides 
 showed him to be distinctly a member of the middle classes, his father was 
 reputed to have descended from a younger branch of one of the most ancient 
 families in the county Kerry, the Mahonys, or, more strictly, the O'Mahonys, 
 of Dromore Castle. For a brief interval, indeed, towards the close of his 
 life in Paris, the subject of this memoir not only had the aristocratic O pre- 
 fixed to his surname upon his visiting card, but the family crest besides, 
 engraved above it. These little coquetries with the airs of high life, how- 
 ever, he at the very last, as in truth better became him, abandoned. 
 Nevertheless, during the time when he was still indulging in such harmless 
 luxuries as the O and the heraldic device just mentioned, he showed himself 
 ready enough upon occasion stoutly to vindicate his right to the possession 
 of both. Playfully asked by a lady friend, whose good opinion he greatly 
 regarded, why he had not long before claimed his own by assuming the 
 prefixed vowel, he not merely answered at once by word of mouth, but 
 deliberately wrote to her on the morrow, that he valued her esteem altogether 
 too highly to render himself ridiculous by assuming what he had no right 
 to possess. At the same time, he referred her to an authority in these 
 matters, from which she might recognize, at a glance, what claim he really 
 had to employ an escutcheon that had been borne by his race for at least 
 two centuries and a half. This authority, he explained, was readily acces- 
 sible among the records relating to the siege of Limerick preserved in the 
 Bermingham Tower of Dublin Castle, from which it might be seen that 
 among those who marched out of the beleaguered city, and who, on arriving 
 at Cork, refused to cross over to France, was one who had stood to his guns 
 like a trump, having served throughout the defence in the artillery, — to wit, 
 his ("Frank O'Mahony's") great-great-grandfather. 
 
 However chivalrous may have been the surroundings of his ancestors, 
 there can at least be no doubt of this, that his immediate progenitors were 
 persons of the homeliest status. For a dozen years after his entrance into 
 the world, Francis Sylvester Mahony (without the O) flourished at Cork, 
 growing up there into a shrewd, bright-eyed, saucy-faced gossoon, while 
 picking up with about equal readiness the brogue that never afterwards 
 altogether forsook him, and the rudiments of an education which, a little 
 later on, was to ripen, on the continent, into the soundest scholarship. In 
 point of fact, he was just twelve years of age when he first quitted his 
 native place for those foreign shores which for half a century afterwards 
 had, for him, a supreme fascination. His student days began thus betimes 
 in the Jesuit College of St. Acheul, at Amiens. Thence, a little while fur- 
 ther on, he was transferred by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus to their 
 
 b * 
 
Biographical Introduction. 
 
 Parisian seminary in the Rue de Sevres. Destined from an early period 
 for the priesthood, Frank Mahony — or, as he was then called by preference, 
 Sylvester— passed the customary two years of his novitiate under the care 
 of the Jesuit Fathers, alternately at their establishment in the Rue de 
 Sevres, and in their suburban retreat, or maison de campagne, at Montrouge. 
 
 An apter scholar than Mahony those great masters of erudition never had 
 entrusted to their charge ; while, on the other hand, the advantages accruing 
 to himself, intellectually, from their system, it would be difficult in any way 
 to exaggerate. During the time when he was enrolled under their instruc- 
 tion, as he used himself afterwards exultantly to declare, he breathed a very 
 atmosphere of latinity, — drank it in, so to speak, through all his senses, — 
 got saturated with it to the very tips of his nails. Skilled and accomplished 
 though he eventually became in Greek scholarship, his knowledge of Greek 
 was never at any time comparable to his rare and intimate knowledge of 
 Latin. Under his foreign Jesuit masters he learned, while yet a stripling, 
 to write, not only with facility but with elegance, in Latin, according to the 
 whim of the moment, elegiacs, alcaics, sapphics, and hexameters. He not 
 only spoke the language glibly even in his college days, but then and 
 thenceforward his latinity, both oral and written, was exceptionally remark- 
 able as at once pure and idiomatic. During his student life abroad, more- 
 over, he contrived so completely to conquer the difficulties of French and 
 Italian, that from that date forward he could converse in either with the 
 rapidity of a native, as though each in turn had been his mother tongue. 
 His successes throughout, it should be said at once, were exclusively those 
 achieved in Uteris humanioribus. At Acbeul, at Paris, and at Montrouge it 
 was exactly the opposite with him, in his intellectual predilections and 
 antipathies, to what it had been at Brienne with Napoleon, when the latter 
 was familiarly referred to among his comrades as the Young Mutineer — 
 " avec le cerveau de feu pour l'Algebre, et de glace pour le Latin. " Mahony, 
 on the contrary, never once from the outset dreamt of winning honours in 
 disciplinis maihematicis. His preference was given from the first, and with 
 his whole heart, to the classic languages and to literature. 
 
 Having completed his novitiate in the Rue de Sevres, Sylvester was in 
 due course despatched to Rome for the pursuance of his higher studies there 
 in philosophy and theology, at the Jesuit College. His instructors had long 
 before then come to recognize in him far more of the student than of the 
 devotee. In temperament he was known to be habitually disputatious, 
 occasionally choleric, and, under anything like direct opposition, whether 
 in trivial or important matters, persistently self-opinionated. If friends 
 were won to him with ease from among his companions, they were not in- 
 frequently repelled by the caustic irony of his remarks, which too often 
 illustrated only too poignantly Sydney Smith's famous metaphor about the 
 sword-stick, out of which seemingly innocent and harmless object there 
 suddenly leaps forth something keen, glittering, and incisive. 
 
 Having received in due sequence the tonsure and the four minor orders, 
 Mahony had by this time, at reasonable intervals, been advanced to the 
 sub-diaconate, and eventually to the diaconate. Precisely at the period of 
 life, however, when he was eligible for ordination to the priesthood, his 
 health failed him so completely that it was considered in every way advis- 
 able that he should return for a while to Ireland. On this journey home- 
 ward he had got as far as Genoa when, calling in there upon the Pro- 
 
Biographical Introduction. xi 
 
 vincial, it was communicated to him as gently, but as distinctly, as possible, 
 that he was considered by his superiors to have no vocation whatever for 
 the priesthood, and that in any case it had been decided by them that he 
 was in no way qualified to enter the Society. Although, during the course 
 of his studies in the Eternal City under the Jesuit Fathers, intimations of a 
 like kind had been made to him whenever he had taken occasion to express 
 his desire to become a novice, the weighty remonstrance addressed to him 
 at Genoa by the Provincial took him, in a great measure, by surprise, 
 filling his mind for a while with doubt and bewilderment, but leaving him in 
 the end wholly unconvinced. Pursuing his journey westwards, nevertheless, 
 it may here be said at once, by anticipation, that on reaching his native 
 land he obtained permission to renew his efforts, to the end, that is, of test- 
 ing his vocation, with a result exactly the same as that already arrived at. 
 
 Before relating, however, what occurred — on the occasion of that 
 second and, as it might be considered, crucial test as to the validity 
 of his vocation — at the great Jesuit College of Clongowes (which is to 
 Ireland what Stonyhurst is to England), it is, to say the least of it, remark- 
 able to note, from a book actually published in Paris when Mahony was 
 in his twenty-second year, that is, in 1826, how strongly his (in the cruel 
 English sense of the word) Jesuitical character had impressed itself upon 
 one of his contemporaries. This contemporary, it should be explained at 
 once, was the Abbe Martial Marest de la Roche-Amand, who, in his work 
 " Les Jesuites Modernes," sketched in lurid colours a most extravagant 
 caricature of the genius and temperament of — as he dubbed him — O'Mahoni ! 
 "Born in Ireland," quoth this atrabilious and ultra-caustic penciller by 
 the way, " I know not if O'Mahoni is descended from the Count of that 
 name, but to the spirit, to the prejudices, to the system of the Count, he 
 adds the fanaticism, the dissimulation, the intrigue, and the chicane of a 
 thorough Jesuit ! God help us in the contingency of his Company ever 
 triumphing in France ! Were he only to become confessor to our good 
 King, he would, for a dead certainty, give us magnificent auto-da-fes ! Irish 
 and Scotch Catholics have about them a smack of the Spanish Catholics ; 
 they love to sniff the reek wafted from the funeral pyres of the doomed 
 wretches who have declined to hear mass. The Society designs to place 
 O'Mahoni, later on, at the head either of colleges or of congregations. 
 Having taught him to stifle all natural sentiment under the morality of = 
 devout life, they hope that, docile to the teachings of his instructors, the 
 young O'Mahoni will become still more insensible and still more cruel than 
 the most pitiless inquisitors of Valence and of Saragossa ! " For forty 
 years together Mahony preserved a copy of the book containing this 
 amazingly grotesque distortion of his own lineaments in his youth, and 
 would often point out with a chuckle of delight the passage just translated. 
 But at length, in 1865, when, as it may be presumed, he had got it pretty 
 well by heart, he handed the precious volume over as a gage d'amitie to 
 James Hannay, enhancing its interest to his friend by scrawling on the 
 fly-leaf that it was a gift to him from Frank Mahony (it should have been 
 O'Mahoni) de Saragosse ! 
 
 Leaving behind him on the Continent, in one mind at least, such par- 
 ticularly strong-flavoured impressions as to his being inspired by a religious 
 zeal amounting to nothing less than ferocity — impressions, it can alone be 
 presumed, derived from no other source than the sketcher's own inner con- 
 
xii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 sciousness, Francis Mahony, still a young cleric aspiring to the priesthood 
 arrived at Clongowes Wood College, to put yet again to the test what he, 
 at any rate, for one, still believed in as his religious vocation. 
 
 The position occupied by him at Clongowes immediately upon his 
 arrival was that of one of the masters of the establishment. As Prefect 
 of Studies and of the Higher Playground he had devolved upon him the 
 duty, in the first place, of preserving silence and general decorum among 
 the more advanced students, both in the school-hall and in the college 
 chapel ; and in the next place, during the hours of recreation, of seeing to 
 the good conduct of those who took part in whatever game happened at 
 the moment to be uppermost, such as cricket, football, rounders, or hare- 
 and-hounds. 
 
 Reaching Clongowes at the end of August, 1830, Mahony found there, 
 among the pupils entrusted to his charge, one who, like himself, was but 
 a very few years afterwards to become a contributor to Bentley's Miscellany, 
 this being the future author of the Tipperary Papers in that periodical, 
 otherwise John Sheehan, better known to the generality of readers by his 
 comical title of the Irish Whisky Drinker. Another pupil, who was 
 already noted among the collegians as the most skilled Greek scholar 
 of them all, writing already as he did brilliant Anacreontics, took part 
 with Mahony also, but a brief while later on, in the literary jousts of 
 Regina, This was Frank Stook Murphy, afterwards known far and 
 wide in the courts of law as Serjeant Murphy, and who, like the young 
 Prefect of Studies and of the Higher Playground, was, at so early a date, 
 to be counted among the picked band of the Fraserians. 
 
 A couple of months had hardly elapsed after Mahony's induction into 
 the post of Prefect at Clongowes when he was promoted by Father Kenny, 
 the then Rector of the College, to the yet more responsible office of Master 
 of Rhetoric. Rapid though his advance was, however, his career there, in 
 any capacity, was destined to be of very brief duration. It closed not 
 only abruptly but by a sort of catastrophe. 
 
 A couple of months had barely run out after Mahony's arrival at Clongowes 
 when, early in November, a holiday for the whole College was unexpectedly 
 announced. Among the plans which were thereupon suddenly impro- 
 vised for the day's enjoyment, it was arranged that, under the special charge 
 of their young master, a score of Rhetoricians were to start in coursing 
 line across country in pursuit of a hare about an hour or so after breakfast. 
 This select band, it was further agreed, was to head well off through the 
 Duke of Leinster's country in the direction of Carton, while the other 
 divisions of the Higher School were to scurry away by entirely dif- 
 ferent routes with their greyhounds. Mahony's party, each member of 
 which was that genuine broth of a boy, a lightfooted Patlander, were, 
 according to the day's programme, to sit down to a two o'clock dinner in 
 the Hotel at Maynootn, and then, after a brief interval of rest, were to 
 course home again before nightfall. Nearly midway, on their return, there 
 was to be one slight additional interruption at Celbridge, where tea was 
 to be partaken of at the house of young John Sheehan's father, three 
 miles from Maynooth, and five from Clongowes. 
 
 The Irish Whisky Drinker himself is not inappropriately the one who 
 has put upon record the result of the day's proceedings. According to 
 his veracious narrative of what occurred, all went prosperously enough 
 
Biographical Introduction. xiii 
 
 until that fatal turning point, when the day was, with a vengeance, done 
 to a tea — a thoroughly disastrous tea and turn out — at Celbridge. There, 
 for one of the revellers at least, the paternal hospitalities, those, that is to 
 say, of the elder Sheehan, were all but within an ace of illustrating, quite 
 literally, what is meant by the phrase of killing with kindness. Modera- 
 tion, until then, had been the order of the festivities. A solitary tumbler 
 of whisky punch, for example, had sufficed for each excursionist as the 
 accompaniment to the homely banquet partaken of with a relish by " the 
 boys " at the Hotel in Maynooth. A hundred thousand welcomes [cead 
 mitle failthe) awaited them, all too generously, as the sequel proved, at 
 Celbridge. " If the fatted calf was not killed — Mr. Sheehan's ingenuous 
 ipsissima verl>a are here given — "there was, as they said in Ireland 
 of old, 'a fire lit under the pump,' or, speaking less poetically, 
 the kitchen boiler was ready to overflowing for what promised to be 
 an exceptionally wet evening." As for the beverage actually giving a 
 name to the meal, it turned out to be nothing better than the merest 
 preliminary. As a sequel to the tea, with its Brobdingnagian accom- 
 paniment of hot tea-cake, hight Bambrack, a luscious compound of 
 flour and eggs, thickly sown with raisins, there came in, in relays, to be 
 again and again replenished, huge decanters of mountain dew freshly 
 distilled, capacious bowls of sugar and ample jugs of screeching water, 
 renewed with proportionate frequency. " I don't know how many songs 
 we sang," confesses the younger Sheehan, in this reminiscence of his 
 bibulous boyhood, "how many patriotic toasts and personal healths we 
 proposed, how many speeches we made, how many decanters we emptied." 
 At the head of the too hospitable board sat the evidently not unworthy 
 sire of one who was so soon afterwards to win repute to himself as, by pre- 
 eminence, The Irish Whisky Drinker ! At the foot of the table was the 
 universally popular Parish Priest of Celbridge, Father Dan Callinan, soul- 
 searching as a pulpit orator, heart-stirring as the singer of a patriotic song, 
 and true master of the revels on an occasion like this, if he happened to be 
 called upon by circumstances, for the delivery of an impromptu harangue. 
 The speech of the evening, the song of the evening, in this particular 
 instance, were alike Father Dan's ; the song in rapturous tribute to Erin, 
 the speech in impassioned praise of O'Connell. The Liberator was 
 already even then, as he continued to be increasingly thenceforward to the 
 very last, in an especial manner, Mahony's bite noirox pet aversion. Father 
 Callinan 's panegyric on the victorious champion of Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion, while it suddenly roused the ire, stirred up all the bile and virulence 
 of his systematic depredator, the self-willed and hot-headed young 
 Master of Rhetoric. When the ringing cheers which marked the close of 
 Father Dan's encomium upon O'Connell had at length died away, the 
 sarcastic voice of Mahony was heard raised, to every one's amazement, in 
 caustic dissent. Some of the most scornful lines in Byron's Irish Avatar 
 were quoted by him against the Liberator, with the added sting of the fine 
 Cork brogue with which they were articulated. Hot words elicited words 
 still hotter, fierce taunts provoked taunts yet fiercer, the disputants at the 
 table being all the rest against the one solitary dissentient, who was 
 denounced in speech after speech as the degenerate son of Ireland. Hap- 
 pily in the end, as Saul's wrath, when at its worst, was appeased by the 
 harp of David, the war of discord was drowned by the harmonious voice 
 
xiv Biographical Introduction. 
 
 of Father Callinan, opportunely trolling i out a ditty, the closing rhymes 
 of which celebrated, thus, the intertwining of the national emblems — 
 
 Then let thy native shamrock shine in rays of triple gleaming, 
 
 And Scotland's thistle round entwine, the rose betwixt them beaming. 
 
 A couple of hours later than was intended the little impromptu orgie 
 broke up to many a hearty hand-grip and cordial clinking of the stirrup 
 cup among the revellers. Excited by argument and heated with potations, 
 the youngsters, immediately upon their emerging into the open air to 
 return to Clongowes, found themselves completely vanquished by the very 
 coolness and freshness of the evening atmosphere. 
 
 Confusedly, in a straggling way, they had barely accomplished the first 
 mile of their return journey when their discomfiture was completed by 
 the sudden outburst of an autumnal tempest of thunder and lightning, 
 with rain in such overwhelming torrents that they were drenched to the skin 
 within a few minutes from its commencement. This climax of calamity 
 appears to have had its sobering influence upon two or three of the 
 least youthful members of the little party, foremost among them, of course, 
 the young Master of Rhetoric, now thoroughly awakened, at the eleventh 
 hour and three-quarters, to a recognition of his responsibility. Mercifully, 
 when affairs were at this supreme juncture, some Bog of Allen carmen 
 opportunely came to the rescue, like so many dei ex machind, tramping by 
 leading their cars, laden with black turf, on their way to Dublin. But for 
 their providential interposition thus, in the very nick of time, the imminent 
 probability is that the boys, ' ' much bemused with" potheen and half-drowned 
 by thunder showers, must inevitably have scattered away in the darkness 
 and before morning have succumbed. A costly bargain having beenmade, 
 however, with the peat-gatherers, the drenched and stupefied urchins were 
 bound with the car ropes on to the top of the turf-loads by the bogmen, the 
 cavalcade, in this miserable plight, wending their way slowly towards 
 their destination. 
 
 Not until midnight was the outer gate of the College at length reached. 
 Watchers were there on the look-out with lanterns. The whole estab- 
 lishment was in trepidation. One after another, the unconscious way- 
 farers were unbound from their al fresco peat beds and carried 
 into the entrance hall of Clongowes. To the momentary horror of the 
 Rector, upon counting their number up, one, it turned out, was missing, 
 who was, however, eventually discovered in a state of collapse half-buried 
 away in one of the peat-cars. Extricated from the superincumbent turf, 
 to all appearance dead, he was, by order of the house- apothecary, plunged 
 as quickly as possible into a hot bath, a bath so hot that upon his immersion, 
 though he was restored to life, he was, as his brother collegian Sheehan 
 has related, peeled, before the close of the next fortnight, from the nape 
 of the neck to the tendon Achilles. The Rector of the College, Father 
 Kenny, as could alone have been reasonably expected under the circum- 
 stances, was profoundly indignant with every one concerned in what 
 appeared to him so disgraceful a saturnalia, but most of all, of course, 
 with the young master, who was especially in charge of the ill-fated cours- 
 ing party. As the result of the incident, Mahony resigned his chair as 
 Master of Rhetoric almost immediately after these occurrences, and before 
 Christmas bade adieu to Clongowes on his return to the Continent. 
 
Biographical Introduction. xv 
 
 Passing through Paris, Mahony went on for a while to the College of the 
 Jesuits at Freiburg, whence, after a few months' hesitation as to the course 
 he ought in prudence to pursue, he proceeded once more to Rome, there to 
 settle down again among his old haunts, though not in his old quarters. 
 During this, for him more or less anxious sojourn in the Eternal City, he 
 continued, with exemplary regularity, to attend theological lectures for 
 two years together, lodging the while out of college at his own expense. 
 
 The opinion of the Jesuit Fathers was still resolutely opposed, not 
 merely to the desire he persistently cherished of being enrolled in the 
 Society, but to the ambition which, io spite of all obstacles, continued 
 to possess him of being, at any rate as a secular, ordained to the 
 priesthood. The declared ambition of his life was to become — Sacerdos. 
 Whatever obstructions were placed in his path, and there were many, 
 appeared only to strengthen his resolve that this one dominant desire 
 of his nature, in spite of everything that could be said to the contrary, 
 should be realized. Years afterwards he repented, when it was altogether 
 too late, that, in this vital matter for him, he had set all reasoning at 
 defiance. As he frankly acknowledged to Monsignor Rogerson, who had 
 the happiness at the last of reconciling him to the Church of God and of 
 administering to him the last sacraments, he himself was " determined to 
 enter the Church, in spite of Jesuit opinion." Not merely of his own 
 perfect free will, therefore, but literally by reason of his rooted self-willed 
 persistence he was, for once and for all, signed on the forehead and the 
 hands with the sacred chrism, and enrolled a priest for ever according to the 
 order of Melchisedek. Dimissory letters to that end having been ob- 
 tained from the Bishop of Cork, the Rev. Francis Mahony was ordained 
 at Lucca, thenceforth standing before the world — Presbyter. It has been 
 stated, in error, that not very long after his ordination to the Priesthood 
 Father Mahony, in obedience to instructions from his bishop, the Right 
 Rev. Dr. Murphy, not only joined the Cork Mission, but acted for a time 
 as chaplain to one of the hospitals in his native city, in 1832, during the 
 terrible cholera visitation. As a simple matter of fact he never in life 
 returned to Cork after the date of his ordination. He frequently said 
 mass both in France and in Italy, occasionally even officiating in London 
 shortly after his first return in his priestly character to England. More 
 than once he preached from the pulpit of the Spanish Ambassador's 
 chapel near Manchester Square, and at intervals assisted in his parochial 
 labours the well known Dr. Magee, who was facetiously dubbed about 
 that period by O'Connell the Abbot of Westminster. 
 
 All too soon, however, for his own happiness, because unhappily, of 
 course, all too late for any possible rectification of his own grievous error 
 of judgment in the matter, Mahony awakened to a recognition of the 
 painful truth that his Jesuit preceptors had been right from the firsthand 
 that in running counter to their earnest wishes and advice he had become 
 a priest without any true vocation. Thenceforth, through nobody's fault 
 but his own, he stood before the world, and before the Church until all 
 but the very end, in a distinctly false position. There was something 
 essentially unclerical in the mocking spirit with which he regarded the 
 men and things, not actually consecrated to religion, that fell under his 
 immediate observation. A scoffer at Christianity or a depreciator of 
 Catholicism he constantly looked upon from first to last with abhorrence. 
 
xvi Biographical Introduction. 
 
 Conscious at all times, in the midst of the incongruities of his after life, of 
 the permanent effect of the anointing from which there was no possibility 
 of escape — the sacred chrism leaving, as he knew, a mark that was abso- 
 lutely indelible — he was keenly alive to, and always instantly resented, 
 any semblance even, under any conceivable circumstances, of a slight put 
 upon him, whether directly or indirectly, in his priestly character. 
 
 Having once realized to the full that by nature, instinct, temperament, 
 nay, by his whole idiosyncrasy, he was far more of the man of letters 
 than of the ecclesiastic, his very sense of reverence constrained him first 
 of all into relaxing and eventually into foregoing altogether the ques- 
 tionable luxury of continuing to exercise his sacerdotal functions. His 
 office he still loved to con. His breviary remained to the last his 
 constant companion. It, and neither Horace nor Beranger, both of 
 whom he knew pretty well by heart, he delighted to carry about with 
 him in his pocket. Refraining, as has been said, out of his very sense 
 of reverence, from venturing any longer within the sanctuary, there to 
 offer up with his own hands at the altar the sacrifice of the mass, he drifted 
 away little by little from the ordinary practices of religion. The Roman 
 collar was doffed. The soutane was abandoned. A biretta never any 
 longer pressed his broad temples : yet while these evidences of the priest 
 were one after another stripped away, the presbyter-turned-man-of- 
 letters still asserted himself in the semi-clerical costume he thenceforth 
 adopted. A threadbare black it may be said was from that time forward 
 his only wear, as indeed in some sort best became so scholarly a Bohemian. 
 Dropping gradually out of further association with his brother ecclesiastics, 
 he found entirely new and in some respects more congenial companions 
 among the contributors to the magazines and newspapers with which he 
 soon afterwards came to be connected. 
 
 In the calm retrospect which can be taken, now, of his long completed 
 career, it seems to have been a circumstance curiously illustrative of its, so 
 to speak, slipshod, and haphazard character that while in the earlier half 
 of his literary life he was hand-and-glove with the ultra-Conservatives 
 when writing for Eraser's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany, he was in 
 its later moiety just as intimate with the ultra-Liberals when he was corre- 
 sponding from Rome with the Daily News and from Paris with the Globe 
 — addressing the latter under the guise of a sort of ^(Swear-bookworm, and 
 the former under the nom de plume of the Benedictine Monk Don Jeremy 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Constitutionally arrogant and self-opinionated though he showed him- 
 self to be throughout his whole life as a disputant, he nevertheless con- 
 trived at all times to foregather, no less pleasurably for others than for him- 
 self, with men of both the great political parties — his ready wit, combined 
 with his ripe scholarship, not infrequently securing to him the maintenance 
 of these amicable relations with antagonists whom his ferocity of attack 
 must otherwise have utterly estranged. A perfect master of fence in argu- 
 ment, he disdained to wear the wire mask himself, or the button on his foil. 
 Cut and thrust, carte and tierce were of no interest whatever to him 
 unless, in those fierce bouts of disputation in which he delighted, he, and 
 of course his opponent in like manner, had each full privilege allowed, 
 so to speak, of drawing blood ad libitum whenever the opportunity for 
 so doing might present itself to either. Sharper things were then said 
 
and written than are now dreamt of in our social philosophy. Regina 
 and Maga flung vitriol and wielded bludgeons while dispensing their 
 criticisms. Lord Alvanley, looking into the cadaverous face of Samuel 
 Rogers, could cynically raise the laugh in those days against his corpse-like 
 friend, the poet-banker — not, we may be certain, as adding thereby another 
 to his Pleasures of Memory — by observing interrogatively, "I say, Rogers, 
 why don't you start your hearse ? you're rich enough ! " The amenities of 
 life were not only fewer then than they are now-a-days, but were of a 
 wholly different character. Indiarubber tyres, C springs, and wooden 
 pavements being comparatively unknown, the ways of the world were less 
 smooth and the torturing jolts more frequent. 
 
 It happened by good fortune for Mahorry, at the very juncture when he 
 was preparing to cj>en up a new path for himself in literature, that a 
 monthly periodical was just at that time springing into celebrity in London, 
 with fair promise of rivalling in vigour and originality its already famous 
 senior by thirteen years, Blackwood of Edinburgh. This was Fraser's 
 Magazine, for Town and Country, the initial number of which was pub- 
 lished on the 1st of February, 1830. It had been but a little more 
 than four years in existence when there was quietly enrolled one day upon 
 its staff a new contributor, who immediately, upon his voice becoming 
 audiblej was recognized by all as indeed an acquisition. The originator of 
 the Magazine it may here, however, be first remarked was Hugh Fraser, 
 its publisher being his brother James Fraser, and its standpoint in London 
 215, Regent Street. There, at regularly recurrent intervals, the contributors 
 were in the habit of assembling convivially in symposium. Less than a 
 twelvemonth after the new recruit had accepted the colours of Regina and 
 the coin of enlistment, there was shadowed forth upon a varnished 
 copper-plate, by the rapid movements of an etching-needle held in the 
 hand of one Alfred Croquis — a young Irishman afterwards renowned in 
 the world of art as Daniel Maclise, the Royal Academician — the reflection, 
 as like as life, of one of these famous gatherings. "The Fraseriansy' to 
 the number of seven-and-twenty, are there depicted, each of them with a 
 marvellous verisimilitude. Two alone at this present writing are still 
 survivors. The rest — a quarter of a hundred in all — have long since, one 
 after another, gone over to the majority. The pair yet extant are the now 
 veteran Carlyle and the then eminently handsome young novelist Harri- 
 son Ainsworth. Glasses and decanters scattered about the fruit-laden 
 board, Dr. Maginn, then Editor of Fraser, has just risen to give the toast of 
 the evening. Upon either side of him, in the background, are the two name- 
 less attendants — one, a Sydney Smith-like butler in the act of decanting an 
 especial magnum of port, the other an assistant flunkey extracting with an 
 all but audible cloop the cork from a fresh bottle. Coleridge, Thackeray, 
 Lockhart, Southey, D'Orsay are among those present who are the most 
 readily distinguishable. Immediately to the left of Maginn, as he stands 
 there delicately resting the tips of his fingers on the table, are seated 
 three clergymen — Edward Irving of the Unknown Tongues, Gleig the 
 Army Chaplain, and between the two, shrewdly peering at you from under 
 his eyebrows and over his spectacles, Frank Mahony. 
 
 One who knew several of the Fraserian set, and among them Mahony, — 
 I am alluding here to the late Charles Lewis Gruneisen, the accomplished 
 musical critic, — speaks of them in a communication addressed by him to the 
 
xviii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette on the 25th May, 1866, as having lived thirty-tvro years 
 previously in a dangerous time, when club life was in its infancy. "The 
 artistic and literary world, " he there writes, "congregated chiefly in the 
 small hours, in strange places. The painter, the sculptor, the actor, the 
 reviewer, the critic, the journalist, the barrister, the author, nay, even 
 the divine, fraternized in coteries, either at Eastey's Hotel, the Widow s 
 in Saint Martin's Lane, afterwards in Dean Street, Soho, the Coalhole, 
 Offley's, the Eccentrics in May Buildings, the Piazza, the Bedford, and 
 other localities familiar to the few survivors. The Irish and Scotch con- 
 vivialists in their visits to London," he adds, "considered it to be a 
 marked distinction to be admitted to these coteries, at a period when 
 drinking habits were in the ascendant." Mahony's tutelary muse at this 
 juncture might, hardly with extravagance, have been described as akin to 
 the Fairy Philomel in Planche's charming extravaganza of " The Sleeping 
 Beauty," of whom the late James Bland, that true King of Burlesque, used 
 to exclaim — with an august clearing of the throat beforehand — 
 
 " (Ahem !) — we've known her long. 
 She likes a jug and sings a tidy song." 
 
 According to Mr. Gruneisen's recollection, Father Prout's vivacity found 
 vent in the nocturnal revels just now referred to, "and," the narrator 
 goes on to remark in so many words, "he never had sufficient resolu- 
 tion to shake off the convivial habits then acquired." It was about that 
 time that among other extravagant freaks of scholarship indulged in by 
 Father Prout and his companions, he, in association among others with 
 Dr. Maginn, Percival Bankes, and John (familiarly Jack) Churchill, trans- 
 lated, or, as Mahony always loved, by preferepce, to express it, upset 
 into various dead and living languages the then ridiculously popular street 
 song of "All Round my Hat I wear a Green Willow." 
 
 As a philologist, as a wit, as a lyrist, as a master of persiflage, Frank 
 Mahony stepped at once conspicuously to the front with his earliest con- 
 tribution to Fraser's Magazine in the April of 1834. His communication 
 there came to the readers of Regina as a distinct revelation. It introduced 
 to their notice one who forthwith took his place permanently among the 
 typical creations of our national literature. In setting forth what was 
 entitled by him, with an air of delightful gravity, his " Apology for Lent," 
 it, in the very act of recording his Death, Obsequies, and Elegy, made the 
 public at large acquainted for the first time with Father Prout, whose 
 Reliques thenceforth, month by month for a couple of years together, 
 while they formed the chief attraction of Fraser, substantially built up for 
 the writer himself an enduring reputation. 
 
 According to a statement put forth on the 18th January, 1875, with all 
 apparent seriousness, by Mr. Nicholas Mahony, Justice of the Peace of 
 Blarney, in a letter addressed by him to the editor of the "Final Reliques," 
 Father Prout was in some sense at least a real personage. He is there spoken 
 of, at any rate, by the brother of the scholarly idealizer of his character who 
 has thus given his name immortality, as an old clergyman who was intimate 
 with the family of the Mahonys when they were children. This intimation 
 it is especially worthy of note, however, is at once coupled with the acknow- 
 ledgment that "the real Father Prout," as he is gravely called, " was only 
 remarkable for his quiet simple manners!" Precisely. And upon an exactly 
 
Biographical Introduction. xix 
 
 similar showing it might just as reasonably be argued that Bob Fagin, 
 the boy who helped to paste the labels on the pots of blacking down at 
 Hungerford Market when Charles Dickens- was for a while there, in his 
 childhood, as " a little labouring hind " at Warren's manufactory, was the 
 veritable germ of the infamous Jew in " Oliver Twist " who goaded Sikes 
 on to the murder of Nancy, and who is himself given over in the end to 
 the hangman's hands at Newgate as an accomplice of the malefactor. A 
 scene and a designation may not improbably in this matter have been 
 adopted for the nonce as suggestive of a theme by Frank Mahony ; but he 
 it was who, by his very mode of adopting it, made that theme his own, 
 and in the true Shaksperian sense as a creator imparted to it perennially 
 in return a " local habitation and a name." The original Father Prout — 
 original so far, that is, as the appellation and the venue are concerned — may, 
 without doubt, have been, as indeed is stated on that very same page of 
 the "Final Reliques," by another witness, Mr. James Murphy, from 1800 
 to 1830, in which latter year he died, parish priest, at Watergrasshill. But, 
 for all this, the true Father Prout — the still living and breathing Father 
 Prout of whom we read in the Reliques, and who there talks to us all in a 
 voice that has long since become perfectly familiar — is no other than Mahony 's 
 own innermost other self, not so much flesh of his flesh and bone of his 
 bone, as, from his whole nature and genius, through brain and heart, hir> 
 most intimate self-revelation. Guided to his right destiny when following 
 in obedience to his first impulse the earliest conception formed by him of 
 that delightful alter ego, one is tempted to say that Mahony by a happy 
 instinct strolled from the Groves of Blarney to the Groves of Academe. 
 
 Let who will turn the leaves, however cursorily, of those racy and indi- 
 genous Reliques, he will for certain acquire a relish for them and a familiarity 
 with them far more readily than he imagines. The potheen has not about 
 it a tang more appetizing. The brogue is not more instantly suggestive of 
 exhilaration. For, with a very literal truth, has he not himself hit off to 
 a T his own highest faculty as a writer in those words of his already 
 inscribed upon the fly-leaf of these collected " Works of Father Prout " as 
 their most fitting motto ? — words in which the Reliques are described in 
 the aptest possible way as " a new combination of the Teian lyre and the 
 Irish bagpipe, of the Ionian dialect blending harmoniously with the Cork 
 brogue, or, yet more tersely even, as " an Irish potato seasoned with Attic 
 salt." Discoursing thus, ostensibly in the posthumous voice of the parish 
 priest of Watergrasshill, but really in his own, he for twenty-four months 
 together through Fraser's Magazine flung, abroad in lavish handfuls the 
 largess of his accumulated wit and learning, scattering them about pell- 
 mell, according to the whim of the moment, with reference to whatever 
 subject-matter chanced to come uppermost. As a critic, there was but too 
 often something scurrile in his acerbity. As a lyrist, his songs had for the 
 most part a lilting swing that bore all before them. The personalities 
 and nicknames with whiqh he pelted the motley throng of those who 
 in any way excited his antipathy, must have bred ill blood enough at 
 the time of their first publication, and read even now most offensively 
 when the passion of the hour has long subsided. 
 
 For "real larky fun," as James Hannay admirably expressed it in 
 the North British Review, ' Father Prout's lucubrations are scarcely to 
 be surpassed. Six years before he thus laughingly eulogized the 
 
Reliques, the same animated writer enlarged with gusto in the Universal 
 Review upon their general excellence as "a piquant mixture of toryism, 
 classicism, sarcasm, and punch." Evidencing therein, as Mahony did, 
 in a hundred whimsical ways, that he knew Latin quite as well as either 
 Erasmus or Buchanan ; he showed his love for the classics, as Hannay 
 deliriously put it, "as a father shows his love for his children — by play- 
 ing with them." While doing this, moreover, he may be said, through 
 the medium of his gravefaced imputations of plagiarism, to have invented 
 a system of intellectual torture until then undreamt of, the poignant 
 operation of which he, besides, in a manner perfected through his cruelly 
 ingenious method of applying it by preference to the genus irritabile. And 
 if, according to Lord Brougham's scathing phrase, Lord Campbell could be 
 said to have added a new pang to the agonies of death by threatening to 
 become his biographer — a threat eventually realized in the shape of a 
 supplementary volume to the " Lives of the Lord Chancellors"— Father 
 Prout might with equal truth have been said by Moore to have added a 
 new pang to the agonies of living by the triumphant skill with which he 
 affected to demonstrate that the "Irish Melodies," so far from being in any 
 way original effusions, were many of them no better than sly borrowings by 
 translation from the Greek, the Latin, or the French ! The Greek of an 
 unnamed disciple of Anacreon, the Latin of Prout himself, ipsissima verba, 
 the French of the ill-starred Marquis Cinq-Mars ! Who that has ever 
 dipped into the "Rogueries" can be blind to the verisimilitude of the 
 Padre's shadowing forth there in classic verse, at one and the same time 
 of the Nora Creina of Moore, and of the Julia of Prout's fellow-cleric 
 of the Hesperides, Robert Herrick ? Who cannot see that Mahony bore 
 equally in mind Moore's rapturous ejaculation, 
 
 " O my Nora's gown for me, 
 
 That floats as wild as mountain breezes, 
 Leaving every beauty free 
 To sink or swell as Heaven pleases ;" 
 
 and with it Herrick's ecstatic allusion to what he terms " the liquefaction 
 of her [Julia's] clothes, " where he exclaims, in regard to their 
 
 " — - brave vibrations each way free, 
 
 O how their glittering taketh me ! " 
 i 
 when, in the good Father's blending of his recollection of the two in his 
 harmonious numbers, he added a perfecting charm to each in his — 
 
 "Norse tunicam praeferres, 
 Flante zephyro volantem ; 
 Oculis et raptis en-es 
 Contemplando ambulantem?" 
 
 Mahony was just thirty years of age when he assumed his place — a fore- 
 most one from the very first by right of his wit and learning — among the 
 select band of the contributors to Eraser's Magazine. His earliest paper 
 there, the first of the four-and-twenty making up the aggregate after the 
 lapse of a little more than two years of the now famous Reliques, made its 
 appearance, as already observed, in the number of Regina for April, 1834. 
 It introduced the reader at once to a new and delightful personality, 
 thenceforth perennially existent in the familiar dreamland of English 
 literature— that of the Reverend Father Andrew Prout, Parish Priest 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxi 
 
 of Watergrasshill. Its sequel, a month later on, gave, parenthetically, 
 as it might be said, vouchers to the more incredulous for his having 
 actually existed in the flesh, by referring to his executors, Father 
 Magrath the elegiac poet, and Father Mat Horrogan, P.P. of the 
 neighbouring village of Blarney. The initial paper, under the guise 
 of "An Apology for Lent," not only revealed to all comers in an off- 
 hand way the menace of the good Father of Watergrasshill, but enabled 
 them to realize with a relish his taste both for creature comforts and for 
 classical scholarship. The May number, which in its turn was entitled " A 
 Plea for Pilgrimages," rendered them besides for once and for all intimate 
 with his immediate pastoral surroundings, while it familiarized them with 
 much that was odd and with more that was attractive in his compan- 
 ions, his visitors, and his conversation. Then, moreover, was made 
 clear to the comprehension of all, the abounding vivacity with which 
 Mahony revelled in his mastery over both the ancient and modem 
 languages. The earliest testimony afforded by him of his holding thus 
 completely under his command not only the resources of the two great 
 classic tongues, but of Norman-French as well, was his turning, as by a 
 very tour de force, Millikin's roystering celebration of "The Groves of 
 Blarney " into a triple polyglot — " Blarneum Nemus," "H 'TAi; BKapvutri, and 
 ' ' Le Bois de Blarnaye. " Appended to these at the time was the fragment of 
 a version of the same ditty in Celtic, which purported to have been copied 
 from an antique manuscript preserved in the King's. Library at Copen- 
 hagen ; an Italian version, ' ' I Boschi di Blarnea, " being set forth by Mahony 
 upwards of a quarter of a century afterwards as having been sung by 
 Garibaldi on trie 25th May, 1859, among the woods near Lake Como — 
 Italic, Celtic, Gallic, Doric, Vulgate, each serio-comically purporting to be 
 the veritable prototype of the merely reputed original, the Corcagian ! 
 
 "Father Prout's Carousal," as reported in the third instalment of the 
 Reliques, which was published in the Juns number of Fraser, was taken 
 rather gravely to heart, as it happened, among the population of Cork by 
 reason of the liberal use made therein of the names of some of its leading 
 inhabitants. George Knapp, Dick Dowden, Jack Bellew, Dan Corbet, 
 Bob Olden, and Friar O'Meara, were but the chorus, however, attendant 
 upon Sir Walter Scott, the illustrious guest of the incumbent of Water- 
 grasshill. As to the bandying of grotesque fun and erudite sarcasms 
 between Scott and Prout in this paper, it may be regarded as reaching its 
 climax where Sir Walter, in answer to the Padre's bantering inquiry as 
 to whether he is any relation of that ornament of the Franciscan order, 
 the great irrefragable doctor, Duns Scotus, replies, " No, I have not that 
 honour ;" adding at once, however, slyly, "but I have read what Erasmus 
 says of certain of your fraternity, in a dialogue between himself and the 
 Echo : 
 
 (Erasmus loquitur). ' Quid est sacerdotium ? 
 (Echo respondit). Otium ! ' — 
 
 Prout at once turning the gibe aside with the laughing rejoinder, "That 
 reminds me of Lardner's idea of 'otium cum dignitate,' which he purposes 
 to read thus — otium cum diggiri 'taties !" In the course of the "Carousal" 
 occurs the Padre's noble version in Latin of Campbell's ' ' Hohenlinden, " the 
 ringing sapphics of his "Prselium apud Hohenlinden " not unworthily echo- 
 
xxii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 ing the heroic original. There also he gave the first cruel foretaste of his 
 more highly elaborated onslaught, two months later, upon Moore, when 
 he adduced, with the matchless effrontery of his persiflage, what he coolly 
 announced as the Latin original of " Let Erin remember the days of old, 
 
 beginning ' 
 
 " O ! utinam sanos mea Ierna recogitet annos ! " 
 
 It was in the fourth of the Prout papers, which appeared in the July 
 number of Regina, that Mahony, indulging in the same eccentric pastime, 
 imputed to Byron the like delinquency of plagiarism, pretending to have 
 discovered the source of the famous apostrophe to Kirke White, familiar 
 to the readers of " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in the dainty 
 verses of a purely imaginary young French poet, hight Chenedolle. 
 
 A score of equally brilliant, bizarre, fantastic, and hilarious contributions 
 from the hand of Frank Mahony followed these in rapid and almost un- 
 broken succession through the double-columned pages of Regina, until, in 
 1836, the whole were collected together in two volumes for separate publi- 
 cation as " Father Prout's Reliques." Maclise — who had been all the while 
 embellishing Fraser month after month with a series of wonderfully etched 
 portraits of the literary celebrities of that generation — to three of which, 
 by the way, those of Henry O'Brien, L. E. L. , and Beranger, Mahony 
 himself furnished the letterpress accompaniment — enhanced the interest and 
 attraction of the reissued Reliques by interspersing them with a number 
 of eminently characteristic illustrations. Eighteen in number, these em- 
 bellishments were announced on the new title-page, under the artist's 
 then pseudonym, as from the pencil of Alfred Croquis, while the Reliques 
 themselves were said to be collected and arranged by Oliver Yorke, a 
 nom de plume generally usable among the Fraserians, as though, like 
 Legion, it had been a noun of multitude signifying many. It can hardly 
 be regarded indeed as having been applicable in any distinctive manner 
 to the Editor of Fraser himself, Dr. William Maginn's assumed name being 
 unmistakably Sir Morgan O'Dogherty, as Father Prout was that of Francis 
 Mahony. 
 
 Before continuing this record of the few and slight incidents which 
 mark the career of the author of the Reliques, let it be said here at once 
 that incomparably the finest of them all is, without doubt, the sixth, in 
 which Mahony pays his tribute of respect and gratitude to his Jesuit 
 instructors. "Literature and the Jesuits " is the title of it ; and it is from 
 the celebration of the apiary in the "Georgics" that Mahony has aptly 
 selected his motto — 
 
 "Alii spem gentis adultos 
 Educunt foetus : alii purissima raella 
 Stipant, et Iiquido distendunt nectare cellas." 
 
 His theme was suggested to him by the then recent massacre of fourteen 
 Jesuits in the College of St. Isidore at Madrid. Referring at the outset 
 of his paper to that atrocity, he is inclined to think, as he protests with 
 cutting irony, that, with all due respect to Dr. Southey, the Poet 
 Laureate, Roderick was not by any means the Last of the Goths in 
 the Iberian peninsula. It is characteristic of him that, even against 
 himself, in the midst of his emotional enthusiasm in the cause of his 
 old masters in literature, he cannot help cynically hinting a suspicion 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxiii 
 
 that he has a. sort of "drop serene" in his eye, seeing that he only, 
 as he expresses it, winks at the rogueries of the Jesuits — never reddening 
 for them the gridiron on which he gently roasts Moore and JLardner. 
 Incidentally in a casual sentence he lays down a proposition which, 
 looked back to now, seems like the foreshadowing of the noble master- 
 piece produced years afterwards by the Count de Montalembert, " Les 
 Moines de l'Occident : " " There is not, perhaps a more instructive and 
 interesting subject of inquiry in the history of the human mind than the 
 origin, progress, and workings of what are called monastic institutions." 
 
 He enumerates with exultation, among a throng of other illustrious 
 pupils of the great Society, Descartes, Torricelli, Tasso, Bossuet, Corneille, 
 Moliere, Fontenelle, Bellarmine, Cornelius a Lapide, Bourdaloue. In the 
 vindication of them as undoubted benefactors to their fellow-creatures, 
 physically no less than intellectually, he recalls to mind the celebrity achieved 
 by their beneficent medicaments, asking, for himself, who has not heard of 
 Jesuits' bark, Jesuits' drops, Jesuits' powders ? and, with Viigil-r- 
 
 " Quae regio in terns nostri non plena laboris ?" 
 
 Grandly he sings, there, too, in his own voice, though nominally in that 
 of an old schoolfellow of Prout's, who died in 1754, as a Jesuit Missionary 
 in Cochin China, the noble Latin ode in which he commemorates the Vigil 
 and Triumphs of the great founder of the Order, Ignatius Loyola — 
 
 " Tellus gigantis sentit itur ; simul 
 Idola nutant, fana ruunt, micat 
 Christi triumphantis trophceum, 
 Crux que novos numerat clientes," 
 
 Persecuted from generation to generation ; ruthlessly expelled from Venice ; 
 twice (it may be said now, thrice) driven ignominiously from France, where, 
 thrust out of the door, they returned through the window ; executed by the 
 dozen, here, in England ; encountering stripes, perils, and incarcerations as 
 numerous as those of St. Paul, in Poland, Germany, Portugal and Hungary 
 — the Society's march through Europe for two centuries together, Mahony 
 finely declares to be alone comparable in heroic endurance with the retreat of 
 the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon. As for himself, he protests that 
 he owes everything to their guidance, finding only in the words of Tully any 
 adequate expression for his gratitude — " Si quid est in me ingenii, judices 
 (et sentio quam sit exiguum), si quae exercitatio ab optimarum artium dis- 
 ciplinis profecta, earum rerum fructum, sibi, suo jure, debent repetere." 
 It is after this sustained and strenuous avowal of his sense of obligation to 
 the Society of Jesus that, as if yielding himself up at once to the irre- 
 pressible resilience of his nature as a satiric humorist, he evidently 
 enough for the sheer relief of unbending after so much unwonted serious- 
 ness, upsets into English verse the extravagant drollery of the Jesuit 
 Gresset s comic poem "Vert- Vert," the Parrot who, although he can sing 
 of him one while in the days of his original innocence, 
 
 " Green were his feathers, green his pinions, 
 And greener still were his opinions," 
 
 alternates, to the delight and terror of the Ursuline community of whom 
 he was the boast, between the saintly and the satanic. 
 
xxiv Biographical Introduction. 
 
 Having unburdened his mind thus in Fraser between 1834 and 1836 of 
 a good deal of the miscellaneous load of familiar humour and out-of-the- 
 way learning that nevertheless, even when most thickly accumulated there, 
 always sat so lightly upon it, Mahony, at the very dawn of 1837, began 
 poking his fun anew at the public through an entirely fresh channel — that, 
 namely, which was opened up to him by Dickens, then at the very outset of 
 his career, when, having just completed ' ' Pickwick, " and dropped the mask 
 of " Boz," he inaugurated under his editorship a new monthly venture for 
 the million, under the title of Bentley's Miscellany. The very first page of 
 the new periodical was Prout's, dated Watergrasshill, Kal. Januarii, entitled 
 No. I of " Our Songs of the Month. " It was an effervescent lyrical'draught 
 from, or anent, the Bottle of St. Januarius. Exactly a year afterwards, in 
 the January number of Bentley for 1838, another and somewhat longer 
 lyrical effusion from the same pen appeared in the form of "A Poetical 
 Epistle from Father Prout to Boz," under date Genoa, the 14th of Decem- 
 ber, 1837. Intermediately between these two contributions, Mahony had 
 been pouring out his rhymed drolleries abundantly enough, though for the 
 most part in a very fragmentary way, in the Miscellany, to the number of 
 seventeen or eighteen. Four of these were scattered, like the sugar-plums 
 from an exploded bonbon -cracker, in different parts of the initial number 
 of Bentley, Teddy O'Dryscull, the Schoolmaster of Watergrasshill being 
 ostensibly, in the instance of three of them, the intermediary for their trans- 
 mission. Again, in the Miscellany, the charge of plagiarism was demurely 
 cast in the teeth of dead and living celebrities by this most incorrigible of 
 larking scholiasts — Lover's Molly Carew, "Och hone! Oh! what will I 
 do? " reappearing as " Heu ! Heu ! me tedet, me piget o ! " while Tom 
 Hudson's Barney Brallaghan came forth anew, robed in the classic toga, 
 under the title of "The Sabine Farmer's Serenade," with its irresistible 
 refrain thus whimsically imitated — 
 
 " Semel tantum die eris nostra Lalage ; 
 Ne recuses sic, dulcis Julia Callage"." 
 
 Before the close of his connection as a regular contributor with Bentley's Mis- 
 cellany, Mahony had at length forsaken the haunts to which he had latterly 
 become accustomed in London, particularly towards the small hours of the 
 morning, and had wandered back through Paris into Italy. Thence, being 
 in no way tethered, either by home ties or clerical responsibilities, he went 
 for two or three years together further afield than he had hitherto ever dreamt 
 of venturing. His movements, which were discursive, carried him gradually 
 and in a wholly unpremeditated way through Hungary, through Asia 
 Minor, through Greece and Egypt, until in 1841 the observant nomad re- 
 turning to the South of France, paused a while there, to all appearance 
 solely for rest and reflection. Before setting out on these peregrinations 
 he had, in 1837, passed through the press in London, with notes and illus- 
 trations, a little duodecimo, entitled "La Boullaye le Gouz in Ireland." 
 By the time his wanderings eastward were completed he settled down into 
 what came to be thenceforth his confirmed character — that of a bookish 
 scholarly fi&neur, loitering through life by preference in continental cities'; 
 with quips and cranks galore for every one he encountered ; gladdened by 
 the chance, whenever he was lucky enough to stumble across one, of fore- 
 gathering with an old friend from whom he had long drifted apart and 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxv 
 
 from this time forward until the very end giving up his pen exclusively 
 to the rough and ready labours of the journalist. Twice in this capacity 
 he discharged for a lengthened period, first for two years at Rome, and 
 afterwards for eight years together at Paris — these being in fact the last years 
 of his life — the responsible duties of a Special Correspondent. 
 
 As the Roman Correspondent of the Daily News in 1846 and 1847, he 
 had the privilege of describing the end of the Pontificate of Gregory the 
 Sixteenth and the commencement of the wonderful reign of Pope Pius the 
 Ninth. . He it was who, shortly after the accession of Giovanni Mastai Ferretti 
 to the chair of the Fisherman, said so finely in his regard, in the words of 
 the Gospel — Fuit homo missus a Deo cut notnen erat Joannes. In carry- 
 ing on this Roman correspondence from day to day Mahony wrote no 
 longer like the Prout of Fraser in a conservative sense but, on the contrary, 
 as an advanced Liberal. Immediately his communications were brought to 
 a conclusion they were collected together as a separate and substantive 
 publication — his title-page running thus : — "Facts and Figures from Italy, by 
 Don Jeremy Savonarola, Benedictine Monk. Addressed during the last two 
 Winters to Charles Dickens, Esq., being an Appendix to his ' Pictures.' " 
 His introduction to the work, which affected to give an autobiographical 
 account of himself as this supposititious monk of St. Benedict, and 6f his 
 supposed birthplace, Sardinia, amounted in reality to a bitter and caustic 
 satire, the veil thrown over which was only too transparent. John Taureau, 
 Tomaso il Moro, Mac(chiav)Hello, Archbishop of Vestrum, Dandelione, 
 Consternatum Hall, and the like, so flagrantly indicated their application, 
 that they were almost tantamount to printing the real names they signified 
 in italics. Mahony's antipathy to O Connell, it must be said in honest 
 truth, bore about it no more distinct characteristic than that of malignity. 
 Nothing less than malignity, it will be evident, dictated every syllable of 
 Don Jeremy's revolting lyric entitled "The Lay of Lazarus," or hinted 
 with such gusto at the notion of the rats clearing off with the heart of the 
 Liberator, after the depositing of that relic overnight in the ponderous 
 catafalque. Consistent at least to the very last, in his ungrateful deprecia- 
 tion of the archchampion and victor of Catholic Emancipation, was the 
 sometime usher of Clongowes, later on Father Prout, later on yet, Don 
 Jeremy Savonarola. 
 
 A wanderer by choice for years upon the European continent, a cosmo- 
 politan ingrained, Mahony, it has been well said by one of his younger 
 friends, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, while he was at home in many places — on 
 the banks of the Tiber, the Seine, the Arno, and the Thames — was most 
 at home in London. Yet for all that he settled down at length en perma- 
 nence in dear, delightful Paris—" Paris pleine d'or et de misere." Occa- 
 sionally, even then, but only at very rare intervals indeed, he wrote for 
 the magazines. In i860, for example, he contributed to the Cornhill his 
 ' ' Inaugural Ode to the Author of ' Vanity Fair ' " — that dear friend of the old 
 Fraser days whom he could never praise too highly. Otherwise Mahony's 
 writing during the last eight years of his life was given up exclusively to 
 the Globe in his capacity as its regular Paris Correspondent. Kis letters 
 there were often brief, and always both desultory and intermittent. His 
 reader, however, sat down to them invariably as a gourmand might sit 
 down to a dish of ripe walnuts, with a favourite bottle of madeira at his 
 elbow, to crack, and peel, and munch them with a relish — et cum grano 
 
\ 
 
 xxvi Biographical Introduction. 
 
 salts. His residence down to the very last during these years was in the 
 entresol of one of those huge Parisian hotels in which he so much delighted. 
 It was situated in the Rue des Moulins, a thoroughfare running out of 
 the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, or, as Thackeray facetiously preferred 
 to call it in plain English, the New Street of the Little Fields. There the 
 old scholiast, striking at last, so to speak, his nomadic tent, settled down 
 permanently in bohemian seclusion. There, at odd intervals, according to 
 the spur of the moment, he jotted down those alternately whimsical and 
 recondite commentaries on passing events which went to the making up of 
 his daily newsletter. During the first half-dozen of the " 'sixties," his was 
 a familiar figure enough to some, at least, of the habitue's of the streets of 
 Paris. Wherever encountered — whether dropping in fitfully at Galignani's 
 newsroom, or sipping his brandy-and-water in solitary state at some 
 favourite cate, or mooning, half dreamily, half observantly, along either 
 a gaslit or a sunlit boulevard — he was scarcely to be passed unnoticed even 
 by a stranger. 
 
 As characteristic a glimpse of Father Prout in his Parisian days as any 
 I know of is that afforded through the loophole of the third chapter of the 
 ' ' Final Reliques, " where he is described as one of those voluntary exiles to 
 the banks of the Seine, who were as much integral parts of its fair 
 Lutetia as Murger, Musset, Privat d'Anglemont, Mery, the great Theo, 
 Lespes, Monselet, Dr. Veron, and a host of other strollers. At that time, 
 quoth Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, "it was difficult to meet Father Prout. He 
 was an odd, uncomfortable, uncertain man. His moods changed like 
 April skies. Light little thoughts were busy in his brain, lively and frisk- 
 ing as ' troutlets in a pool.' He was impatient of interruption, and 
 shambled forward talking in an undertone to himself, with now and then 
 a bubble or two of laughter, or one short sharp laugh almost a bark, like 
 that of the marksman when the arrow quivers in the bull's-eye. He would 
 pass you with a nod that meant, ' Hold off— not to-day ! ' You had been 
 with him in his entresol of the Rue des Moulins over night, and had been 
 dismissed in the small hours when he had had gossiping enough. You 
 had been charmed with the range of his scholarship, the ease and raciness 
 of his wit, by the masterly skill with which he handled his literary tools, 
 and the shades of the best of all good company whom he could summon 
 before you in anecdotes which almost brought their breath again upon the 
 cheek. To-day he is gathered up closely within himself, and is holding 
 company in solitude. He was very impatient if any injudicious friend or 
 a passing acquaintance (who took him to be usually as accessible as any 
 fl&neur on the macadam) thrust himself forward and would have his hand 
 and agree with him that it was a fine day, but would possibly rain shortly. 
 A sharp answer, and an unceremonious plunge forward without bow or 
 good-day, would put an end to the interruption. Of course the Father was 
 called a bear by ceremonious shallow-pates, who could not see there was 
 something extra in the little man talking to himself and shuffling, with his 
 hands behind him, through the fines fieurs and grandes dames of the 
 Italian Boulevard. There were boobies of his cloth, moreover, who called 
 him a bore. He was forgetful at times of the biensiances, it seems, which 
 regulate the use of scissors and paste. He made ill-timed visits. He was 
 unmindful of the approach of ' the hour of going to press.' He lingered 
 over the paper when a neighbour was waiting for it, while he travelled far 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxvii 
 
 off amid the vast stores of his memory, seeking to clothe some fact or 
 truth of to-day in the splendour of a classic phrase or in some quaint old 
 Jesuit dress. When his brain was full-flowing to his tongue, he would 
 keep you under a tropical sun by the Luxor obelisk, and tell you when he 
 first knew Paris, and how he saw the scaffoldings of the Rue Royale, and 
 what historic pageants he had watched progressing inwards and outwards 
 by the Tuileries. Apposite anecdote, queer figure, sounding phrase cover- 
 ing wretched littleness, lace coats over muddy petty hearts : Monsieur de 
 Talleyrand, Beranger's de, everybody's de, Louis Philippe and his mess, the 
 poet-president and then the nephew of somebody who lives to rule the 
 roast — better roast, too, than Monsieur Chose got by contract for his guests 
 — ha ! ha ! the Father laughed, unmindful of the heat — and he gossiped 
 on. Louis Philippe as Ulysses ! as Leech could draw him, with bottle- 
 nose, a cotton umbrella under his arm, and a market-basket in his hand, 
 going out for the Sunday dinner. The store of recollection would gape 
 wide, and it would end with this, ' You've nothing to do for an hour, have 
 a cigar.'" Lightly touched in though this silhouette is, it is surely a 
 speaking likeness of the man whom, as Mgr. Rogerson reminds me, Vis- 
 count Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and others of the Whig party used 
 to look up as something to be seen in Paris and encouraged in politics. 
 
 Stooping his short and spare but thick-set figure as he walked, wearing 
 his ill-brushed hat upon the extreme back of his head, clothed in the 
 slovenliest way in a semi-clerical dress of the shabbiest character, he saun- 
 tered by, with his right arm habitually clasped behind him in his left hand 
 — altogether presenting to view so distinctly the appearance of a member of 
 one of the mendicant orders, that upon one occasion, in the Rue de Rivoli, an 
 intimate friend of his found it impossible to resist the impulse of slipping a 
 sou into the open palm of his right hand, with the apologetic remark, ' ' You 
 do look so like a beggar ! " Apart, however, from his threadbare garb and 
 shambling gait, there were personal traits of character about him which 
 caught the attention almost at a glance, and piqued the curiosity of even 
 the least observant wayfarer. The " roguish Hibernian mouth," noted 
 in his regard by Mr. Gruneisen, and the grey piercing eyes, that looked 
 up at you so keenly over his spectacles, Won your interest in him even 
 upon a first introduction. From the mocking lip soon afterwards, if you 
 fell into conversation with him, came the " loud snappish laugh," with 
 which, as Mr. Blanchard Jerrold remarks, the Father so frequently evi- 
 denced his appreciation of a casual witticism — uproarious fits of merri- 
 ment signalizing at other moments one of his own ironical successes, 
 outbursts of fun, followed during his later years by the racking cough with 
 which he was too often then tormented. His " pipes," as he called the 
 bronchial tubes, he mistakenly regarded as the only weak point in his con- 
 stitution, his physical strength having been mainly worn down at last by 
 diabetes. That disease, in the midst of a complication of maladies and 
 infirmities, first indicated its undermining influence by the excessive 
 depression it superinduced in his naturally hilarious temperament. Leading 
 in his domestic character the life of a recluse, he had only too obviously 
 ample opportunity for solitary reflection. Ordained to the priesthood, 
 consecrated to the service of God by the sacred chrism, not only, as has been 
 seen, h«d he ceased for years to exercise his sacerdotal faculties, but he had 
 even drifted away altogether, as already remarked, from the ordinary prac- 
 
xxviii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 - , - | - 
 
 tices of religion. It must be understood at once, however, and ought, in 
 justice to his memory, to be here stated as emphatically as words can in 
 any way express it, that — contrary to a belief in his regard still unhappily 
 very prevalent — he never was suspended ! More than this, no shadow 
 of a charge was ever directed against him of having, at any time, either 
 directly or indirectly, denied his Faith. He was never, it should be added, 
 besides, in any way seriously taken to task, either by the Holy See, 
 or by his immediate ecclesiastical superiors. More than this, the fact is 
 upon record, that the Tablet, having once incidentally referred to him as "a 
 suspended priest," was summarily challenged by him to prove its assertion 
 in a court of justice, Mahony laying his damages at ^2,000, and the result 
 being that an apology was instantly offered and the charge unconditionally 
 withdrawn. 
 
 About six weeks before Mahony's demise, the illness from which he had 
 for a considerable interval been more or less constantly suffering assumed 
 an unmistakably menacing character. He did then what he had done 
 three years previously when attacked by severe indisposition — he sent 
 round to St. Roch, his parish church, for the Abbe Rogerson. Thence- 
 forth, day after day, the latter was sedulously in attendance upon him in 
 his apartment. The spiritual adviser of the lonely wit became his friend, 
 his guide, his consoler. It is from the testimony of this venerated priest, 
 better known now as Monsignor Rogerson, that the facts are derived 
 which are here, for the first time in print, about to be enumerated. 
 Desirous as I naturally was, immediately upon my having undertaken to 
 become Mahony's biographer, to state only in his regard what was abso- 
 lutely authentic, but more particularly with reference to the incidents 
 attendant upon his deathbed, I turned instinctively, as a matter of 
 course, for the desired information to Mgr. Rogerson, my application to 
 whom, it is but the simplest justice to say, was responded to with the 
 most instant and gracious cordiality. Whatever materials Mgr. Rogerson 
 had at his command that were in any way likely to be serviceable to me, 
 he placed entirely at my discretion. The characteristic portrait, for 
 example, which forms the frontispiece to the present volume he has enabled 
 me to have engraved from the latest photograph of Mahony — that executed 
 by Weyler, of 45 in the Rue Lafitte : the very copy having been generously 
 confided to me for that purpose which was the sitter's last souvenir to his 
 deathbed confessor. Thanks to a similar kindness again, the very auto- 
 graph which will be found inscribed underneath that likeness has been fac- 
 similed from one of the very last and one of the most confidential letters 
 addressed to Mgr. Rogerson by the author of the Reliques. 
 
 During the closing six weeks of Mahony's existence, within which interval, 
 as has been said, he was brought day after day into intimate acquaintance 
 with Mgr. Rogerson, their usual hour of meeting was late in the afternoon. 
 Ordinarily the former's diurnal letter to the Globe had by that time been com- 
 pleted, Father Prout's special correspondence with that journal, by the way, 
 being continued up to within a fortnight of the actual date of his decease. 
 Upon one of these occasions, however, he had not quite finished his com- 
 munication. Hence, upon the Abbi showing himself at the door, which 
 generally stood open, Mahony called out with some asperity, "I'm busy." 
 " All right," was the reply " and not very civil to-day. That same evening 
 a line written with a black-lead pencil on his card was sent round to his 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxix 
 
 confessor — zoologically apologetic — thus : "If you will poke up a bear 
 in his hours of digestion, you must expect him to growl. " Hereupon, 
 Mgr. Rogerson remarks, that, although Mahony was undoubtedly by nature 
 testy and abrupt, he evidently, in his regard, restrained his impetuosity, as 
 a rule receiving him as a priest who had a duty to perform. The exception 
 just instanced he conceives to have betokened unmistakably the self-con- 
 quest which had already commenced. 
 
 Another slight ebullition of temper is also mentioned as having 
 occurred at one of their earlier conferences. Upon the occasion referred 
 to, the Abbe had thrown out, it appears, the suggestion that Mahony 
 should resort for purposes of especial devotion to Notre Dame des 
 Victoires, urging as its peculiar privilege, that that sanctuary was the 
 seat of the great archconfratemity for the conversion of sinners, as 
 well as a place of holy pilgrimage sought by people of all classes 
 when weighed down by any particular anguish or solicitude, adding that 
 at such times it was visited, among others, by the Empress Eugenie. 
 Upon this Mahony, who had listened sullenly to these remarks, kindling 
 into a poetic flame, exclaimed abruptly, " Don't talk to me of localizing 
 devotion. God is to be met with in all places. The canopy of heaven is 
 the roof of his temple : its walls are not our horizon," and so on. Seeing 
 clearly that he was in for a strenuous remonstrance, and realizing at once 
 the importance of asserting his own position in his regard, Mgr. Rbgetstm, 
 interrupting him, mildly observed, " Excuse me, I am speaking to you 
 under the impression that you are a Catholic wishful to resume his duty. 
 Byron has given us his rhapsodies in some such fashion as this. Pray let 
 me speak as a priest and as a believer. If you find me limited and illiberal 
 seek some one else." Having from the very outset been under the appre- 
 hension that he would in his intercourse with Mahony have to encounter 
 impatience of control and pride of intellect, Mgr. Rogerson deemed it 
 advisable, he says, at once to claim his position unhesitatingly, as here 
 described. In so doing it may be remarked at once that he succeeded 
 effectually. Mahony never repeated his assault, but on the contrary 
 remained to the last docile and tractable. Here, for example, is one of 
 the little epistolary indications he gave at this period of his having become 
 thoroughly amenable. Dating his note simply "6 o'clock — evening," he 
 writes as follows with reference to his intended general confession : — 
 
 " Dear and Reverend Friend, 
 
 " I am utterly unfit to accomplish the desired object this evening, 
 having felt a giddiness of head all the afternoon, and am now compelled to seek sleep. 
 It is my dearest wish to make a beginning of this merciful work, but complete prostration 
 of mind renders it unattainable just now. I will call in the morning and arrange for 
 seeing you. 
 
 Do pray for your 
 
 "penitent, F. Mahokv." 
 
 Mgr. Rogerson remembers also perfectly well, as he tells me, having been 
 influenced in his determination to take this resolute stand with Mahony, 
 by reason of his having been some time previously struck by the remark 
 of an Irish dignitary, who, when conversing with another bishop on the 
 subject of Father Prout, said in the Abba's hearing, "I should fear him 
 even dying ! " the reply of the prelate thus addressed being, "I should covet 
 no greater grace than to see poor Frank prepared to die well." When listen- 
 
xxx Biographical Introduction. 
 
 ing to those words the Abbe Rogerson little expected, as he says, that his 
 was to be the privilege and his the responsibility. The event actually 
 came to pass, however, on the evening of Friday, the 18th of May, i860, 
 at Mahony's apartment in the entresol of No. 19 in the Rue des Moulins, 
 and it did so, as will be seen at once, under circumstances of great conso- 
 lation both to penitent and confessor. 
 
 Their conversations for half a dozen weeks together, though generally brief 
 and business-like, had been often prolonged, extending at those times into 
 details of Father Prout's past history and reminiscences. Repeatedly 
 during the course of them, ejaculations like the following would start in 
 anguish from his lips : — " But I ought never to have been a priest ! " "I 
 had no vocation ! or exclamations of a similar character. As already 
 explained, the Jesuit Fathers, before it was yet too late, had striven in vain 
 to impress upon him, betimes, the same conviction. Their proverbial 
 powers of penetration had, as Mgr. Rogerson conjectures, enabled them 
 even then to detect what was invisible to Mahony himself, namely, a prepon- 
 derating excess of will and unusual intellectual endowments, together with 
 a ready armoury of dangerous wit and satire. Notwithstanding his general 
 recklessness when treating of Churchmen and Church matters, it is especially 
 noticeable in his regard that he never once allowed either his tongue or his 
 pen to give expression, with reference to his old masters, to any of those denun- 
 ciations of the great Order, so much in aGcord with the popular prejudices. 
 
 Mahony's remorseful sense of having obtruded himself into the Church 
 was; it may here be remarked; embodied by him in a document which the 
 Abbe Rogerson presented on his behalf to Rome when first he sought his aid 
 towards reconciling him to the Church of God. This was in 1863, when, 
 through the archbishop's office in Paris, permission was obtained for him 
 "to retire for ever," as he expressed it, "from the sanctuary," and to 
 resort thenceforth to lay communion. Simultaneously he received a dis- 
 pensation enabling him, in consideration of his failing eyesight and his 
 advancing age, to substitute the rosary or the penitential psalms for his 
 daily office in the Breviary. Mahony, it is worthy of note, drew up this 
 petition himself at the Abbe Rogerson's suggestion, both its completeness 
 and its latinity being so remarkable that the Roman ecclesiastical lawyer 
 who charged himself with it volunteered to the Abbi an expression at 
 once of his surprise and his admiration. Commenting upon this same 
 document Mgr. Rogerson himself remarks, that whilst Mahony's published 
 specimens of classical and canine Latin are no doubt the wonder and amuse- 
 ment of scholars, his taking up his pen, as he did in this instance, after 
 years of disuse, and in a couple of hours throwing off an ecclesiastical 
 paper full of technical details and phraseology, was, to say the least of it, 
 very remarkable. Already, at the period here immediately referred to, 
 that is three years prior to the end, the Abbe had the happiness of restor- 
 ing his penitent to practical life in the Church, though, greatly to the inter- 
 mediary's regret, only in the degree of lay communion. 
 
 To two alone of Father Prout's friends was this fact communicated — one of 
 these two being bound to him by ties of affection from their early youth, when 
 they were fellow-novices at Acheul, meaning the good Pere Lefevre, 'while 
 the other was the late saintly Bishop Grant of Southwark, .who had never, at 
 any time evidenced towards Mahony anything like estrangement. It was 
 the last-mentioned, by the way, who, in 1848, during Don Jeremy Savona- 
 
, Biographical Introduction. xxxi 
 
 rola's residence in Rome as the Daily News' Correspondent, "drew him, 
 in his. own sweet winning way," as Mgr; Rogerson expresses it, once 
 more within the sanctuary, Father Mahony then for the last time venturing 
 to offer up the Holy sacrifice. Matty years afterwards the two met by 
 accident one day in Paris, at the comer where the Rue de Rivoli turns into 
 the Rue Castiglione. The Bishop, stopping abruptly in front of Father 
 Prout, claimed him upon the instant as an old friend, calling him delight- 
 edly by his real name, and at once walked off with him arm-in-arm with 
 every evidence of affectionate cordiality. Referring with manifest pleasure 
 at the time to this incident, Mahony in 1863 requested the Abbe Rogerson 
 to communicate to Bishop Grant and to the Pere Lefevre, and to those two 
 intimates alone, the fact of his reconciliation. 
 
 When, towards the close of April, and yet more plainly at the beginning 
 of May, 1866, Mahony's last malady gave unmistakable evidence of its 
 alarming character, the Abbe Rogerson, finding that his penitent took to his 
 bed at length without reluctance (he who had always hitherto striven har9 
 toreceive his friends in his accustomed corner), directed his utmost efforts 
 to the completion of his work by the administration of the last sacraments. 
 Immediately prior to Father Prout's actually taking to his deathbed, upon 
 the last occasion, that is, of the Abbe's finding him yet "up," he was 
 huddled in his arm-chair, scantily clad, and eagerly expectant ! Mgr. 
 Rogerson's own words shall be here given : — " Thanking me for my patient 
 and persevering attention to him during his sickness, he asked pardon of 
 me and of the whole world for offences committed against God and to 
 the prejudice of his neighbour, and then sinking down in front of me, with 
 his face buried in his two hands and resting them on my knees, he received 
 from me with convulsive sobs the words of absolution. His genial Irish 
 heart was full to overflowing with gratitude to God as a fountain released 
 at this moment, and the sunshine of his early goodness had dispelled the 
 darkness of his after life, and he was as » child wearied and worn out after 
 a day's wanderings, when it had been lost and was found, when it had 
 hungered and was fed again. I raised him up, took him in my arms and 
 laid him on his bed as I would have treated such a little wanderer of a 
 child, and left him without leavetaking on his part, for his heart was too 
 full for words. " After this he never attempted to quit his bed, or desired 
 to see any one. At the Abbe Rogerson's suggestion, however, he consented 
 to see his fellow-novice of the old days, the Pere Lefevre, his parting with 
 whom is described as wonderfully touching. The old college intimate, 
 addressing him by his once familiar name as a novice, " Sylvestre, " embraced 
 him with an effusion of tenderness, and gave him rendezvous in eternity ! 
 
 Two days afterwards he received extreme unction at the hands of the 
 Abbe Rogerson. The latter had been desirous, it is true, of giving this 
 sacrament to him earlier, Mahony himself, however, entreating at the 
 time to be allowed to give the signal himself when he should feel prepared 
 for its administration. Immediately upon his confessor's appearance at his 
 bedside, on the very next morning, he uttered significantly the two words 
 "Holy Oils," upon hearing which the Abbe Rogerson lost no time in 
 summoning his assistants, and with the aid of the Abbe Chartrain gave 
 the solemn anointing. The last sacred rites having been completed, the 
 end was seen to be rapidly approaching. No articulate syllable from that 
 moment passed his lips, and at about half-past nine o'clock on the evening 
 
xxxii Biographical Introduction. 
 
 of Friday, the 18th May, 1866, he tranquilly expired in the presence of his 
 sister, Mrs. Woodlock, and of his friend and confessor, the Abb£ Rogerson. 
 "We could detect," says the latter, "the approach of the final moment, 
 and continued through the beautiful prayers for the agonizing, to appeal to 
 God, earnestly for him up to the very instant when his breathing ceased. 
 He could not, in fact," continues this sympathetic eyewitness, "have sur- 
 rounded himself with more accessories of grace had he been permitted to 
 sketch out his mode of quitting life ; and I feel that our ever-merciful 
 Saviour, His compassionate Mother, and the whole Court of Heaven must 
 have welcomed this one other ' lost and found,' wounded it may be and 
 having many sores, and requiring the process of renewal in Purgatorial 
 detention, but — saved. No other thought or feeling comes back to me to 
 interrupt as a cloud the clear remembrance that I hold of this event," 
 observes Mgr. Rogerson in conclusion, "and it troubles me to hear un- 
 catholic reflections pronounced by those whose faith and the experiences 
 of life, and much more the 'charity that hopeth all things,' ought to 
 check, admonish, and deter* 'And thinkest thou, O man, that judgest 
 them that do such things, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? 
 or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long-suffer- 
 ing?' Rom. ii. 3, 4." With reason did the then British consul at Barce- 
 lona, James Hannay, write of his old friend, on the morrow of Mahony's 
 death, in the Pall Mall Gazette : — " Probably nc man with whom he was 
 brought into contact, friendly or otherwise, but will hear with satisfaction 
 that a sister of his blood and a priest of his faith cheered the deathbed of 
 the lonely old wit and scholar, and helped to make his last hours pass 
 tranquilly away. " More tranquilly, as will be evident now upon unques- 
 tionable authority, he could not well have passed the awful boundary line 
 that divides time from eternity. 
 
 It is characteristic of the magnanimity of the venerable Archbishop 
 McHale, who still survives, at the patriarchal age of a nonogenarian, that 
 years ago he checked one whom he overheard reprehending Mahony by 
 observing that, after all, the Irishman who wrote Father Prout s papers was 
 an honour to his country. Dying abroad though he did, his remains had 
 fitting sepulture at once in his native land, at his birthplace, Cork, on 
 the banks of the liver Lee, under the shadow of the spire and within sound 
 of those Bells of Shandon he had sung of so lovingly and harmoniously in 
 his lyrical masterpiece. Immediately upon its arrival at Cork, upon the 
 evening of Sunday, the 27th May, 1866, the coffin containing his remains 
 was disembarked from the London steamer and conveyed to St. Patrick's 
 Church, King Street, where it was laid in front of the sanctuary until 
 the following morning. Shortly after daybreak, masses were said there 
 for the repose of the soul of the deceased, at each mass large numbers 
 attending. At eight o'clock, Bishop Delaney, preceded by a long procession 
 of priests, entered from the sacristy and sang the Miserere. Another pro- 
 cession being formed upon the completion of the solemn requiem and the 
 aspergings, the remains were borne to the bier which stood in readiness at 
 the gates, and conducted, with twenty priests in attendance, to the vaults at 
 Shandon, in which, among the dust of many generations of Frank Mahony's 
 kith and kin, they have ever since reposed. 
 
 By a curious irony of fate — remembering how Mahony during his last 
 illness had remarked to the Abbe" Rogerson, with especial reference to his 
 
Biographical Introduction. xxxiii 
 
 threatened action against the Tablet for defamation of character, " I have 
 spoken of the C«//?»ization of Ireland, and that amounts to heresy with 
 some people," — the very number of the Cork Examiner containing the 
 account of the funeral ceremony at Shandon, gave on the opposite page 
 the announcement from the Freeman's Journal that "His Holiness the 
 Pope, appreciating the eminent services rendered to the Catholic Church 
 by the most reverend Dr. Cullen, has elevated his grace to the dignity 
 of Cardinal." According to a statement, put forth with the utmost gravity 
 of manner, by the late Mr. Gruneisen, in the Pall Mall Gazette, of the 
 25th of May, 1866, a Cardinal's hat might have been had by Mahony 
 himself, "but for that which was imputed to him as his one great fault- 
 conviviality. At Rome, " continued the writer, "so strongly impressed were 
 the leading men of the Church with his abilities, that it was intimated to 
 him that he might hope to rise high in honours ecclesiastical if he would 
 devote his exclusive services to the Pope. He assented : a period of pro- 
 bation was assigned during which it was ascertained that his notions of 
 temperance were too liberal for the Church." Mr. Gruneisen further 
 asserts in plain words, " Prout told me the temptation he had at Rome," 
 that is to this advancement — the archwag not impossibly meaning 
 all the while to the conviviality. The Pall Malts Correspondent, though 
 frankly acknowledging, "I treated his statement at the time as a joke," 
 adds, "but, from one of the highest Church authorities in Paris I sub- 
 sequently had full confirmation of the fact that the Cardinal's hat was 
 actually offered to him in prospect, and that he lost the distinction as 
 I have intimated. " On submitting these wild rumours and wilder asser- 
 tions to the dispassionate judgment of Mgr. Rogerson, I have the latter's 
 assurance that Prout at any rate never once spoke to him of a Cardinal's 
 hat, and that for his own part he cannot consider the idea in any way to 
 have accorded with Mahony's then character. 
 
 Besides the original edition of "The Reliques," published in two 
 volumes by James Fraser in 1836, another edition in one volume was 
 issued from the press in i860, otherwise, during Mahony's lifetime, as an 
 important integral part of Bonn's Illustrated Library. Supplementary to 
 these two editions, an exceedingly miscellaneous collection of his writings 
 as a journalist and of memorabilia in his regard contributed by various 
 hands, those of several of his friends, acquaintances, and contemporaries, 
 appeared in 1875, under the editorship of Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, with the 
 title of " Final Reliques of Father Prout." The materials compacted 
 together in that volume, however, interesting and valuable though 
 some of them undoubtedly were, it must be admitted were so loosely put 
 together and so confusedly arranged, that their general effect was a source 
 rather of disappointment than of satisfaction. The present edition of the 
 collected "Works of Father Prout" is the third that has yet made its 
 appearance. Several estimates of the genius and learning, the wit and 
 wisdom, of Francis Mahony have been put forth at different times in the 
 periodicals both of France and of England, three of which may be regarded 
 as of sufficient intrinsic excellence to entitle them to be here enumerated. 
 Two of these were from the skilled and scholarly hand of no less sound a 
 critic than the late James Hannay, who first of all in the Universal Review 
 for February, 1 860, weighed in the balance and did not find wanting the 
 humoristic erudition of Father Prout ; and who upon the morrow of 
 C 
 
Mahony's decease, six years afterwards, with brilliant effect held up in 
 Contrast to each other in the North British Review for September, 1866, 
 those three typical humorists of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Pea- 
 cock, 'Ayrcinvarrd--Proutr~ irwaCTrnr iKr-THentidHed'-pape? beyesd all 
 question which in the following year suggested to a French critic the 
 article entitled "Trois Ecrivains (humorist) Anglais," meaning Hood, 
 Prout, and Thackeray, which in 1867 appeared in the Revue Britan- 
 nique. The Works themselves, however, which are here brought 
 together, and arranged in chronological sequence, will, without any 
 extraneous aid whatever in that direction, mbst surely guide the saga- 
 cious reader to their just appraisement. They are as exhilarating as the 
 first runnings of a well-filled wine-press, the grapes heaped together 
 in which have been ripened by laughing suns and grown in classic 
 vineyards. 
 
THE 
 
 zli£[utB at Jfatjwr ^xaui, 
 
 LATE 
 
 % % of SHaiergrassijtII, in tf»c ©ountjj of arotfc, Ireland. 
 
 COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 PREAM BLE. 
 
 [The Preface to the First Edition of the " Reliques," published in 1836, in two 
 volumes post octavo, by James Fraser, of 215, Regent Street, was thus entitled. The 
 work was embellished with eighteen daintily-pencilled illustrations by Alfred Croquis, 
 afterwards famous under his real came as Daniel Maclise the Royal Academician.] 
 
 It is much to be regretted that our Author should he no longer in the 
 land of the living, to furnish a general Preamble, explanatory of the scope 
 and tendency of his multifari6us writings. By us, on whom, with the con- 
 tents of his coffer, hath devolved the guardianship of his glory, such de- 
 ficiency is keenly felt ; having learnt from Epictetus that every sublunary 
 thing has two handles (nap lrpayixa Svas «x«' A«d8«), and from experience 
 that mankind are prone to take hold of the wrong one. King Ptolemy, to 
 whom we owe the first translation of the Bible into a then vulgar tongue 
 (and consequently a long array of "centenary celebrations "), proclaimed, 
 in the pithy inscription placed by his order over the entrance of the Alex- 
 andrian Library, that books were a sort of physic. The analogy is just, 
 and pursuing it, we would remark that, like other patent medicines, they 
 should invariably be accompanied with "directions for use." Such vpoKe- 
 
xxx vi Preamble. 
 
 yo/ieva would we in the present case be delighted ourselves to supply, but 
 that we have profitably studied the fable of La Fontaine entitled " L'Ane 
 quiportail les Reliques " (liv. v. fab. 14). 
 
 Nevertheless.it is not our intention, in giving utterance to such a very natu- 
 ral regret, to insinuate that the present production of the lamented writer is 
 unfinished, abortive, or incomplete : on the contrary, our interest prompts 
 us to pronounce it complete, as far as it goes. It requires, in point of fact, 
 no extrinsic matter ; and Prout, as an author, wnl be found what he was 
 in the flesh—" totus teres atque rotundus." Still, a suitable introduction, 
 furnished by a kindred genius, would in our idea be ornamental. The 
 Pantheon of republican Rome, perfect in its simplicity, yet derived a sup- 
 plementary grace from the portico superadded by Agrippa. 
 
 All that remains for us to say under the circumstances is to deprecate 
 the evil constructions which clumsy "journeymen" may hereafter put on 
 the book. In our opinion it can bear none. 
 
 The readers of Preiser's Magazine will recognize these twelve papers as 
 having been originally put forth, under our auspices, in one year's consecu- 
 tive numbers of Regina — i.e., from the 1st of April, 1834, to the recurrence 
 of that significant date in 1835. For reprinting them in their present 
 shape we might fairly allege the urgent " request of friends," had not the 
 epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot made that formula too ridiculous ; we will, there- 
 fore content ourselves by stating that we merely seek to justify, by this 
 undertaking, the confidential trust reposed in us by the parish of Water- 
 grasshill. 
 
 Much meditating on the materials that fill " the chest," and daily more 
 impressed with the merit of our author, we thought it a pity that its wis- 
 dom should be suffered to evaporate in magazine squibs. What impression 
 could, in sooth, be made on the public mind by such desultory explosions? 
 Never on the dense mass of readers can isolated random shots produce the 
 effect of a regular feu de peloton. For this reason we have arranged in one 
 volume his files of mental musketry, to secure a simultaneous discharge. 
 The hint, perhaps, of right belongs to the ingenious Fieschi. 
 
 We have been careful to preserve the order of succession in which these 
 essays first met the public eye, prefixing to each such introductory com- 
 ments as from time to time we felt disposed to indulge in, with reference 
 to synchronous occurrences — for, on looking back, we find we have been 
 on some occasions historical, on others prophetical, and not unfrequently 
 rhapsodical. This latter charge we fully anticipate, candidly confessing 
 that we have been led into the practice by the advice and example of 
 Pliny the Younger : " Ipsa varietatc," are his words, "tentaihus efficere ut 
 
Preamble. xxxvii 
 
 alia aliii, qucedam fortasse omnibus placeant." This would appear to con- 
 stitute the whole theory of miscellaneous writing : nor ought it to be for- 
 gotten by the admirers of more strictly methodical disquisition, that — 
 
 " L'ennui naguit un jour de I'umformitc. " 
 
 Caterers for public taste, we apprehend, should act on gastronomic 
 principles; according to which "toujour! Prout" would be far less 
 acceptable than "toujours perdrix:" hence the necessity for a few liors 
 d , auvres. 
 
 We have hitherto had considerable difficulty in establishing, to the satis- 
 faction of refractory critics, the authenticity of one simple fact ; viz. , that 
 of our author's death, and the consequently posthumous nature of ther-e 
 publications. People absurdly persist in holding him in the light of a 
 living writer : hence a sad waste of wholesome advice, which, if judiciously 
 expended on some reclaimable sinner, would, no doubt, fructify in due 
 season. In his case 'tis a dead loss — Prout is a literary mummy ! Folks 
 should look to this : Lazarus will not come forth to listen to their stric- 
 tures ; neither, should they happen to be in a complimentary mood, will 
 Samuel arise at the witchery of commendation. 
 
 Objects of art and virtu lose considerably by not being viewed in their 
 proper light ; and the common noonday effulgence is not the fittest for the 
 right contemplation of certain capi d 'opera. Canova, we know, preferred 
 the midnight taper. Let therefore, " ut /maris religuiis" [P/iizd. lib. i. 
 fab. 22), the dim penumbra of a sepulchral lamp shed its solemn influence 
 over the page of Prout, and alone preside at its perusal. 
 
 Posthumous authorship, we must say, possesses infinite advantages ; and 
 nothing so truly serves a book as the writer's removal by death or trans- 
 portation from the sphere or hemisphere of his readers. The " Memoirs 
 of Captain Rock " were rendered doubly interesting by being dated from 
 Sidney Cove. Byron wrote from Venice with increased effect. Nor can 
 we at all sympathize with the exiled Ovid's plaintive utterance, ' ' Sine me, 
 liber, ibis in urbem." His absence from town, he must have known, was a 
 right good thing for his "publisher under the pillars." But though distance 
 be useful, death is unquestionably better. Far off, an author is respected ; 
 dead, he is beloved. Extinctus, amabitur. 
 
 [This theory is incidentally dwelt on by Prout himself in one of his 
 many papers published by us, though not comprised within the present 
 limited collection. In recounting the Roman adventures of his fellow- 
 townsman Barry, he takes the occasion to contrast the neglect which his 
 friend experienced during life with the rank now assigned him in pictorial 
 celebrity. 
 
xxxviii Preamble. 
 
 Ainsi les maltres de la lyre 
 
 Fartout exhalent leur chagrins ; 
 Vivans, la haine les dechire, 
 £t ces dieux, que la terre admire, 
 
 Ont peu compt«S de jours serens. 
 
 Longtemps la gloire fugitive 
 
 Semble tromper leur noble orgeuil ; 
 La gloire enfin pour eux arrive, 
 Et toujours sa palme tardive 
 
 Croit plus belle pres d'un cerceuiL 
 
 Fontanes, Ode d Chateaubriand. 
 
 I've known the youth with genius cursed — 
 I've mark'd his eye hope-lit at first ; 
 Then seen his heart indignant burst. 
 
 To find his efforts scorn'd. 
 Soft on his pensive hour I stole. 
 And saw him draw, with anguish'd soul. 
 Glory's immortal muster-roll. 
 
 His name should have adorn'd. 
 
 His fate had been, with anxious mind, 
 To chase the phantom Fame— to find 
 His grasp eluded ! Calm, resign'd, 
 
 He knows his doom— he dies. 
 Then comes Renown, then Fame appears, 
 Glory proclaims the Coffin hers ! 
 Aye greenest over sepulchres 
 
 Palm-tree and laurel rise. 
 
 Prout, Notti Romane nel Palazzo Vaticano.] 
 
 We recollect to have been forcibly struck with a practical application of 
 this doctrine to commercial enterprise when we last visited Paris. The 
 2nd of November, being "All SoulsV ..y,"* had drawn a concourse of 
 melancholy people to Pine la [Chaise, ourselves with the rest ; on which 
 occasion our eye was arrested, in one of the most sequestered walks of that 
 romantic necropolis, by the faint glimmering of a delicious little lamp — a 
 glow-worm of bronze — keeping silent and sentimental vigil under a modest 
 urn of black marble, inscribed thus :— 
 
 Ci-git Fournibr (Pierre Victor), 
 
 Inventeur bre'vete* des lampes dites sans fin, 
 
 Brulant une centime d'huile a l'heure. 
 
 IL FUT BON PERE, BON FILS, BON EPOUX. 
 
 SA VEUVE INCONSOLABLE 
 
 Continue son commerce, Rue atix Ours, No. 19. -••- 
 
 Elie fait des envois dans les de"partemens. 
 
 N.B. ne pas confondre avec la boutique en face s.v.r>. 
 
 R. 1. p. 
 
Preamble. xxxix 
 
 We had been thinking of purchasing an article of the kind ; so, on our 
 return, we made it a point to pass the Rue mix Ours, and give our custom 
 to the mournful Artemisia. On entering the shop, a rubicund tradesman 
 accosted us; but we intimated our wish to transact business with "the 
 widow," "La veuve inconsolable?" " Eh, fardieu 1 c'est moil je suis, 
 moi, Pierre Fournier, inventeur, &c. : la veuve n'est qitun symbole, un 
 mythe." We admired his ingenuity, and bought his lamp ; by the mild 
 ray of which patent contrivance we have profitably pursued our editorial 
 labours. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Regent Street, Feb. 29, 1836. 
 
 * In the first edition of the " Reliques " the date of All Souls' was given very literally 
 indeed by a " clerical " error as the 1st of November 
 
"At Covent Garden a sacred drama, on the story of Jephtha, 
 conveying solemn impressions, is prohibited as a profanation of 
 tie period of fasting and mortification ! There is no doubt where the 
 odium should fix — on the Lord Chamberlain or on the Bishop of 
 London. Let some intelligent Member of Parliament bring the ques- 
 tion before the House of Commons." 
 
 Times, Feb. 20 and 21, 1834. 
 
THE WORKS OF FATHER PROUT. 
 
 THE RELIQUES. 
 
 I. 
 Jktfctr froui's ^polxrgg for %tnt 
 
 HIS DEATH, OBSEQUIES, AND AN ELEGY. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, Aprils 1834.) 
 
 — — 
 
 [Mahony*s first contribution to Eraser appeared in the same number in which Carlyle 
 completed the second of the three books of his " Sartor Resartus." The now well-known 
 Magazine, which had already won to itself a high degree of popularity, had but just then 
 rounded the fourth year of its existence. Its salient feature from its commencement had 
 been, as it long continued to be, the publication in each monthly instalment of one in a 
 singularly varied Gallery of Literary Characters. These were doubly sketched, and 
 with about an equally startling vividness, by the pseudonymous pencil of Alfred Croquis, 
 a young artist afterwards world-famous in his own name as Daniel Maclise, R. A., and, 
 upon a confronting leaf, by the pen of an anonymous writer, who was in reality no less 
 caustic and scholarly a wit than Dr. William Maginn, then the responsible editor of 
 Regina. No. 47 in that Gallery portrayed thus, in walking costume, for the amuse- 
 ment of the readers of Fraser, the well-buttoned-up form and vinous countenance of 
 '1 heodore Hook, author of " Sayings and Doings." A couple of years afterwards, when 
 " The Reliques" were collected together for independent publication, Maclise's facile 
 pencil adorned this opening chapter with two embellishments, one of them forming the 
 frontispiece to the first volume, being his wicked limning, under embowering nets, of 
 Mahony seated vis-d-vis with his alter ego or eidolon Father Prout, each busily engaged, 
 fork in hand, discussing his — ahem !— Apology for Lent ! " relays of dishes being 
 brought in processionally to the already well-laden board ; while the other, the companion 
 vignette, appended to this opening instalment of the " Reliques," delineated, under the 
 two significant words " Pace Implora," the reverend Father's solemn interment] 
 
 " Cependant, suivant la chronique, 
 Le Careme, depuis un mois, 
 Sur tout l'univers Catholique 
 Etendait ses *6veres lois." — Gresset. 
 
 There has been this season in town a sad outcry against Lent. For the first 
 week the metropolis was in a complete uproar at the suppression of the 
 oratorio ; and no act of authority since the fatal ordonnances of Charles X. 
 bid fairer to revolutionize a capital than the message sent from Bishop Blom- 
 field to Manager Bunn. That storm has happily blown over. The Cockneys, 
 having fretted their idle hour, and vented their impotent ire through their 
 C* 
 
The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " safety-valve," the press, have quietly relapsed into their wonted attitude of 
 indifference and resumed their customary calm. The clamour of the day is 
 now passed and gone, and the dramatic " murder of Jephtha " is forgotten. In 
 truth, after all, there was something due to local reminiscences ; and when the 
 present tenants of the " Garden" recollect that in by-gone days these " deep 
 solitudes and awful cells " were the abode of fasting and austerity, they will 
 not grudge the once-hallowed premises to commemorate in sober stillness the 
 Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. But let that rest. An infringement on 
 the freedom of theatricals, though in itself a grievance, will not, in all likeli- 
 hood, be the immediate cause of a convulsion in these realms ; and it will 
 probably require some more palpable deprivation to arouse the sleeping 
 energies of John Bull, and to awake his dormant anger. 
 
 It was characteristic of the degeneracy of the Romans, that while they 
 crouched in prostrate servility to each imperial monster that swayed their desti- 
 nies in succession, they never would allow their amusements to be invaded, nor 
 tolerate a cessation of the sports of the amphitheatre ; so that even the despot, 
 while he riveted their chains, would pause and shudder at the well-known 
 ferocious cry of "Pattern et Circmsesl" Now, food and the drama stand 
 relatively to each other in very different degrees of importance in England ; 
 and while provisions are plentiful, other matters have but a minor influence on 
 the popular sensibilities. The time may come, when, by the bungling measures 
 of a Whig administration, brought to their full maturity of mischief by the 
 studied neglect of the agricultural and shipping interests, the general disorgan- 
 ization of the state-machinery at home, and the natural results of their inter- 
 meddling abroad, — a dearth of the primary articles of domestic consumption 
 may bring to the Englishman's fireside the broad conviction of a misrule and 
 mismanagement too long and too sluggishly endured. It may then be too 
 late to apply remedial measures with efficacy ; and the only resource left, may 
 be, like Caleb Balderstone at Wolf's Crag, to proclaim "a general fast." 
 When that emergency shall arise, the quaint and original, nay, sometimes 
 luminous and philosophic, views of Father Prout on the fast of Lent, may 
 afford much matter for speculation tp.theBritish public l or,. as Childe Harold 
 says, 
 
 " Much that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly." 
 
 Before we bring forward Father Prout's lucubrations on this grave subject, 
 it -may be allowable, by way of preliminary observation, to remark, that, as 
 far as Lent is concerned, as well indeed as in all other matters, " they manage 
 these things differently abroad." In foreign countries a carnival is the 
 appropriate prelude to abstemiousness ; and folks get such a surfeit of 
 amusement during the saturnalian days which precede its observance, that they 
 find a grateful repose in the sedate quietude that ensues. The custom is a 
 point of national taste, which I leave to its own merits ; but whoever has 
 resided on the continent must have observed that all this bacchanalian riot 
 suddenly terminates on Shrove Tuesday ; the fun and frolic expire with the 
 ■ ' boeuf-gras ; " and the shouts of the revellers, so boisterous and incessant 
 during the preceding week, on Ash Wednesday are heard no more. A singu- 
 lar ceremony in all the churches— that of sprinkling over the congregation 
 on that Wednesday the pulverized embers of the boughs of an evergreen 
 (meant, I suppose, as an emblem and record of man's mortality) — appears to 
 have the instantaneous effect of turning their thoughts into a different channel : 
 the busy hum subsides at once ; and learned commentators have found, in the 
 fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, a prophetic allusion to this magic operation : 
 
 " Hi motus animorum atque hsec certamina tanta 
 Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt." 
 
 The non-consumption of butchers' meat, and the substitution of fish diet, 
 
Father P rout's Apology for Lent. 
 
 is also a prominent feature in the continental form of observing Lent ; and on 
 this topic Father Prout has been remarkably discursive, as will be seen on 
 perusal of the following pages. To explain how I became the depositary of 
 the reverend man's notions, and why he did not publish them in his lifetime 
 (for, alas ! he is no more — peace be to his ashes ! ) is a duty which I owe the 
 reader, and from which I am far from shrinking. I admit that some apology 
 is required for conveying the lucid and clarified ideas of a great and good 
 divine through the opaque and profane medium that is now employed to bring 
 them under the public eye ; I account for it accordingly. 
 
 I am a younger son. I belong to an ancient, but poor and dilapidated 
 house, of which the patrimonial estate was barely enough for my elder ; hence, 
 as my share resembled what is scientifically called an evanescent quantity, I 
 was directed to apply to that noble refuge of unprovided genius — the bar! 
 Tp (he bar, with a heavy heart and aching head, I devoted year after year, 
 and was about to become a tolerable proficient in the black letter, when an 
 epistle from Ireland reached me in Furnival's Inn, and altered my prospects ma- 
 terially. This despatch was from an old Roman Catholic aunt whom I had in 
 that country, and whose house I had been sent to, when a child, on the specu- 
 lation that this visit to my venerable relative, who, to her other good qualities, 
 added that of being a resolute spinster, might determine her, as she was both 
 rich and capricious, to make me her inheritor. The letter urged my imme- 
 diate presence in the dying chamber of the Lady Cresswell ; and as no time was 
 to be lost, I contrived to reach in two days the lonely and desolate mansion on 
 Watergrasshill, in the vicinity of Cork. As I entered ' the apartment, by the 
 scanty light of the lamp that glimmered dimly, I recognized, with some 
 difficulty, the emaciated form of my gaunt and withered kinswoman, over 
 whose features, originally thin and wan, the pallid hue of approaching death 
 cast additional ghastliness. By the bedside stood the rueful and unearthly 
 form of Father Prout ; and, while the sort of chiaroscuro in which his figure 
 appeared, half shrouded, half revealed, served to impress me with a proper 
 awe for his solemn functions, the scene itself, and the probable consequences 
 to me of this last interview with my aunt, affected me exceedingly. I involun- 
 tarily knelt ; and while I felt my hands grasped by the long, cold, and bony 
 fingers of the dying, my whole frame thrilled ; and her words, the last she 
 spoke in this world, fell on my ears with all the effect of a potent witchery, 
 never to be forgotten! "Frank," said the Lady Cresswell, "my lands and 
 perishable riches I have bequeathed to you, though you hold not the creed of 
 which this is a minister, and I the a worthless but steadfast votary : only 
 promise me and this holy man that, in memory of one to whom your welfare 
 is dear, you will keep the fast of Lent while you live ; and, as I cannot control 
 your inward belief, be at least in this respect a Roman Catholic : I ask no 
 more." How could I have refused so simple an injunction? and what junior 
 member of She . bar would not hold a good rental by so easy a tenure ? In 
 brief,. I was.pledged in that solemn hour to Father Prout, and to my kind and 
 simple-hearted aunt, whose grave is in Rathcooney, and whose soul is in 
 heaven. 
 
 During my short stay at Watergrasshill (a wild and romantic district, of 
 which every brake and fell, every bog and quagmire, is well known to Crofton 
 Croker — for it is the very Arcadia of his fictions), I formed an intimacy with this 
 Father Andrew Prout, the pastor of the upland, and a man celebrated in the 
 south of Ireland. He was one of that race of priests now unfortunately 
 extinct, or very nearly so, like the old breed of wolf-dogs, in the island : I 
 allude to those of his order who were educated abroad, before the French 
 revolution, and had imbibed, from associating with the polished and high-born 
 clergy of the old Gallican church, a loftier range of thought, and a superior 
 delicacy of sentiment. Hence, in his evidence before the House of Lords, 
 
The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ' ' the glorious Dan " has not concealed the grudge he feels towards those 
 clergymen, educated on the Continent, who, having witnessed the doings 
 of the sansculottes in France, have no fancy to a rehearsal of the same in 
 Ireland. Of this class was Prout, P.P. of Watergrasshill ; but his real 
 value was very faintly appreciated by his rude flock : he was not understood by 
 his contemporaries ; his thoughts were not their thoughts, neither could he 
 commune with kindred souls on that wild mountain. Of his genealogy 
 nothing was ever known with certainty ; but in this he resembled Melchizedek: 
 like Eugene Aram, he had excited the most intense interest in the highest 
 quarters, still did he studiously court retirement He was thought by some 
 to be deep in alchemy, like Friar Bacon ; but the gaugers never even suspected 
 him of distilling " potheen." He was known to have brought from France a 
 spirit of the most chivalrous gallantry ; still, like Fenelon retired from the 
 court of Louis XIV., he shunned the attractions of the sex, for the sake of 
 his pastoral charge : but in the rigour of his abstinence, and the frugality of 
 his diet, he resembled no one, and none kept Lent so strictly. 
 
 Of his gallantry one anecdote will be sufficient. The fashionable Mrs. P , 
 
 with two female companions, travelling through the county of Cork, stopped 
 for Divine service at the chapel of Watergrasshill (which is on the high road 
 on the Dublin line), and entered its rude gate while Prout was addressing his 
 congregation. His quick eye soon detected his fair visitants standing behind 
 the motley crowd, by whom they were totally unnoticed, so intent were all 
 on the discourse ; when, interrupting the thread of his homily, to procure 
 suitable accommodation for the strangers, "Boys!" cried the old man, "why 
 don't ye give three chairs for the ladies ? " " Three cheers for the ladies ! " 
 re-echoed at once the parish clerk. It was what might be termed a clerical, 
 but certainly a very natural, error ; and so acceptable a proposal was suitably 
 responded to by the frieze-coated multitude, whose triple shout shook the very 
 cobwebs on the roof of the chapel ! — after which slight incident, service was 
 quietly resumed. 
 
 He was extremely fond of angling; a recreation which, while it ministered 
 to his necessary relaxation from the toils of the mission, enabled him to 
 observe cheaply the fish diet imperative on fast days. For this he had estab- 
 lished his residence at the mountain-source of a considerable brook, which, 
 after winding through the parish, joins the Blackwater at Fermoy ; and on its 
 banks would be found, armed with his rod, and wrapped in his strange 
 cassock, fit to personate the river-god or presiding genius of the stream. [Old 
 Izaak Walton would have liked the man exceedingly.] 
 
 His modest parlour would not ill become the hut of one of the fishermen of 
 Galilee. A huge net in festoons curtained his casement ; a salmon-spear, 
 sundry rods, and fishing tackle, hung round the walls and over his bookcase, 
 which latter object was to him the perennial spring of refined enjoyment. 
 Still he would sigh for the vast libraries of France, and her well-appointed 
 scientific halls, where he had spent his youth, in converse with the first 
 literary characters and most learned divines; and once he directed mv 
 attention to what appeared to be a row of folio volumes at the bottom of his 
 collection, but which I found on trial to be so many large stone-flags, with 
 parchment backs, bearing the appropriate title of Cornelii A Lapide 
 Opera qua extant omnia ; by which semblance of that old Jesuit's commen- 
 taries he consoled himself for the absence of the original. 
 
 His classic acquirements were considerable, as will appear by his essay on 
 Lent ; and while they made him a most instructive companion, his unobtrusive 
 merit left the most favourable impression. The general character of a 
 churchman is singularly improved by the tributary accomplishments of the 
 scholar, and literature is like a pure grain of Araby's incense in the golden 
 censer of religion. His taste for the fine arts was more genuine than mi«ht 
 
 L 
 
Father P rout's Apology for Lent. 
 
 be conjectured from the scanty specimens that adorned his apartment, 
 though perfectly in keeping with his favourite sport ; for there bung over the 
 mantelpiece a print of Raphael's cartoon the " Miraculous Draught ; " here, 
 "Tobith rescued by an Angel from the Fish;" and there, "St. Anthony 
 preaching to the Fishes." 
 
 With this learned Theban I held a long and serious converse on the nature 
 of the antiquated observance I had pledged myself to keep up ; and oft have 
 we discussed the matter at his frugal table, aiding our conferences with a plate 
 of water-cresses and a red herring. I have taken copious notes of Father 
 Prout's leading topics ; and while I can vouch them as his genuine arguments, 
 I will not be answerable for the style ; which may possibly be my own, and 
 probably, like the subject, exceedingly jejune. 
 
 I publish them in pure self-defence. I have been so often called on to 
 explain my peculiarities relative to Lent, that I must resort to the press for a 
 riddance of my persecutors. The spring, which exhilarates all nature, is to 
 me but the herald of tribulation ; for it is accompanied in the Lent season 
 with a recurrence of a host of annoyances consequent on the tenure by 
 which I hold my aunt's property. I have at last resolved to state my case 
 openly; and I trust that, taking up arms against a sea of troubles, I may, by 
 exposing, end them. No blessing comes unalloyed here below : there is ever 
 a cankerworm in the rose ; a dactyl is sure to be mixed up with a spondee in 
 the poetry of life ; and, as Homer sings, there stand two urns, or crocks, 
 beside the throne of Jove, from which he doles out alternate good and bad 
 gifts to men, but mostly both together. 
 
 I grant, that to repine at one's share of the common allotment would 
 indicate bad taste, and afford evidence of ill-humour : but still a passing 
 insight into my case will prove it one of peculiar hardship. As regularly as 
 dinner is announced, so surely do I know that my hour is come to be stared 
 at as a disciple of Pythagoras, or scrutinized as a follower of the Venetian 
 Cornaro. I am "a lion" at "feeding time." To tempt me from my 
 allegiance by the proffer of a turkey's wing, to eulogize the sirloin, or dwell on 
 the haut go<U of the haunch, are among my friends' (?) practical sources of 
 merriment. To reason with them at such unpropitious moments, and against 
 such fearful odds, would be a hopeless experiment ; and I have learned from 
 Horace and Father Prout, that there are certain mollia tempora, fandi, which 
 should always be attended to : in such cases I chew the cud of my resentment, 
 and eke out my repast on salt-fish in silence. None will be disposed to 
 question my claim to the merit of fortitude. In vain have I been summoned 
 by the prettiest lisp to partake of the most tempting delicacies. I have 
 declined each lady-hostess's hospitable offer, as if, to speak in classic parlance, 
 Canidia tract avit dapes ; or, to use the vernacular phraseology of Moore, 
 as if 
 
 " The trail of the serpent was over them all." 
 Hence, at the club I am looked on as a sort of rara avis ; or, to speak 
 more appropriately, as an odd fish. Some have spread a report that I have a 
 large share in the Hungerford Market ; others, that I am a Saint Simonian. 
 A fellow of the Zoological Society has ascertained, forsooth, from certain 
 maxillary appearances, that I am decidedly of the class of tydvoQayai, with a 
 mixture of the herbivorous. When the truth is known, as it will be on the 
 publication of this paper, it will be seen that I am no phenomenon what- 
 ever. 
 
 My witty cousin, Harriet R., will no longer consider me a fit subject for the 
 exercise of her ingenuity, nor present me a copy of Gray's Poems, with the 
 page turned down at "An Elegy on a Cat drowned in a Tub of Gold 
 Fishes." She will perhaps, when asked to sing, select some other aria 
 besides that eternal barcarolle. 
 
The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 " O pescator dell' onda, 
 ' Vieni pescar in qu& 
 
 Colla Delia tua barca ! ** 
 
 and if I happen to approach the loo-table, she will not think it again 
 necessary to caution the old dowagers to take care of their fish. 
 
 Revenons a nos moutons. When last I supped with Father Prout, on the 
 eve of my departure from Watergrasshill (and I can only compare my reminis- 
 cences of that classic banquet to Xenophon's account of the symposion of 
 Plato), " Young man," said he, "you had a good aunt in the Lady Cresswell ; 
 and if you thought as we do, that the orisons of kindred and friends can benefit 
 the dead, you should pray for her as long as you live. But you belong to a 
 different creed — different, I mean, as to this particular point ; for, as a whole, 
 your Church of England bears a close resemblance to ours of Rome. The 
 daughter will ever inherit the leading features of the mother ; and though in 
 your eyes the fresh and unwithered fascinations of the new faith may fling into 
 the shade the more matronly graces of the old, somewhat on the principle 
 of Horace, O matre fulchr&jllia pulchrior/ still has our ancient worship 
 many and potent charms. I could proudly dwell on the historic recollections 
 that emblazon her escutcheon, the pomp and pageantry of her gorgeous 
 liturgy " 
 
 " Pardon me, reverend friend," I interposed, lest he should diverge, as was 
 his habit, into some long-winded argument, foreign to the topic on which I 
 sought to be informed, — "I do not undervalue the matronly graces of your 
 venerable church ; but (pointing to the remnant of what had been a red her- 
 ring) let us talk of her fish-diet and fast-days." 
 
 "Ay, you are right there, child," resumed Prout ;." I perceive where my 
 panegyric must end — 
 
 ' Desinit itipiscem mulier formosa superne ! * 
 Vou will get a famous badgering in town when you are found out to have for- 
 sworn the flesh-pots ; and Lent will' be a sad season for you among the 
 Egyptians. But you need not be unprovided with plausible reasons for your 
 abstinence, besides the sterling considerations of the rental. Notwithstanding 
 that it has been said or sung by your Lord Byron, that 
 
 ' Man is a .carnivorous production, 
 And cannot live (as woodcocks do) on suction ; ' 
 
 still that noble poet (I speak from the record of his life and habits furnished us 
 by Moore) habitually eschewed animal food, detested gross feeders, and in his 
 own case lived most frugally, I might even say ascetically; and this abstemi- 
 ousness he practised from a refinement of choice, for he had registered no vow 
 to heaven, or to a maiden aunt. The observance will no doubt prove a trial of 
 fortitude ; but for your part at the festive board, were you so criminal as to 
 transgress, would not the spectre of the Lady Cresswell, like the ghost of 
 Banquo, rise to rebuke you ? 
 
 ' ' And besides, these days of fasting are of the most remote antiquity ; they 
 are referred to as being in vogue at the first general council that legislated for 
 Christendom at Nice, in Bithynia, A.D. 325 ; and the subsequent assembly of 
 bishops at Laodicea ratified the institution A.D. 364. Its discipline is fully de- 
 veloped in the classic pages of the accomplished Tertullian, in the second century 
 (Tract, de jejuniis). I say no more. These are what Edmund Burke would 
 call ' grave and reverend authorities,' and, in the silence, of Holy Writ, may 
 go as historic evidence of primitive Christianity ; but if you press me, I can no 
 more show cause under the proper hand and seal of an apostle for keeping the 
 fast on these days, than I can for keeping the Sabbath on Sunday. 
 
 " I do not choose to notice that sort of criticism, in its dotage, that would 
 trace the custom to the well-known avocation of the early disciples : though 
 
Father Prout 's Apology for Lent. 
 
 that they were fishermen is most true, and that even after they had been raised 
 to the apostolic dignity, they relapsed occasionally into the innocent pursuit of 
 their primeval calling, still haunted the shores of the accustomed lake, and 
 loved to disturb with their nets the crystal surface of Gennesareth. 
 
 " Lent is an institution which should have been long since rescued from the 
 cobwebs of theology, and restored to the domain of the political economist, 
 for there is no prospect of arguing the matter in a fair spirit among conflicting 
 divines ; and, of all things, polemics are the most stale and unprofitable. 
 Loaves and fishes have, in all ages of the church, had charms for us of the cloth ; 
 yet how few would confine their frugal bill of fare to mere loaves and fishes ! 
 So far Lent may be considered a stumbling-block. But here I dismiss theology : 
 nor shall I further trespass on your patience by angling for arguments in the 
 muddy stream of church history, as it rolls its troubled waters over the middle 
 ages. 
 
 ' ' Your black-letter acquirements, I doubt not, are considerable ; but have 
 you adverted to a clause in Queen Elizabeth's enactment for the improvement 
 of the shipping interests in the year 1564? You will, I believe, find it to run 
 thus : 
 
 "Anno $0 Eliz. caf. v. sect, n : — 'And for encrease of provision of fishe 
 by the more usual eating thereof, bee it further enacted, that from the feast of 
 St. Mighell tharchangell, ano. Dni. fiftene hundreth threescore foure, every 
 Wednesdaye in every weeke through the jvhple,yere shal be hereafter observed 
 and kepte as the Saturdays in every weeke be or ought to be ; and that no 
 person shal eat any fleshe no more than on the common Saturdays. 
 
 "12. — ' And bee it further enacted by th'auctoritee aforesaid, for the commo- 
 ditie and benifit of this realme, as well to growe the navie as in sparing and 
 encrease of fleshe victual, that from and after the feast of Pentecost next 
 coming, yt shall not be lawful for any p'son to eat any fleshe upon any days 
 now usually observed as fish-days ; and that any p'son offending herein shal 
 forfeite three powndes for every tyme.' 
 
 " I do not attach so much importance to the act of her royal successor, 
 James I., who in 1619 issued a proclamation, reminding his English subjects of 
 the obligation of keeping Lent; because his Majesty's object is clearly ascer- 
 tained to have been to encourage the traffic of his countrymen the Scotch, who 
 had just then embarked largely in the herring trade, and for whom the thrifty 
 Stuart was anxious to secure a monopoly in the British markets. 
 
 " But when, in 1627, I find the chivalrous Charles I„ your martyred king, 
 sending forth from the banqueting-room of Whitehall his royal decree to the 
 same effect, I am at a loss to trace his motives. It is known that Archbishop 
 Laud's advice went to the effect of reinstating many customs of Catholicity ; 
 but, from a more diligent consideration of the subject, I am more inclined to 
 think that the king wished rather, by this display of austere practices, te soothe 
 and conciliate the Puritanical portion of his subjects, whose religious notions 
 were supposed (I know not how justly) to have a tendency to self-denial and 
 the mortification of the flesh. Certain it is. that the Calvinists and Round- 
 heads were greater favourites at Billingsgate than the high-church party ; from 
 which we may conclude that they consumed more fish.- Afact corroborated by 
 the contemporary testimony of Samuel Butler, who says that, when the great 
 struggle commenced, 
 
 ' Each fisherwoman locked her fish up, 
 And trudged abroad to cry, No Bishop ! ' 
 
 " I will only remark, in furtherance of my own views, that the king's beef- 
 eaters, and the gormandizing Cavaliers of that period, could never stand in 
 fair fight against the austere and fasting Cromwellians. 
 
 " It is a vulgar error of your countrymen to connect valour with roast beef, 
 
The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 or courage with plum-pudding. There exists no such association; and I 
 wonder this national mistake has not been duly noticed by Jeremy Bentham in 
 his 'Book of Fallacies.' As soon might it be presumed that the pot-bellied 
 Falstaff, faring on venison and sack, could overcome in prowess Owen Glen- 
 dower, who, I suppose, fed on leeks ; or that the lean and emaciated Cassius 
 was not a better soldier than a well-known sleek and greasy rogue who fled 
 from the battle of Philippi, and, as he himself unblushingly tells the world, left 
 his buckler behind him : ' Relicts rum bene parmuKL' 
 
 "I cannot contain my bile when I witness the mode in which the lower 
 orders in your country abuse the French, for whom they have found nothing in 
 their Anglo-Saxon vocabulary so expressive of contempt as the term ' frog- 
 eater.' A Frenchman is not supposed to be of the same flesh and blood as 
 themselves ; but, like the water-snake described in the Georgics — 
 ' Fiscibus atram, 
 Improbus ingluviem ranisque loquacibus implet.' 
 
 Hence it is carefully instilled into the infant mind (when the young idea is 
 taught how to shoot), that you won the victories of Poitiers and Agincourt 
 mainly by the superiority of your diet. In hewing down the ranks of the foe- 
 man, much of the English army's success is of course attributed to the dex- 
 terous management of their cross-bills, but considerably more to their bill of 
 fare. If I could reason with such simpletons, I would refer them to the records 
 of the commissariat department of that day, and open to their vulgar gaze the 
 folio vii. of Rymer's Fcedera, where, in the twelfth year of Edward III., 
 A.D. 1338, at page 1021, they would find, that previous to the victory of Cressy 
 there were shipped at Portsmouth, for the use of these gallant troops, fifty tons 
 of Yarmouth herrings. Such were the supplies (rather unusual now in the 
 contracts at Somerset House) which enabled Edward and his valiant son to 
 drive the hosts of France before them, and roll on the tide of war till the 
 towers of Paris yielded to the mighty torrent. After a hasty repast on such 
 simple diet, might the Black Prince appropriately address his girded knight'. 
 in Shakespearian phrase, 
 
 ' Thus far into the bowels of the land 
 Have we marched on without impediment.' 
 
 "The enemy sorely grudged them their supplies. For it appears by the 
 chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrellet, the continuator of Froissart, that in 
 1429, while the English were besieging Orleans, the Duke of Bedford sent from 
 his head-quarters, Paris, on the Ash Wednesday of that year, five hundred 
 carts laden with herrings, for the use of the camp during Lent, when a party 
 of French noblemen, viz., Xaintraille, Lahire, De la Tour de Chavigny, and 
 the Chevalier de Lafayette (ancestor of the revolutionary veteran), made a 
 desperate effort to intercept the convoy. But the English detachment, under 
 whose safeguard was this precious deposit, fought fro arts it focis in its 
 defence, and the assailants were routed with the loss of sixscore knights and 
 much plebeian slaughter. Read Rapin's account of the affray, which was 
 thence called ' lajournte des harcngs.' 
 
 " What schoolboy is ignorant of the fact, that at the eve of the battle of 
 Hastings, which gave to your Norman ancestors the conquest of the island, the 
 conduct of the Anglo-Britons was strongly contrasted with that of the invaders 
 from France ; for while in Harold's camp the besotted natives spent the ni"ht 
 in revelling and gluttony, the Norman chivalry gave their time to fasting and 
 devotion. — {Goldsmith, A.D. 1066.) 
 
 " It has not escaped the penetrating mind of the sagacious Buffon, in his 
 views of man and man's propensities (which, after all, are the proper study of 
 mankind), that a predilection for light food and spare diet has always been the 
 characteristic of the Celtic and Eastern races ; while the Teutonic, the Sclav- 
 
Father Prout 's Apology for Lent. 
 
 onian, and Tartar branches of the human family betray an aboriginal craving 
 for heavy meat, and are gross feeders. In many countries of Europe there has 
 been a slight amalgamation of blood, and the international pedigree in parts 
 of the continent has become perplexed and doubtful : but the most obtuse 
 observer can see that the phlegmatic habits of the Prussians and Dutch argue a 
 different genealogical origin from that which produced the lively disposition of 
 the tribes of Southern Europe. The best specimens extant of the genuine 
 Celt are the Greeks, the Arabians, and the Irish, all of whom are temperate in 
 their food. Among European denominations, in proportion as the Celtic in- 
 fusion predominates, so in a corresponding ratio is the national character for 
 abstemiousness. Nor would I thus dwell on an otherwise uninteresting specu- 
 lation, were I not about to draw a corollary, and show how these secret influ- 
 ences become apparent at what is called the great epoch of the Reformation. 
 The latent tendency to escape from fasting observances became then revealed, 
 and what had lain dormant for ages was at once developed. The Tartar and 
 Sclavonic breed of men flung off the yoke of Rome ; while the Celtic races 
 remained faithful to the successor of the ' Fisherman," and kept Lent. 
 
 " The Hollanders, the Swedes, the Saxons, the Prussians, and in Germany 
 those circles in which the Gothic blood ran heaviest and most stagnant, hailed 
 Luther as a deliverer from salt-fish. The fatted calf was killed, bumpers of 
 ale went round, and Popery went to the dogs. Half Europe followed the 
 impetus given to free opinions, and the congenial impulse of the gastric juice ; 
 joining in reform, not because they loved Rome less, but because they loved sub- 
 stantial fare more. Meantime neighbours differed. The Dutch, dull and 
 opaque as their own Zuydersee, growled defiance at the Vatican when their 
 food was to be controlled ; the Belgians, being a shade nearer to the Celtic 
 family, submitted to the fast. While Hamburg clung to its beef, and West- 
 phalia preserved her hams, Munich and Bavaria adhered to the Pope and to 
 sour-crout with desperate fidelity. As to the Cossacks, and all that set of 
 northern marauders, they never kept Lent at any time ; and it would be arrant 
 folly to expect that the horsemen of the river Don, and the Esquimaux of the 
 polar latitudes, would think of restricting their ravenous propensities in a 
 Christian fashion; the very system of cookery adopted by these terrible 
 hordes would, I fear, have given Dr. Kitchiner a fit of cholera. The apparatus 
 is graphically described by Samuel Butler : I will indulge you with part of the 
 quotation : 
 
 ' For like their countrymen the Huns, 
 They cook their meat 
 
 All day on horses' backs they straddle, 
 Then every man eats up his saddle !'* 
 
 A strange process, no doubt : but not without some sort of precedent in 
 classic records ; for the Latin poet introduces young lulus at a picnic, in the 
 Mneii, exclaiming — 
 
 ' Heus ! etiam mensas consumimus. ' 
 
 "In England, as the inhabitants are of a mixed descent, and as there has 
 ever been a disrelish for any alteration in the habits and fireside traditions of the 
 country, the fish-days were remembered long after every Popish observance had 
 become obsolete ; and it was not until 1668 that butchers' meat finally estab- 
 lished its ascendency in Lent, at the arrival of the Dutchman. We have seen 
 the exertions of the Tudor dynasty under Elizabeth, and of the house of 
 Stuart under James I. and Charles I., to keep up these fasts, which had 
 flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, which the Heptarchy had revered, 
 * Hudibras, canto ii. 1. 275. 
 
io ■ The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 which Alfred and Canute had scrupulously observed, and which had come 
 down positively recommended by the Venerable Bede. William III. gave a 
 death-blow to Lent. Until then it had lingered among the threadbare curates 
 of the country, extremaper illos excedens terris vestigia, fecit, having been long 
 before exiled from the gastronomic hall of both Universities. But its extinction 
 was complete. Its ghost might still remain, flitting through the land, without 
 corporeal or ostensible form ; and it vanished totally with the fated star of the 
 Pretender. It was William who conferred the honour of knighthood on the 
 loin of beef ; and such was the progress of disaffection under Queen Anne, that 
 the folks, to manifest their disregard for the Pope, agreed that a certain ex- 
 tremity of the goose should be denominated his nose 1 
 
 "The indomitable spirit of the Celtic Irish preserved Lent in this country 
 unimpaired — an event of such importance to England, that I shall dwell on it 
 by-and-by more fully. The Spaniards and Portuguese, although Gothic and 
 Saracen blood has commingled in the pure current of their Phoenician pedi- 
 gree, clung to Lent with characteristic tenacity. The Gallic race, even in the 
 days of Caesar, were remarkably temperate, and are so to the present day. 
 The French very justly abhor the gross, carcase-eating propensities of John 
 Bull. But as to the keeping of Lent, in an ecclesiastical point of view, I Can- 
 not take on myself to vouch, since the ruffianly revolution, for their orthodoxy 
 in that or any other religious matters. They are sadly deficient therein, though 
 still delicate and refined in their cookery, like one of their own artistes, whose 
 epitaph is in Pere la Chaise — 
 
 ' Ci git qui des l'ftge le plus tendre 
 
 I nventa la sauce Robert ; 
 
 Mais jamais il ne put apprendre 
 
 Ni son credo ni son pater. ' 
 
 " It was not so of old, when the pious monarchs of France dined publicly in 
 Passion week on fasting fare, in order to recommend by their example the use of 
 fish— when the heir-apparent to the crown delighted to be called a dolphin— 
 and when one of your own kings, being on a visit to France, got so fond of 
 their lamprey patties, that he died of indigestion on his return. 
 
 "Antiquity has left us no document to prove that the early Spartans kept 
 certain days of abstinence ; but their black broth, of which the ingredients have 
 puzzled the learned, must have been a fitting substitute for the soupe maigre of 
 our Lent, since it required a hard run on the banks of the Eurotas to make it 
 somewhat palatable. At all events, their great lawgiver was an eminent 
 ascetic, and applied himself much to restrict the diet of his hardy countrymen ; 
 and if it is certain that there existed a mystic bond of union among the 300 
 Lacedemonians who stood in the gap of Thermopylae, it assuredly was not a 
 beef-steak club of which Leonidas was president. 
 
 "The Athenians were too cultivated a people not to appreciate the value of 
 periodical days of self-denial and abstemiousness. Accordingly, on the eve of 
 certain festivals, they fed exclusively on figs and the honey of Mount Hymettus. 
 Plutarch expressly tells us that a solemn fast preceded the celebration of the 
 Thermophoria ; thence termed vqcrma. In looking over the works of the 
 great geographer Strabo (lib. xir.), I find sufficient evidence of the respect paid 
 to fish by the inhabitants of a distinguished Greek city, in which that erudite 
 author says the arrival of the fishing-smacks in the harbour was announced joy- 
 fully by sounding the ' tocsin ; ' and that the musicians in the public piazza were 
 left abruptly by the crowd, whenever the bell tolled for the sale of the herrings : 
 K&apw&ov iTTiSeiKWfiEVOv Tfws fi£i/ aKpoatrSai iravras' cue Se o fcuioW o 
 Kara Ttjv o^/otrtaXtav e^otp^in KaTa\tiroiT*e airtXBttv cm to oiiroi/. A 
 custom to which Plutarch also refers in his Symposium of Plato, lib. iv. cap. 4 ; 
 TOtrff irtpi lyQvoirwKiav avaSttiovras kcu tov KwStovo? ofctios aKotfovrac. 
 
 "That practices similar to our Lent existed among the Romans, may be 
 
Father Prout 's Apology for Lent. \ i 
 
 gathered from various sources. In Ovid's Fasti (notwithstanding the title) I 
 find nothing; but from the reliques of old sacerdotal memorials collected by 
 Stephano Morcelli, it appears that Numa fitted himself by fasting for an inter- 
 view with the mysterious inmate of Egeria's grotto. Livy tells us that the 
 decemvirs, on the occurrence of certain prodigies, were instructed by a vote of 
 the senate to consult the Sibylline books ; and the result was the establishment 
 of a fast in honour of Ceres, to be observed perpetually every five years. It is 
 hard to tell whether Horace is in joke or in earnest when he introduces a vow 
 relative to these days of penance— 
 
 ' Frigida si puenim quartana reliquerit illo 
 Mane die quo tu iitdicis jejnnia nudus 
 In Tyberi stabit ! ' Serin, lib. ii. sat. 3, v. 29a 
 
 But we are left in the dark as to whether they observed their fasts by restricting 
 themselves to lentils and vegetable diet, or whether fish was allowed. On this 
 interesting point we find nothing in the laws of the twelve tables. However, a 
 marked predilection for herbs, and such frugal fare, was distinctive of the old 
 Romans, as' the very names of the principal families sufficiently indicate. The 
 Fabii, for instance, were so called from faba, a bean, on which simple aliment 
 that indefatigable race of heroes subsisted for many generations. The noble line 
 of the Lentuli derive their patronymic from a favourite kind 1 of lentil, to which 
 they were partial, and from which Lent itself is so called. The aristocratic Pisoes 
 were similarly circumstanced; for their family appellation will be found to 
 signify a kind of vetches. Scipio was titled from cefe, an onion ;* and we may 
 trace the surname and hereditary honours of the great Roman orator to the 
 same horticultural source, for deer in Latin means a sort of pea ; and so on 
 through the whole nomenclature. 
 
 ' ' Hence the Roman satirist, ever alive to the follies of his age, can find nothing 
 more ludicrous than the notion of the Egyptians, who entertained a religious 
 repugnance to vegetable fare : 
 
 ' Porrfrm et cepe nefas violare et frangere morsu, 
 O sanctas gentes ! ' Juv. Sat. 15. 
 
 And as to fish, the fondness of the people of his day for such food can be 
 demonstrated from his fourth satire, where he dwells triumphantly on the cap- 
 ture of a splendid tunny in the waters of the Adriatic, and describes the 
 assembling of a cabinet council in the ' Downing Street ' of Rome to deter- 
 mine how it should be properly cooked. It must be admitted that, since the 
 Whigs came to office, although they have had many a pretty kettle of fish to 
 deliberate upon, they have shown nothing half so dignified or rational in their 
 decisions as the imperial privy council of Domitian. 
 
 " The magnificence displayed by the masters of the world in getting up fish- 
 ponds is a fact which every schoolboy has learnt, as well as that occasionally 
 the muresaa were treated to the luxury of a slave or two, flung in alive for their 
 nutriment. The celebrity which the maritime villas of Baise obtained for that 
 fashionable watering-place, is a further argument in point ; and we know that 
 when the reprobate Verres was driven into exile by the brilliant declamation of 
 Cicero, he consoled himself at Marseilles over a dish of sprats, with the reflec- 
 tion that at Rome such a delicacy could not be procured in such high per- 
 fection. 
 
 "Simplicity and good taste in diet gradually declining in the Roman 
 empire, the gigantic frame of the colossus itself soon hastened to decay. It 
 burst of its own plethory. The example of the degenerate court had pervaded 
 the provinces; and soon the whole body politic reeled, as after a surfeit of 
 
 * Here Prout is in error. Scipio means a "walking-stick," and commemorates the 
 filial piety of one of the gens Cornelia, who went about constantly supporting his totter- 
 ing aged father.— O. Y. 
 
debauchery. Vitellius had gormandized with vulgar gluttony ; the Emperor 
 Maximinus was a living sepulchre, where whole hecatombs of butchers' meat 
 were daily entombed ; and no modern keeper of a table d'h&te could stand a 
 succession of such guests as Heliogabalus. Gibbon, whose penetrating eye 
 nothing has escaped in the causes of the Decline and Fall, notices this vile 
 propensity to overfeeding ; and shows that, to reconstruct the mighty system of 
 dominion established by the rugged republicans (the Fabii, the Lentuli, and 
 Pisoes), nothing but a bon&fide return to simple fare and homely pottage could 
 be effectual. The hint was duly acted on. The Popes, frugal and abstemious, 
 ascended the vacant throne of the Caesars, and ordered Lent to be observed 
 throughout the eastern and western world. 
 
 "The theory of fasting, and its practical application, _did wonders in that 
 emergency. It renovated the rotten constitution of Europe — it tamed the 
 hungry hordes of desperate savages that rushed down with a war-whoop on the 
 prostrate ruins of the empire — it taught them self-control, and gave them a 
 masterdom over their barbarous propensities ; — it did more, it originated 
 civilization and commerce. 
 
 "A few straggling fishermen built huts on the flats of the Adriatic, for the 
 convenience of resorting thither in Lent, to procure their annual supply of 
 fish. The demand for that article became so brisk and so extensive through the 
 vast dominions of the Lombards in northern Italy, that from a temporary 
 establishment it became a permanent colony in the lagunes. Working like the 
 coral insect under the seas, with the same unconsciousness of the mighty result 
 of their labours, these industrious men for a century kept on enlarging their 
 nest upon the waters, till their enterprise became fully developed, and 
 
 ' Venice sat in state, throned on a hundred isles.' 
 
 "The fasting necessities of France and Spain were ministered to by the 
 rising republic of Genoa, whose origin I delight to trace from a small fishing 
 town to a mighty emporium of commerce, fit cradle to rock (in the infant 
 Columbus) the destinies of a new world. Few of us have turned our attention 
 to the fact, that our favourite fish, the John Dory, derives its name from the 
 Genoese admiral, Doria, whose seamanship best thrived on meagre diet. Of 
 Anne Chovy, who has given her name to another fish found in the Sardinian 
 waters, no record remains; but she was doubtless a heroine. Indeed, to revert 
 to the humble herring before you, its etymology shows it to be well adapted for 
 warlike stomachs, heer (its German root) signifying an army. In England, is 
 not a soldier synonymous with a lobster? 
 
 " In the progress of maritime industry along the shores of southern, and sub- 
 sequently of northern Europe, we find a love for freedom to grow up with a 
 fondness for fish. Enterprise and liberty flourished among the islands of the 
 Archipelago. And when Naples was to be rescued from thraldom, it was the 
 hardy race of watermen who plied in her beauteous bay, that rose at Freedom's 
 call to effect her deliverance, when she basked for one short hour in its full 
 sunshine under the gallant Masaniello. 
 
 " As to the commercial gr.mdeur, of which a constant demand for fish was 
 the creating principle, to illustrate its importance, I need only refer to a remark- 
 able expression of that deep politician, and exceedingly clever economist, 
 Charles V., when, on a progress through apart of his dominions, on which the 
 sun at that period never went down, he happened to pass through Amsterdam, 
 in company with the Queen of Hungary : on that occasion, being complimented 
 in the usual form by the burgomasters of his faithful city, he asked to see the 
 mausoleum of John Bachalen, the famous herring-barreller ; but when told that 
 his grave, simple and unadorned, lay in his native island in the Zuydersee, 
 ' What I ' cried the illustrious visitor, ' is it thus that my people of the Nether- 
 lands show their gratitude to so great a man ? Know ye not that the founda- 
 
Father F 'rout's Apology for Lent. 13 
 
 tions of Amsterdam are laid on herring-bones?' Their majesties went on a 
 pilgrimage to his tomb, as is related by Sir Hugh Willoughby in his ' Mistorie 
 of Fishes.' 
 
 "It would be of immense advantage to these countries were we to return 
 unanimously to the ancient practice, and restore to the full extent of their 
 wise policy the laws of Elizabeth. The revival of Lent is the sole remedy for 
 the national complaints on the decline of the shipping interest, the sole way to 
 meet the outcry about corn-laws. Instead of Mr. Attwood's project for a 
 change of currency, Mr. Wilmot Horton's panacea of emigration, and Miss 
 Martineau's preventive check, re-enact Lent. But mark, I do not go so far as 
 to say that by this means all and everything desirable can be accomplished, nor 
 do I undertake by it to pay off the national debt — though the I ,ords of the 
 Treasury might learn that, when the disciples were at a loss to meet the de- 
 mand of tax-collectors in their day, they caught a fish, and found in its gills 
 sufficient to satisfy the revenue. (St. Matthew's Gospel, chap, xvii.) 
 
 " Of all the varied resources of this great empire, the most important, in a 
 national point of view, has long been the portion of capital afloat in the 
 merchantmen, and the strength invested in the navy of Great Britain. True, 
 the British thunder has too long slept under a sailor-king, and under so many 
 galling national insults ; and it were full time to say that it shall no longer 
 sleep on in the grave where Sir James Graham has laid it. But my concern is 
 principally for the alarming depression of our merchants' property in vessels, 
 repeatedly proved in evidence before your House of Commons. Poulett 
 Thomson is right to call attention to the cries of the shipowners, and to that 
 dismal howling from the harbours, described by the prophet as the forerunner 
 of the fall of Babylon. 
 
 " The best remedial measure would be a resumption of fish-diet during a 
 portion of the year. Talk not of a resumption of cash payments, of opening 
 the trade to China, or of finding a north-west passage to national prosperity. 
 Talk not of ' calling spirits from the vasty deep,' when you neglect to elicit 
 food and employment for thousands from its exuberant bosom. Visionary 
 projectors are never without some complex system of beneficial improve- 
 ment ; but I would say of them, in the words of an Irish gentleman who has 
 lately travelled in search of religion, 
 
 ' They may talk of the nectar that sparkled for Helen — 
 1 heirs is a fiction, but this is reality.' 
 
 Melodies. 
 
 Demand would create supply. Flotillas would issue from every seaport in the 
 spring, and ransack the treasures of the ocean for the periodical market : and 
 the wooden walls of Old England, instead of crumbling into so much rotten 
 timber, would be converted into so many huge wooden spoons to feed the 
 population. 
 
 "It has been sweetly sung, as well as wisely said, by a genuine English 
 writer, that 
 
 ' Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 
 The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear.' 
 
 To these undiscovered riches Lent would point the national eye, and direct 
 the national energies. Very absurd would then appear the forebodings of the 
 croakers, who with some plausibility now predict the approach of national 
 bankruptcy and famine. Time enough to think of that remote contingency 
 when the sea shall be exhausted of its live bullion, and the abyss shall cry, 
 ' Hold, enough ! ' Time enough to fear a general stoppage, when the run on 
 the Dogger Bank shall have produced a failure — when the shoals of the teem- 
 ing north shall have refused to meet their engagements in the sunny waters of 
 the south, and the drafts of the net shall have been dishonoured. 
 
14 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ' " I am one of the many modern admirers of Edmund Burke, who, in his 
 speech on American conciliation, has an argumentum piscalorium quite to my 
 fancy. Tollel lege I 
 
 " ' As to the wealth which these colonies have derived from the sea by their 
 fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely 
 thought these acquisitions of value ; for they even seemed to excite your envy. 
 And yet the spirit with which that enterprising employment has been exercised 
 ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And 
 pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? Look at the manner in which the 
 people of New England have carried on their fishery. While we follow them 
 among the tumbling mountains of ice, penetrating into the deepest recesses of 
 Hudson's Bay ; while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we 
 hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold,— that they 
 are at the antipodes,, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. 
 Falkland Island, which -seemed too remote and romantic an object for the 
 grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of 
 their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to 
 them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know, that while 
 some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, 
 others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the shores of 
 Brazil : no sea that is not vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not 
 witness to their toils ! ' 
 
 "Such glorious imaginings, such beatific dreams, would (I speak advisedly) 
 be realized in these countries by Lent's magic spell ; and I have no doubt 
 that our patriot King, the patron of so many very questionable reforms, will 
 see the propriety of restoring the laws of Elizabeth in this matter. Stanislaus, 
 the late pious king of Lorraine, so endeared himself to his subjects in general, 
 and market-gardeners in particular, by his sumptuary regulations respecting 
 vegetable diet in Lent, that in the /tortus siccus of Nancy his statue has been 
 placed, with an appropriate inscription : — 
 
 ' Vitales inter succos herbasque salubres, 
 Quam bene stat populi vita salusque sui ! ' 
 
 " A similar compliment would await his present Majesty William IV. from 
 the shipowners, and the ' worshipful Fishmongers' Company,' if he should 
 adopt the suggestion thrown out here. He would figure colossally in Trafal- 
 gar Square, pointing with his trident to Hungerford Market. The three- 
 pronged instrument in his hand would be a most appropriate emblem (much 
 more so than on the pinnacle of Buckingham Palace), since it would signify 
 equally well the fork with which he fed his people, and the sceptre with which 
 he ruled the world. 
 
 ' Le trident de Neptune est le sceptre du monde ! ' 
 Then would be solved the grand problem of the Corn-Law question. Hitherto 
 my Lord Fitzwilliam has taken nothing by his motions. But were Lent pro- 
 claimed at Charing Cross and Temple. Bar, and through the market towns of 
 England, a speedy. fall in the price of. grazing stock, though it might afflict 
 Lord Althorp, would eventually harmonize the jarring interests of agriculture 
 and manufacturing industry. The superabundant population of the farming 
 districts would crowd to the coast, and find employment in the fisheries ; 
 while Devonshire House would -repudiate for a time the huge sirloin, and 
 receiving as a substitute the ponderous turbot, Spitalfields would exhibit on 
 her frugal board salt ling flanked with potatoes. A salutary taste for fish 
 would be created in the inmost recesses of the island, an epoch most bene- 
 ficial to the country would take date from that enactment. 
 ' Omnc qiuim Proteus pecus egit altos 
 Visere montes.' 
 
Father P rout's Apology for Lent. 15 
 
 Nor need the landlords take alarm. People would not plough the ground 
 les"> because they might plough the deep more ; and while smiling Ceres 
 would still walk through our isle with her horn of plenty, Thetis would follow 
 in her train wirli a rival cornucopia. 
 
 "Mark the effects of this observance in Ireland, where it continues in its 
 primitive austerity, undiminished, unshorn of its beams. The Irish may be 
 wrong, but the consequences to Protestant England are immense. To Lent 
 you owe the connection of the two islands; it is the golden link that binds the 
 two kingdoms together. Abolish fasting, and from that evil hour no beef or 
 pork would be suffered by the wild natives to go over to your English markets ; 
 and the export of provisions would be discontinued by a people that had 
 unlearned the lessons of starvation. Adieu to shipments of live stock and 
 consignments of bacon ! Were there not some potent mysterious spell over 
 this country, think you we should allow the fat of the land to be everlastingly 
 abstracted? Let us learn that there is no virtue in Lent, and repeal is 
 triumphant to-morrow. We are in truth a most abstemious race. Hence our 
 great superiority over our Protestant fellow-countrymen in the jury-box. It 
 having been found that they could never hold out against hunger as we can 
 when locked up, and that the verdict was generally carried by popish obstinacy, 
 former administrations discountenanced our admission to serve on juries at all. 
 By an oversight of Serjeant Lefroy, all this has escaped the framers of the 
 new jury bill tor Ireland. 
 
 ' ' To return to the Irish exports. The principal item is that of pigs. The 
 hog is as essential an inmate of the Irish cabin as the Arab steed of the 
 shepherd's tent on the plains of Mesopotamia. Both are looked on as part of 
 the household ; and the affectionate manner in which these dumb friends of the 
 family are treated, here as well as there, is a trait of national resemblance, 
 denoting a common origin. We are quite oriental in most of our peculiarities. 
 The learned Vallancey will have it, that our consanguinity is with the Jews. I 
 might elucidate the colonel's discovery, by showing how the pig in Ireland plays 
 the part of the scape-goat of the Israelites : he is a sacred thing, gets the run 
 of the kitchen,- is rarely molested, never killed, but alive and buoyant leaves 
 the cabin when taken off by the landlord's driver for arrears of rent, and is then 
 shipped clean out of the country, to be heard of no more. Indeed, the pigs of 
 Ireland bear this notable resemblance to their cousins of Judea, that nothing 
 can keep them from the sea, — a tendency which strikes all travellers in the 
 interior of the island whenever they meet our droves of swine precipitating 
 themselves towards the outports for shipment. 
 
 "To ordinary observers this forbearance of the most ill-fed people on the 
 face of the globe towards their pigs would appear inexplicable ; and if you 
 have read the legend of Saint Anthony and his pig, you will understand the 
 value of their resistance to temptation. 
 
 "They have a great resource in the potato. This capital esculent grows 
 nowhere in such perfection, not even in America, where it is indigenous. But 
 it has often struck me that a greater national delinquency has occurred in the 
 sad neglect of people in this country towards the memory of the great and 
 good man who conferred on us so valuable a boon, on his return from the expe- 
 dition to Virginia. To Sir Walter Raleigh no monument has yet been erected, 
 and nothing has been' done to repair the injustice of his contemporaries. His 
 head lias rolled from the scaffold on Tower Hill ; and though he has fed with 
 his discovery more families, and given a greater impulse to population, than any 
 other benefactor of mankind, no testimonial exists to commemorate his bene- 
 faction. Nelson has a pillar in Dublin : — in the city of Limerick a whole 
 column has been devoted to Spring Rice ! ! and the mighty genius of Raleigh 
 is forgotten. I have seen some animals feed under the majestic oak on the 
 acorns that fell from its spreading branches {glande sues lati\, without once 
 
\6 The Works of FatJier Prout. 
 
 looking up to the parent tree that showered down blessings on their ungrateful 
 heads." 
 
 Here endeth the " Apology," and so abruptly terminate my notes of Prout's 
 Lenten vindicice. But, alas ! still more abrupt was the death of this respect- 
 able divine, which occurred last month, on Shrove Tuesday. There was a 
 peculiar fitness in the manner of Anacreon's exit from this life ; but not so in 
 the melancholy termination of Prout's abstemious career, an account of which 
 is conveyed to me in a long and pathetic letter from my agent in Ireland. It 
 was well known that he disliked revelry on all occasions ; but if there was a 
 species of gormandizing which he more especially abhorred, it was that prac- I 
 tised in the parish on pancake-night, which he frequently endeavoured to dis- 
 countenance and put down, but unsuccessfully. Oft did he tell his rude 
 auditors (for he was a profound Hellenist) that such orgies had originated with 
 the heathen Greeks, and had been even among them the source of many evils, 
 as the very name showed, ira» koxov I So it would appear, by Prout's ety- 
 mology of the pancake, that in the English language there are many terms 
 which answer the description of Horace, and 
 
 * Graco fonte cadunt parce detorta.' 
 
 Contrary to his own better taste and sounder judgment, he was, however, on 
 last Shrove Tuesday, at a wedding-feast of some of my tenantry, induced, from 
 complacency to the newly-married couple, to eat of the profane aliment ; and 
 never was the Attic derivation of the pancake more wofully accomplished than 
 in the sad result — for his condescension cost him his life. The indigestible 
 nature of the compost itself might not have been so destructive in an ordinary 
 case ; but it was quite a stranger and ill at ease in Father Prout's stomach : it 
 eventually proved fatal in its effects, and hurried him away from this vale of 
 tears, leaving the parish a widow, and making orphans of all his parishioners. 
 My agent writes that his funeral (or berring, as the Irish call it) was thronged 
 by dense multitudes from the whole county, and was as well attended as if it 
 were a monster meeting. The whole body of his brother clergy, with the 
 bishop as usual in full pontificals, were mourners on the occasion ; and a Latin 
 elegy was composed by the most learned of the order, Father Magrath, one, 
 like Prout, of the old school, who had studied at Florence, and is still a corre- 
 spondent of many learned Societies abroad. That elegy I have subjoined, as 
 a record of Prout's genuine worth, and as a specimen of a kind of poetry 
 called Leonine verse, little cultivated at the present day, but greatly in vogue 
 at the revival of letters under Leo X. 
 
 IN MORTEM VENERABILIS ANDREW PROUT, CARMEN. 
 Quid j u vat in pulchro Sanctos dormire sepulchro I 
 
 Optimus usque bono s nonne manebit honos ? 
 Plebs tenui /assd Pastoris condidit ossa, 
 
 Splendida sed miri mens petit astra viri. 
 Porta patens esta I caelum reseretur konesio, 
 ^ Neve sit & Petro jussus abire retro. 
 Tota malam sortem sibi net vicinia mortem, 
 
 Ut pro patre solent tindique rura dolent ; 
 Sed fures gaudent ; secures hactenUs undent 
 
 Disturbare greges, nee mage tua seges. 
 Audio singultus, rixas, miserosque tumultus, 
 
 Et pietas luget, sohnetzsque fttgit. 
 Namque furore brevi Hquidoque ardentis aqua vt 
 
 Antiquus Nicholas perdidit agricolas. 
 Jam patre defimcto, meliores flumine cuncto 
 
 La:tantur fixers obtinuisse vices. 
 Exultans almo, Isetare sub sequore salmo ! 
 
 Carpe, o carpe dies, nam tibi parta quits I 
 
Father Prout's Apology for Lent. 17 
 
 Gaudent angiiilla, quia tandem est mortuus Hie, 
 Presbyter Andreas % qui capiebat eas. 
 
 Yexxofiiscator placuit plus artis amator, 
 
 Cui, propter mores, pandit utrosquc fores. 
 Cut lachry mQ./un us justi comitabitur unus t 
 
 Flendum est non tali, sed bene morte malt: 
 Munera nunc Flora spargo. Sic ftebile rore 
 
 Florescat gramen. Pace quie scat. Amen. 
 
 Sweet upland ! where, like hermit old, in peace sojourn'd 
 
 This priest devout ; 
 Mark where beneath thy verdant sod lie deep inurn'd 
 
 The bones of Frout ! 
 Nor deck with monumental shrine or tapering column 
 
 His place of rest. 
 Whose soul, above earth's homage, meek yet solemn, 
 
 Sits mid the blest. 
 Much was he prized, much loved ; his stern rebuke 
 
 O'erawed sheep-stealers ; 
 And rogues fear'd more the good man's single look 
 
 Than forty Feelers. 
 He's gone : and discord soon I ween will visit 
 
 The land with quarrels ; 
 And the foul demon vex with stills illicit 
 
 The village morals. 
 No fatal chance could happen more to cross 
 
 The public wishes ; 
 And all the neighbourhood deplore his loss. 
 
 Except the fishes ; 
 For he kept Lent most strict, and pickled herring 
 
 Preferred to gammon. 
 Grim Death has broke his angling-rod ; his herring 
 
 Delights the salmon. 
 No more can he hook up carp, eel, or trout, 
 
 For fasting pittance, — 
 Arts which Saint Peter loved, whose gate to Prout 
 
 Gave prompt admittance. 
 Mourn not, but verdantly let shamrocks keep 
 
 His sainted dust ; 
 The bad man's death it well becomes to weep,— 
 
 Not so the just. 
 
 U i i 1 i s 
 
1 8 The Works of Fattier Prout. 
 
 II. 
 
 % ^hn fax $xlgnm»0tB. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT'S VISIT TO THE BLARNEY STONE. 
 {Fraser's Magazine, May, 1834.) 
 
 [The number of Regiita containing the record of Father Prout's delightful imaginary- 
 foregathering with Sir Walter Scott was the one embellished with the portrait of the then 
 Editor of The Age, Charles Molloy Westmacott, comely, black-whiskered, loosely- 
 attired, seated slouchingly with a sort of rakish, sporting air about him, his hat upon the 
 floor with a long-lashed whip trailing out of it, his foot, Tike a true critic's, brought down 
 heavily on a book or two. As a grand choral finish to this second of the Prout Papers, 
 came Mahony's memorable polyglot version of the " Groves of Blarney," in which, 
 upon confronting pages, appeared cheek-by-jowl the English and French as contrasted 
 with the Greek and Latin. Twenty-three years after the issuing from the press of the 
 original edition of the " Reliques,' yet another version — in Italian — was put forth by 
 Mahony as purporting to have been sung in bivouac among the woods near Lake Como, 
 on the 25th of May, 1859, by the Condottiere Giuseppe Garibaldi ; the title of this supple- 
 mentary companion to the Doric, Vulgate, and Gallic translations, so long before produced, 
 being "I Boschi di Blarnea." Immediately appended to the fragment of the Celtic 
 manuscript reputed to have been obtained from the Royal Library at Copenhagen, 
 appeared by way of tailpiece to this paper, in the edition of 1836, Maclise's wonderfully 
 comic yet lifelike sketch of Sir Walter when he had just said, "So here I kiss the 
 stone."] 
 
 " Beware, beware 
 Of the black friar, 
 Who sitteth by Norman stone : 
 For he mutters his prayer 
 In the midnight air, 
 And his mass of the days that are gone.** 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Since the publication of this worthy man's "Apology for Lent," which, with 
 some account of his lamented death and well-attended funeral, appeared in our 
 last Number, we have written to his executors— (one of whom is Father Mat. 
 Horrogan, P.P. of the neighbouring village of Blarney; and the other, our 
 elegiac poet, Father Magrath)— in the hope of being able to negotiate for the 
 valuable posthumous essays and fugitive pieces which we doubted not had been 
 left behind in great abundance by the deceased. These two disinterested 
 divines— fit associates and bosom-companions of Prout during his lifetime, and 
 whom, from their joint letters, we should think eminently qualified to pick up 
 the fallen mantle of the departed prophet — have, in the most handsome manner, 
 promised us all the literary and philosophic treatises bequeathed to them by 
 the late incumbent of Watergrasshill ; expressing, in the very complimentary 
 note which they have transmitted us, and which our modesty prevents us from 
 inserting, their thanks and that of the whole parish, for our sympathy and 
 condolence on this melancholy bereavement, and intimating at the same time 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 19 
 
 their regret at not being able to send us also, for our private perusal, the collec- 
 tion of the good father's parochial sermons ; the whole of which (a most 
 valuable MS.) had been taken off for bis own use by the bishop, whom he had 
 made his residuary legatee. These " sermons" must be doubtless good things 
 in their way — a theological fiiya. Sav/ia — well adapted to swell l!ie episcopal 
 library ; but as we confessedly are, and suspect our readers likewise to be, a 
 very improper multitude amongst whom to scatter such pearls, we shall console 
 ourselves for that sacrifice by plunging head and ears into the abundant sources 
 of intellectual refreshment to which we shall soon have access, and from which 
 Frank Cresswell, lucky dog ! has drawn such a draught of inspiration. 
 " Sacros ausus recludere fontes ! " 
 
 for assuredly we may defy any one that has perused Prout's vindication of fish- 
 diet (and who, we ask, has not read it con amore, conning it over with secret 
 glee, and forthwith calling out for a red herring?), not to prefer its, simple 
 unsophisticated eloquence to the oration of Tully pro Domo sud, or Barclay's 
 "Apology for Quakers." After all, it may have been but a sprat to catch a 
 whale, and the whole affair may turn out to be a Popish contrivance ; but if so, 
 we have taken the bait ourselves : we have been, like Festus, " almost per- 
 suaded," and ProUt has wrought in us a sort of culinary conversion. Why should 
 we be ashamed to avow that we have been edified by the good man's blunt 
 and straightforward logic, and drawn from his theories on fish s, higher and 
 more moral impression than from the dreamy visions of an " English Opium- 
 eater," or any other "Confessions" of sensualism and gastronomy. If this 
 "black friar" has got smuggled in among our contributors, like King Saul 
 among the regular votaries of the sanctuary, it must be admitted that, like the 
 royal intruder, he has caught the tone and chimed in with the general harmony 
 of our political opinions — no Whigling among true Tories, no goose among 
 swans. Arguios inter strapere anser olores. 
 
 How we long to get possession of " the Prout Papers 1 " that chest of learned 
 lumber which haunts our nightly visions ! Already, in imagination, it is within 
 our grasp ; our greedy hand hastily its lid 
 
 " Unlocks, 
 And all Arcadia breathes from yonder box ! " 
 
 In this prolific age, when the most unlettered dolt can find a mare's nest in the 
 domain of philosophy, why should not we also cry, EvptiKanev I How much 
 of novelty in his views I how much embryo discovery must not Prout unfold ! 
 It were indeed a pity to consign the writings of so eminent a scholar to 
 oblivion : nor ought it be said, in scriptural phrase, of him, what is, alas ! 
 applicable to so many other learned divines when they are dead, that " their 
 works have followed them." Such was the case of that laborious French 
 clergyman, the Abbe' Trublet, of whom Voltaire profanely sings : 
 
 " L'Abbe Trublet ficrit, le Lethe* sur ses rives 
 Recoit avec plaisir ses feuilles fugitives ! " 
 
 Which epigram hath a recondite meaning, not obvious to the reader on a first 
 perusal ; and being interpreted into plain English, for the use of the London 
 University, it may ran thus : 
 
 " Lardner compiles — kind Lethe on her banks 
 Receives the doctor's useful page with thanks." 
 
 Such may be the fate of Lardner and of Trublet, 'such the ultimate destiny 
 that awaits their literary labours; but neither men, nor gods,' nor our columns 
 (those graceful pillars that support the. Muses', temple), shall suffer this old 
 priest to remain in the unmerited obscurity from which Frank Cresswell first 
 essayed to draw him. To that young barrister we have written, with a request 
 
that he would furnish us with further details concerning Prout, and, if possible, 
 a few additional specimens of his colloquial wisdom ; reminding him that 
 modern taste has a decided tendency towards illustrious private gossip, and 
 recommending to him, as a sublime model of the dramatico-biographic style, 
 my Lady rSessington's "Conversations of Lord Byron." How far he has 
 succeeded in following the ignis fatuus of her ladyship's lantern, and how many 
 bogs he has got immerged in because of the dangerous hint, which we gave 
 him in an evil hour, the judicious reader will soon find out. Here is the com- 
 munication. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 May i, 1834. 
 
 Furnival's Inn, April 14. 
 Acknowledging the receipt of your gracious mandate, O Queen of Peri- 
 odicals ! and kissing the top of your ivory sceptre, may I be allowed to express 
 unblamed my utter devotion to your orders, in the language of ^Eolus, quondam 
 ruler of the winds : 
 
 " Tuus, O Regina, quid optes 
 
 Explorare labor, mihi jussa capessere fas est ! " 
 
 without concealing, at the same time, my wonderment, and that of many other 
 sober individuals, at your patronizing the advocacy of doctrines and usages 
 belonging exclusively to another and far less reputable Queen (quean ?) whom 
 I shall have sufficiently designated when I mention that she sits upon seven 
 hills /—in stating which singular phenomenon concerning her, I need not add 
 that her fundamental maxims must be totally different from yours. Many 
 orthodox people cannot understand how you could have reconciled it to your 
 conscience to publish, in its crude state, that Apology for Lent, without adding 
 note or comment in refutation of such dangerous doctrines; and are still more 
 amazed that a Popish parish priest, from the wild Irish hills, could have got 
 among your contributors — 
 
 " Claimed kindred there, and have that claim allowed." 
 
 It will, however, no doubt, give you pleasure to learn, that you have established 
 a lasting popularity among that learned set of men the fishmongers, who are 
 never scaly of their support when deserved ; for, by a unanimous vote of the 
 "worshipful company" last meeting-day, the marble bust of Father Prout, 
 crowned with sea-weeds like a Triton, is to be placed in a conspicuous part of 
 their new hall at London Bridge. But as it is the hardest thing imaginable to 
 please all parties, your triumph is rendered incomplete by the grumbling of 
 another not less respectable portion of the community. By your proposal for 
 the non-consumption of butchers' meat, you have given mortal offence to the 
 dealers in horned cattle, and stirred up a nest of hornets in Smithfield. In 
 your perambulations of the metropolis, go not into the bucolic purlieus of that 
 dangerous district ; beware of the enemy's camp ; tempt not the ire of men 
 armed with cold steel, else the long-dormant fires of that land celebrated in 
 every age as a tierra del fuego may be yet rekindled, and made *' red with 
 uncommon wrath," for your especial roasting. Lord Althorp is no warm friend 
 of yours ; and by your making what he calls ' ■ a most unprovoked attack on 
 the graziers," you have not propitiated the winner of the prize ox. 
 
 * Fcenum habet in cornu,— hunc tu, Romane, caveto !" 
 
 In vain would you seek to cajole the worthy chancellor of his Majesty's 
 unfortunate exchequer, by the desirable prospect of a net revenue from the 
 ocean: you will make no impression. His mind is not accessible to any reason- 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 21 
 
 ing on that subject ; and, like the shield of Telamon, it is wrapt in the impene- 
 trable folds of seven tough bull-hides. 
 
 But eliminating at once these insignificant topics, and setting aside all minor 
 things, let me address myself to the grand subject of my adoption. Verily, 
 since the days of that ornament of the priesthood, and pride of Venice, 
 Father Paul,' no divine has shed such lustre on the Church of Rome as 
 Father Prout. His brain was a storehouse of inexhaustible knowledge, and 
 his memory a bazaar, in which the intellectual riches of past ages were 
 classified and arranged in marvellous and brilliant assortment. When, by the 
 liberality of his executor, you shall have been put in possession of his writings 
 and posthumous papers, you will find I do not exaggerate ; for though his 
 mere conversation was always instructive, still, the pen in his hand, more 
 potent than the wand of Prospero, embellished every subject with an aerial 
 charm ; and whatever department of literature it touched on, it was sure to 
 illuminate and adom, from the lightest and most ephemeral matters of the day, 
 to the deepest and most abstruse problems of metaphysical inquiry ; vigorous 
 and philosophical, at the same time that it is minute and playful ; having no 
 parallel unless we liken it to the proboscis of an elephant, that can with equal 
 ease shift an obelisk and crack a nut. 
 
 Nor did he confine himself to prose. He was a chosen favourite of the 
 nine sisters, and flirted openly with them all, his vow of celibacy preventing 
 his forming a permanent alliance with one alone. Hence pastoral poetry, 
 elegy, sonnets, and still grander effusions in the best style of Bob Montgomery, 
 flowed from his muse in abundance ; but, I must confess, his peculiar forte 
 lay in the Pindaric. Besides, he indulged copiously in Greek and Latin versi- 
 fication, as well as in French, Italian, and High Dutch ; of which accomplish- 
 ments I happen to possess some fine specimens from his pen ; and before I 
 terminate this paper, I mean to introduce them to the benevolent notice of the 
 candid reader. By these you will find, that the Doric reed of Theocritus was 
 to him but an ordinary sylvan pipe —that the lyre of Anacreon was as familiar 
 to him as the German flute — and that he played as well on the classic chords 
 of the bard of Mantua as on the Cremona fiddle ; at all events, he will prove 
 far superior as a poet to the covey of unfledged rhymers who nestle in annuals 
 and magazines. Sad abortions ! on which even you, O Queen, sometimes 
 take compassion, infusing into them a life 
 
 " Which did not you prolong, 
 The world had wanted many an idle song." 
 
 To return to his conversational powers : he did not waste them on the gene- 
 rality of folks, for he despised the vulgar herd of Corkonians with whom it 
 was his lot to mingle ; but when he was sure of a friendly circle, he broke out 
 in resplendent style, often humorous, at times critical, occasionally profound, 
 and always interesting. Inexhaustible in his means of illustration, his fancy 
 was an unwasted mine, into which you had but to sink a shaft, and you were 
 sure of eliciting the finest ore, which came forth stamped with the impress of 
 genius, and fit to circulate among the most cultivated auditory : for though the 
 mint of his brain now and then would issue a strange and fantastic coinage, 
 sterling sense was sure to give it value, and ready wit to promote its currency. 
 The rubbish and dust of the schools with which his notions were sometimes 
 incrusteddidnot alter their intrinsic worth; people only wondered how the 
 diaphanous mind of Prout could be obscured by such common stuff: its 
 brightness was still undiminished by the admixture ; and like straws in amber, 
 without deteriorating the substance, these matters only made manifest its 
 transparency. Whenever he undertook to illustrate any subject worthy of him 
 he was always felicitous. 1 shall give you an instance. 
 
 There stands on the borders of his parish, near the village of Blarney, an 
 
22 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 old castle of the M'Carfhy family, rising abruptly from a bold cliff, at the foot 
 of which rolls a not inconsiderable stream — the fond and frequent witness of 
 Prout's angling propensities. The well-wooded demesne, comprising an 
 extensive lake, a romantic cavern, and an artificial wilderness of rocks, belongs 
 to the family'of Jeffereys, which boasts in the Dowager Countess Glengnll a 
 most distinguished scion; her ladyship's mother having been immortalized 
 under the title of "Lady Jeffers," with the other natural curiosities produced 
 by this celebrated spot, in that never-sufficiently-to-be-encored song, the 
 Groves of Blarney. But neither the stream, nor the lake, nor the castle, tor 
 the village (a sad ruin ! which, but for the recent establishment of a spinning 
 factory by some patriotic Corkonian, would be swept away altogether, or 
 possessed by the owls as a grant from Sultan Mahmoud) ; — none of these 
 picturesque objects has earned such notoriety for "the Groves" as a certain 
 stone, of a basaltic kind, rather unusual in the district, placed on the pinnacle 
 of the main tower, and endowed with the property of communicating to the 
 happy tongue that comes in contact with its polished surface the gift of gentle, 
 insinuating speech, with soft talk in all its ramifications, whether employed in 
 vows and promises light as air, nrtq. irrtpoivra, such as lead captive the ftmrle 
 heart; or elaborate mystification 6f a grosser grain, such as may do for the 
 House of Commons ; all summed up and characterized by the mysterious term 
 Blarney.* 
 
 Prout's theory on this subject might have remained dormant for ages, and 
 perhaps been ultimately lost to the world at large, were it not for an event 
 which occurred in the summer of 1825, while I (a younker then) happened to 
 be on that visit to my aunt at Watergrasshill which eventually secured me her 
 inheritance. The occurrence I am about to commemorate was, in truth, one 
 of the first magnitude, and well calculated, from its importance, to fonn an 
 epoch in the Annals of the Parish. It was the arrival of Sir Walter Scott 
 at Blarney, towards the end of the month of July. 
 
 Nine years have now rolled away, and the " Ariosto of the North " is dead, 
 and our ancient constitution has since fallen under the hoofs of the Whigs ; 
 quenched is many a beacon-light in church and state— Prout himself is no 
 more ; and plentiful indications tell us we are come upon evil days : but still 
 may I be allowed to feel a pleasurable, though somewhat saddened emotion, 
 while I revert to that intellectual meeting, and bid memory go back in " dream 
 sublime" to the glorious exhibition of Prout's mental powtrs. It was, in 
 sooth, a great day for old Ireland ; a greater still for Blarney ; but, greatest of 
 all, it dawned, Prout, on thee ! Then it was that thy light was taken from 
 under its sacerdotal bushel, and placed conspicuously before a man fit to 
 appreciate the effulgence of so brilliant a luminary — a light which I, who pen 
 these words in sorrow, alas ! shall never gaze on more — a light 
 
 " That ne'er shall shine again 
 On Blarney's stream ! ' 
 
 That day it illumined the *' cave," the " shady walks," and the "sweet rock- 
 close," and sent its gladdening beam into the gloomiest vaults of the ancient 
 
 * To Crofton Croker belongs the merit of elucidating this obscure tradition. Itappears 
 that in 1602, when the Spaniards were exciting our chieftains to harass the English 
 authorities, Cormac M'Dermot Carthy held, among other dependencies, the castle of 
 Blarney, and had concluded an armistice with the Lord-president, on condition of sur- 
 rendering this fort to an English garrison. Day after day did his lordship look for the 
 fulfilment of the compact ; while the Irish Pozzo di Borgo, as loath to part with his 
 stronghold as Russia to relinquish the Dardanelles, kept protocolizinrr with soft promises 
 and delusive delays, until at last Carew became the laughing-stock of Elizabeth 1 minis- 
 ters, and "Blarney talk " proverbial. lit is a singular coincidence, that while Crofton was 
 engaged in tracing the. origin of this Irish term, p'Israeli was equally well employed in 
 •'evolving the pedigree of tie English word " Fudge.";! 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 23 
 
 _ _ 
 
 fort ; for all the recondite recesses of the castle were explored in succession by 
 the distinguished poet and the learned priest, and Prout held a candle to 
 Scott. 
 
 We read with interest, in the historian Polybius, the account of Hannibal's 
 interview with Scipio on the plains of Zama ; and often have we, in our school- 
 boy days of unsophisticated feeling, sympathized with Ovid, when he told us 
 that he only got a glimpse of Virgil ; but Scott basked for a whole summer's 
 day in the blaze of Prout's wit, and witnessed the coruscations of his learning. 
 The great Marius is said never to have appeared to such advantage as when 
 seated on the ruins of Carthage : with equal dignity Prout sat on the Blarney 
 stone, amid ruins of kindred glory. Zeno taught in the "porch;" Plato 
 loved to muse alone on the bold jutting promontory of Cape Sunium ; Socra- 
 tes, bent on finding Truth, "in sylvis Acaiiemi quarere verum," sought her 
 among the bowers of Academus ; Prout courted the same coy nymph, and 
 wooed her in the " groves of Blarney." 
 
 I said that it was in the summer of 1625 that Sir Walter Scott, in the pro- 
 gress of his tour through Ireland, reached Cork, and forthwith intimated his 
 wish to proceed at once on a visit to Blarney Castle. For him the noble river, 
 the magnificent estuary, and unrivalled harbour of a city that proudly bears on 
 her civic escutcheon the well-applied motto, " Statib bene fida carinis," had 
 but little attraction when placed in competition with a spot sacred to the 
 Muses, and wedded to immortal verse. Such was the interest which its 
 connection with the popular literature and traditionary stories of the country 
 had excited in that master-mind — such the predominance of its local 
 reminiscences— such the transcendent influence of song ! For this did the 
 then "Great Unknown" wend his way through the purlieus of "Golden 
 Spur," traversing the great manufacturing fauxbourg of "Black Pool," and 
 emerging by the "Red Forge ;" so intent on the classic object of his pursuit, 
 as to disregard the unpromising aspect of the vestibule by which alone it is 
 approachable. Many are the splendid mansions and hospitable halls that stud 
 the suburbs of the " beautiful city," each boasting its grassy lawn and placid 
 lake, each decked with park and woodland, and each well furnished with that 
 paramount appendage, a batterie de cuisine ; but all these castles were passed 
 unheeded by, carcnt quia vate sacro. Gorgeous residences, picturesque seats, 
 magnificent villas, they be, no doubt ; but unknown to literature, in vain do 
 they plume themselves on their architectural beauty ; in vain do they spread 
 wide their well-proportioned wings— they cannot soar aloft to the regions of 
 celebrity. 
 
 On the eve of that memorable day I was sitting on a stool in the priest's 
 parlour, poking the turf fire, while Prout, who had been angling all day, sat 
 nodding over his "breviary," and, according to my calculation, ought to be 
 at the last psalm of vespers, when a loud official knock, not usual on that bleak 
 hill, bespoke the presence of no ordinary personage. Accordingly, the 
 "wicket, opening with a latch," ushered in a messenger clad in the livery of 
 the ancient and loyal corporation of Cork, who announced himself as the 
 bearer of a despatch from the mansion-house to his reverence; and, handing 
 it with that deferential awe which even his masters felt for the incumbent of 
 Watergrasshill, immediately withdrew. The letter ran thus : — 
 
 Council Ckamber, July 24, 1825. 
 
 Very Reverend Doctor Prout, 
 
 Cork harbours within its walls the illustrious author of Waverley. On 
 receiving the freedom of our ancient city, which we presented to him (as usual 
 towards distinguished strangers) in a box carved out of a chip of the Blarney 
 stone, he expressed his determination to visit the old block itself. As he will, 
 therefore, be in your neighbourhood to-morrow, and as no one is better able to 
 
24 The Works of Father Prottt. 
 
 do the honours than you (our burgesses being sadly deficient in learning, as you 
 and I well know), your attendance on the celebrated poet is requested by your 
 old friend and foster-brother, 
 
 George Knapp,* Mayor. 
 
 Never shall I forget the beam of triumph that lit up the old man's features on 
 the perusal of Knapp's pithy summons ; and right warmly did he respond to 
 my congratulations on the prospect of thus coming in contact with so dis- 
 tinguished an author. ' ' You are right, child ! " said he ; and as I perceived 
 by his manner that he was about to enter on one of those rambling trains 
 of thought— half-homily, half-soliloquy— in which he was wont to indulge, I 
 settled myself by the fireplace, and prepared to go through my accustomed 
 part of an attentive listener. ... 
 
 "A great man, Frank ! A truly great man ! No token of ancient days 
 escapes his eagle glance, no venerable memorial of former times his observant 
 scrutiny; and still, even he, versed as he is in the monumentary remains of by- 
 gone ages, may yet learn something more, and have no cause to regret his visit 
 to Blarney. Yes ! since our * groves ' are to be honoured by the presence of the 
 
 learned baronet, , .. 
 
 ' Sylvse suit consule dignae ! 
 
 let us make them deserving of his attention. He shall fix his antiquarian eye 
 and rivet his wondering gaze on the rude basaltic mass that crowns the battle- 
 ments of the Main tower r for though he may have seen the ' chair at Scone,' 
 where the Caledonian kings were crowned ; though he may have examined that 
 Scotch pebble in Westminster Abbey, which the Cockneys, in the exercise of a 
 delightful credulity, believe to be "Jacob's pillow ;" though he may have 
 visited the misshapen pillars on Salisbury plain, and the Rock of Cashel, and 
 the ' Hag's Bed," and St. Kevin's petrified matelas at Glendalough, and many 
 a cromlech of Druidical celebrity,— there is a stone yet unexplored, which he 
 shall contemplate to-morrow, and place on record among his most profitable 
 days that on which he shall have paid it homage : 
 
 ' Hunc, Macrine, diem numera meliore Iapillo ! ' 
 
 "lam old, Frank. In my wild youth I have seen many of the celebrated 
 writers that adorned the decline of the last century, and shed a lustre over 
 France, too soon eclipsed in blood at its sanguinary close. I have conversed 
 
 * The republic of letters has great reason to complain of Dr. Maginn, for his non- 
 fulfilment of a positive pledge to publish " a great historical work " on the Mayor of 
 Cork. Owing to this desideratum in the annals of the Empire, I am compelled to bring 
 into notice thus abruptly the most respectable civic worthy that has worn the cocked hat 
 and chain since the days of John Walters, who boldly proclaimed Perkin Warbeck, in 
 the reign of Henry VII., in the market-place of that beautiful city. Knapp's virtues 
 and talents did not, like those of Donna Ines, deserve to be called 
 
 '* Classic allj 
 Nor lay they chiefly in the mathematical," 
 for his favourite pursuit during the canicule of i8»5, was the extermination of mad dogs ; 
 and so vigorously did he urge the carnage during the summer of his mayoralty, that 
 some thought he wished to eclipse the exploit of St. Patrick in destroying the breed alto- 
 gether, as the saint did that of toads. A Cork poet, the laureate of the mansion-house, 
 has celebrated Knapp's prowess in a didactic composition, entitled "Dog-Killing, a 
 Poem ;" in which the mayor is likened to Apollo in the Grecian camp before Troy, in the 
 opening of the " Iliad : " — 
 
 Avrap 0ovc irpa>T0i> e<f>* UKero feat Kvvas Apyous. 
 
 [But as you may think it all mere doggrel, I shall omit to quote from it, though it might 
 edify many a magisterial Dogberry, and prove a real mayor's nest.— F. Cresswell. J 
 
with Buffon and with Fontenelle, and held intercourse with Nature's simplest 
 child, Bernardin de St. Pierre, author of 'Paul and Virginia;' Gresset and 
 Marmontel were my college-friends ; and to me, though a frequenter of the 
 halls of Sorbonne, the octogenaire of Ferney was not unknown : nor was I un- 
 acquainted with the recluse of Ermenonville. But what are the souvenirs of a 
 single period, however brilliant and interesting, to the recollections of full seven 
 centuries of historic glory, all condensed and concentrated in Scott? What a 
 host of personages does his name conjure up ! what mighty shades mingle in 
 the throng of attendant heroes that wait his bidding, and form his appropriate 
 retinue ! Cromwell, Claverhouse, and Montrose; Saladin, Front de Bceuf, and 
 Coeur de Lion ; Rob Roy, Robin Hood, and Marmion ; those who fell at 
 Culloden and Flodden Field, and those who won the day at Bannockburn, — 
 all start up at the presence of the Enchanter. I speak not of his female forms 
 of surpassing loveliness — his Flora M'lvor, his Rebecca, his Amy Robsart : 
 these you, Frank, can best admire. But I know not how I shall divest myself 
 of a secret awe when the wizard, with all his spells, shall rise before me. The 
 presence of my old foster-brother, George Knapp, will doubtless tend to dis- 
 sipate the illusion ; but if so it will be by personifying the Bailie Nicol Jarvie 
 of Glasgow, his worthy prototype. Nor are Scott's merits those simply of a 
 pleasing novelist or a-spirit-stirring poet ; his ' Life of Dryden,' his valuable 
 commentaries on Swift, his researches in the dark domain of demonology, his 
 biography of Napoleon, and the sterling views of European policy developed 
 in 'Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' all contribute to enhance his literary pre- 
 eminence. Rightly has Silius Italicus depicted the Carthaginian hero, sur- 
 rounded even in solitude by a thousand recollections of well-earned renown— 
 
 ' Nee credis inermem 
 
 8uem mihi tot cinxere duces : si admoveris ora, 
 annas et Trebiam ante oculos, Romanaque busta, 
 Et Pauli stare ingenlem mirabeiis umbram ! ' 
 
 Yet, greatly and deservedly as he is prized by his contemporaries, future ages 
 will value him even more ; and his laurel, ever extending its branches, and 
 growing in secret like the ' fame of Marcellus, ' will overshadow the earth. Pos- 
 terity will canonize his every relic; and his footsteps, even in this remote district, 
 will b3 one day traced and sought for by the admirers of genius. For, not- 
 withstanding the breadth and brilliancy of effect with which he waved the torch 
 of mind while living, far purer and more serene will be the lamp that shall 
 glimmer in his tomb and keep vigil over his hallowed ashes : to that fount of 
 inspiration other and minor spirits, eager to career through the same orbit of 
 glory, will recur, and 
 
 'In their golden urns draw light.' 
 
 Nor do I merely look on him as a writer who, by the blandishment of his narra- 
 tive and the witchery of his style, has calmed more sorrow, and caused more 
 happy hours to flow, than any save a higher and a holier page — a writer who, 
 like the autumnal meteor of his own North, has illumined the dull horizon of 
 these latter days with a fancy ever varied and radiant with joyfulness — one who, 
 for useful purposes, has interwoven the plain warp of history with the many- 
 coloured web of his own romantic loom; — but further do I hail in him the 
 genius who has rendered good and true service to the cause of mankind, by 
 driving forth from the temple of Religion, with sarcasm's knotted lash, that 
 canting puritanic tribe who would obliterate from the book of life every earthly 
 enjoyment, and change all its paths of peace into walks of bitterness. I honour 
 him for his efforts to demolish the pestilent influence of a sour and sulky system 
 that would interpose itself between the gospel sun and the world — that retains 
 no heat, imbibes no light, and transmits none; but flings its broad, cold, and 
 disastrous shadow over the land that is cursed with its visitation. 
 
 D 
 
26 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 "The excrescences and superfoetations of my own church most freely do I 
 yield up to his censure ; for while in his Abbot Boniface, his Friar Tuck, and 
 his intriguing Rashleigh, he has justly stigmatized monastic laziness, and de- 
 nounced ultramontane duplicity, he has not forgotten to exhibit the bright 
 reverse of the Roman medal, but has done full measure of justice to the nobler 
 inspirations of our creed, bodied forth in Mary Stuart, Hugo de Lacy, Cathe- 
 rine Seaton, Die Vernon, and Rose de B&anger. Nay, even in his fictions of 
 cloistered life, among the drones of that ignoble crowd, he has drawn minds of 
 another sphere, and spirits whose ingenuous nature and piety unfeigned were 
 not worthy of this world's deceitful intercourse, but fitted them to commune in 
 solitude with Heaven. 
 
 "Such are the impressions, and such the mood of mind in which I shall 
 accost the illustrious visitor ; and you, Frank, shall accompany me on this 
 occasion." 
 
 Accordingly, the next morning found Prout, punctual to Knapp's summons, 
 at his appointed post on the top of the castle, keeping a keen look-out for the 
 arrival of Sir Walter. He came, at length, up the "laurel avenue," so called 
 from the gigantic laurels that overhang the path, 
 
 " Which bowed, 
 As if each brought a new classic wreath to his head ; M 
 
 and alighting at the castle-gate, supported by Knapp, he toiled up the winding 
 stairs as well as his lameness would permit, and stood at last, with all his fame 
 around him, in the presence of Prout. The form of mutual introduction was 
 managed by Knapp with his usual tact and urbanity ; and the first interchange 
 of thoughts soon convinced Scott that he had lit on no "clod of the valley" 
 in the priest. The confabulation which ensued may remind you of the 
 "Tusculanse Qusestiones" of Tully, or the dialogues "De Oratore," or of 
 Home Tooke's " Diversions of Purley," or of all three together, til void. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I congratulate myself, reverend father, on the prospect of having so 
 experienced a guide .in exploring the wonders of this celebrated spot. Indeed, 
 I am so far a member of your communion, that I take delight in pilgrimages ; 
 and you behold in me a pilgrim to the Blarney stone. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 I accept the guidance of so sincere a devotee ; nor has a more accomplished 
 palmer ever worn scrip, or staff, or scollop-shell, in my recollecticta ; nay, 
 more — right honoured shall the pastor of the neighbouring upland feel in 
 affording shelter and hospitality, such as every pilgrim has claim to, if the 
 penitent will deign visit my humble dwelling. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 My vow forbids ! I must not think of bodily refreshment, or any such pro- 
 fane solicitudes, until I go through the solemn rounds of my devotional career 
 — until I kiss ';' the stone," and explore the " cave where no daylight enters," 
 the "fracture in the battlement," the "lake well stored with fishes," and, 
 finally, " the sweet rock-close." 
 
 PROUT. 
 All these shall you duly contemplate when you shall have rested from the 
 fatigue of climbing to this lofty eminence, whence, seated on these battlements, 
 you can command a landscape fit to repay the toil of the most laborious pere- 
 grination ; in truth, if the ancient observance were not sufficiently vindicated 
 by your example to-day, I should have thought it my duty to take up the 
 gauntlet for that much-abused set of men, the pilgrims of olden time. 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 27 
 
 In all cases of initiation to any solemn rites, such as I am about to enter on, 
 it is customary to give an introductory letter to the neophyte ; and as you 
 seem disposed to enlighten us with a preamble, you have got, reverend father, 
 in me a most docile auditor. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 There is a work, Sir Walter, with which I presume you are not unacquainted, 
 which forcibly and beautifully portrays the honest fervour of our forefathers in 
 their untutored views of Christianity: but if the "Tales of the Crusaders" 
 count among their dramatis persona the mitred prelate, the cowled hermit, the 
 croziered abbot, and the gallant templar — strange mixture of daring and devo- 
 tion, — far do I prefer the sketch of that peculiar creation of Catholicity and 
 romance, the penitent under solemn vow, who comes down from Thabor or 
 from Lebanon to embark for Europe : and who in rude garb and with unshodden 
 feet will return to his native plains of Languedoc or Lombardy, displaying 
 with pride the emblem of Palestine, and realizing what Virgil only dreamt of — 
 
 " Primus Idumseas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas ! " 
 But I am wrong in saying that pilgrimages belong exclusively to our most 
 ancient form of Christianity, or that the patent for this practice appertains to 
 religion at all. It is the simplest dictate of our nature, though piety has con- 
 secrated the practice, and marked it for her own. Patriotism, poetry, philan- 
 thropy, all the arts, and all the finer feelings, have their pilgrimages, their 
 hallowed spots of intense interest, their haunts of fancy and of inspiration. 
 It is the first impulse of every genuine affection, the tendency of the heart in 
 its fervent youthhood ; and nothing but the cold scepticism of an age which 
 Edmund Burke so truly designated as that of calculators and economists, 
 could scoff at the enthusiasm that feeds on ruins such as these, that visits 
 with emotion the battle-field and the ivied abbey, or Shakespeare's grave, or 
 Galileo's cell, or Runnymede, or Marathon. 
 
 Filial affection has had its pilgrim in Telemachus ; generous and devoted ' 
 loyalty in Blondel, the best of troubadours ; Bruce, Belzoni, and Humboldt, 
 were pilgrims of science ; and John Howard was the sublime pilgrim of 
 philanthropy. 
 
 Actuated by a sacred feeling, the son of Ulysses visited every isle and 
 inhospitable shore of the boisterous /Egean, until a father clasped him in his 
 arms; — propelled by an equally absorbing attachment, the faithful minstrel of 
 Cceur de Lion sang before every feudal castle in Germany, until at last a 
 dungeon-keep gave back the responsive echo of " O Richard) O mon royl" 
 If Belzoni died toilworn and dissatisfied — if Baron Humboldt is still plodding 
 his course through the South American peninsula, or wafted on the bosom of 
 the Pacific — it is because the domain of science is infinite, and her votaries 
 must never rest : 
 
 " For there are wanderers o'er eternity, 
 "Whose bark goes on and on, and anchorM ne'er shall be '. " 
 
 But when Howard explored the secrets of every prison-house in Europe, per- 
 forming that which Burke classically described as "a circumnavigation of 
 charity ; " nay, when, on a still holier errand, three eastern sages came from 
 the boundaries of the earth to do homage to a cradle ; think ye not that in 
 theirs, as in every pilgrim's progress, a light unseen to others shone on the 
 path before them ? derived they not untiring vigour from the exalted nature of 
 their pursuit, felt they not " a pinion lifting every limb " ? Such are the feel- 
 ings which Tasso beautifully describes when he brings his heroes within view 
 of Sion : 
 
28 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " Al grand placer che quella prima vista 
 Dolcemente spird, nell' altrui petto, 
 Alta contrizion successe, mista 
 Di timoroso e riverente afletto. 
 Osano appena d' innalzar la vista 
 Ver la citta, di Cristo albergo eletto, 
 Dove morl, dove sepolto fue f 
 Dove poi rivestl Ie membra sue ! " 
 
 Canto III. 
 
 I need not tell you, Sir Walter, that the father of history, previous to taking 
 up the pen of Clio, explored every monument of Upper Egypt ; or that Hero- 
 dotus had been preceded by Homer, and followed by Pythagoras, in this 
 philosophic pilgrimage; that Athens and Corinth were the favourite resorts of 
 the Roman literati, Sylla, Lucullus, and Mecaenas, when no longer the seats 
 of empire ; and that Rome itself is, in its turn, become as well the haunt of 
 the antiquarian as the poet, and the painter, and the Christian pilgrim ; for 
 dull indeed would that man be, duller than the stagnant weed that vegetates 
 on Lethe's shore, who again would put the exploded interrogatory, once fallen, 
 not inaptly, from the mouth of a clown — 
 
 " 'Quae tanta fuit Romam tibi causa videndi 1 " 
 
 I mean not to deny that there exist vulgar minds and souls without refinement, 
 whose perceptions are of that stunted nature that they can see nothing in the 
 "pass of Thermopylae" but a gap for cattle; in the "Forum" but a cow- 
 yard ; and for whom St. Helena itself is but a barren rock : but, thank 
 Heaven ! we are not all yet come to that unenviable stage of utilitarian philo- 
 sophy ; and there is still some hope left for the Muses' haunts, when he of 
 Abbotsford blushes not to visit the castle, the stone, and the groves of Blarney. 
 Nor is he unsupported in the indulgence of this classic fancy ; for there 
 exists another pilgrim, despite of modern cavils, who keeps up the credit of 
 the profession — a wayward childe, whose restless spirit has long since spurned 
 the solemn dulness of conventional life, preferring to hold intercourse with the 
 mountain-top and the ocean-brink : Ida and Salamis "are to him companion- 
 ship ;" and every broken shaft, prostrate capital, and marble fragment of 
 that sunny land, tells its tale of other days to a fitting listener in Harold : 
 for him Etruria is a teeming soil, and the spirit of song haunts Ravenna 
 and Parthenope : for him 
 
 "There is a tomb in Arqua," 
 
 which to the stolid peasant that wends his way along the Euganeian hills 
 is mute indeed as the grave, nor breathes the name of its indweller; but a 
 voice breaks forth from the mausoleum at the passage of Byron, the ashes 
 of Petrarch grow warm in their marble bed, and the last wish of the poet 
 in his "Legacy " is accomplished : 
 
 "Then if some bard, who roams forsaken, 
 Shall touch on thy cords in passing along, 
 O may one thought of its master waken 
 The sweetest smile for the Childe ff/Song!" 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 Proud and flattered as I must feel, O most learned divine ! to be classi- 
 fied with Herodotus, Pythagoras, Belzoni, Bruce, and Byron, I fear much 
 that I am but a sorry sort of pilgrim, after all. Indeed, an eminent writer of 
 your church has laid it down as a maxim, which I suspect applies to my 
 case, "Qui multum peregrinantur raro sanctificantur." Does not Thomas 4 
 Kempis say so? 
 
1 
 
 A Plea for Pilgrimages. 29 
 
 The doctrine may be sound ; but the book from which you quote is one of 
 those splendid productions of uncertain authorship which we must ascribe to 
 some "great unknown" of the dark ages. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 Be that as it may, I can give you a parallel sentiment from one of your 
 French poets ; for I understand you are partial to the literature of that merry 
 nation. The pilgrim's wanderings are compared by this Gallic satirist to the 
 meandering course of a river in Germany, which, after watering the plains of 
 Protestant Wirtemberg and Catholic Austria, enters, by way of finale, on the 
 domains of the Grand Turk : 
 
 ai vu le Danube inconstant, 
 jui, tantdt Catholique et tant6t Protestant, 
 Sen Rome et Luther de son onde ; 
 
 Mais, comptant a^res pour rien 
 
 Romain et Luthenen, 
 Finit sa course vagabonde 
 
 Par n'etre pas meme Chretien, 
 Rarement en courant le monde 
 
 On devient homme de bien !" 
 
 By the way, have you seen Stothard's capital print, "The Pilgrimage to 
 Canterbury"? 
 
 PEOUT. 
 
 Such orgies on pious pretences I cannot but deplore, with Chaucer, Erasmus, 
 Dryden, and Pope, who were all of my creed, and pointedly condemned them. 
 The Papal hierarchy in this country have repeatedly discountenanced such 
 unholy doings. Witness their efforts to demolish the cavern of Loughderg, 
 called St. Patrick's Purgatory, that has no better claim to antiquity than our 
 Blarney cave, in which " bats and badgers are for ever bred." And still, con- 
 cerning this truly Irish curiosity, there is a document of a droll description in 
 Rymer's " Fcedera," in the 32nd year of Edward III., A.D. 1358. It is no 
 less than a certificate, duly made out by that good-natured monarch, showing 
 to all men as how a foreign nobleman did really visit the Cave of St. Patrick,* 
 and passed a night in its mysterious recesses. 
 
 * This is, we believe, what Prout alludes to ; and we confess it is a precious relic of 
 olden simplicity, and ought to see the light : — 
 
 "AD. 1358,. an. 32 Edw. III. 
 " Litters testimonials super mora- in S cti Patricii Purgatorio. Rex universis et singulis 
 ad quos presences litterae pervenerint, salutem ! 
 
 " Nobilis vir Malatesta Ungarus de Arimenio, miles, ad prsesentiam nostram veniens, 
 mature nobis exposuit quod ipse nuper a terra; suae discedens laribus, Purgatorium Sancti 
 Patricii, infra terrain nostram Hyberniae cons titu turn, in multis corporis sui laboribus 
 peregrfe visit&rat, ac per Integra? diei ac noctis continuatum spatium, ut est inoris, clausus 
 manserat in eodem, nobis cum instantia supplicando, ut in prxmissorum veracius fulcU 
 mentum regales nostras litteras inde sibi concedere dignaremur. 
 
 " Nos autem ipsius peregrinationis considerantes periculosa discrimina, licet tanti 
 nobilis in hac parte nobis assertio sit accepta, quia tamen dilecti ac fidelis nostri Almarici 
 de S*° Amando, militis, justiciarii nostri Hyberniae, simul ac Prions et Conventus loci 
 dicti Purgatorii, et etiam aliorum auctoritatis multse virorum litteris, aliisque Claris evi- 
 dentiis informamur quod dictus nobilis hanc peregrinationem rile perfecerat et etiam 
 antmosi. 
 
 "Dignum duximus super his testimonium nostrum favorabiliter adhibere, ut sublato 
 cujusvis dubitationis involucro, praemissorum Veritas singulis lucidius patefiat, has litteras 
 nostras sigillo regio consignatas ilH duximus concedendas. 
 
 " Dat' in palatio nostro West', xxiv die Octobris, 1358/' 
 
 Rymer's Feedera t hy Caley. London, 1835. 
 Vol. iii. pt. i. p. 408. 
 
30 TIte Works of Father Prout. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 I was aware of the existence of that document, as also of the remark made 
 by one Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the said cave : " Non desunt hodie 
 qui descendunt, sedprius triduano enecti jejunio ne sano capite ingrediantur,"* 
 Erasmus, reverend friend, was an honour to your cloth ; but as to Edward III., 
 I am not surprised he should have encouraged such excursions, as he belonged 
 to a family whose patronymic is traceable to a pilgrim's vow. My reverend 
 friend is surely in possession of the historic fact, that the name of Plantagenet 
 is derived from pldnie de genest, a sprig of heath, which the first Duke of 
 Anjou wore in his helmet as a sign of penitential humiliation, when about to 
 depart for the Holy Land ; though why a broom-sprig should indicate lowliness 
 is not satisfactorily explained. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 The monks of that day, who are reputed to have been very ignorant, 
 were perhaps acquainted with the "Georgics" of Virgil, and recollected the 
 verse — 
 
 " Quid majora sequar? Salices Immilesque Genista." 
 
 II. 434. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I suppose there is some similar recondite allusion in that unaccountable deco- 
 ration of every holy traveller's accoutrement, the scollop-shell? or was it merely 
 used to quaff the waters of the brook ? 
 
 It was first assumed by the penitents who resorted to the shrine of St. Jago 
 di Compostella, on the western coast of Spain, to betoken that they had 
 extended their penitential excursion so far as that sainted shore ; just as the 
 palm-branch was sufficient evidence of a visit to Palestine. Did not the 
 soldiers of a Roman general fill their helmets with cockles on the brink of the 
 German Ocean? By the bye, when my laborious and learned friend the 
 renowned Abbe Trublet, in vindicating the deluge against Voltaire, instanced 
 the heaps of marine remains and conchylia on the ridge of the Pyrenees, the 
 witty reprobate of Ferney had the unblushing effrontery to assert that those 
 were shells left behind by the pilgrims of St. Jacques on recrossing the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I must not, meantime, forget the objects of my devotion; and with your 
 benison, reverend father, shall proceed to examine the "stone." 
 
 * Erasmus in Adagia, artic. de antra Trophonii. See also Camden's account of this 
 cave in his Hybertiue Description edition of 1504, p. 671. It is a singular fact, though 
 little known, that from the visions said to occur in this cavern, and bruited abroad by the 
 fraternity of monks, whose connection with Italy was constant and intimate, Dante took 
 the first hint of his Divina Commedia, // Purgatorio. Such was the celebrity this cave 
 had obtained in Spain, that the great dramatist Calderon made it the subject of one of 
 his best pieces ; and it was so well known at the court of Ferrara, that Ariosto introduced 
 it into his Orlando Furioso, canto x. stanza 92. 
 
 " Quindi Ruggier, poichedi banda in banda 
 Vide gl' Inglesi, and6 verso 1' Irlanda 
 E vide Ibernia fabulosa, dove 
 II santo vecchiarel fece la cava 
 In che tanta niercEj par che si trove, 
 Che 1' uom vi purga ogni sua colpa prava ! " 
 
 [F. Cresswelu] 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 31 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 You behold, Sir Walter, in this block the most valuable remnant of Ireland's 
 ancient glory, and the most precious lot of her Phoenician inheritance ! Pos- 
 sessed of this treasure, she may well he designated 
 
 " First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea ; " 
 
 for neither the musical stone of Memnon, that "so sweetly played in tune," 
 nor the oracular stone at Delphi, nor the lapidary talisman of the Lydian 
 Gyges, nor the colossal granite shaped into a sphinx in Upper Egypt, nor 
 Stonehenge, nor the Pelasgic walls of Italy's Palaistrina, offer so many attrac- 
 tions. The long-sought lapis philosophorum, compared with this jewel, 
 dwindles into insignificance ; nay, the savoury fragment which was substituted 
 for the infant Jupiter, when Saturn had the mania of devouring his children ; 
 the Luxor obelisk ; the treaty-stone of Limerick, with all its historic endear- 
 ments ; the zodiacal monument of Denderach, with all its astronomic impor- 
 tance; the Elgin marbles with all their sculptured, the Arundelian with all their 
 lettered, riches, — cannot for a moment stand in competition with the Blarney 
 block. What stone in the world, save this alone, can communicate to the 
 tongue that suavity of speech, and that splendid effrontery, so necessary to get 
 through life ? Without this resource, how could Brougham have managed 
 to delude the English public, or Dan O'Connell to gull even his own country- 
 men? How could St. John Long thrive? or Dicky Sheil prosper? What 
 else could have transmuted my old friend Pat Lardner into a man of letters — 
 LL.D., F.R.S.L. and E., M.R.I.A., F.R.A.S., F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.C.P.S., 
 &c, &c. ? What would have become of Spring Rice? and who would have 
 heard of Charley Phillips ? When the good fortune of the above-mentioned 
 individuals can be traced to any other source, save and except the Blarney 
 stone, I am ready to renounce my belief in it altogether. 
 
 This palladium of our country was brought hither originally by the Phoe- 
 nician colony that peopled Ireland, and is the best proof of our eastern 
 parentage. The inhabitants of Tyre and Carthage, who for many years had 
 the Blarney stone in their custody, made great use of the privilege, as the 
 proverbs fides Punica, Tyripsque Hlingues, testify. Hence the origin of this 
 wondrous talisman is of the remotest antiquity. , 
 
 Strabo, Diodorus, and Pliny, mention the arrival of the Tyrians in Ireland 
 about the year 883 before Christ, according to the chronology of Sir Isaac 
 Newton, and the twenty-first year after the sack of Troy. 
 
 Now, to show that in all their migrations they carefully watched over this 
 treasure of eloquence and source of diplomacy, I need only enter into a few 
 etymological details. Carthage, where they settled for many centuries, but 
 which turns out to have been only a stage and resting-place in the progress of 
 their western wanderings, bears in its very name the trace of its having had in 
 its possession and custody the Blarney stone. This city is called in the Scrip- 
 ture Tarsus, or Tarshish, V*VHS\, which in Hebrew means a valuable stone, a 
 stone of price, rendered in your authorized (?) version, where it occurs in the 
 28th and 39th chapters of Exodus, by the specific term beryl, a sort of jewel. 
 In his commentaries on this word, an eminent rabbi, Jacob Rodrigues 
 Moreira, the Spanish Jew, says that Carthage is evidently the Tarsus of the 
 Bible, and he reads the word thus— Win, accounting for the termina- 
 tion in ish, by which Carthago becomes tarshish, in a very plausible way : 
 "now," says he, " our peoplisn have de very great knack of ending dere vords 
 in ish; for if you go on the 'Change, you will hear the great man Nicholish 
 Rotchild calling the English coin monish." — See Lectures delivered in the 
 Western Synagogue, by J. R. M. 
 
 But, further, does it not stand to reason that there must be some other latent 
 
way of accounting for the purchase of as much ground as an ox-hide would 
 cover, besides the generally received and most unsatisfactory explanation ? The 
 fact is, the Tynans bought as much land as their Blarney stone would require 
 to fix itself solidly, — 
 
 " Taurino quantum potuit circumdare tergo ; '" 
 and having got that much, by the talismanic stone they humbugged and 
 deluded the simple natives, and finally became the masters of Africa. 
 
 I confess you have thrown a new and unexpected light on a most obscure 
 passage in ancient history ; but how the stone got at last to the county of 
 Cork, appears to me a difficult transition. It must give you great trouble. 
 
 My dear sir, don't mention it ! It went to Minorca with a chosen body of 
 Carthaginian adventurers, who stole it away as their best safeguard on the 
 expedition. They first settled at Port Mahon, — a spot so called from the clan 
 of the O'Mahonys, a powerful and prolific race still flourishing in this county; 
 just as the Nile had been previously so named from the tribe of the O'Neils, 
 its aboriginal inhabitants. All these matters, and many more curious points, 
 will be one day revealed to the world by my friend Henry O'Brien, in his work 
 on the Round Towers of Ireland. Sir, we built the pyramids before we left 
 Egypt ; and all those obelisks, sphinxes, and Memnonic stones, were but 
 emblems of the great relic before you. 
 
 George Knapp, who had looked up to Prout with dumb amazement from the 
 commencement, here pulled out his spectacles, to examine more closely the old 
 block, while Scott shook his head doubtingly. 
 
 " I can convince the most obstinate sceptic, Sir Walter," continued the 
 learned doctor, "of the intimate connection that subsisted between us and 
 those islands which the Romans called insula Ba hares, without knowing the 
 signification of the words which they thus applied. That they were so called 
 from the Blarney stone, will appear at once to any person accustomed to trace 
 Celtic derivations : the Ulster king of arms, Sir William Betham, has shown 
 it by the following scale." 
 
 Here Prout traced with his cane on the muddy floor of the castle the words 
 " B«L«ARm iNiK&E=Blam* ! " 
 
 Prodigious ! My reverend friend, you' have set the point at rest for ever — 
 rem acu tetigistil Have the goodness to proceed. 
 
 Setting sail from Minorca, the expedition, after encountering 'a desperate 
 storm, cleared the Pillars of Hercules, and landing in the Cove of Cork, 
 deposited their treasure in the greenest spot and the shadiest groves of this 
 beautiful vicinity. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 How do you account for their being left by the Carthaginians in quiet pos- 
 session of this invaluable deposit? , 
 
 PROUT. 
 They had sufficient tact (derived from their connection with the stone) to give 
 out, that in the storm it had been thrown overboard to relieve the ship, in lati- 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 33 
 
 tude 36 14", longitude 24 . A search was ordered by the senate of Carthage, 
 and the. Mediterranean was dragged without effect; but the mariners of that 
 sea, according to Virgil, retained a superstitious reverence for every submarine 
 appearance of a stone : 
 
 " Saxa vocant Itali mediis quas in fluctibus aras ! " 
 And Aristotle distinctly says, in his treatise "De Mirandis," quoted by the 
 erudite Justus Lipsius, that a law was enacted against any further intercourse 
 with Ireland. His words are : "In man, extra Herculis Columnas, insulam 
 desertam inventam fuisse sylvS, nemorosam, in quam crebrd Carfhaginienses 
 commearint, et sedes etiam fixerint : sed veriti ne nimis cresceret, et Carthago 
 laberetur, edicto cavisse ne quis poena capitis ed deinceps navigaret," 
 
 The fact is, Sir Walter, Ireland was always considered a lucky spot, and 
 constantly excited the jealousy of Greeks, Romans, and people of every 
 country. The Athenians thought that the ghosts of departed heroes were 
 transferred to our fortunate island, which they call, in the war-song of Harmo- 
 dius and Aristogiton, the land of O's and Macs : 
 
 $i\th0' 'Ap/io<5i, ovte trov TeSi/ij/caff, 
 Ntjo-ois 8' tv MAK ap' GN at ipaaiv ttvai. 
 
 And the " Groves of Blarney " have been commemorated by the Greek poets 
 many centuries before the Christian era. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 There is certainly somewhat of Grecian simplicity in the old song itself ; and 
 if Pindar had been an Irishman, I think he would have celebrated this favourite 
 haunt in a style not very different from Millikin's classic rhapsody. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 Millikin, the reputed author of that song, was but a simple translator from 
 the Greek original. Indeed, I have discovered, when abroad, in the library of 
 Cardinal Mazarin, an old Greek manuscript, which, after diligent examination, 
 I am convinced must be the oldest and ' ' princeps editio " of the song. I begged 
 to be allowed to copy it, in order that I might compare it with the ancient 
 Latin or Vulgate translation which is preserved in the Brera at Milan ; and 
 from a strict and minute comparison with that, and with the Norman-French 
 copy which is appended to Doomsday-book, and the Celtic-Irish fragment pre- 
 served by Crofton Croker (rejecting as spurious the Arabic, Armenian, and 
 Chaldaic stanzas on the same subject, to be found in the collection of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society), I have come to the conclusion that the Greeks were the 
 undoubted original contrivers of that splendid ode ; though whether we ascribe 
 it to Tyrtaeus or Callimachus will depend on future evidence ; and perhaps. 
 Sir Walter, you would give me your opinion, as I have copies of all the versions 
 I allude to at my dwelling on the hill. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I cannot boast, learned father, of much nous in Hellenistic matters; but 
 should find myself quite at home in the Gaelic and Norman-French, to inspect 
 which I shall with pleasure accompany you : so here I kiss the stone ! 
 
 Thewondersof " the castle," and "cave," and "lake," were speedily gone 
 over ; and now, according to the usage of the dramatist, modo Soma, modb 
 fan it Athenis, we shift the scene to the tabernacle of Father Prout on Water- 
 grasshill, where, round a small table, sat Scott, Knapp, and Prout — a trium- 
 virate of critics never equalled. The papers fell into my hands when the table 
 was cleared for the subsequent repast ; and thus I am able to submit to the 
 world's decision what these three could not decide, viz., which is the original 
 version of the " Groves of Blarney." 
 
 P * 
 
34 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Zfy Grofaes of 93Iam?p. 
 
 Le Bois de Blarnaye. 
 I. 
 
 Charmans bocages t 
 
 i. 
 
 The groves of Blarney, 
 
 They look so charming, 
 
 Vous me ravissez, 
 
 Down by the purlings 
 Of sweet silent brooks, 
 
 Que d'avantages 
 
 Vous riunissez I 
 
 All decked by posies 
 
 Rockers salvages, 
 
 That spontaneous grow there, 
 
 Paisibles ruisseaux, 
 
 Planted in order 
 
 Tendres ramages 
 
 In the rocky nooks. 
 
 Degentils oiseaux .* 
 
 'Tis there the daisy, 
 
 Dans ce doux parage 
 
 And the sweet carnation, 
 
 Aiinable Nature 
 
 The blooming pink, 
 
 A fait italage 
 
 And the rose so fair ; 
 
 D'Hernelle verdure : 
 
 Likewise the lily, 
 
 Et lesfleurs, & mesure 
 Qttelles croissent, a raison 
 De la belle saison 
 
 And the daffodilly — 
 
 All flowers that scent 
 
 The sweet open air. 
 
 Font driller lenrparure. 
 
 II. 
 
 II. 
 
 'Tis Lady Jeffers 
 
 Cest Madame de Jefferts % 
 
 Owns this plantation ; 
 
 Femmepleine d'addtvsse, 
 
 Like Alexander, 
 
 Qui sur ces beaux diserts 
 
 Or like Helen fair, 
 
 Rigne enfihre princesse. 
 
 Elle exerce ses droits 
 
 There's no commander 
 
 In all the nation, 
 
 Comme dame tnaitresse. 
 
 For regulation 
 
 Dans cette forteresse 
 
 Can With her compare. 
 
 Que la hautje vols. 
 Plus sage millefois 
 Qit Hilene on CUopatre, 
 Cromvel seulput Vabb&tre, 
 
 Such walls surround her, 
 
 That no nine-pounder 
 
 Could ever plunder 
 
 Her place of strength ; 
 
 La mettant aux abois, 
 
 But Oliver Cromwell, 
 
 Quand, allumant sa mrche. 
 
 Her he did pommel, 
 
 Point ne tira au hasard, 
 
 And made a breach 
 
 Mais bum dans son rempett 
 
 In her battlement. 
 
 Pit irreparable brie tie. 
 
 III. 
 
 III. 
 
 There is a cave wliere 
 
 // est dans ccs vallons 
 
 No daylight enters. 
 
 Une sombre caveme, 
 
 But cats and badgers 
 
 Ouiamais nous n'allons 
 Qu armis dune lanterne. 
 La mousse en cette grotte 
 
 Are for ever bred ; 
 
 And mossed by nature 
 
 Makes it completer 
 
 Tapissant ckaque matte 
 
 Than a coach-and-six, 
 
 Vous offre des so/as ; 
 
 Or a downy bed. 
 
 Et la se trouve unie 
 
 'Tis there the lake is 
 
 La douce symphonie 
 
 Well stored .with fishes, 
 
 Des kiboux et des chats. 
 
 And comely eels in 
 
 Toutpres on voii un lac, 
 
 The verdant mud ; 
 
 Oil lespoissons affluent ', 
 
 Besides the leeches. 
 And groves of beeches. 
 Standing in order 
 
 Avec asses de sangsues 
 
 Pour en remplir un sac; 
 
 Et sur ces bords champitrcs 
 
 To guard the flood. 
 
 On aplanU des nitres. 
 
A Plea for 
 
 Pilgrimages, 
 
 35 
 
 *H 'TXij BXapvixq. 
 
 > Blarneum Nemus, 
 
 
 a. 
 
 Ttjs BXapvia? ai iiAai 
 
 I. 
 
 Quisquis hlc in lsetU 
 
 
 4>epi<rTat, xaAAupvAAai, 
 
 Gaudes errare virefis, 
 
 ' 
 
 'Ottou ffiyfl peovtri. 
 
 Turrigeras rupes 
 
 
 Iljjyai jpi0vpi<jovcrar 
 
 Blarnea saxa stupes ! 
 
 
 'Ekopto. yei/wjOeira, 
 
 Murmure dum caeco ( 
 
 
 *Op.ws tb <puT*v0«Ta 
 
 Lympharum perstrepk echo, 
 
 
 Mecrtrois €f ayfcopeawii' 
 
 Quas veluti mutas 
 
 
 Ear* avfle' TreTpttifieffffif. 
 
 Ire per arva putas. 
 
 
 Eicei eoV ay\anjp,a 
 
 Multus in hoc luco 
 
 
 T\vkv Kat epvBrjfia, 
 
 Rubet undique flos sine fuco, 
 
 
 Iov t' exei QaXov re 
 
 Ac ibi formosam 
 
 
 BeuriAiKOv patio? re. 
 
 Cernis ubique rosam ; 
 
 
 Kat Aeipioe re 4pvei, 
 
 Suaviter hi flores 
 
 
 AtnpoocAof re Bpvei, 
 
 Miscent ut amabis odorcs ; 
 
 
 Tlavr avOeft a KakQO~iv 
 
 Nee requiem demus, 
 
 
 Ee Evfiiais aijo'»\ 
 
 Nam placet omne nemus ! 
 
 
 ft 
 
 II. 
 
 
 Tavnjs IE*EPE22A 
 
 Fcemina dux horum ( 
 
 
 KaAt) kox \aautraa. 
 *H« 'EAenj, ws t' vtot 
 
 Regnat Jeferessa locorum, 
 
 
 Face, virago gravis, 
 
 
 Tou A-fi.ft.ov 09 6 fitos, 
 
 Marteque pejor avis ! 
 
 
 $vreiac ear' avatrcnj. 
 
 Africa non atram 
 
 
 lepiTV t' ev iiraoT7 
 
 Componeret ei Cleopatram, 
 Nee Dido constares ! 
 
 
 Oims Bpowv yevotTO 
 
 
 *0« auT77 avp-tpepoiTO, 
 
 Non habe.t ilia pares. 
 
 
 OiKOPOiietp yap olfie. 
 
 Turre manens ista 
 
 
 Toi^oi TOtroi toioi fie 
 
 Nulla est violanda balista : 
 
 
 AuTTjr a^LcrTei^orrai, 
 
 Turris erat diris 
 
 
 IIoAefxiKT) w (3pornj_ 
 MaTqv Vtv fia\k' MS ifpiat 
 
 Non penetranda viris ; 
 Cromwellus latum 
 
 
 KpopueAAo? OAupijpo? 
 
 Tamen illlc fecit hiatum, 
 
 
 En-epo-e, St aTratras 
 
 Et ludos heros 
 
 
 AicpoiroAew? Trepacras. 
 
 Lucit in arce feros ! 
 
 
 Kat curpoi' etrr* ckci fie 
 *0y' Tffifp' OV7T0T* etfie, 
 McAetc 5e *cai yaAcu ec 
 
 III. 
 
 Hie tenebrosa caverna 
 Est, gattorumque taberna, 
 Talpa habitata pigro, 
 
 
 
 AuTiw rpnpovrat oiev 
 EweAcoTepor <puov re 
 Afupis Trotei /3pvov ye 
 *E£ tmrov rj Si^tpoio 
 H KotTT)? tovAoto* 
 I^dveuf re /acottj 
 AiftKTj eieei TrapecTTt, 
 
 Non sine fele nijjro ; 
 Muscus iners olh 
 Stravit loca u-gmine molH 
 Lecticas, ut plumis 
 Mollior esset humus : 
 
 
 Inque lacu anguillse 
 Luteo nant gurgite mille ; 
 
 
 K' eyxeAees <puoufft 
 Ep tA.vi 6a\ov(r[}- 
 
 Quo nat, arnica luti, 
 Hostis hirudo cuti : 
 
 
 BfieAAai tc citric aAAa 
 
 Grande decus pagi, 
 
 
 ^ywc re aAoij jeaA.' a 
 
 Fluvii stant margine fagi ; 
 
 
 STtxecRr* e/cet TeraxTai, 
 Ais pOTj irctpuAaKTcu. 
 
 Quodque tegunt ramo 
 Labile flumen amo ! 
 
 ) 
 
36 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There gravel walks are 
 For recreation. 
 And meditation 
 In sweet solitude. 
 Tis there the lover 
 May hear the dove, or 
 The gentle plover, 
 In the afternoon ; 
 And if a lady- 
 Would be so engaging 
 As for to walk in 
 Those shady groves, 
 'Tis there the courtier 
 Might soon transport her 
 Into some fort, or 
 The "sweet rock-close." 
 
 There are statues gracing 
 This noble place in- 
 All heathen gods, m 
 And nymphs so fair ; 
 Bold Neptune, Caesar, 
 And Nebuchadnezzar, 
 All standing naked 
 In the open air ! 
 There is a boat on 
 The lake to float on. 
 And lots of beauties 
 Which I can't entwine ; 
 But were I a preacher, 
 Or a classic teacher, 
 In every feature 
 I'd make 'em shine ! 
 
 IV. 
 let Vhomme atrahilaire 
 Un sentierpeut choisir 
 Poury suivir a loisir 
 Son rive solitaire, 
 Quand une nympke cruelle 
 Jja mis au disespoir, 
 Satis qu'iipuisse imouvoir 
 L'inexorable belle. 
 Quel doux repos je goute, 
 Assis sur ce gazon I 
 Du rossignol j'icoute 
 J,e tendre diapason. 
 Ah I dans cet antre noir 
 Puisse ma Lionore, 
 Celle que man cceur adore, 
 Venir furtive au soirl 
 
 V. 
 
 Dans ces classiques lieux 
 Plus d'une statue brille, 
 Et se prtsente aux yeux 
 En par/ait. dishabille 1 
 La Neptune on discern*, 
 Et Jules Cisar en plomb, 
 Et Venus, et le tronc 
 Du Gtneral Holoferne. 
 Vent-on voguer au large 
 Sur ce lac * un csquif 
 Offire a V amateur craintif 
 Les chances d'un naufrage. 
 Que fte suis-j'e un Hugo, 
 On quelqii 'auteur en vogue, 
 En ce genre d'iglogue. 
 Je n'aurais pas d'igattx. 
 
 VI 
 
 There is a stone there. 
 That whoever kisses. 
 Oh ! he never misses 
 To grow eloquent. 
 'Tis he may clamber 
 To a lady's chamber, 
 Or become a member 
 Of parliament : 
 A clever spouter 
 He'll sure turn out, or 
 An out-and-outer, 
 " To be let alone," 
 Don't hope to hinder him, 
 Or to bewilder him ; 
 Sure he's a pilgrim 
 From the Blarney stone ! * 
 
 * End of Millikin's Translation of the 
 Groves of Blarney. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Unepierre s'y rencontre, 
 
 Estimable trisor. 
 
 Qui vaut son poids en or 
 
 Au guide qui la tnontre. 
 
 Qui baise ce monument, 
 
 Acquiert la parole 
 
 Qui doncement cajole ; 
 
 ll devient eloquent. 
 
 Au boudoir d'une dame 
 
 II sera bien recu, 
 
 Et mime a son inscu 
 
 Fera naltre nneflatmne. 
 
 Homme a bonnes fortunes, 
 
 A lui on peut sejier 
 
 Pour mystifier 
 
 La Chambre des Cotnmunes.f 
 
 + Ici finist le Pofeme dit le Bois de Blar- 
 naye, copie du Livre de Doomsdaye, a.d. 
 1069. 
 
A Plea for Pilgrimages. 
 
 37. 
 
 A t Qivas y e\« iropcux$ 
 'EvcKa TreptiraT«taff, 
 "EwOiav T€ detav 
 Kar* tfrtifiiav ykviteiav 
 Escort «at epaarjj 
 Mtfl' etnrepaf aAcurrj} 
 
 AltOVCtl/ TJ TpTJfW v' 1} 
 
 2e, fitxpe Aiyv^wi-e ! 
 El Tts re icai Secnroica 
 E*cei koAij /i,ei/oica 
 AAacrtJai TepevVOWL 
 Icruc «»* cneioetra-i, 
 
 Avnjv 05 aTrayoiTO 
 
 E17 irvpvoi' ti if frpof o-e, 
 
 O Ai&voi' trireoy ye ] 
 
 IV. 
 
 Cernis in has valles 
 
 Qui) ducunt tramite calles, 
 
 Hanc mente in sedem 
 
 Fer meditante pedem, 
 
 Quisquis ades, belUc 
 
 1 ransfixus amore puellas 
 
 Aut patrix carx 
 
 Tempus inane dare ! 
 
 Dumque jaces herbs., 
 
 Turtur Het voce superb^, 
 
 Arboreoque throno 
 
 Flet philomela sono : 
 
 Spelunca apparet 
 
 Quam dux- Trojanus amaret, 
 
 In simili nido 
 
 Nam fuit icta Dido. 
 
 EtSoiA' ayXat^ovra 
 
 E0T1 StOV T07T0V T€. 
 
 TW eBvtKotv Oeuv re t 
 Twc ApuooW tcaXuv re* 
 IIoo~eLoW rfie Kaicrap 
 T* tfiov 'SafiexySvaurap' 
 El» atflptif curairaf 
 Eot' tSetv yvftvovs aravTaf. 
 Ev Mfivjt eCTTl n^otov, 
 El rt$ irAeeiv OcAoi <w ■ 
 Kat Ka\a otrtr' tyot <rot 
 Ov Swafj,' tKTvirtoa-af 
 AAA' €i y' tajv Aoyio-nj?, 
 H SioaoxaAof cnxpianfs, 
 Tot' efoxwTOT" av troi 
 Aei£ai>u to an-av crot. 
 
 V. 
 
 Flumbea signa Deum 
 
 Nemus ornant, grande trophasum ! 
 
 Stas ibi, Bacche teres ! 
 
 Nee sine fruge Ceres 
 
 Neptunique vago 
 
 De fi limine surgit imago ; 
 
 Julius hlc Caesar 
 
 Stat, Nabechud que Nezar ! 
 
 Navicula insonti 
 
 Dat cuique pericula pon ti, 
 
 Si quis cy mba hac cum 
 
 Vult super ire lacum. 
 
 Carmini huic ter sum 
 
 Conatus hlc addere versum : 
 
 Pauper at ingenio. 
 
 Plus nihil invenio ! 
 
 Exet Ai0oe r evpT}0*CL(, 
 Avrof fitv ft <ptAi)o*eifi 
 
 EvSatfiov to </)t'A7}^.a* 
 PifTup yap irapa\p7]fi.a 
 Pcia}0*eai <rv Sciyo?, 
 Tvvai^t t' eparctyog, 
 Sep-i-oraTa re AaAuc 
 Ep jSouAtf tui' (xer' aAAwe 
 Kat ev Tats ayopaitri 
 *'* KaOoAlKCUf" 0oato-t 
 Aijpoc o*ot VaAov0ij<m, 
 Kat \cLpac «ro 1 xponjim 
 'Of ai'Spt tu) uEytorcj) 
 Aruio-yopuii' T apiOTip* 
 A 01S0S ovpaco vSe 
 Am BAapi-tKoi' Al0op y' 37.* 
 
 * TeAos ttjs 'YAi)? BAavpiKTp. Ex Codice 
 Vatic, vetustiss. incert. sevi circa an. Sal. 
 CM. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Fortunatam autem 
 Premuerunt oscula cautem 
 (Fingere diim conor 
 Debitus huic sic honor) : 
 
 Buam bene tu fingis 
 ui saxi oracula hngis, 
 Eloquioque sapis 
 Quod dedit tile lapis ! 
 Gratus homo bellis 
 Fit unctis melle labellis, 
 Gratus erit populo 
 Oscula dans scopulo ; 
 Fit subitb orator, 
 Caudaque sequente senator. 
 Scandere vis aethram ? 
 Hanc venerare petram ! t 
 
 t Explicit hie Carmen de Nemore Blar- 
 nensi. Ex Codice No. 464 in Bibliotheca 
 Brerae apud Mediolanum. 
 
38 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 leir aij be leyni bcAijajr At; aj: reo 
 JOaji cpeuu-SnArcriAin ijo J>elerj Caoirj 
 Nl't ceaijpeAbijA Ajri ptbi)* tjrie 
 Cornel leici cam AfjucrAir &' T-»Sat' 
 Ca cairAeAn 'i)» cionjcioU. ijAleop |c plcupiA. 
 £1 bAitAio ceA^A &'at»5mi) da rsnior ; 
 Hec Ollbeit CrionjfMl; o'jrfis 50 j:Aij 1. 
 
 Sir flw beAjujA iqS|i joija ralcA no-* 
 
 * Fragment of a Celtic MS., from the King's Library, Copenhagen. 
 
 |Q »< 
 
 .»««:" 
 <j™, 
 
III. 
 fa%r |lnwt's Caumsal. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, June, 1834.) 
 
 [The Literary Portrait adorning the number of Regina containing this exhilarating 
 account of Father Prout's symposium at Watergrasshifl was the vera effigies of Leigh 
 Hunt as he then was — long before his sable locks were silvered, and when, though already 
 in his fortieth year, he could be portrayed without much extravagance as bearing the 
 semblance of a dark-eyed, careworn youth ! The linguistic gems of this third paper by 
 Mahony are undoubtedly his Latin version of Campbell's glorious war-song, resonantly 
 echoed in Prout's " Prehum apud Hohenlinden," and that foretaste of his onslaught with 
 the big end of the shilelagh on Moore, the Cork Father's classic rendering of " Let Erin 
 remember the days of old "as " O utinam sanos mea Ierna recogitet annos." As a fitting 
 embellishment to the Carousal in the original edition of 1836 the reader enjoyed a glimpse 
 at its close of " The Miraculous Draught," to which the convives were challenged by the 
 uplifted tumbler of whisky toddy.] 
 
 " He spread his vegetable store. 
 And gaily Dressed and smiled ; 
 And, skilled in legendary lore, 
 The lingering hours beguiled." 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 Before we resume the thread (or yarn) of Frank Cresswell's narrative con- 
 cerning the memorable occurrences which took place at Blarney, on the remark- 
 able occasion of Sir Walter Scott's visit to " the groves," we feel it imperative 
 on us to set ourselves right with an illustrious correspondent, relative to a most 
 important particular. We have received, through that useful medium of the 
 interchange of human thought, "the twopenny post," a letter which we think 
 of the utmost consequence, inasmuch as it goes to impeach the veracity, not of 
 Father Prout (patrem guts dicere falsum audcat f), but of the young and some- 
 what facetious barrister who has been the volunteer chronicler of his life and 
 opinions. 
 
 For the better understanding of the thing, as it is likely to become a quasi io 
 vexata in other quarters, we may be allowed to bring to recollection that, in 
 enumerating the many eminent men who had kissed the Blarney stone during 
 Prout's residence in the parish — an experience extending itself over a period of 
 nearly half a century — Doctor D. Lardner was triumphantly mentioned by the 
 benevolent and simple-minded incumbent of Watergrasshill, as a proud and 
 incontestable instance of the virtue and efficacy of the talisman, applied to the 
 most ordinary materials with the most miraculous result. Instead of feeling a 
 lingering remnant of gratitude towards the old parent-block for such super- 
 natural interposition on his behalf, and looking back to that ' ' kiss " with fond 
 
40 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 and filial recollection— instead of allowing "the stone" to occupy the greenest 
 spot in the wilderness of his memory— "the stone" that first sharpened his 
 intellect, and on which ought to be inscribed the line of Horace, 
 
 " Fungor vice cotis, acutum 
 Reddere quse valeat ferrum, exsors ipsa secandi" — 
 
 instead of this praiseworthy expression of tributary acknowledgment, the 
 Doctor writes to us denying all obligation in the quarter alluded to, and con- 
 tradicting most flatly the " soft impeachment" of having kissed the stone at 
 all. His note is couched in such peevish terms, and conceived in such fretful 
 mood, that we protest we do not recognize the tame and usually unexcited 
 tracings of his gentle pen ; but rather suspect he has been induced, by some 
 medical wag, to use a quill plucked from the membranous integument of that 
 celebrated " man-porcupine " who has of late exhibited his hirsuteness at the 
 Middlesex Hospital. 
 
 "London University, May Uh. 
 "SIR, 
 
 " I owe it to the great cause of ' Useful Knowledge,' to which I 
 have dedicated my past labours, to rebut temperately, yet firmly, the assertion 
 reported to have been made by the late Rev. Mr. Prout (for whom I had a 
 high regard), in conversing with the late Sir Walter Scott on the occasion 
 alluded to in your ephemeral work ; particularly as I find the statement re- 
 asserted by that widely-circulated journal the Morning Herald of yesterday's 
 date. Were either the reverend clergyman or the distinguished baronet now 
 living, I would appeal to their candour, and so shame the inventor of that tale. 
 But as both are withdrawn by death from the literary world, I call on you, sir, 
 to insert in your next Number this positive denial on my part of having ever 
 kissed that stone ; the supposed properties of which, I am ready to prove, do 
 not bear the test of chymical analysis. I do recollect having been solicited 
 by the present Lord Chancellor of England (and also of the London Univer- 
 sity), whom I am proud to call my friend (though you have given him the 
 sobriquet of Bridlegoose, with your accustomed want of deference for great 
 names), to join him, when, many years ago, he privately embarked on board a 
 Westmoreland collier to perform his devotions at Blarney. That circumstance 
 is of old date : it was about the year that Paris was taken by the allies, and 
 certainly previous to the Queen's trial. But I did not accompany the then 
 simple Harry Brougham, content with what nature had done for me in that 
 particular department. 
 
 " You will please insert this disavowal from, 
 "Sir, 
 " Your occasional reader, 
 
 "DlONYSIUS Lasdner, D.D. 
 
 " P.S. — If you neglect me, I shall take care to state my own case in the 
 Cyclopaedia. I'll prove that the block at Blarney is an 'Aerolithe,' and that 
 your statement as to its Phoenician origin is unsupported by historical evidence. 
 Recollect, you have thrown the first stone." 
 
 Now, to us, considering these things, and much pondering on the Doctor's 
 letter, it seemed advisable to refer the matter to our reporter, Frank Cresswell 
 aforesaid, who has given us perfect satisfaction. By him our attention was 
 called, first, to the singular bashfulness of the learned man, in curtailing from 
 his signature the usual appendages that shed such lustre o'er his name. He 
 lies before us in this epistle a simple D.D., whereas he certainly is entitled to 
 write himself F.R.S., M.R.I.A., F.R.A.S., F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.C.P.S., &c. 
 
Father P routs Carousal. 41 
 
 Thus, in his letter, " we saw him," to borrow an illustration from the beautiful 
 episode of James Thomson, 
 
 " We saw him charming ; but we saw not half— 
 The rest his downcast modesty concealed." 
 
 Next as to dates : how redolent of my Uncle Toby — "about the year Den- 
 dermonde \vas taken by the allies." The reminiscence was probably one of 
 which he was unconscious, and we therefore shall not call him a plagiary ; but 
 how slyly, how diabolically does he seek to shift the onus and gravamen of the 
 whole business on the rickety shoulders of his learned friend Bridlegoose ! 
 This will not do, O sage Thaumaturgus I By implicating "Bridoison," you 
 shall not extricate yourself — "etvitula, tu digitus, et hie;" and Frank Cress- 
 well has let us into a secret. Know then, all men, that among these never-too- 
 anxiously-to-be-looked-out-for "Prout Papers," there is a positive record of 
 the initiation both of Henry Brougham and Patrick Lardner to the freemasonry 
 of the Blarney stone ; and, more important still — (O, most rare document !)— 
 there is to be found amid the posthumous treasures of Father Prout the original 
 project of a University at Blarney, to be then and there founded by the united 
 efforts of Lardner, Dan O'Connell, and Tom Steele ; and of which the Doctor's 
 " AEROLtTHE " was to have been the corner-stone. 
 
 [Frank Cresswell tells us that the statutes, and the whole getting up of that 
 contemplated Alma Mater have been reproduced like a " twice-boiled cabbage " 
 — a sort of cramhe repetita — in the Gower Street Academy for young Cockneys ; 
 but that the soil being evidently not congenial to the plant, unless it be 
 transferred back to Blarney, the place of its nativity, it must droop and die. 
 So we often told the young gulls that frequent the school itself — so we told 
 Lardner, the great oracle of its votaries — so we often told Lord Brougham and 
 Vaux, the sublime shepherd of the whole flock : 
 
 " Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse ! "] 
 
 We therefore rely on the forthcoming Prout Papers for a confirmation of all 
 we have said ; and here do we cast down the glove of defiance to the champion 
 of Stinkomalee, even though he come forth armed to the teeth in a panoply, 
 not, of course, forged on the classic anvil of the Cyclops, however laboriously 
 hammered in the clumsy arsenal of his own " Cyclopaedia." 
 
 We know there is another world, where every man will get his due according 
 to his deserts; but if there be a limbus patrum, or literary purgatory, where the 
 effrontery and ingratitude of folks ostensibly belonging to the republic of 
 letters are to be visited with condign retribution, we think we behold in that 
 future middle state of purification (which, from our friend's real name, we shall 
 call Patrick's Purgatory), Pat Lardner rolling the Blarney stone, d la Sisyphus, 
 up the hill of Science. 
 
 Kat /XfJP "Sitjvtyov eio-f iSov KpttTZp' aXyt' tx oVTa 
 
 Aaatt /3affTa£oi/Tra ireXtapioif afuporepritriv, 
 
 At/Tt? iiTEira irt&ov&e KvKtvStTo AAA2 ANAIAH2 ! 
 
 And now we return to the progress of events on Watergrasshill, and to matters 
 more congenial to the taste of our Regina. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Regent Street, ist June, 1835. 
 
 Furnival's Inn, May 14. 
 
 Accept, O Queen ! my compliments congratulatory on the unanimous and 
 most rapturous welcome with which the whole literary world hath met, on its 
 first entrance into life, that wonderful and more than Siamesq bantling your 
 
42 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " Polyglot edition " of the "Groves of Blarney." Of course, various are the 
 conjectures of the gossips in Paternoster Row as to the real paternity of that 
 "most delicate monster;" and. some have the unwarrantable hardihood to hint 
 that, like the poetry of Sternhold and Hopkins, your incomparable lyric must 
 be referred to a joint-stock sort of parentage : but, entre nous, how stupid and 
 malignant are all such insinuations I How little do such simpletons suspect or 
 know of the real source from which hath emanated that rare combination of 
 the Teian lyre and the Tipperary bagpipe — of the Ionian dialect blending har- 
 moniously with the Cork brogue ; an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt, 
 and the humours of Donnybrook wed to the glories of Marathon I Verily, 
 since the days of the great Complutensian Polyglot (by the compilation of 
 which the illustrious Cardinal Ximenes so endeared himself to the bibliomaniacal 
 world), since the appearance of that still grander effort of the " Clarendon" 
 at Oxford, the "Tetrapla," originally compiled by the most laborious and 
 eccentric father of the Church, Origen of Alexandria, nothing has issued from 
 the press in a completer form than your improved quadruple version of the 
 "Groves of Blarney." The celebrated proverb, lucus d non lucendo, so often 
 quoted with malicious meaning and for invidious purposes, is no longer applic- 
 able to your " Groves :" this quaint conceit has lost its sting, and, to speak in 
 Gully's phraseology, you have taken the shine out of it. What a halo of glory, 
 what a flood of lustre, will henceforth spread itself over that romantic "plan- 
 tation !" How oft shall its echoes resound with the voice of song, Greek, 
 French, or Latin, according to the taste or birthplace of its European visitors ; 
 all charmed with its shady bowers, and enraptured with its dulcet melody 1 
 From the dusty purlieus of High Holborn, where I pine in a foetid atmosphere, 
 my spirit soars afar to that enchanting scenery, wafted on the wings of poesy, 
 and transported with the ecstasy of Elysium — 
 
 "Videorpios 
 Errare per Iucos, amcenae 
 Quos et aqua subeunt et aura ! " 
 
 Mine may be an illusion, a hallucination, an ' ' amabilis insania," if you will ; 
 but meantime, to find some solace in my exile from the spot itself, I cannot 
 avoid poring, with more than antiquarian relish, over the different texts placed 
 by you in such tasteful juxtaposition, anon comparing and collating each par- 
 ticular version with alternate gusto — 
 
 " Amant alterna Camcenae." 
 
 How pure and pellucid the flow of harmony ! how resplendent the well-grouped 
 images, shining, as it were, in a sort of milky way, or poetic galaxy, through 
 your glorious columns ; to which I cannot do better than apply a line of St. 
 Gregory (the accomplished Greek father) of Nazianzene — 
 
 'H trotpiav in\yr\ tv fiiftkioitji pin ! 
 
 A great minister is said to have envied his foreign secretary the ineffable plea- 
 sure of reading ' ' Don Quixote " in the original Spanish, and it would, no doubt, 
 be a rare sight to get a peep at Lord Palmerston's French notes to Talleyrand ; 
 but how I pity the sorry wight who hasn't learnt Greek ! What can he know 
 of the recondite meaning of certain passages in the "Groves?" He is in- 
 capacitated from enjoying the full drift of the ode, and must only take it 
 diluted, or Velluti-ed, in the common English version. Nbrunt fidcles, as Tom 
 Moore says. 
 
 For my part, I would as soon see such a periwig-pated fellow reading your 
 last Number, and fancying himself capable of understanding the full scope of 
 the poet, as to behold a Greenwich pensioner with a wooden leg trying to run a 
 race with Atalanta for her golden apple, or a fellow with a modicum quid of 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 43 
 
 legal knowledge affecting to sit and look big under a chancellor's peruke, like 
 Bridlegoose on the woolsack. In verity, gentlemen of the lower house ought 
 to supplicate Sir Daniel Sandford, of Glasgow, to give them a few lectures on 
 Greek, for the better intelligence of the real Blarney style ; and I doubt not 
 that every member will join in the request, except, perhaps, Joe Hume, who 
 Would naturally oppose any attempt to throw light on Greek matters, for reasons 
 too tedious to mention. Verb. sap. 
 
 To have collected in his youthful rambles on the continent, and to have dili- 
 gently copied in the several libraries abroad, these imperishable versions of an 
 immortal song was the pride and consolation of Father Prout's old age, and 
 still, by one of those singular aberrations of mind incident to all great men, he 
 could never be prevailed on to give further publicity to the result of his labours ; 
 thus sitting down to the banquet of literature with the egotistic feeling of a 
 churl. He would never listen to the many offers from interested publishers, 
 who sought for the prize with eager competition ; but kept the song in manu- 
 script on detached leaves, despite of the positive injunction of the sibyl in the 
 ^Eneid— 
 
 " Non foliis tu carmina manda, 
 Ne correpta volent rapidis ludibria vends ! " 
 
 I know full well to what serious imputations I make myself liable, when I can- 
 didly admit that I did not come by the treasure lawfully myself; having, as I 
 boldly stated in the last Number of Regina, filched the precious papers, 
 disjecti membra poeta, when the table was being cleared by Prout's servant 
 maid for the subsequent repast. But there are certain "pious frauds" of which 
 none need be ashamed in the interests of science : and when a great medal- 
 collector (of whom " Tom England" will tell you the particulars), being, on 
 his homeward voyage from Egypt, hotly pursued by the Algerines, swallowed 
 the golden series of the Ptolemies, who ever thought of blaming Mr. Dufour, 
 as he had purchased in their human envelope these recondite coins, for having 
 applied purgatives and emetics, and every possible stratagem, to come at the 
 deposit of glory? 
 
 But to describe " the repast " has now become my solemn duty— a task im- 
 posed on me by you, O Queen 1 to whom nothing relating to Sir Walter Scott, 
 or to Father Prout, appears to be uninteresting. In that I agree with you, for 
 nothing to my mind comes recommended so powerfully as what hath apper- 
 tained to these two great ornaments of "humanity;" which term I must be 
 understood to use in its double sense, as relating to mankind in general, and in 
 particular to the Uteres humaniores, of which you and I are rapturously fond, 
 as Terence was before we were born, according to the hackneyed line — 
 
 "Homo sum ; human! nihil a me alien um puto ! " 
 
 That banquet was insooth no ordinary jollification, no mere bout of sensuality, 
 but a philosophic and rational commingling of mind, with a pleasant and succu- 
 lent addition of matter— a blending of soul and substance, typified by the union 
 of Cupid and Psyche — a compound of strange ingredients, in which a large in- 
 fusion of what are called (in a very Irish-looking phrase) "animal spirits" 
 coalesced with an abundance of distilled ambrosia ; not without much erudite 
 observation, and the interlude of jovial song ; wit contending for supremacy 
 with learning, and folly asserting her occasional predominance like the tints of 
 the rainbow in their tout ensemble, or like the smile and the tear, in Erin's left 
 eye, when that fascinating creature has taken "a drop " of her own mountain 
 dew. But though there were lots of fun at Prout's table at all times, which the 
 lack of provisions never could interfere with one way or another, I have special 
 reason for recording in full the particulars of this carousal, having learned 
 with indignation that, since the appearance of the Father's " Apology for 
 
Lent," calumny has been busy with his character, and attributed his taste for 
 meagre diet to a sordid principle of economy. No ! Prout was not a penurious 
 wretch ! And since it has been industriously circulated in the club-houses at 
 the west-end, that he never gave a dinner in his life, by the statement of one 
 stubborn fact I must silence for ever that " whisper of a faction." 
 
 From the first moment of delight, when the perusal of George Knapp's 
 letter (dated July 25, 1825) had apprised Prout of the visit intended by Sir 
 Walter Scott to the Blarney stone, he had predetermined that the Great 
 Unknown should partake of sacerdotal hospitality. I recollect well on that 
 evening (for you are aware I was then on a visit to my aunt at Watergrasshill, 
 and, as luck would have it, happened to be in the priest's parlour when the 
 news came by express) how often he was heard to mutter to himself, as if 
 resolving the mighty project of a "let out," in that beautiful exclamation, 
 borrowed from his favourite Milton — 
 
 " What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice. 
 Of Attic taste with wine?" 
 
 I then foresaw that there really would be " a dinner, " and sure enough there 
 was no mistake, for an entertainment ensued, such as the refinement of a 
 scholar and the tact of a well-informed and observant traveller naturally and 
 unaffectedly produced, with the simple but not less acceptable materials which 
 circumstances allowed of, and a style as far removed from the selfishness of the 
 anchorite as the extravagance of the glutton. 
 
 Prout had seen much of mankind ; and in his deportment through life 
 showed that he was well versed in all those varied arts of easy, but still gradual 
 acquirement, which singularly embellish the intercourse of society : these 
 were the results of his excellent continental education — 
 
 IIoWcul/ 6" avdpuirwv l$oi/ atrrea, Kai voov tyvw. 
 
 But at the head of his own festive board he particularly shone ; for though in 
 his ministerial functions he was exemplary and admirable, ever meek and un- 
 affected at the altar of his rustic chapel, where 
 
 " His looks adorned the venerable place," 
 still, surrounded by a few choice friends, the calibre of whose genius was in 
 unison with his own, with abottleof his choice old claret before him, hewas truly 
 a paragon. I say claret ; for when, in his youthful career of early travel, he 
 had sojourned at Bourdeaux in 1776, he had formed an acquaintanceship with 
 the then representatives of the still flourishing house of Maccarthy and Co. ; and 
 if the prayers of the old priest are of any avail, that firm will long prosper in 
 the splendid capital of Gascony. This long-remembered acquaintanceship was 
 periodically refreshed by many a quarter cask of excellent medoc, which found 
 its way (no matter how) up the rugged by-roads of Watergrasshill to the sacer- 
 dotal cellar. 
 
 Nor was the barren upland, of which he was the pastor (and which will one 
 day be as celebrated for having been his residence as it is now for water-tresses), 
 so totally estranged from the wickedness of the world, and so exalted above the 
 common level of Irish highlands, that no whisky was to be found there ; for 
 though Prout never openly countenanced, he still tolerated Davy Draddy's 
 public-house at the sign of the " Mallow Cavalry." But there is a spirit (an 
 evil one) which pays no duty to the King, under pretence of having paid it to 
 Her Majesty the Queen (God bless her I) — a spirit which would even tempt you, 
 O Regina .1 to forsake the even tenour of your ways — a spirit which Father 
 Prout could never effectually chain down in the Red Sea, where every foul 
 demon ought to lie in durance until the vials of wrath are finally poured out on 
 this sinful world— Mai spirit, endowed with a smoky fragrance, as if to indi- 
 
Father Prout s Carousal. 45 
 
 cate its caliginous origin — not a drop of it would he give Sir Walter. He 
 would have wished, such was his anxiety to protect the morals of his 
 parishioners from the baneful effects of private distillation, that what is called 
 technically " mountain-dew" were never heard of in the district; and that in 
 this respect Watergrasshill had resembled the mountain of Gilboa, in the 
 country of the Philistines. 
 
 But of legitimate and excellent malt whisky he kept a constant supply, 
 through the friendship of Joe Hayes, a capital fellow, who presides, with great 
 credit to himself, and to his native city, over the spiritual concerns of the Glin 
 Distillery. Through his intelligent superintendence, he can boast of maintain- 
 ing an unextinguishable furnace and a worm that never dies ; and O ! may he 
 in the next life, through Promt's good prayers, escape both one and the other. 
 This whisky, the pious offering of Joe Hayes to his confessor, Father Prout, 
 was carefully removed out of harm's way ; and even I myself was considerably 
 puzzled to find out where the good divine had the habit of concealing it, until 
 I got the secret out of Margaret, his servant-maid, who, being a 'cute girl, had 
 suggested the hiding-place herself. I don't know whether you recollect my 
 description, in your April Number, of the learned Father's bookcase and the 
 folio volumes of stone-flag inscribed " Cornelii A Lapide Opera qua cxt, 
 omn. .-" well, behind them lay hidden the whisky in a pair of jars — 
 
 For buxom Maggy, careful soul, 
 
 Had two stone bottles found, 
 To hold the liquor that Prout loved, 
 
 And kept it safe and sound. 
 
 Orders had been given to this same Margaret to kill a turkey, in the first 
 impulse of the good old man's mind, " on hospitable thoughts intent :" but, 
 alas ! when the fowl had been slain, in accordance with his hasty injunctions, 
 he bethought himself of the melancholy fact, that the morrow being Friday, 
 fish diet was imperative, and that the death-warrant of the turkey had been a 
 most premature and ill-considered act of precipitancy. The corpus delicti was 
 therefore hung up in the kitchen, to furnish forth the Sunday's dinner next 
 ensuing, and his thoughts of necessity ran into a piscatory channel. He had 
 been angling all day, and happily with considerable success ; so that, what with 
 a large eel he had hooked out of the lake at Blarney, and two or three dozen 
 of capital trout from the stream, he might emulate the exploit of that old 
 Calabrian farmer, who entertained Virgil on the produce of his hives : 
 
 *' Seraque revertens 
 Nocte domum, dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis." 
 
 But when Prout did the thing, he did it respectably : this was no ordinary 
 occasion — "pot luck"would not do here. And though he bitterly deplored the 
 untoward coincidence of the fast-day on the arrival' of Sir Walter, and was 
 heard to mutter something from Horace very like an imprecation, viz. ' ' IIU 
 ct nefasto te posuit die, quicumque," &c, &c. ; still it would ill become the 
 author of an "Apology for Lent " to despair of getting up a good fish dinner. 
 
 In this emergency he summoned Terry Callaghan, a genius infinitely 
 superior even to the man-of-all-work at Ravenswood Castle, the never-to-be- 
 forgotten Caleb Balderstone. Terry Callaghan (of whom we suspect we shall 
 have, on many a future occasion, much to recount, ere the star of Father 
 Prout shall eclipse itself in the firmament of Regina), Terry Callaghan is a 
 character well known in the Arcadian neighbourhood of Watergrasshill, the 
 life and soul of the village itself, where he officiates to this day as "pound- 
 keeper," "grave-digger," "notary public," and "parish piper." Inadditionto 
 these situations of trust and emolument, he occasionally stands as deputy at 
 the turnpike on the mail-coach road, where he was last seen with a short pipe 
 
46 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 in his mouth, and a huge black crape round his "caubeen," being in mourning 
 for the subject of these memoirs. He also is employed on Sundays at the 
 chapel-door to collect the coppers of the faithful, and, like the dragon of the 
 Hesperides, keeps watch over the "box" with untamable fierceness, never 
 having allowed a rap to be subtracted for the O'Connell tribute, or any other 
 humbug, to the great pecuniary detriment of the Derrynane dynasty. In the 
 palace at Iveragh, where a geographical chart is displayed on the wall, showing 
 at a glance the topography of the "rint,"and exhibiting all those districts, 
 from Dan to Beersheba, where the copper-mines are most productive, the 
 parish of Watergrasshill is marked "all barren;" Terry very properly con- 
 sidering that, if there was any surplus in the poor-box, it could be better placed, 
 without going out of the precincts of that wild and impoverished tract, in the 
 palm of squalid misery, than in the all-absorbing Charybdis, the breeches- 
 pocket of our glorious Dan. 
 
 Such was the "Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill," to whom 
 Prout delivered his provisional orders for the market of Cork ; and early, with 
 a hamper on his back, at the dawn of that important day which settled into so 
 glorious an evening of fun and conviviality, Terry set off to lay the foundation 
 of the whole affair at the fish-stall kept by that celebrated dame de la Aalle, the 
 Widow Desmond. Pursuant to directions, he bought a turbot, two lobsters, a 
 salmon, and a hake, with a hundred of Cork-harbour oysters ; and considering, 
 prudently, that a corps de reserve might be wanted in the course of the repast, 
 he added to the aforesaid matters, which Prout had himself specified, a hors 
 d'auvre of his own selection, viz. a keg of cod-sounds ; he having observed 
 that on all state occasions, when Prout entertained his bishop, he had always, 
 to suit his lordship's taste, a flat olligS of cod-sounds, " by particular desire." 
 
 At the same time he was commissioned to deliver sundry notes of invitation 
 to certain choice spirits, who try to keep in wholesome agitation, by the buoy- 
 ancy of their wit and hilarity, the otherwise stagnant pond of Corkonian 
 society ; citizens of varied humour and diversified accomplishments, but of 
 whom the highest praise and the most comprehensive eulogy cannot convey 
 more to the British public than the simple intimation of their having been 
 " the friends of Father Prout :" for while Job's Arabian "friends " will be re- 
 membered only as objects of abhorrence, Prout's associates will be cherished 
 by the latest posterity. These were, Jack Bellew, Dan Corbet, Dick Dowden, 
 Bob Olden, and Friar O'Meara. 
 
 Among these illustrious names, to be henceforth embalmed in the choicest 
 perfume of classic recollection, you will find on inquiry, O Queen ! men of all 
 parties and religious persuasions, men of every way of thinking in politics and 
 polemics, but who merged all their individual feelings in the broad expanse of 
 one common philanthropy ; for at Prout's table the serene horizon of the festive 
 board was never clouded by the suffusion of controversy's gloomy vapours, or 
 the mephitic feuds of party condition. And, O most peace-loving Regina I 
 should it ever suit your fancy to go on a trip to Ireland, be on your guard 
 against the foul and troublesome nuisance of speech-makers and political 
 oracles, of whatever class, who infest that otherwise happy island : betake thy- 
 self to the hospitable home of Dan Corbet, or some such good and rational 
 circle of Irish society, where never will a single drop of acrimony be found to 
 mingle in the disembosomings of feeling and the perennial flow of soul — 
 
 "Sic tibi cTim fluctus praeterlabere Sicanos, 
 Doris amara suam non inter misccat undam ! " 
 
 But, in describing Prout's guests, rank and precedency belong of right to 
 that great modern ruler of mankind, "the Press;" and therefore do we 
 first apply ourselves to the delineation of the merits of Jack Bellew, its 
 
Father Prout's Carousal. 47 
 
 significant representative — be being the wondrous editor of that most accom- 
 plished newspaper, the Cork Chronicle. 
 
 Jack Montesquieu Bellew * {guem honoris causA nomino) was— I say was, 
 for, alas ! he too is no more : Prout's death was too much for him, 'twas a 
 blow from which he never recovered ; and since then he was visibly so heart- 
 broken at the loss of his friend that he did nothing but droop, and soon 
 died of what the doctor said was a decline;— Jack was the very image of his 
 own Chronicle, and vice versd, the Chronicle was the faithful mirror (ciouXoy, 
 or alter ego) of Jack : both one and the other were the queerest concerns in 
 the south of Ireland. The post of editor to a country newspaper is one, 
 generally speaking, attended with sundry troubles and tribulations ; for even 
 the simple department of "deaths, births, and marriages," would require a 
 host of talent and a superhuman tact to satisfy the vanity of the subscribers, 
 without making them ridiculous to their next neighbours. Now Bellew didn't 
 care a jot who came into the world or who left it ; and thus he made no 
 enemies by a too niggardly panegyric of their kindred and deceased relations. 
 There was an exception, however, in favour of an old subscriber to the 
 "paper," whose death was usually commemorated by a rim of mourning at 
 the edges of the Chronicle : and it was particularly when the subcsription had 
 not been paid (which, indeed, was generally the case) that the emblems of 
 sorrow were conspicuous — so much so, that you could easily guess at the 
 amount of the arrears actually due, from the proportionate breadth of the 
 black border, which in some instances was prodigious. But Jack's attention 
 was principally turned to the affairs of the Continent, and he kept an eye on 
 Russia, an eye of vigilant observation, which considerably annoyed the czar, 
 In vain did Pozzo di Borgo endeavour to silence, or purchase, or intimidate 
 Bellew ; he was to the last an uncompromising opponent of the ' ' miscreant of 
 the North." The opening of the trade to China was a favourite measure with 
 our editor; for he often complained of the bad tea sold at the sign of the 
 " Elephant," on the Parade. He took part with Don Pedro against the Serene 
 Infanta Don Miguel ; but that was attributed to a sort of Platonic he felt for 
 the fascinating Donna Maria da Gloria. As to the great question of repale, 
 he was too sharp not to see the full absurdity of that brazen imposture. He 
 endeavoured, however, to suggest a Juste mi/lieu, a medius terminus, between 
 the politicians of the Chamber of Commerce and the common-sense portion 
 of the Cork community ; and his plan was, — to hold an imperial parliament 
 for the three kingdoms on the Isle of Man I But he failed in procuring the 
 adoption of his conciliatory sentiments. Most Irish provincial papers keep 
 a London "private correspondent" — some poor devil, who writes from a 
 blind alley in St. Giles's, with the most graphic minuteness, and a truly 
 laughable hatred of myscery, all about matters occurring at the cabinet meet- 
 ings of Downing Street, or in the most impenetrable circles of diplomacy. 
 Jack despised such fudge, became his own "London private correspondent," 
 and addressed to himself long communications dated from Whitehall. The 
 most useful intelligence was generally found in this epistolary form of 
 soliloquy. But in the "fashionable world," and "News from the beau 
 monde," the Chronicle was unrivalled. The latest and most rechercht modes, 
 the newest Parisian fashions, were carefully described ; notwithstanding which, 
 
 * How the surname of the illustrious author of the Esprit de Lois came to be used by 
 the Bellews in Ireland has puzzled the Heralds' College. Indeed, many other Irish 
 names offer a wide field for genealogical inquiry : e.g. , Sir Hercules Langhrish, Ceesar 
 Otway, Eneas MacDonnell, Hannibal Flunkett, Ebenezer Jacob, yonak Barrington 
 (this last looks very like a whale). That the Bellews dealt largely in spirits appears to 
 be capable of proof ".* at any rate, there was never any propensity for Vesprit des lots, 
 whatever might be the /««&»«/ for rtnlatofitl spirit, at the family mansion Knock an 
 isoueiu — Anglicc Mount Whisky, Gallice Montesquieu. 
 
48 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Jack himself, like Diogenes or Sir Charles Wetherell, went about in a most 
 ragged habiliment. To speak with Shakespeare, though not well dressed 
 himself, he was the cause of dress in others. His finances, alas ! were always 
 miserably low ; no fitting retribution was ever the result of his literary labours ; 
 and of him might be said what we read in a splendid fragment of Petronius 
 Arbiter, — - 
 
 " Sola pruinosis horret facundia pannis, 
 Atque inopi lingua disertas invocat artes !" 
 
 Such was Bellew ; and next to him of political importance in public estima- 
 tion was the celebrated Dick Dowden, the great inventor of the ' ' pyroligneous 
 acid for curing bacon." He was at one time the deservedly popular librarian 
 of the Royal Cork Institution ; but since then he has risen to eminence as the 
 greatest soda-water manufacturer in the south of Ireland, and has been 
 unanimously chosen by the sober and reflecting portion of his fellow-citizens 
 to be the perpetual president of the " Cork Temperance Society." He is a 
 Presbyterian — but 1 believe I have already said he was concerned in vinegar.* 
 He is a great admirer of Dr. Bowring, and of the Rajah Rammohun Roy ; 
 and some think him inclined to favour the new Utilitarian philosophy. But 
 why do I spend my time in depicting a man so well known as Dick Dowden? 
 Who has not heard of Dick Dowden? I pity the wretch to whom his name 
 and merits are unknown ; for he argues himself a dunce that knows not 
 Dowden, and deserves the anathema pronounced by Goldsmith against his 
 enemies, — 
 
 "To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor ! " 
 
 Talking of razors, the transition to our third guest, Bob Olden is most 
 smooth and natural — Olden, the great inventor of the wonderful shaving- 
 lather, called by the Greeks eukeirooeneion (EuKtipoytvtiov) ! — Olden, the 
 reproducer of an Athenian cosmetic, and the grand discoverer of the patent 
 "Trotter-oil," for the growth of the human hair ; a citizen of infinite worth 
 and practical usefulness ; a high churchman eke was he, and a Tory ; but his 
 "conservative " excellence was chiefly applicable to the epidermis of the chin, 
 which he effectually preserved by the incomparable lather of his EuKiipoyivnov ; 
 an invention that would, to use the words of a Cork poet, 
 
 " Bid even a Jew bid adieu to his beard." 
 But Dan Corbet, the third guest, was a real trump, the very quintessence 
 of fun and frolic, and of all Prout's friends the one of whom he was most 
 particularly proud. He is the principal dentist of the Munster district — a 
 province where a tooth-ache is much rarer, unfortunately for dentists, than a 
 broken head or a black eye. In Corbet, the kindliest of human beings, and 
 sincerest of Corkonians, the buttermilk of human friendliness was ever found 
 in plentiful exuberance ; while the loud laugh and the jocund song bespoke 
 the candour of his soul. Never was a professor of odontology less pedantic 
 or less given to quackery. His ante-chamber was always full of patients, 
 awaiting his presence with pleasurable anticipation, and some were known to 
 feign a tooth-ache, in order to have a pleasant interview with the dentist. 
 When he made his appearance in his morning gown before the crowd of 
 afflicted visitors, a general titter of cheerfulness enlivened the visages of the 
 sufferers ; and I can only compare the effect produced by his presence to the 
 welcome of Scarron on the banks of the Styx, when that man of wondrous 
 hilarity went down to the region of the ghosts as a dispeller of sorrow : 
 
 " Solvuntur risu mosstissima turba silentum, 
 Cum venit ad Stygias Scarro facetus aquas." 
 
 * "A Quaker, sly ; a Presbyterian, sour." — Pope. 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 49 
 
 I have only one thing to say against Corbet. At his hospitable table, where, 
 without extravagance, every good dish is to be found, a dessert generally 
 follows remarkable for the quantity and iron-hardness of the walnuts, while 
 not a nutcracker can be had for love or money from any of the servants. Now 
 this is too bad : for you must know, that next morning most of the previous 
 guests reappear in the character of patients ; and the nuts (like the dragon- 
 teeth sown in a field by Cadmus) produce a harvest of lucrative visitors to the 
 cabinet of the professor. Ought not this system to be abolished, O Queen I 
 and is it any justification or palliation of such an enormity to know that the 
 bane and antidote are both before one ? When I spoke of it to Corbet, he 
 only smiled at my simplicity, and quoted the precedent in Horace (for he is a 
 good classic scholar), 
 
 " Et mix ornabat mensam, cum duplice ficu." 
 
 Lib. ii. sat ». 
 
 But I immediately pointed out to him, that he reversed the practice of the 
 Romans ; for, instead of the figs being in double ratio to the nuts, it was the 
 latter with him that predominated in quantity, besides being pre-eminently 
 hard when submitted to the double action of that delicate lever the human 
 jaw, which nature never (except in some instances, and these more apparent, 
 perhaps, in the conformation of the nose and chin) intended for a nut-cracker. 
 
 Of Friar O'Meara there is little to be said. Prout did not think much of 
 friars in general ; indeed, at all times the working parochial clergy in Ireland 
 have looked on them as a kind of undisciplined Cossacks in the service of the 
 church militant, of whom it cannot conveniently get rid, but who are much 
 better adepts in sharing the plunder than in labouring to earn it. The good 
 father often explained to me how the matter stood, and how the bishop 
 wanted to regulate these friars, and make them work for the instruction of the 
 poor, instead of their present lazy life ; but they were a match for him at 
 Rome, where none dare whisper a word against one of the fraternity of the 
 cowl. There are some papers in the Prout collection on this subject, which 
 (when you get the chest) will explain all to you. O'Meara (who was not 
 the "Voice from St. Helena," though he sometimes passed for that gentle- 
 man on the Continent) was a pleasant sort of fellow, not very deep in divinity 
 or black-lettered knowledge of any kind, but conversable and chatty, having 
 frequently accompanied young 'squires, as travelling tutor to Italy, much in 
 the style of those learned functionaries who lead a dancing-bear through the 
 market-towns of England. There was no dinner within seven miles of Cork 
 without O'Meara. Full soon would his keen nostril, ever upturned (as Milton 
 sayeth) into the murky air, have snuffed the scent of culinary preparation in 
 the breeze that came from Watergrasshill : therefore it was that Prout sent 
 him a note of invitation, knowing he would come, whether or no. 
 
 Such were the guests who, with George Knapp and myself, formed the 
 number of the elect to dine with Sir Walter at the father's humble board ; 
 and when the covers were removed (grace having been said by Prout in a 
 style that would have rejoiced the sentimental Sterne) a glorious vision of fish 
 was unfolded to the raptured sight ; and I confess I did not much regret the 
 absence of the turkey, whose plump carcase I could get an occasional 
 glimpse of, hanging from the roof of the kitchen. We ate, and confabulated 
 as follows : — 
 
 "I don't approve," said Bob Olden, "of Homer's ideas as to a social 
 entertainment : he does not let his heroes converse rationally until long after 
 they have sat down to table, or, as Pope vulgarly translates it, 
 
 ' Soon as the rage of hunger is repressed-' 
 Now I think that a very gross way of proceeding." 
 
So The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 O'MEARA. 
 
 In our convent we certainly keep up the observance, such as Pope has it. 
 The repast is divided into three distinct periods j and in the conventual refec- 
 tory you can easily distinguish at what stage of the feeding time the brother- 
 hood are engaged. The first is called i*. altum silent ium ; then a', clangor 
 dentium; then, 3°, rumor gentium. 
 
 CORBET. 
 I protest against the personal allusion contained in that second item. You 
 are always making mischief, O'Meara. 
 
 BELLEW. 
 
 I hope that when the friars talk of the news of the day,— -for such, I suppose, 
 is the meaning of rumor gentium, — they previously have read the private 
 London correspondence of the Cork Chronicle. 
 
 PROUT. 
 Sir Walter, perhaps you would wish to begin with a fresh egg, ah ovo, as 
 Horace recommends ; or perhaps you'd prefer the order described by Pliny, in 
 his letter to Septimus, 1°, a radish; s°, three snails; and 3°, two eggs,* or 
 oysters ad libitum, as laid down by Macrobius.f 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 Thank you, I can manage with this slice of salmon trout. I can relish 
 the opinion of that great ornament of your church, Thomas a Kempis, to 
 whose taste nothing was more delicious than a salmon, always excepting the 
 Psalms of David I as he properly says, Mihi Psalmi Davidici sapiunt 
 salmon cs /$ 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 That was not a bad idea of Tom Kempis. But my favourite author, St. 
 Chrysostom, surpasses him in wit. When talking of the sermon on the Lake 
 of Tiberias, he marvels at the singular position of the auditory relative to 
 the preacher : his words are Asti/ov 0Ea/ia, ol inputs tin t»i/ yi\v, nai 6 <xAieu« 
 ii» floXoTTjj I Serm. de Nov. et Vet. Test. 
 
 O'MEARA. 
 That is a capital turbot, O Prout ! and, 'instead of talking Greek and 
 quoting old Chrysostom (the saint with the golden mouth), you ought to be 
 helping Jack Bellew and George Knapp. — What sauce is that ? 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 The senate of Rome decided the sauce long ago, by order of Domitian, as 
 Juvenal might tell you, or even the French translation — 
 
 *' Le senat mit aux voix cette affaire importante, 
 Et le turbot fut mis d la sauce piquante." 
 
 * Vide Plin. Ep. ad Septim, where he acquaints us with the proper manner of com- 
 mencing operations. His words ate, " Lactucas singulas, cochleas tres, ova bina." Our 
 cockle and the French word cuiller, a spoon, are derived from the Latin cochleare; of 
 -which cochlea (a snail or periwinkle) is the root Thus we read in Martial— 
 " Sum cochleis habijis, sed nee magis utilis ovis ; 
 Numquid scis potius cur cochleare vocer ? " 
 
 t In the third book of his "Saturnalia," Macrobius, describing the feast given by the 
 Flamen Lentulus to the Roman people on his installation to office; praises the host's 
 generosity, inasmuch as he opened tne banquet by providing as a whet " ostrtas crudas 
 quantum quisque relief. " 
 
 } See the Elzevir edition of Thorn, a. Kempis, in vit&, p. 946. 
 
Father Prout's Carousal. 51 
 
 KNAPP. 
 
 Sir Walter ! as it has been my distinguished lot — a circumstance that con- 
 fers everlasting glory on my mayoralty — to have had the honour of present- 
 ing you yesterday with the freedom of the corporation of Cork, allow me to 
 present you with our next best thing, a potato. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I have received with pride the municipal franchise, and I now accept with 
 equal gratitude the more substantial gift you have handed me, in this capital 
 esculent of your happy country. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 Our round towers, Sir Walter, came from the east, as will be one day 
 proved ; but our potatoes came from the West ; Persia sent us the one, and 
 Virginia the other. We are a glorious people 1 The two hemispheres 
 minister to our historic recollections ; and if we look back on our annals, we 
 get drunk with glory ; 
 
 " For when hist'ry begins to grow dull in the east, 
 We may order our wings, and be off to the west." 
 
 May I have the pleasure of wine with you? Gentlemen, fill all round. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 I intend writing a somewhat in which Sir Walter Raleigh shall be a dis- 
 tinguished and prominent character ; and I promise you the potato shall not 
 be forgotten. The discovery of that root is alone sufficient to immortalize the 
 hero who lost his head so unjustly on Tower Hill. 
 
 KNAPP. 
 
 Christopher Columbus was equally ill-treated : and neither he nor Raleigh 
 have ever given their name to the objects they discovered. Great men have 
 never obtained justice from their contemporaries. — I'll trouble you for some of 
 the fins of that turbot, Prout. 
 
 PROUT. 
 Nay, further, without going beyond the circle of this festive board, why has 
 not Europe and the world united to confer some signal distinction on the 
 useful inventor of " Pyroligneous Acid?" Why is not the discoverer of 
 "Trotter oil "and " Eukeirogeneion " fittingly rewarded by mankind? Because 
 men have narrow views, and prefer erecting columns to Spring Rice, and to 
 Bob Waithman who sold shawls in Fleet Street. — Let me recommend some 
 lobster-sauce. 
 
 CORBET. 
 
 Minerva, who first extracted oil from the olive, was deified in Greece ; and 
 Olden is not yet even a member of the dullest scientific body ; while Dr. 
 Lardner belongs to them all, if I can understand the phalanx of letters that 
 follows his name. 
 
 KNAPP. 
 
 I have read the utilitarian Doctor's learned treatise on the potato— a 
 subject of which he seems to understand the chemical manipulation. He 
 says, very justly, that as the root contains saccharine matter, sugar may be 
 extracted therefrom ; he is not sure whether it might not be distilled into 
 whisky; but he is certain that it makes capital starch, and triumphantly 
 shows that the rind can feed pigs, and the stalk thatch the pigsty. O most 
 wonderful Doctor Lardner ! Here's his health ! Aiovihtios ! — not a bad 
 introduction to a bumper of claret. [Three times three.] 
 
52 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 PROUT. 
 I too have turned my thoughts into that channel, and among my papers 
 there is a treatise on " the root." I have prefixed to my dissertalion this 
 epigraph from Cicero's speech "pro Archill Poetit," where the Roman orator 
 talks of the idles lettres ; but I apply the words much more literally — I 
 hate metaphor in practical matters such as these : "They are the food of our 
 youth, the sustenance of our old age ; they are delightful at home, and by no 
 means in one's way abroad ; they cause neither nightmare nor indigestion, but 
 are capital things on a journey, or to fill the wallet of a pilgrim." " Adoles- 
 centiam alunt, senectutem oblectant ; delectant domi, non impediunt foris ; 
 pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." So much for potatoes. 
 But there are other excellent natural productions in our island, which are 
 also duly celebrated in my papers, and possibly may be published ; but not 
 till I am gathered to the grave. I have never forgotten the interests of 
 posterity. — Pass that decanter. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 Talking of the productions of the soil, I cannot reconcile the antiquity, 
 the incontestable antiquity, of the lyric ode called the "Groves of Blarney," 
 of which before dinner we have traced the remote origin, and examined so 
 many varied editions with a book of more modern date called " Caesar's Com- 
 mentaries." The beech-tree, Csesar says, does not grow in these islands, or 
 did not in his time : All trees grow there, he asserts, the same as in Gaul, 
 except the lime-tree and the beech — ' ' Materia fere eadem ac in Gallia, praeter 
 fagum et abietem." (C&s. de Bello Galileo, lib. v.) Now in the song, which 
 is infinitely older than Caesar, we have mention made, "besides the leeches," 
 of certain " groves of beeches," — the text is positive. 
 
 KNAPP. 
 That observation escaped me totally; and still the different versions all 
 concur in the same assertion. The Latin or Vulgate codex says— 
 
 "Grande decus pagi 
 Fluvii slant margine FAGI." 
 
 The Greek or Septuagint version is equally stubborn in making out the 
 case — 
 
 TaTajuEiwi; feat vKij 
 
 $HfQN, pof|c fpuXaKrrjp. 
 
 And the French copy, taken from Doomsday Book, is conclusive, and a 
 complete poser — 
 
 " Sur ces bords champetres 
 On a plante des hetres." 
 
 I am afraid Cassar's reputation for accuracy will be greatly shaken by this 
 discovery : he is a passable authority in military tactics, but not in natural 
 history : give me Pliny !— This trout is excellent ! 
 
 OLDEN. 
 I think the two great authors at issue on this beech-tree business can be 
 conciliated thus : let us say, that by the Greek <ptiyiw, and the Latin fagi, 
 nothing more is meant than the clan the O'Fagans, who are very thickly 
 planted hereabouts. They are still a hungry race, as their name Fagan indicates 
 — owo tov (paytiv. 
 
 PROUT. 
 It must have been one of that family who, in the reign of Aurelius, dis- 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 53 
 
 tinguished himself by his great appetite at the imperial court of Rome. 
 Thus Berchoux sings, on the authority of Suetonius : 
 
 " Phagon fut en ce genre un homme extraordinaire ; 
 11 avail l'estomac (grands Dieux !) d'un dromadaire : 
 11 faisait disparaltre, en ses rares festins, 
 UnporCj un sanglier, un mouton, et cent pains 111" 
 
 O'MEASA. 
 That's what we at Paris used to call pain d discretion. — Margaret, open 
 some oysters, and get the cayenne pepper. 
 
 BELLEW. 
 I protest I don't like to see the OFagans run down — my aunt was an 
 O'Fagan; and as to deriving the name from the Greek atra rov (paytiu, I 
 think it a most gratuitous assumption. 
 
 KNAPP. 
 I agree with my worthy friend Bellew as to the impropriety of harping 
 upon names. One would think the mayor of Cork ought to obtain some 
 respect, and be spared the infliction of the waggery of his fellow-townsmen. 
 But no; because I clear the city of mad dogs, and keep hydrophobia far 
 from our walls, I am called the "dog- (I had almost said kid-) Knapperl" 
 Now, my family is of German extraction, and my great-grandfather served 
 under the gallant Dutchman in his wars with the " Grande Monarque," 
 before he came over with William to deliver this country from slavery and 
 wooden shoes. It was my great-grandfather who invented that part of a 
 soldier's accoutrement called, after him, a " Knapp's sack." 
 
 CORBET. 
 I hope, Sir Walter, you will not leave Cork without dining at the mansion- 
 house with our worthy mayor. Falstaff himself could not find fault with the 
 excellent flavour of Knapp's sack. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 I fear I shall not be able to postpone my departure ; but as we are on this 
 subject of names, I have to observe, that it is an old habit of the vulgar to 
 take liberty with the syllables of a great man's patronymic. Melancthon* was 
 forced tp clothe his name in Greek to escape their allusions ; Jules de l'Echelle 
 changed his into Scaliger ; Pat Lardner has become Dionysius ; and the great 
 author of those immortal letters, which he has taken care to tell us will be 
 read when the commentaries of Cornelius k Lapide are forgotten, gave no 
 
 name at all to the world — 
 
 " Stat nominis umbra ! " 
 
 PROUT. 
 Poor Erasmus ! how he used to be badgered about his cognomen— 
 " Quaaitur unde tibi sit nomen, Erasmus!— Eras Mus !" 
 for even so that arch wag, the Chancellor Sir Thomas More, addressed him. 
 But his reply is on record, and his pentameter beats the Chancellor's hexa- 
 meter — , 
 
 " Si sum Mus ego, te judice Summus ero ! 
 
 * The real name of Melancthon was Philipp Schwartzerd (SajrearM), which means 
 Hack earth and is most happily rendered into Greek by the term Melancthon, MeAniyo- 
 vflui/ Thus sought he to escape the vulgar conundrums which his name in the ver- 
 nacular German could not fail to elicit. A Lapide's name was stein. 
 
54 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 Ay, and you will recollect how he splendidly retaliated on the punster by 
 dedicating to Sir Thomas his Miopias Eyxaijiuoi/. Erasmus was a capital 
 fellow, 
 
 " The glory of the priesthood, and the shame ! " 
 
 O'MEAEA. 
 
 Pray, Sir Walter, are you any relation of our great irrefragable doctor, 
 Duns Scotus ? He was an ornament of the Franciscan order. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 No, I have not that honour; but I have read what Erasmus says of 
 certain members of your fraternity, in a dialogue between himself and the 
 Echo : 
 
 "(Erasmus loquitur.)— Quid est sacerdotium ? 
 (Echo resftmdit.)— Otium !" 
 
 PROUT. 
 That reminds me of Lardner's idea of "otium cum dignitate," which he 
 proposes to read thus — otiitm cum diggiri 'lades I — The sugar and the materials 
 here for Mr. Bellew. 
 
 CORBET. 
 
 There was a witty thing, and a severe thing, said of the Barberini family 
 at Rome, when they took the stones of the Amphitheatrum Flavium to build 
 them their palazzo : "Quod non fecerant Barbari, hoc fecerunt Barberini." 
 But I think Jack Bellew, in his Chronicle, made as pointed a remark on 
 Sir Thomas "Deane, knight and builder, who bought the old furniture and 
 gutted the old castle of Blarney : " The Danes," quoth Jack, " have always 
 been pillaging old Ireland ! " 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 Whoever connived at or abetted the destruction of that old mansion, or 
 took any part in the transaction, had the soul of a Goth ; and the 
 Chronicle could not say less. 
 
 CORBET. 
 
 Bellew has vented his indignation in a song, which, if called on by so dis- 
 tinguished an antiquary, he will, no doubt, sing. And first let me propose 
 the "Liberty of the Press" and the Cork Chronicle, — nine times nine, 
 standing. Hurrah ! 
 
 JACK BELLEW'S SONG. 
 
 Air — " O weep for the hour ! " 
 
 Oh ! the muse shed a tear 
 
 When the cruel auctioneer, 
 With a hammer in his hand, to sweet Blarney came ! 
 
 Lady Jeffery's ghost 
 
 Left the Stygian coast, 
 And shriek'd the livelong night for her grandson's shame. 
 
 The Vandal's hammer fell, 
 
 And we know full well 
 Who bought the castle furniture and fixtures, O ! 
 
 And took off in a cart 
 
 {'Twos enough to break one's heart !) 
 All the statues made of lead, and the pictures, O ! 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 55 
 
 You're the man I mean, hight 
 
 Sir Thomas Deane, knight, 
 Whom the people have no reason to thank at all ; 
 
 But for you those things so old 
 
 Sure would never have been sold, 
 Nor the fox be looking out from the banquet-hall. 
 
 Oh, ye pull'd at such a rate 
 
 At every wainscoting and grate, 
 Determined the old house to sack and garble, O ! 
 
 That you didn't leave a splinter, 
 
 To keep but the could winter, 
 Except a limestone chimney-piece of marble, O 1 
 
 And there the place was left 
 
 Where bold King Charles the Twelfth 
 Hung, before his portrait went upon a journey, O ! 
 
 Och ! the family's itch 
 
 For going to law was sitch, 
 That they bound him long before to an attorney, O 1 
 
 But still the magic stone 
 
 (Blessings on it 1) is not flown, 
 To which a debt of gratitude Fat Lardner owes ; 
 
 Kiss that block, if you're a dunce, 
 
 And you'll emulate at once 
 The genius who to fame by dint of blarney rose. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 I thank you, Mr. Bellew, for your excellent ode on that most lamentable 
 subject : it must have been an evil day for Blarney. 
 
 BELLEW. 
 A day to be blotted out of the annals of Innisfail— a day of calamity and 
 downfall. The nightingale never sang so plaintively in "the groves," the 
 dove or the " gentle plover " were not heard "in the afternoon," the fishes wept 
 in the deepest recesses of the lake, and strange sounds were said to issue 
 from " the cave where no daylight enters."— Let me have a squeeze of 
 lemon. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 But what became of the " statues gracing this noble mansion ? " 
 
 BELLEW. 
 
 Sir Thomas Deane bought "Nebuchadnezzar," and the town-clerk, one 
 Besnard, bought "Julius Csesar." Sir Thomas of late years had taken to 
 devotion, and consequently coveted the leaden effigy of that Assyrian king, of 
 whom Daniel tells us such strange things ; but it turned out that the graven 
 image was a likeness of Hercules, after all ! so that, having put up the statue in 
 his lawn at Blackrock, the wags have since called his villa " Herculaneum." 
 Like that personage of whom Tommy Moore sings, in his pretty poem about 
 a sculptor's shop, who made a similar qui pro quo. What's the verse, 
 Corbet? 
 
 CORBET. 
 " He came to buy Jonah, and took away Jove ! " 
 
 O'MEARA. 
 
 There is nothing very wonderful in that. In St. Peter's at Rome we have an 
 old statue of Jupiter (a capital antique bronze it is), which, with the addition of 
 "keys" and some other modem improvements, makes an excellent figure of 
 the prince of the apostles. 
 
56 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 Swift says that Jupiter was originally a mere corruption of "Jew Peter,*' 
 You have given an edition of the Dean, Sir Walter? 
 
 SCOTT. 
 Yes ; but to return to your Blarney statue : I wonder the peasantry did not 
 rescue, vi et armis, the ornaments of their immortal groves, from the grasp of 
 the barbarians. I happened to be in Paris when the allies took away the 
 sculptured treasures of the Louvre, and the Venetian horses of the Carrousel; 
 and I well remember the indignation of the sons of France. Pray what was 
 the connection between Blarney Castle and Charles XII. of Sweden? 
 
 BELLEW. 
 
 One of the Jeffery family served with distinction under the gallant Swede, 
 and had received the royal portrait on his return to his native country, after a 
 successful campaign against the Czar Peter. The picture was swindled out of 
 Blarney by an attorney, to satisfy the costs of a lawsuit. 
 
 OLDEN. 
 
 The Czar Peter was a consummate politician ; but when he chopped off the 
 beards of the Russians, and forced his subjects by penal laws to shave their 
 chins, he acted very unwisely ; he should have procured a supply of cukeiro- 
 geneion % and effected his object by smooth means. 
 
 CORBET. 
 
 Come, Olden, let us have one of your songs about that wonderful dis- 
 covery. 
 
 OLDEN. 
 
 I'll willingly give you an ode in praise of the incomparable lather ; but I 
 think it fair to state that my song, like my eukeirogeneion^ is a modern imita- 
 tion of a Greek original : you shall hear it in both languages. 
 
 OLDEN'S SONG. 
 
 Come, list to my stave, 
 Ye who roam o'er the land or the wave, 
 Or in grots subterranean. 
 Or up the blue Mediterranean, 
 Near Etna's big crater, 
 Or across the equator, 
 Where, within St. Helena, theie lieth an emperor's 
 
 grave ; 
 If, when you nave got to the Cape of Good Hope, 
 You begin to experience a sad want of soap. 
 Bless your lot 
 On the spot, 
 If you chance to lay eye on 
 A flask of Eukeirogeneion ; 
 For then you may safely rely on 
 A smooth and most comforting shave ! 
 
 In this liquid there lies no deception ; 
 For even old Neptune, 
 Whose bushy chin frightens 
 The green squad of Tritons— 
 And who turns up the deep 
 With the huge flowing sweep 
 
 lEuKttpoyivftou. 
 
 TV efLijs axpoavBe 
 OfiiJ5, baroi n\a vav9t 
 ^ v yjl* ^ tv kv/khwo'i 
 Ka.Ta.yat. ots, r' ev 0"mje<r<n 
 Kvaveto re MecroyaLu, 
 ITapa. Kajtuwu Atri'aiw 
 la~i)fi.£pwov Ttpav re ' 
 KvkAou, eir' EKzvav n 
 'OSov irX.coire$ fuutpw, 
 " Aya$eKmSo<; " jrpos axpai^ 
 2irai*i$ et ti? yevotTO 
 Sarnoro?, icfjp ^at potro 
 Et y' oju.u.a to jSAerret aw 
 To EYKEIPOrENEION, 
 Kovpa yap if /taAtora 
 IlapeerrL <rot rpiAAtora. 
 
 Ei> leAva/tar' ovto> npfie 
 Ear' arrarr}, yap 6 6ij 
 TIocrei6iijr, 6 ye pat 05 
 Mrya? Efi-oo-iyaios, 
 Aaaw i^iov ntoywva, 
 O ipofieet Tptmva, 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 
 
 57 
 
 Of his lengthy and ponderous beard,— 
 Should he rub but his throttle 
 With the foam of this bottle, 
 He'd find, 
 a To his mind, 
 In a twinkling the mop would have all disappear'd. 
 
 King Nebuchadnezzar, 
 Who was turn'd for his sins to a grazier, 
 (For they stopp'd his allowance of praties, 
 And made him eat grass on the banks of Euphrates), 
 
 Whose statue Sir Thomas 
 
 Took from us ; 
 Along with the image of Caesar ; 
 (But Frank Cresswell will tell the whole story to 
 
 Fraser :) 
 Though they left him a capital razor, 
 Still went for seven years with his hair like a lion, 
 For want of Eukeirogeneion. 
 
 Km oifiaret 6o.\a<T<rav, 
 Ocrax t? e£enfTa<T<rei> 
 Iliayuvos CKTalevrac 
 IWonafiQw; fioTpVOevTOg, 
 Tlpotriairov et ye kovtl, 
 Ki/tovs atftptp Tovrovi. 
 Ep afcapei to #eiop 
 Aetatfcrat yepeiop. 
 
 Ne/SuxaoVattrap (cruXip 
 Ov B\apviKr)s a<|>' vKtjs 
 "O ©wjaas to etStakov 
 *0 fJapfiaptK fill 2oAtuf , 
 MeyaAiji/ tupaipuv A.eiar 
 Kai Jijioui' 0uTfiai/, 
 2oi t* avTO pe|e Kaiaap, 
 'fly yf oo-crat 6 OFAISAP) 
 Ta £vp' apiar' avag ev 
 Oikw exuv Taoo^ev, 
 "O moyati' Kai x aiT ?? (r "' 
 Eo-^ij/j.ei'os, TrXanjs iji> 
 ®ijp wo"', ovTbi yap 6"toi> 
 Et X ' EYKEIPOrENEION. 
 
 I don't think it fair that Frank Cresswell should say nothing all the evening. 
 Up, up, my boy ! give us a speech or a stave of some kind or other. Have 
 you never been at school? Come, let us have "Norval on the Grampian 
 hills," or something or other. 
 
 Thus apostrophized, O Queen! I put my wits together; and, anxious to 
 contribute my quota to the common fund of classic enjoyment, I selected 
 the immortal ode of Campbell, and gave a Latin translation in rhyme as well 
 as I could. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF HOHEN- 
 LINDEN. 
 
 On Linden, when the sun was low, 
 
 All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow. 
 And dark as winter was the flow 
 Of Iser rolling rapidly. 
 
 But Linden saw another sight, 
 When the drums beat at dead of night, 
 Commanding fires of death to light 
 The darkness of the scenery. 
 
 By torch and trumpet fast array'd, 
 Each horseman drew his battle-blade, 
 And furious every charger neigh'd 
 To join the dreadful rivalry. 
 
 Then shook the hills, by thunder riven ; 
 Then rush d the steed, to battle driven : 
 And louder than the bolts of heaven 
 Far flash'd the red artillery ! 
 
 The combat thickens ! on, ye brave ! 
 Who rush to glory or the grave. 
 Wave, Munich ! all thy banners wave, 
 And charge with all thy chivalry ! 
 
 Few, few shall part where many meet ! 
 The snow shall be their winding-sheet. 
 And every sod beneath their feet 
 Shall be a soldier's sepulchre ! 
 
 Pralium apud Hohenlinden. 
 
 Sol ruit ccelo minuitque lumen, 
 Nix super terris jacet usque munda, 
 Et tenebrosa fluit Iser unda 
 Flebile (lumen ! 
 
 Namque nocturnus simul arsit ignis. 
 Tympanum rauco sonuit boatu, 
 Dum micant flammis, agitante fiatu, 
 Rura malign is. 
 
 Jam dedit vocem tuba ! fax rubentes 
 Ordinat turmis equites, et ultrd 
 Fert equos ardor, rutilante cultro. 
 Ire furentes. 
 
 Turn sono colles tremuere belli, 
 Turn ruit campo sonipes, et aether 
 Mugit, et rubrS. tonitru videtur 
 Arce revelli ! 
 
 Ingruit strages ! citb, ferte gressum ! 
 Quos triumphantem redimere pulchro 
 lempori laurum juvat ! aut sepulchro 
 Stare cupressum ! 
 
 Hlc ubi campum premuere multi, 
 Tecta qu&m ran patrise videbunt 
 Heu sepulchrali nive quot manebunt, 
 Pol ! nee inulti ! 
 
58 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Such, O Queen ! was my feeble effort : and to your fostering kindness I 
 commit the luckless abortion, hoping to be forgiven by Tom Campbell for 
 having upset into very inadequate Latin his spirit-stirring poetry. 1 made 
 amends,, however, to the justly-enraged Muse, by eliciting the following 
 dithyrambic from Dan Corbet, whom I challenged in my turn : 
 
 DAN CORBET'S SONG. 
 
 The Ivory Tooth. 
 
 Believe me, dear Prout, _ 
 Should a tooth e'er grow loose in your head. 
 
 Or fall out, 
 And perchance you'd wish one in its stead, 
 Soon you'd see what my Art could contrive for ye ; 
 
 When I'd forthwith produce, 
 
 For your reverence's use, 
 A most beautiful tooth carved from ivory ! 
 
 Which, when dinner-time comes, 
 
 Would so well fit your gums, 
 
 That to make one superior 
 
 'Twould puzzle a fairy, or 
 
 Any 'cute Leprechawn 
 
 That trips o'er the lawn. 
 
 Or the spirit that dwells 
 
 In the lonely harebells, 
 Or a witch from the big lake Ontario ! 
 
 'Twould fit in so tight, 
 
 So brilliant and bright, 
 
 And be made of such capital stuff. 
 
 That no food 
 
 Must needs be eschew'd 
 On account of its being too tough,; 
 
 'Twould enable a sibyl 
 
 The hardest sea-biscuit to nibble ; 
 Nay, with such a sharp tusk, and such polish' d enamel, 
 
 Dear Prout, you could eat up a camel ! 
 
 As I know you will judge 
 With eye microscopic 
 What I say on this delicate topic, 
 And I wish to beware of all fudge, 
 I tell but the bare naked truth, 
 And I hope I don't state what's irrelevant, 
 When I say that this tooth. 
 Brought from Africa, when 
 In the depths of a palm-shaded glen 
 It was captured by men, 
 Then adorn d in the full bloom of youth, 
 The jaws of a blood-royal elephant. 
 
 We are told, 
 That a surgeon of old — 
 Oh, 'tis he was well skill'd in the art of nosology ! 
 For such was his knowledge, he 
 Could make you a nose bran new 1 
 I scarce can believe it, can you ? 
 And still did a public most keen and discerning 
 Acknowledge his learning ; 
 Yea, such skill was his, 
 That on any unfortunate phiz. 
 By some luckless chance. 
 In the wars of France, 
 Deprived of its fleshy ridge. 
 He d raise up a nasal bridge. 
 
Father P routs Carousal. 59 
 
 Now my genius is not so precocious 
 As that of Dr. Tagliacotius, 
 For I only profess to be versed in the art of dontology ; 
 To make you a nose 
 " C'est toute autre chose ;" 
 For at best, my dear Prout, 
 Instead of a human snout, 
 
 You'd get but a sorry apology. 
 But let me alone 
 For stopping a gap, or correcting a flaw 
 In a patient's jaw ; 
 Or making a tooth that, like bone of your bone, 
 Will outlive your own, 
 And shine on in the grave when your spirit is flown. 
 
 I know there's a blockhead 
 That will put you a tooth up with wires, 
 And then, when the clumsy thing tires, 
 
 This most impudent fellow 
 
 Will quietly tell you 
 
 . To take it out of its socket. 
 And put it back into your waistcoat pocket 1 
 
 But 'tis not so with mine, 
 
 O most learned divine ! 
 For without any spurious auxiliary. 
 So firmly infix'd in your dexter maxillary, m 
 
 To your last dying moment 'twill shine. 
 Unless 'tis knock'd out, 
 In some desperate rout, 
 By a sudden discharge of artillery. 
 
 Thus the firmer 'twill grow as the wearer grows older, 
 And then, when in death you shall moulder, 
 Like that Greek who had gotten an ivory shoulder. 
 The delight and amazement of ev'ry beholder, 
 You'll be sung by the poets in your turn, O ! 
 "Dettte Prout humerogue Felons itisignis eburno I " 
 
 Virg. Georg. II. 
 CORBET. 
 Come, old Prout, let's have a stave ! And first, here's to your health, my 
 old cock ! 
 
 " Perpetual bloom 
 To the Church of Rome ! " 
 
 [Drunk standing.] 
 
 The excellent old man acknowledged the toast with becoming dignity, and 
 tunefully warbled the Latin original of one of " the Melodies." 
 
 FATHER PROUT'S SONG. Prout cantat. 
 
 Let Erin remember the days of old, O ! utinam sanos mea Ierna recogitet annos 
 
 Ere her faithless sons betray'd her, Antea quam nati vincla deddre pati, 
 
 When Malachi wore the collar of gold, CUm Malachus torque ut patriae defen- 
 
 Which he won from the proud invader ; sor honorque 
 
 When Nial, with standard of green un- Ibat : erat verd pignus ab hoste fero. 
 
 furl'd, Tempore vexillo viridante equitabat in 1II0 
 
 Led the red-branch knights to danger, Nialus ante truces fervidus ire duces. 
 
 Ere the emerald gem of the western world Hi nee erant anni radiis in fronte tyranni 
 
 Was set in the brow of a stranger. Fulgeat ut claris, insula gemma maris. 
 On Lough Neagh's banks as the fisherman Quando tacet ventus, Neaghx d&m mar- 
 strays, £«« lentus 
 
 When the cool, calm eve's declining, Piscator vadit, vesperae ut umbra cadit, 
 
 He sees the round towers of other days Contemplans undas, ibi turres stare: rotun- 
 
 Beneath the waters shining. das 
 
6o 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 So shall memory oft, in dream sublime, 
 Catch a glimpse of the days that are 
 over, 
 And, sighing, look through the waves of 
 time, 
 For the long-faded glories they cover. 
 
 Credidit,inquelacfts oppidacernit aquis. 
 Sic memori in somnis res gesta reponitur 
 
 omnis 
 • Historicosque dies rettulit alma quies, 
 Gloria sublimis se effert % fluctibus imis, 
 Atque apparet ibi patria cam tibi. 
 
 PKOUT. 
 I now call on my worthy friend Dowden, whom I am sorry to see indulging 
 in nothing but soda all the evening: come, President of the "Temperance," 
 and ornament of " the Kirk," a song ! 
 
 DICK DOWDEN'S SONG. 
 
 Air — "/ sing the Maid of LodtV 
 
 I sing the fount of soda. 
 
 That sweetly springs for me. 
 And I hope to make this ode a 
 
 Delightful melody ; 
 For if ?< Castalian water 
 
 Refresh'd the tuneful nine. 
 Health to die Muse ! I've brought her 
 
 A bubbling draught of mine. 
 A.purrov fl€V to vSwp — 
 
 So Pindar sang of old, 
 Though modern bards— proh ptidor I — 
 
 Deem water dull and cold ; 
 But if at my suggestion 
 
 They'd try the crystal spring, 
 They'd find that, for digestion. 
 
 Pure element's the thmg. 
 
 With soda's cheerful essence 
 
 They'd fill the brimming glass, 
 And feel the mild 'fervescence 
 
 Of hydrogen and gas ; 
 Nor quaff Geneva's liquor— 
 
 Source of a thousand ills ! 
 Nor swill the poisonous ichor 
 
 Cork (to her shame !) distils. 
 
 Gin is a lurking viper, 
 
 That stings the madden 'd soul, 
 And Reason pays the piper, 
 
 While Folly drains the bowl ; 
 
 And rum, made of molasses, 
 
 Inclineth man to sin ! 
 And fax potheen surpasses 
 
 The alcohol of gin. 
 But purest air in fixture 
 
 Pervades the soda draught. 
 And forms the sylph-like mixture 
 
 Brew'd by our gentle craft. 
 Nor is the beverage injured 
 
 When flavour'd with a lime ; 
 Or if, when slightly ginger'd, 
 
 "lis swallow d off in time. 
 
 Far from the tents of topers 
 
 Blest be my lot to dwell. 
 Secure from interlopers 
 
 At peaceful "Sundays well." 
 Free o'er my lawn to wander, a 
 
 Amid sweet flowers and fruits ; 
 And may I still grow fonder 
 
 Of chemical pursuits. 
 
 Through life with step unerring 
 
 To glide, nor wealth to hoard. 
 Content if a red herring 
 
 Adorn my frugal board ; 
 While Martha, mild and placid. 
 
 Assumes the household cares. 
 And Pyroligneoits acid 
 
 The juicy ham prepares. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 That is a capital defence of the Temperance Society, and of sodaic com- 
 pounds, Mr. Dowden, and clearly refutes the rash assertion of Horace — 
 
 " Nee durare diu nee vivere cannina possunt 
 Qua; scribuntur aquae potoribus." 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 Dick, you have a decided claim for a song on any of our guests whose 
 melodious pipe we have not as yet heard. 
 
 DOWDEN. 
 
 I call on O'Meara, whom I have detected watching, with a covetous eye, 
 something in the distant landscape. A song, friar ! 
 
Father Proufs Carousal. 
 
 61 
 
 O MEAKA. 
 I am free to confess that yonder turkey, of which I can get a glimpse 
 through the kitchen-door, has a most tempting aspect. Would it were 
 spitted I — but, alas ! this is Friday. However, there are substitutes even for a 
 turkey, as I shall endeavour to demonstrate in the most elegant style of Fran- 
 ciscan Latinity; adding a free translation for the use of the ignorant. 
 
 FRIAR O'MEARA'S SONG. 
 
 Why then, sure it was made by a learned owl, 
 The "rule " by which I beg, 
 Forbidding to eat of the tender fowl 
 That hangs on yonder peg. 
 But, rot it ! no matter : 
 For here on a platter, 
 Sweet Margaret brings 
 A food fit for kings ; 
 And a meat 
 Clean and neat — 
 That's an egg ! 
 
 Sweet maid, 
 She brings me an egg newly laid ! 
 And to fast I need ne'er be afraid, 
 For 'tis Peg 
 That can find me an egg. 
 
 Three different ways there are of eating them ; 
 
 First boil'd, then fried with salt, — 
 But there's a particular way of treating them, 
 Where many a cook's at fault : 
 For with parsley and flour 
 Tis in Margaret's power 
 To make up a dish, 
 Neither meat, fowl, nor fish ; 
 But in Paris they call 't 
 A neat 
 Omelette. 
 Sweet girl ! 
 In truth, as in Latin, her name is a pearl, 
 
 When she gets 
 Me a platter of nice omelettes. 
 
 Och ! 'tis all in my eye, and a joke, 
 To call fasting a sorrowful yoke ; 
 Sure, of Dublin Bay herrings a keg. 
 
 And an egg, 
 Is enough for all sensible folk ! 
 Success to the fragrant turf-smoke. 
 That curls round the pan on the fire ; 
 While the sweet yellow yolk 
 From the egg-shells is broke 
 In that pan. 
 Who can, 
 If he have but the heart of a man, 
 Not feel the soft flame of desire, 
 When it bums to a clinker the heart of a friar 7 
 
 Cantilena Omearica, 
 I. 
 
 Nostra non est regul& 
 
 Edenda gallina, 
 Altera sed edula 
 
 Splendent in culinfl : 
 Ova manus sedula 
 
 Affert mihi bina ! 
 Est Margarita, 
 Quae facit ita, 
 
 Puellarum regina I 
 
 II. 
 Triplex mos est edere : 
 
 Primb, genuina ; 
 Dein, certo fcedere 
 
 Tosta et salina ; 
 Turn, nil herbae laedere 
 
 Possunt aut farina ; 
 Est Margarita, 
 Quae facit ita, 
 
 Puellarum regina ! 
 
 III. 
 
 {Lento e maetoso.) 
 
 Tempus stulta plebs abhorret 
 
 Quadragesimale ; 
 Halec sed si in mens& foret, 
 
 Res iret non tarn male ! 
 Ova dum haec nympha torret 
 In ollft cum sale. 
 Est Margarita, 
 Quas facit ita, 
 Puellarum regina : 
 
62 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 I coincide with all that has been said in' praisR of eggs ; I have written a 
 voluminous essay on the subject; and as to frying them in a pan, it is 
 decidedly the best method. That ingenious man, Crofton Croker, was the 
 first among all the writers on "useful knowledge" who adorn this utili- 
 tarian epoch to discover the striking resemblance that exists between those 
 two delightful objects in national history, a daisy and a fried egg. Eggs 
 broken into a pan seem encircled with a whitish border, having a yellow 
 nucleus in the centre; and the similar appearance of the field-daisy ought 
 to have long since drawn the notice of Wordsworth. Meantime in the matter 
 of frying eggs, care should be taken not to overdo them, as an old philosopher 
 has said— p.i\nr\ to irau. But let none imagine that in all I have said I 
 intend to hint, in the remotest manner, any approval of that barbarous and 
 unnatural combination — that horrid amalgam, yclept a pancake, than which 
 - nothing can be more detestable. 
 
 SCOTT. 
 
 Have you any objection, learned host, to our hearing a little instrumental 
 music ? Suppose we got a tune on the bagpipe ? I understand your man, 
 Terry Callaghan, can squeeze the bags to some purpose. 
 
 PROUT. 
 
 Terry 1 come in, and bring your pipes 1 
 
 Terry, nothing loth, came, though with some difficulty, and rather unsteadily, 
 from the kitchen ; and having established himself on a three-legged stool (the 
 usual seat of Pythonic inspiration), gave, after a short prelude, the following 
 harmonious strain, with vocal accompaniment to suit the tuneful drone of 
 the bags: in which arrangement he strictly adhered to the Homeric prac- 
 tice ; for we find that the most approved and highly gifted minstrels of the 
 " Odyssey " (especially that model among the bards of antiquity, Deraodocus), 
 owing to their contempt for wind-instruments, were enabled to play and sing 
 at the same time ; but neither the lyre, the plectrum, the cf>op/ity£ , the chelys, 
 the testudo, or the barbiton, afford such facilities for the concomitance of 
 voice and music as that wondrous engine of harmony the Celtic bagpipe, 
 called " corne muse " by the French, as if far excellence " cornu musa'' Terry, 
 having exalted his horn, sang thus : 
 
 TERRY CALLAGHAN'S SONG; 
 
 Bebg a full and true Account of the Storming of Blarney Castle, by the united 
 
 forces of Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax, 
 
 in 1628. 
 
 - Air— "I'm akin to the Callaghaw" 
 
 O Blarney Castle, my darlint ! 
 
 Sure you're nothing at all but a stone 
 Wrapt in ivy — a nest for all varmint, 
 
 Since the ould Lord Clancarty is gone. 
 Och ! 'tis you that was once strong and aincient, 
 
 And ye kep all the Sassenachs down, 
 While fighting them battles that ain't yet 
 
 Forgotten by martial renown. 
 
 O Blarney Castle, &c 
 
 Bad luck to that robber, ould Crommill ! 
 
 That plundered our beautiful fort ; 
 We'll never forgive him, though some will — 
 
 Saxons 1 such as George Knapp and his sort. 
 
Father Prouts Carousal. 63 
 
 But they tell us the day '11 come, when Dannel 
 
 Will purge the whole country, and drive 
 All the Sassenachs into the Channel, 
 
 Nor leave a CromwelHan alive. 
 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 Curse the day clumsy Noll's ugly corpus* 
 
 Clad in copper, was seen on our plain ; 
 When he fowled over here like a porpoise, 
 
 In two or three hookers from Spain ! 
 And bekase that he was a freemason 
 
 He mounted a battering-ram. 
 And into her mouth, full of treason, 
 
 Twenty pound of gunpowder he'd cram. 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 So when the brave boys of Clancarty 
 
 Looked over their battlement-wall, 
 They saw wicked Oliver's party 
 
 All a feeding on powder and hall ; 
 And that giniral that married his daughter, 
 
 Wid a heap of grape-shot in his jaw — 
 That's bould Ireton, so famous for slaughter— 
 
 And he was his brother-in-law. 
 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 They fired off their bullets like thunder, 
 
 That whizzed through the air like a snake ; 
 And they made the ould castle (no wonder !) 
 
 With all its foundations to shake. 
 While the Irish had nothing to shoot off 
 
 But their bows and their arras, the sowls ! 
 Waypons fit for the wars of old Plutarch, 
 
 And perhaps mighty good for wild fowls. 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 Och ! 'twas Crommill then gave the dark token— 
 
 For in the black art he was deep ; 
 And though the eyes of the Irish stood open, 
 
 They found themselves all fast asleep ! 
 With his jack-boots he stepped on the water. 
 
 And he walked clane right over the lake ; 
 While his sodgers they all followed after, 
 
 As dry as a duck or a drake. 
 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 Then the gates he burnt down to a cinder, 
 
 And the roof he demolished likewise ; 
 O ! the rafters they flamed out like tinder, 
 
 And the buWtir? JIared up to the skies. 
 And he gave the estate to the Jeffers, 
 
 With the dairy, the cows, and the hay : 
 And they lived there in clover like heifers, 
 
 As their ancestors do to this day. 
 
 O Blarney Castle, &c. 
 
 Such was the song of Terry, in the chorus of which he was aided by the 
 sympathetic baryton of Jack Bellew's voice, never silent when his country's 
 woes are the theme of eloquence or minstrelsy. An incipient somnolency 
 began, however, to manifest itself in Corbet and Dick Dowden ; and I con- 
 fess I myself can recollect little else of the occurrences of the evening. 
 Wherefore with this epilogue we conclude our account of the repast on 
 Watergrasshill, observing that Sir Walter Scott was highly pleased with the 
 sacerdotal banquet, and expressed himself so to. Knapp ; to whom, on their 
 return in a post-chaise to Cork, he exclaimed, . 
 
 " Prorsus jucundS ccenam produximus illam.' — Hor. 
 
64 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IV. 
 
 §t:m Staffs litatriuss. 
 
 A TALE OF A CHURN. 
 {Fraser's Magazine, July % 1834.) 
 
 [The Fraser which contained this grimly grotesque phantasy by Prout was the one in 
 which, as the fiftieth Literary Portrait in Rpgina's Gallery, the Author of ** Rookwood," 
 then in his jeunesse dorve, was depicted, symmetrical in form, perfectly clad, curly- 
 headed, delicately chiselled in feature, negligently half-seated upon a table, surrounded 
 by festoons of manacles, crape-masks, and pistols at full cock, befitting the celebrant of 
 prison-breakers and highwaymen. Obeying the impulse of some now incomprehensible 
 freak, Maginn, in the letterpress accompanying Maclise's sketch, dubbed the romancist, 
 not according to his baptismal register, William Harrison, but Walker HedricAmswofth. 
 There can be little doubt of it but that Thackeray had this paper of Mahony's uncon- 
 sciously in his recollection when in his lecture on Swift, seventeen years later on, he spoke 
 of the great Dean as entering the nursery with the look and tread of an ogre. Not 
 inappropriately as the tailpiece to the reprint of this double-headed essay in 1836, the 
 infant Prout was revealed by the pencil of Croquis as escaping in a churn from the 
 terrible risk of getting only too literally a little later on into a pickle, through the carry- 
 ing out of his illustrious putative father's suggestion that the children of papists should 
 be utilized for the advantage of the Royal Navy by being turned into salt provisions.] 
 
 " O thou, whatever title please thine ear, 
 Dean, Drapier, BickerstafF, or Gulliver— 
 Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, 
 Or laugh and shake in Rab'lais* easy-chair, 
 Or praise the court, or magnify mankind, 
 Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind ! " 
 
 Pope. 
 
 We are fully cognizant of and prepared for the overwhelming burst of felicita- 
 tion which we shall elicit from a sympathizing public, when we announce the 
 glad tidings of the safe arrival in London of the Watergrasshill "chest," 
 fraught with treasures such as no Spanish galleon ever wafted from Manilla or 
 Peru into the waters of the Guadalquiver. From the remote Irish highland 
 where Prout wasted so much Athenian suavity on the desert air, unnoticed and 
 unappreciated by the rude tenants of the hamlet, his trunk of posthumous 
 papers has been brought into our cabinet; and there it stands before us, 
 like unto the Trojan horse, replete with the armed offspring of the great 
 man's brain, right well packed with classic stuffing— ay, pregnant with life and 
 glory ! Haply has Fate decreed that it should fall into proper hands and 
 fitting custody; else to what vile uses might not this vile box of learned 
 lumber have been unwittingly converted— we shudder in spirit at the probable 
 
Dean Swift's Madness. 65 
 
 destiny that would have awaited it. The Caliph Omar warmed the bath of 
 Alexandria with Ptolemy's library; and the " Prout Papers" might ere now 
 be lighting the pipes of "the boys" in Blarney Lane, while the chest itself 
 might afford materials for a three-legged stool — 
 
 " Tntnciis ficulnus, inutile lignum !" 
 
 In verity it ought to be allowable at times to indulge in that most pleasing 
 opiate, self-applause ; and having made so goodly an acquisition, why should 
 not we chuckle inwardly while congratulated from without, ever and anon 
 glancing an eye of satisfaction at the chest : 
 
 " Mihi plaudo ipse domi, simul ac contemplor in arcft ! " 
 
 Never did that learned ex-Jesuit, Angelo Mai, now librarian of the Vatican, 
 rejoice more over a " palimpsest " MS. of some crazy old monk, in which his 
 quick eye fondly had detected the long-lost decade of Livy — never did friend 
 Pettigrew gloat over a newly uncoffined mummy— (warranted of the era of Sesos- 
 tris) — nevar did (that living mummy) Maurice de Talleyrand exult over a fresh 
 bundle of Palmerstonian protocols, with more internal complacency,— than 
 did we, jubilating over this sacerdotal anthology, this miscellany "in boards," 
 at last safely lodged in our possession. 
 
 Apropos. We should mention that we had previously the honour of 
 receiving from his Excellency Prince Maurice (aforesaid) the following note, to 
 which it grieved us to return a flat negative : — 
 
 " Le Prince de Talleyrand prie Mr. Olivier Yorke d'agreer ses respec- 
 tueux hommages, Ayant eu l'avantage de connajtre personellement feu 
 l'Abbi de Prout lors de ses etudes a la Sorbonne en 1778, il serait charme, 
 sitdt qu'arriveront les papiers de ce respectable ecclesiastique, d'assister h 
 l'ouverture du coffre. Cette faveur, qu'il se fiatte d'obtenir de la politesse 
 reconnue de Monsieur Yorke, il scaura duement apprecier. 
 
 "Ambassaiie de France, Hanovre Sq. 
 *' ce 3 yitin." 
 
 We suspected at once, and our surmise has proved correct, that many 
 documents would be found referring to Marie Antoinette's betrayers, and the 
 practices of those three prime intriguers, Mirabeau, Cagliostro, and Prince 
 Maurice ; so that we did well in eschewing the honour intended us in over- 
 hauling these papers— Non " Talley " auxilio ! 
 
 We hate a flourish of trumpets ; and though we could justly command all the 
 clarions of renown to usher in these Prout writings, let their own intrinsic worth 
 be the sole herald of their fame. We are not like the rest of men, obliged to 
 inflate our cheeks with incessant effort to blow cur commodities into notoriety. 
 No ! we are not disciples in the school of Puffendorf : Prout'sy&A will be 
 found fresh and substantial— not " blown," as happens too frequently in the 
 literary market. We have more than once acknowledged the unsought and 
 unpurchased plaudits of our contemporaries ; but it is also to the imperishable 
 verdict of posterity that we ultimately look for a ratification of modern 
 applause; with Cicero we exclaim— "Memoria vestra, Quirites, nostras res 
 vivent, sermonibus crescent, litterarum monumentis veterascent et cor- 
 roborabuntur ! " Yes ! while the ephemeral writers of the day, mere bubbles 
 on the surface of the flood, will become extinct in succession, — while a few, 
 more lucky than their comrade dunces, may continue for a space to swim with 
 the aid of those vile bladders, newspaper puffs, Father Frout will be seen 
 floating triumphantly down tbe stream of time, secure and buoyant in a genuine 
 " Cork " jacket. » 
 
66 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 We owe it to the public to account for the delay experienced in the trans- 
 mission of the " chest " from Watergrasshill to our hands. The fact is, that 
 at a meeting of the parishioners held on the subject (Mat Horrogan, of 
 Blarney, in the chair), it was resolved, " That Terry Callaghan, being a tall 
 and trustworthy man, able to do credit to the village in London, and carry 
 eleven stone weight (the precise tariff of the trunk), should be sent at the 
 public expense, vid Bristol, with the coffer strapped to his shoulders, and 
 plenty of the wherewithal to procure 'refreshment' on the western road, 
 until he should deliver the same at Mr. Fraser's, Regent Street, with the 
 compliments of the parish." Terry, wisely considering, like the Commissioners 
 of the Deccan prize-money, that the occupation was too good a thing not to 
 make it last as long as possible, kept refreshing himself, at the cost of the 
 parochial committee, on the great western road, and only arrived last week in 
 Regent Street. Having duly stopped to admire Lady Aldborough's " round 
 tower," set up to honour the Duke of York, and elbowed his way through 
 the " Squadrint," he at last made his appearance at our office ; and when he 
 had there discharged his load, went off to take pot-luck with Feargus 
 O'Connor. 
 
 Here, then, we are enabled, no longer deferring the promised boon, to 
 lay before the public the first of the " Prout Papers ; " breaking bulk, to use a 
 seaman's phrase, and producing at hazard a specimen of what is contained in 
 the coffer brought hither on the shoulders of tall and trustworthy Terry 
 Callaghan. 
 
 " Pandere res olid TerrA et Caligine mersas," 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Regent Street, ist July, 1834. 
 
 Watergrasshill, March 1830. 
 Yet a few years, and a full century shall have elapsed since the death of Dr. 
 Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's. Yes, O my friends ! if such I may 
 presume to designate you into whose hands, when I am gathered to the 
 silent tomb, these writings shall fall, and to whose kindly perusal I commend 
 them, bequeathing, at the same time, the posthumous blessing of a feeble and 
 toil-worn old man — yes, when a few winters more shall have added to the 
 accumulated snow of age that weighs on the hoary head of the pastor of this 
 upland, and a short period shall have rolled on in the dull monotony of these 
 latter days, the centenary cycle will be fully completed, the secular anthem of 
 dirge-like solemnity may be sung, since the grave closed for ever on one whom 
 Britain justly reveres as the most upright, intuitive, and gifted of her sages ; 
 and whom Ireland, when the frenzied hour of strife shall have passed away, 
 and the turbulence of parties shall have subsided into a national calm, will 
 hail with the rapture of returning reason, as the first, the best, the mightiest 
 of her sons. The long arrears of gratitude to the only true disinterested 
 champion of her people will then be paid — the long-deferred apotheosis of 
 the patriot-divine will then take place — the shamefully-forgotten debt of 
 glory which the lustre of his genius shed around his semi-barbarous country- 
 men will be deeply and feelingly remembered ; the old landmark of genuine 
 worth will be discovered in the ebbing of modern agitation, and due honour 
 will be rendered by a more enlightened age to the keen and scrutinizing 
 philosopher, the scanner of whate'er lies hidden in the folds of the human 
 heart, the prophetic seer of coming things, the unsparing satirist of con- 
 temporary delinquency, the stern Rhadamanthus of the political and of the 
 
Dean Swift 's Madness. 67 
 
 literary world, the star of a benighted land, the lance and the buckler of 
 Israel — 
 
 " We ne'er shall look upon his like again." * 
 
 And still why must I recall (what I would fain obliterate) the ever-painful 
 fact, — graven, alas ! too indelibly on the stubborn tablets of his biographers, 
 chronicled in the annals of the country, and, above all, firmly and fatally 
 established by the monumental record of his own philanthropic munificence, — 
 the disastrous fact, that ere this brilliant light of our island was quenched in 
 death, towards the close of the year 1745 — long before that sad consummation, 
 the flame had wavered wild and flickered fitfully in its lamp of clay, casting 
 around shadows of ghastly form, and soon assuming a strange and melancholy 
 hue, that made every well-wisher hail as a blessing the event of its final 
 extinction in the cold and dismal vaults of St. Patrick's. In what mysterious 
 struggle his gigantic intellect had been cloven down, none could tell. But the 
 evil genius of insanity had clearly obtained a masterdom over faculties the 
 most powerful, and endowments the highest, that have fallen to the lot of 
 man. 
 
 We are told of occasional hours of respite from the fangs of his tormenting 
 Sat/uuii, — we learn of moments when the ' ■ mens divinior " was suffered to. go 
 loose from its gaoler, and to roam back, as it were, on "parole," into the 
 dominions of reason, like the ghost of the murdered king, allowed to revisit, for 
 a brief space, the glimpses of our glorious firmament, — but such gleams of 
 mental enlightenment were but few, and short in their duration. They were 
 like the flash that is seen to illumine the wreck when all hope is gone, and, 
 fiercely bursting athwart in the darkness, appears but to seal the doom of the 
 cargo and the mariners — intervals of lugubrious transport, described by our 
 native bard as 
 
 " That ecstasy which, from the depths of sadness, 
 Glares like the maniac's moon, whose light is madness." 
 
 Alas ! full rapidly would that once clear and sagacious spirit falter and relapse 
 into the torpor of idiocy. His large, expressive eyes, rolling wildly, would at 
 times exhibit, as it were, the inward working of his reason, essaying in vain to 
 cast off the nightmare that sat triumphant there, impeding that current of 
 thought, once so brisk and brilliant. Noble and classic in the very writhings 
 of delirium, and often sublime, he would appear a living image of the sculp- 
 tured Laocoon, battling with a serpent that had grasped, not the body, but the 
 mind, in its entangling folds. Yet must we repeat the sad truth, and again 
 record in sorrow, that the last two or three years of Jonathan Swift presented 
 nothing but the shattered remnants of what had been a powerfully organized 
 being, to whom it ought to have been allotted, according to our faint notions, 
 to carry unimpaired and undiminished into the hands of Him who gave such 
 varied gifts, and formed such a goodly intellect, the stores of hoarded wisdom 
 and the overflowing measure of talents well employed : but such was not the 
 
 * Note in Front's handwriting: "Doyle, of Carlow, faintly resembles him. Bold, 
 honest, disinterested, an able writer, a scholar, a gentleman ; a bishop, too, in otir 
 church, with none of the shallow pedantry, silly hauteur, arrant selfishness, and anile 
 dotage, which may be sometimes covered, but not hidden, under a mitre. Swift demol- 
 ished, in his day, Woods and his bad halfpence ; Doyle denounced Daniel and his box of 
 coppers. A provision for the starving Irish was called for by ' the Dean,' and was sued 
 for by ' J. K. L.' Alas ! when will the Government awaken to the voice of our island's 
 best and most enlightened patriots? Truly, it hath ' Moses and the prophets ' — doth the 
 Legislature wait until one come from the dead ? " 
 
 Doyle is since dead — but " defunctus adhuc loquitur \ " — O. Y. 
 
68 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 counsel of an inscrutable Providence, whose decree was to be fulfilled in the 
 prostration of a mighty understanding — 
 
 Aioe 6" iTtKutro /3ou\?). 
 
 And here let me pause— for a sadly pleasing reminiscence steals across my 
 mind, a recollection of youthful days. I love to fix, in its flight, a transitory 
 idea ; and I freely plead the privilege of discursiveness conceded to the garru- 
 lity of old age. When my course of early travel led me to wander in search 
 of science, and I sought abroad that scholastic knowledge which was denied to 
 us at home in those evil days ; when, by force of legislation, I became like 
 others of my clerical brethren, a "peripatetic" philosopher — like them com- 
 pelled to perambulate some part of Europe in quest of professional education- — 
 the sunny provinces of southern France were the regions of my choice ; and 
 my first gleanings of literature were gathered on the banks of that mighty 
 stream so faithfully characterized by Burdigala's native poet Ausonius, in his 
 classic enumeration : 
 
 "Lenius Arar, Rhodanusque celer, PLENUsque Garumna." 
 
 One day, a goatherd, who fed his shaggy flock along the river was heard by me, 
 as, seated on the lofty bank, he gazed on the shining flood, to sing a favourite 
 carol of the country. 'Twas but a simple ballad; yet it struck me as a neat 
 illustration of the ancient parallel between the flow of human life and the 
 course of the running waters ; and thus it began : 
 
 " Salut ! O vieux fleuve, qui coulez par la plaine ! 
 Helas ! un m§me cours ici bas nous entraine — 
 
 Egal est en tout notre sort : 
 Tous deux nous fournissons la mettle carriere ; 
 Car un meme destin nous mene, O riviere ! — 
 
 Vous a la mer ! nous a la mort ! " 
 
 So sang the rustic minstrel. But it has occurred to me, calmly and sorrowfully 
 pondering on the fate of Swift, that although this melancholy resemblance, so 
 often alluded to in Scriptural allegory, may hold good in the general fortunes of 
 mankind, still has it been denied to some to complete in their personal history 
 the sad similitude ; for not a few, and these some of the most exalted of our 
 species, have been forbidden to glide into the Ocean of Eternity bringing there- 
 unto the fulness of their life-current with its brimming banks undrained. 
 
 Who that has ever gazed on the glorious Rhine, coeval in historic memory 
 with the first Csesar, and boasting much previous traditionary renown, at the 
 spot where it gushes from its Alpine source, would not augur to it, with the 
 poet, an uninterrupted career, and an ever-growing volume of copious exuber- 
 ance ? 
 
 " Au pied du Mont Adulle, entre mille roseaux, 
 Le Rhin tranquil, et tier du progres de ses eaux, 
 Appuye d'une main sur son urae penchante, 
 S endort au bruit flatteur de son onde naissante." 
 
 BoiLEAtr. 
 
 Whence if it is viewed sweeping in brilliant cataracts through many a moun- 
 tain glen, and many a woodland scene, until it glides from the realms of romance 
 into the business of life, and forms the majestic boundary of two rival nations, 
 conferring benefits on both — reflecting from the broad expanse of its waters 
 anon the mellow vineyards of Johannisberg, anon the hoary crags of Drachen- 
 fels— who then could venture to foretell that so splendid an alliance of useful- 
 ness and grandeur was destined to be dissolved— that yon rich flood would 
 
Dean Swifts Madness. 69 
 
 never gain that ocean into whose bosom a thousand rivulets flow on with 
 unimpeded gravitation, but would disappear in the quagmires of Helvoetsluys, 
 be lost in the swamps of Flanders, or absorbed in the sands of Holland ? 
 
 Yet such is the course of the Rhine, and such was the destiny of Swift, — of 
 that man the outpourings of whose abundant mind fertilized alike the land of 
 his fathers* and the land of his birth : that man the very overflowings of whose 
 strange genius were looked on by his contemporaries with delight, and 
 welcomed as the inundations of the Nile are hailed by the men of Egypt. 
 
 A deep and hallowed motive impels me to select that last and dreary period 
 of his career for the subject of special analysis ; to elucidate its secret history, 
 and to examine it in all its bearings ; eliminating conjecture, and substituting 
 fact ; prepared to demolish the visionary superstructure of hypothesis, and to 
 place the matter on its simple basis of truth and reality. 
 
 It is far from my purpose and far from my heart to tread on such solemn 
 ground save with becoming awe and with feet duly unshodden. If, then, in 
 the following pages, I dare to unseal the long- closed well, think not that I 
 seek to desecrate the fountain : if it devolves on me to lift the veil, fear not 
 that I mean to profane the sanctuary : tarry until this paper shall have been 
 perused to its close ; nor will it fall from your grasp without leaving behind it 
 a conviction that its contents were traced by no unfriendly hand, and by no 
 unwarranted biographer : for if a bald spot were to be found on the head of 
 Jonathan Swift, the hand of Andrew Prout should be the first to cover it with 
 laurels. 
 
 There is a something sacred about insanity : the traditions of every country 
 agree in flinging a halo of mysterious distinction around the unhappy mortal 
 stricken with so sad and so lonely a visitation. The poet who most studied 
 from nature and least from books, the immortal Shakespeare, has never made 
 our souls thrill with more intense sympathy than when his personages are 
 brought before us bereft of the guidance of reason. The grey hairs of King 
 Lear are silvered over with additional veneration when he raves ; and the wild 
 flower of insanity is the tenderest that decks the pure garland of Ophelia. 
 The story of Orestes has furnished Greek tragedy with its most powerful 
 emotions ; and never did the mighty Talma sway with more irresistible domin- 
 ion the assembled men of France, than when he personated the fury-driven 
 maniac of Euripides, revived on the French stage by the muse of Voltaire. 
 We know that among rude and untutored nations madness is of rare occur- 
 rence, and its instances few indeed. But though its frequency in more refined 
 and civilized society has taken away much of the deferential homage paid to 
 it in primitive times, still, in the palmiest days of Greek and Roman illumina- 
 tion, the oracles of Delphi found their fitting organ in the frenzy of the 
 Pythoness ; and through such channels does the Latin lyrist represent the 
 Deity communicating with man : 
 
 quatit 
 
 Mentem sacerdotum incola Pythius." 
 
 But let us look into our own breasts, and acknowledge that, with all the fastid- 
 ious pride of fancied superiority, and in the full plenitude of our undimmed 
 reason, we cannot face the breathing ruin of a noble intellect undismayed. 
 The broken sounds, the vague intensity of that gaze, those whisperings that 
 seem to commune with the world of spirits, the play of those features, still 
 impressed with the signet of immortality, though illegible to our eye, strike 
 us with that awe which the obelisk of the desert, with its insculptured riddles, 
 inspires into the Arabian shepherd. An oriental opinion makes such beings 
 
 * Prout supposes Swift to have been a natural son of Sir William Temple. We believe 
 him in error here.— O. Y. 
 
?o TJie Works of Father Prout. 
 
 the favourites of Heaven : and the strong tincture of eastern ideas, so discern- 
 ible on many points in Ireland, is here also perceptible; for a born idiot 
 among the offspring of an Irish cabin is prized as a family palladium. 
 
 To contemplate what was once great and resplendent in the eyes of man 
 slowly mouldering in decay, has never been an unprofitable exercise of thought ; 
 and to muse over reason itself fallen and prostrate, cannot fail to teach us our 
 complete deficiency. If to dwell among ruins and amid sepulchres — to explore 
 the pillared grandeur of the tenantless Palmyra, or the crumbling wreck of that 
 Roman amphitheatre once manned with applauding thousands and rife with 
 joy, now overgrown with shrubs and haunted by the owl — if to soliloquize in 
 the valley where autumnal leaves are thickly strewn, ever reminding us by their 
 incessant rustle, as we tread the path, " that all that's bright must fade; " — if 
 these things beget that mood of soul in which the suggestions of Heaven 
 find readiest adoption, — how forcibly must the wreck of mind itself, and the 
 mournful aberrations of that faculty by which most we assimilate to our Maker, 
 humble our self-sufficiency, and bend down our spirit in adoration ! It is in 
 truth a sad bereavement, a dissevering of ties long cherished, a parting scene 
 melancholy to witness, when the ethereal companion of this clay takes its 
 departure, an outcast from the earthly coil that it once animated with intel- 
 lectual fire, and wanders astray, cheerless and friendless, beyond the picturings 
 of poetry to describe ; — a picture realized in Swift, who, more than Adrian, was 
 entitled to exclaim : 
 
 " Animula vagula, blandula, " Wee soul, fond rambler, whither, say, 
 
 Hospes comesque corporis, Whither, boon comrade, fleest awayf 
 
 Qua; nunc abibis in loca f 111 canst thou bear the bitter blast— 
 
 Palhdula, rigida, nudula. Houseless, unclad, affright, aghast ; 
 
 Nee, ut soles, dabis jocos ! " Jocund no more ! and hush'd the mirth 
 
 That gladden'd oft the sons of earth ! " 
 Nor unloth am I to confess that such contemplations have won upon me in 
 the decline of years. Youth has its appropriate pursuits ; and to him who 
 stands on the threshold of life, with all its gaieties and festive hours spread in 
 alluring blandishment before him, such musings may come amiss, and such 
 studies may offer no attraction. We are then eager to mingle in the crowd of 
 active existence, and to mix with those who swarm and jostle each other on 
 the molehill of this world — 
 
 " Towered cities please us then, 
 And the busy hum of men ! " 
 
 But to me, numbering fourscore years, and full tired of the frivolities of 
 modern wisdom, metaphysical inquiry returns with all its charms, fresh as 
 when first I courted, in the halls of Sorbonne, the science of the soul. On 
 this barren hill where my lot is fallen, in that " sunset of life" which is said to 
 " bring mystical lore," I love to investigate subjects such as these. 
 
 " And may my lamp, at midnight hour, 
 Be seen in some high, lonely tower. 
 Seeking, with Plato, to unfold 
 What realms or what vast regions hold 
 Th' immortal soul that hath forsook 
 Its mansion in this fleshy nook 1 
 And may, at length, my weary age 
 Find out some peaceful hermitage. 
 Till old experience doth attain 
 To something like prophetic strain !" 
 
 To fix the precise limits where sober reason's well-regulated dominions end 
 and at what bourne the wild region of the fanciful commences, extending in 
 many a tract of lengthened wilderness until it joins the remote and volcanic 
 territory of downright insanity, —were a task which the most deeply-read 
 
Dean Swift's Madness. yi 
 
 psychologist might attempt in vain. Hopeless would be the endeavour to 
 settle the exact confines ; for nowhere is there so much debatable ground, so 
 much unmarked frontier, so much undetermined boundary. The degrees of 
 longitude and latitude have never been laid down, nor, that I learn, ever 
 calculated at all, for want of a really sensible solid man to act the part of a 
 first meridian, 'lhe same remark is applicable to a congenial subject, viz. 
 that state of the human frame akin to insanity, and called intoxication ; for 
 there are here also various degrees of intensity ; and where on earth (except 
 perhaps in the person of my friend Dick Dowden) will you find, Kara <ppma 
 xai Kara 0vjuoi> a SOBER man, according with the description in a hymn of our 
 church liturgy? 
 
 " Qui plus, prudens, humilis, pudicus, 
 
 Sobriam duxit sine labe vitam. 
 
 Donee humanos levis afflat aur& 
 Spiritus ignes." 
 
 Ex officio Brev. Rom. de communi Con/, non 
 Pont, ad vesperas. 
 
 I remember well, when in 1815 the present Lord Chancellor (then simple 
 Hatry Brougham) came to this part of the country (attracted hither by the 
 fame of our Blarney-stone), having had the pleasure of his society one summer 
 evening in this humble dwelling, and conversing with him long and loudly on 
 the topic of inebriation. He had certainly taken a drop extra, but perhaps 
 was therefore better qualified for debating the subject, viz. at what precise 
 point drunkenness sets in, and what is the exact low water-mark. He first 
 advocated a three-bottle system, but enlarged his view of the question as he 
 went on, until he reminded me of those spirits described by Milton, who 
 sat apart on a hill retired, discussing freewill, fixed fate, foreknowledge 
 absolute, 
 
 "And found no end, in wandering mazes lost !" 
 
 My idea of the matter was very simple, although I had some trouble in 
 bringing him round to the true understanding of things ; for he is obstinate by 
 nature, and, like the village schoolmaster, whom he has sent "abroad," 
 
 "Even though vanquish'd, he can argue still." 
 
 I showed him that the poet Lucretius, in his elaborate work " De Natura 
 Rerum," had long since established a criterion, or standard— a sort of clepsy- 
 dra, to ascertain the final departure of sobriety,— being the well-known pheno- 
 menon of reduplication in the visual orb, that sort of second-sight common 
 among the Scotch : 
 
 " Bina lucemarum flagrantia lumina flammis, ^ 
 Et duplices hominum vultus et corpora bina ! 
 
 Lucretius, lib. iv. 453. 
 
 But, unfortunately, just as I thought I had placed my opinions in their most 
 luminous point of view, I found that poor Harry was completely fuddled, so 
 as to be unconscious of all I could urge during the rest of the evening; for, 
 as Tom Moore says in " Lalla Rookh," 
 
 ' the delicate chain 
 
 Of thought, once tangled, could not clear again." 
 
 It has long ago been laid down as a maxim by Seneca, that "nullum 
 magnum ingenium sine mixtura insaniae." Newton was decidedly mad when 
 he wrote his comment on Revelations; so, I think, was Napier of the 
 
72 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 logarithms, when he achieved a similar exploit; Burns was more than once 
 labouring under delirium, of the kind called tremens; Tasso was acquainted 
 with the cells of a madhouse ; Nathaniel Lee,* the dramatist, when a tenant 
 of Bedlam, wrote a tragedy twenty-five acts long ; and Sophocles was accused 
 before the tribunal of the tpparpia, and only acquitted of insanity by the recita- 
 tion of his CEdip. Colon. Pascal was a miserable hypochondriac ; the poet 
 Cowper and the philosopher Rousseau were subject to lunacy; Luis de 
 Camoens died raving in an hospital at Lisbon; and, in an hospital at 
 Madrid, the same fate, with the same attendant madness, closed the career 
 of the author of "Don Quixote," the immortal Miguel Cervantes. Shelley 
 was mad outright; and Byron's blood was deeply tainted with maniacal 
 infusion. His uncle, the eighth lord, had been the homicide of his kindred, 
 and hid his remorse in the dismal cloisters of Newstead. He himself enume- 
 rates three of his maternal ancestors who died by their own hands. Last 
 February (1830), Miss Milbanke, in the books he has put forth to the world, 
 states her belief and that of her advisers, that ' ' the Lord Byron was actually 
 insane." And in Dr. Millingen's book (the Surgeon of the Suliote brigade) 
 we find these words attributed to the Childe : " I picture myself slowly expir- 
 ing on a bed of torture, or terminating my days, like Swift, a grinning idiot." 
 — Anecdotes of Lord Byron's Illness and Death, by Julius Millingen, 
 p. 120. — Ijondon. 
 
 Strange to say, few men have been more exempt from the usual exciting 
 causes of insanity than Swift. If ambition, vanity, avarice, intemperance, and 
 the fury of sexual passion, be the ordinary determining agents of lunacy, then 
 should he have proudly defied the approaches of the evil spirit, and withstood 
 his attacks. As for ambitious cravings, it is well known that he sought not the 
 smiles of the court, nor ever sighed for ecclesiastical dignities. Though a 
 churchman, he had none of the crafty, aspiring, and intriguing mania of a 
 Wolsey or a Mazarin. By the boldness and candour of his writings, he 
 effectually put a stop to that ecclesiastical preferment which the low-minded, 
 the cunning, and the hypocrite, are sure to obtain : and of him it might be 
 truly said, that the doors of clerical promotion closed while the gates of glory 
 opened. 
 
 But even glory (mystic word !), has it not its fascinations, too powerful at 
 times even for the eagle eye of genius, and capable of dimming for ever the 
 intellectual orb that gazes too fixedly on its irradiance? How often has splen- 
 did talent been its own executioner, and the best gift of Heaven supplied the 
 dart that bereft its possessor of all that maketh existence valuable ! The very 
 intensity of those feelings which refine and elevate the soul, has it not been 
 found to operate the work of ruin? 
 
 " 'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, 
 And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low. 
 
 * This fact concerning Lee I stumbled on in that olla&odrtda, the " Curiosities of 
 Literature " of the elder D'lsraeli. In his chapter on the '' Medicine of the Mind " (vol. i. 
 second series : Murray, 1823), I find a passage which tells for my theory ; and I there- 
 fore insert it here, on the principle of je prends man bieti partout eitje U trouvei *' Plu- 
 tarch says, in one of his essays, that should the body sue the mind in a court of judica- 
 ture for damages, it would be found that the mind would prove to have been a most 
 ruinous tenant to its landlord." This idea seemed tome so ingenious, that I searched for 
 it through all the metaphysical writings of the Boeotian sage ; and I find that Democritus, 
 the laughing philosopher, first made the assertion about the Greek law of landlord and 
 tenant retailed by him of Cheronaea : Otfiat fiaXto-ra top AiuioKpiToi/ ctimp, u? ei to trwpa 
 oucatrcuro 77) </">xn, KaKUo-ecof ovjc av avrrjv ai>o$vy£tv. Theophrastus enlarges on the 
 same topic : ®eo^pa<rro? aAijfles etn-ev, iroKv T([> crwfxari TeAciv cpouaoi' njv tlrvxvy. 
 UKeiova ixevrot TO <Tu>fi.a TTjq i/rvvTC airoKavei KtXKa, flT] Kara Xo-yov avrui xptojucpos'- See the 
 
 magnificent edition of Plutarch s Moral Treatises, from the Clarendon press of Oxford, 
 «79S, being IIAOYT. TA H0IKA, torn. i. p. 375.— Prout. 
 
Dean Swift's Madness. 73 
 
 So the struck eagle, stretch 'd upon the plain, 
 No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 
 Views his own feather on the fatal dart 
 Which wing'd the shaft that quivers in his heart 
 Keen are his pangs, but keener far to feel 
 He nursed the pinion that impell'd the steel ; 
 While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest 
 Drinks the last life-drop of his bleeding breast" 
 
 So Byron sings in his happiest mood ; and so had sung before him a young 
 French poet, who died in early life, worn out by his own fervour : 
 
 "Oui, l'homme ici bas aux talents condamne, 
 
 Sur la terre en passant sublime infortune, 
 
 Ne peut impunement achever une vie 
 
 Que le Ciel surcharges du fardeau du genie ! 
 
 Souvent il meurt brule de ces celestes feux . . . 
 
 Tel quelquefois l'oiseau du souverain des dieux, 
 
 L'aigle, tombe du haut des plaines immortelles, 
 
 Bruli du/oudre ardent qu'ilportait sous ses ailes I " 
 
 Chenedolle. 
 I am fully aware that in Swift's case there was a common rumour among his 
 countrymen in Ireland at the time, that over-study and too much learning had 
 disturbed the equilibrium of the doctor's brain, and unsettled the equipoise of 
 his cerebellum. The "most noble" Festus, who was a well-bred Italian 
 gentleman, fell into the same vulgar error long ago with respect to St. Paul, and 
 opined that much literature had made of him a madman ! But surely such a 
 sad confusion of materialism and spiritualism as that misconception implies will 
 not require refutation. The villagers in Goldsmith's beautiful poem may have 
 been excusable for adopting so unscientific a theory ; but beyond the sphere of 
 rustic sages the hypothesis is intolerable : 
 
 " And still they gazed, and still their wonder grew, 
 That one small head could carry all he knew ! " 
 
 How can the ethereal and incorporate stores of knowledge become a physical 
 weight, and turn out an incumbrance, exercising undue pressure on the human 
 brain ?— how can mental acquirement be described as a body ponderous ? 
 What folly to liken the crevices of the cerebral gland to the fissures in an old 
 barn bursting with the riches of a collected harvest I — ruptruitt Aorrea messes 
 — or to the crazy bark of old Charon, when, being only fitted for the light 
 waftage of ghosts, it received the bulky personage of the .■Eneid : 
 
 " Gemuit sub pondere cymba 
 Sutilis, ac multam accepit rimosa paludem." — Lib. vL 
 
 Away with such fantasies ! The more learned we grow, the better organized 
 is our mind, the more prejudices we shake off; and the stupid error which I 
 combat is but a pretext and consolation for ignorance. 
 
 The delusions of love swayed not the stern mind of the Dean of St. 
 Patrick's, nor could the frenzy of passion ever overshadow his clear under- 
 standing. Like a bark gliding along a beautiful and regular canal, the soft 
 hand of woman could, with a single riband, draw him onward in a fair and 
 well-ordered channel ; but to drag him out of his course into any devious path, 
 it was not in nature nor the most potent fascination to accomplish. Stella, the 
 cherished companion of his life, his secretly wedded bride, ever exercised a 
 mild influence over his affections — 
 
 " And rose, where'er he turn'd his eye. 
 The morning star of memory." 
 
 But his acquaintanceship with Vanessa (Mrs. Vanhomrigg) was purely of that 
 description supposed to have been introduced- by Plato. For my part, having 
 
74 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 embraced celibacy, I am perhaps little qualified for the discussion of these 
 delicate matters ; but I candidly confess, that never did Goldsmith so win upon 
 my good opinion, by his superior knowledge of those recondite touches that 
 ennoble the favourite character of a respectable divine, as when he attributes 
 severe and uncompromising tenets of monogamy to Dr. Primrose, vicar of 
 Wakefield ; that being the next best state to the one which I have adopted 
 myself, in accordance with the Platonic philosophy of Virgil, and the example 
 of Paul : 
 
 " Quiqtte sacerdotes casti, dum vita maneiat ; 
 
 Quique pii vates, et Phoebo digna locuti ; 
 
 Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vita ! " 
 
 SEneid. VI. 
 
 The covetousness of this world had no place in the breast of Swift, and 
 never, consequently, was his mind liable to be shaken from its basis by the in- 
 roads of that overwhelming vice, avarice. Broad lands and manorial posses- 
 sions he never sighed for ; and, as Providence had granted him a competency, 
 he could well adopt the resignation of the poet, and exclaim, " Nil amplius 
 oro." Nothing amused him more than the attempt of his friend Doctor 
 Delany to excite his jealousy by the ostentatious display of his celebrated villa, 
 which, as soon as purchased, he invited the Dean to come and admire. We 
 have the humorous lines of descriptive poetry which were composed by Swift 
 on the occasion, and were well calculated to destroy the doctor's vanity. The 
 estate our satirist represents as liable to suffer " an eclipse of the sun " wher- 
 ever "a crow " or other small opaque body should pass between it and that 
 luminary. The plantations " might possibly supply a toothpick ;" 
 
 " And the stream that's call'd *Meander* 
 Might be suck'd up by a gander !" 
 
 Such were the sentiments of utter derision with which he contemplated the 
 territorial aggrandizement so dear to the votaries of Mammon; nor is it 
 foreign from this topic to remark, that the contrary extreme of hopeless 
 poverty not having ever fallen to his lot, one main cause of insanity in high 
 minds was removed. Tasso went mad through sheer distress and its concomi- 
 tant shame ; the fictions of his romantic love for a princess of the Court of 
 Ferrara are all fudge : he had at one time neither fire nor a decent coat to his 
 back ; and he tells us that, having no lamp in his garret, he resorted to his cat 
 to lend him the glare of her eyes : 
 
 " Non avendo candele per iscrivere i suoi versi ! " 
 
 Intemperance and debauchery never interfered with the quiet tenour of the 
 Dean's domestic habits ; and hence the medical and constitutional causes of 
 derangement flowing from these sources must be considered as null in this 
 case. I have attentively perused the best record extant of his private life — his 
 own "Journal to Stella," detailing his sojourn in London ; and I find his diet 
 to have been such as I could have wished. 
 
 " London, Oct. 1711. — Mrs. Vanhomrigg has changed her lodgings — I dined 
 with her to-day. I am growing a mighty lover of herrings; but they are much 
 smaller here than with you. In the afternoon I visited an old major-general, 
 and ate six oysters." — Letter 32, p. 384, in Scott's edition of Swift. 
 
 " I was invited to-day to dine with Mrs. Vanhomrigg, with some company 
 who did not come ; but I ate nothing but herrings." — Same Letter, p. 388. 
 
 "Oct. 23, 1711.— I was forced to be at the secretary's office till four, and 
 lost my dinner. So I went to Mrs. Van's, and made them get me three herrings, 
 which I am very fond of. And they are a light victuals" (sic. in orig.). — 
 Letter 33, p. 400. 
 
Dean Swift's Madness. 7$ 
 
 He further shows the lively interest he always evinced for fish diet by the 
 following passage, which occurs in a publication of his printed in Dublin, 1732, 
 and entitled "An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enor- 
 mities in this City of Dublin. By Dr. Jonathan Swift, D.D." 
 
 "The affirmation solemnly made in the cry of Herrings I is against all truth, 
 viz. ' Herrings alive, ho ! ' The very proverb will convince us of this ; for what 
 is more frequent in ordinary speech than to say of a neighbour for whom the 
 bell tolls, ' He is dead as a herring ! ' And pray, how is it possible that a herring, 
 which, as philosophers observe, cannot live longer than one minute three 
 seconds and a half out of water, should bear a voyage in open boats from 
 Howth to Dublin, be tossed into twenty hands, and preserve its life in sieves 
 for several hours ?" 
 
 The sense of loneliness consequent on the loss of friends, and the with- 
 drawal of those whose companionship made life pleasant, is not unfrequently 
 the cause of melancholy monomania; but it could not have affected Swift, 
 whose residence in Dublin had estranged him long previously from those who 
 at that period died away. Gay, his bosom friend, had died in December, 1732; 
 Bolingbroke had retired to France in 1734 ; Pope was become a hypochondriac 
 from bodily infirmities ; Dr. Arbuthnot was extinct ; and he, the admirer and 
 the admired of Swift, John of Blenheim, the illustrious Marlborough, had pre- 
 ceded him in a madhouse ! 
 
 "Down Marlborough's cheeks the tears of dotage flow." 
 A lunatic asylum was the last refuge of the warrior— if, indeed, he and his 
 fellows of the conquering fraternity were not candidates for it all along intrin- 
 sically and professionally, 
 
 " From Macedonia's madman to the Swede." 
 
 Thus, although the Dean might have truly felt like one who treads alone some 
 deserted banquet-hall (according to the beautiful simile of the Melodist), still 
 we cannot, with the slightest semblance of probability, trace the outbreak of his 
 madness to any sympathies of severed friendship. 
 
 If Swift ever nourished a predominant affection — if he was ever really under the 
 dominion ofa ruling passion, it was that of pure and disinterested love of country ; 
 and were he ever liable to be hurried into insane excess by an overpowering enthu- 
 siasm, it was the patriot's madness that had the best chance of prostrating his 
 mighty soul. His works are the imperishable proofs of the sincere and 
 enlightened attachment which he bore an island connected with him by no 
 hereditary recollections, but merely by the accident of his birth at Cashel. 
 
 We read in the sacred Scriptures (Eccles. vii. 7), that the sense of "oppres- 
 sion maketh a man mad;" and whosoever will peruse those splendid effusions 
 of a patriotic soul, " The Story of an Injured Lady" (Dublin, 1725), "Maxims 
 controlled in Ireland" (Dublin, 1724), " Miserable State of Ireland " (Dublin, 
 1727), must arise from the perusal impressed with the integrity and fervour of 
 the Dean's love of his oppressed country. The " Maxims controlled" develop, 
 according to that highly competent authority, Edmund Burke, the deepest and 
 most statesmanlike views ever taken of the mischievous mismanagement that 
 has constantly marked England's conduct towards her sister island. In the 
 " Miserable State, &c," we have evidence that the wretched peasantry at that 
 time was at just the same stage of civilization and comfort as they are at the 
 present day; for we find the Dean thus depicting-a state of things which none 
 but an Irish landlord could read without blushing for human nature — "There 
 are thousands of poor creatures who think themselves blessed if tbey can 
 obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and a piece of ground for 
 potato-plantation, on condition of being as verv slaves as any in America, 
 starving in the midst of plenty." Further on, he informs us of a singular item . 
 
J6 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 of the then traffic of the Irish :— " Our fraudulent trade in wool to France is 
 the best branch of our commerce." 
 
 And in his " Proposal for the Use of Irish Manufactures," which was prose- 
 cuted by the Government of the day, and described by the learned judge who 
 sent the case to the jury as a plot to bring in the Pretender ! we have this wool- 
 traffic again alluded to : " Our beneficial export of wool to France has been our 
 only siippirt for several years : we convey our wool there, in spite of all the 
 harpies of the custom-house." In this tract, he introduces the story of Pallas 
 and the nymph Arachne, whom the goddess, jealous of her spinning, changed 
 into a spider ; and beautifully applies the allegory to the commercial restrictions 
 imposed by the sister-country on Ireland. " Arachne was allowed still to spin ; 
 but Britain will take our bowels, and convert them into the web and warp of her 
 own exclusive and intolerant industry." 
 
 Of the "Drapier's Letters," and the signal discomfiture of the base-currency 
 scheme attempted by William Woods, it were superfluous to speak. Never was 
 there a more barefaced attempt to swindle the natives than the copper imposition 
 of that notorious hardwareman ; and the only thing that in modem times can 
 be placed in juxtaposition, is the begging-box of O'Connell. O for a Drapier 
 to expose that second and most impudent scheme for victimizing a deluded and 
 starving peasantry 1 
 
 The Scotch rebellion of 1745 found the Dean an inmate of his last sad 
 dwelling — his own hospital; but the crisis awakened all his energies, and he 
 found an interval to publish that address to his fellow-countrymen which some 
 attributed to the Lord-Lieutenant Chesterfield, but which bears intrinsic evidence 
 of his pen. It is printed by Sir W. Scott, in the appendix of the " Drapier's 
 Letters." There is a certain chemical preparation called sympathetic ink, 
 which leaves no trace on the paper ; but if applied to the heat of a fire, the 
 characters will become at once legible. Such was the state of Swift's soul— a 
 universal blank ; but when brought near the sacred flame that burnt on the 
 altar of his country, his mind recovered for a time its clearness, and found means 
 to communicate its patriotism. Touch but the interests of Ireland, and the 
 madman was sane again ; such was the mysterious nature of the visitation, 
 
 " O Reason ! who shall say what spells renew, 
 When least we look for it, thy broken clue ; 
 Through what small vistas o'er the darken 'd brain 
 The intellectual daybeam bursts again ! 
 Enough to show the maze in which the sense 
 Wander'd about, but not to guide thee hence — 
 Enough to glimmer o'er the yawning wave, 
 But not to point the harbour which might save ! " 
 
 When Richard Cceur de Lion lay dormant in a dungeon, the voice of a song 
 which he had known in better days came upon his ear, and was the means of 
 leading him forth to light and freedom ; but, alas 1 Swift was not led forth from 
 his lonely dwelling by the note of long-remembered music, the anthem of 
 fatherland. Gloomy insanity had taken too permanent possession of his mind ; 
 and right well did he know that he should die a maniac. For this, a few years 
 before his death, did he build unto himself an asylum, where his own lunacy 
 might dwell protected from the vulgar gaze of mankind. He felt the approach 
 of madness, and, like Csesar, when about to fall at the feet of Pompey's statue, 
 he gracefully arranged the folds of his robe, conscious of his own dignity even 
 in that melancholy downfall. The Pharaohs, we are told in Scripture, built 
 unto themselves gorgeous sepulchres : their pyramids still encumber the earth. 
 Sardanapalus erected a pyre of cedar-wood and odoriferous spices when death 
 was inevitable, and perished in a blaze of voluptuousness. The asylum of 
 Swift will remain a more characteristic memorial than the sepulchres of Egypt, 
 and a more honourable funeral pyre than that heaped up by the Assyrian king. 
 
Dean Swifts Madness. TJ 
 
 He died mad, among fellow-creatures similarly visited, but sheltered by his 
 munificence ; and it now devolves on me to reveal to the world the unknown 
 cause of that sad calamity. 
 
 I have stated that his affections were centred in that accomplished woman, 
 the refined and gentle Stella, to whom he had been secretly married. The 
 reasons for such secrecy, though perfectly familiar to me, may not be divulged ; 
 but enough to know that the Dean acted in this matter with his usual sagacity. 
 An infant son was born of that marriage after many a lengthened year, and in 
 this child were concentrated all the energies of the father's nffection, and all the 
 sensibilities of the mother's heart. In him did the Dean fondly hope to live on 
 when his allotted days should fail, like unto the self-promised immortality 
 of the bard — "Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam ! " 
 How vain are the hopes of man! That* child most unaccountably, most 
 mysteriously disappeared ; no trace, no clue, no shadow of conjecture, could 
 point out what had become its destiny, and who were the contrivers of this 
 sorrowful bereavement. The babe was gone ! and no comfort remained to a 
 desponding father in this most poignant of human afflictions. 
 
 In a copy of Verses composed on his own Death, the Dean indulges in a 
 humorous anticipation of the motives that would not fail to be ascribed, as 
 determining his mind to make the singular disposal of his property which (after 
 the loss of his only child) he resolved on : 
 
 " He gave the little wealth he had' 
 To build a house for people mad, 
 To show, by one satiric touch, 
 No nation wanted it so much." 
 
 But this bitter pleasantry only argued the sad inroads which grief was making 
 in his heart. The love of offspring, which the Greeks call o-ropyi) (and which 
 is said to be strongest in the stork), was eminently perceptible in the diagnosis 
 of the Dean's constitution. Sorrow for the loss of his child bowed down his 
 head eventually to the grave, and unsettled a mind the most clear and well- 
 regulated that philosophy and Christianity could form. 
 
 These papers will not meet the public eye until I too am no 
 more; but when that day shall come— when the pastor of this 
 obscure upland shall, in a good old age, be laid in the earth- 
 when neither pride of birth nor human applause can move the 
 cold ear of the dead, the secret of that child's history, of 
 Swift's long-lost child, shall be told; and the old man who 
 has departed from this world of woe in peace, will be found 
 to have been that long-sought son, whom william woods, in 
 the baseness of a vile vindictiveness, filched from a father's 
 affections. , , .,.,.. 
 
 Baffled in his wicked contrivances by my venerable father, and foiled in every 
 attempt to brazen out his notorious scheme of bad halfpence, this vile tinker, 
 nourishing an implacable resentment in his soul, 
 
 "iEternum servans sub pectore vulnus," 
 
 resolved to wreak his vengeance on the Dean ; and sought out craftily the 
 most sensitive part to inflict the contemplated wound. In the evening of 
 October, 1741, he kidnapped me, Swift's innocent child, from my nurse at 
 Glendalough, and fraudulently hurried off his capture to the extremity of Mun- 
 ster ; where he left me exposed as a foundling on the bleak summit of Water- 
 grasshill. The reader will easily imagine all the hardships I had to encounter 
 in this my first and most awkward introduction to my future parishioners. 
 Often have I told the sorrowful tale to my college companion in France, the 
 
7§ The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 kind-hearted and sensitive Gresset, who thus alludes to me in the well-known 
 lines of his " Lutrin Vivant : " 
 
 " Et puis, d'ailleurs, le petit malheureux, 
 Ouvrage ne d'un auteur anonyme, 
 Ne connaissant parens, ni legitime, 
 N'avait, en tout dans ce sterile lieu, 
 Pour sc chauffer que la grace de Dieu ! " 
 
 Some are born, says the philosophic Goldsmith, with a silver spoon in their 
 . mouth, some with a wooden ladle ; but wretched I was not left by Woods even 
 that miserable implement as a stock-in-trade to begin the world. Moses lay 
 ensconced in a snug cradle of bulrushes when he was sent adrift ; but I was 
 cast on the flood of life with no equipage or outfit whatever ; and found myself, 
 to use the solemn language of my Lord Byron, 
 
 " Sent afloat 
 With nothing but the sky for a great coat." 
 
 But stop, I mistake. I had an appendage round my neck— a trinket, which I 
 still cherish, and by which I eventually found a clue to my real parentage. It 
 was a small locket of my mother Stella's hair, of raven black (a distinctive 
 feature in her beauty, which had especially captivated the Dean) : around this 
 locket was a Latin motto of my gifted father's composition, three simple words, 
 but beautiful in their simplicity — " prout stella refulges!" So that, 
 when I was taken into the " Cork Foundling Hospital," I was at once christened 
 "Prout," from the adverb that begins the sentence, and which, being the 
 shortest word of the three, it pleased the chaplain to make my future patro- 
 nymic. 
 
 Of all the singular institutions in Great Britain, philanthropic, astronomic, 
 Hunterian, ophthalmic, obstetric, or zoological, the " Royal Cork Foundling 
 Hospital," where I had the honour of matriculating, was then, and is now, 
 decidedly the oddest in principle and the most comical in practice. Until the 
 happy and eventful day when I managed, by mother-wit, to accomplish my 
 deliverance from its walls (having escaped in a churn, as I will recount pre- 
 sently), it was my unhappy lot to witness and to endure all the varieties of 
 human misery. The prince of Latin song, when he wishes to convey to his 
 readers an idea of the lower regions, and the abodes of Erebus, begins his 
 affecting picture by placing in the foreground the souls of infants taken by the 
 mischievous policy of such institutions from the mother's breast, and perishing 
 by myriads under the infliction of a mistaken philanthropy : 
 
 " Infantumque anims flentes in lumine primo : 
 Quos dulcis vitas exsortes, et ab ubere raptos, 
 Abstulit atra dies, et funere mersit acerbo." 
 
 The inimitable and philosophic Scarron's translation of this passage in the 
 .rEneid is too much in my father's own style not to give it insertion : 
 
 " Lors il entend, en ce lieu sombre, 
 
 Les cris aigus d'enfants sans nombre. 
 
 Pauvres bambins ! lis font grand bruit, 
 
 Et braillent de jour et de nuit — 
 
 Peut-etre faute de nourrice?" See, &c. 
 
 Eneii travest. 6. 
 Bet if I had leisure to dwell on the melancholy subject, I could a tale unfold 
 that would startle the Legislature, and perhaps arouse the Irish secretary to 
 examine into an evil crying aloud for redress and suppression. Had my perse- 
 cutor, the hard-hearted coppersmith, Woods, had any notion of the sufferings 
 he entailed on Swift's luckless infant, he would never have exposed me as an 
 enfant trouvi ; he would have been satisfied with plunging my father into a 
 
Dean Swifts Madness. 79 
 
 madhouse, without handing over his child to the mercies of a foundling hospi- 
 tal. Could he but hear my woful story, I would engage to draw "copper" 
 tears down the villain's cheek. 
 
 Darkness and mystery have for the last half century hung over this establish- 
 ment ; and although certain returns have been moved for in the House of 
 Commons, the public knows as little as ever about the fifteen hundred young 
 foundlings that there nestle until supplanted, as Death collects them under his 
 wings, by a fresh supply of victims offered to the Moloch of ifrEuoo-philanthropy. 
 Horace tells us, that certain proceedings are best not exhibited to the general 
 gaze — 
 
 "Nee natos coram populo Medea trucidet." 
 Such would appear to be the policy of these institutions, the only provision 
 which the Legislature has made for Irish pauperism. 
 
 Some steps, however, have been taken latterly by Government ; and from a 
 paper laid before Parliament last month (May 1830), it appears that, in conse- 
 quence of the Act of 1822, the annual admissions in Dublin have fallen from 
 2,000 to 400. But who will restore to society the myriads whom the system has 
 butchered ? who will recall the slain ? When the flower of Roman chivalry, 
 under improvident guidance, fell in the German forests, " Varus, give back my 
 legions ! " was the frantic cry wrung from the bitterness of patriotic sorrow. 
 
 My illustrious father has written, among other bitter sarcasms on the cruel 
 conduct of Government towards the Irish poor, a treatise, which was printed 
 in 1729, and which he entitled "A Modest Proposal for preventing Poor Chil- 
 dren from being a Burden to their Parents." He recommends, in sober 
 sadness, that they should be made into salt provisions for the navy, the colonies, 
 and for exportation; or eaten fresh and spitted, like roasting-pigs, by the 
 aldermen of Cork and Dublin, at their civic banquets. A quotation from that 
 powerful pamphlet may not be unacceptable here : 
 
 " Infant's flesh (quoth the Dean) will be in season throughout the year, but 
 more plentifully in March, or a little before ; for we are told by a grave author, 
 an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more 
 children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than 
 at any other season. Therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will 
 be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish infants is at least 
 three to one in the kingdom ; and therefore it will have one other collateral 
 advantage, by lessening the number of Papists amongst us." 
 
 These lines were clearly penned in the very gall and bitterness of his soul j 
 and while the Irish peasant is still considered by the miscreant landlords of 
 the country as less worthy of his food than the beasts of the field, and less 
 entitled to a legal support in the land that bore him ; while the selfish demagogue 
 of the island joins in the common hostility to the claims of that pauper who 
 makes a stock-purse for him out of the scrapings of want and penury ; the 
 proposal of Swift should be reprinted, and a copy sent to every callous and 
 shallow-pated disciple of modern political economy. Poor-laws, forsooth, 
 they cannot reconcile to their clear-sighted views of Irish legislation : fever 
 hospitals and gaols they admire ; grammar-schools they will advocate, where 
 half-starved urchins may drink the physic of the soul, and forget the cravings 
 of hunger ; and they will provide in the two great foundling hospitals a recep- 
 tacle for troublesome infants, who, in those " white-washed sepulchres," soon 
 cease to be a burden on the community. The great agitator, meantime (God 
 wot !) will bring in " a bill " for a grand national cemetery in Dublin;* such 
 is the provision he deigns to seek for his starving fellow-countrymen ! 
 
 " The great have still some favour in reserve — 
 They help to bury \riiom they help to starve. " 
 
 * Historical fact Vide Pari, proceedings.— O. Y. 
 
80 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 The Dublin Hospital, being supported out of the consolidated fund, has, by 
 the argument um ad crumenam, at last attracted the suspicions of Government, 
 and is placed under a course of gradual reduction ; but the Cork nursery is 
 upheld by a compulsory local tax on coal, amounting to the incredible sum of 
 j£6,ooo a year, and levied on the unfortunate Corkonians for the support of 
 children brought into their city from Wales, Connaught, and the four winds of 
 heaven ! Three hundred bantlings are thus annually saddled on the beautiful 
 city, with a never-failing succession of continuous supply : 
 
 "Miranturque novas frondes, et non sua poma !" 
 
 By the Irish Act of Parliament, these young settlers are entitled, on coming of 
 age (which few do), to claim as a right the freedom of that ancient and loyal 
 corporation ; so that, although of the great bulk of them it may be said that 
 we had " no hand in their birth," they have the benefit of their coming — "a 
 place in the commonwealth " (ita Shakespeare). 
 
 My sagacious father used to exhort his countrymen to burn every article that 
 came from England, except coals ; and in 1729 he addressed to the Dublin 
 Weekly Journal a series of letters on the use of Irish coals exclusively. But 
 it strikes me that, as confessedly we cannot do without the English article in 
 the present state of trade and manufactures, the most mischievous tax that any 
 Irish seaport could be visited with would be a tonnage on so vital a commodity 
 to the productive interests of the community. Were this vile impost withdrawn 
 from Cork, every class of manufacture would hail the boon ; the iron foundry 
 would supply us at home with what is now brought across the Channel ; the 
 glassblower's furnace would glow with inextinguishable fires ; the steam-engine, 
 that giant power, as yet so feebly developed among us, would delight to wield 
 on our behalf its energies unfettered, and toil unimpeded for the national 
 prosperity; new enterprise would inspirit the capitalist; while the humble 
 artificer at the forge would learn the tidings with satisfaction, — 
 
 " Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear." 
 
 Something too much of this. But I have felt it incumbent on me to place 
 on record my honest conviction of the impolicy of the tax itself, and of the 
 still greater enormity of the evil which it goes to support. To return to my 
 own history. 
 
 In this " hospital," which was the first alma mater of my juvenile days, I 
 graduated in all the science of the young gipsies who swarmed around me. 
 My health, which was naturally robust, bore up against the fearful odds of 
 mortality by which I was beset ; and although I should have ultimately, no 
 doubt, perished with the crowd of infant sufferers that shared my evil destiny, 
 still, like that favoured Grecian who won the good graces of Polyphemus in 
 his anthropophagous cavern, a signal privilege would perhaps have been 
 granted me : Prout would have been the last to be devoured. , 
 
 But a ray of light broke into my prison-house. The idea of escape, a bold 
 thought ! took possession of my soul. Yet how to accomplish so daring an 
 enterprise? how elude the vigilance of the fat door-keeper, and the keen eye 
 of the chaplain? Right well did they know the muster-roll of their stock of 
 urchins, and often verified the same : 
 
 " Bisque die numerant ambo pecus, alter et hxdos." 
 
 Heaven, however, soon granted what the porter denied. The milkman from 
 Watergrasshill, who brought the supplies every morn and eve, prided himself 
 particularly on the size and beauty of his churn,— a capacious wooden recipient 
 which my young eye admired with more than superficial curiosity. Having acci- 
 dentally got on the waggon, and explored the capacious hollow of the machine, 
 
Dean Swift's Madness. 8 1 
 
 a bright angel whispered in my ear to secrete myself in the cavity. I did so ; 
 and, shortly after, the gates of the hospital were flung wide for my egress, and 
 I found myself jogging onward on the high road to light and freedom ! Judge 
 of my sensations ! Milton has sung of one who, "long in populous city pent," 
 makes a visit to Highgate, and, snuffing the rural breeze, blesses the country 
 air : my rapture was of a nature that defies description. To be sure, it was 
 one of the most boisterous days of storm and tempest that ever vexed the 
 heavens ; but secure in the churn I chuckled with joy, and towards evening fell 
 fast asleep. In my subsequent life I have often dwelt with pleasure on that 
 joyous escape ; and when in my course of studies I met with the following 
 beautiful elegy of Simonides, I could not help applying it to myself, and trans- 
 lated it accordingly. There have been versions by Denman, the Queen's 
 solicitor ;* by Elton, by W. Hay, and by Doctor Jortin ; but I prefer my own, 
 as more literal and more conformable to genuine Greek simplicity. 
 
 THE LAMENT OF DAN^E. 
 
 By Simonides, the Elegiac Poet of Cos. 
 
 Ore XapvaKt iv HaiSaXsa, avtfio? 
 Bptfxt irpEtup, Ktt/ti$tnra te Xtfiva 
 Attfiart iipnrtv, ovS' actavTotai 
 ITapEiais, ap.<pt ot TltpaEi j3a\e 
 
 <t>t\ait X f P a i E tT £ f T£ ' Q TCffOS, 
 
 OlOV *)(W TTOVOV' €TV 6" GCOITEIS, ya\a§t]vw T* 
 
 Hto/h Kvwarrtts tv aTipimi SwfiaTt, 
 Xa\KEoyofi<pto oe vvKTiXaftirti 
 Kvai/EU) te oVtxpaj' trv 6' auaXtau 
 'Yirepdt Ttav KOfiav fiatiiiav 
 Ilaptoi/Tos KVfiara? ovk aXtyeis, 
 Ov&* avtfiov <f}doyyu>Vj iropcpvpta 
 Kitfitvos tv yXavt&i, trpoawirov KaXov. 
 
 El OE TOt BeIVOV TOyt SeIVOV t)Vj 
 
 Kat keu tfiwv ptjfiaTtev Xetttou 
 *Y7T£IXec owas' KtXofiat, evoe fipztpov, 
 
 EuOETO dt TTOl/TOS, EL/OEXO (ZfllTpOV KCtKOV. 
 
 "MiaraiotovXta de Tts (pat/zttj, 
 
 Zcu TraTEp, ik <teo' 6 ti St} QapaaXtov 
 
 Eiros, ivypfxai tekvoQi diKav fiot. 
 
 THE LAMENT OF STELLA. 
 
 By Fattier Prout. 
 
 While round the churn, 'mid sleet and rain, 
 It blew a perfect hurricane, 
 Wrapt in slight garment to protect her, 
 Methought I saw my mother's spectre, 
 Who took her infant to her breast — 
 Me, the small tenant of that chest — 
 
 * We never employed him.— Reg in a. 'Twas Caroline of Brunswick., 
 
82 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 While thus she lull'd her babe : " How cruel 
 Have been the Fates to thee, my jewel ! 
 But caring nought for foe or scoffer, 
 Thou sleepest in this milky coffer, 
 Cooper'd with brass hoops weather-tight, 
 Impervious to the dim moonlight. 
 The shower cannot get in to soak 
 Thy hair or little purple cloak ; 
 Heedless of gloom, in dark sojourn, 
 Thy face illuminates the churn ! 
 Small is thine ear, wee babe, for hearing. 
 But grant my prayer, ye gods of Erin ! 
 And may folks find that this young fellow 
 Does credit to his mother Stella. 
 
V. 
 
 t 'gaQum&B at %axa H&nm. 
 
 {Fraser's Magazine, August, 1834.) 
 
 [In several respects this paper must be regarded as the most remarkable of all the 
 Reliques. For one thing, it gave to the world towards its conclusion the most delicious 
 copy of verses ever penned by Mahony— -his exquisite poem of "The Bells of Shandon." 
 It illustrated, besides, in a more marvellous way than ever, his capacity, whenever he 
 so pleased, to deal with his scholarship as freely as a juggler does with the golden balls 
 and daggers which he sets at any moment, ad libitum, in bewildering gyration. The 
 " Melody to the Beautiful Milkmaid " thus reappeared Latinized in his magic as " Lesbia 
 Semper hinc et inde," "The Shamrock" in its Gallic reflection, and "Wreathe the 
 Bowl " in t Greek anacreontics as SrcifwjLiei' aw kuttcAAov. The Literary Portrait 
 contained in the number of Regina to which these and other similar Rogueries 
 were contributed was that of Thomas Hill, who — though, judging from his likeness, he 
 certainly looked not in the least like it— wasauthor of the '^Mirror of Fashion." Two of 
 Maclise's happiest embellishments adorned this paper in the original edition of 1836, one 
 of them revealing Moore in the sanctum at Watergrasshill listening, chin on fist, to 
 Father Prout carolling one of his Rogueries ; while the other delineates, starkly under 
 its winding-sheet, the dead body of Henry O'Brien, author of " The Round Towers of 
 Ireland," a patriotic archaeologist, but very recently deceased before the first publication 
 of this paper in the magazine. Yet another of Croquis' sketches associated with this 
 instalment of the Reliques prettily portrayed L. E. L.— otherwise Letitia Elizabeth 
 Landon— in the then fashionable attire of a cottage bonnet and preposterous gigot 
 sleeves, standing in front of a trellised bower, like the lady who sat in Thackeray's cane- 
 bottomed chair, " with a smile on her face and a rose in her hair ! "] 
 
 " Grata carpendo thyma per laborem 
 Plurimum, circa nemus* uvidique 
 Tiburis ripas, operosa parvus 
 Carmina fingo." 
 
 QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS. 
 
 " By taking time, and some advice from Prout, 
 A polish'd book of songs I hammer'd out ; 
 But still my Muse, for she the fact confesses, 
 Haunts that sweet hill, renown'd for water-cresses." 
 
 Thomas L. Moore. 
 
 When the star of Father Prout (a genuine son of the accomplished Stella, 
 and in himself the most eccentric luminary that has of late adorned our plane- 
 tary system) first rose in the firmament of literature, it deservedly attracted the 
 gaze of the learned, and riveted the eye of the sage. We know not what may 
 have been the sensation its appearance created in foreign countries,— at the 
 Observatoire Royal of Paris, in the Vat d'Arno, or at Fesole\ where, in Milton's 
 * i.e. t Blarneum nemus. 
 
84 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 time, the sons of Galileo plied the untiring telescope to descry new heavenly 
 phenomena, "rivers or mountains in the shadowy moon" — but we can vouch 
 for the impression made on the London University; for all Stinkomalee hath 
 been perplexed at the apparition. The learned Chaldeans of Gower Street 
 opine that it forbodes nothing good to the cause of " useful knowledge," and 
 they watch the "transit "of Prout, devoutly wishing for his "exit." With 
 throbbing anxiety, night after night has Dr. Lardner gazed on the sinister 
 planet, seeking, with the aid of Dr. Babbage's calculating machine, to ascer- 
 tain the probable period of its final eclipse, and often muttering its name, " to 
 tell how he hates its beams." He has seen it last April shining conspicuously 
 in the constellation of Pisces, when he duly conned over the "Apology for 
 Lent," and the Doctor has reported to the University Board, that, " advancing 
 with retrograde movement in the zodiac," this disastrous orb was last perceived 
 in the milky way, entering the sign of " Amphora," or " the churn." But 
 what do the public care, while the general eye is delighted by its irradiance, 
 that a few owls and dunces are scared by its effulgen cy ? The Georgium Sidus, the 
 Astrium Julium, the Soleil d'Austerlitz, the Star at Vauxhall, the Nose of Lord 
 Chancellor Vaux,* and the grand Roman Girandola shot off from the mole of 
 Adrian, to the annual delight of modern "Quirites," are all fine things and 
 rubicund in their generation ; but nothing to the star of Watergrasshill. Nor 
 is astronomical science or pyrotechnics the only department of philosophy that 
 has been influenced by this extraordinary meteor — the kindred study of 
 GASTKOnomy has derived the hint of a new combination from its inspiring 
 ray; and, after a rapid perusal of " Prout's Apology for Fish," the celebrated 
 Monsieur Ude, whom Croquis has so exquisitely delineated in the gallery of 
 Regina, has invented on the spot an original sauce, a novel ohsonium, more 
 especially adapted to cod and turbot, to which he has given the reverend 
 father's name ; so that Sir William Curtis will be found eating his " turbot & la 
 Prout " as constantly as his " cotelette a la Maintenon." The fascinating Miss 
 Landon has had her fair name affixed to a frozen lake in the map of Captain 
 Ross's discoveries ; and if Prout be not equally fortunate in winning terraqueous 
 renown with his pen (" Nititur penna vitreo daturas nominaponto"), he will 
 at least figure on the "carte" at Verey's, opposite our neighbour. 
 
 Who can tell what posthumous destinies await the late incumbent of Water- 
 grasshill ? In truth, his celebrity (to use an expression of Edmund Burke) is as 
 yet but a "speck in the horizon — a small seminal principle, rather than a 
 formed body;" and when, in the disemboguing of the chest, in the evolving 
 of his MSS., he shall be unfolded to the view in all his dimensions, developing 
 his proportions in a gorgeous shape of matchless originality and grandeur, then 
 will be the hour for the admirers of the beautiful and the votaries of the sub- 
 lime to hail him with becoming veneration, and welcome him with the sound 
 of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of 
 music. — (Dan. viii. 15.) 
 
 " Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth, 
 And, starting fresh, as from a second birth, 
 
 * The following song was a favourite with the celebrated Chancellor d'Aguesseau. It 
 is occasionally sung, in our own times, by a modern performer on the woolsack, in the 
 intervals of business : 
 
 " Sitot que la lumiere 
 Redore nos coteaux, 
 Je commence ma carriere 
 Par visiter mes tonneaux. 
 
 Ravi de revoir l'aurore, 
 
 Le verre en main, je lui dis, 
 yois-tu done plus, chez le Maure, 
 
 Que siir won lies, de rubis ?" 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 85 
 
 Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring, 
 Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing ! ! ! 
 Then, too, your prophet from his angel-brow 
 Shall cast the veil that hides its splendour now, 
 And gladden'd earth shall, through her wide expanse. 
 Bask in the glories of his countenance ! " 
 
 The title of this second paper taken from the Prout Collection is enough to 
 indicate that we are only firing off the small arms — the pop-guns of this 
 stupendous arsenal, and that we reserve the heavy metal for a grander occasion, 
 when the Whig ministry and the dog-days shall be over, and a merry autumn 
 and a Wellington administration shall mellow our October cups. To talk of 
 Tom Moore is but small talk — "in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria;" for 
 Prout's great art is to magnify what is little, and to fling a dash of the sublime 
 into a twopenny-post communication. To use Tommy's own phraseology, 
 Prout could, with great ease and comfort to himself, 
 
 " Teach an old cow pater-noster, 
 And whistle Moll Roe to a pig." 
 
 But we have another reason for selecting this " Essay on Moore" from the 
 papers of the deceased divine. We have seen with regret an effort made to 
 crush and annihilate the young author of a book on the " Round Towers of 
 Ireland," with whom we are not personally acquainted, but whose production 
 gave earnest of an ardent mind bent on abstruse and recondite studies ; and 
 who, leaving the frivolous boudoir and the drawing-room coterie to lisp their 
 ballads and retail their Epicurean gossip unmolested, trod alone the craggy 
 steeps of venturous discovery in the regions of Oriental learning; whence, 
 returning to the isle of the west, the " iKan of the fire-worshipper," he trimmed 
 his lamp, well fed with the fragrant oil of these sunny lands, and penned a work 
 which will one day rank among the most extraordinary of modern times. The 
 Edinburgh Review attempted, long ago, to stifle the unfledged muse of Byron ; 
 these truculent northerns would gladly have bruised in the very shell the young 
 eagle that afterwards tore with his lordly talons both Jeffery and his colleague 
 Moore (of the leadless pistol), who were glad to wax subservient slaves, after 
 being impotent bullies. The same review undertook to cry down Wordsworth 
 and Coleridge; they shouted their vulgar " crucifigatur " against Robert 
 Southey ; and seemed to have adopted the motto of the French club of 
 witlings, 
 
 " Nul n'aura de I'esprit que nous et nos amis." 
 
 But in the present case they will find themselves equally impotent for evil : 
 O'Brien may defy them. He may defy his own alma mater, the silent and 
 unproductive Trin. Coll. Dub. ; he may defy the Royal Irish Academy, a 
 learned assembly, which, alas ! has neither a body to be kicked, nor a soul to 
 be damned ; and may rest secure of the applause which sterling merit challenges 
 from every freeborn inhabitant of these islands,— 
 
 *• Save where, from yonder ivy-mantled tower^ 
 The moping owl does to the moon complain 
 Of those who, venturing near her silent bower, 
 Molest her ancient solitary reign." 
 
 Moore— (we beg his pardon)— the reviewer, asserts that O'Brien is a plagiary, 
 and pilferred his discovery from " Nimrod." Now we venture to offer a copy 
 of the commentaries of Cornelius a Lapide (which we find in Prout's chest) 
 to Tom, if he will show us a single passage in " Nimrod " (which we are con- 
 fident he never read) warranting his assertion. But, apropos of plagiarisms ; 
 let us hear the prophet of Watergrasshill, who enters largely on the subject. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Regent Street, tstAvgust, 1834. 
 
86 Th$ Work? of Father Prout. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Feb. 1834. 
 That notorious tinker, William Woods, who, as I have recorded among the 
 papers in my coffer somewhere, to spite my illustrious father, kidnapped me in 
 my childhood, little dreamt that the infant Prout would one day emerge from 
 the Royal Cork Foundling Hospital as safe and unscathed as the children from 
 Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to hold up his villany to the execration of man- 
 kind: 
 
 " Non sine Dis animosus infans ! " 
 
 Among the Romans, whoever stole a child was liable by law to get a sound 
 flogging ; and as plaga in Latin means a strife or lash, kidnappers in Cicero's 
 time were called plagiarii, or cat-d ' -nine-tail-villains. I approve highly of 
 this law of the twelve tables ; but perhaps my judgment is biassed, and I should 
 be an unfair juror to give a verdict in a case which comes home to my own 
 feelings so poignantly. The term plagiary has since been applied meta- 
 phorically to literary shop-lifters and book-robbers, who stuff their pages with 
 other men's goods, and thrive on indiscriminate pillage. This is justly con- 
 sidered a high misdemeanour in the republic of letters, and the lash of criti- 
 cism is unsparingly dealt on pickpockets of this description. Among the 
 Latins, Martial is the only classic author by whom the term plagiarius is used 
 in the metaphorical sense, as applied to literature ; but surely it was not because 
 the practice only began in his time that the word had not been used even in the 
 Augustan age of Rome. Be that as it may, we first find the term in Martial's 
 Epigrams (lib. i. epigr. 53) : talking of his verses, he says, 
 
 " Dicas esse meos, manuque missos : 
 Hoc si terque quaterque clamitaris, 
 Impones plagiario pudorem." 
 
 Cicero himself was accused by the Greeks of pilfering whole passages, for his 
 philosophical works, from the scrolls of Athens, and cooking up the fragments 
 and broken meat of Greek orations to feed the hungry barbarians of the Roman 
 forum. My authority is that excellent critic St. Jerome, who, in the " Proemium 
 inqu. Heb. lib. Genesis," distinctly says, "Cicero repetundarum accusaturi 
 Grsecis," &c, &c. ; and in the same passage be adds, that Virgil being accused 
 of taking whole similes from Homer, gloried in the theft, exclaiming, " Think 
 ye it nothing to wrest his club from Hercules?" (it. ibidem.) Vide S " Hier- 
 onymi Opera, torn. iv. fol. 90. But what shall we say when we find Jerome 
 accusing another holy father of plagiarism ? Verily the temptation must have 
 been very great to have shaken the probity of St. Ambrose, when he pillaged 
 his learned brother in the faith, Origen of Alexandria, by wholesale. " Nuper 
 Sanctus Ambrosius Hexaemeron illius compilavit " (S " Hieronymi Opera, torn, 
 iii. fol. 87, in epislolA ad Pammach). It is well known that Menander and 
 Aristophanes were mercilessly pillaged by Terence and Plautus ; and the Latin 
 freebooters thought nothing of stopping the Thespian waggon on the highways 
 of Parnassus. The French dramatists are similarly waylaid by our scouts from 
 the green-room, — and the plunder is awful ! What is Talleyrand about, that 
 he cannot protect the property of the French ? Perhaps he is better employed? 
 I am an old man, and have read a great deal in my time — being of a quiet 
 disposition, and having always had a taste for books, which I consider a great 
 blessing ; but latterly I find that I may dispense with further perusal of printed 
 volumes, as, unfortunately, memory serves me but too well,' and all I read now 
 strikes me as but a new version of what I had read somewhere before. Plagi- 
 arism is so barefaced and so universal, that I can stand it no longer : I have 
 shut up shop, and will be taken in no more. Quare peregrinum t cltimo. 
 I'm sick of hashed-up works, and loathe the baked meats of antiquity served in 
 a fricassee. Give me a solid joint, in which no knife has been ever fleshed, 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 87 
 
 and I will share your intellectual banquet most willingly, were it but a moun- 
 tain kid, or a limb of Welsh mutton. Alas I whither shall I turn? Let me 
 open the reviews, and lo ! the critics are but repeating old criticisms ; let me 
 fly to the poets, 'tis but the old lyre with catgut strings ; let me hear the orators, 
 — " that's my thunder 1 " says the ghost of Sheridan or the spectre of Burke; 
 let me listen to the sayers of good things, and alas for the injured shade of Joe 
 Miller ! I could go through the whole range of modem authors (save Scott, 
 and a few of that kidney), and exclaim, with more truth than the chieftain of 
 the crusaders in Tasso — 
 
 " Di chi di voi non so la patria e '1 seme ? 
 Qual spada m' e ignota ? e qual saetta, 
 Benche per 1' aria ancor sospesa treme, 
 Non saprei dir s' e Franca, o s' 6 d'Irlanda, 
 E quale appunto il braccio 6 che la mandaV" 
 
 Gerusal. Liber, canto xx. st. 18. 
 
 To state the simple truth, such as I feel it in my own conviction, I declare 
 that the whole mass of contemporary scribblement might be bound up in one 
 tremendous volume, and entitled "Elegant Extracts; " for, if you except the 
 form and style, the varnish and colour, all the rest is what I have known in a 
 different shape forty years ago ; and there is more philosophy than meets the 
 vulgar eye in that excellent song on the transmutation of things here below, 
 which perpetually offer the same intrinsic substance, albeit under a different 
 name : 
 
 " Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with mild ale, 
 Was once Toby Phil pot, a merry old soul," &c, &c 
 
 This transmigration of intellect, this metempsychosis of literature, goes on 
 silently reproducing and reconstructing what had gone to pieces. But those 
 whose memory, like mine, is unfortunately over-tenacious of its young impres- 
 sions, cannot enjoy the zest of a twice-told tale, and consequently are greatly 
 to be pitied. 
 
 It has lately come out that " Childe Harolde " (like other naughty children 
 whom we daily read of as terminating their ' ' life in London " by being sent 
 to the "Euryalus hulk,") was given to picking pockets. Mr. Beckford, the 
 author of " Vathek," and the builder of Font hi 11 Abbey, has been a serious 
 sufferer by the Childe' s depredations, and is now determined to publish his 
 case in the shape of "Travel, in 1787, through Portugal, up the Rhine, and 
 through Italy; " and it also appears that Saml. Rogers, in his "Italy," has 
 learned a thing or two from the " Bandits of Terracina," and has divalisi Mr. 
 Beckford aforesaid on more than one occasion in the Apennines. I am not 
 surprised at all this : murder will out ; and a stolen dog will naturally nose out 
 his original and primitive master among a thousand on a race-course. 
 
 These matters may be sometimes exaggerated, and (honour bright !) far be it 
 from me to pull the stool from under every poor devil that sits down to write a 
 book, and sweep away, with unsparing besom, all the cobwebs so industriously 
 woven across Paternoster Row. I don't wish to imitate Father Hardouin, the 
 celebrated Jesuit, who gained great renown among the wits of Louis XlVth's 
 time by his paradoxes. A favourite maggot hatched in his prolific brain was, 
 that the Odes of Horace never were written by the friend of Mecasnas, but 
 were an imposture of some old Benedictine monk of the twelfth century, who, 
 to amuse his cloistered leisure, personated Flaccus, and under his name strung 
 together those lyrical effusions. This is maintained in a large folio, printed 
 at Amsterdam in 1733, viz., " Harduini Opera Varia, i|if u5o-Horatius." One of 
 his arguments is drawn from the Christian allusions which, he asserts, occur 
 so frequently in these Odes : ex. grati&, the " praise of celibacy ; " 
 
88 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " Platanusque coelebs 
 Kvincit ulmos ; " 
 
 Lib. ii. ode 15. 
 
 for the elm-tree used to be married to the vine ; not so the sycamore, as any 
 one who has been in Italy must know. . The rebuilding of the temple by Julian 
 the Apostate is, according to the Jesuit, thus denounced : 
 
 " Sed bellicosis fata Quiritibus 
 Hftc lege dico, ne nimium pii, 
 Tecta velint reparare Urojae." 
 
 Lib. iii. ode 3. 
 Again, the sacred mysteries of the Lord's Supper, and the concealed nature 
 of the bread that was broken among the primitive Christians : 
 
 — — — — " Vetabo, qui Cmris sacrum 
 Vulgarit arcana, sub iisdem 
 Sit trabibus, fragilemve mecum 
 Sol vat phaselum " (ue., the bark 0/ Feterf, 
 Lib. iii. ode 2. 
 
 And the patriarch Joseph, quoth Hardouin, is clearly pointed out under the 
 strange and un-Roman name of Proculeius, of whom Pagan history says 
 naught : 
 
 " Vivet extento Proculeius asvo, 
 Notus infratres animi patenii I " 
 
 Lib. ii. ode 2. 
 
 For the rest of Hardouin's discoveries I must refer to the work itself, as quoted 
 above; and I must in fairness add, that his other literary efforts and deep 
 erudition reflect the highest credit on the celebrated order to which he belonged 
 — the Jesuits, and I may add, the Benedictines being as distinct and as superior 
 bodies of monastic men to the remaining tribes of cowled coenobites as the 
 Brahmins in India are to the begging Parias.* 
 
 There is among the lyric poems of the lower Irish a very remarkable ode, 
 the authorship of which has been ascribed to the very Rev. Robert Burrowes, 
 the mild, tolerant, and exemplary Dean of St. Finbarr's Cathedral, Cork, whom 
 I am proud to call my friend : it refers to the last tragic scene in the comic or 
 melodramatic life of a Dublin gentleman, whom the above-mentioned excellent 
 divine accompanied in his ministerial capacity to the gallows ; and nothing 
 half so characteristic of the genuine Irish recklessness of death was ever penned 
 by any national Labruyere as that Incomparable elegy, beginning — 
 
 "The night before Larry was stretched, 
 The boys they all paid him a visit," &c. 
 
 Now, were not this fact of the clerical authorship of a most sublime Pindaric 
 composition chronicled in these papers, some future Hardouin would arise to 
 unsettle the belief of posterity, and the claim of my friend Dean Burrowes 
 would be overlooked ; while the songster of Turpin the highwayman, the illus- 
 
 * Father Hardouin, who died at Paris 3rd Sept., 1730, was one of the many high orna- 
 ments of the society and of the century to which he belonged. His " Collection of the 
 Councils" ranks among the most elaborate efforts of theological toil, " Concil. Collect. 
 Regia," 15 vols, folio, Paris, 1715. The best edition extant of the naturalist Pliny is his 
 (in usum Delfihini), and displays a wondrous range of reading. He was one of the 
 witty and honest crew of Jesuits who conducted that model of periodical criticism, the 
 Journal de Trivoux. Bishop Atterbury of Rochester has written his epitaph : 
 
 Hie jacet Petrus Harduinvs, 
 Hominum paradoxotatos, vir summas mtmerix. 
 
 Judicium expectans." Prout. 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 89 
 
 trious author of " Rookwood,"* would infallibly be set down as the writer of 
 " Larry's " last hornpipe. But let me remark, en passant, that in that interest- 
 ing department of literature "slang songs," Ireland enjoys a proud and lofty 
 pre-eminence over every European country : her musa pedestris, or "footpad 
 poetry," being unrivalled; and, as it is observed by Tacitus (in his admirable 
 work ' ' De Moribus Germanorum ") of the barbarians on the Rhine — the native 
 Irish find an impulse for valorous deeds, and a comfort for all their tribulations, 
 in a song. 
 
 Many folks like to write anonymously, others posthumously, others under an 
 assumed name ; and for each of these methods of conveying thought to our 
 fellow-men there may be assigned sundry solid reasons. But a man should 
 never be ashamed to avow his writings, if called on by an injured party, and I, 
 for one, will never shrink from that avowal. If, as my friend O'Brien of the 
 Round Towers tells me, Tom Moore tried to run him down in the Edinburgh 
 Review, after holding an unsuccessful negotiation with him for his services in 
 compiling a joint-stock history of Ireland, why did not the man of the paper 
 bullet fire a fair shot in his own name, and court the publicity of a dirty job, 
 which done in the dark can lose nothing of its infamy? Dr. Johnson tells us 
 that Bolingbroke wrote in his old age a work against Christianity, which he 
 hadn't the courage to avow or publish in his lifetime ; but left a sum of money 
 in his will to a hungry Scotchman, Mallet, on condition of printing in his own 
 name this precious production. "He loaded the pistol," says the pious and 
 learned lexicographer, "but made Sawney pull the trigger." Such appear to 
 be the tactics of Tommy in the present instance : but I trust the attempt will 
 fail, and that this insidious missile darted against the towers of O'Brien will 
 prove a " telum imbelle, sine ictu." 
 
 The two most origfnal" writers of the day, and also the two most ill-treated by 
 the press, are decidedly Miss Harriet Martineau and Henry O'Brien. Of Miss 
 Martineau I shall say little, as she can defend herself against all her foes, and 
 give them an effectual check when hard-pressed in literary encounters. Her 
 fame can be comprised in one brief pentameter, which I would recommend as 
 a motto for the title-page of all her treatises : 
 
 " Foemina tractavit ' propna quse maribus.' " 
 
 But over Henry O'Brien, as he is young and artless, I must throw the shield of 
 my fostering protection. It is now some time since he called at Watergrass- 
 hill; it was in the summer after I had a visit from Sir Walter Scott. The 
 young man was then well versed in the Oriental languages and the Celtic : he 
 had read the " Coran" and the " Psalter of Cashil," the " Zendavesta" and 
 the "Ogygia," Lalla Rookh " and "Rock's Memoirs," besides other books 
 that treat of Phoenician antiquities. From these authentic sources of Irish 
 and Hindoo mythology he had derived much internal comfort and spiritual 
 consolation; at the same time that he had picked up a rude (and perhaps a 
 crude) notion that the Persians and the boys of Tipperary were first cousins 
 after all. This might seem a startling theory at first sight ; but then the story 
 of the fire-worshippers in Arabia so corresponded with the exploits of General 
 Decimus Rock in Mononia, and the camel-driver of Mecca was so forcibly 
 associated in his mind with the bog-trotter of Derrynane, both having deluded 
 an untutored tribe of savages, and the jligat of the one being as celebrated as 
 the vicarious imprisonment of the other, he was sure he should find some 
 grand feature of this striking consanguinity, some landmark indicative of former 
 relationship : 
 
 ♦ Prout must have enjoyed the gift of prophecy, for " Rookwood " was not published 
 till four months after his death at Watergrasshill. Perhaps Mr. Ainsworth submitted his 
 embryo romance to the priest's inspection when he went to kiss the stone.— O. Y. 
 
90 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Journeying with that intent, he eyed these Towers ; 
 And, Heaven-directed, came this way to find 
 The noble truth that gilds his humble name. 
 
 Being a tolerable Greek scholar (for he is a KerrymarO, with Lucian, of 
 course, at his fingers' ends, he probably bethought himself of the twagreat 
 phallic towers which that author describes as having been long ago erected ht 
 the countries of the East (" ante Syrias Deas templum stare f hallos duos mirre 
 allitudinis ; sacerdotem per funes ascendere, ibi orare, sacra facere, tinnitumque 
 ciere," &c, &C); a ray of light darted through the diaphanous casement of 
 O'Brien's, brain—'twas a most eurtkish, moment, — 'twas a coup de soleil, a mani- 
 festation of the spirit — 'twas a divinm pdrticula aura, — 'twas what a French*- 
 man would call [Inure du berger; and on the spot the whole theory of " Round 
 Towers" was developed in his mind. The dormant chrysalis 1 burst into a 
 butterfly. And th,fe is the bright thing of surpassing brilliancy that Tom Moore 
 would extinguish with his flimsy foolscap pages of the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 Forbid it. Heaven ! .Though all the mercenary or time-serving scribes of 
 the periodical press should combine to slander and burke thee, O'B. ! though 
 all the world betray thee, one pen at least thy right shall guard, and vindicate 
 thy renown : here, on the summit of a bleak Irish hill'— here, to the child of 
 genius and enthusiasm' my door is still open ; and though the support which I 
 can give thee is but a scanty portion of patronage indeed, I give it with good 
 will, and assuredly with good humour. O'Brien ! historian of round towers, 
 has sorrow thy young days faded?; 
 
 Does Moore with his cold wins; wither 
 
 Each feeling that once was dear?. 
 Then, child of misfortune, come hither— 
 
 I'll weep with thee tear for tear. 
 
 When O'Brien consulted me as to his future plans and prospects, and the 
 development of his theory, in the first instance confidentially to Tom Moore, I 
 remember distinctly that in the course of our conversation (over a red herring), 
 I cautioned the young and fervent enthusiast against the tricks and rogueries of 
 Tommy. No man was better able to give advice on this subject — Moore and I 
 having had many mutual transactions, the reciprocity of which was all on one 
 side. We know each other inius et in cute, as the reader of this posthumous 
 paper will not fail lo learn before he has laid down the. document ; and if the 
 ballad-monger comes off second best, I can't help him. I warned O'B. against 
 Confiding his secret to the man of melody, or else he. would surely repent of hfe 
 simplicity, and to his cost find himself some day the dupe of his credulous 
 reliance: while he would have the untoward prospect of seeing his discovery 
 swamped, and of beholding, through the medium of a deep and overwhelming 
 flood of treachery, 
 
 ''His round towers of other days 
 Beneath the waters shining." 
 
 For, to illustrate by a practical example the man's way of doing business, I 
 gave, as a striking instance, his " Travels in Search of Religion." Now, since 
 my witty father's celebrated book of " GuUiver's Travels,'' I ask, was there ever 
 a more clever, or in every way so well got up a performance as this Irish gentle- 
 man's '• 'steeple-chase ? " But unfortunately memory supplies me with the fact 
 that this very same identical Tommy, who in that work quotes the " Fathers " 
 So accurately, and, I may add (without going into polemics), so felicitously and 
 triumphantly, has written the most abusive, scurrilous, and profane article that 
 ever sullied the pages of the Edinburgh Review, — the whole scope of which is 
 to cry down the Fathers, and to turn the highest and most cherished ornaments 
 of the primitive church into ridicule. See the 34th volume of the Edinburgh 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. gi 
 
 Review,* p. 65, Nov. 1814, where you will learn with amazement that the most 
 accomplished Christian writer of the second century, that most eloquent church- 
 man, Africa's glorious son, was nothing more in Tommy's eye than the " harsh, 
 muddy, and unintelligible Tertullian ! " Further on you will hear this Anacre- 
 ontic little chap talk of "the pompous rigidity of Chrysostom ;" and soon 
 after you are equally edified by hearing him descant on the "antithetical trifling 
 of Gregory Nazianzene " — of Gregory, whose elegant mind was the result and 
 the index of pure unsullied virtue, ever most attractive when adorned with the 
 graces of scholarship— Gregory, the friend of St. Basil, and his schoolfellow 
 at Athens, where those two vigorous champions of Christianity were associated 
 in their youthful studies with that Julian who was afterwards an emperor, a 
 sophist, and an apostate— a disturber of oriental provinces, and a fellow who 
 periihed deservedly by the javelin of some young patriot admirer of round 
 towers in Persia. In the article alluded to, this incredulous Thomas goes on to 
 say, that these same Fathers, to whom he afterwards refers his Irish gentleman 
 in the catch-penny travels, are totally "unfit to be guides either in faith or 
 morals." (it. ii.) The prurient rogue dares to talk of their "pagan imagi- 
 nations!" and, having turned up his ascetic nose at these saintly men, because, 
 forsooth, they appear to him to be but " indifferent Christians" he pronounces 
 them to be also "elephants in battle," and,' chuckling over this old simile, 
 concludes with a complacent smirk quite self-satisfactory. O for the proboscis 
 of the royal animal in the Surrey Menagerie, to give this poet's carcase a sound 
 drubbing ! > O most theological, and zoological, and supereminently logical 
 Tommy ! 'tis you that are fit to travel in search of religion 1 
 
 If there is one plain truth that oozes forth from the feculent heap of trash 
 which the reviewer accumulates on the merits of the Fathers, it is the conviction 
 in every observant mind, drawn from the simple perusal of his article, that he 
 never read three consecutive pages of their works in his life. No one that ever 
 did — no one who had banqueted with the gorgeous and magnificent Chrysostom, 
 or drained the true Athenian cup of Gregory Nazianzene, or dwelt with the 
 eloquent and feelingly devout Bernard in the cloistered shades of Clairvaux, or 
 mused with the powerful, rich, and scrutinizing mind of Jerome in his hermit- 
 age of Palestine, — could write an article so contemptible, so low, so little. He 
 states, truly with characteristic audacity, that he has mounted to the most 
 inaccessible shelves of the library in Trin. Coll. Dublin, as if he had scaled the 
 "heights of Abraham," to get at the original editions; but believe him not : 
 for the old folios would have become instinct with life at the approach of the 
 dwarf — they would have awakened from their slumber at his touch, and, 
 tumbling their goodly volumes on their diminutive assailant, would have over- 
 whelmed him, like TarpeJa, on the very threshold of his sacrilegious inva- 
 sion. 
 
 Towards my young friend O'Brien of the towers he acts the same part, 
 appearing in his favourite character — that of an anonymous reviewer, a veiled 
 prophet of Khorassan. Having first negotiated by letter with him to extract 
 his brains, and make use of him for his meditated " History of Ireland"— (the 
 correspondence lies before me)— he winds up the confidential intercourse by an 
 Edinburgh volley of canister shot, "quite in a friendly way." He has the 
 ineffable impudence to accuse O'B. of plagiarism, and to state that this grand 
 and unparalleled discovery had been previously made by the author of " Nim- 
 rod ; "+ a book which Tommy read not, neither did he care, so he plucked the 
 
 * The book reviewed by Moore is entitled " Select Passages from the Fathers," by 
 Hugh Boyd, Esq. Dublin, 1814. 
 
 t " Nimrod," by the Hon. Reginald Herbert. 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1826. Priestley. 
 A work of uncommon erudition ; but the leading idea of which is, that thes= towers were 
 fire-altars. O'B.'s theory is not to be found in. any page of it having the remotest 
 
92 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 laurel from the brow of merit. But to accuse a writer of plagiarism, he should 
 be himself immaculate ; and while he dwells in a glass house, he should not 
 throw stones at a man in a tower. 
 
 The Blarney stone in my neighbourhood has attracted hither many an illus- 
 trious visitor; but none has been so assiduous a pilgrim in my time as Tom 
 Moore. While he was engaged in his best and most unexceptionable work on 
 the melodious ballads of his country, he came regularly every summer, and did 
 me the honour to share my humble roof repeatedly. He knows well how often 
 he plagued me to supply him with original songs which I had picked up in 
 France among the merry troubadours and carol-loving inhabitants of that once 
 happy land, and to what extent he has transferred these foreign inventions into 
 the " Irish Melodies." Like the robber Cacus, he generally dragged the plun- 
 dered cattle by the tail, so as that, moving backwards into his cavern of stolen 
 goods, the foot-tracks might not lead to detection. Some songs he would turn 
 upside down, by a figure in rhetoric called ixrripov irponpov ; others he would 
 disguise in various shapes ; but he would still worry me to supply him with the 
 productions of the Gallic muse ; " for, d'ye see, old Prout," the rogue would 
 say, 
 
 " The best of all ways 
 To lengthen our lays. 
 Is to steal a few thoughts from the French, 'my dear.' " 
 
 Now I would have let him enjoy unmolested the renown which these " Melo- 
 dies" have obtained for him ; but his last treachery to my round-tower friend 
 has raised my bile, and I shall give evidence of the unsuspected robberies. 
 
 " Abstractxque boves abjuratscque rapina: 
 Ccelo ostendentur." 
 
 It would be easy to point out detached fragments and stray metaphors, 
 which he has scattered here and there in such gay confusion that every page 
 has within its limits a mass of felony and plagiarism sufficient to hang hitn. 
 For instance, I need only advert to his " Bard's Legacy." Even on his dying 
 bed this "dying bard " cannot help .indulging his evil pranks; for, in 
 bequeathing his "heart" to his " mistress dear," and recommending her to 
 "borrow" balmy drops of port wine to bathe the relic, he is all the while 
 robbing old Clement MarSt, who thus disposes of his remains : 
 
 "Quand je suis mort, je veux qu'on m'entere 
 Dans la cave oh est le vin ; 
 Le corps sous un tonnean de Madere, 
 Et la bouche sous le robin." 
 
 But I won't strain at a gnat, when I can capture a camel— a huge dromedary 
 laden with pilfered soil ; for, would you believe it if you had never learned it 
 from Prout, the very opening and foremost song of the collection, 
 
 " Go where glory waits thee," 
 
 is but a literal and servile translation of an old French ditty, which is among 
 my papers, and which I believe to have been composed by that beautiful and 
 interesting " ladye," Francoise de Foix, Comtesse de Chateaubriand, born in 
 1491, and the favourite of Francis I., who soon abandoned her : indeed, the 
 lines appear to anticipate his infidelity. They were written before the battle 
 of Pavia. 
 
 reference to Ireland; and we are astonished at the unfairness of giving (as Moore has 
 done) a pretended quotation from "Nimrod " without indicating where it is to be met 
 with in the volume. — O. Y. 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 
 
 93 
 
 CHANSON 
 
 de la Comtesse de Chateaubriand 
 a Francois J. 
 
 Va oh la gloire t 'invite ; a 
 Et quand d'orgueil palpite 
 
 Ce Coeur, qu'il pense i moi ! 
 Quand I'e'loge enflamme 
 Toute 1'ardeur de ton ftme, 
 
 Pense encore a moi ! 
 Autres charmes peut-6tre 
 Tu voudras connaltre. 
 Autre amour en maitre 
 
 Regnera sur toi ; 
 Mais quand ta lfevre presse 
 Celle oui te caresse, 
 
 Mecnant, pense & moi ! 
 
 Quand au soir tu erres 
 Sous l'astre des bergeres, 
 
 Pense aux doux instans 
 Lorsque cette etoile, 
 Qu'un beau ciel devoile, 
 
 Guida deux amans ! 
 Quand la fleur, symbole 
 D'tfte" qui s'envole, 
 Penche sa tSte molle, 
 
 S 'exhalant a lair, 
 Pense & la guirlande, 
 De ta mie 1 offrande— 
 
 Don qui fut si cher ! 
 
 Quand la feuille d'automne 
 Sous tes pas resonne, 
 
 Pense alors a moi ! 
 Quand de la famille 
 L antique foyer brille, 
 
 Pense encore & moi ! 
 Et si de la chanteuse 
 La voix melodieuse 
 Berce ton 8-me heureuse 
 
 Et ravit tes sens, 
 Pense & I 'air que chante 
 Pour toi ton amante — 
 
 1 ant aimes accens ! 
 
 TOM MOORE'S 
 
 Translation of this Song in the Irish 
 Melodies. 
 
 Go where glory waits thee ; 
 But while fame elates thee, 
 
 Oh, still remember me ! 
 When the praise thou meetest 
 To thine ear is sweetest, 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 Other arms may press thee, 
 Dearer friends caress thee — 
 All the joys that bless thee 
 
 Dearer far may be : 
 But when friends are dearest. 
 And when joys are nearest. 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 
 When at eve thou rovest 
 By the star thou lovest, 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 Think, when home returning, 
 Bright we've seen it burning— 
 
 On, then remember me ! 
 Oft as summer closes, 
 When thine eye reposes 
 On its lingering roses, 
 
 Once so loved by thee, 
 Think of her who wove them — 
 Her who made thee love them 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 
 When around thee, dying, 
 Autumn leaves are lying, 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 And at night, when gazing 
 On the gay hearth blazing, 
 
 Oh, still remember me ! 
 Then, should music, stealing 
 All the soul of feeling, 
 To thy heart appealing. 
 
 Draw one tear from thee ; 
 Then let memory bring thee 
 Strains I used to sing thee— - 
 
 Oh, then remember me ! 
 
 Any one who has the slightest tincture of French literature must recognize 
 the simple and unsophisticated style of a genuine love-song in the above, the 
 language being that of the century in which Clement Marot and Maitre Adam 
 wrote their incomparable ballads, and containing a kindly admixture of gentle- 
 ness and sentimental delicacy, which no one but a " ladye" and a loving heart 
 could infuse into the composition. Moore has not been infelicitous in render- 
 ing the charms of the wondrous original into English lines adapted to the 
 measure and tune of the French. The air is plaintive andexquisitively beauti- 
 ful ; but I recommend it to be tried first on the French words, as it was sung 
 by the charming lips of the Countess of Chateaubriand to the enraptured ear 
 of the gallant Francis I. 
 
 The following pathetic strain is the only literary relic which has been 
 preserved of the unfortunate Marquis de Cinqmars, who was disappointed in 
 a love affair, and who, " to fling forgetfulness around him," mixed in politics, 
 conspired against Cardinal Richelieu, was betrayed by an accomplice, and 
 perished on the scaffold. Moore has transplanted it entire into his " National 
 
94 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Melodies ; " but is very careful not to give the nation or writer whence he trans- 
 lated it. 
 
 LE MARQUIS DE CINQMARS. 
 
 Tu n'as fait, 6 mon ccKur ! qu'un beau 
 songe, 
 Qui te fut, helas ! ravi trop t6t ; 
 Ce doux riive, ah dieux ! qu'il se prolonge, 
 Je consens & n'aspirer plus haul. 
 Faut-il que d'avance 
 Jeune esperance 
 Le destin dfitruise ton avenir? 
 Faut-il que la rose 
 La premiere dclose 
 Soit celle qu'il se plaise a fletrir ? 
 
 Tu n'as fait, &c 
 
 Que de fois tu trompas notre attente, 
 Amitie, soeur de l'amour trompeur ! 
 De l'amour la coupe encore enchante 
 A l'ami on livre encor' son coeur ; 
 L'insecte qui file 
 Sa trame inutile 
 Voit perir cent fois le fr&e tissu ; 
 Tel, amour ensorcele 
 L'homme qui renouvelle 
 Des Hens qui l'ont cent fois decu ! 
 Tu n'as fait. &c. 
 
 THOMAS MOORE. 
 
 O ! 'twas all but a dream at the best— 
 And still when happiest, soonest o'er : 
 But e'en in a dream to be blest 
 Is so sweet, that I ask for no more ! 
 The bosom that opes 
 With earliest hopes 
 The soonest finds those hopes untrue ; 
 Like flowers that first 
 In spring-time burst, , 
 The soonest whither too ! 
 
 Oh, 'twas all but, &c. 
 
 By friendship we've oft been deceived. 
 
 And love, even love, too soon is past ; 
 But friendship will still be believed, 
 And love trusted on to the last ; 
 Like the web in the leaves 
 The spider weaves 
 Is the charm that hangs o'er men — 
 Tho' oft as he sees 
 It broke by the breeze, 
 He weaves the bright line again ! 
 O ! 'twas all but. &c. 
 
 Every thing was equally acceptable in the way of a song to Tommy; and 
 provided I brought grist to his mill, he did not care where the produce came 
 from — even the wild oats and the thistles of native growth on Watergrasshill, 
 all was good provender for his Pegasus. There was an old Latin song of my 
 own, which I made when a boy, smitten with the charms of an Irish milkmaid, 
 who crossed by the hcdge-scJwol occasionally, and who used to distract my 
 attention from " Corderius" and "ErasmiColloquia." I have often laughedat 
 my juvenile gallantry when my eye has met the copy of verses in overhauling 
 my papers. Tommy saw it, grasped it with avidity ; and I find he has given it, 
 word for word, in an English shape in his " Irish Melodies." Let the intelli- 
 gent reader judge if he has done common justice to my young muse. 
 
 IN PULCHRAM LACTIFERAM. 
 Carmen, Attctore Prout. 
 
 Lesbia semper hinc et inde 
 
 Oculorum tela movit ; 
 Captat omnes, sed deinde 
 
 Quis ametur nemo novit. 
 Palpebrarum, Nora cara, 
 
 Lux tuarum non est foris, 
 Flamma inicat ibi rara, 
 
 Sed sinceri lux amoris. 
 Nora Creina sit regina, 
 
 Vultu, gressu tarn modesto ! 
 Haec, puellas inter be! las, 
 
 Jure omnium dux esto ! 
 
 Lesbia vestes auro graves 
 Fert, et gemmis, juxta normam; 
 
 Gratia; sed, eheu \ suaves 
 Cihctam reliquSre formam. 
 
 TO A BEAUTIFUL MILKMAID. 
 A Melody, by Thomas Moore. 
 
 Lesbia hath a beaming eye, 
 
 But no one knows for whom it bcameth ; 
 Right and left its arrows fly. 
 
 But what they aim at, no one dreameth. 
 Sweeter 'tis to gaze upon 
 
 My Norah's lid, that seldom rises ; 
 Few her looks, but every one 
 
 Like unexpected light surprises. 
 O, my Norah Creina dear ! 
 
 My gentle, bashful Norah Creina ! 
 Beauty lies 
 In many eyes — 
 
 But love's in thine, my Norah Creina ! 
 
 Lesbia wears a robe of gold ; 
 
 But alt so tight the nymph hath laced it, 
 Not a charm of beauty s mould' 
 
 Presumes to stay where nature placed it. 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 95 
 
 None tunicam prsferres, O, my Norah's gown for me, 
 
 Flante zephyro volantem ; That floats as wild as mountain breezes, 
 
 Oculis et raptis erres ■ Leaving every beauty free 
 
 Contemplando ambulantem ! To sink or swell as Heaven pleases. 
 
 Vesta Nora tarn decora Yes, my Norah Creina dear ! 
 
 Semper indui memento. My simple, graceful Norah Creina t 
 
 Semper purse sic naturae Nature's dress 
 
 Ibis tecta vestimento. Is loveliness — 
 
 The dress you wear, my Norah Creina ! 
 
 Lesbia mentis.praefett lumen, Lesbia hath a wit refined ; 
 
 Quod corusdat perlibeneer ; But when its points are gleaming round us. 
 
 Sea quis optet hoc acumen, Who can tell if they're design'd 
 
 - Quando acupuncta dentur t To dazzle merely, or to wound us ? 
 
 Nora: sinu cum rccliner, Fillow'd on my Norah's heart, 
 
 Dormio luxurioso . In safer slumber Love reposes — 
 
 Nil corrugat hoc pulvinar. Bed of peace, whose roughest part 
 
 Nisi crispse ruga rosse. Is but the crumpling of the roses. 
 
 Nora blanda, lux amanda, O, my Norah Creina dear ! 
 
 Expers usque tenebrarum, My mild, my artless Norah Creina ! 
 
 Tu cor mulcts per tot dukes Wit, though bright. 
 
 Dotes, fons illecebrarum ! Hath not the light 
 
 That warms your eyes, my Norah Creina ! 
 
 It will be seen by these specimens that Tom Moore can eke out a tolerably 
 fair translation of any given ballad ; and indeed, to translate properly, retain- 
 ing all the fire and spirit of the original, is a merit not to be sneezed at — it is 
 the next best thing to having a genius of one's own ; for he who can execute 
 a clever forgery, and make it pass current, is almost as well off as the capitalist 
 who can draw a substantial check on the baqk of sterling genius : so, to give 
 the devil his due, I must acknowledge that in terseness, point, pathos, and 
 elegance, Moore's translations of these French and Latin trifles are very near 
 as good as the primary compositions themselves. He has not been half so 
 lucky in hitting off Anacreon ; but he was a young man then, and a " wild 
 fellow ; " since which fime it is thought that he has got to that climacteric in 
 life to which few poets attain, viz. , the years of discretion, A predatory sort of 
 life, the career of, a literary freebooter, has had great charms for him from his 
 cradle ; and I am afraid that he will pursue it on to final impenitence. He 
 seems to care little about the stern reception-be will one day receive from that 
 inflexible judge, Rhadamanthus. who will make him confess all his rogueries— 
 " Castigatque dolos, subigitque fateri "—our bard being of that epicurean and 
 careless turn of mind so strikingly expressed in these lines of " Lai la 
 Rookh"— 
 
 " O ! if there be an Elysium on earth, 
 It is this ! it is this ! " 
 
 Which verses, by the by, are alone enough to convict him of downright 
 plagiarism and robbery; for they are (as Tommy knows right well) to be seen 
 written in large letters in the Mogul language over the audience-chamber of 
 the King of Delhi:* in fact, to examine and overhaul his "Lalla Rookh" 
 would be a most diverting task, which I may one day undertake. He will be 
 found to have been a chartered pirate in the Persian Gulf, as he was a high- 
 wayman in Europe — " spoliis Orientis onustum." 
 
 But the favourite field in which Tommy has carried on his depredations, to 
 an almost incredible extent, is that of the early French troubadours, whose 
 property he has thought fair game, availing himself thereof without scruple. 
 In his soi-disant "Irish" Melodies, and indeed in all his effusions of more 
 refined gallantry, he has poured in a large infusion of the spirit and the letter 
 
 • See the Asiatic Journal for May, 1834, p. 2. 
 
of southern France. To be sure, he has mixed up with the pure, simple, and 
 genuine inspirations of these primitive hearts, who loved, in the olden time, 
 after nature's fashion, much of his own overstrained fancy, strange conceits, and 
 forced metaphors; but the initiated can easily distinguish when it is he 
 speaketh pi propria, person^,, and when it is that he uses the pathetic and soul- 
 stirring language of the m(nbstrels of Gaul, those legitimate laureates of love. 
 There has been a squib fired off by some wag of the sixteenth century against 
 an old astrologer, who practised many rogueries in his generation, and which 
 I think not inapplicable to Moore : 
 
 "Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est : 
 Et cum falsa damus, non nisi Nostra damus." 
 
 And, only it were a profanation to place two such personages in juxtaposition, 
 I would say that Moore might use the affecting, the soul-rending appeal of the 
 ill-fated Mary Stuart, addressed to that land of song and civilization which she 
 was quitting for ever, when she exclaimed, as the Gallic' shore receded from her 
 view, that ' ' half of her heart would still be found on the loved plains of France, 
 and even the other half pined to rejoin it in its primitive abodes of pleasantness 
 and joy." The song of the unfortunate queen is too exquisitely beautiful not 
 to be given here by me, such as she sang it on the deck of the vessel that 
 wafted her away from the scenes of her youth and the blessings of friendship, 
 to seek the dismal regions of bleak barbarity arid murderous fanaticism. I 
 also give it because Tommy has modelled on it his melody, " As slow our ship 
 its foamy track," and Byron his " Native land, good night !" 
 
 "Adieu, plaisant pays de France ! 
 
 Oh, ma patrie la plus cherie, 
 Qui as nourri ma jeune enfance — 
 
 Adieu, France ! adieu, mes beaux jours ! 
 La nef qui dejoint mes amours 
 
 N'a ici de moi que la moitie' ; 
 Une part te reste, elle est tienne, 
 
 Je la fie a ton amitie"— 
 Four que de l'autre, il te souvienne ! " 
 
 I now come to a moreseriouschargeagainst the gentleman of "Sloperton Cot- 
 tage, Wiltshire," and it will require more mother-wit than he is known to possess 
 to bamboozle the public into a satisfactory belief in his innocence. To plunder 
 the French is all right ; but to rob his own countrymen is what the late Lord 
 Liverpool would call ' ' too bad." I admit the claims of the poet on the grati- 
 tude of the aboriginal Irish ; for glorious Dan might have exerted his leathern 
 lungs during a century in haranguing the native' sans culottes on this side of 
 the Channel; but had not the "Melodies" made emancipation palatable to 
 the thinking and generous portion of Britain's free-born sons— had not his 
 poetry spoken to the hearts of the great and the good, and enlisted the fair 
 daughters of England, the spouters would have been but objects of scorn and 
 contempt. The ■ ' Melodies " won the cause silently, imperceptibly, effectually ; 
 and if there be a tribute due from that class of the native, it is to the child of 
 song. Poets, however, are always destined to, be poor ; and such used to be 
 the case with patriots too, until the rint opened the eyes of the public, and 
 aught them that even that sacred and exalted passion, love of country, could 
 resolve itself, through an Irish alembic, into an ardent love for the copper 
 currency of one's native land. The dagge' of Harmodius, which used to be 
 concealed under a wreath of myrtle, is now-a-days hidden within the cavity of 
 a church-door begging-box ; and Tom Moore can only claim the second part 
 of the celebrated line of Virgil, as the first evidently refers to Mr. O'Connell ; 
 
 u jQZre ciere viros — Martemque accendere cantu.'' 
 But I am digressing from the serious charge I mean to bring against the author 
 
TJie Rogueries of Tom Moore. 
 
 97 
 
 of that beautiful melody, " The Shamrock." Does not Tom Moore know that 
 there was such a thing in France as the Irish brigade? and does he not fear 
 and tremble lest the ghosts of that valiant crew, whom he has robbed of their 
 due honours, should, "in the stilly night, when slumber's chains have bound 
 him," drag his small carcase to the Styx, and give him a well-merited sousing? 
 For why should he exhibit as his production their favourite song ? and what 
 ineffable audacity to palm off on modern drawing-rooms as his own. that glorious 
 carol which made the tents of Fontenoy ring with its exhilarating music, and 
 which old General Stack, who lately died at Calais, used to sing so gallantly ? 
 
 LE TREFLE D'IRLANDE. 
 
 Chanson de la Brigade, 1748. 
 
 Un jour en Hyberirie, 
 
 D'Amour le beau genie 
 Et le dieu de la Valeur firent rencontre 
 
 Avec le " Bel Esprit," 
 
 Ce drdle qui se rit 
 De tout ce qui lui vient & 1'encontre ; 
 
 Partem t leur pas reVeille* 
 
 Une herbe & triple feuiHe, 
 Que la nuit humecta de ses pleurs, 
 
 Et que la douce aurore 
 
 Fraichement fait eclorre, 
 De l'emeraude elie a les couleurs. 
 
 Vive le trefle ! 
 
 Vive le vert gazon !_ 
 De la patrie, terre cherie ! 
 
 L embleme est bel et bon ! - 
 
 Valeur, d'un ton superbe, 
 
 S'ecrie, " Pour moi cette herbe 
 Croit sitdt quelle me voit ici paraitre ; " 
 
 Amour lui dit, " Non, non, 
 
 C'est moi que le gazon 
 Konore en ces bijoux qu'il fait naitre : '' 
 
 Mais Bel Esprit dirige 
 
 Sur 1'herbe k triple tige 
 Un ceil observateur, & son tour, 
 
 " Pourquoi," dit-il, "defaire 
 
 Un nceud 51 beau, qui serre 
 En ce type Esprit, Valeur, et Amour ! " 
 
 Vive le trefle ! 
 
 Vive ie vert gazon ! 
 De la patrie, terre cherie ! 
 
 L 'embleme est bel et bon ! 
 
 Prions le Ciel qu'il dure 
 Ce nceud, oil la nature 
 Voudrait voir une eternelle alliance ; 
 
 Sue nulvenin jamais 
 'empoisonne les traits 
 Qu'a 1'entour si gaiement 1'Esprit lance ! 
 
 Que nul tyran ne reve 
 
 LVuser le noble glaive 
 De la Valeur contre la Hbertfi; 
 
 Et que 1' Amour suspende 
 
 Sa plus belle guirlande 
 Sur l'autel de la fidelite ! 
 
 Vive le trefle ! 
 
 Vive le vert gazon ! 
 De la patrie, terre cherie ! 
 
 L embleme est bel et bon ! 
 
 THE SHAMROCK. 
 
 A "Melody" of Tom Moore's, 1813. 
 
 Through Erin's isle, 
 
 To sport awhile, 
 As Love and Valour wander'd 
 
 With Wit the sprite, 
 
 Whose quiver bright 
 A thousand arrows squander^ : 
 
 Where'er they pass 
 
 A triple grass 
 Shoots up, with dewdrops streaming, 
 
 As softly green 
 
 As emeralds seen 
 Through purest crystal gleaming. 
 
 O the shamrock ! 
 
 The green immortal shamrock ! 
 Chosen leaf of bard and chief, 
 
 Old Erin's native shamrock ! 
 
 Says Valour, " See ! 
 
 They spring for me — t 
 Those leafy gems of morning ; '* 
 
 Says Love, " No, no, 
 
 For me they grow, 
 My fragrant path adorning." 
 
 But Wit perceives 
 
 The triple leaves, 
 And cries, O, do not sever 
 
 A type that blends 
 
 Three god-like friends — 
 Wit, Valour, Love, for ever ! " 
 
 O the shamrock ! 
 
 The green immortal shamrock ! 
 Chosen leaf of bard and chief, 
 
 Old Erin's native shamrock ! 
 
 So Arm and fond 
 
 May last the bond 
 They wove that morn together,; 
 
 And ne'er may fall 
 
 One drop of gall 
 On Wit's celestial feather ! 
 
 May Love, as shoot 
 
 His flowers and fruit. 
 Of thorny falsehood weed them ; 
 
 Let Valour ne'er 
 
 His standard rear 
 Against the cause of freedom, 
 
 Or of the shamrock, 
 
 The green immortal shamrock ( 
 Chosen leaf of bard and chief, 
 
 Old Erin's native shamrock ! 
 
 * Alia lectio : parpntt leur main recueille. 
 
 Ur- 
 
Moliere has written a pleasant and instructive comedy entitled the Fourberies 
 de Scapin, which I recommend to Tom's perusal; and in the "spelling-book" 
 which I used to con over when at the hedge-school with my foster-brother 
 George Knapp, who has since risen to eminence as mayor of Cork, but with 
 whom I used then to share the reading of the "Universal Spelling-Book" 
 (having but one between us), there is an awful story about "Tommy and Harry," 
 very capable of deterring youthful minds from evil practices, especially the 
 large wood-cut representing a lion tearing the stomach of the luckless wight 
 who led a, career of wickedness. Had Tommy Moore been brought up properly 
 (as Knapp and I were) he would not have committed so many depredations, 
 which he ought to know would be discovered on him at last, and cause him 
 bitterly to repent his "rogueries." 
 
 With all my sense of indignation, unabated and unmitigated at the unfairness 
 with which O'Brien "of the round towers" has been treated, and which has 
 prompted me to make disclosures which would have otherwise slept with me in 
 the grave, I must do Moore the justice to applaud his accurate, spirited, and 
 sometimes exquisite translations from recondite MSS. and other totally unex- 
 plored writings of antiquity, I felt it my duty, in the course of these strictures, to 
 denounce the version of Anacreon as a total failure, only to be accountedfor by 
 the extreme youth and inexperience of the subsequently matured and polished 
 melodist ; but there is an obscure Greek poet, called Etukkov MoptfuoV. whose 
 ode on whisky, or negus, composed about the sixteenth olympiad, according to 
 the chronology of Archbishop Usher, he has splendidly and most literally 
 rendered into English Anacreontic verse, thus : 
 
 SratCKOU Mof)0t6tos tC)(yS. 
 
 [Stat nominis umbra.) 
 
 STe^rwftef ovv KvirtWpv 
 Tot; av9efjL0ttrt tyvXQ** 
 Tot? ^eprarois qtacves y' a 
 'Hfi.iv Svvatvf ftjievpetv. 
 Tavrfi yap ovpavovSt 
 Tj7 pvKTt Set TT(Ta(T0at, 
 Tavnjv Atn-orre? atav. 
 Et y ovv Epws \adoiro 
 Tots <rTefXftaTesTtr' a Tepi^ij 
 Hfj.iv /iayof o'tiSucrti', 
 Ovirto <£o/3o? yev oiro, 
 *n$ yap irapeortv oLPOf, 
 Btvpu>fj.fv ctye Kernel. 
 
 *fl( jxoi Acyovoi, vcitrap 
 ITaAai emvoy *HPAI 
 Kat ZHNE2 T,6e *OIB0I. 
 Efeort «at (3poToi(Tiu 
 'llfj.iv TFoieu- to vetcTap* 
 TtatrfTtov yap woV" 
 Toutoi* kafioyres olvov, 
 Tou xapfiaros irpotranroif 
 
 A.fA<f>L CTKVIpOf QTt$QVTtt t ' 
 
 Tot* Qptvwv tftaetviqv 
 
 TIotw xeovTes avyjjv, 
 l&ov, napttrrt vatrap. 
 
 Tun-' ovv Xpovos ye tyanftvi 
 Tvfy KKetjivBpav eTrAtjo"« 
 Ti;v ayhaijv aeueei ; 
 Ev (iav yap otfief oivov 
 Tayurepov faappetv, 
 SnXirvwrcrpoi' ro kapmiv* 
 
 ON WHISKY OR NEGUS. 
 
 By Moore. 
 
 Wreathe the bowl 
 
 With flowers of soul 
 The brightest wit can find us ; 
 
 Well take a flight 
 
 Towards heaven to-night. 
 And leave dull earth behind us. 
 
 Should Love amid 
 
 The wreath be hid, 
 That joy th' enchanter brings us ; 
 
 No danger fear 
 
 While Wine is near — 
 We'll drown him if he stings us. 
 
 Then wreathe the bowl, &c., &C 
 
 'Twas nectar fed 
 
 Of old, 'tis said. 
 Their Junos, Jbves, Apollos ; 
 
 And man. may brew 
 
 His nectar too — 
 The rich receipt's as follows : 
 . fc Take wine like this. 
 
 Let looks of bliss 
 Around it well be blended : 
 
 Then bring wit's beam 
 
 To warm the stream— 
 And there's your nectar splendid* 
 
 Then wreathe the bowl, &c, &C. 
 
 Say, why did Time 
 
 His glass sublime 
 Fill ud with sands unsightly, 
 
 When Wine, he knew, 
 .Runs brisker through, 
 And sparkles far more brightly? 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 99 
 
 Ao? ow. fios rjfiiv avnjv, O lend it us, 
 
 Kai /xeiStajfre? 0UT019 And, smiling, thus 
 
 Trjv icKeilniSpav trjpiTavTts, The glass in two we'd_ sever, 
 
 IIoiTjo-o/i.ei' ye 5lttAo) Make pleasure glide 
 
 Feic 178010}!/ pceBpap In double tide, 
 
 EjunAijo-op.ei' 5' tratpot And till both ends for ever. 
 
 A/npu kvttj ts met. Then wreathe the bowl, &c, &c. 
 
 Such carefully finished translations as this from Stokkos, in which not an 
 idea or beauty of the Greek is lost in the English version, must necessarily do 
 Tommy infinite credit ; and the only drawback on the abundant praise which I 
 should otherwise feel inclined to bestow on the Anacreontic versifier, is the fatal 
 neglect, or perhaps wilful treachery, whicli has led him to deny or suppress the 
 sources of his inspiration, and induced him to appear in the discreditable 
 fashion of an Irish jackdaw in the borrowed plumage of a Grecian peacock. 
 The splendour of poesy, like "Malacliy's collar of gold," is round his neck, 
 but he won it from a stranger : the green glories of the emerald adorn his glow- 
 ing crest— or, as Phasdrus says, 
 
 " Nitor smaragdi collo refulget tuo — " 
 
 but if you ruffle his feathers a little, you will find that his literary toilette is com- 
 posed of what the French coiffeurs call da orncmens postiches ; and that there 
 was never a more called-for declaration than the avowal which he himself makes 
 in one of his Melodies, when, talking of the' wild strains of the Irish harp, he 
 admits, he " was but the wind passing heedlessly over" its chords, and that the 
 music was by no means his own. 
 
 A simple hint was sometimes enough to set his muse at work ; and he not 
 only was, to my knowledge, an adept in translating accurately, but he could 
 also string together any number of lines in any given measure, in imitation of 
 a song or ode which casually came in his way. This is not such arrant 
 robbery as what I have previously stigmatized ; but it is a sort of ^aare'-pilfer- 
 ing, a kind of petty larceny, not to be encouraged. There is, for instance, his 
 " National Melody," or jingle, called, in the early edition of his poems, " Those 
 Evening Bells," a "Petersburg air ,■" of which I could unfold the natural 
 history. It is this : — In one of his frequent visits to Watergrasshill, Tommy 
 and I spent the evening in talking of our continental travels, and more par- 
 ticularly of Paris and its mirabilia ; of which he seemed quite enamoured. 
 The view from the tower of the central church, Notre Dame, greatly struck 
 his fancy ; and I drew the conversation to the subject of the simultaneous ring- 
 ing of all the bells in all the steeples of that vast metropolis on some feast-day, 
 or public rejoicing. The effect, he agreed with me, is most enchanting, and 
 the harmony most surprising. At that time Victor Hugo had not written his 
 glorious romance, the "Hunchback Quasimodo; " and, consequently, I could 
 not have read his beautiful description : " In an ordinary way, the noise issuing 
 from Paris in the day-time is the talking of the city ; at night, it is the breath- 
 ing of the city; in this case, it is the singing of the city. Lend your ear to 
 this opera of steeples. Diffuse over the whole the buzzing of half a million of 
 human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, 
 the grave and distant quartette of the four forests, placed like immense organs 
 on the four hills of the horizon ; soften down as with a demi-tint all that is too 
 shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound, — and say if you know any- 
 thing in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling, "than that tumult 
 of bells — than that furnace of music — than those ten thousand brazen tones, 
 breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high — than that city 
 which is but one orchestra — than tha symphony, rushing and roaring like a 
 tempest." All these matters, we agreed, were very fine ; but there is nothing, 
 after all, like the associations which early infancy attaches to the well-known 
 
ioo The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 and long-remembered chimes of our own parish steeple : and no magic can 
 equal the effect on our ear when returning after long absence in foreign, and 
 perhaps happier countries. As we perfectly coincided in the truth of this 
 observation, I added, that long ago, while at Rome, I had thrown my ideas 
 into the shape of a song, which I would sing him to the tune of the " Groves.' 1 
 
 THE SHANDON BELLS.* 
 Sabbata pango, 
 
 FlJNERA PLANGO, 
 
 Solum ni a clango. 
 
 Imcrip. on an old Bell. 
 
 With deep affection 
 And recollection 
 I often think of 
 
 Those Shandon bells, 
 Whose sounds so-wild would, 
 In the days of childhood, 
 Fling round my cradle 
 
 Their magic spells. 
 On this I ponder 
 Where'er I wander 
 And thus grow fonder, 
 
 Sweet Cork, of thee ; 
 With thy bells of Shandon, 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 
 Of the river Lee. 
 
 I've heard bells chiming 
 Full many a clime in, 
 Tolling sublime in 
 
 Cathedral shrine, 
 While at a glibe rate 
 Brass tongues would vibrate — 
 But all their music 
 
 Spoke naught like thine ; 
 For memory dwelling 
 On each proud swelling 
 Of the belfry knelling 
 
 Its bold notes free, 
 Made the bells of Shandon 
 Sound far more grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 
 Of the river Lee. 
 
 I've heard bells tolling 
 OId/'Adrian'sMole B in, 
 Their thunder rolling 
 
 From the Vatican, 
 And cymbals glorious 
 Swinging uproarious 
 In the gorgeous turrets 
 
 Of Notre Dame ; 
 
 * The church and spire of Shandon, built on the ruins of old Shandon Castle (for 
 which see the plates in Pacata Hy hernia "X is a prominent object, from whatever side 
 the traveller approaches our beautiful city. There exists a pathetic ballad, composed by 
 some exile when " eastward darkly going," in which he begins his adieux to the sweet 
 spot thus : " Farewell to thee, Cork, and thy sugar-loaf steeple," &c, &c. But as no- 
 thing is done in Ireland in the ordinary routine of sublunary things, this belfry is built on 
 a novel and rather droll principle of architecture, viz. , one side is all of grey stone, and 
 the other all red,— like the Prussian soldier's uniform trousers, one leg blue, the other 
 green.— Note by Cropton Croker. 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 101 
 
 But thy sounds were sweeter 
 Than the dome of Peter 
 Flings o'er the Tiber, 
 Pealing solemnly ; — 
 
 ! the bells of Shandon 
 Sound far more grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 
 Of the river Lee. 
 
 There's a bell in Moscow, 
 While on tower and kiosk O ! 
 In Saint Sophia 
 
 The Turkman gets. 
 And loud in air 
 Calls men to prayer 
 From the tapering summit 
 
 Of tall minarets. 
 Such empty phantom 
 
 1 freely grant them ; 
 But there is an anthem 
 
 More dear to me, — 
 'Tis the belts of Shandon, 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters 
 
 Of the river Lee. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Moore published his "Evening Bells, a Petersburg air." 
 But any one can see that he only rings a few changes on my Roman ballad, 
 cunningly shifting the scene as far north as he could, to avoid detection. He 
 deserves richly to be sent on a hurdle to Siberia. 
 
 I do not feel so much hurt at this nefarious " belle's stratagem " regarding 
 me, as at his wickedness towards the man of the round towers ; and to this 
 matter T turn in conclusion. 
 
 •' O blame not the bard ! " some folks will no doubt exclaim, and perhaps 
 think that I have been over-severe on Tommy, in my vindication of O'B. ; I 
 can only say, that if the poet of all circles and the idol of his own, as soon as 
 this posthumous rebuke shall meet his eye, begins to repent him of his wicked 
 attack on my young friend, and, turning him from his evil ways, betakes him 
 to his proper trade of ballad-making, then shall he experience the comfort 
 of living at peace with all mankind, and old Prout's blessing shall fall as a 
 precious ointment on his head. In that contingency if (as I understand it to 
 be his intention) he should happen to publish afresh number of his "Melodies," 
 may it be eminently successful ; and may Power of the Strand, by some more 
 sterling sounds than the echoes of fame, be convinced of the power of song — 
 
 For it is not the magic of streamlet or hill : 
 
 O no ! it is something that sounds in the " till ! " 
 
 My humble patronage, it is true, cannot do much for him in fashionable circles; 
 for I never mixed much in the beau monde (at least in Ireland), during my life- 
 time, and can be of no service, of course, when I'm dead ; nor will his " Melo- 
 dies," I fear, though well adapted to mortal pianofortes, answer the purposes 
 of that celestial choir in which I shall then be an obscure but cheerful vocalist. 
 But as \ have touched on this great topic of mortality, let Moore recollect that 
 his course here below, however harmonious in the abstract, must have a finale ; 
 and at his last hour let him not treasure up for himself the unpleasant retrospect 
 of young genius nipped in the bud by the*frost of his criticism, or glad enthu- 
 siasm's early promise damped by inconsiderate sneers. O'Brien's book can, and 
 will, no doubt, afford much matter for witticism and merriment to the super- 
 ficial, the unthinking, and the profane ; but to the eye of candour it ought to 
 have presented a page richly fraught with wondrous research —redolent with 
 
102 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 all the perfumes of Hindostan ;. its leaves, if they failed to convince, should, 
 like those of the mysterious lotus, have inculcated silence ; and if the finger of 
 meditation did not rest on every line, and pause on every period, the volume, 
 at least, should not be indicated to the vulgar by the finger of scorn. Even 
 granting that there were in the book some errors of fancy, of judgment, or of 
 style, which of us is without reproach in our juvenile productions ? and though 
 I myself am old, I am the more inclined to forgive the inaccuracies of youth. 
 Again, when all is dark, who would object to a ray of light, merely because of 
 the faulty or flickering medium by which it is transmitted ? And if these round 
 towers have been hitherto a dark puzzle and a mystery, must we scare away 
 O'Brien because he approaches with a rude and unpolished but serviceable 
 lantern? No ; forbid it, Diogenes : and though Tommy may attempt to put 
 his extinguisher on the towers and their historian, there is enough of good 
 sense in the British public to make common cause with O'Brien the enlightener. 
 Moore should recollect, that knowledge conveyed in any shape will ever find a 
 welcome among us ; and that, as he himself beautifully observes in his " Loves 
 of the Angels " — 
 
 " Sunshine broken in the rill, 
 Though tum'd aside, is sunshine still." 
 
 For my own part, I protest to Heaven, that were I, while wandering in a 
 gloomy forest, to meet on my dreary path the small, faint, glimmering light 
 even of a glow-worm, I should shudder at the thought of crushing with my 
 foot that dim speck of brilliancy ; and were it only for its being aid n to brighter 
 rays, honouring it for its relationship to the stars, I would not harm the little 
 lamplighter as I passed along in the woodland shade. 
 
 If Tommy. is rabidly bent on satire, why does he not fall foul of Doctor 
 Lardner, who has got the clumsy machinery of a whole Cyclopaedia at work, 
 grinding that nonsense which he calls "Useful Knowledge?" Let the poet 
 mount his Pegasus, or bis Rosinante, and go tilt a lance against the doctor's 
 windmill. It was unworthv of him to turn on O'Brien, after the intimacy of pri- 
 vate correspondence ; and if he was inclined for battle, he might have found a 
 seemlier foe. Surely my young friend was not the quarry on which the vulture 
 should delight to pounce, when there are so many literary reptiles to tempt his 
 beak and glut his maw ! Heaven knows, there is fair game and plentiful carrion 
 on the plains of Boeotia. In the poet's picture of the pursuits of a royal bird, 
 we find such sports alluded to — 
 
 " In reluctantes dracones 
 Egit amor dapis atque pugnse." 
 
 Let Moore, then, vent his indignation and satiate his voracity on the proper 
 objects of a volatile of prey ; but he will find in his own province of imagina- 
 tive poetry a kindlier element, a purer atmosphere, for his winged excursions. 
 Long, long may we behold the gorgeous bird soaring through the regions of 
 inspiration, distinguished in his loftier as in his gentler flights, and combining, 
 by a singular miracle of ornithology, the voice of the turtle-dove, the eagles 
 eye and wing, with the plumage of the "bird of Paradise." 
 
 Mem.- On the zWiofJune, 1835, died, at the Hermitage, Hanwell, " Henry 
 O'Brien, autlior of the Round Towers of Ireland." His portrait was hung up 
 in the Gallery of Regina on the 1st of August following ; and the functionary 
 who exhibits the " Literary Characters " dwelt thus on his merits : 
 
 In the village graveyard of Hanwell (ad viii. ab urbe lafidem) sleeps the original of 
 yonder sketch, and the rude forefathers of the Saxon hamlet have consented to receive 
 among them the clay of a Milesian scholar. That "original" was no stranger to us. 
 
The Rogueries of Tom Moore. 103 
 
 Some time back we had our misgivings that the oil in his flickering lamp of life would 
 soon dry up; still, we were not prepared to hear of his light being thus abruptly extin- 
 guished. " One morn we missed him " from the accustomed table at the library of the 
 British Museum, where the page of antiquity awaited his perusal ; " another came— nor 
 yet" was he to be seen behind the pile of "Asiatic Researches," poring over his 
 favourite Herodotus, or deep in the Zendavesta. "The next" brought tidings of his 
 death. 
 
 "Au banquet de la vie, infortune" convive, 
 
 J'apparus un jour, et jemeurs : 
 Je meurs, et sur la tombe oh, jeune encor, j'arrive 
 
 Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." 
 
 His book on the " Round Towers " has thrown more light on the early history of Ireland, 
 and on the freemasonry of these gigantic puzzles, than will ever shine from the cracked 
 pitchers of the " Royal Irish Academy," or the farthing candle of Tommy Moore. And 
 it was quite natural that he should have received -from them, during- his lifetime, such 
 tokens of malignant hostility as might sufficiently '* tell how they hated his beams." The 
 " Royal Irish twaddlers must surely feel some compunction now, when they look back 
 on their paltry transactions in the matter of the " prize essay ; " and though we do not 
 expect much from M Tom Brown the younger," or " Tom Little," the author of sundry 
 Tomfudgeries and Tomfooleries, still it would not surprise us if he now felt the necessity 
 of atoning for his individual misconduct by doing appropriate penance in a white sheet or 
 a " blue and yellow " blanket when next he walks abroad in that rickety go-cart of 
 drivelling dotage, the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 While Cicero was quxstor in Sicily, he discovered in the suburbs of Syracuse the 
 neglected grave of Archimedes, from the circumstance of a symbolical cylinder indicat- 
 ing the pursuits and favourite theories of the illustrious dead. Great was his joy at the 
 recognition. No emblem will mark the sequestered spot where lies the CEdipus of the 
 Round Tower riddle— no hieroglyphic, ' 
 
 t ** Save daisies on the mould, 
 Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate. 
 His name and life's brief date." 
 
 But ye who wish for monuments to his memory, go to his native land, and there— cir- 
 cumspicitel— Glendalough, Devenish, Clondalkin, Inniscattery, rear their architectural 
 cylinders ; and each, through those mystic apertures that face the cardinal points, pro- 
 claims to the four winds of heaven, trumpet- ton gued, the name of him who solved the 
 problem of 3,000 years, and who first disclosed the drift of these erections ! 
 Fame, in the Latin poet's celebrated personification, is described as perched 
 
 " Sublimi culmine tecti, 
 Turribus aut altis," 
 
 MneidlV* 
 
 That of O'B. is pre-eminently so circumstanced. m From these proud pinnacles nothing 
 can dislodge his renown. Moore, in the recent pitiful compilation meant for "a his- 
 tory," tails of these, monuments as being so many '* astronomical indexes." He might 
 as well have said they were tubes for the purposes of gastronomy. Tis plain He knew as 
 little about their origin as he may be supposed to know of the " Hanging Tower of 
 Pisa," or the " Torre degH Asinelli, or how the nose of the beloved resembled the tower 
 of Damascus. 
 
 Concerning the subject of this memoir, suffice it to add that he was born in the kingdom 
 of Iveragh, graduated in T.CD, (having been classically "brought up at the feet of 
 the Rev. Charles Boyton) ; and fell a victim here to the intense ardour with which he 
 pursued the antiquarian researches that he loved. 
 
 *' Kerria me genuit ; studia, heu ! rapuere ; tenet nunc 
 Anglia : sed patriam turrigeram cecini." 
 
 Regent Street, August 1, 2835. 
 
io4 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VI. 
 
 % iterate* anb % $*smte. 
 
 (^rtwe/j Magazine, September 1834.) 
 
 [This, in many ways, noble evidence of Mahony's gratitude to the great and learned 
 Order to the fathers of which he owed so much of his ripe scholarship, appeared in the 
 number of Fraser containing the portrait of the Rev. George Robert Gleig, author of 
 "The Subaltern/' twelve years afterwards appointed Chaplain-General of the Forces, the 
 clerical novelist as portrayed by Maclise's pencil, hat in hand, and with his hands 
 clasped before him, all but walking out of the picture as we examine his likeness. 
 Rather incongruously, at the close of so loyal a tribute to his old masters, the Jesuits, 
 Mahony, by appending to it his version of Jean Baptiste Louis Gresset's wonderfully 
 humorous poem of "vert-Vert," affords Croquis' wicked pencil the opportunity of 
 introducing as a tailpiece to it in the 1836 edition his profane illustration of the scare in 
 the cloisters, "Toutes pensent etreala fin du monde.' Conspicuous, by the way, among 
 the finest specimens of our author's graver Latin poetry, his Ode ' in celebration of the 
 Vigil of Saint Ignatius Loyola, incidentally given in this sixth of the Prout Papers, is 
 entitled to the reader's closest consideration.] 
 
 " Alii spem gentis adultos ' 
 
 Educunt foetus: alii purissima mella 
 Stipant, et liquido distendunt nectare cellas." 
 
 Virg. Georgia IV. 
 
 "Through flowery paths 
 Skill 'd to guide youth, in haunts where learning dwells, 
 They fiU'd with honey'd lore their cloister'd cells." 
 
 Prout. 
 
 The recent massacre by a brutal populace in Madrid of fourteen Jesuits, in 
 the hall of their college of St. Isidoro, has drawn somewhat of notice, if not 
 of sympathy, to this singular order of literati, whom we never fail, for the last 
 three hundred years, to find mixed up with every political disturbance There 
 is a certain species of bird well known to ornithologists, but better still to 
 mariners, which is sure to make its appearance in stormy weather— so con- 
 stantly, indeed, as to induce among the sailors {durum genus) a belief that it is 
 the fowl that has raised the tempest. Leaving this knotty point to be settled 
 bv . Dr ' Gardner in his "Cyclopaedia," at the article of "Mother Careys 
 Chickens," we cannot help observing, meantime, that since the days of the 
 French League under Henri Trois, to the late final expulsion of the brancke 
 ainke (an event which has marked the commencement of Regina's accession 
 to the throne of literature), as well in the revolutions of Portugal as in the 
 vicissitudes of Venice, in the revocation of the edict of Nantz, in the expulsion 
 of James II. , in the severance of the Low Countries from Spain, in the invasion 
 of Africa by Don Sebastian, in the Scotch Rebellion of '45, in the conquest of 
 
China by the Tartars, in all the Irish rebellions, from Father Salmeron in 1561, 
 and Father Archer (for whom see "Pacata Hibernia"), to that anonynuus 
 Jesuit who (according to Sir Harcourt Lees) threw the bottle at the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant in the Dublin Theatre some years ago,— there is always one of this ill- 
 fated society found in the thick of the confusion — 
 
 "And whether for good, or whether for ill, 
 It is not mine to say ; 
 But still to the house of Aimindevilie 
 He abideth night and day ! 
 
 When an heir is born, he is heard to mourn, 
 
 And when ought is to befall 
 That ancient line, in the pale moonshine 
 
 He walks from hall to hall." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 However, notwithstanding the various and manifold commotions which 
 these Jesuits have confessedly kicked up in the kingdoms of Europe and the 
 commonwealth of Christendom, we, Oliver Yobke, must admit that they have 
 not deserved ill of the Republic of Letters; and therefore do we decidedly set 
 our face against the Madrid process of knocking out their brains ; for, in our 
 view of things, the pineal gland and the cerebellum are not kept in such a 
 high state of cultivation in Spain as to render superfluous a few colleges and 
 professors of the literal humaniorcs. George Knapp, the vigilant mayor of 
 Cork, was, no doubt, greatly to be applauded for demolishing with his civic 
 club the mad dogs which invested his native town ; and he would have won 
 immortal laurels if he had furthermore cleared that beautiful city of the idlers, 
 
 fossips, and cynics, who therein abound ; but it was a great mistake of the 
 ladrid folks to apply the club to the learned skulls of the few literati they 
 possessed. We are inclined to think (though full of respect for Robert 
 Southey's opinion) that, after all, Roderick was not the last of the Goths in 
 Spain. 
 
 When the Cossacks got into Paris in 1814, their first exploit was to eat up all 
 the tallow-candles of the conquered metropolis, and to drink the train oil out 
 of the lamps, so as to leave the "Boulevards" in Cimmerian darkness. By 
 murdering the schoolmasters, it would seem that the partisans of Queen 
 Christina would have no great objection to a similar municipal arrangement 
 for Madrid. But all this is a matter of national taste ; and as our gracious 
 Regika is no party to " the quadruple alliance, " she has determined to adhere 
 to her fixed system of non-intervention. 
 
 Meantime the public will peruse with some curiosity a paper from Father 
 Prout, concerning his old masters in literature. We suspect that on this 
 occasion sentimental gratitude has begotten a sort of "drop serene" in his 
 eye, for he only winks at the rogueries of the Jesuits; nor does he redden for 
 them the gridiron on which he gently roasts Dr. Lardner and Tom Moore. 
 But the great merit of the essay is, that the composer evidently had opportunities 
 of a thorough knowledge of his subject — a matter of rare, occurrence, and 
 therefore quite refreshing. He appears, indeed, to be fully aware of his van- 
 tage-ground : hence the tone of confidence, and the firm, unhesitating tenour 
 of his assertions. This is what we like to see. A chancellor of England who 
 rarely got drunk, Sir Thomas More, has left this bit of advice to folks in 
 
 general : 
 
 Wise men alwaye 
 
 affirme and say 
 
 that tis best for a man 
 diligently 
 for to apply 
 
 to the business he can, 
 
106 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 and in no wyse 
 to enterprise 
 
 another facultie. 
 A simple hatter 1 
 should not go smarter 
 
 in philosophic ; , 
 
 nor ought a peddlar 
 .become a meddlar 
 
 in theologie.* 
 
 Acting on this principle, how gladly would we open our columns to a treatise 
 by our particular friend, Marie Taglioni, on the philosophy of hops /—how 
 cheerfully would we welcome an essay on heavy wet from the pen of Dr. 
 Wade, or of Jack Reeve, or any other similarly qualified Chevalier de Malte ! 
 We should not object to a tract on gin from Charley Pearson ; nor would we 
 exclude Lord AlthOrp'S thick notions on "flummery," or Lord Brougham's 
 XXX, ideas on that mild alcohol which, for the sake of peace and quietness, 
 we. shall call"/«z." Who would not listen with attention to Irving on a 
 matter of " unknown tongues," or to O'Brien on " Round Towers ? " Verily 
 it belongeth to old Benjamin Franklin to write scientifically on the paratonnire ; 
 and his contemporary, Talleyrand, has a paramount claim to lecture on the 
 weather-cock. 
 
 " Surnite materiam vestris qui scribitis aequara 
 Viribus." 
 
 Turning finally to thee, O Prout ! truly great was thy love of frolic, but still 
 more remarkable thy wisdom. Thou wert a most rare combination of Socrates 
 and Sancho Panza, of Scarron and the venerable Bede ! What would we not 
 have given to have cracked a bottle with thee in thy hut on Watergrasshill, 
 partaking of thy hospitable "herring," and imbibing thy deep flood of know- 
 ledge with the plenitude of thy "Medoc?" Nothing gloomy, narrow, or 
 Pharisaical, ever entered into thy composition — " In wit, a man ; simplicity, a 
 child." The wrinkled brow of antiquity softened into smiles for thee ; and the 
 Muses must have marked thee in thy cradle for their own. Such is the per- 
 ' fume that breathes from thy chest of posthumous elucubrations, conveying a 
 sweet fragrance to the keen nostrils of criticism, and recalling the funeral 
 oration of the old woman in Phsedrus over her emptied flagon — 
 
 " O suavis anima ! quale te dicam bonum 
 Antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiae." 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Regent Street, ut Sept. 1834. . , 
 
 Watergrasshill, Dec 1833. 
 
 About the middle of the sixteenth century, after the vigorous arm of an 
 Augustinian monk had sounded on the banks of the Rhine that loud tocsin of 
 
 * See this excellent didactic poem printed at length in the elaborate preface to Dr. 
 Johnson's Dictionary. [Mahony should rather have said . in the sequel to the famous 
 
 5 reface entitled " The History of the English Language."] It is entitled "A merrie 
 est, how a Sarjeant would learn to play y' Frere ; by Maister Thomas More, in hys 
 youthe." [The last six lines as printed by the Doctor run— 
 Whan an hatter 
 Wyll go smatter 
 
 In philosophy, . 
 Or a pedlar 
 Ware a medlar 
 In theology.] 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 107 
 
 reform that found such responsive echo among the Gothic steeples of Germany, 
 there arose in southern Europe, as if to meet the exigency of the time, a body 
 of popish men, who have been called (assuredly by no friendly nomenclator) 
 the Janissaries of the Vatican. Professor Robertson, in hi? admirable " His- 
 tory of Charles V.," introduces a special episode concerning the said "janis- 
 saries ; " and, sinking for a time the affairs of the belligerent continent, turns 
 his grave attention to the operations of the children of Loyola. The essay 
 forms an agreeable interlude in the melodrama of contemporary warfare, and 
 is exquisitely adapted to the purpose of the professor ; whose object was, I 
 presume, to furnish his readers with a light divertimento. For surely and 
 soberly (pace tanti viri dixerim) he did not expect that his theories on the 
 origin, development, and mysterious organization of that celebrated society 
 would pass current with any save the uninitiated and the profane ; nor did he 
 ever contemplate the adoption of his speculations by any but the careless and 
 unreflecting portion of mankind. It was a capital peg on which to hang the 
 flimsy mantle of a superficial philosophy ; it was a pleasant race-ground over 
 which to canter on the gentle back of a metaphysical hobby-horse : but what 
 could a Presbyterian of Edinburgh, even though a pillar of the kirk, know 
 about the inmost and most recondite workings of Catholic freemasonry? 
 What could he tell of Jerusalem, he being a Samaritan? Truly, friend 
 Robertson, Father Prout would have taken the liberty, had he been in the 
 historical workshop where thou didst indite that ilk, of acting the unceremonious 
 part of " Cynthius " in the eclogue : 
 
 "Aurem 
 Vellit et admonuit, ' Pastorem, Tityre, pingues 
 Pascere oportet oves, deductum dicere carmen. ' " 
 
 What could have possessed the professor ? Did he ever go through the 
 Course of " spiritual exercises f" Did he ever eat a peck of salt with Loyola's 
 intellectual and highly disciplined sons? "Had he ever manifested his con- 
 science t " Did his venturous foot ever cross the threshold of the Jesuitical 
 sanctuary? Was he deeply versed in the " ratio studiorum?" Had his ear 
 ever drank the mystic whisperings of the monita secreta t No I Then why the 
 deuce did he sit down to write about the Jesuits? Had he not the Brahmins 
 of India at his service ? Could he not take up the deryishes of Persia? or the 
 bonzes of Japan ? or the illustrious brotherhood of Bohemian gipsies ? or the 
 " ancient order of Druids " ? or all of them together? But, in the name of 
 Cornelius a Lapide, why did he undertake to write about the Jesuits? 
 
 I am the more surprised at the learned historian's thus indulging in the 
 Homeric luxury of a transient nap, as he generally is broad awake, .and scans 
 with scrutinizing eye the doings of his fellow-men through several centuries of 
 interest. To talk about matters of which he must necessarily be ignorant, never 
 occurs (except in this case) to his comprehensive habit of thought : and it was 
 reserved for modern days to produce that school of writers who industriously 
 employ their pens on topics the most exalted above their range of mind, and 
 the least adapted to their powers of illustration. The more ignorance, the 
 more audacity. " Prince Puckler Muskaw " and "Lady Morgan" furnish the 
 beau idial of this class of scribblers. Let them get but a peep at the "toe of 
 Hercules," and they will produce forthwith an accurate mezzotinto drawing of 
 his entire godship. Let them get a footing in any country in the habitable globe 
 for twenty-four hours, and their volume of "France," " England," " Italy," or 
 " Belgium " is ready for the press. i, 
 
 " Oh give but a glance, let a vista but gleam. 
 Of any given country, and mark how they'll feel ! " 
 
 It is not necessary that they should know the common idiom of the natives, 
 
108 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 or even their own language grammatically ; for Lady Morgan (aforesaid) stands 
 convicted, in her printed rhapsodies, nf being very little acquainted with French, 
 and not at all with Italian : while her English, of which every one can judge, 
 is poor enough. The Austrian authorities shut the gates of Germany against 
 her impostures, not relishing the idea of such audacious humbug : in truth, 
 what could she have done at Vienna, not knowing German ; though perhaps 
 her obstetric spouse, Sir Charles, can play on the German flute? 
 
 " Lasciami por' nella terra il piede 
 E vider' quest! inconosciuti Hdi, 
 Vider' le gente, e il colto di lor fede, 
 E tutto quello onde uom saggio m' invidi, 
 
 guando mi giovera narrare altrui 
 5 novita vedute, e dire, 'iofuil* " 
 
 Tasso, Gerus. Lit. cant, is, st. 38. 
 
 There is in the county of Kildare a veritable Jesuits' college (of whose exist- 
 ence Sir Harcourt Lees is well satisfied, having often denounced it) : it is called 
 "Clongowes Wood;" and even the sacred " Groves of Blarney " do not so 
 well deserve the honours of a pilgrimage as thi: haunt of classic leisure and 
 studious retirement. Now Lady Morgan wanted to explore the learned cave of 
 these literary coenobites, and no doubt would have written a book, entitled 
 "Jesuitism in all its Branches," on her return to Dublin ; but the sons of 
 Loyola smelt a rat, and acted on the principle inculcated in the legend of St. 
 Senanus (Colgan. Acta SS. Hyb.) : 
 
 " Quid fremitus 
 Commune est cum monachis? 
 Nee te nee ullam aliam 
 Admittamus in insulam." 
 
 For which Prout's blessing on 'em 1 Amen. 
 
 In glaring contrast and striking opposition to this system of forwardness and 
 effrontery practised by the "lady" and the "prince," stands the exemplary 
 conduct of Denny Mullins. Denny is a patriot and a breeches-maker in the 
 town of Cork, the oracle of the "Chamber of Commerce," and looked up to 
 with great reverence by the radicals and sans culottes who swarm in that beau- 
 tiful city. The excellence of his leather hunting unmentionables is admitted by 
 the Mac-room fox-hunters ; while his leather gaiters and his other straps are 
 approved of by Tohn Cotter of the branch bank of Ireland. But this is a mere 
 parenthesis. Now when the boys in the Morea were kicking against the Sub- 
 lime Porte, to the great delight of Joe Hume and other Corinthians, a grand 
 political dinner occurred in the beautiful capital of Munster ; at which, after 
 the usual flummery about Marathon and the Peloponnesus, the health of Prince 
 Ypsilanti and " Success to the Greeks " was given from the chair. There was 
 a general call for Mullins to speak on this toast ; though why he should be 
 selected none could tell, unless for the reason which caused the Athenians to 
 banish Aristides, viz. his being " too honest." Denny rose and rebuked their 
 waggery by protesting, that, " though he was a plain man, he could always gjve 
 a reason for what he was about. As to the modern Greeks, he would think 
 twice before he either trusted them or refused them credit. He knew little about 
 their forefathers, except what he had read in an author called Pope's ' Homer,' 
 who says they were ' well-gaitered ;' and he had learned to respect them. But 
 latterly, to call a man a ' Greek ' was, in his experience of the world, as bad as 
 to call him 'a Jesuit;' though, in both cases, few people had ever any personal 
 knowledge of a real Jesuit or a bona, fide Grecian." Such was the wisdom of 
 the Aristides of Cork. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is not my intention to enter on the debatable ground of " the 
 order's" moral or political character. Cerutti, the secretary of Mirabeau (whose 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 109 
 
 faieral oration he was chosen to pronounce in the church of St. Eustache, April 
 4, 1791), has written most eloquently on that topic ; and in the whole range of 
 French polemics I know nothing so full of manly logic and genuine energy of 
 style as his celebrated " Apologie des Jesuites" (8vo. Soleure, 1778). He after- 
 wards conducted, with Rabaud St. Etienne, that firebrand newspaper, La Fe nil It 
 Villageoise, in which there was red-hot enthusiasm enough to get all the chateaux 
 round Paris burnt : but the work of his youth remains an imperishable perform- 
 ance. My object is simply to consider " the Jesuits " in connection with litera- 
 ture. None would be more opposed than 1 to the, introduction of polemics 
 into the domain of the " belles lettres," or to let angry disputation find its way 
 into the peaceful vale of Tempe\ 
 
 *' Pour changer en champ-clos l'harmonieux vallon ! " 
 
 MllXEVOYE. 
 
 The precincts of Parnassus form a "city of refuge," where political and 
 religious differences can have no access, where the angry passions subside, and 
 the wicked cease from troubling. Wherefore to the devil, its inventor, I be- 
 queath the Gunpowder Plot ; and I shall not attempt to rake up the bones of 
 Guy Faux, or disturb the ashes of Doctor Titus :— not that Titus, " the delight 
 of the human race," who considered a day as lost when not signalized by some 
 benefaction ; but Titus Oates, who could not sleep quiet on his pillow at night 
 unless he had hanged a Jesuit in the moming. 
 
 I have often in the course of these papers introduced quotations from the 
 works of the Jesuit Gresset, the kind and enlightened friend of my early years ; 
 and to that pure fountain of the most limpid poetry of France I shall again 
 have occasion to return : but nothing more evinces the sterling excellence of 
 this illustrious poet's mind than his conduct towards the "order," of which he 
 had been an ornament until matters connected with the press caused his with- 
 drawal from that society. His "Adieux aux Jesuites" are on record, and 
 deserve the admiration which they excited at that period. A single passage will 
 indicate the spirit of this celebrated composition : 
 
 " Je dois tous mes regrets aux sages que je quitte ! 
 J'en perds avec douleur l'entretien vertueux ; 
 Et si dans leurs foyers desormais je n'habite, 
 
 Mon creur me survit aupres d'eux. 
 Car ne les crois point tels que la main de l'envie 
 
 Les peint a des yeux prevenus : 
 Si tu ne les connais que sur ce qu'en publie 
 La tenebreuse calomnie, 
 lis te sont encore inconnus !" 
 
 To the sages I leave here's a heartfelt farewell ! 
 Twas a blessing within their loved cloisters to dwell, a 
 
 And my dearest affections shall ding round them still : 
 Full gladly I mix'd their blessed circles among. 
 And oh ! need not the whisper of Envy's foul tongue ; 
 
 If you list but to her, you must know them but ill. 
 
 But to come at once to the pith and substance of the present inquiry, viz. 
 the influence of the Jesuits on the belles lettres. It is one of the striking facts 
 we meet with in tracing the history of this "order," and which D' Israeli may 
 do well to insert in the next edition of his " Curiosities of Literature," that 
 the founder of the most learned, and by far the most distinguished literary 
 corporation that ever arose in the world, was an old soldier who took up his 
 " Latin Grammar" when past the age of thirty; at which time of life Don 
 Ignacio de Loyola had his leg shattered by an eighteen-pounder, while 
 defending the citadel of Painpeluna against the French. The knowledge of 
 this interesting truth may encourage the great captain of the age, whom I do 
 not yet despair of beholding in a new capacity, covering his laurelled brow 
 
1 10 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 with a doctor's cap, and filling the chancellor's chair to the great joy of the 
 public and the special delight of Oxford., 1 have seen more improbable 
 events than this take place in my experience of the world. Be that as it 
 may,, this lieutenant in the Cacadores of his imperial majesty Charles V., 
 called into existence by the vigour of his mind a race of highly educated 
 followers. He was the parent-stock (or, if you will, the primitive block) 
 from which so many illustrious chips were hewn during the XVIIth century. 
 If he had not intellect for his own portion, he most undeniably created it 
 around him : he gathered to his standard men of genius and ardent spirits ; he 
 knew how to turn their talents to the best advantage (no ordinary knowledge), 
 and, like Archimedes at Syracuse, by the juxtaposition of reflectors, and the 
 skilful combination of mirrors, so as to converge into a focus and concentrate 
 the borrowed rays of the sun, he contrived to damage the enemy's fleet and 
 fire the galleys of Marcellus. Other founders of monastic orders enlisted the 
 prejudices, the outward senses, and not unfrequently the fanaticism of man- 
 kind ; their appeal was to that love for the marvellous inherent to the human 
 breast, and that latent pride which lurked long ago under the torn blanket of 
 Diogenes, and which would have tempted Alexander to set up a rival tub. 
 But Loyola's quarry was the cultivated mind ; and he scorned to work his 
 purpose by any meaner instrumentality. When in the romantic hermitage of 
 our Lady of Montserrat he suspended for ever over the altar his helmet and 
 his sword, and in the spirit of most exalted chivalry resolved to devote him- 
 self to holier pursuits— one eagle glance at the state of Europe, just fresh 
 from the revival of letters under Leo X., taught him how and with what 
 weapons to encounter the rebel Augustinian monk, and check the pro- 
 gress of disaffection. A short poem by an old schoolfellow of mine, who 
 entered the order in 1754, and died a missionary in Cochin China, may 
 illustrate these views. The Latin shows excellent scholarship; and my attempt 
 at translation can give but a feeble idea of the original. 
 
 PERVIGILIUM LOYOLA DON IGNACIO LOYOLA'S VIGIL 
 
 In Maria Sacello, 1522. In the Chapel of cur Lady of Montserrat. 
 
 Cum bellicosus Cantaber e tholo When at thy shrine, most holy maid ! 
 
 Suspendit ensem, " Non ego lugubri The Spaniard hung his votive blade, 
 Defuncta bello," dixit, " arma And bared his helmed brow — 
 
 Degener aut timidus perire Not that he fear'd war's visage grim, 
 
 Miles resigno. Me nova buccina, %^'±^i d fS S. 
 
 Me non profani tessera pralii Had aught to daunt, I trow ; 
 
 Deposcit : et sacras secutus, .. GI ,» he cried, "with thee I've done I 
 
 Ausprciomehore partes. Fame ! thy bright theatres I shun, 
 Non indecorus transfuga, glorias To tread fresh pathways now : 
 
 Signis relictis, nil cupientium To track thy footsteps, Saviour God ! 
 
 Succedo castris, jam futurus With throbbing heart, with feet unshod : 
 Splendidior sine clade victor. Hear and record my vow. 
 
 Domare mentes, stringerfe fervidis Y es, Thou shall reign ! Chain'd to thy throne. 
 
 Sacro catems ingeniom throno, The mind of man & y sw shaI1 ovm ' 
 Et cuncta^terrarum subacta And to its conquer0 r bow. 
 
 Corda Deo dare gestlt ardor : Genius his lyre to Thee shall lift, 
 
 Fraudis magistros artibus asmulis And intellect its choicest gift 
 
 Deprxliando stemere ; sed magis . Proudly on Thee bestow." 
 
 "s^st,... . ste&St&^ kndt - 
 
 Tellus gigantis sentit iter : simul A vivid furnace glow ; 
 
 Idola nutant, fana ruunt, micat Forth to his task the giant sped, 
 
 Christi triumphantis trophxum, Earth shook abroad beneath his tread. 
 
 Cruxque novos numerat clientes. And idols were laid low. 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. Ill [ 
 
 Videre gentes Xamerii jubar India repair' d half Europe's loss : 
 
 Igni corusco nubila dividens : O'er a new hemisphere the Cross 
 
 Ccepitque mirans Christianos Shone in the azure sky ; 
 
 Per medios fluitare Ganges. And, from the isles of far Japan 
 
 . To the broad Andes, won o'er man 
 A bloodless victory ! 
 
 Professor Robertson gravely opines that Ignatius was a mere fanatic, who 
 never contemplated the subsequent glories of his order ; and that, were he to 
 have revisited the earth a century after his decease, when his institute was 
 making such a noise in the world, he would have started back, 
 
 " Scared at the sound himself had made." 
 Never did the historian adopt a more egregious blunder. Had he had leisure 
 or patience to con over the original code, called Institutvm Soc. Tesv, he 
 would have found in every paragraph of that profound and crafty volume the 
 germs of wondrous future development ; he would have discovered the long- 
 hidden but most precious "soul of the licentiate Garcias " under the inscription 
 that adorns the title-page* Yes, the mind of Loyola lies embalmed in the 
 leaves of that mystic tome; and the ark of cedar-wood, borne by the children 
 of Israel along the sands of the desert, was not more essential to their happy 
 progress unto the land of promise than that grand depository of the founder's 
 wisdom was to the march of intellect among the Jesuits. 
 
 Before his death, this old veteran of Charles V,, this illiterate lieutenant, 
 this crippled Spaniard from the "imminent and' deadly breach " of Pampe- 
 luna (for he too was lame, like Tyrtaeus, Talleyrand, Lord Byron, Sir W. 
 Scott, Tamerlane, and Appius Claudius), had the satisfaction of counting 
 twelve "provinces" of his order established iri Europe, Asia, Brazils, and 
 Ethiopia. The members of the society amounted at that epoch (31st July, 
 1556), sixteen years after its foundation, to seven thousand educated men. 
 Upwards of one hundred colleges had been opened. Xavier had blown 
 the trumpet of the Gospel over India; Bobadilla had made a noise in 
 Germany; Gaspar Nunes had gone to Egypt ; Alphonso Salmeron to Ireland. 
 Meantime the schools of the new professors were attracting, in every part of 
 Europe, crowds of eager pupils : industry and' zeal were reaping their best 
 reward in the visible progress of religion as well as literature : 
 
 '* Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella ! " 
 
 At the suppression of the order, it numbered within a fraction of twenty 
 thousand well-trained, well-disciplined; and well-taught members. 
 
 There is an instinct in great minds that tells them of their sublime 
 destinies, and gives them secret but certain warning of their ultimate gran- 
 deur : like Brutus, they have seen a spirit of prophetic import, whether for 
 good or evil, who will meet them at Philippi : like Plato, they keep correspon- 
 dence with a familiar Jai/iuv : like Napoleon, they read their meridian glories 
 of successful warfare in the morning siin;— sure as fate, Loyola saw the future 
 laurels of his order, and placed full reliance on the anticipated energy of his 
 followers yet unborn : the same reliance which ' that giant fowl of Arabia, the 
 ostrich, must entertain, when, depositing its monstrous egg on the sands, it 
 departs for ever, leaving to the god- of day the care of hatching into life its 
 vigorous young. 
 
 Industry, untiring ardour, immortal energy were the characteristics of these 
 learned enthusiasts. Some cleared away the accumulated rubbish of the 
 friars, their ignorant predecessors ; and these were the pioneers of literature. 
 Some gave editions of the Fathers or the Classics, hitherto pent up in the 
 womb of MS. ; these were the accoucheurs of knowledge. Others, for the 
 use of schools, carefully expurgated the received authors of antiquity, and 
 
112 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 suppressed every prurient passage, performing, in usum Dclphini, a very 
 meritorious task. I need not say to what class of operators in surgery these 
 worthy fathers belonged. Some wrote "commentaries" on Scripture, which 
 Junius undervalues ; but with all his acquirements, I would sooner take the 
 guidance of Cornelius a Lapide in matters of theology. Finally, some wrote 
 original works ; and the shelves of every European library groan under the 
 folios of the Jesuits. 
 
 There is not, perhaps, a more instructive and interesting subject of inquiry 
 in the history of the human mind than the origin, progress, and workings of 
 what are called monastic institutions. It is a matter on which I have bestowed 
 not a little thought, and I may one day plunge into the depths thereof in a 
 special dissertation. But I cannot help adverting here to some causes that 
 raised the order of the Jesuits so far above all the numerous and fantastical 
 fraternities to which the middle ages had previously given birth. Loyola saw 
 the vile abuses which had crept into these institutions, and bad the sagacity to 
 eschew the blunders of his predecessors. Idleness was the most glaring evil 
 under which monks and friars laboured in those days ; and hence incessant 
 activity was the watchword of his sons. The rules of other " orders " begot a 
 grovelling and vulgar debasement of mind, and were calculated to mar and 
 cripple the energies of genius, if it ever happened exceptionally to lurk under 
 " the weeds of Francis or of Dominick :" but all the regulations of the Jesuits 
 had a tendency to develop the aspirings of intellect, and to expand the scope 
 and widen the career of talent. The system of mendicancy adopted by each 
 holy brotherhood as the ground-work of its operations, did not strike Loyola 
 as much calculated to give dignity or manlimess to the human character ; hence 
 he left his elder brethren in quiet possession of that interesting department. 
 When cities, provinces, or kings founded a Jesuits' college, they were sure of 
 getting value in return ; hence most of their collegiate halls were truly magnifi- 
 cent, and they ought to have been so. When of old a prince wished to 
 engage Zeno as tutor to his son, and sought to lower the terms of the 
 philosopher by stating, that with such a sum he could purchase a slave, "Do 
 so, by all means, and you will have a pair of them," was the pithy reply of 
 the indignant Stoic. 
 
 I do not undervalue the real services of some " orders " of earlier institu- 
 tion. I have visited with feelings of deep respect the gorgeous cradle of the 
 Benedictine institute at Monte Cassino ; and no traveller has explored Italy's 
 proud monuments of Roman grandeur with more awe than I did that 
 splendid creation of laborious and persevering men. I have seen with less 
 pleasure the wr It of Bruno, la Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble; he 
 excluded learning from the solitude to which he drew his followers : but I 
 have hailed with enthusiasm the sons of Bernard on the Alps ministering to 
 the wants of the pilgrim ; and I knew, that while they prowled with their 
 mountain-dogs in quest of wayworn travellers, their brethren were occupied 
 far off in the mines of Mexico and Peru, soothing the toils of the encaverned 
 slave. But while I acknowledged these benefactions, I could not forget the 
 crowds of lazy drones whom the system has fostered in Europe : the humor- 
 ous lines of Berchoux, in his clever poem "La Gastronomic" involuntarily 
 crossed my mind : 
 
 " Oui, j'avais un bon oncle en votre ordre, sieve" 
 D'un mente eclatant, gastronome acheve ; 
 Souvent il metalait son brillant reiectoire, 
 C'&ait la du couvent la veritable gloire ! 
 Garni des biens exquis qu'enfante Tunivers, 
 Vins d'un bouquet celeste, et mets d'un gout divers I 
 
 " Clottres majestueux ! fortune's monasteres ! 
 Retraite du repos des vertus solitaires, 
 
Je vous ai vu tomber, le cceur gros des soupirs ; 
 Mais je vous ai garde d'cternels souvenirs ! — 
 Je scais qu'on a prouve que vous aviez grand tort, 
 Mais que ne prouve-t-on pas quand on est le plus fort ? " 
 
 This last verse is a capital hit, in its way. 
 
 But to return to the Jesuits. Their method of study, or ratio studiorum, 
 compiled by a select quorum of the order, under the guidance of the pro- 
 found and original Father Maldonatus,* totally broke up the old machinery 
 of the schools, and demolished for ever the monkish fooleries of contemporary 
 pedagogues. Before the arrival of the Jesuits in the field of collegiate exer- 
 cises, the only skill applauded or recognized in that department consisted in a 
 minute and servile adherence to the deep-worn tracks left by the passage of 
 Aristotle's cumbrous waggon over the plains of learning. The well-known 
 fable of Gay, concerning 
 
 "A Grecian youth of talents rare,'* 
 
 whom he describes as excelling in the hippodrome of Athens by the fidelity 
 with which he could drive his chariot-wheels within an inch of the exact circle 
 left on the race-course by those who had preceded, was the type and model of 
 scholastic excellence. The Jesuits, in every university to which they could get 
 access, broke new ground. Various and fierce were the struggles against those 
 invaders of the territory and privileges of Bceotia ; dulness opposed his old 
 bulwark, the vis inertia, in vain. Indefatigable in their pursuit, the new 
 professors made incessant inroads into the domains of ignorance and sloth ; 
 awfully ludicrous were the dying convulsions of the old universitarian system, 
 that had squatted like an incubus for so many centuries on Paris, Prague, 
 Alcala, Valladolid, Padua, Cracow, and Coimbra. But it was in the halls of 
 their own private colleges that they unfolded all their excellence, and toiled 
 unimpeded for the revival of classic studies. " Consult scholas Jesuitarum," 
 exclaims the Lord Chancellor Bacon, who was neither a quack nor a swiper, 
 but " spoke the words of sobriety and truth." (Vide Opus de Dignit. Scient. 
 lib. vii.) And Cardinal Richelieu has left on record, in that celebrated docu- 
 ment the "Testament Politique," part i. chap, a, sect. 10, his admiration of 
 the rivalry in the race of science which the order created in France. 
 
 Forth from their new college of Lafltehe came their pupil Descartes, to dis- 
 turb the existing theories of astronomy and metaphysics, and start new and 
 unexampled inquiries. Science until then had wandered a captive in the 
 labyrinth of the schools ; but the Cartesian Daedalus fashioned wings for 
 himself and for her, and boldly soared among the clouds. Tutored in their 
 college of Fayenza (near Rimini), the immortal Torricelli reflected honour on 
 his intelligent instructors by the invention of the barometer, a.d. 1620. Of 
 the education of Tasso they may well be proud. Justus Lipsius, trained in 
 their earliest academies, did good service to the cause of criticism, and cleared 
 off the cobwebs of the commentators and grammarians^ Soon after, Cassini 
 rose from the benches of their tuition to preside over the newly established 
 Observatoire in the metropolis of France; while the illustrious Tournefort 
 issued from their halls to carry a searching scrutiny into the department of 
 botanical science, then in its infancy. The Jesuit Kircherf meantime astonished 
 his contemporaries by his untiring energy and sagacious mind, equally con- 
 spicuous in its most sublime as in its trifling efforts, whether he predicted with 
 precision the eruption of a volcano, or invented that ingenious plaything the 
 " Magic Lantern." Father BoscovichJ shone subsequently with equal lustre : 
 
 * See Bayle's Diet., art Maldonat. 
 
 t Mundus Subterraneus, Amst. 1664, 2 vols. foj. China Illustrat., ibid. 1667, folio. 
 De Usu Obeliscor. Roma, 7666, folio. Museum Kircher, ibid. 1709, folio. 
 X Born at Ragusa, on the Adriatic ; taught by the Jesuits, in their college in that 
 
i 14 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 and ft was a novel scene, in 1759, to find a London Royal Society preparing to 
 send out a Jesuit to observe the transit of Venus in California. His pane- 
 gyric, from .the pen of the great Lalande, fills the Journal des Savans, 
 February 1792. To Fathers Riccioli and De Billy science is also deeply in- 
 debted. 
 
 Forth from their college of Dijon, in Burgundy, came Bossuet to rear his 
 mitred front at the court of a despot, and to fling the bolts of his tremendous 
 oratory among a crowd of elegant voluptuaries. Meantime the tragic muse of 
 Corneille was cradled in their college of Rouen ; and, under the classic guid- 
 ance of the fathers who taught at the College de Clermont, in Paris, Moliere 
 grew up to be the most exquisite of comic writers. The lyric poetry Of Jean 
 Baptiste Rousseau was nurtured by them in their college of Louis le Grand. 
 And in that college the wondrous talent of young " Francois Arouet " was also 
 cultivated by these holy men, who little dreamt to what purpose the subsequent 
 "Voltaire " would convert his abilities — 
 
 " Non hos quffisitum munus in usus." 
 
 JLneid. IV. 
 
 D'Olivet, Fontenelle, Crebillon, Le Franc de Pompignan— there is scarcely a 
 name known to literature during the seventeenth century which does not bear 
 testimony to their prowess in the province of education — no profession. for 
 which they did not adapt their scholars. For the bar they tutored the illus- 
 trious Lamoignon (the Maecenas of Racine and Boileau). It was they who 
 taught the vigorous ideas of D'Argenson how to shoot ; they who breathed into 
 the young Montesquieu his "Esprit;'" they who reared those ornaments of 
 French jurisprudence, Nicoliii, Mole, Seguier, and Amelot. 
 
 Their disciples could Wield the sword: . Was the great Conde5 deficient in 
 warlike spirit for having studied among them ? was Marechal Villars a discredit- 
 able pupil? Need I give the list of their other belligerent scholars? — De 
 Grammont, De BoufflerSj De Rohan, De Brissac, De Etrees, De Soubise, De 
 Crequi, De Luxembourg,— in France alone. 
 
 Great names these, no doubt ; but literature is the title of this paper, and 
 to that I would principally advert as the favourite and peculiar department of 
 their excellence. True, the Society devoted itself most to church history and 
 ecclesiastical learning, such being the proper pursuit of a sacerdotal body ; and 
 success in this, as in every study, waited on their industry. The archaiologist 
 is familiar with the works of Father Petavius, whom Grotius calls his friend ; 
 with the labours of Fathers Sirmond, Bolland , Hardouin, Labbe, Parennin, 
 and Tourncmine. The admirer of polemics (if there be any such a', this time 
 of day) is acquainted with Bellarmin, Menochius, Suarez, Tolet, Becan, Sheff- 
 maker, and (last, though not least) O ! Cornelius b, Lapide, with thee ? But in 
 classic lore, as well as in legendary, the Jesuits excelled. Who can pretend to 
 the character of a literary man that has not read Tiraboschi and his "Storia 
 della Letteratura d'ltalia," Bouhours on the " Manniere de bien penser," Bru- 
 moy on the " Theatre des Gtecs," Vavassour " de Ludicri Dictione," Rapin's 
 
 town ; entered the order at the age of sixteen ; was sent to Rome, and forthwith was 
 made professor of mathematics in the Archigymn. Rom.; was employed by the Papal 
 Government in the measurement of the arc of meridian, which he traced from Rome to 
 Riming assisted by an English Jesuit, Mayer ; in 1750, employed by the Republic of 
 Lucca tn a matter relating to their marshes ; .subsequently, by the Emperor of Austria ; 
 and was elected, in 1760, a fellow of the London Royal Society, to whom he dedicated 
 his poem on the " Eclipses," a clever manual of astronomy. His grand work on the 
 properties of matter {Lex Continuitatis) was printed at Rome, 4to, 1754. We have 
 also from his pen, Dioptrica, Vinci. 1767 ; Mathesis Universa, Venetiis, 1757 ; Lens et 
 Telescop., Rom. 1755 J Theoria Philos. Natur., Vienna, 1758. The French Government 
 invited him to Pans, where he died in X793, in the sentiments of unfeigned piety which 
 he ever-displayed. . ..„,»■ 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 115 
 
 poem on the "Art of Gardening" (the model of those by Dr. Darwin and 
 Abbe 1 Delille), Vaniere's " Pradium Rusticum," Tursellin "de Particulis 
 Latini Sermonis," and Casimir Sarbievi's Latin Odes, the nearest approach to 
 Horace in modern times ? What shall I say of Poree (Voltaire's master), of 
 Sanadon, of Desbillons, Sidronius, Jouvency, and the "journalistes de Tre- 
 voux?" 
 
 They have won in France, Italy, and Spain, the palm of pulpit eloquence. 
 Logic, reason, wisdom, and piety, dwelt in the soul of Bourdaloue, and flowed 
 copiously from his lips. Lingendes, Cheminais, De la Rue, were at the head 
 of their profession among the French; while the pathetic and unrivalled 
 Segneri took the lead among the eloquent orators of Italy. In Spain, a Jesuit 
 has done more to purify the pilfit of that fantastic country than Cervantes to 
 clear the brains of its chivalry; for the comic romance of " Fray Gerundio" 
 (Friar Gerund), by the Jesuit Isla, exhibiting the ludicrous rantingof the eowled 
 fraternity of that day, has had the effect, if not of giving eloquence to clods of 
 the valley, at least of putting dpwn absurdity and presumption. 
 
 They wooed and won the muse of history, sacred and profane. Sfrada* in 
 Flanders, Maffei+ at Genoa, Mariana % in Seville. In France, Maimbourg.g 
 Daniel, || Boujeant.lf Charlevoix,** Berruyer.+t D'Orleans.JJ Ducerceau,§§ 
 and Du Halde,|||| shed light on the paths of historical inquiry which they 
 severally trod. I purposely omit the ex-Jesuit Raynal. 
 
 They shone in art as well as in science. Father Pozziwas one of Rome's 
 best painters. A Jesuit was employed in the drainage of the Pontine marshes ; 
 another to devise plans for sustaining the dome of St. Peter's, when it threat- 
 ened to crush its massive supports. In naval tactics (a subject estranged from 
 sacerdotal researches! the earliest work on the strategy proper to ships of the 
 line was written by Pere le Hoste, known to middies as *' the Jesuits' book," its 
 French title being "Traite des Evolutions Navales." The first hint of aerial 
 navigation came from Padre Lana, in his work de Arte Prodromo, Milan. 
 Newton acknowledges his debt to Father Grimaldi, de Lumine Coloribus et 
 /ride, Bononise, 1665, for his notions on the inflexion of light. The best edi- 
 tion of Newton's Principia was brought out at Geneva, 1739-60, by the Jesuits 
 Lesueur and Jaquier, in 3 vols. In their missions through Greece, Asia Minor, 
 and the islands of the Archipelago, they were the best antiquaries, botanists, 
 and mineralogists. They became watchmakers, as well as mandarins, in China ; 
 they were astronomers on the "plateau" of Thibet; they taught husbandry 
 and mechanics in Canada ; while in. their own celebrated and peculiar conquest 
 (since fallen into the hands of Doctor Francia) on the plains of Paraguay, 
 they taught the theory and practice of civil architecture, civil economy, farming, 
 tailoring, and all the trades of civilized life. They played on the fiddle and on 
 the flute, to draw the South American Indians from the forests into their villages ; 
 and the story of Thebes rising to the sound of Amphion's lyre ceased to be a 
 fable. 
 
 We find them in Europe and at the antipodes, in Siam and at St. Omer's, in 
 
 * "DeBeiloBelgico," 
 
 t " Rerum Indicar. Hist" 
 
 X " Histor. di Espana." De Regis Institutione, Toledo, 1509. 
 
 § " Histoire de I'Arianisme, des Iconcclastes, des Croisades, du Calvinism, de la 
 Ligue." 
 
 II " Hist, de France." "De la Milice Francaise." 
 
 IT "Hist. duTraitadeWestphalie." " Ame des Betes," &c 
 " ** "Hist, du Paraguay, dujapori/de St. Domihtue." 
 
 +t "Du Peuple de Dieu." 
 
 t{ " Revolutions d'Angleterre." 
 
 S§ "Conjuration de Rienzi," &c, &C. 
 
 Illl 1 " Description Geogr. Histor. Politic, et Physique de la Chine." Loud. 1742, s vols, 
 folio. 
 
Il6 The Works of Fattier Prout. 
 
 1540 and in 1830 — everywhere the same. Lainfe preached before the Council 
 of Trent in 1560; Rev. Peter Kenney was admired by the North American 
 Congress not many years ago. Tiraboschi was librarian of the Brera in 1750 : 
 Angelo Ma! (ex-Jesuit) is librarian of the Vatican in 1833. By the bye, they 
 were also capital apothecaries. Who has not heard of Jesuits' bark, Jesuits' 
 drops, Jesuits' powders, Jesuits' cephalic snuff f 
 
 " Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? " 
 
 SEneid. I. 
 
 And, alas ! must I add, who has not heard of the cuffs and buffetings, the 
 kicks and halters, which they have met with in return : 
 
 " Quae caret ora cruore nostra ? " 
 
 Hor. lib. ii. ode 1. 
 For, of course, no set of men on the face of God's earth have been more abused. 
 'Tis the fate of every mortal who raises himself by mother-wit above the com- 
 mon level of fools and dunces, to be hated by the whole tribe most cordially : 
 " Urit enim fulgore suo," &c 
 
 Hor. lib. ii. ep. 1. 
 
 The friars were the first to raise a hue and cry against the Jesuits, with one 
 Melchior Cano, a Dominican, for their trumpeter. Ignatius had been taken up 
 by " the Inquisition" three several times. Then came the pedants of the uni- 
 versity at Paris, whom these new professors threw into the shade. The "order" 
 was next at loggerheads with that suspicious gang of intriguers, the council and 
 doge of Venice ; the Jesuits were expelled the republic* Twice they were 
 expelled from France ; but, thrust out of the door, they came back through the 
 window. They encountered, like Paul, "stripes, perils, and prisons," in 
 Poland, in Germany, in Portugal, and Hungary. They were hanged by dozens 
 in England. Their march for two centuries through Europe was only to be 
 compared to the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon. 
 
 A remarkable energy, a constant discipline, a steady perseverance, and a 
 dignified self-respect, were their characteristics from the beginning. They did 
 not notice the pasquinades of crazy Pascal, whose " Provincial Letters," made 
 up of the raspings of antiquated theology and the scrapings of forgotten casu- 
 istry, none who knew them ever thought much of. The sermons of Bourda- 
 loue were the only answer such calumnies required ; and the order confined 
 itself to giving a new edition of the " litres edifiantes et curieuses, ecrites par 
 nos Missionaires du Levant, de la Chine, du Canada, et du Malabar." When 
 a flimsy accusation was preferred against him of Africa, 
 
 " Hunc qui 
 Duxit ab everstt meritum Carthagine nomen,'" 
 
 he acted in a similar manner, and silenced his miserable adversaries. 
 
 If ever there was an occasion on which the comparative merits of the Jesuits 
 and Jansenists could be brought to the test, it was at the outbreak of the 
 pestilential visitation that smote the city of Marseilles; and which history, 
 poetry, and piety, will never allow to be forgotten : 
 
 " Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath, 
 When nature sicken'd, and each gale was death? " 
 
 Pope's Essay on Man, ep. 4. 
 For while the Pharisees of that school fled from their clerical functions, and 
 sneaked off under some paltry pretext, the Jesuits came from the neighbouring 
 town of Aix to attend the sick and the dying ; and, under the orders of that 
 
 * In Bayle's Dictionary, among the notes appended to the article on Abelard, will be 
 found the real cause of their expulsion ; they may be proud of it. 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 117 
 
 gallant and disinterested bishop, worked, while life was spared them, in the 
 cause of humanity. Seven of them perished in the exercise of this noblest 
 duty, amid the blessings of their fellow-men. The bishop himself, De Belzunce, 
 had not only studied under the Jesuits, but had been a member of the order 
 during the early part of his ecclesiastical career at Aix, in 1691. 
 
 Long ago, that noblest emanation of Christian chivalry — an order in which 
 valorous deeds were familiar as the " matin song" or the "vesper hymn" — the 
 Templars, fell the victims of calumny, and were immolated amid the shouts of 
 a vulgar triumph ; but history, keen and scrutinizing, has revealed the true 
 character of the conspiracy by which the vices of a few were made to swamp 
 and overwhelm, in the public eye, the great mass of virtue and heroism which 
 constituted that refined and gentlemanly association ; and a tardy justice has 
 been rendered to Jacques Molay and his illustrious brethren. The day may yet 
 come when isolated instances and unauthenticated misdeeds will cease to create 
 an unfounded antipathy to a society which will be found, taking it all in all, 
 to have deserved well of mankind. This, at least, is Father Prout's honest 
 opinion ; and why should he hide it under a bushel ? 
 
 The most convincing proof of their sterling virtue is to be found in the docil- 
 ity and forbearance they evinced in promptly submitting to the decree of their 
 suppression, issued ex cathedrO, by one Ganganelli, a Franciscan friar, who had 
 got enthroned, Heaven knows how ! on the pontine chair. In every part of 
 Europe they had powerful friends, and could have "shown fight" and "died 
 game," if their respect for the successor of " the fisherman " had not been all 
 along a distinctive characteristic, even to the death. In Paraguay they could have 
 decidedly spurned the mandate of the Escurial. backed by an army of 60,000 
 Indians, devoted to their spiritual and temporal benefactors, taught the tactics 
 of Europe, and possessing, in 1750, a well-appointed train of artillery. That 
 portion of South America has since relapsed into barbarism ; and the results of 
 their withdrawal from the interior of that vast peninsula have fully justified the 
 opinion of Muratori, in his celebrated work on Paraguay, " II Christianesimo 
 felice." It was a dismal day for literature in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, when 
 their colleges were shut up ; and in France they alone could have stayed the 
 avalanche of irreligion ; for, by presenting Christianity to its enemies clad in 
 the panoply of Science, they would have awed the scoffer, and confounded the 
 philosophe. But the Vatican had spoken. They bowed ; and quietly dispers- 
 ing through the cities of the continent, were welcomed and admired by every 
 friend of science and of piety. The body did not cease to do good even after 
 its dissolution in 1763, and, like the bones of the prophet, worked miracles of 
 usefulness even in the grave.* 
 
 Contrast their exemplary submissiveness with the frenzy and violence of their 
 old enemies the Jansenists (of which sour and Pharisaical sect Pascal was the 
 mouthpiece), when the celebrated bull Unigenilus was issued against them. 
 Never did those unfortunate wights, whom the tyrant Phalaris used to enclose 
 in his brazen cow, roar so lustily as the clique of Port Royal on the occasion 
 alluded to. It was, in fact, a most melancholy exhibition of the wildest fanati- 
 cism, combined, as usual, with the most pertinacious obstinacy. The followers 
 of Pascal were also the votaries of a certain vagabond yclept le Diacre Paris, 
 whose life was a tissue of rascality, and whose remains were said by the Jansen- 
 ists to operate wondrous cures in the churchyard of St. Medard, in one of the 
 fauxbourgs of the capital. The devotees of Port Royal flocked to the tomb of 
 the deacon, and became forthwith hysterical and inspired. The wags of Louis 
 
 * "And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, behold they spied a band of 
 robbers ; and they Cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha : and when the man 
 touched the bones of Elisha he came to life, and stood upon his feet.' 1 — 2 Kings, chap, 
 xiii. ver. 21. 
 
Il8 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 the Fifteenth's time called them " Les Coyvulsionnaires." Things rose to 
 such a height of dangerous absurdity at last that the cemetery was shut up by 
 the police ; and a wit had an opportunity of writing on the gates of the afore- 
 said churchyard this pointed epigram : 
 
 " Be par le roy, defense & Dieu, 
 D6 (aire miracles' en ce lieu." 
 
 And I here conclude this very inadequate tribute of long-remembered 
 gratitude towards the men who took such pains to drill my infant mind, and 
 who formed with plastic power whatever good or valuable quality it may 
 possess. "Si quid est in me ingenii, judices (et sentio quam sit exiguum), si 
 quae exercitatio ab optimarum artium disciplinis profecta, earum rerum fruc- 
 tum, sibi, suo jure, dtbcnt repetere." — (Cicero pro Archia, poet.) And as for 
 the friend of my youth , the accomplished Gresset, whose sincerity and kindness 
 will be ever embalmed in my memory, I cannot show my sense of his varied 
 excellencies in a more substantial way than by making an effort— a feeble one, 
 but the best I can command — to bring him before the English public in his 
 most agreeable production, the best specimen of graceful and harmless humour 
 in the literature of France. I shall upset Vert-Vert into English verse, for 
 the use of the intelligent inhabitants of these islands; though I much fear, 
 that to transplant so delicate an exotic into this frigid climate may prove an 
 unsuccessful experiment. 
 
 VERT- VERT, THE PARROT. 
 
 A POEM BY THE JESUIT CRESSET. 
 
 Hys Original Innocence. 
 
 Alas ! what evils I discern in ^ 
 
 Too great an aptitude for learning ! 
 
 And fain would all the ills unravel 
 
 That aye ensue from foreign travel ; 
 
 Far happier is the man who tarries 
 
 Quiet within his household "Lares ;*' 
 
 Read, and you'll find how virtue vanishes, 
 
 How foreign vice all goodness banishes. 
 
 And how abroad young heads will grow dizzy, 
 
 Proved in the underwritten Odyssey. 
 
 In old Nevers, so famous for iK 
 Dark narrow streets and Gothic turrets, 
 Close on the brink of Loire's young flood, 
 Flourished a convent sisterhood 
 Of Ursulines. Now in this order 
 A parrot lived as parlour-boarder ; 
 Brought in his childhood from the Antilles, 
 And sheltered under convent mantles : 
 Green were his feathers, green his pinions, 
 And greener still were his opinions : 
 For vice had not yet sought to pervert 
 This bird, who had been christened Vert-Vert; 
 Nor could the wicked world defile him, 
 Safe from its snares in this asylum. 
 Fresh, in his teens, frank, gay, and gracious, 
 And, to crown all, somewhat loquacious ; 
 If we examine close, not one, or he, 
 Dad a vocation for a nunnery.* 
 
 * "Par son caquet dignc d'etre en coiwcnt." 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 119 
 
 The convent's kindness need I mention ? 
 Need X detail each fond attention. 
 Or count the tit-bits which in Lent he 
 Swallowed remorseless and in plenty ? 
 Flump was his carcase ; no, not higher 
 Fed was their confessor the friar ; 
 And some even say that our young Hector 
 Was far more loved than the " Director."* 
 Dear to each novice and each nun — 
 He was the life and soul of fun ; 
 Though* to be sure, some hags censorious 
 Would sometimes find him too uproarious. 
 What did the parrot care for those old 
 Dames, while he had for him the household ? 
 He had not yet made his " profession," 
 Nor come to years called " of discretion ; " 
 Therefore, unblamed, he ogled, flirted. 
 And romped like any unconverted' : 
 Nay sometimes, too, by the Lord Harry ! 
 He d pull their caps and ° scapulary." 
 But what in ill his tricks seemed oddest. 
 Was that at times he'd turn so modest, 
 That to all bystanders the wight 
 Appeared a finished hypocrite. , 
 In accent' he did not resemble "•' ■ ' 
 Kean, though he had the tones of Kemble 
 But fain to do the sisters' biddings. 
 He left the stage to Mrs. Siddons. 
 Poet, historian; judge, financier, ~ - - 
 Four problems at a time he'd answer — 
 He had a faculty like C*sars. - - -\ 
 Lord Althorp, baffling all his teasers, 
 Could not surpass Vert-Vert in puzzling ;, 
 "Goodrich" to him was but a goslirig.t 
 
 Placed when at table near some vestal, 
 His 'fare, be sure, was of the best all, — 
 For every sister would endeavour 
 To keep for him some sweet horsed' ceuvre. 
 Kindly at heart, in spite of vows and 
 Cloisters, a nun is worth a thousand ! 
 And aye, if Heaven would only lend her, 
 I'd have a nun for a nurse tender ! % , 
 
 Then, -when the shades of night would come on, 
 And to their cells the sister's summon, 
 Happy the favoured bne whose grotto 
 This sultan of a bird would trot to : 
 Mostly the young ones' cells he toyed in 
 (The aged sisterhood avoiding), 
 bure among all to find kind offices, — s 
 Still he was partial to the novices, ' 
 And in their cells our anchorite 
 Mostly cast anchor for the night ; 
 Perched qi\ the box $h£t held the relics, he 
 Slept without notion of indelicacy.^ 
 Rare was his luck > nor did he spoil it 
 By flying from the, morning toilet : . 
 
 * " Souvent l'oiseau l'emporta sur le Pare.'' 
 f 0. Wherefore was Lord Goodrich sty led a goose when a Chancellor ? 
 A. Because honourable members in him were sure of an anser. 
 
 ' ' '"" ' " „ Mart. Scribl. 
 
 t "I^petitssbins.lesattenfciohy fines, 
 Sont nes, dit on, chez Ies Ursulines, '* 
 
120 The Works of Father Prout, 
 
 Not that I can admit the fitness 
 Of (at the toilet) a male witness ; 
 But that I scruple in this history 
 To shroud a single fact in mystery. 
 
 Quick at all arts, our bird was rich at 
 That best accomplishment, called chit-chat ; 
 For, though brought up within the cloister, 
 His beak was not closed like an oyster, 
 But, trippingly, without a stutter, 
 The longest sentences would utter ; 
 Pious withal, and moralizing. 
 His conversation was surprising ; 
 None of your equivoques, no slander — 
 To such vile tastes he scorned to pander ; 
 But his tongue ran most smooth and nice on 
 " Deo sit laus" and " Kyrie eleison ;" m 
 The maxims he gave with best emphasis 
 Were Suarez's or Thomas & Kempis's ; 
 In Christmas carols he was famous, 
 u Orate, fratres," and " Oremus ;" 
 If in good humour, he was wont 
 To give a stave from "Think well ott't ;" * 
 Or, oy particular desire, he 
 Would chant the hymn of " Dies ira?." 
 Then in the choir he would amaze all 
 By copying the tone so nasal 
 In which the sainted sisters chanted, — 
 (At least that pious nun my aunt did.) 
 
 Hys Fatall Renowne. 
 
 The public soon began to ferret 
 The hidden nest of so much merit, 
 And, spite of all the nuns' endeavours, 
 The fame of Vert-Vert filled all Nevers; 
 Nay, from Moulines folks came to stare at 
 The wondrous talent of this parrot ; 
 And to fresh visitors ad libitum 
 Sister Sophie had to exhibit him. 
 Drest in her tidiest robes, the virgin, 
 Forth from the convent cells emerging, 
 Brings the bright bird, and for his plumage 
 First challenges unstinted homage ; 
 Then to his eloquence adverts, — 
 "What preacher's can surpass Vert-Vert's? 
 Truly in oratory few men 
 Equal this learned catechumen ; 
 Fraught with the convent's choicest lessons, 
 And stuffed with piety's quintessence ; 
 A bird most quick of apprehension, 
 With gifts and graces hard to mention : 
 Say in what pulpit can you meet 
 A Chrysostom half so discreet, 
 Who'd follow in his ghostly mission 
 So close the c Fathers and tradition V " 
 Silent meantime, the feathered hermit 
 Waits for the sister's gracious permit. 
 When, at a signal from his mentor, 
 
 Suick on a course of speech he'll enter ; 
 ot that he cares for human glory. 
 Bent but to save his auditory ; 
 
 * " Pensez-y-bien," or "Think well ott't," as translated by the titular bishop, Richard 
 Challoner, is the most generally adopted devotional tract among the Catholics of these 
 islands.— Prout. 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 121 
 
 Hence he pours forth with so much unction 
 That all his hearers feel compunction. 
 
 Thus for a time did Vert-Vert dwell 
 Safe in his holy citadelle ; 
 Scholared like any well-bicd abb£. 
 And loved by many a cloistered Hebe ; 
 You'd swear that he had crossed the same bridge 
 As any youth brought up in Cambridge.* 
 Other monks starve themselves ; but his skin 
 Was sleek like that of a Franciscan, 
 And far more clean ; for this grave Solon 
 Bathed every day in eau de Cologne. 
 Thus he indulged each guiltless gambol. 
 Blest had he ne'er been doomed to ramble ! 
 
 For in his life there came a crisis 
 Such as for all great men arises, — 
 Such as what Nap to Russia led. 
 Such as the " flight" of Mahomed ; 
 O town of Nantz ! yes, to thy bosom 
 We let him go, alas ! to lose him ! 
 Edicts, O town famed for revoking, 
 Still was Vert-Vert's loss more provoking ! 
 Dark be the day when our bright Don went 
 From this to a far-distant convent ! 
 Two words comprised that 4wful era — 
 Words big With fate and woe—" II ira ! " 
 Yes, "he shall go ; " but, sisters, mourn ye 
 The dismal fruits of that sad journey, — 
 Ills on which Nantz's nuns ne'er reckoned* 
 When for the beauteous bird they beckoned. 
 
 Fame, O Vert-Vert ! in evil humour, 
 One day to Nantz had brought the rumour 
 Of thy accomplishments, — acumen," 
 " Nous," and esprit" quite superhuman : 
 All these reports but served to enhance 
 Thy merits with the nuns of Nantz. 
 How did a matter so unsuited 
 For convent ears get hither bruited ? 
 Some may inquire. Hut " nuns are knowing," 
 And first to hear what gossips going, f 
 Forthwith they taxed their wits to elicit 
 From the famed bird a friendly visit. 
 Girls' wishes run in a brisk current. 
 But a nun's fancy is a torrent ; % 
 To get this bird they'd pawn the missal : 
 Quick they indite a long epistle. 
 Careful with softest things to fill it, 
 And then with musk perfume the billet ; 
 Thus, to obtain their darling purpose, 
 They send a writ of habeas corpus. 
 
 Off goes the post When will the answer 
 Free them from doubt's corroding cancer? 
 Nothing can equal their anxiety, 
 Except, of course, their well-known piety. 
 Things at Nevers meantime went harder 
 Than well would suit such pious ardour ; 
 It was no easy job to coax 
 This parrot from the Nevers folks. 
 
 * Quaere— Pons Asinorum ? 
 t " Les reverendes meres 
 
 A tout savoir ne sont pas les dern iferes. " 
 X " Desir de fille est un feu qui devore, 
 
 Desir de nonne est cent fois pis encore.'' 
 
122 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 What, take their toy from convent belles ? 
 Make Russia yield the Dardanelles ! 
 Filch his good rifle from a " Suliote," 
 Or drag her " Romeo" from a "Juliet !'* 
 Make an attempt to take Gibraltar, 
 Or try the old corn laws to alter ! 
 This seemed to them, and eke to us, 
 "Most wasteful and ridiculous." 
 Long did the "chapter" sit in state, 
 And on this point deliberate ; 
 The junior members of the senate 
 Set their fair faces quite again' it ; 
 Refuse to yield a point so tender, 
 And urge the motto — No surrender. 
 The elder nuns feel no great scruple 
 In parting with the charming pupil ; 
 And as each grave affair of state runs 
 Most on the verdict of the matrons, 
 Small odds, I ween, and poor the chance 
 Of keeping the dear bird from Nantz. 
 Nor in my surmise am I far out,— 
 For by their vbte off goes the parrot. 
 
 ffys Evil Voyage. 
 
 En ce terns id. a small canal-boat. 
 Called by most chroniclers the Talbot, 
 (Talbot, a name well known in France !) 
 Travelled between Nevers and Nantz. 
 Vert- Vert took shipping in this craft, 
 'Tis not said whether fore or aft ; 
 But in a book as old as Massinger's 
 We find a statement of the passengers ; 
 These were — two Gascons and a piper, 
 A sexton (a notorious swiper), 
 A brace of children, and a nurse ; 
 But what was infinitely worse, 
 A dashing Cyprian ; while by her 
 Sat a most jolly-looking friar.* 
 
 For a poor bird brought up in purity 
 'Twas a sad augur for futurity 
 To meet, just free from his indentures, 
 And in the first of his adventures, 
 Such company as formed his hansel, — 
 Two rogues ! a friar ! ! and a damsel ! ! ! 
 Birds the above were of a feather ; 
 But to Vert-Vert 'twas altogether 
 Such a strange aggregate of scandals 
 As to be met but among Vandals ; 
 Rude was their talk, bereft of polish, 
 And calculated to demolish 
 All the fine notions and good-breeding 
 Taught by the nuns in their sweet Eden. 
 No Billingsgate surpassed the nurse's, 
 And all the rest indulged in curses; 
 Ear hath not heard suoh vulgar gab in 
 The nautic cell of any cabin. 
 Silent and sad, the pensive bird, 
 Shocked at their guilt, said not a word, t 
 
 * " Une nourrice, un moine, deux Gascons ; 
 Pour un enfant qui sort du monastere 
 C'etait ochoir en dtgnes compagnons." 
 t This canal-boat, it would seem, was not a very refined or fashionable conveyance it : 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 123 
 
 Now he " of orders grey," accosting 
 The, parrot green, who seemed quite lost in 
 The contemplation of man's wickedness, 
 And the bright river's gliding liquidness, 
 " Tip us a stave (quoth Tuck), my darling, 
 Ain't you a parrot or a starling ? 
 If you don't talk, by the holy poker, , 
 I'll give thatneck of yours a choker ! " 
 Scared by this threat from his propriety, 
 Our pilgrim thinking with sobriety, 
 That if he did not speak they'd make him, 
 Answered the friar, "Pax sit tecum!" 
 Here our reporter marks down after 
 Poll's maiden-speech— " loud roars of laughter ;" 
 And sure enough the bird so affable 
 Could hardly use a phrase more laughable. 
 
 Talking pi such, there .are some,rum ones 
 That oft amuse the .House of Commons : 
 And since we lost " Sir Joseph Vorke" 
 We've got great " Feargits' fr^sh from Cork, — 
 A fellow honest, droll, and funny, 
 Who would not sell for love or money 
 His native land : nor, like vile Daniel, 
 Fawn on Lord Althorp like a spaniel; 
 Flatter the mob, while the old fox 
 Keeps an eye to the begging-box. 
 Now 'tis a shame that such brave fellows, 
 When they blow "agitation's" bellows, 
 Should only meet with heartless scoffers, 
 While cunning Daniel fills his coffers. 
 But Kerrymen will e'er be apter 
 At the conclusion of the chapter, 
 While others bear the battle's brunt, 
 Toreap the spoil and fob tlus blunt. 
 This is an episode concerning 
 The parrot s want of worldly learning, 
 In squandering' his tropes and figures 
 On a vile crew of heartless niggers. 
 The " house " heard once with more decorum 
 Phil. Howard on ''the Roman forum."* 
 
 Poll's brief address met lots of cavillers ; 
 Badgered by all his fellow-travellers, 
 He tried to mend a speech so ominous 
 By striking up with "Dixit Dominus!" 
 But louder shouts of laughter follow, — 
 This last roar beats the former hollow, 
 And shows that it was bad economy 
 lb give a stave from Deuteronomy. 
 
 Posed> not abashed, the bird refused to 
 Indulge a scene he was not used to ; 
 And, pondering on his strange reception, 
 " There rnusf,_ he thought, be some deception 
 In the nuns' views of things rhetorical, 
 And sister Rose is not an oracle., 
 
 rather remindeth of Horace's voyage to Brundusium, and of that line so applicable to the 
 parrot's company — 
 
 " Repletum nautis, cauponibus, atque malign is. " 
 
 O. Y. 
 * See " Mirror o*- Parliament " for this ingenious person's maiden speech on Joe Hume's 
 motion to alter and enlarge the old House of Commons. " Sir, the Romans (a laugh) — 
 / say the Remans (loud laughter) never altered their Forum " (roars of ditto). But 
 Heaven soon granted what Joe Hume desired, and the old rookery was burnt shortly 
 after. 
 
124 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 True wit, perhaps, lies not in ( mattiiis* 
 Nor is their school a school of Athens." 
 
 Thus in this villanous receptacle 
 The simple bird at once grew sceptical. 
 Doubts lead to hell. The arch-deceiver 
 Soon, made of Poll an unbeliever ; 
 And mixing thus in bad society, 
 He took French leave of all his piety. 
 
 His austere maxims soon he mollified, 
 And all his old opinions qualified ; 
 For he had learned to substitute 
 For pious lore things more astute ; 
 Nor was his conduct unimpeachable. 
 For youth, alas ! is but too teachable ; 
 And in the progress of his madness 
 Soon he had reached the depths of badness. 
 Such were his curses, such his evil 
 Practices, that no ancient devil,* 
 Plunged to the chin when burning hot 
 Into a holy water-pot, 
 Could so blaspheme, or fire a volley 
 Of oaths so drear and melancholy. 
 
 Must the bright blossoms, ripe and ruddy, 
 And the fair fruits of early study, 
 Thus in their summer season crossed, 
 Meet a sad blight— a killing frost? 
 Must that vile demon, Moloch, oust 
 Heaven from a young heart's holocaust?! 
 And the glad hope of life's young promise 
 Thus in the dawn of youth ebb from us ? 
 Such is, alas ! the sad and last trophy 
 Of the young rake's supreme catastrophe ; 
 For of what use are learning's laurels 
 When a young man is without morals ? 
 Bereft of virtue, and grown heinous. 
 What signifies a brilliant genius ? 
 'Tis but a case for wail and mourning, — 
 Tis but a brand fit for the burning ! 
 
 Meantime the river wafts the barge, 
 Fraught with its miscellaneous charge, 
 Smoothly upon its broad expanse, 
 Up to thevery quay of Nantz ; 
 Fondly within the convent bowers 
 The sisters calculate the hours, 
 Chiding the breezes for their tardiness, 
 And, in the height of their fool-hardiness. 
 Picturing the bird as fancy painted — 
 Lovely, reserved, polite, and sainted- 
 Fit "ursuline." And this, I trow, meant 
 Enriched with every endowment ! 
 Sadly, alas ! these nuns anointed 
 Will find their fancy disappointed ; 
 When, to meet all those hopes they drew on, 
 They'll find a regular Don Juan ! 
 
 The Aw/uli Discoverie. 
 
 Scarce in the port was this small craft 
 On its arrival telegraphed, 
 
 ' Bien tot il scut jurer et mougrder 
 
 Mieux qu'un vieux diable au fond d'un benitier." 
 1 Faut-il qu'ainsi 1'exemple slducteur 
 
 Du ciel au diable emporte un jeune cceur ? " 
 
When, from the boat home to transfer him, 
 
 Came the nuns' portress, " sister Jerome." 
 
 Well did the parrot recognize 
 
 The walk demure and downcast eyesT 
 
 Nor aught such saintly guidance relished 
 
 A bird by worldly arts embellished ; 
 
 Such was his taste for profane gaiety, 
 
 He'd rather much go with the laity. 
 
 Fast to the bark he clung ; but plucked thence, 
 
 He showed d ire symptoms of reluctance, 
 
 And, scandalizing each beholder, 
 
 Bit the nun's cheek, and eke her shoulder !* 
 
 Thus a black eagle once, 'tis said, 
 
 Bore off the struggling Ganymede, t 
 
 Thus was Vert- Vert, heart-sick and weary, 
 
 Brought to the heavenly monastery. 
 
 The bell and tidings both were tolled, 
 
 And the nuns crowded, young and old. 
 
 To feast their eyes with joy uncommon on 
 
 This wondrous talkative Dnenomenon. 
 
 Round the bright stranger, so amazing 
 And so renowned, the sisters gazing, 
 Praised the green glow which a warm latitude 
 Gave to his neck, and liked his attitude. 
 Some by his gorgeous tail are smitten, 
 Some by his beak so beauteous bitten ! 
 And none e'er dreamt of dole or harm in 
 A bird so brilliant and so charming. 
 Shade of Spurzheim ! and thou, Lavater, 
 Or Gall, of " bumps " the great creator ! 
 Can ye explain how our young hero, 
 With all the vices of a Nero, 
 Seemed such a model of good-breeding, 
 Thus quite astray the convent leading ? 
 Where on his head appeared, I ask from ye, 
 The "nob" indicative of blasphemy? 
 Methinks 'twould puzzle your ability 
 To find his organ of scurrility. 
 
 Meantime the abbess, to " draw out" 
 A bird so modest and devout, 
 With soothing air and tongue caressing 
 The " pilgrim of the Loire " addressing, 
 Broached the most edifying topics. 
 To ** start " this native of the tropics ; 
 When, to their scandal and amaze, he 
 Broke forth— "Morbleu I those nuns are crazy i 1 * 
 (Showing how well he learnt his task on 
 The packet-boat from that vile Gascon !) 
 " Fie ! brother Poll ! " with zeal out bursting, 
 Exclaimed the abbess, Dame Augustin. 
 But all the lady's sage rebukes 
 Brief answer got from Poll—" Gadzooks ! * 
 Nay, 'tis supposed, he muttered, too, 
 A word folks write with W. 
 Scared at the sound,—" Sure as a gun, 
 The bird's a demon ! " cried the nun. 
 
 * " Les uns disent au cou, 
 
 D'autres au bras ; on nesait pas bien oft." 
 t " Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem. 
 
 Cui rex deorum regnum in aves vagos 
 Commisit, expertus fidelem 
 Jupiter in Ganymede flavo." 
 
 HoR. 
 
126 Tlie Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " O the vile Wretch ! the naughty dog ! 
 
 He's surely Lucifer incog. 
 
 What !^ is the reprobate before us 
 
 That bird so pious and decorous — 
 
 So celebrated ? " — Here the pilgrim, 
 
 Hearing sufficient to bewilder him, 
 
 Wound up the sermon of the beldame 
 
 By a conclusion heard but seldom— 
 
 "Ventre Saint Gris!" "Parbleu!" and "Sacre!" 
 
 Three oaths ! and every one a whacker! 
 
 Still did the nuns, whose conscience tender 
 Was much shocked at the young offender, 
 Hoping he'd change his tone, and alter, 
 Hang breathless round the sad defaulter : 
 When, wrathful at their importunity, 
 And grown audacious from impunity, 
 He fired a broadside (holy Mary !) 
 Drawn from Hell's own vocabulary ! 
 Forth like a Congreve rocket burst, 
 And stormed and swore, Jlared up and cursed ! 
 Stunned at these sounds of import stygian, 
 The pious daughters of religion 
 Fled from a scene so dread, so horrid, 
 But with a cross first signed their forehead. 
 ' The younger sisters, mud and meek, 
 Thought mat the culprit spoke in Greek ; 
 But the old matrons and ''the bench" 
 Knew every word was genuine French ; 
 And ran in all directions, pell-mell, 
 From a flood fit to overwhelm hell. 
 'Twas by a fall that Mother Ruth* 
 Then lost her last remaining tooth. 
 
 " Fine conduct this, and pretty guidance I" 
 Cried one of the most mortified ones ; 
 " Pray, is such language and such ritual 
 Among the Nevers nuns habitual ? 
 'Twas in our sisters most improper 
 To teach such curses — such a whopper ! 
 He shan't by me, for one, be hindered 
 From being sent back to his kindred ! " 
 This prompt decree of Poll's proscription 
 Was signed by general subscription. 
 Straight in a cage the nuns insert 
 The guilty person of Vert-Vert ; 
 Some young ones wanted to detain him ; 
 But the grim portress took " the paynim " 
 Back to the boat, close in his litter ; 
 "l'is not said this time that he bit her. 
 
 Back to the convent of his youth, 
 Sojourn of innocence and truth, 
 Sails the green monster, scorned and hated, 
 His heart with vice contaminated. 
 Must I tell how, on his return, 
 He scandalized his old sojourn ? 
 And how the guardians of his infancy 
 Wept o'er their quondam child's delinquency? 
 What could be done ? the elders often 
 Met to consult how best to soften 
 
 * " Toutes pensent Stre & la fin du monde, 
 Et sur son nez la mere Cunegonde 
 Se laissant cheoir, perd sa dernierc dent ! " 
 
Literature and the Jesuits. 127 
 
 This obdurate and hardened sinner, 
 
 Finished in vice ere a beginner !* 
 
 One mother counselled " to denounce 
 
 And let the Inquisition pounce 
 
 On the vile heretic ; " another 
 
 Thought " it was best the bird to smother !" 
 
 Or " .send the convict for his felonies 
 
 Back to his native land — the colonies." 
 
 But milder views prevailed. His sentence 
 
 Was, that, until he showed repentance, \ 
 
 "A solemn fast and frugal diet, \ 
 
 Silence exact, and pensive quiet, \ 
 
 Should be his lot ;" and, for a blister, 
 
 He got, as gaoler, a lay sister, 
 
 Ugly as sin, bad-tempered, jealous, 
 
 And in her scruples over-zealous, 
 
 A jug of water and a carrot 
 
 Was all the prog she'd give the parrot ; 
 
 But every eve when vesper-bell 
 
 Called sister Rosalie from her cell, 
 
 She to Vert-Vert would gain admittance, 
 
 And bring of " comfits ' a sweet pittance. 
 
 Comfits ! alas ! can sweet confections 
 
 Alter sour slavery's imperfections? 
 
 What are " preserves " to you or me, 
 
 When locked up in the Marshalsea t 
 
 The sternest virtue in the hulks, 
 
 Though crammed with richest sweetmeats, sulks. 
 
 Taught by his gaoler and adversity, 
 Poll saw the folly of perversity, 
 And by degrees his heart relented : 
 Duly, in fine, "the lad" repented. 
 His Lent passed on, and sister Bridget 
 Coaxed the old abbess to abridge it. 
 
 The prodigal, reclaimed and free, 
 Became again a prodigy, 
 And gave more joy, by works and words. 
 Than ninety-nine canary-birds, 
 Until his death. Which last disaster 
 (Nothing on earth endures !) came faster 
 Than they imagined. The transition 
 From a starved to a stuffed condition, 
 From penitence to jollification, 
 Brought on a fit of constipation. 
 Some think he would be living still 
 If given a " Vegetable Pill ;' 
 But from a short life, and a merry, 
 Poll sailed one day per Charon's ferry. 
 
 By tears from nuns' sweet eyelids wept, 
 Happy in death this parrot slept ; 
 For him Elysium oped its portals, 
 And there he talks among immortals. 
 But I have read, that since that happy day 
 (So writes Cornelius & Lapide,t 
 
 * ImpUcat in termfnis. There must have been a beginning, else how conceive a. finish 
 (see Kant), unless the proposition of Ocellus Lucanus be adopted, viz., avapxpv xut 
 areAevTaiof to irav. Gresset simply has it— 
 
 "II fut un scelerat _ 
 Profes d'abord, et sans noviciat." 
 tThis author appears to have been a favourite with Prout, who takes every oppor- 
 tunity of recording his predilection 'vide pages 5 and 114). Had the Order, however, 
 produced only such writers as Cornelius, we fear there would have been little mention of 
 the Jesuits in connection with literature. Gresset's opinion on the matter is contained 
 
128 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Proving, with commentary droll, 
 
 The transmigration of the soul), 
 
 That still Vert- Vert this earth doth haunt, 
 
 Of convent bowers a visitant ; 
 
 And that, gay novices among, 
 
 He dwells, transformed into a tongue ! 
 
 in an epistle to his confrtre P. Boujeant, author of the ingenious treatise " Sur I'Ame Jes 
 Bikes ' (see p. 295) ; — 
 
 Moins reverend qu'aimable pere, Afnchent la severite ; 
 
 Voits dont l'esprit, le caractere, £t ne sortant de leur tanifere 
 
 Et les airs, ne sont point months Que sous la lugubre bannicre 
 Sur le ton sottement austere De la grave formalite*, 
 
 De cent tristes paternites, H6ritiers de la triste enclume 
 Qui, manquant du talent de platre, De quelque p6dant ignore, 
 
 Et de toute legeVete, Reforgent quelque lourd volume. 
 Pour dissimuler la misere Aux antres Latins enterrd. 
 
 D'un esprit sans amenit£, 
 
VII. 
 
 &!rc Srntgs of Jfrmtce, 
 
 ON WINE, WAR, WOMEN, WOODEN SHOES, PHILOSOPHY, 
 FROGS AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 (Frasers Magazine, October, 1834.) 
 
 [The Fraser which introduced this first of Prout's four batches of the " Songs of 
 France" was the one containing Maclise's comical portrait of William Godwin, author of 
 "Thoughts on Man," representing him as a very dwarf, bonneted by a disproportion- 
 ately huge hat, and with his hands clasped high up behind him, apparently just between 
 the shoulder-blades. The philosophic novelist who imagined Caleb Williams is further 
 embellished in this grotesque limning with ponderous spectacles, a shapeless sack-coat, 
 shortish trousers, and clumping Wellingtons — the latter so visibly as to be almost audibly 
 walking. As further illustrative of the time at which this paper of Prout's first appeared, 
 it may T>e mentioned here that next to it in that number of JRegina, in the October of 
 1834, was an article on the " Dinner to Earl Grey " in the preceding month at Edinburgh, 
 in going whither to assist in the taking down of the speeches at which , for the Morning 
 Chronicle^ Charles Dickens, then little more than a stripling, contributed to that journal 
 his first morsel of descriptive reporting — a humorous fragment, not only identified as from 
 the hand of "Boz" by the editor of the present volume, out reproduced by him in externa 
 and in stenographic characters in his monograph of " Charles Dickens as a Journalist." 
 Maclise's pencillings for this seventh of the Front Papers, when reprinted in the 1836 
 edition, were two in number ; one of them being the vignette on the engraved title-page 
 of the second volume, in celebration of " The Planting of the Vine in Gaul ; " the other 
 that sentimental sketch of " Meet me by Moonlight alone," in which the young draughts- 
 man portrayed himself, as in an imaginary glimpse of Paradise, half reclining on one of 
 the primrose paths of dalliance under green leaves at the feet of L. E. L., still in her 
 gigot sleeves, the picture— all moonshine !] 
 
 CHAPTER I.— Wine and War. 
 
 " Favete Unguis ! Carmina non prihs 
 ' Audita, Musarum sacerdos, 
 Virginibus puerisque canto." 
 
 Hor. Carmen Seeeulare. 
 
 " With many a foreign author grappling, 
 Thus have I, Prout, the Muses' chaplain, 
 Traced on Regina's virgin pages 
 Songs for ' the boys * of after-ages." 
 
 Prout's Trans, of Horace, 
 
 That illustrious utilitarian, Dr. Bowring, the knight-errant of free trade, 
 who is allowed to circulate just now without a keeper through the cities of 
 France, will be in high glee at this October manifestation of Prout's wisdom. 
 The Doctor hath found a kindred soul in the Priest. To promote the inter- 
 
 G * 
 
130 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 change of national commodities, to cause a blending and a chemical fusion of 
 their mutual produce, and establish an equilibrium batween our negative and 
 their positive electricity; such appears to be the sublime aspiration of both 
 these learned pundits. But the beneficial results attendant on the efforts of 
 each are widely dissimilar. Both Arcadians, they are not equally successful 
 in the rivalry of song. We have to record nothing of Dr. Bowring in the way 
 of acquirement to this country ; we have gained nothing by his labours.; our 
 cottons, our iron, our woollens, and our coals, are still without a passport to 
 France ; while in certain home-trades, brought by his calculations into direct 
 competition with the emancipated French, we have encountered a loss on our 
 side to the tune of a few millions. Not so with the exertions of Prout : he has 
 enriched England at the expense of her rival, and engrafted on our literature 
 the choicest productions of Gallic culture. Silently and unostentatiously, on 
 the bleak top of Watergrasshill, he has succeeded in naturalizing these foreign 
 vegetables, associating himself in the gratitude of posterity with the planter 
 of the potato. The inhabitants of these islands may now, thanks to Prout ! 
 sing or whistle the "Songs of France," duty free, in their vernacular 
 language; a vastly important acquisition ! The beautiful tunes of the " Ch. 
 ira" and "Charmante Gabrielle" will become familiarized to our dull ears; 
 instead of the vulgar ' ' Peas upon a trencher," we shall enjoy that barrel-organ 
 luxury of France, " Partant pour la Syrie; " and for " The Minstrel Boy to 
 the wars is gone," we shall have the original, " Malbroock s"en va-t-en 
 guerre." What can be imagined more calculated to establish an harmonious 
 understanding between the two nations, than this attempt of a benevolent 
 clergyman to join them in a hearty chorus of common melody/ a grand 
 " duo," composed of bass and tenor, the roaring of tie bull and the croaking 
 of the frog t Far less to be patronized was the late musical festival in West- 
 minster Abbey, which " proved nothing." 
 
 To return to Dr. Bowring. We have been quietly observing (not without 
 concern for our national pride) the ludicrous exhibition he has been making of 
 himself in sundry places over the way. Palmerston is a good cotton-ball in 
 the paw of the veteran grimalkin here at home ; but to fumish a butt for the 
 waggery of every provincial town in France in the person of a documentary 
 doctor is somewhat galling to our national vanity. Commissions of inquiry 
 are the order of the day ; but some travelling " notes of interrogation " are so 
 misshapen and grotesque, that the response or result is but a roar of laughter. 
 This doctor, we perceive, is now the hero of every dinner of every " Chambre 
 de Commerce ; " his toasts and his speeches in Norman French are, we are 
 told, the ne plus ultra of comic performance, towards the close of each 
 banquet. He is now in Burgundy, an industrious labourer in the vineyard of 
 his commission ; and enjoys such particular advantages, that Brougham from 
 his woolsack is said to cast a jealous eye on his missionary's department ; 
 " invidia rumpantur ut ilia Codri." The whole affair exhibits that sad 
 mixture of imbecility and ostentation too perceptible in all the doings of 
 Utilitarianism. Of whose commissioners Phaedrus has long ago given the 
 prototype : 
 
 " Est ardelionum quaedam Romse natio 
 Trepidfe concursans, occupata in otio, 
 Gratis anhelans, multtim agendo, nihil agens.** 
 
 So no more on that topic. The publication of this paper on the "Songs of 
 France " is intended by us, at this particular season, to counteract the pre- 
 valent epidemic which hurries away our population in crowds to Paris or 
 Boulogne, By furnishing them here at home with Gallic fricassee, we hope 
 to induce some, at least, to remain in the country, and forswear emigration. 
 If our " preventive check " succeed, we shall have deserved well of our own 
 
The Songs of France. 131 
 
 watering-places, which naturally look up to us for protection and ^patronage. 
 Indeed, we are sorry to find the Parisian mania so visibly on the increase, in 
 spite of the strong animadversions of Bombardinio, aided by the luminous 
 notes of Sir Morgan. The girls will never listen to good advice — 
 
 " Each pretty minx in her conscience thinks that nothing can improve her, 
 Unless she sees the Tuileries, and trips along the Louvre." 
 
 No ! never in the memory of Regina has Regent Street suffered such 
 complete depopulation. It hath emptied itself into the " Boulevards." Our 
 city friends will keep an eye on the Monument, or it may elope from Pudding 
 Lane to the " Place Venddme : " but as to the Thames flowing into the Seine, 
 we cannot yet anticipate so alarming a phenomenon, although Juvenal records 
 a similar event as having occurred in his time— 
 
 " Totus in Tyberim defluxit Orontes." 
 
 But there is still balm in Gilead, there is still corn in Egypt. The " chest " in 
 which old Prout hath left a legacy of hoarded wisdom to the children of men 
 is open to us, for comfort and instruction. It is rich in consolation, and fraught 
 with goodly maxims adapted to every state and stage of sublunary vicissitude. 
 The treatise of Boethius, " de Consolatione Philosophise," worked wonders in 
 its day, and assuaged the tribulations of the folks of the dark ages. The 
 sibylline books were consulted in all cases of emergency. Prout's strong box 
 rather resembleth the oracular portfolio of the Sibyl, inasmuch as it chiefly 
 containelh matters written in verse ; and even in prose it appeareth poetical. 
 Versified apophthegms are always better attended to than mere prosaic crumbs 
 of comfort ; and we trust that the " Songs of France," which we are about to 
 publish for the patriotic purpose above mentioned, may have the desired 
 effect. 
 
 11 Carmina vel coelo possunt deducere lunam ; 
 Carmine Dl supen placantur, carmine manes : 
 Due tie ab itrbe e/omum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim !" 
 
 When Saul went mad, the songs of the poet David were the only effectual 
 sedatives; and in one of that admirable series of homilies on Job, St. 
 Chrysostom, to fix the attention of his auditory, breaks out in fine style : 
 $cpe ovv, nymDjTF, Ttjs Aa/Lc/ctjs KtOapav avaKpovaiafitv to if/aX/jinou /uXor, 
 Kal tijw affo(i)7rii'T|y yoovTi? TaXanruinuw tnroi/itv, Kai T. A. (Serm. Ill, in 
 yob.) These French Canticles are, in Prout's manuscript, given with accom- 
 paniment of introductory and explanatory observations, in which they swim 
 like water-fowl on the bosom of a placid and pellucid lake ; and to each song 
 there is underwritten an English translation, like the liquid reflection of the 
 floating bird in the water beneath, so as to recall the beautiful image of the 
 swan, which, according to the father of " lake poetry," 
 
 "Floats double— swan and shadow." 
 
 Vale et fruere I 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Regent Street, ist Oct. 1834. 
 
 WATERGRA5SHILL, Oct. 1S33. 
 
 I HAVE lived among the French : in the freshest dawn of early youth, in 
 the meridian hour of manhood's maturity, my lot was cast and my lines fell 
 on the pleasant places of that once-happy land. Full gladly have I strayed 
 among her gay hamlets and her hospitable chateaux, anon breaking the brown 
 loaf of the peasant, and anon seated at the board of her noblemen and hei 
 
132 The Works of Father Proul. 
 
 pontiffs. I have mixed industriously with every rank and every denomination 
 of her people, tracing as I went along the peculiar indications of the Celt and 
 the Frank, the Normand and the Breton, the langue d'oui and the langue 
 d'oc; not at the same time overlooking the endemic features of unrivalled 
 Gascony. The manufacturing industry of Lyons, the Gothic reminiscences 
 of Tours, the historic associations of Orleans, the mercantile enterprise and 
 opulence of Bordeaux, Marseilles, the emporium of the Levant, each claimed 
 my wonder in its turn. It was a goodly scene ! and, compared to the ignoble 
 and debased generation that now usurps the soil, my recollections of ante- 
 revolutionary France are like dreams of an antediluvian world. And in those 
 days arose the voice of song. The characteristic cheerfulness of the country 
 found a vent for its superabundant joy in jocund carols, and music was at 
 once the offspring and the parent of gaiety. Sterne, in his "Sentimental 
 Journey," had seen the peasantry whom he so graphically describes in that 
 passage concerning a marriage-feast — a generous flagon, grace after meat, 
 and a dance on the green turf under the canopy of approving Heaven. Nor 
 did the Irish heart of Goldsmith (who, like myself, rambled on the banks of 
 the Loire and the Garonne with true pedestrian philosophy) fail to enter into 
 the spirit of joyous exuberance which animated the inhabitants of each 
 village through which we passed, poor and penniless, but a poet ; and he him- 
 self tells us that, with his flute in his pocket, he might not fear to quarter 
 himself on any district in the south of France, — such was the charm of music 
 to the ear of the natives in those happy days. It surely was not of France 
 that the poetic tourist spoke when he opened his " Traveller," by those sweet 
 verses that tell of a loneliness little experienced on the banks of the Loire, 
 however felt elsewhere— 
 
 " Remote, unfriended, solitary, slow ; 
 Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po," &C. 
 
 For Goldy, the village maiden lit up her brightest smiles ; for him the tidy 
 housewife, "on hospitable cares intent," brought forth the wheaten loaf and 
 the well-seasoned sausage : to Welcome the foreign troubadour, the master of 
 the cottage and of the vineyard produced his best can of wine, never loth for 
 an excuse to drain a cheerful cup with an honest fellow ; for, 
 
 " Si bene commemini, causae sunt quinque bibendi : 
 Hospitis adventus, prsesens sitis atque futura, 
 Vel vini bonitas — vel quaelibet altera causa." 
 
 AH this buoyancy of spirits, all this plentiful gladness, found expression and 
 utterance in the national music and songs of that period ; which are animated 
 and lively to excess, and bear testimony to the brisk current of feeling and the 
 exhilarating influence from which they sprung. Each season of the happy year, 
 each incident of primitive and rural life, each occurrence in village history, was 
 chronicled in uncouth rhythm, and chanted with choral glee. The baptismal 
 holyday, the marriage epoch, the soldier's return, the " patron saint," the har- 
 vest and the vintage, "le jour des rois," and "le jour de Noel," each was 
 ushered in with the merry chime of parish bells and the extemporaneous out- 
 break of the rustic muse. And when mellow autumn gave place to hoary winter, 
 the genial source of musical inspiration was not frozen up in the hearts of the 
 young, nor was there any lack of traditionary ballads derived from the memory 
 of the old. 
 
 *' Ici le chanvre prepare 1 
 Tourne autour du fuseau Gothique, 
 
 Et sur un banc mat assure 
 La bergerc la plus antique 
 
 Chante la mort du ' Balafre ' 
 D'une voix plaintive et tragique. 1 ' 
 
The Songs of France. 133 
 
 " While the merry Are-blocks kindle. 
 While the gudewife twirls her spindle, 
 Hark the song which, nigh the embers, 
 
 Singeth yonder withered crone ; 
 Well I ween that hag remembers 
 
 Many a war-tale past and gone." 
 
 This characteristic of the inhabitants of Gaul, this constitutional attachment 
 to music and melody, has been early noticed by the writers of the middle ages, 
 and remarked on by her historians and philosophers. The eloquent Salvian of 
 Marseilles (A.D. 440), in his book on Providence (" de Gubernatione Dei"), 
 says that his fellow-countrymen had a habit of drowning care and banishing 
 melancholy with songs : " Cantilenis infortunia sua solantur." In the old 
 jurisprudence of the Gallic code we are told, by lawyer de Marchangy, in his 
 work, " la Gaule Poetique," that all the goods and chattels of a debtor could 
 be seized by the creditor, with the positive exception of any musical instrument, 
 lyre, bagpipe, or flute, which happened to be in the house of misfortune; the 
 lawgivers wisely and humanely providing a source of consolation for the poor 
 devil when all was gone. We have still some enactments of Charlemagne in- 
 terwoven in the labyrinthine intricacies of the capitularian law, having reference 
 to the minstrels of that period ; and the song of Roland, who fell at Ronces- 
 vaux with the Sower of Gallic chivalry, is still sung by the grenadiers of France : 
 
 " Soldats Francois, chantons Roland, 
 L'honneur de la chevalerie," &c, &c. 
 
 Or, as Sir Walter Scott will have it, in his " Marmion" (a couplet which, by 
 the way, he afterwards unconsciously repeated in his " Rob Roy"), 
 
 " O ! for a blast of that wild horn, 
 On Fontarabia's echoes borne," &c. 
 
 During the crusades the minstrelsy of France attained a high degree of refine- 
 ment, delicacy, and vigour. Never were love-adventures, broken hearts, and 
 broken heads so plentiful. The novelty of the scene, the excitement of depar- 
 ture, the lover's farewell, the rapture of return, the pilgrim's tale, the jumble of 
 war and devotion, laurels and palm-trees — all these matters inflamed the 
 imagination of the troubadour, and ennobled the effusions of genius. Oriental 
 landscape added a new charm to the creations of poetry, and the bard of 
 chivalrous Europe, transported into the scenes of voluptuous Asia, acquired a 
 new stock of imagery ; an additional chord would vibrate on his lyre. Thie- 
 bault, comte de Champagne, who swayed the destinies of the kingdom under 
 Queen Blanche, while St. Louis was in Palestine, distinguished himself not 
 only by his patronage of the tuneful tribe, but by his own original compositions; 
 many of which I have overhauled among the MSS. of the King's Library, when I 
 was in Paris. Richard Cceur de Lion, whose language, habits, and character 
 belonged to Normandy, was almost as clever at a ballad as at the battle-axe : his 
 faithful troubadour, Blondel, acknowledges his master's competency in things 
 poetical. But it was reserved for the immortal Rene d'Anjou, called by the 
 people of Provence le bon roy Reni, to confer splendour and iclat on the gentle 
 craft, during a reign of singular usefulness and popularity. He was, in truth, a rare 
 personage, and well deserved to leave his memory embalmed in the recollection 
 of his fellow-countrymen. After having fought in his youth under Joan of Arc, 
 in rescuing the territory of France from the grasp of the invaders, and sub- 
 sequently in the wars of Scander Beg and Ferdinand of Arragon, he spent the 
 latter part of his eventful life in diffusing happiness among his subjects, and 
 making his court the centre of refined and classic enjoyment. Aix in Pro- 
 vence was then the seat of civilization, and the haunt of the Muses. While to 
 Rend is ascribed the introduction and culture of the mulberry, and the con- 
 
134 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 sequent development of the silk-trade along the Rhone, to his fostering care the 
 poetry of France is indebted for many of her best and simplest productions, the 
 rondeau, the madrigal, the triolet, the lay, the virelai, and other measures 
 equally melodious. His own ditties (chiefly church hymns) are preserved in 
 the Bibliotheque du Roi, in his own handwriting, adorned by his royal pencil 
 with sundry curious enluminations and allegorical emblems. 
 
 A rival settlement for the "sacred sisters " was established at the neighbour- 
 ing court of Avignon, where the temporary residence of the popes attracted 
 the learning of Italy and of the ecclesiastical world. The combined talents of 
 churchmen and of poets shone with concentrated effulgence in that most 
 picturesque and romantic of cities, fit cradle for the muse of Petrarch, and the 
 appropriate resort of every contemporary excellence. The pontific presence 
 shed a lustre over this crowd of meritorious men, and excited a spirit of emu- 
 lation in all the walks of science, unknown in any other European capital : and 
 to Avignon in those days might be applied the observation of a Latin poet 
 concerning that small town of Italy which the residence of a single important 
 personage sufficed to illustrate : 
 
 " Veios habitante Camillo, 
 IIllc Roma fuit." 
 
 Lucan. 
 
 The immortal sonnets of Laura's lover, written in the polished and elegant 
 idiom of Lombardy, had a perceptible effect in softening what was harsh, and 
 refining what was uncouth, in the love songs of the troubadours, whose lan- 
 guage (not altogether obsolete in Provence at the present time) bears a close 
 affinity to the Italian. But this "light of song," however' gratifying to the 
 lover of early literature, was but a sort of crepuscular brightening, to herald 
 in that full dawn of true taste and knowledge which broke forth at the appear- 
 ance of Francis I. and Leo X. Then it was that Europe's modern minstrels, 
 forming their lyric effusions on the imperishable models of classical antiquity, 
 produced, for the bower and the banquet, for the court and the camp, strains 
 of unparalleled sweetness and power. I have already enriched my papers with 
 a specimen of the love-ditties which the amour of Francis and the unfortunate 
 Comtesse de Chateaubriand gave birth to. The royal lover has himself recorded 
 his chivalrous attachment to that lady in a song which is preserved among the 
 MSS. of the Duke of Buckingham, in the Bibliotheque du Roi. It begins 
 thus: 
 
 " Ores que je la tiens sous ma loy, 
 
 Plus je'regne amant que roy, 
 
 Adieu, visages de cour," &c., &c. 
 
 Of the songs of Henri Quatre, addressed to Gabrielle d'Etrees, and of the 
 ballads of Mary Stuart, it were almost superfluous to say a word; but in a 
 professed essay on so interesting a subject, it would be an unpardonable 
 omission not to mention two such illustrious contributors to the minstrelsy of 
 France. 
 
 From crowned heads the transition to Maitre Adam (the poetic carpenter) is 
 rather abrupt; but he deserves most honourable rank among the tuneful 
 brotherhood. Without quitting his humble profession of a joiner, he published 
 a volume of songs (Rheims, 1650) under the modest title of " Dry Chips and 
 Oak Shavings from the Workshop of Adam Billaud." Many of his staves are 
 right well put out of hand. But he had been preceded by Clement Mardt, a 
 most cultivated poet, who had given the tone to French versification. Malherbe 
 was also a capital lyric writer in the grandiose style, and at times pathetic. 
 Then there was Ronsard and Panard. Jean de Meun, who, with Guillaume de 
 Lorris, concocted the " Roman de la Rose ;" Villon, Charles d'Orleans, Grin- 
 goire, Alain Chartier, Bertaut, and sundry others of the old school, deservedly 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 135 
 
 challenge the antiquary and critic's commendation. The subsequent glories of 
 Voiture, Scuderi, Dorat, Boufflers, Florian, Racan, and Chalieu, would claim 
 their due share of notice, if the modern lyrics of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, 
 Andr<5 Chenier, Chateaubriand, and Delavigne, like the rod of the prophet, 
 had not swallowed up the inferior spells of the magicians who preceded them. 
 But I cannot for a moment longer repress my enthusiastic admiration of one 
 who has arisen in our days, to strike in France, with a master-hand, the lyre of 
 the troubadour, and to fling into the shade all the triumphs of bygone min- 
 strelsy. Need I designate Beranger, who has created for himself a style of 
 transcendent vigour and originality, and who has sung of war, love, and wine, 
 in strains far excelling those of Blondel, Tyrtaeus, Pindar, or the Teian bard. 
 He is now the genuine representative of Gallic poesy in her convivial, her 
 amatory, her warlike, and her philosophic mood : and the plenitude of the 
 inspiration that dwelt successively in the souls of all the songsters of ancient 
 France seems to have transmigrated into Beranger, and found a fit recipient in 
 his capacious and liberal mind : 
 
 11 As some bright river, that, from fall to fall 
 In many a maze descending, bright in all, 
 Finds some fair region, where, each labyrinth past. 
 In one full lake of light it rests at last."— Lalla Rookh. 
 I cannot resist the impulse which hurries me to the perpetration of an assault 
 on the muse of Beranger : forcible abduction is here, if ever, justifiable, and 
 she must forthwith cross the "Pas de Calais," nolens volens, into merry 
 England. How shall we begin ? Wine is the grand topic with all poets (after 
 the ladies) ; I shall therefore give his account of the introduction of the grape 
 into Burgundy and Champagne, effected through the instrumentality of the 
 brave Brennus, the Celtic hero, and the ancestor of our Irish Brennans. 
 
 BRENNUS. 
 On la Vigncplantie dans les Gaules. 
 
 Brennus disait aux bons Gaulois, 
 
 " Celebrez un triomphe insigne ! 
 Les champs de Rome ont pave mes exploits, 
 
 Et j'en rapporte un cep de vigne ; 
 Prives de son jus tout-puissant. 
 
 Nous avons vaincu pour en boire ; 
 Sur nos coteaux que le pampre naissant 
 
 Serve a couronner la victoire. 
 
 TJn jour, par ce raisin vermeil t 
 
 Des peuples vous serez 1'envie : 
 Dans son nectar plein des feux du soleil 
 
 Totis les arts puiseront la vie. 
 Quittant nos bords favorises, 
 
 Mille vaisseaux iront sur l'onde 
 Charges de yins et de fleurs pavoises, 
 
 Porter la joie autour du monde. 
 
 THE SONG OF BRENNUS, 
 
 Or the Introduction of the Grape into 
 
 Ft ance. 
 
 Tune—" The Night before Larry." 
 
 When Brennus came back here from Rome, 
 These words he is said to have spoken : 
 " We have conquered, my boys ! and 
 brought home 
 A sprig of the vine for a token ! 
 Cheer, my hearties ! and welcome to Gaul 
 This plant, which we won from the foe- 
 man; 
 Tis enough to repay us for all 
 Our trouble in beating the Roman ; 
 
 Bless the gods/ and bad luck to 
 the geese ! 
 
 O ! take care to treat well the fair guest, 
 From the blasts of the north to protect 
 her; 
 Of your hillocks, the sunniest and best 
 Make them hers, for the sake of her 
 nectar. 
 She shall nurse your young Gauls with her 
 juice ; 
 Give life to * the arts ' in libations ; 
 While your ships round the globe shall 
 produce 
 Her goblet of joy for all nations — 
 
 E'en the foeman shall taste of 
 our cup. 
 
136 
 
 Tfie Works of Father ProuL 
 
 The exile who flies to our hearth 
 She shall soothe, all his sorrows redress- 
 ing; 
 
 For the vine is the parent of mirth, 
 And to sit in its shade is a blessing. " 
 
 So the soil Brennus dug with his lance, 
 'Mid the crowd of Gaul's warriors and 
 
 Bacchus ! embellis nos destins ! 
 Un peuple hospitalier te prie, 
 Fats qu'un proscrit, assis a nos festins, 
 
 Oublie un moment sa pa trie." 
 Brennus alors bennit les Cieux, 
 Creuse la terre avec sa lance, 
 Plante la vigne ! et les Gaulois joyeux 
 Dans I'avenir ont vu " La France ! " 
 
 And our forefathers grim, of gay France 
 Got a glimpse through the vista of 
 ages — 
 And it gladdened the hearts of 
 the Gauls ! 
 
 Such is the classical and profound range of thought in which Beranger loves 
 to indulge, amid the unpretending effusions of a professed drinking song ; 
 embodying his noble and patriotic aspirations in the simple form of an historical 
 anecdote, or a light and fanciful allegory. He abounds in philanthropic senti- 
 ments and generous outburst; of passionate eloquence* whicV come on the 
 feelings unexpectedly, and never fail to produce a corresponding excitement in 
 the heart of the listener. I shall shortly return to his glorious canticles ; but 
 meantime, as we are on the chapter of wine, by way of contrast to the style of 
 Be"ranger, I may be allowed to introduce a drinking ode of a totally different 
 character, and which, from its odd and original conceptions, and harmless 
 jocularity, I think deserving of notice. It is, besides, of more ancient date ; 
 and my English version has been therefore set to the old tune of " Life let us 
 cherish." 
 
 LES ELOGES DE L'EAU. 
 
 II pleut ! il pleut en fin 1 
 
 Et la vigne alteree 
 
 Va se voir restauree 
 Far un bienfait divin. 
 De 1'eau chantons la gloire, 
 
 On la meprise en vain, 
 C'est l'eau qui nous fait boire 
 
 Du vin ! du vin ! du vin I 
 
 C'est par l'eau, j'en conviens, 
 
 Que Dieu fit fe deluge ; 
 
 Mais ce souverain Juge 
 Mit le mal pres du bien ! 
 Du deluge l'histoire 
 
 Fait naStre le raisin j 
 C'est l'eau qui nous fait boire 
 
 Du vin ! du vin ! du vin I 
 
 Ah ! combien je jouis 
 
 Suand la riviere apporte 
 es vins de toute sorte 
 Et de tous les pays ! 
 Ma cave est mon armoire— 
 A 1'instant tout est plein ; 
 C'est l'eau qui nous fait boire 
 Du vin.! du vin ! du vin ! 
 
 Far un terns sec et beau 
 Le meunier du village, 
 Se morfond sans ouvrage, 
 
 II ne boit que de l'eau ; 
 
 WINE DEBTOR TO WATER. 
 Air — " Life let us cherish." 
 
 Rain best doth nourish 
 
 Earth's pride, the budding vine ! 
 Grapes best will flourish 
 
 On which the dew-drops shine. 
 Then why should water meet with scorn, 
 
 Or why its claims to praise resign ? 
 When from that bounteous source is born 
 
 The vine ! the vine ! the vine ! 
 
 Rain best disposes 
 
 Earth for each bios om and each bud ; 
 True, we are told by Moses, 
 
 Once it brought on " a flood : " 
 But while that flood did all immerse, 
 
 All save old Noah's holy line, 
 Pray read the chapter and the verse — 
 
 The vine is there 1 the vine ! 
 
 Wine by water-carriage 
 
 Round the globe is best conveyed ; 
 Then why disparage 
 
 A path for old Bacchus made ? 
 When in our docks the cargo lands 
 
 Which foreign merchants here consign. 
 The wine's red empire wide expands — 
 
 The vine ! the vine ! the vine ! 
 
 Rain makes the miller 
 
 Work his glad wheel the livelong day; 
 Rain brings the siller, 
 
 And drives dull care away : 
 
II rentre dans sa gloire 
 
 Quand 1'eau rentre au moulin ; 
 C'est l'eau qui lui fait boire 
 
 Du vin ! du vin ! du vin ! 
 
 Faut-il un trait nouveau ? 
 
 Mes amis, je le guette ; 
 
 Voyez a la guinguette 
 Entrer ce porteur d'eau I 
 II y perd la memoire 
 
 Des travaux du matin ; 
 C'est l'eau qui lui fait boire 
 
 Du vin I du vin ! du vin ! 
 
 Mais a vous chanter l'eau 
 
 ie sens que je m'altere ; 
 lonnez moi vite une verre 
 Du doux jus du tonneau — 
 Ce vin vient de la Loire, 
 
 Ou bien des bords du Rhin ; 
 C'est l'eau qui nous fait boire 
 Du vin 1 du vin ! du vin ! 
 
 For without rain he lacks the stream, 
 And fain o'er watery cups must pine ; 
 
 But when it rains, he courts, I deem, 
 The vine ! the vine ! the vine 1 * 
 
 Though all good judges 
 
 Water's worth now understand, 
 Mark yon chiel who drudges 
 
 With buckets in each hand ; 
 He toils with water through the town. 
 
 Until he spies a certain sign," 
 Where entering, all his labour done, 
 
 He drains thy juice, O vine ! 
 
 But pure water singing 
 
 Dries full soon the poet's tongue ; 
 So crown all by bringing 
 
 A draught drawn from the bung 
 Of yonder cask, that wine contains 
 
 Of Loire's good vintage or the Rhine, 
 Queen of whose teeming margin reigns 
 
 The vine ! the vine ! the vine ! 
 
 It must be acknowledged that even Pindar himself, when he struck the 
 glorious key-note of Apiarov fxeu vowp, produced a more complimentary 
 panegyric on the liquid element than our French songster. But it is not merely 
 on water that the French have shown more talent than the illustrious Bceotian, 
 for on Aorses, also, they have completely thrown him into the shade. This is 
 what I call fighting with the Grecian cock on his own favourite dunghill, and 
 beating him in his own stable-yard. The " Olympic Races" never furnished a 
 more sublime equestrian ode than the celebrated song of the " Cossack to his 
 Horse," by Beranger, and Pindar's Racing Calendar, or 'the Sporting Magazine 
 of Greece may be searched in vain for anything superior in the way of horse 
 poetry. Homer may talk of his Hector — 'Efrropos lirirodafiyj/oio — but the 
 Tartar jockey from the river Don beats the Trojan hollow. Turpin's " Black 
 Bess " is the only modern attempt that can compare to 
 
 LE CHANT DU COSAQUE. 
 
 Viens, mon coursier, noble ami du Cosaque, 
 
 Vole au signal des trompettes du nord ; 
 Prompt au pdlage, intrepide & l'attaque, 
 
 Prcte sous moi des ailes & la mort. 
 L'or n'enrichit ni ton frein ni ta selle, 
 
 Mais attends tout du prix de mes exploits : 
 Hennis d'orgueil, 6 mon coursier fidele, 
 
 Et foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois. 
 
 La paix qui fuit m'abandonne tes guides, 
 
 La vieille Europe a perdu ses remparts ; 
 Viens de tresors combler mes mains avides, 
 ■ Viens reposer dans l'asile des arts, 
 
 * This idea, containing an apparent paradox, has been frequently worked up in the 
 quaint writing of the middle ages. There is an old Jesuits' riddle, which I learnt among 
 other wise saws at their colleges, from which it will appear that this Miller is a regular 
 Joe. 
 
 Q. " Suave bibo vinum quoties mihi suppetit unda : 
 Undaque si desit, quid bibo?" 
 
 R. " Tristris aquam ! " 
 
 Peout. 
 
138 Tlie Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Retourne boire & la Seine rebelle, 
 
 Otl, tout sanglant, tu t'es lave deux fois ; 
 Hennis d'orguexl, 6 mon coursier fidele, 
 
 £t foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois. 
 
 Comme en un fort, princes, nobles, et prStres, 
 
 Tous assieges par leurs sujets souffrans, 
 Nous ont cne : venez, soyez nos mattres — 
 
 Nous serons serfs pour demeurer tyrans ! 
 J'ai pris ma lance, et tous vont devant ellc 
 
 Humilier, et le sceptre et la croix : 
 Hennis d'orgueilj 6 mon coursier fiddle, _ 
 
 Et foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois. 
 
 J'ai d'un geant vu le fantdme immense 
 
 Sur nos bivouacs fixer un ceil ardent ; 
 II s'ecria : Mon regne recommence ; 
 
 Et de sa hache il-montrait 1 'Occident ; 
 Du roi des Huns e'etait l'ombre immortelle ; 
 
 Fils d'Attila, j'obeis & sa voix 
 Hennis d 'orgueil, 6 mon coursier fidele, 
 
 Et foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois. 
 
 Tout cet eclat doht 1'Europe est si Here, 
 
 Tout ce savoir qui ne la defend pas, 
 S'engloutira dans les flots de poussiere 
 
 Qu'autour de moi vont soulever tes pas 
 Efface, efface, en la course nouvelle, 
 
 Temples, palais, mceurs, souvenirs, et lois ! 
 Hennis d'orgueil, 6 mon coursier fidele, 
 
 Et foule aux pieds les peuples et les rois. 
 
 THE SONG OF THE COSSACK. 
 
 Come, arouse thee up, my gallant horse, and bear thy rider on ! 
 The comrade thou, and the friend, I trow, of the dweller on the Don. 
 Pillage and Death have spread their wings ! 'tis the hour to hie thee forth. 
 And with thy hoofs an echo wake to the trumpets of the North 1 
 Nor gems nor gold do men behold upon thy saddle-tree ; 
 But earth affords the wealth of lords for thy master and for thee. 
 Then fiercely neigh, my charger grey ! — thy chest is proud and ample ; 
 Thy hoofs shall prance o er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample 1 
 
 Europe is weak — she hath grown old — her bulwarks are laid low ; 
 She is loth to hear the blast of war* — she shrinkethfrom a foe ! 
 Come, in our turn, let us sojourn in her goodly haunts of joy — 
 In the pillar'd porch to wave the torch, and her palaces destroy ! 
 Proud as when first thou slak'dst thy thirst in the flow of conquer 'd Seine, 
 Aye shalt thou lave, Within that wave, thy blood-red flanks again. 
 Then fiercely neigh, my gallant grey !— thy chest is strong and ample ! 
 Thy hoofs shall prance o er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample 1 
 
 Kings are beleaguered on their thrones by their own vassal crew ; 
 And in their den quake noblemen, and priests are bearded too ; 
 And loud they yelp for the Cossack's "help to keep their bondsmen down, 
 And they think it meet, while they kiss our feet, to wear a tyrant's crown ! 
 The sceptre now to my lance shall bow, and the crosier and the cross 
 Shalt bend alike when I lift my pike, and aloft that sceptre toss t 
 Then proudly neigh, my gallant grey ! — thy chest is broad and ample ; 
 Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample 1 
 
 In a night of storm I have seen a form I— and the figure was a giant, 
 And his eye was bent on the Cossack's tent, and his look was all defiant ; 
 Kingly his crest— and towards the West with his battle-axe he pointed ; 
 And the " form " I saw was Attila 1 of this earth the scourge anointed. 
 
The. Songs of France. i 39 
 
 From the Cossack's camp let the horseman's tramp the coming crash announce ; 
 Let the vulture whet his beak sharp set, on the carrion field to pounce ; 
 And proudly neigh, my charger grey ! — O ! thy chest is broad and ample ;' 
 Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample, ! 
 
 What boots Old Europe's boasted fame, on which she builds reliance, 
 When the North shall launch its avalanche on her works of art and science ? 
 Hath she not wept her cities swept by our hordes pf trampling stallions i 
 And tower and arch crushed in the march of our barbarous battalions ? 
 
 ' Can we not wield our fathers' shield ? the same war-hatchet handle ? 
 
 Do our blades want length, or the reapers' strength, for the harvest of the Vandal ? 
 Then proudly neigh, my gallant grey, for thy chest is strong and ample ; 
 
 And thy hoofs shall prance o er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample ! 
 
 In the foregoing glorious song of the Cossack to his Horse, Beranger appears 
 to me to have signally evinced that peculiar talent discoverable in most of his 
 lyrical impersonations, which enables him so completely to identify himself 
 with the character he undertakes to portray, that the poet is lost sight of in the 
 all-absorbing splendour of the theme. Here we have the mind hurried away 
 with irresistible grasp, and flung down among the wild scenery of the river 
 Don, amid the tents of the Scythians and an encampment of the North. If we 
 are sufficiently dull to resist the impulse that would transport our rapt soul to 
 the region of the poet's inspiration, still, even on the quiet tympanum of cur- 
 effeminate ear, there cometh the sound of a barbarian cavalry, heard most fear- 
 fully distinct, thundering along the rapid and sonorous march of the stanza ; 
 the terrific spectre of the King of the Huns frowns on our startled fancy : and 
 we look on this sudden outpouring of Beranger' s tremendous poetry with the 
 sensation of Virgil's shepherd, awed at the torrent that sweeps down the 
 Apennines, — 
 
 " Stupet inscius alto 
 Accipiens sonitumsaxt de vertice pastor." 
 
 There is more where that came from. And if, instead of oriental imagery and 
 " barbaric, pearl and gold," camels, palm-trees, bulbuls, houris, frankincense, 
 silver veils, and other gewgaws with which Tom Moore has glutted the market 
 of literature in his " Lalla Rookh," we could prevail on our poetasters to use 
 sterner stuff, to dig the iron mines of the North, and send their Pegasus to a 
 week's training among the Cossacks, rely on it we should have more vigour and 
 energy in the bone and muscle of the winged animal. Drawing-room poets 
 should partake of the rough diet and masculine beverage of this hardy tribe, 
 whose cookery has been described in " Hudibras," and of whom the swan of 
 Mantua gently singeth with becoming admiration : 
 
 " Et lac concretum cum sanguine potat equino." 
 
 Lord Byron is never more spirited and vigorous than when he recounts the 
 catastrophe of Mazeppa ; and in the whole of that sublime rhapsody, the 
 " Pilgrimage of Childe Harold," there is nota line (where-o// is breathing the 
 loftiest enthusiasm and rapture) to be compared to his northern slave, his 
 "dying gladiator," 
 
 " Butchered to make a Roman holyday 1 " 
 
 Oh ! he is truly great, when, in the fulness of prophetic inspiration, he calls on 
 the Goths to " arise and glut their ire ! " However, I hope none will attempt 
 to woo the muse of the North, unless poets of solid pretensions and capabili- 
 ties : if Tom Moore were to present himself to the nymph's notice, I fear he 
 would catch a Tartar. 
 
This dissertation has led me away from the subject-matter of my essays, to 
 which I faithfully return. The " Songs of France," properly socalled, exhibit 
 a fund of inexhaustible good-humour, at the same time that they are fraught 
 with the most exalted philosophy. Addison has written with a " commentary 
 on the ballad of " Chevy Chase ;" and the public is indebted to him for having 
 revealed the recondite value of that excellent old chant : but there is a French 
 lyrical composition coeval with the English ballad aforesaid, and containing at 
 least an equal quantity of contemporary wisdom. The opening verses may 
 give a specimen of its wonderful range of thought. They run thus : 
 
 " Le bon roy Dagobert 
 Avait mis sa culotte a l'envers : 
 Le bon Saint Eloy 
 Lui dit, ' O mon roy ! 
 Votre majeste 
 S'est mal culotte ! ' 
 ' Eh bien,' dit ce bon roy, 
 ' Je vais la remettre & l'endroit. ,M * 
 
 I do not, as in other cases, follow up this French quotation by a literal version 
 of its meaning in English, for several reasons ; of which the principal is, that 
 I intend to revert to the song itself in my second chapter, when I shall come to 
 treat of "frogs" and "wooden shoes." But it maybe well to instruct the 
 superficial reader, that in this apparently simple stanza there is a deep blow 
 aimed at the imbecility of the then reigning monarch ; and that under the 
 culotte there lieth much hidden mystery, explained by one Sartor Resartus, 
 Professor Teufelsdrockh, a German philosopher. 
 
 Confining myself, therefore, for the present, to wine and war, I proceed to 
 give a notable war-song, of which the tune is well known throughout Europe, 
 but the words and the poetry are on the point of being effaced from the super- 
 ficial memory of this flimsy generation. By my recording them in these papers, 
 posterity will not be deprived of their racy humour and exquisite ndiveti: 
 nor shall a future age be reduced to confess with the interlocutor in the 
 " Eclogues," " numeros nemini, si verba tenerem." Who has not hummed in 
 
 Dagobert II., King of Australisia, was conveyed away in his infancy to Ireland, 
 
 the school of Lismore, so celebrated by the venerable Bede as a college of Europ 
 reputation. His peculiar manner of wearing his trousers would seem to have been 
 learned in Cork. St. Eloi was a brassfounder and a tinker. He is the patron of the 
 Dublin corporation guild of smiths, who call him (ignorantly) St. Loy. This saint was 
 a good Latin poet. The king, one day going into his chariot, a clumsy contrivance, 
 described by Boileau — < 
 
 " Quatre bosufs atteles, d'un pas tranquil et lent, 
 Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent" — 
 
 was, as usual, attended by his favourite, Eloi, and jokingly asked him to make a couplet 
 extempore before the drive. Eloi stipulated for the wages of song ; and having got a 
 promise of the two oxen, launched out into the following apostrophe — 
 
 " Ascendit Dagobert, veniat bos unus et alter 
 In nostrum stabulum, carpere ibl pabulum ! " 
 
 King Dagobert was not a bid hand at Latin verses himself, for he is supposed to have 
 written that exquisite elegy sung at the dirge for the dead — 
 
 " Dies irse, dies ilia 
 Solvet saeclum in favilla, 
 Teste David cum sibyll*," &c, 
 
 which has been translated by Lord Roscommon. —Trout. 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 141 
 
 his lifetime the immortal air of Malbrouck ? Still, if the best antiquary were 
 called on to supply the original poetic composition, such as it burst on the 
 world in the decline of the classic era of Queen Anne and Louis XIV., I fear 
 he would be unable to gratify the curiosity of an eager public in so interesting 
 an inquiry. For many reasons, therefore, it is highly meet and proper that I 
 should consign it to the imperishable tablets of these written memorials : and 
 here, then, followeth the song of the lamentable death of the illustrious John 
 Churchill, which did not take place, by some mistake, but was nevertheless 
 celebrated as follows : 
 
 MALBROUCK. 
 
 Malbiouck s'en va-t-en guerre, 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton* mi ron taine, 
 Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, 
 On n'scait quand il reviendra. 
 
 II reviendra k Paques, < 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron tame, 
 
 II reviendra a Paques, 
 
 Ou a la Trinite. 
 
 La Trinit6 se passe, 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 La Trinit£ se passe, 
 Malbrouck ne revient pas. 
 
 Madame h sa tour monte. 
 
 Mi ron ton,. ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 Madame a sa tour monte, 
 
 Le plus haut qu'on peut monter. 
 
 Elle voit venir un page, 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 Elle voit venir un page 
 
 De noir tout nabiUe 1 . 
 
 Mi 
 
 MALBROUCK. 
 
 Malbrouck, the prince of commanders, 
 Is gone to the war in Flanders : 
 His fame is like Alexander's ; 
 Iter. But when will he come home? iter* 
 
 Perhaps at Trinity Feast, or 
 Perhaps he may come at Easter. 
 Egad > he had better make haste, or 
 We fear he may never come. [ter 
 
 [ter. 
 
 {ter. 
 
 iter. 
 
 iter. 
 
 Mon page, 6 mon beau page. 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 Mon page, 6 mon beau page, 
 
 Quelle nouvelle apportez ? iter* 
 
 La nouvelle que j'apporte, 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 La nouvelle que j'apporte 
 
 Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer. iter. 
 
 Monsieur Malbrouck est mort. 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron tame, 
 
 Monsieur Malbrouck est mort, 
 
 Est mort et enterre. * [ter. 
 
 e l'ai vu porter en terre, 
 
 ili ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 Te l'ai vu porter en terre 
 
 Par quatrez' officiers. iter. 
 
 L'un portait son grand sabre, 
 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 
 L'un portatt son grand sabre, 
 
 L'autre son bouclier. iter. 
 
 For "Trinity Feast " is over, 
 And has brought no news from Dover ; 
 And Easter is past, moreover, 
 And Malbrouck still delays. [ter. 
 
 Milady in her watch-tower 
 Spends many a pensive hour, 
 Not well knowing why or how her 
 Dear lord from England stays. [ter. 
 
 While sitting quite forlorn in 
 That tower, she spies returning 
 A page clad in deep mourning, 
 With fainting steps and slow. [ter. 
 
 " O page, prithee, come faster, — 
 What news do you bring of your master? 
 I fear there is some disaster, 
 Your looks are so full of woe." iter. 
 
 "The news I bring, fair lady," 
 With sorrowful accent said he, 
 
 * Is one you are not ready 
 So soon, alas ! to hear. 
 
 {ier. 
 
 But since to speak I'm hurried," 
 Added this page, quite flurried, 
 " Malbrouck is dead and buried ! "— 
 (And here he shed a tear.) iter. 
 
 '* He's dead ! he's dead as a herring ! 
 For I beheld his 'herring,' 
 And four officers transferring 
 
 His corpse away from the field. iter. 
 
 One officer carried his sabre, 
 And he carried it not without labour. 
 Much envying his next neighbour, 
 Who only bore a shield. iter. 
 
 * Kciteu narpOKAos* vcttvos 5tj aft<£t/*aYO»Tai 
 
 Tvfivov aTap ra ye Tev\e' e^ei KOpu0aioAos 'Efcrup. 
 
143 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Le troisieme son casque, 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 Le troisieme son casque, 
 Panache renverse, 
 
 L'autre, je ne scais pas bien. 
 Mi ron ton, ton ton, mi ron taine, 
 L'autre, je nc scais pas bien, 
 Mais je croix qu'il ne portait rien. 
 
 The third was helmet-bearer— 
 That helmet which on its wearer 
 Filled all who saw with terror. 
 Iter. And covered a hero's brains. Iter. 
 
 Now, having got so far, I 
 Find that (by the Lord Harry 
 ThefdurtA is left nothing to carry ; 
 \ter. So there the thing remains." [ter. 
 
 Such, O phlegmatic inhabitants of these countries 1 is the celebrated 
 funeral song of Malbrouck. It is what we would . in Ireland call a keen over 
 the dead, with this difference, that the lamented deceased is, among us, 
 generally dead outright, with a hole in his skull ; whereas the subject of the 
 pathetic elegy of " Monsieur " was, at the time of its composition, both alive 
 and kicking all before him. It may not be uninteresting to learn, that both 
 the tune and the words were composed as a " lullaby" to set the infant Dau- 
 phin to sleep ; and that, having succeeded in the object of soporific efficacy, the 
 poetess (for some make Madame de Sevigne' the authoress of " Malbrouck," 
 she being a sort of L. E. L. in her day) deemed historical accuracy a minor 
 consideration. It is a singular fact, which I have learnt among other matters 
 from my esteemed friend Tames Roche, Esq. , that this tune is the only one 
 relished by the South Sea Islanders, who find it " most musical, most melan- 
 choly." 
 
 There is nothing like variety in a literary composition ; and as we have just 
 given a war-song, or a lullaby, we shall introduce a different subject, to avoid 
 monotony and to break the uniformity of our essay. We shall therefore give 
 the poet Berahger's famous ode to Dr. Lardner, concerning his "Cyclopaedia," 
 which is little known to the British public, but is highly deserving of notice. 
 The occasion which gave rise to this lyrical effusion was the recent trip of 
 Dionysius Lardner to Paris, and his proposal (conveyed through Dr. Bowring) 
 to Be'ranger, of a handsome remuneration, if the poet would sing or say a good 
 word about his " Cabinet Cyclopaedia," which Dr. Bowring translated as "son 
 Encyclopedie des Cabinets" (query, d'aisauce f). Lardner gave the poet a 
 dinner on the strength of the expected commendatory poem, when the follow- 
 ing song was composed after the third bottle : 
 
 L'EPEE DE DAMOCLES. 
 
 De Damocles I'epee est bien connue, 
 
 En songe a table il m'a semble la voir ; 
 Sous cetre ep6e et menacante et nue, . 
 
 Denis 1'ancien me foroait a m'asseoir. 
 Jc m'ecriais que mon destin s'achevc — ; 
 
 La coupe en main, au doux bruit ces 
 concerts, 
 vieux Denis; je me ris de ton glaive, 
 
 Je bois, je chante, ct je siffle tes vers I 
 
 "Que dti mepris la haine an moins me 
 sauve ! ' 
 Dit ce pedant, qui rompt un fil leger ; 
 Le fer pesant tonibc sur ma tete chauve, 
 J'entends ces mots, " Denis soait se ven- 
 ger ! " 
 
 THE DINNER OF DIONY- 
 SIUS. 
 
 O ! who hath not heard of the sword which 
 old Dennis 
 Hung over the head of a stoic? 
 And how the stem sage bore that terrible 
 menace 
 With a fortitude not quite heroic? 
 There's a Dennis the " tyrant of Cecily " 
 hight, 
 (Most sincerely I pity his lady, ah !) 
 Now this Dennis is doom'd for his sins to 
 ' : indite 
 A "Cabinet Cyclopaedia." 
 
 ..He press'd me to dine, and he placed on 
 my head 
 An appropriate garland of poppies ; 
 And, lo ! from the ceiling there hung by a 
 thread 
 A bale of unsalable copies. 
 
The Songs of France. 143 
 
 Me voila mort et poursuivant mon reve — " Puff my writings," he cried, " or your 
 
 La coupe en main, je repete aux enfers, skull shall be crushed 1 " 
 
 O vieux Denis, je me ris de ton glaive, "TJiat I cannot," I answer'd, with honesty 
 
 Je bois, je chantc, et je siffle tes vers ! flushed. 
 
 " Be your name Dionysius or Thady, ah ! 
 Old Dennis, my boy, though I were to en- 
 joy 
 But one glass and one song, still one laugh, 
 loud and long, 
 I should have at your 'Cyclopaedia.'" 
 
 So adieu, Dr. Lardner, for the present, ass in fnssenii; and turn we to 
 other topics of song. 
 
 In this "Ode to Dr. Lardner" the eye of the connoisseur has no doubt 
 detected sundry latent indications of the poet's wonderful cleverness and con- 
 summate drollery ; but it is in ennobling insignificant subjects by reference to 
 historical anecdote and classic allegory, that the delicate tact and singular 
 ability of Beranger are to be admired. It will be in the recollection of those 
 who have read the accomplished fabulist of Rome, Phsedrus, that he commends 
 Simonides of Cos for his stratagem, when hired to sing the praise of some 
 obscure candidate for the honours of the Olympic race-course. The bard, 
 finding no material for verse in the life of his vulgar hero, launched forth into 
 an encomium on Castor and Pollux, twin-brothers of the olden turf, from whom 
 he ever afterwards derived good luck and celestial patronage. But further to 
 illustrate this grand feature in the songs of Beranger, and this predominant 
 propensity of the French poet, I will now give a most beautiful exemplification 
 of his talent in dignifying a most homely subject by the admixture of Greek 
 and Roman associations. The French original is rather too long to be tran- 
 scribed here ; and as my translation is not, in this case, a literal version, the 
 less it is confronted with its prototype the better. The last stanza I do not 
 pretend to understand rightly, so I put it at the bottom of the page in a note,* 
 supposing that my readers may not be so blind as I confess I am concerning 
 this intricate and enigmatical passage of the ode. 
 
 "GOOD DRY LODGINGS." 
 
 According to B&ranger, Songster* 
 
 My dwelling is ample, 
 And I've set an example 
 For all lovers of wine to follow. 
 
 If my home you should ask, 
 , I have drain d out a cask, 
 And I dwell in the fragrant hollow ! 
 A disciple am I of Diogenes — 
 Oh ! his tub a most classical lodging is ; 
 Tis a beautiful alcove for thinking ; 
 *Tis, besides, a cool grotto for drinking : 
 Moreover, the parish throughout 
 You can readily roll it about. 
 
 * " Diogene ! sous ton irranteau, 
 
 Libre et content, je ris, je bois, sans gene ; 
 
 -Libre et content, je roule mon tonneau 1 
 Lanterne en main, dans l'Athenes moderne 
 
 Chercher uit homme est un dessein fort beau ! 
 Mais quand le soir voit briller ma lanterne, 
 
 C'est aux amours quelle sert de flambeau." 
 
O ! the berth 
 For a lover of mirth 
 To revel in jokes, and to lodge in ease, 
 Is the classical tub of Diogenes ! 
 
 In politics I'm no adept, 
 And into my tub when I've crept, 
 They may canvass in vain for my vote. 
 For besides, after all the great cry and hubbub, 
 Reform gave no " ten pound franchise" to my tub; 
 
 So your " bill " I don t value a groat ! 
 And as for that idol of filth and vulgarity, 
 Adored now-a-days, and yclept Popularity, 
 To my home 
 Should it come, 
 And my hogshead's bright aperture darken, 
 Think not to such summons l ! d hearken. 
 No ! I'd say to that goule grim and gaunt, 
 Vile phantom, a vaunt ! 
 Get thee out of my sight ! 
 For thy clumsy opacity shuts out the light 
 Of the gay glorious sun 
 From my classical tun, 
 Where a hater of cant and a lover of fun 
 Fain would revel in mirth, and would lodge in ease— 
 The classical tub of Diogenes ! 
 
 In the park of St. Cloud there stares at you 
 A pillar or statue 
 
 Of my liege, the philosopher cynical : 
 
 There he stands on a pinnacle, 
 And his lantern is placed on the ground. 
 
 While, with both eyes fixed wholly on 
 
 The favourite haunt of Napoleon, 
 " A man ! " he exclaims, " by the powers, I have found ! " 
 But for me, when at eve I go sauntering 
 On the boulevards of Athens, ** Love " carries my lantern ; 
 And, egad ! though I walk most demurely, 
 For a man I'm not looking full surely ; 
 Nay, I'm sometimes brought drunk home, 
 Like honest Jack Reeve, or like honest Tom Duncombe. 
 O ! the nest 
 For a lover of jest 
 
 To revel in fun, and to lodge in ease, 
 
 Is the classical tub of Diogenes ! 
 
 So much for the poet's capability of embellishing what is vulgar, by the 
 magic wand of antique recollections : froprih communia dicere, is a secret as 
 rare as ever ; and none but genuine fellows, such as Byron, Horace, Scott, and 
 Beranger, were in possession of this valuable tradition. When Hercules took a 
 distaff in hand, he made but a poor spinner, and broke all the threads, to the 
 amusement of his mistress; Beranger would have gracefully gone through 
 even that minor accomplishment, at the same time that the war-club and the 
 battle-axe lost nothing of their power when wielded by his hand. Such is the 
 amazing versatility of genius ! 
 
 Can anything be found in the whole range of sentimental rhapsodies and 
 tender effusions, of mingled love, enthusiasm, and patriotism, to compare 
 with the following beautiful ode of this songster of '* the tub," who herein 
 shows most strikingly with what facility he can diversify his style, vary his tone, 
 and run ' ' through each mood of the lyre, while a master in all 1 " 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 145 
 
 LE PIGEON MESSAGER. 
 
 Chanson, 1822. 
 
 L'Ai brillait, et ma jeune maitresse 
 
 Chantait les dieux dans la Grfece ou- 
 blies ; # 
 Nous comparions notre France & la Grfece, 
 
 Quand tm pigeon vint s'abattre & nos 
 pieds. 
 Naeris decouvre un billet sous son ai!e ; 
 
 II le portait vers des foyers cheris— 
 Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidele ! 
 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Naeris. 
 
 II est tomb6, las d'un trop-long voyage ; 
 
 Rendons-lui vite et force et liberte. 
 D'un traffiquant remplit-il le message? 
 
 Va-t-il d'amour parler & la beaute ? 
 Peut-etre il porte au nid qui le rappelle 
 
 Les dermers vceux d'infortunes pros- 
 crits — 
 Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidele ! 
 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Naeris. 
 
 Mais du billet quelques mots me font 
 croire 
 
 Qu'il est en France in des Grecs apportd; 
 II vient d'Athenes; il doit parler de gloire; 
 
 Lisons-le done par droit de parente — 
 "Athene est libra!" Amis, quelle nou- 
 velle ! 
 
 Que de lauriers tout-a-coup refleuris — 
 Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidele ! 
 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Nasris. 
 
 Athene est libre ! Ah ! buvons a laGrece ! 
 
 Nseris, voici de nouveaux demi-dieux ! 
 L'Europe en vain, tremblantc de viellesse, 
 
 Desheritait ces aSnes glorieux. 
 lis sent vainqueurs ! Athenes, tou jours 
 belle, 
 
 N'est plus vouee au culte des debris !— 
 Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidele ! 
 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Naeris. 
 
 A thine est libre ! O, muse des Pindares, 
 
 Ueprends ton sceptre, et ta lyre, et ta 
 voix ! 
 Athene est libre, en depit des barbares V 
 
 Athene est libre, en depit de nos rois ! 
 Que l'tmivers toujours, instruit par elle, 
 
 Ketrouve encore Athenes dans Fans — 
 Bois dans ma coupe, O messager fidele ! 
 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Nsris. 
 
 Beau voyageur du pays des Hellenes, 
 Repose-toi ; puis vole a tes amoui s ! 
 
 Vole, et bientot, reports dans Athenes, 
 Reviens braver et tyrans et vautours. 
 
 THE CARRIER-DOVE OF 
 ATHENS. 
 
 A Dream, 1822. 
 
 Ellen sat by my side, and I held 
 
 To her lip the gay cup in my bower, 
 When a bird at our feet we beheld. 
 
 As we talk'd of old Greece in that 
 hour ; 
 And his wing bore a burden of love, 
 
 To some fair one the secret soul tell- 
 ing— 
 O drink of my cup, carrier-dove ! 
 
 And sleep on the bosom of Ellen. 
 
 Thou art tired — rest awhile, and anon 
 
 Thou shalt soar, with new energy thrill- 
 ing, 
 To the land of that far-off fair one, 
 
 If such be the task thou'rt fulfilling : 
 But perhaps thou dost waft the last word 
 
 Of despair, wrung from valour and 
 duty — 
 Then drink of my cup, carrier-bird ! 
 
 And sleep on the bosom of Beauty. 
 
 Ha ! these lines are from Greece ! Well I 
 knew 
 
 The loved idiom ! Be mine the perusal. 
 Son of France, I'm a child of Greece too ; 
 
 And a kinsman will brook no refusal. 
 " Greece is free t " all the gods have con- 
 curr'd 
 
 To fill up our joy's brimming measure — 
 O drink of my cup, carrier-bird ! 
 
 And sleep on the bosom of Pleasure. 
 
 Greece is free ! Let us drink to that land, 
 
 To our elders in fame ! Did ye merit 
 Thus to struggle alone, glorious band ! 
 From whose sires we our freedom in- 
 herit? 
 * The old glories, which kings would de- 
 stroy, 
 Greece regains, never, never to lose 'em ! 
 O drink of my cup, bird of joy ! 
 And sleep on my Ellen's soft bosom. 
 
 Muse of Athens ! thy lyre quick resume ! 
 
 None thy anthem of freedom shall hin- 
 der: 
 Give Anacreon joy in his tomb, 
 
 And gladden the ashes of Pindar. 
 Ellen ! fold that bright bird to thy breast, 
 
 Nor permit him henceforth to desert 
 you — 
 O drink of my cup, winged guest ! 
 
 And sleep on the bosom of Virtue. 
 
 But no, he must hie to bis home, 
 To the nest wherehis bride is awaiting ; 
 
 Soon again to our climate he'll come, 
 The young glories of Athens relating, 
 
146 
 
 Tlie Works of Father Prout. 
 
 A tant des rois dont le trine chancele, 
 D'un peuple libre apporte encore les 
 ens — 
 
 Bois dans ma coups, O message? fidfele ! 
 Et dors en paix sur le sein de Na»ris. 
 
 The baseness of kings to reprove, 
 To blush our vile rulers compelling ! — 
 
 -Then drink of my goblet, O dove ! 
 And sleep on the breast of my Ellen.* 
 
 After this specimen of Beranger's poetic powers in the sentimental line, I shall 
 take leave of him for the remainder of this chapter; promising, however, to 
 draw largely on his inexhaustible exchequer when next I levy my contributions 
 on the French. But I cannot get out of this refined and delicate mood of 
 quot ations without indulging in the luxury of one more ballad, an exquisite ore, 
 from the pen of my favourite Millevoye. Poor young fellow ! he died when 
 full of promise, in early life; and these are the last lines his pale haiid traced 
 on paper, a few days before he expired in the pretty village of Neuilly, near 
 Paris, whither he had been ordered by the physician, in hopes of prolonging, 
 by country air, a life so dear to the Muses. Listen to the notes of the swan ! 
 
 PRIEZ POUR MOI. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 Neuilly, Octobre t 282c. 
 
 Dans la solitaire bourgade, , 
 
 Revant & ses maux tristement, 
 Languissait un pauvre malade, 
 
 D'un mal qui le va consumant : 
 II disait, "Gens de la chaumifere, 
 Voici l'heure de la priere, 
 
 Et le tinteinent du befroi ; 
 
 Votis qui priez, priez pour moi ! 
 
 Mais quand vous verrez la cascade 
 
 S'ombrager de sombres rameaux, 
 Vous dlrez, ' Le jeune malade 
 
 Est delivr6 de tous ses maux.* 
 Alors revenez sur cette rive, 
 Chanter la complainte naive, 
 
 Et quand tinttra le befroi, 
 
 Vous qui priez, priez pour moi ! 
 
 Ma compagne, ma seule amie, 
 
 Di.:ne ubjet d'un constant amour! 
 Je lui avals consacro ma vie, 
 
 HeLu. ! je ne vis qu'un jour! 
 Plai^nez-la, ■..ens de la chaumiere, 
 Lorsque, & l'heure de ta priere, 
 
 Kile viendra sous le befroi ; 
 
 Vous- qui priez, priez pour moi ! " 
 
 Simple, unaffected, this is true poetry, and goes to the heart. One ballad 
 like the foregoing is worth a cart-load of soi-disant elegies, monodies, solilo- 
 quies, and "bards' legacies." Apropos of melodies, I just now recollect one 
 in Toms own style, which it would be a pity to keep from him ; indeed, only 
 for his late conduct I would have enclosed it to him, and allowed him to pass 
 it off as his own, -in -the same way as forty other- French compositions, which 
 he has had the effrontery to claim as his original property. To save him the 
 trouble of translating it into Moorish rhyme, 1 have done the job myself; and 
 
 * It would be an insult to the classic scholar to remind him that Beranger has taken 
 the hint of this song from Anacreon's Epacrpu) ireAeta, mtfcp, itaBw TTCTturtrat, ode 15, 
 \juxtacod, Krt//c.)— Prout. 
 
 PRAY FOR ME. A BALLAD. 
 
 By Millevoye, on his Death-bed at the Village 
 of Neuilly. 
 
 Silent, remote, this hamlet seems — 
 
 How hush'd the breeze ! the eve how calm ! 
 Light through my dying chamber beams. 
 
 But hope comes not, nor healing balm. 
 Kind villagers ! God bless your shed ! 
 
 Hark ! 'tis for prayer— the evening bell — 
 Oh, stay, and near my dying bed, 
 
 Maiden, for me your rosary tell ! 
 
 When leaves shall strew the waterfall, 
 
 In the sad close of autumn drear, 
 Say, " The sick youth is freed from all 
 
 The pangs and woe he suffer'd here." 
 So may ye speak of him that's gone ; 
 
 But when your belfry tolls my knell. 
 Pray for the soul of that lost one— 
 
 Maiden, for me your rosary tell ! 
 
 Oh ! pity her, in sable robe, 
 
 Who to my grassy grave will come : 
 Nor seek a hidden wound to probe — 
 
 She was my love !— point out my tomb; 
 Tell her my life should have been ners — 
 
 'Twas but a day !— God's will !— 'tis well : 
 But weep with her, kind villagers ! 
 
 Maiden, fur me your rosary tell ! 
 
The Songs of Frame. 
 
 H7 
 
 it may challenge competition with his best concetti and most captivating 
 similes. , Tire song is from an old troubadour called Pierre Ronsard, from 
 whom Tommy has picked up many a good thing ere now. 
 
 LE SABLE. 
 
 La poudre qui clans ce crista! 
 
 Le pours de.s heures nous retrace, 
 Lorsqite dans un petit canal 
 
 Souvent elle passe et repasse. 
 
 Fut Ronsard, qui, un jour, morbleu t 
 Par les beaux yeux de sa Clytandre 
 
 Soudain fut transform© en feu, 
 Et il n'en reste que la cendre. 
 
 Cendre ! qui ne t'arrStes jamais, 
 Tu temoigneras une chose, 
 
 C'est qu'ayant vu de tels attraits, 
 Le cceur onques ne repose. 
 
 THE HOUR-GLASS. 
 
 Dear Tonyd'ye see the rill 
 J 'Of sand Within this phial 1 
 It runs like in a mill, 
 And tells time like a dial. 
 
 That sand was once Ronsard. 
 
 Till Bessy D*»* look'd at him.* 
 Her eye burnt up the bard — 
 
 He's pulverized ! an atom I 
 
 Now at this tale so horrid, 
 
 Pray learn to keep your smile hid. 
 For Bessy's zone is "torrid," 
 
 And tire is in her eyelid, t 
 
 Now who, after this magnificent sample of French gallantry, will refuse to 
 that merry nation the sceptre of supremacy in the department of love-songs 
 and amorous effusions? Indeed, the language of polite courtship and the 
 dialect of soft talk is so redolent among us of French origin and Gallic associa- 
 tions, that the thing speaks for itself. The. servant-maid in the court of Pilate 
 found out Peter to be from Galilee by his accent ; and so is the dialect of 
 genuine Gaul ever recognized by the fair. Pettis soins— air distingue - — faite 
 au tour — na'iveti — billet doux— affaire de casur— boudoir, &c. &c, and a thou- 
 sand other expressions, have crept, in spite of us, into our every-day usage. 
 It was so of old with the Romans in reference to Greek, which was the favour- 
 ite conversational vehicle of gallantry anion; the loungers along the Via 
 Sacra : at least we have (to say nothing 01 Juvenal) the authority of that 
 excellent critic, Quintilian, who informs us that his contemporaries,' in their 
 sonnets to the Roman ladies, stuffed their verses with Greek terms. I think 
 his words are: " Tanto est sermo Graecus Latino jucundior, ut nostri poeta?, 
 quoties carmen dulce esse voluerunt, illorum id nominibus exornent." (Quint, 
 xii. cap. 10, sec. 33.) And again, in another passage, he says (Kb. x. cap. 1), 
 "Ita ut mihi sermo Romanus non recipere yideattir illam solis concessam 
 Atticis Vencrem." Our own Quintilian, Addison, has a curious paper in his 
 "Spectator," complaining of the great number of military terms imported, 
 during the Marlborough campaigns, from the fighting dictionary of France : 
 the influx of this slang he considered as a great disgrace to his fellow-country- 
 men, a humiliating badge of foreign conquest not to be tolerated. Neverthe- 
 less, chevaux de frise—hors de combat — aide de camp — depot— etat majoi — 
 
 * A gipsy had cautioned M. de la Mothe Vayer against going too near a dyke J but in 
 defiance of the prophecy he married a demoiselle De la Fosse : 
 
 " In foved qui te moriturum dixit haruspex 
 Non mentitus erat ; coniugis ilia fuit ! " 
 
 O. Y. 
 t Ronsard has no claim to this ingenious concetto : it is to be found among the poems 
 of Jerome Amafthi, who flourished in the 14th century. 
 
 " Perspicuo in vitro pulvis qui dividit haras, 
 Et vagus angustum ssepe recurrit iter, 
 Olim erat Alcippus, qui, Gallse ut vidit ocellos, 
 
 Arsit, et est exco factus ab igne.cinis. 
 Irrequiete cinis ! miserum testabere amantem 
 More tuo nulla posse quiete frui." 
 
 O.Y. 
 
148 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 brigade — and a host of other locutions, have taken such root in our soil, that 
 it were vain to murmur at the circumstance of their foreign growth. So it is 
 with the manual of love ; it is replete with the idioms of France, and there is 
 no use in denying the superiority of that versatile tongue for the purpose of 
 bamboozling the gentler portion of creation. I might triumphantly refer to 
 the epistolary and conversational embellishments it has furnished to the 
 " Fudge Family in Paris," one of Tommy's happiest efforts at humour, but 
 I intend returning to the subject in a fresh chapter. 
 
 Meantime, I think it but fair to make some compensation to the French for 
 all the sentimental matters derived from their vocabulary; and I therefore 
 conclude this first essay on the "Songs of France" by giving them a speci- 
 men of our own love-ditties, translated, as well as my old hand can render the 
 young feelings of passionate endearment, into appropriate French expression : 
 
 WADE. ABBE DE PROUT. 
 
 Meet me by moonlight alone, Viens au bosquet, ce soir, sans temoin, 
 And then I will tell you a tale Dans Ie vallon, au clair de la lune ; 
 
 Must be told by the light of the moon, Ce que Ton t'y dira n'a besoin 
 In the grove at the end of the vale. Ni de jour ni d'oreille importune. 
 
 remember ! be sure to be there ; Mais surtout rends-toi la sans faillir, 
 For though dearly the moonlight I prize, Car la lune a bien moins de lumiere 
 
 1 care not for all in the air, Que l'amour n'en scait faire jaillir 
 If I want the sweet light of thine eyes. De ta languissante paupiere. 
 
 Then meet me by moonlight alone. Sois au bosquet au clair de la lune. 
 
 Daylight was made for the gay, Pour les coeurs sans amour Ie jour luit. 
 
 For the thoughtless, the heartless, the Le soleil aux froids pensers preside ; 
 
 free! Mais la pale clarte de la nuit 
 
 But there's something about the moon's ray Favonse l'amant et le guide. 
 
 That is dearer to you, love, and me. Les fleurs que son disque argentin 
 
 Oh ! be sure to be there, for I said Colore, en toi verront leur reine. 
 
 I would show to the night-flowers their Quoi ! tu baisses ce regard divin, 
 
 queen. Jeune beaute, vraiment souveraine ? 
 
 Nay, turn not aside that sweet head— Rends-toi la done au clair de la lune. 
 "i'ls the fairest that ever was seen. 
 Then meet me by moonlight alone. 
 
 If an English love-song can be so easily rendered into the plastic language 
 of France by one to whom that flexible and harmonious idiom was not native 
 (though hospitable), what must be its capabilities in the hands of those masters 
 of the Gallic lyre, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Delavigne, and 
 Beranger ? To their effusions I shall gladly dedicate a few more papers ; nor 
 can I imagine any literary pursuit better calculated to beguile, in a pleasant 
 and profitable fashion, the winter evenings that are approaching. 
 
 :, 01 g 
 
The Songs of France. 149 
 
 VIII. 
 
 {Fraser's Magazine, November^ 1834.) 
 
 [The Literary Portrait in the number of Regina containing this second chapter on the 
 Lyrics of France, apropos to women and wooden shoes, represented one of those two rare 
 humorists of the Regency who were joint authors of the Rejected Addresses " — James 
 Smith, the elder brother, not Horace, the novelist of "Brambletye House" and long- 
 hidden performer of another solo, also, on a certain " Tin Trumpet" Croquis' wicked 
 likeness of the former depicted him in this sketch .seated rather stiffly in an arm-chair, 
 high-cravated, a hand on his crutch-handled cane, a foot resting upon an ottoman, and 
 altogether " pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down as much as he 
 could possibly bear," after the manner of a comparatively slim and rather grim Turvey- 
 drop. Machse's embellishment to this paper in the 1S36 edition represented the old 
 grandame in her ingle-nook saying to her children's children," J'ai garde* son verre," as 
 she points to the treasured wine-glass upon her homely chimney-piece. The editor of 
 the present edition of " The Works of Father Prout," having himself, years ago, translated 
 BeYanger's "Souvenirs du Peuple," is tempted, for the mere purposes of comparison, 
 to append to Mahony's, his own version of that, in truth, inimitable masterpiece.] 
 
 CHAPTER II.— Women and Wooden Shoes. 
 
 " Nell* estate all' ombra, nel inverno al fuoco, 
 Pinger' per gloria, e poetar' per giuoco." 
 
 Salvator Rosa. 
 
 Cool shade is summer's haunt, fireside November's ; 
 The red red rose then yields to glowing embers : 
 Drawings of Cork and " Croquis" place before us ! 
 And let old Prout strike up his Gallic chorus. 
 
 O. Y. 
 
 This gloomy month is peculiarly disastrous in northern climates. Indeed, our 
 brethren of the "broadsheet" are so philosophically resigned to the antici- 
 pated casualties of the season, that they keep by them, in stereotype, announce- 
 ments which at this time never fail to be put in constant requisition ; viz. 
 "-Death by Drowning," " Extraordinary Fog," "Melancholy Suicide," " Felo 
 de se," and sundry such doleful headings borrowed from Young's "Night 
 Thoughts," Ovid's " Tristia," the "Newgate Calendar," and other authors in 
 the dismal line. There is a method in our spleen, and much punctuality in 
 this periodical recurrence of the national melancholy. It certainly showed 
 great considerateness in that much-abused man, Guy Faux, to have selected 
 the fifth of November for despatching the stupid and unreformed senators of 
 
ISO The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Great Britain : so cold and comfortless a month was the most acceptable which 
 he could possibly have chosen for warming their honourable house with a few 
 seasonable faggots and forty-eight barrels of gunpowder. Philanthropic citizen ! 
 Neither he nor Sir William Congreve, of rocket celebrity— nor Friar Bacon, 
 the original concocter of "villanous saltpetre" — nor Parson Malthus, the 
 patentee of the "preventive check " — nor Dean Swift, the author of " A most 
 Modest Proposal for turning into Salt Provisions the Offspring of the Irish 
 Poor"— nor Brougham, the originator of the new reform in the poor laws — 
 nor Mr. O'Connell, the Belisarius of the poor-box, and the stanch opponent of 
 any provision for his half-starved tributaries — will ever meet their reward in 
 this world, nor even be appreciated or understood by their blind and ungrate- 
 ful fellow-countrymen. Happily, however, for some of the above-mentioned 
 worthies, there is a warm corner reserved, if not in Westminster Abbey, most 
 certainly in "another place;" where alone (God forgive us!), we incline to 
 think, their merits can be suitably acknowledged- 
 Sorrowful, indeed, would be the condition of mankind, and verily .deplor- 
 able the November chapter of accidents if, in addition to other sources of sub- 
 lunary desolation over which we have no control, Father Prout were, like the 
 sun, to obnubilate his disk, veil his splendour, and withdraw the light of his 
 countenance from a gloomy and disconsolate world : 
 
 " Caput obscur& nitidum femigine texit, 
 Impiaque aeternam timuerunt sxcula noctem." 
 
 Qeorgie. I. 
 
 Then, indeed, would unmitigated darkness thicken the already "palpable" 
 obscure ; dulness would place another padlock on the human understanding, 
 and knowledge be at one grand entrance fairly shut out. But no ! such a 
 calamity, such a " disastrous twilight " shall not befall our planet, as long as 
 there is MS. in " the chest " or shot in the locker. Generations yet unborn 
 shall walk in the blaze of Prout's wisdom, and the learned of our own day 
 shall still continue to light the pipe of knowledge at the focus of this intense 
 luminary. We are thoroughly convinced, so essential do we deem the con- 
 tinuance of these periodical essays to the happiness of our contemporaries, 
 that were we (quod Deus avertat!) to put a stop to our accustomed issues of 
 "Prout paper," forgeries would instantly get into circulation; a false paper 
 currency would be attempted ; there would arise \pi u6a-Prouts and tfrivco- 
 prophets : but they would deceive no one, much less the elect. Every one 
 knows how that great German chemist, Farina of Cologne, is constantly 
 obliged to caution the public; in the envelope of his long glass bottles, against 
 all spurious distillations of his wonderful water : " Rowland," of Hatton Gar- 
 den, has found more than one "Oliver" vending a counterfeit "incomparable 
 Macassar;" and our friend Bob Olden writes to us from Cork to be on our 
 guard against an illegitimate " Kukeirogeneion," for he swears by the beard of 
 the prophet that there is no shaving cosmetic genuine unless it bears his most 
 illegible signature. Now, following the example of these gentlemen, we give 
 fair notice, that no " Prout Paper" is the real thing unless it have a label 
 signed "Oliver Yorke." There is a certain Bridgewater Treatise now in 
 circulation said to be from the pen of one Doctor Prout ; but it is a sheer 
 hoax. An artist has also taken up the name ; but he must be an impostor, 
 not known on Watergrasshill. Let it be remembered that, owing to the 
 law of celibacy, "the Father" can have left behind him no children, or 
 posterity whatever : therefore, none but himself can hope to be his parallel. 
 We are perfectly aware that he may have "nephews,* and other collateral 
 descendants ; for we admit the truth of that celebrated placard, or lampoon, 
 stuck on the mutilated statue of Pasquin in the reign of Pope Borghese 
 (Paul IV.) : 
 
The Songs of France. 151 
 
 " CUm factor rerum privaret semine clerum, 
 In Satanae votum successit turba nepotum I " — i.e. 
 
 " Of bantlings when our clergymen were freed from having bevies. 
 There next arose, a crowd of woes, a multitude of 'levies I " 
 
 But should any audacious thief attempt to palm himself as a son or literary 
 representative of the venerable pastor of the most barren upland in the county 
 of Cork, let him look sharp ; for Terry Callaghan, who has got a situation 
 in the London police (through the patronage of Feargus O'Connor), will 
 quickly collar the ruffian in the most inaccessible garret of Grub Street : to 
 profane so respectable a signature, the fellow must be what Terry calls " a bad 
 mimber intirely;" what we English call a "jail-bird;" what the French 
 denominate a ' ' vrai gibier de gr&ve ; " termed in Latin, ' ' corvus patibularius ; " 
 and by the Greeks, nattov kopukov nation woo. 
 
 We have nothing further to add in this introductory prolusion, only to 
 acknowledge the receipt of the following communication from Germany, 
 referring to our last batch of "Songs of France." It is from the pen of a 
 stanch friend of Old England, and an uncompromising disciple of Regina — 
 the sterling patriot, the eloquent lawyer, and the facetious knight. Sir Charles 
 Wetherell. Great men's peculiarities attract no small share of public atten- 
 tion : thus, ex. gr.. Napoleon's method of plunging his forefinger and thumb 
 into his waistcoat-pocket, in lieu of a snuff-box, was the subject of much 
 European commentary; and one of the twelve Caesars was nicknamed 
 Caligula from a peculiar sort of Wellington boot which he happened to fancy. 
 (SUET, in vM.) Some irreverent poet has not scrupled to notice a feature in 
 our learned correspondent's habiliment, stating him to be 
 
 " Much famed for length of sound sagacious speeches. 
 More still for brevity of braceless b-— — s," 
 
 — a quotation, by the bye, not irrelevant to the topic on which Sir Charles has 
 favoured us with a line. 
 
 "Aix-la-Chapelle, October 7. 
 
 "Dear Yorke, 
 " I've just been paying my devotions to the tomb of Charlemagne (the 
 
 Fride of this ci-devant metropolis of Europe), and on my return to my hotel 
 find your last number on my table. What the deuce do you mean by 
 giving a new and unheard-of version of the excellent song on ' Le bon Roy 
 Dagobert,' who, you say, ' avait mis sa culotte i, Venvers;' whereas all good 
 editions read 'de travers ;' which is quite a different sense, lectio longe 
 emendatior ; foi he wore the garment, not inside out, but wrong side foremost f 
 Again, it was not of Australesia that he was king, but of ' Gallia braccata.' 
 Let me not meet any similar blunders in the subsequent songs, my old cock 1 
 
 "Yours in haste, 
 
 " C. W." 
 
 Wishing him a pleasant tour through the Germanic confederation, and 
 hoping it may be long ere he reach that fatal goal of all human pilgrimage, 
 the diet of Worms, we bow to the baronet's opinion, and stand corrected. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Nov. 1st, 1834. 
 
152 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Watergrassiiill, Nov. 18.33. 
 
 " Ille ego qui quondam," is an old Latin formula, first used in the reign of 
 Augustus, to connect the epic cantos of the warlike .lEneid with a far more 
 polished and irreproachable poem, its agricultural predecessor. Virgil (some- 
 thing like Lord Althorp when he indulges in a day-dream and thinks pos- 
 terity will forgive his political blunders in consideration of his excellent breed 
 of cattle) sought thus to bolster up the manifest imperfections of his heroic 
 and epic characters by a wrong reference to the unexceptionable Meliboeus, 
 and to that excellent old Calabrian farmer whose bees hummed so tunefully 
 under the "lofty towers of CEbalia." This is an old trick : it is a part of the 
 tactics of literature, well understood by that awfully numerous fraternity, the 
 novel writers, who never fail on the title-page of each successive production 
 to mention some previous performance of glorious memory, evidently remind- 
 ing the public of their bygone trophies in the field of literature, and of some 
 more fortunate hit already made in the chance medley of modern authorship. 
 Now, in venturing to refer to a previous paper on the " Songs of France," my 
 object is not similar : my thoughts are not their thoughts. Totally unknown 
 to my contemporaries, and anxious to cultivate the privilege of obscurity, it is 
 when I am mouldering in the quiet tomb where my rustic parishioners shall 
 have laid me, that these papers, the offspring of my leisure, shall start into 
 life, and bask in the blaze of publicity. Some paternal publisher — perhaps 
 some maternal magazine — will perhaps take charge of the learned deposit, and 
 hatch my eggs with all the triumph of successful incubation. But — and this 
 is the object of these preliminary remarks — let there be care taken to keep 
 each batch separate, and each brood distinct. The French hen's family should 
 not be mixed up with the chickens of the Muscovy duck ; and each series of 
 ' ' Prout Papers ' should be categorically arranged, ' ' Series juncturaque pollet." 
 (HoR. Ars Poet.) For instance: the present essay ought to come after one 
 bearing the date of "October," and containing songs about " wine ;" such 
 topic being appropriate to that mellow month, which, from time immemorial 
 (no doubt because it happens to rhyme with the word ' ' sober "), has been set 
 apart for jollification. 
 
 I have called these effusions the offspring of my leisure ; nor do I see any 
 cause why the hours not claimed by my sacerdotal functions should be 
 refused to the pursuits of literature. I do not think that Erasmus was a dis- 
 credit to his cloth, though he penned the Mwpias EyKupuw. The sonnets of 
 Francis Petrarca were not deemed a high misdemeanour at the papal court of 
 Avignon, though written by a priest. Nor was Vida a less exemplary bishop in 
 his diocese of Albi, for having sung in immortal verse the labours of the 
 silk-worm (" Bombyces," Bale, 1537), and the game of chess ("Schiaccia 
 Ludus," "Romoe, 1527). Yet I doubt not (for I know something of mankind), 
 that there may be found, when I am dead, in some paltry provincial circle of 
 gossips, the chosen haunt of dulness and all uncharitableness, creatures with- 
 out heart and without brains, who will industriously malign my motives 
 and try to stigmatize my writings, as unbefitting the exalted character in 
 which I glory— that of an aged priest (however unworthy), and a humble 
 joint in the venerable hierarchy of the Church of Rome. To them I say, 
 that my zeal for the character of my order was not less than theirs ; and that 
 while their short-sightedness I deplore, their rancorous malevolence I con- 
 template not in anger, but in sorrow. Their efforts can only recoil on them- 
 selves. When a snake in the island of Malta entwined itself round the arm 
 of Paul, with intent to sting the teacher of the Gentiles, he gently shook the 
 viper from his wrist ; and he was not to blame if the reptile fell into the 
 fire. 
 But to return to the interesting subject of literary researches. Full gladly 
 
The Songs of France. 153 
 
 do I once more resume the pleasant theme, and launch my simple skiff on the 
 wide expanse of song — 
 
 " Once more upon the waters ; yea, once more ! " 
 
 The minstrelsy of France is to me an inexhaustible source of intellectual 
 pleasure, and it shall not be my fault if I do not carry the public with me in 
 the appreciation I make of such refined enjoyment. The admirers of what 
 is delicate in thought, or polished in expression, will heed no apology for 
 drawing their attention to these exquisite trifles ; and the student of general 
 literature will acknowledge the connecting link which unites, though unseen, 
 the most apparently remote and seemingly dissimilar departments of human 
 knowledge. " Omnes enim artes, quae ad humanitatem pertinent, habent 
 quoddam commune vinculum," says Cicero (pro Archi& poetd). But in the 
 pleasant province of legendary lore through which I propose to make excur- 
 sions, there are local and national features of attraction peculiarly captivating. 
 To what class of Englishmen, since the conquest of this fair island and its 
 unfortunate sister by the chivalrous Normans, can the songs of that gallant 
 race of noble marauders and glorious pirates be without thrilling interest ? Not 
 to relish such specimens of spirit-stirring poesy, the besotted native must be 
 only fit to herd among swine, with the collar round his neck, like the Saxon 
 serf of Cedric ; or else be a superficial idiot, like ' ■ Wamba, the son of Wit- 
 less the jester." Selecting one class of the educated public, by way of exem- 
 plification, where all are concerned, — to that most acute and discriminating 
 body, the Bar, — the language of France and her troubadours cometh in the 
 character of a professional acquaintance tar be carefully cultivated, and most 
 happy shall I deem myself if, by submitting to their perusal these gay and 
 amusing ballads, I shall have reconciled them to the many tedious hours 
 they are doomed to spend in conning over what to them must otherwise 
 appear the semi-barbarous terms of jurisprudence bequeathed by William le 
 Roux with the very structure of Westminster Hall, and coeval with its oak 
 roof and its cobwebs. In reference to the Gallic origin of our law and its 
 idiom, it was Juvenal who wrote that inspired verse (Sat. XV. v. no) — 
 
 " Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos . " 
 
 and in that single line he furnished an incontestable proof that poetry is akin 
 to prophecy, and that the " eye in a fine frenzy rolling" can discover even the 
 most improbable future event in the womb of time. 
 
 A knowledge of the ancient vocabulary of France is admitted to be of high 
 importance in the perusal of our early writers on history, as well as on legisla- 
 tion : its aid may be felt in poetry and prose, as well as in Chancery and 
 Doctors' Commons. An old song has been found of consequence in elucidat- 
 ing an unintelligible clause or a disputed construction ; and singular to relate, 
 the only title-deed the Genoese can put forward to claim the invention of the 
 mariners' compass is the lay of a French troubadour.* Few are aware to 
 what extent the volatile literature of our merry neighbours has pervaded the 
 mass of British authorship, and by what secret influences of imitation and of 
 reminiscence the spirit of Norman song has flitted through the conquered 
 island of Britain. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Tom Moore (a vast interval !), 
 there is not one, save the immortal Shakespeare perhaps, whose writings do 
 not betray the secret working of this foreign essence, mixed up with the crude 
 material of Saxon growth, and causing a sort of gentle fermentation most 
 delectable to the natives. Take, for example, Oliver Goldsmith, whom every 
 
 * A ballad, " La Bible," from the pen of Guyot deProvlns, dated a. d. 1190, and com- 
 mencing, ' ' De nostre pere l'apostoile. " It is a pasquinade against the Court of Rome. — 
 Prout. 
 
154 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 schoolboy knows by heart and every critic calls an eminently English writer of 
 undoubted originality; now place in juxtaposition with an old French song 
 his " Elegy on a Mad Dog, and the " Panegyric of Mrs, Mary Blaze," and 
 judge for yourself if I have not a case in point : 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Good people all, of every sort, 
 
 Give ear unto my song, 
 And if you find it wondrous short, 
 
 It cannot hold you long. 
 
 In Islington there lived a man 
 Of whom the world might say, 
 
 That still a godly race he ran 
 Whene'er ne went to pray. 
 
 A kind and gentle heart he had, 
 To comfort friends and foes ; 
 
 The naked every day he clad, 
 When he put on his clothes. 
 
 DE LA MONNOYE. 
 
 Messires, vous plaist-il d'oufr, 
 I/air du fameux La Palisse ? 
 
 II pourra vous rejouir, 
 Pourvu qu'il vous divertisse, 
 
 II e'tait affable et doux, 
 
 De lliumeur de feu son pere ; 
 II n'etait guere en courroux, 
 
 Si ce n'est dans sa colore, 
 
 Bien instruit des le berceau, 
 Onques, tant etait honnete, 
 
 II ne mettait son chapeau, 
 Qu'il ne se couvrit la tSte. 
 
 So much for this Islington model of a gentleman, whose final catastrophe, and 
 the point which forms the sting of the whole " Elegy," is but a literal version 
 of a long-established Gallic epigram, viz. 
 
 Quand un serpent mordit Aurele, 
 Cue crois-tu qu'il en arriva ? 
 
 Qu Aurele mourut '—bagatelle ! 
 Ce fut le serpent qui creva. 
 
 But soon a wonder eame to light 
 That shewed the rogues they lied ; 
 
 The meat recovered from the bite, 
 The dog it was that died. 
 
 The same accusation hangs over Mrs. Blaze ; for I regret to say that her 
 virtues and accomplishments are all secondhand ; and that the gaudy finery 
 in which her poet has dressed her out is but the cast-off frippery of the La 
 Palisse wardrobe. Ex. gr. ; 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 The public all, of one accord. 
 
 Lament for Mrs. Blaze ; 
 Who never wanted a good word > 
 
 From those who spoke her praise, 
 
 At church, in silks and satins new. 
 With hoop of monstrous size, 
 
 She never slumber'd in her pew 
 But when she shut her eyes. 
 
 Her love was sought, I do aver, 
 
 By twenty beaux and more ; 
 The king himself has follow'd her 
 
 When she has walk'd before. 
 
 Let us lament in sorrow sore ; 
 
 For Kent Street well may say, 
 That, had she lived a twelvemonth more, 
 
 She had not died to-day.* 
 
 DE LA MONNOYE. 
 
 II brillait conune un soleil, 
 Sa chevelure 6tait blonde ; 
 
 II n'eut pas eu de pareil, 
 S'il eut ete seul au monde. 
 
 Monti sur un cheval noir, 
 Les dames le minauderent ; 
 
 Et e'est Ik qu'il ce At voir, 
 A ceux qui le regarderent. 
 
 Dans un superbe tournoi, 
 Prest a fournir sa carriere, 
 
 Quand 11 fut devant le roi, 
 Certes il ne fut pas demere. 
 
 II fut, par un triste sort, 
 Blesse d'une main cruelle ; 
 
 On croit, puisqu'il en est mort, 
 Que la playe etaite mortelle. 
 
 My readers will, no doubt, feel somewhat surprised at the flagrant coincidence 
 manifest in these parallel passages ; and I can assure them that it is not without 
 a certain degree of concern for the hitherto unimpeachable character of Gold- 
 
 * This joke is as old as the days of St Jerome, who applies it to his old foe. Ruffinus. 
 " Grunnius Corocotta, porcellus, vixit annas DCCCCXCix. : qudd si semis vixisset, M- annos 
 implesset "— Prout. 
 
The Songs of France. 155 
 
 smith, that I have brought to light an instance of petty larceny perpetrated by 
 him : he is one for whom I have a high regard. My friendship is also very 
 great for Plato ; but of Truth I am fondest of all : so out the cat must go 
 from the bag of concealment. Why did he not acquaint us with the source 
 of his inspiration? Why smuggle these French wares, when he might have 
 imported them lawfully by paying the customary duty of acknowledgment ? 
 The Roman fabulist, my old and admired friend Phaedrus, honestly tells the 
 world how he came by his wonderful stock-in-trade : 
 
 11 jEsopus auctor quam materiam repent, 
 Hanc ego polivi versibus senariis. 
 
 Such is the sign-board he hangs out in the prologue to his book, and no one 
 can complain of unfair dealing. But to return to the connection between our 
 literature and that of France. 
 
 Pope avowedly modelled his style and expression on the writings of Boileau ; 
 and there is perceptible in his didactic essays a most admirable imitation 
 of the lucid, methodical, and elaborate construction of his Gallic original. 
 Dryden appears to have read with predilection the works of Coraeille and 
 Malherbe : like them, he is forcible, brilliant, but unequal, turgid, and care- 
 less. Addison, it is apparent, was intimately conversant with the tasteful and 
 critical writings of the Jesuit Bouhours ; and Sterne is but a rifacitritnto of 
 the Vjcar of Meudon, the reckless Rabelais. Who will question the influence 
 exercised by Moliere over our comic writers— Sheridan, Farquhar, and Con- 
 greve ? Indeed, our theatre seems to have a prescriptive right to import its 
 comedies from France, wholesale and duty free. At the brilliant and dazzling 
 torch of La Fontaine, Gay humbly lit his slender taper ; and Fielding would 
 be the first to admit his manifold obligations to Le Sage, having drunk deep 
 at the fountain of "Gil Bias." Hume the historian is notorious for his 
 Gallicisms ; and perhaps it was owing to his long residence abroad that the 
 pompous period of Gibbon was attuned to the. melody of Massillon. If I do 
 not mention Milton among our writers who have profited by the perusal of 
 continental models, it is because the Italian school was that in which ht 
 formed his taste and harmonized his rhythmic period. 
 
 But, to trace the vestiges of French phraseology to the very remotest paths 
 of our literary domain, let us examine the chronicles of the Plantagenets, and 
 explore the writings of the incomparable Froissart. His works form a sort of 
 connecting link between the two countries during the wars of Cressy and Agin- 
 court : he was alternately a page at the court of Rlois, a minstrel at the court 
 of Winceslas in Brabant, a follower of the French King Charles, and a 
 suivant of Queen Philippa of England. Though a clergyman, he was 
 decidedly to be classified under the genus troubadour, partaking more of that 
 character than of any ecclesiastical peculiarities. For, lest I should do him 
 injustice by giving of his life and opinions a false idea to my reader, I shall let 
 him draw his own portrait : 
 
 " Au boire je prends grand plaisir, 
 Aussi fais-je en beau draps vestir : 
 Oir de menestrel parolles, 
 Veoir danses et carolles ; 
 
 Violettes en leur saison, a 
 Et roses blanches et vermeilles ; 
 
 Voye volontiers; car c'est raison, 
 Jeux, et danses, et tongues veilles, 
 Et chambres pleitte de candeilles. " * 
 
 * Tis a pity that the poetical works of this eminent man should be still locked up in 
 MS. in the Biblioth. du Roi ; but a few fragments have been printed, and these are so 
 characteristic and racy, that they create a longing for the remainder. Whoever has the 
 
1 56 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Now this jolly dog Froissart was the intimate friend and boon comrade of 
 our excellent Geoffrey Chaucer ; and no doubt the two worthy clercs cracked 
 many a bottle together, if not in Cheapside, at least on this side of the Channel. 
 How far Geoffrey was indebted to the Frenchman for his anecdotes and 
 stories, for his droll style of narrative, and the pungent salt with which he has 
 seasoned that primitive mess of porridge, the "Canterbury Tales," it would be 
 curious to investigate; here I merely throw out the hint for Disraeli. With 
 my sprat he will doubtless catch a whale. But it is singular to find the most 
 distinguished of France, England, and Italy's contemporary authors met 
 shortly after, as if by mutual appointment, in Provence, the land of song. It 
 was on the occasion of a Duke of Clarence's visit to Milan to marry the 
 daughter of Galeas II. ; a ceremony graced by the presence of the Count of 
 Savoy and the King of Cyprus, besides a host of literary celebrities. Thither 
 came Ch nicer, Froissart, and Petrarca, by one of those chance dispositions of 
 fortune which seem the result of a most provident foresight, and as if the 
 triple genius of French, English, and Italian literature had presided over their 
 reunion. It was a literary congress, of which the consequences are felt to the 
 present day, in the common agreement of international feeling in the grand 
 federal republic of letters. Of that eventful colloquy between these most worthy 
 representatives of the three leading literatures of Europe, nothing has tran- 
 spired but the simple fact of its occurrence. Still, one thing is certain, viz. 
 that there were then very few features of difference in even the languages of 
 the three nations which have branched off, since that period, in such wide 
 divergency of idiom : 
 
 " When shall we three meet again ! " 
 
 Chaucer has acknowledged that it was from Petrarch he learned, on that 
 occasion, the story of Griselda ; which story Petrarch had picked up in 
 Provence, as I shall show by-and-by, on producing the original French 
 ballad. But here is the receipt of Chaucer, duly signed, and most circum- 
 stantial : 
 
 " I wo! you tel a tale, the which that I 
 Lerned at Padowe, of a worthy clerc. 
 As Droved by his wordes and his werk. 
 He is now dead, and nailed in his chest, 
 I pray to God to geve his sowle rest. 
 Frauncis Petrark, the laureat poete, 
 Hight was this clerk, whose rhetoricke so swete 
 Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie." 
 
 Prologue to Griselidis, in "Cant. Tales." 
 
 We learn from William of Malmesbury (lib. iii.), and from various con- 
 temporary sources, that the immediate successors of the Conqueror brought 
 over from Normandy numbers of learned men, to fill the ecclesiastical and 
 other beneficial employments of the country, to the exclusion of the native 
 English, who were considered dunces and unfit for office. Any one who had 
 the least pretension to be considered a sr,avant clerc, spoke French and dis- 
 dained the idiom of his fellow-countrymen. In the reign of Henry III. we 
 have Robert Grossetete, the well-known Bishop of Lincoln (who was born in 
 Suffolk), writing a work in French called " Le Chasteau d' Amour; " and 
 another, "Le Manuel des Pcchees." Of this practice Chaucer complains, 
 somewhat quaintly, in his "Testament of Love" (ed. 1542) : "Certes there 
 
 care of that department in Paris has not done his duty to the public in withholding the 
 treasure. Such a selfishness might be expected from a churlish collector of rarities "here 
 
 at home ; for in England the garden of MS. is kept " by a dragon ;"— but in France 
 
 proh pudor ! — Prout. 
 
 They were published in 1829, in one vol. 8vo, at Paris, by J, A. Buchon— J. Roche. 
 
The Songs of France. 157 
 
 ben some that speke thyr poysy mater in Ffrencli, of whyche speche the 
 Ffrenchmen have as gude a fantasye as we have in hearing of Ffrench mennes 
 Englyshe." Tanner, in his " liiblioth. Brit.," hath left us many curious testi- 
 monies of the' feeling which then prevailed on this subject among the jealous 
 natives of England. See also the Harleian MS. 3869. 
 
 But the language of the troubadours still remained common to both countries, 
 when, for all the purposes of domestic and public life, a new idiom had sprung 
 up in each separate kingdom. Extraordinary men 1 These songsters were the 
 favourites of every court, and the patronized of every power. True, their life 
 was generally dissolute, and their conduct unscrupulous; but the mantle of 
 poetie inspiration seems to have covered a multitude of sins. I cannot better 
 characterize the men. rnd the times in which they lived, than by introducing a 
 ballad of Beranger— t!.e " Uauphin : " 
 
 LA NAISSANCE DU DAUPHIN. 
 
 Du bou vicux terns souffrez que je vous parle. 
 
 Jadis Richard, troubadour renomme, 
 Avait pour Roy Jean^ Louis, Philippe, ou Charle, 
 
 Ne f?ai.s lequel, mais il en fut aime. 
 D'uii gros dauphin on fStait lanaissance ; 
 
 Richard a Blois 6ta.it depuis un jour : 
 II apprit la le bonheur de la France. 
 
 Four votre roi chantez, gai troubadour ! 
 Chantez, chantez, jeune et gai troubadour ! 
 
 La harpe en main Richard vient sur la place : 
 
 Chacun lui dit, "Chantez notre garcon ! " 
 DeVotement a la Vierge il rend grace, 
 
 Puis au dauphin consacre une chanson. 
 On 1'applaudit ; l'auteur etait en veine : 
 Mainte beautd le trouve fait au tour, 
 Disant tout bas, "// doit plaire a la reine I " 
 
 Pour votre roi chantez, gai troubadour ! 
 Chantez, chantez, jeune et gai troubadour ! 
 
 Le chant fini, Richard court & l'eglise ; 
 
 Qu'y va-t-il faire? II cherche un confesseur. 
 II en trouve un, gros moine a barbe grise, 
 
 Des mceurs du terns inflexible censeur. 
 11 Ah, sauvez moi des flammes eWnelles ! 
 Mon pere h61as ! e'est un vilain sejour." 
 " Qu'avez-vous fait ? " " J'ai trop aim6 les belles ! " 
 Pour votre roi chantez, gai troubadour ! 
 Chantez, chantez, jeune et gai troubadour ! 
 
 " Le grand malheur, mon pere, e'est qu'on m'aime ! " 
 "Parlez, mon fils; explicujez-vous enfin." 
 
 " J'ai fait, hfilas ! narguant le diademe, 
 Un gros peche ! car j'ai fait— un dauphin ! ! " 
 
 D'abord le moine a la mine ebahie : 
 Mais il reprend, *'Vous-etes bien en cour? — 
 
 OURVOVEZ-NOUS D'uNE RlCHE ABBAYE." 
 
 Pour votre roi chantez, gai troubadour ! 
 Chantez, chantez, jeune et gai troubadour I 
 
 Le moine ajoute : " Eut-on fait a la reine 
 Un prince ou deux, on peut-etre sauve. 
 Parlez de nous a notre souveraine ; 
 
 Allez, mon fils ! vous direz cinq Ave." 
 Richard absous, gagnant la capitate, 
 
 A.u nouveau-ne voit prodiguer 1'amour ; 
 Vive a jamais notre race royale ! 
 
 Pour votre roi chantez, gai troubadour ! 
 Chantez, chantez, jeune et gat troubadour ! 
 
158 The Works of Fatlter Prout 
 
 THE DAUPHIN'S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 Let me sing you a song of the good old times, 
 
 About Richard the troubadour, 
 Who was loved by the king and the queen for his rhymes ; 
 
 But by which of our kings I'm not sure. 
 Now a dauphin was born while the court was at Blois, 
 
 And all France felt a gladness pure ; 
 Richard's heart leapt for joy when he heard 'twas a boy. 
 Sing for your king, young and gay troubadour ! 
 Sing well you may, troubadour young and gay ! 
 
 So he went with his harp, on his proud shoulder hung, 
 
 To the court, the resort of the gay ; 
 To the Virgin a hymn of thanksgiving he sung, 
 
 For the dauphin a new " rondelay. 
 And our nobles flock'd round at the heart-stirring sound, 
 
 And their dames, dignified and demure, 
 Praised his bold, gallant mien, and said, "He'll please tfte queen V* 
 Sing for your king, young and gay troubadour ! 
 Oh, sing well you may, troubadour young and gay ! 
 
 But the song is now hush'd, and the crowd is dispersed : 
 
 To the abbey, lo ! Richard repairs, 
 And he seeks an old monk, in the legend well versed, 
 
 With a long flowing beard and grey hairs. 
 And " Oh, save me ! ' he cries, "holy father, from hell ; 
 
 Tis a place which the soul can't endure ! " 
 " Of your shrift tell the drift ; " " y'ai trap aimi les belles t " 
 Sing for your king, young and gay troubadour ! 
 Sing well you may, troubadour young and gay ! 
 
 " But the worst is untold ! " " Haste, my sonne, and be shriven ; 
 
 Tell your guilt— its results— how you sinned, and how often." 
 " Oh, my guilt it is great !— can my sin be forgiven— 
 
 Its result, holy monk ! is— alas, 'tis a dauphin ! " 
 And the friar grew pale at so startling a tale. 
 
 But he whisper'd, "For us, sonne, procure 
 (She will grant it, I ween) abbey land from the queen." 
 Sing for your king, young and gay troubadour ! 
 Sing well you may, troubadour young and gay ! 
 
 Then the monk said a prayer, and the sin, light as air. 
 
 Flew away from the penitent's soul ; 
 And to Paris went Richard to sing for the fair, 
 
 ** Virelai," sonnet gay, and ** carolle ; " 
 And he mingled with joy in the festival there. 
 
 Oh ! while beauty and song can allure, 
 May our old royal race never want for an heir ! 
 
 Sing for your king, young and gay troubadour ! 
 Sing well you may, troubadour young and gay ! 
 
 It does not enter into my plan to expatiate on the moral conclusion or politi- 
 cal tirtuvtiioi/ which this ballad suggests, and which with sarcastic ingenuity is 
 so adroitly insinuated. It is, in fact, a lyrical epigram. The vein of thought 
 is deep and serious, if dug by the admirers of hereditary legislation or the 
 defenders of the divine right of kings. To the venerable owls who flutter 
 through the dark, Gothic purlieus of the Heralds' College, this view of the 
 matter may seem a perfectly " new light : " in sooth, it sheds a quiet my on 
 the awful sublimities of genealogical investigation, and cannot but edify the 
 laborious and hyper/panegyrical Mr. Burke, the compiler of peerages and pedi- 
 grees for each and all of us. Excellent man ! may his subscribers be as 
 numerous as the leaves of his book, and his gains commensurate with the 
 extent of human vanity 1 Bdranger's ode on the Dauphm's birthday may serve 
 
Tlu Songs of France. 
 
 159 
 
 as a commentary on the well-known passage of Boileau (pilfered uncere- 
 moniously by Pope), in which the current of princely blood is said to flow "de 
 Lucrece en Lucrece ; " and such is the recognized truth of the commentary, 
 that I understand an edition of the song has been published by order of the 
 University of Prague, in Bohemia, 'tis imagined, " in usum Delphini." Vive 
 Henri Cinq I 
 
 On all matters in which the character of the ladies may be involved, I 
 recommend constant caution and the most scrupulous forbearance to both poets 
 and historians. The model of this delicate attention may be found among the 
 troubadours, I more particularly allude to the Norman school of French 
 poesie ; for I regret to state, that in Provence there was not always the same 
 veneration and mysterious homage paid to the gentler sex, whose very frailties 
 should be shrouded by the poet, and concealed from the vulgar gaze of the 
 profane. In Normandy and the adjacent provinces the spirit of chivalry was 
 truly such as described by our hot-headed Irish orator, when, speaking of 
 Marie Antoinette, he fancies ten thousand swords ready to leap from their 
 scabbards at the very suspicion of an insult. This instinctive worship of 
 beauty seems to have accompanied that gallant race of noble adventurers from 
 their Scandinavian settlements beyond the Elbe and the Rhine ; for we find the 
 sentiment attributed to their ancestors by Tacitus, in his admirable work " De 
 Moribus Germanorum," where he writes, as well as I can recollect, as follows : 
 " Inesse quinetiam foeminis sanctum aliquid et providum putant." The ballad 
 of " Griselidis," to which I have made allusion in talking of the " Canterbury 
 Tales," and which I then promised to give in its original old Norman simplicity, 
 finely illustrates all that is noble and chivalrous in their respect for female 
 loveliness and purity. My English version, to harmonize with the French, runs 
 in the old ballad idiom, as nearly as I can imitate that quaint style. 
 
 GRISELEDIS. 
 
 Romance. 
 Escoutez icy jouvencelles, 
 
 Escoutez aussy damoiseaux, 
 Vault mieux estre bone que belle, 
 
 Vault mieux estre loyal que beau ! 
 Beaute passe, passe jeunesse, 
 
 Bonte reste et gagne les caeurs ; 
 Avec doulceur et gentilesse 
 
 Espines se changent en fleurs. 
 
 Belle, mais pauvre et souffreteuse, 
 
 Vivoit jadis Griseledis ; 
 Alloit aux champs, estoit glaneuse, 
 
 Filoit beau lin, gardoit brebis ; 
 N'estoit fylle de hault parage, 
 
 N'avoit comte ny joyaux d'or, 
 Mais avoit plus, car estait sage — 
 
 Mieulx vault sagesse que tresor I 
 
 Ung jour qu'aux champs estoit seulette, 
 
 Vtnst a passer Sire Gaultier, 
 Las ! sans chien estoit la pauvrette, 
 
 Sans page estoit le chevalier ; 
 Mais en ce siecle, on. l'innocence 
 
 N 'avoit i craindre aucun danger, 
 Vertu veilloit, dormoit prudence, 
 
 Beaulx terns n'auriez pas du changer t 
 
 GRISELDA. 
 
 A Romaunt. 
 
 List to my ballad, for 'twas made expresse, 
 
 Damsels, for you ; 
 Better to be (beyond all lovelinesse) 
 
 Loyall and true ! 
 Fadeth fair face, bright beauty blooms 
 awhile, 
 
 Soon to departe ; 
 Goodness abydeth aye ; and gentle smyle 
 
 Gaineth y* heatte. 
 
 There lived a maiden, beautifull but poore, 
 
 Gleaning y« fields ; 
 Poor pittaunce shepherd's crook upon y* 
 moor, 
 
 Or distaff yields ! 
 Yet tho' no castel hers had ever been, 
 
 Jewells nor golde, 
 Kindnesse she hadde and virtue ; thyngs, 
 I ween, 
 
 Better fowr folde ! 
 
 One day a cavalier, Sir Walter hight, 
 
 Travell'd that way ; 
 Nor dogge y 9 shepherd esse, nor page y* 
 knight 
 
 Hadde on that day. 
 But in those times of innocence and truth, 
 
 Virtue alone 
 Kept .vigil in our land ; bright days, in 
 sooth, 
 
 Where are ye gone ? 
 
i6o 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Long on y maiden, as she slept, he 
 gazed — 
 , Could gaze for months ! 
 But when awaking, two soft eyelids raised, 
 
 Loved her at once ! 
 " Fair one, a knight's true love canst thou 
 despise, 
 With golden store ? " 
 " Sir Knight, true love I value, but I prize 
 Honour far more \ " 
 
 " I, too, prize honour above high descent 
 
 ibid all beside ; 
 Maiden, be mine ! yea, if thou wilt con- 
 sent, 
 
 Be thou my bride ! 
 Swear but to do y« bidding of thy Hege 
 
 Faithful and fond." 
 "Tell not of oaths, Sir Knight; is not 
 love's pledge 
 
 Abetter bond?" 
 
 Not for his castel and his broad domain. 
 
 Spoke so > ■ maid, 
 But that she loved y» handsome knight — 
 Love fain 
 Would be obey'd. 
 On >• same charger with the knight she 
 rodde, 
 So pass'd along ; 
 Nor blame fear'd she, for then all hearts 
 were good ; 
 None dream'd of wrong. 
 
 And they rodde on untill rose on y m sight 
 
 His castel towers ; 
 And there that maiden lived with that good 
 knight 
 
 In marriage bowers, 
 Diffusing blessings among all who dwelt 
 
 Within that vale : 
 Goodness abydeth aye— her smile is felt, 
 
 Tho' beauty fail ! 
 
 Lived there one with soul so dead as not to admire the genuine high-minded- 
 ness of these primitive times, expressed in this pleasing record of what was no 
 romance, but matter of frequent occurrence in the days of chivalry? The 
 ballad has got into many languages, and is interwoven with the traditional 
 recollections of many a noble house ; but the original is undoubtedly the 
 above. Tom Moore (whose rogueries are infinite) has twisted it into a thing 
 which he calls a melody, "You remember Ellen, our hamlet's pride ; " and he 
 has tacked a note to the stolen ditty, wherein, with his usual tuft-hunting and 
 toad-eating propensities, he seeks to connect the story with " an interesting tale 
 told of a certain noble family in England." Unfortunately for such attempts, 
 the lays of the Norman troubadours, like the Government ropes in the dock- 
 yard at Portsmouth, have in their texture a certain inimitable twist and 
 peculiarity of workmanship by which they are recognized at once when they 
 get into the possession of thieves. 
 
 These Normans were a glorious race ! No, neither the sons of Greece in 
 their palmiest days of warlike adventure (ov\os Axaiwv), nor the children of 
 the Tiber, that miscellany of bandits and outlaws [turba /fernr), ever displayed 
 such daring energy as the tribe of enterprising Northerns who, in the seventh, 
 eighth, and subsequent centuries, affrighted and dazzled the world with the 
 
 Tant que sommeille la berg&re, 
 
 Beau sire eutt le terns d admirer, 
 Mais des qu'entr'ouvrist la paupifere, 
 
 Fust force de s'en amourer ; 
 " Belle," dit-il, " serez ma mie, 
 
 Si voulez venir & ma cour ? " 
 " Nenny, seigneur, vous remercie, 
 
 Honneur vault bien play sir d'amour? " 
 
 if Vertu, dit-il, passe noblesse ! 
 
 Serez ma femme des ce jour — 
 Serez dame, serez comtesse, 
 
 Si me jurez, au nom d'amour, 
 De m'obeir quand devrai, meme 
 
 Bien durement, vous ordonner?" 
 " Sire, obei'r & ce qu'on aime 
 
 Est bien plus doux que commander ? " 
 
 Ne jura pour estre comtesse, 
 
 Mais avoit vu le chevalier ; 
 A l'amour seul fist la promesse : 
 
 Puis monta sur son destrier. 
 N'avoit besoin de bienseances 
 
 Le terns heureux des bonnes raceurs ; 
 Fausses (Stoient les apparances, 
 
 Nobles et vrays estoient les cceurs t 
 
 Tant chevaucberent par la plaine 
 
 Qu'arriverent a la citd ; 
 Griseledis fust souveraine 
 
 De ce riche et puissant comtd ; 
 Chascun l'aima ; sous son empire 
 
 Chascun ressentit ses bienfaits : 
 Beaute* previent, doulceur attire 
 
 Bont6 gagne et fixe a jamais ! 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 161 
 
 splendour of their achievements. From the peninsula of Jutland, their narrow 
 home on the Baltic, they went forth to select the choicest and the fairest 
 provinces of the south for their portion : the banks of the Seine,* the kingdom 
 of Naples, the island of Sicily, the Morea, Palestine, Constantinople, England, 
 Ireland, — they conquered in succession. The proudest names in each land 
 through which they passed glory in tracing up a Norman origin ; and while 
 their descendants lorra the truest and most honourable aristocracy in Europe, 
 their troubadours still reign paramount, and unsurpassed in every mode and 
 form of the tuneful mystery. The architectural remains of that wonderful people 
 are not more picturesque and beautiful than the fragments of their ballads 
 and their war-songs ; and Beranger himself (by the bye, a Norman patrony- 
 mic, and an evidence of the poet's excellent lineage) has but inherited the lyre 
 of that celebrated minstrel who is thus described in a contemporary poem on 
 the conquest of this island by William : 
 
 Taillefer ki mult bien ,cantout, 
 Sur ung cheval ki tost allout, 
 Devant le host allout cantant 
 De Karlemain e de RoIIant. 
 
 Dan Tallyfer, who sang right well, 
 Borne on a goodly handefle, 
 Pranced in the van and led the train, 
 With songs of Ronald and Charleraaine. 
 
 But I venture to say, that never was Charlemagne sung by his ablest trouba- 
 dour in loftier strains than those in which Beranger has chanted the great 
 modern inheritor of his iron crown, anointed like him by a Pope, and like him 
 the sole arbitrator of European kingdoms and destinies. 
 
 LES SOUVENIRS DU 
 
 PEUPLE. 
 
 Biranger. 
 
 On parlera de sa gloire 
 Sous le chaume bien long-temps ; 
 I/humble toit, dans cin quant e ans, 
 Ne connaftra plus d'autre histoire. 
 La viendront les villageois 
 Dire alors a quelque vieille ; 
 Par des recits d'autrefois, 
 Mere, abregez notre veille : 
 liien, dit-on, qu'il nous ait nui, 
 Le peuple encor le revere, 
 
 Out, le revfere. 
 Parlez-nous de lui, grand'mere ! 
 
 Parlez-nous de Tui ! 
 
 *' Mes enfans, dans ce village, 
 Suivi de rois, il passa, 
 Voila bien long-temps de ea : 
 Je venais d'entrer en menage. 
 A pied grimpant le c6teau, 
 Ou pour voir je m'etais mise ; 
 II avait petit chapeau, 
 Avec redingote grise. 
 Pres de lui je me troublai, 
 
 POPULAR RECOLLECTIONS 
 OF NAPOLEON. 
 
 They'll talk of him for years to come, 
 
 In cottage chronicle and tale ! 
 When for aught else renown is dumb, 
 
 His legend shall prevail ! 
 Then in the hamlet's honour'd chair 
 
 Shall sit some aged dame, 
 Teaching to lowly clown and villager 
 
 That narrative of fame. 
 'Tis true, they'll say, his gorgeous throne 
 France bled to raise ; 
 But he was all our own ! 
 Mother ! say something in his praise— 
 
 O speak of him always ! 
 
 " I saw him pass : his was a host : 
 
 Countless beyond your young imagin- 
 t ings— 
 My children, he could boast 
 
 A train of conquer'd kings ! 
 And when he, came this road, 
 
 'Twas on my bridal day, 
 He wore, for near to him I stood, 
 
 Cock'd hat and surcoat grey. 
 
 * Such was the terror with which they inspired the natives of France before Duke 
 Rollo's conversion to Christianity, that there is in the office of the Parisian Breviary a 
 hymn, composed about that period, and containing a prayer against the Normans — - 
 
 " Auferte gentem perfidam 
 Credentium de finibus," Ac, &c.; 
 
 which remains to this day a memorial of consternation. — Prout. 
 
1 62 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 II me dit, * Bonjour, ma chere ! 
 
 Bonjour, ma chere ! ' " 
 II vous a parte, grand'mere ! 
 
 II vous a parle ! 
 
 " I/an d'apres, moi pauvre femme, 
 A Paris 6tant un jour, 
 Je Ie vis avec sa cour : 
 II se rendait a Notre-Dame. 
 Tous les cceurs etaient contens ; 
 On admirait son cortege, 
 Chacun disait, * Quel beau terns I 
 Le Ciel toujours le protege. 
 Son sourire etait bien doux, 
 D'un fils Dieu le rendait pere, 
 
 Le rendait pere ! " — 
 Quel beau jour pour vous, grand mere ! 
 
 Quel beau jour pour vous ! 
 
 " Mais quand la pauvre Champagne 
 Fut en proie aux etrangers, 
 Lui, bravant tous les dangers, 
 Semblait seul tenir la campagne. 
 Un soir, tout comme aujourd'hui, 
 J'entends frapper a la porte ; 
 j'ouvre, bon Dieu ! c'etait lui ! 
 Suivi d'une faible escorte. 
 II s'asseoit oh me voila, 
 S'ecriant : ' Oh, quelle guerre I 
 
 Oh, quelle guerre ! ' " — 
 II s'est assis la, grand'mere ! 
 
 II s'est assis Ik ! 
 " * J'ai faim,' dit-il ; et Wen vite 
 Je sers piquette et pain bis. 
 Puis il scene ses habits ; 
 Meme a dormir le feu l'invite. 
 Au rlSveil, voyant mes pleurs, 
 II me dit : " Bonne esperance ! 
 Je cours de tous ses malheurs 
 Sous Paris venger la France t 
 II part ; et comme un tresor 
 J'ai depuis garde son verre, 
 
 Garde son verre," — 
 Vous 1'avez encor, grand'mere ! 
 
 Vous l'avez encor ! 
 
 " Le voici. Mais a sa perte 
 Le heYos fut entratne. 
 Lui, qu'uN Pap? a couronne, 
 Est mort dans un lie d^sertc. * 
 Long -temps aucun ne l'a cru ; 
 On disait : II va paraltre. 
 Par mer il est accouru ; 
 L'etranger va voir son maltre. 
 
 Suand d'erreur on nous tira, 
 a doiileur fut bien amere. 
 Fut bien amere." — 
 Dieu vous benira, grand'mere ; 
 Dieu vous bunira ! 
 
 I blush'd ; he said, ' Be of good cheer ! 
 Courage, my dear ! ' 
 That was his very word." — 
 Mother ! O then this really occurred, 
 
 And you his voice could hear ! 
 "A year roll'd on, when next at Paris I f 
 Lone woman that I am, 
 Saw him pass by, 
 Girt with his peers, to kneel at Notre Dame. 
 I knew by merry chime and signal gun, 
 God granted him a son, 
 And O ! I wept for joy^ ! 
 For why not weep when warrior-men did, 
 Who gazed upon that sight so splendid, 
 
 And blest th' imperial boy? m 
 Never did noonday sun shine out so 
 bright ! 
 O what a sight ! " — 
 Mother ! for you that must have been 
 
 A glorious scene ! 
 " But when all Europe's gather*d strength 
 Burst o'er the French frontier at length, 
 
 'Twill scarcely be believed 
 What wonders, single-handed, he achieved. 
 
 Such general ne er lived ! 
 One evening, on my threshold' stood 
 A guest— 'twas he ! Of warriors few 
 He had a toil-worn retinue. 
 He flung himself into this chair of wood. 
 Muttering, meantime, with fearful air, 
 
 * Quelle guerre ! ok, quelle guerre I * " — 
 Mother ! and did our emperor sit there, 
 
 Upon that very chair ? 
 " He said, ' Give me some food.' — t 
 Brown loaf I gave, and homely wine. 
 And made the Kindling fire-blocks shine, 
 To dry his cloak with wet bedew'd. 
 Soon by the bonny blaze he slept, 
 Then waking chid me (for I wept) ; 
 ' Courage ! ' he cried, ' I'll strike for all, 
 Under the sacred wall 
 Of France's noble capital ! ' 
 Those were his words : I've treasured up 
 With pride that same wine-cup ; 
 Ana for its weight in gold 
 It never shall be sold ! " — 
 Mother ! on that proud relic let us gaze, 
 
 O keep that cup always ! 
 " But, through some fatal witchery. 
 He, whom a Pope had crown'd and 
 blest, 
 Perish'd, my sons ! by foulest treachery : 
 Cast on an isle far in the lonely West. 
 Long time sad rumours were afloat — 
 
 The fatal tidings we would spurn, 
 Still hoping from that isle remote 
 
 Once more our hero would return. 
 But when the dark announcement drew 
 
 Tears from the virtuous and the brave — 
 When the sad whisper proved too true, 
 A flood of grief 1 to his memory gave. 
 Peace to the glorious dead 1 " — 
 Mother ! may God his fullest blessing shed 
 Upon your aged head ! 
 
The Songs of France. 163 
 
 [RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Translated from Stranger, by Charles Kent. 
 
 Long beneath the thatch his glory 
 Feasant hearts will leap to sing : 
 Fifty years and cots will ring 
 With no other wondrous story. 
 Then the villagers will throng 
 
 'Round the knees of aged dame, 
 Saying, " Now the nights are long. 
 Tell us of the Great Man's fame. 
 What though death-cries pealed his hymn, 
 We revere him as no other, 
 
 As no other : 
 Speak to us of him, mother, 
 Speak to us of him." 
 
 " Once, my children, through this village, 
 With a train cf kings he passed. 
 (Years since then hath time amassed) 
 Pausing 'mid these scenes of tillage, 
 On the threshold of my home, 
 
 Here I heard him tread the ground, 
 Here on foot I saw him come, 
 
 In grey coat and hat renowned ! 
 1 Good-day, my dear 1* when near he drew. 
 He said, while awe I tried to smother. 
 
 Tried to smother." 
 " Then he spoke to you, mother ! 
 Then he spoke to you ! " 
 
 " Paris summer suns did render 
 Radiant ; while I, standing there, 
 Saw him with his court repair 
 To Notre Dame in regal splendour. 
 Gladness filled the hearts of all, 
 
 Glory bidding each rejoice. 
 Golden hours ! their tongues did call : 
 
 God will guard the People's Choice ! 
 Sweet the smiles he round him threw * 
 Heaven had blessed him as a father, 
 
 As a father. " 
 " What brave days for you, mother ! 
 What brave days for you ! " 
 
 " But when foreign bands had taken 
 Champagne's fair but ravaged fields,— 
 When all else flung by their shields - 
 He alone remained unshaken. ^ - - . 
 
 One evening— as it might be this — 
 
 I heard a knock, and oped the door : 
 Great God ! 'twas he— no form but his, 
 And with him two or three— no more. 
 Then, seated on this very chair, 
 
 He sighed, * Why war we with each other, 
 
 With each other ! ' " 
 " What then, he sat there, mother ! 
 What then, he sat there ! " 
 
 " Wants were his, thus ill requited, 
 
 Poorest wine and bread supplied ; 
 
 On the hearth his garb he dried, 
 While the fire to sleep invited. 
 
1 64 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Waking, when he saw my tears, 
 
 * Have some little hope,' he said ; 
 ' I go to shelter France from fears. 
 
 And avenge my heroes dead.' 
 He went ; since when great store I've set 
 On his glass more than all other, 
 
 Than all other." 
 "And you have it yet, mother? 
 And you have it yet ? " 
 
 ** 'Tis here ! But while his cup I cherished 
 He in villain bonds was bound : 
 He a holy Pope had crowned, 
 In a desert island perished. 
 Doubting long if such could be, 
 
 We cried, ' He yet will reappear, 
 Coming from the southern sea, 
 
 Lord of foes who then shall fear ! ' 
 All known : most bitter grief did fill 
 
 These eyes that wept as for a brother, 
 
 For a brother ! " 
 "God will bless you still, mother! 
 God will bless you still ! "J 
 
 Such songs embalm the glories of a conqueror in the hearts of the people, 
 and will do more to endear the memory of Napoleon to posterity than all the 
 efforts of the historian. Can it be believed, however, that the government 
 which lately disgraced France — that of the imbecile Charles X. — had the folly 
 to pick a personal quarrel with this powerful master of the lyre, and to provoke 
 the wrath of genius, which no one yet aroused and got off unscathed by its 
 lightning. be*ranger was prosecuted before the cour d' assizes for a song ! 
 And nothing, perhaps, contributed more to the catastrophe that soon overtook 
 the persecutor of the Muses than the disgrace and ridicule which covered the 
 royal faction, in consequence of his attack on the liberty of the press and the 
 freedom of that freest of all trades, the craft of the troubadour. The pro- 
 phecy contained in the ode was realized to the letter : even the allusion to that 
 old Gallic emblem the cock, which Louis Philippe made the ornament of the 
 restored tricolor, confirms the fact of inspiration. 
 
 LE VIEUX DRAPEAU. 
 
 Biranger. 
 
 De mes vieux compagnons de gloire 
 
 Je viens de me voir entoure ; 
 
 Nos souvenirs m'ont eniyr6, 
 Le vin m'a rendu la memoire. 
 
 Fier de mes exploits et des lews, 
 J'ai mon drapeau dans ma chaumiere- 
 Quand secourai-je la fioussiere 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs t 
 
 II est cacho sous l'humble paille 
 Oil je dors, pauvre et mutil£, 
 Lul qui, sur de vaincre, a void 
 
 Vingt ans de bataille en bataille 
 
 THE THREE-COLOURED 
 FLAG. 
 
 (A prosecuted Song.) 
 
 Comrades, around this humble board, 
 Here's to our banner's by-gone splen- 
 dour. 
 There may be treason in that word — 
 All Europe may the proof afford- 
 All France be the offender ; 
 But drink the toast 
 That gladdens most, 
 Fires the young heart and cheers the old — 
 "May France once more 
 
 Her tri-color 
 Blest with new life behold! " 
 
 List to my secret. That old flag 
 Under my bed of straw is hidden. 
 
 Sacred to glory ! ' War-worn rag ! 
 Thee no in/ormer thence shall drag, 
 Nor dastard spy say 'tis forbidden. 
 
Charge de lauriers et de fleurs, 
 It brilla sur 1'Europe entifere — 
 Quand secourai-je la poussitre 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs I 
 
 Ce drapeau payaita la France 
 
 Tout le sang qu'il nous a coUt<5 : 
 
 Sur la sein de la liberty 
 Nos fits jouaient avec sa lance ; 
 
 Qu'il prouve encor aux oppresseurs 
 Combien la gloire est rotunere— » 
 , Quatui secourai-je la poussicre 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs I 
 
 Son aigle est rest£ dans la poudre, 
 
 Fatigue* de lointains exploits ; 
 
 Rendons-lui le coo des Gaulois, 
 II s?ut aussi lancer la foudre. 
 
 La France, oubliant ses douleurs, 
 Le rebenira libre et fifere — 
 Quand secourai-je la poussiere 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs ! 
 
 Las d'errer avec la victoire, 
 
 Des lois il diSviendra lappui ; 
 
 Chaque soldat fut, grace a lui, 
 Cito yen aux bords de la Loire. 
 
 Seul il peut voiler nos malheurs, 
 Deployons-ie sur la frontiere — 
 Quand secourai-je la poussiire 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs I 
 
 Mais il est la pres de mes armes ! 
 
 Un instant osons l'entrevoir; 
 
 Viens, mon drapeau ! viens, mon espoir ! 
 C'est a toi d'cssuyer mes larmes ! 
 
 D'un guerrier qui verse des pleurs 
 Le Ciel entendra la priere — 
 Qui, je secouerai la Poussiire 
 
 Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs t 
 
 France, I can vouch, 
 
 Will, from its couch, 
 The dormant symbol yet unfold, 
 
 And wave once more 
 
 Her tri-color 
 Through Europe, uncontrolled! 
 
 For every drop of blood we spent, 
 
 Did not that flag give value plenty ? 
 Were not our children as they went. 
 Jocund, to join the warrior's tent, 
 Soldiers at ten, heroes at twenty ? 
 France ! who were then 
 Your noblemen ? 
 Not they of parchment-must and mould ! • 
 But they who bore 
 Your tri-color 
 Through Europe, tmcontroll 'd ! 
 
 Leipsic hath seen our eagle fall, 
 Drunk with renown, worn out with 
 glory ; 
 But, with the emblem of old Gaul 
 Crowning our standard, we'll recall 
 The brightest days of Valmy's story ! 
 With terror pale 
 Shall despots quail, 
 When in their ear the tale is told, 
 Of France once more 
 Her tricolor 
 Preparing to unfold! 
 
 Trust not the lawless ruffian chid, 
 
 Worse than the vilest monarch he ! 
 Down with the dungeon and Bastille ! 
 But let. our country .never kneel 
 To that grim idol. Anarchy! 
 Strength shall appear 
 On our frontier — 
 France shall be Liberty's stronghold ! 
 Then earth once more 
 The tri-color 
 With blessings shall behold! 
 
 O my old flag ! that liest hid. 
 
 There where my sword and musket lie — 
 Banner, come forth ! for tears unbid 
 Are filling fast a warrior's lid, 
 Which thou alone canst dry. 
 A soldier's grief 
 Shall And relief; 
 A veteran's heart shall be consoled— 
 France shall once more 
 Her tri-color 
 Triumphantly unfold! 
 
 After this warlike outburst, this glorious dithyramb, worthy of the days when 
 the chivalry of France took solemnly the oriflame from the Abbey of St. Denis, 
 to bear it foremost in the tight, for the defence of their native land, or the con- 
 quest of the land of Palestine, it may be gratifying to produce a specimen of 
 the earlier military songs of that gallant country. I select for that purpose a 
 very striking lyric effusion from the pen of old Mardt, which is particularly 
 deserving of attention, from its marked coincidence in thought and expression 
 
166 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 with the celebrated Marseillaise Hymn, composed at the distance of three 
 centuries ; but it would be hard to. say which produced on the wwden-shoed 
 men of France the greater impression in its day. 
 
 AU DUC D'ALENCON, 
 Commandant VAvant Garde de V Annie Franfaise, 1521. 
 
 Di vers Hainault, sur les fins de champagne, 
 
 Est arrive Ie bon Due d'Alencon, 
 Aveque honneur qui toujours l'accompagne 
 
 Comme le sien propre et vrai ecusson : 
 La peut on veoir sur la grande plaine unie 
 Do bons soudars son enseigne munie, 
 Pres d'employer leurs bras fulminatoire, 
 A repousser dedans leurs territoire 
 
 L'ours Hanvier, gent, rustique, et bruralle, 
 Voulant marcher sans raison peremptoire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. 
 
 Prenez hault cceur, donques, France et Bretagne ! 
 
 Car si en ce camp tenez fiere facon, 
 Fondre verrez devant vous l'AUemagne, 
 
 Comme au soleil blanche niege et glacon : 
 Fiffres ! tambours ! sonnez en harmonie ; 
 Aventuriers ! que la pique on manie 
 Pour les choquer et mettre en accessoire, 
 Car deja. sont au royal possessore : 
 
 Mais comme je crois destine*e fatalle 
 Veult ruiner leur outrageuse gloire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale, 
 
 Donques pietons marchans sur la campagne, 
 
 Foudroyez tout sans rien prendre a rancon ; 
 Preux chevaliers, puisqu'honneur on y gagne, 
 
 Vos ennemies poussez hors de 1'arcon, 
 Faites rough- du sang de Germanie 
 Les clairs ruisseaux dont la terre est garnie ; 
 Si seront mis vos hauts noms en histoire : 
 Frappez done tous de main gladiatoire, 
 
 Qu apres leur more et deffaicte totalie 
 Vous rapportiez la palme de victoire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. 
 
 Prince ! rempli de haut Ios meritoire, 
 Faisons les tons, si vous me voulez croire, 
 
 Aller humer leur cervoise et godalle ; 
 Car de nos yins ont grand desir de boire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. ' 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE VANGUARD OF THE FRENCH 
 Under the Duke d'Alenpon, 1521. 
 
 CLEMENT MAROT. 
 
 Soldiers ! at length their gather'd strength our might is doom'd to feel — 
 
 Spain and Brabant comilitant— Bavaria and Castile. 
 
 Idiots, they think that France will shrink from a foe that rushes on. 
 
 And terror damp the gallant camp of the bold Duke d'Alencon ! 
 
 But wail and woe betide the foe that waits for our assault ! 
 
 Back to his lair our pikes shall scare the wild boar of Hainault 
 
 La Meuse shall flood her banks with blood, ere the sons of France resign 
 
 Their glorious fields— the land that yields the olive and the vine t 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 167 
 
 Then draw the blade ! be our ranks array'd to the sound of the martial fi.e ; 
 
 In the foeman's ear let the trumpeter blow a blast of deadly strife ; 
 
 And let each knight collect his might, as if there hung this day 
 
 The fate of France on his single lance in the hour of the coming fray : 
 
 As melts the snow in summer s glow, so may our helmets' glare 
 
 Consume their host ; so folly's boast vanish in empty air. 
 
 Fools ! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine 
 
 Our Gallic fields — the land that yields the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Can Germans face our Norman race in the conflict's awful shock — 
 liravc the war-cry of " Brittany ! " the shout of " Langukdoc 1" 
 Bare they confront the battle's brunt— the fell encounter try- 
 When dread Bayard leads on his guard of stout gendarmerie ? 
 Strength be the test— then breast to breast, ay, grapple man with man ; 
 Strength in the ranks, strength on both flanks, and valour in the van. 
 Let war efface each softer grace ; on stern Bellona's shrine 
 We vow to shield the plains that yield the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Methinks I see bright Victory, in robes of glory drest, 
 
 Joyful appear on the French frontier to the chieftain she loves best ; 
 
 While grim Defeat, in contrast meet, scowls o'er the foeman's tent, 
 
 She on our duke smiles down with look of blythe encouragement. 
 
 E'en now, I ween, our foes have seen their hopes of conquest fail ; 
 
 Glad to regain their homes again, and quaff their Saxon ale. 
 
 So may it be while chivalry and loyal hearts combine 
 
 To lift a brand for the bonnie land of the olive and the vine ! 
 
 And now let us give truce to war, and, turning to calmer subjects, smoke for 
 awhile the calumet of peace with a poet of gentler disposition. Poor Mille- 
 voye! it is with a melancholy pleasure that again I turn to thy pure and 
 pathetic page; but thou art a favourite of the Muse, and, need I add, of 
 mine ? Who can peruse this simple melody without feeling deeply interested 
 in the fate of its hero — a fate too soon thine own 1 
 
 LA CHUTE DES FEUILLES. THE FALL OF THE LEAVES. 
 
 Par Millevoye. 
 
 De la depouille de nos bois 
 L'automne avait jonch6 la terre, 
 Le bocage e"tait sans mvstere, 
 
 Le rossignol etait sans voix. 
 
 Triste et mourant a son aurore, 
 Un jeune malade, a pas lents, 
 
 Parcourait une fois encore 
 Le bois cher & ses premiers ans. 
 
 "Bois que j'aime, adieu ! je succombe — 
 
 Ton deuil m'avertit de mon sort ; 
 Et dans chaque feuille qui tombe 
 
 Je vois un presage de mort. 
 Fatal oracle d'Epidaure, 
 
 Tu m'as dit, *Les/euilles des boh 
 A tes yeux jauniront encore, 
 
 Mais c* est four la demierefois J ' 
 
 L'eternel cypres se balance ; 
 De"ja sur ma tete en silence 
 
 II incline ses rameaux : 
 Ma jeunesse sera fle trie 
 Avant l'herbe de la prairie, 
 
 Avant le pampre des coteaux I 
 
 By Millevoye, 
 
 Autumn had stript the grove, and strew'd 
 
 The vale with leafy carpet o'er— 
 Shorn of its mystery the wood. 
 
 And Philomel bade sing no more — 
 Yet one still hither comes to feed 
 
 His gaze on childhood's merry path; 
 For him, sick youth ! poor invalid ! 
 
 Lonely attraction still it hath. 
 
 "I come to bid you farewell brief, 
 
 Here, O my infancy's wild haunt ! 
 For death gives in each falling leaf 
 
 Sad summons to your visitant. 
 Twas a stern oracle that told 
 
 My dark decree, ' The woodland bloom 
 Once more 'tis given thee to behold, 
 
 Then comes tlC inexorable tomb I ' 
 
 Th' eternal cypress, balancing 
 
 Its tall form like some funeral tiling 
 
 In silence o'er my head, 
 Tells me my youth shall wither fast, 
 Ere the grass fades — yea, ere the last 
 
 Stalk from the vine is shed. 
 
Et je mcurs ! de lew froide haleine 
 M'ont touched les sombres autans, 
 
 Et j'ai vu comme une ombre vaine 
 S'eVanouir mon beau printems. 
 
 Tombe ! tombe, feuille tJphem&re ! 
 
 Couvre, h6las ! ce triste chemin ! 
 Cache au dtisespoir de ma mere 
 
 La place ou je serai demain ! 
 
 Mais si mon amante voilee 
 Vient dans la solitaire allee, 
 
 Pleurer a l'heure ou le jour fuit ; 
 
 Eveille, par un leger bruit, 
 Mon ombre un instant consolee ! " 
 
 II dit. S'eloigne et sans retour : 
 
 La derni&re feuille qui tombe 
 A signals son dernier jour ; 
 
 Sous le chene on creusa sa tombe. 
 Mais son amante ne vint pas ; — 
 
 Et la patre de la vallee 
 Troubla seul du bruit de ses pas 
 
 Le silence du mausolee. 
 
 I die ! Yes, with his icy breath, 
 Fix'd Fate has frozen up my blood ; 
 
 And by the chilly blast of Death 
 Nipt is my life's spring in the bud. 
 
 Fall ! fall, O transitory leaf ! 
 
 And cover well this path of sorrow ; 
 Hide from my mothers searching grief 
 
 The spot where I'll be laid to-morrow. 
 
 But should my loved one's fairy tread ■' 
 Seek the sad dwelling of the dead, 
 
 Silent, alone, at eve ; 
 O then with rustling murmur meet 
 The echo of her coming feet. 
 
 And sign of welcome give ! '* 
 
 Such was the sick youth's last sad thought; 
 
 Then slowly from the grove he moved ; 
 Next moon that way a corpse was brought, 
 
 And buried in the bower he loved. 
 But at his grave no form appear 'd, 
 
 No fairy mourner : through the wood 
 The shepherd's tread alone was heard, 
 
 In the sepulchral solitude. 
 
 Attuned to the sad harmony of that closing stanza, and set to the same 
 key-note of impassioned sorrow, are the following lines of Chateaubriand, 
 which I believe have never appeared in print, at least in this country. They 
 were composed on the occasion of a young and beautiful girl's premature 
 death, the day her remains were, with the usual ceremony of placing a wreath 
 of white roses on the bier, consigned to the earth. 
 
 CHATEAUBRIAND. 
 
 Sur la FUle de mon Ami, enterrie Her devant met au CitnetUre de Passy, 
 16 Juin t 1832. 
 
 II descend ce cercueil ! et les roses sans taches 
 
 Qu'un pere y deposa, tribut de sa doule.ur : 
 Terre ! tu les portas ! et maintenant tu caches 
 Jeune fille et jeune flew ! 
 
 Ah ! ne les rends jamais a ce monde prophane, 
 
 A ce monde de deuil, d'angoisse, et de malheur ! 
 Le vent brise et fl&rit, le soleil brule et fane 
 Jeune fille et jeune flew ! 
 
 Tu dors, pauvre Elisa, si legere d'annees ! 
 
 Tu ne crains plus du jour le poids et la chaleur ; 
 Elles ont acheve lews fraiches matinees, 
 Jeune fille et jeune flew 1 
 
 Ere that coffin goes down, let it bear on its lid 
 
 The garland of roses 
 Which the hand of a father, her mourners amid, 
 In silence deposes — 
 'Tis the young maiden's funeral hour ! 
 From thy bosom, O earth ! sprung that young budding rose. 
 And 'tis meet that together thy lap should enclose 
 The young maid and the flower 1 
 
Never, never give back the two symbols so pure 
 
 Which to thee we confide ; 
 From the breath of this world and its plague-spot secure, 
 Let them sleep side by side— 
 They shall know not its pestilent power ! 
 Soon the breath of contagion, the deadly mildew, 
 Or the fierce scorching sun, might parch up as they grew 
 The young maid and the flower t 
 
 Poor Eliza ! for thee life's enjoyments have fled, 
 
 But its pangs too are flown ! 
 Then go sleep in the grave ! in that cold bridal bed 
 
 Death may call thee his own-* 
 Take this handful of clay for thy dower t 
 Of a texture wert thou far too gentle to last ; 
 Twas a morning thy life ! now the matins are past 
 For the maid and the flower ! 
 
 En 0" 
 
170 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IX. 
 
 \% j&rnp flf Jfrana. 
 
 (Eraser's Magazine, December, 1834.) 
 
 [The December number of Fraser, containing Front's third chapter on the Songs of 
 France, gave to view as its fifty-fifth Literary Portrait the vera effigies of that curled 
 darling of the hour, still then in his jeunesse dorle, Comte Alfred d'Orsay, author of "A 
 Journal/' It delineated him as an exquisite, " whose counterfeit presentment was in Its 
 every minute particular the very pink and pattern in a superlative degree of the then 
 fashion— the small-waisted, broad-collared coat thrown wide open, the delicately-tasselled 
 cane, the high cravat descending in a cataract of satin over the bosom, the ambrosial 
 whiskers meeting under the Cupidon chin, the speckless shirt cuffs daintily turned back 
 at the wrists over the coat sleeves. In startling contrast to this superb limning of what 
 was instantaneously recognizable, then, both on the boulevards and in Bond Street, as a per- 
 fect gentleman, was Maclise's embellishment, two years afterwards, of I'Abbe' de Prout's 
 Gallic rendering, it la viellt d'etre tendu, of Dean Burrowes' terrible death-lyric " The 
 Night before Larry was Stretched. ] 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Philosophy. 
 
 " Quando Gallus cantat, Fetrus Her."— Six/us V. Pent. Max. 
 " Si de nos coqs la voix altiere " If old St. Peter on his rock 
 
 Troubla I'heritier de St. Pierre, Wept when he heard the Gallic cock, 
 
 Grace aux annates auiourd'hui, Has not the good French hen (God bless 
 
 Nos poules vont pondre pour lui." . her!) 
 
 Beranger. Laid many an egg for his successor?" 
 
 Prout. 
 
 Before we plunge with Prout into the depths of French Philosophy, we must 
 pluck a crow with the Sun. Not often does it occur to us to notice a news- 
 paper criticism ; nor, indeed, in this case, should we condescend to wax angry 
 at the discharge of the penny-a-liner's popgun, were it not that an imputation 
 has been cast on the good father's memory, which cannot be overlooked, and 
 must be wiped away. The caitiff who writes in the Sun has, at the insti- 
 gation of Satan, thrown out a hint that these songs, and specifically his bril- 
 liant translation of " Malbrouck," were written "under vinous inspiration!" 
 A false and atrocious libel this, and, to use the language of Tom Duncombe, 
 an instance of the unparalleled audacity of the press. Great mental powers and 
 superior cleverness are too often supposed to derive assistance from the bottle. 
 Thus the virtue of the elder Cato {frisci Catonis) is most unjustifiably ascribed 
 
The Songs of France. 171 
 
 to potations by unreflecting Horace ; and a profane French sophist has attri- 
 buted Noah's escape from the Flood to his partiality for the vine : 
 
 " Noe" le patriarche, " To have drown'd an old chap, 
 
 Si celfebn: par l'arche, Such a friend to ' the tap,' 
 
 Aima fort le jus du tonneau ; The flood would have felt compunction : 
 
 Puisqu'il planta la vigne, Noah owed his escape 
 
 Convenez qu'e*tait digne To his love for the grape ; 
 
 De ne point se noyer dans l'eau ! " And his ' ark ' was an empty puncheon." 
 
 The illustrious Queen Anne, who, like our own Regina, encouraged literature 
 and patronized wit, was thus calumniated after death, when her statue was put 
 up where it now stands, with its back to Paul's church and its face turned 
 towards that celebrated corner of the churchyard which in those days was a 
 brandy-shop. Nay, was not our late dignified Lord Chancellor equally lam- 
 pooned, without the slightest colour of a pretext, excepting, perhaps, "because 
 his nose is red," and also because, instead of writing as formerly in the "bloody 
 old Times" he had chosen to scribble latterly in the Blue and Yellow. Good 
 reason has he to curse his evil genius, and to exclaim with Ovid — 
 
 " Ingenio peril Naso poeta meo ! " 
 
 But to return to Prout. We were prepared, by our previous experience and our 
 knowledge of history, for this outbreak of calumny in his case ; and we knew, 
 by a reference to the biography of Christopher Columbus, of Galileo, and of 
 Dr. Faustus (the great inventor of the art of printing), that his intellectual 
 superiority would raise up a host of adversaries prepared to malign him, nay, 
 if necessary, to accuse him of witchcraft. The writer in the Sun has not 
 yet gone quite so far, contenting himself for the present with the assertion, 
 that the father penned " these Songs of France" to the sound of a gurgling 
 flagon. 
 
 " Aux doux gloux gloux que fait la bouteille." 
 
 The idea is not a new one. When Demosthenes shaved his head, and spent 
 the winter in a cellar transcribing the works of Thucydides, 'twas said of him, 
 on his emerging into the light of the finna, that " his .speeches smelt of oil." 
 It was stated of that locomotive knight, Sir Richard Blackmore, whose epic 
 poem on King Arthur is now (like Bob Montgomery's "Omnipresence") 
 nowhere to be found, that he 
 
 " Wrote to the rumbling of his coach-wheels." 
 
 In allusion to Byron's lameness, it was hinted by some Zoilus that he penned 
 not a few of his verses stampede in uno. Even a man's genealogy is not safe 
 from innuendo and inference; for Sam Rogers having discovered, from 
 Beranger's song, " Le Tailleuret la Fee," that his father was a tailor, -pro- 
 nounced his parentage and early impressions to be the cause why he was such 
 a capital hand at a hem-a-stich. If a similar analogy can hold good in Tom 
 Moore's case, it will no doubt become obvious why his compositions are so 
 " highly spiced," his taste so " liquorish," and his muse so prodigal of " sugar- 
 candy." 
 
 But is it come to this ? must we needs, at this time of day, vindicate the holy 
 man's character? and are we driven to take up the cudgels for his sobriety?— 
 he, whose frugal life was proverbial, and whose zeal, backed by personal 
 example, was all-powerful to win his parishioners from the seduction of barley- 
 corn, and reduce them to a habit of temperance, ad bonam frugem reducere I 
 He, of whom it might be predicated, that while a good conscience was the 
 juge convivium of his mind, his corporeal banquet was a perpetual red-herring ! 
 
Water-cresses, so abundant on that bleak hill, were his only luxury ; for he 
 belonged to that class of Pythagorean philosophers of whom Virgil speaks, in 
 his description of the plague : 
 
 " Non illis epulse nocuere repostae : 
 Frondibus et victu pascuntur simplicis herbse." 
 
 Gcorg. III. 
 
 Cicero tells us, in his Tusculan Questions (what he might have read in Xeno- 
 phon), that water-cresses were a favourite diet in Persia. His words are : 
 "Persae nihil ad panem adhibebant prater nasturtium." (Tusc. Qunest. v. 
 140.) I only make this remark en passant, as, in comparing Ireland witu 
 what Tommy calls 
 
 " that delightful province of the sun, 
 The land his orient beam first shines upon," 
 
 it would seem that " round towers " and water-erases are distinctive charac- 
 teristics of both countries ; a matter somewhat singular, since the taste for 
 water-grass is by no means generally diffused among European nations. Pliny, 
 indeed (lib. xix. cap. 8), goes so far as to state that this herb creates an un- 
 pleasant titillation in the nose : " Nasturtium nomen accepit a narium tor- 
 memo." But Spenser says of the native Irish, that, "wherever they found a 
 plot of shamrocks or water-cresses, there they flocked as to a feast." — State of 
 Ireland, A.D. 1580. 
 
 When we assert that Prout was thus a model of abstemiousness, we by no 
 means intend to convey the notion that he was inhospitable. Is not his 
 Carousal on record in the pages of Regin a ? and will it not be remembered 
 when the feast of O'Rourke is forgotten ? If a friend chanced to drop into his 
 hut on a frosty night, he felt no more scruple in cracking with his guest a few 
 bottles of Medoc than George Knapp, the redoubtable Mayor of Cork, in 
 demolishing, with his municipal club, a mad-dog's pericranium. Nor were his 
 brother-clergy in that diocese less remarkable for well-ordered conviviality. 
 Horace, in his trip to Brundusium, says, that parish-priests are only bound (on 
 account of their poverty) to supply a stranger with a fireside of bog-wood, and 
 potatoes and salt — 
 
 "Suppeditant parochi quod debent Hgna salemque : " 
 
 whereas he foolishly imagines that nothing can surpass a bishop's hospi- 
 tality — 
 
 " Pontificum potion ccenis." 
 
 Were the poet now-a-days ( A.D. 1830) to make a trip to Cork, he would find 
 matters managed vice versa, and the advice of Paul to Bishop Timothy (ch. iii.) 
 forgotten. 
 
 From all we have said on this subject, and still more from what we could add, 
 if inclined to be wrathful, Prout's calumniators may learn a lesson of forbear- 
 ance and decorum. His paths are the paths of pleasantness and peace ; but 
 let all beware of crossing him in his walk of literature, or molesting him in his 
 rambles through the bye-ways of Parnassus. We are determined to protect 
 him from assault— both able and ready to fling down the gauntlet in his defence. 
 Far be it from us to throw an apple of discord : but Prout is the apple of our 
 eye. Let the man in "the Sun" read how Daniel O'Rourke fell from "the 
 moon ; " or rather let him recollect the Dutch ambassador's remark when the 
 grand monarque showed him his own royal face painted in the disc of an 
 emblematic "Sol:" " Je vois avec plaisir votre majesti dans le plus grand 
 
 DES ASTRES." ' 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Dec, nt, 1834. 
 
The Songs of France. 173 
 
 Watekgrasshill, Dec. 1834. 
 The historian of Charles V., in that very remarkable chapter of his immortal 
 work wherein he discourseth of the children of Loyola, in reference to which 
 there is a paper in my chest [already published, O. Y.], takes the opportunity 
 of manifesting his astonishment that so learned a body of men should never 
 have produced, among crowds of poets, critics, divines, metaphysicians, orators, 
 and astronomers, "one single fhilosopher I" By the ghost of Confucius ! O 
 Robertson ! thou hast in that ilk made a most rare discovery ! nor does it in 
 the least disparage the value of thy mare's-nest that the egg is a bit paradoxical. 
 But I must, however, premise by duly recording that (his sagacious observation, 
 this ingenious maggot, was first generated in the prolific brain of the notorious 
 D'Alembert, himself an undeniable "philosopher." Everyone, I imagine, 
 knows what guess-sort of wiseacre France gave birth to in the person of that 
 algebraic gentleman. I say France in general, using advisedly the wholesale 
 term, as none ever knew who his parents were in detail, he, like myself, having 
 graduated in a foundling hospital. By the bye, it is a remarkable circumstance, 
 which I shall record for D' Israeli (" il curioso "), that in the noble seminary dts 
 En/ans Trouvis (that grand metropolitan magazine for anonymous contribu- 
 tions), where he became learned in all the science of the Egyptians, the future 
 geometer was only known by the name of "Jaques le Kond," which he ex- 
 changed in after-life for the more sonorous title of D'Alembert : not rendering 
 himself thereby a whit more capable of finding the quadrature of the circle. 
 To be sure, in the fancy for a high-sounding name he only imitated his illus- 
 trious fellow-labourer in the vineyard, Francois Arouet, whom mortals have 
 learnt to call "Voltaire" by his own particular desire. Now Robertson, of the 
 Kirk of Scotland, ought to have known, when he adopted, second-hand, this 
 absurdity, that by the term philosopher the French infidel meant anything but 
 a well-regulated sound and sagacious mind, reposing in calm grandeur on the 
 rock of Revelation, and looking on with scornful pity, while modern sophists 
 go through all the drunken capers of emancipated scepticism. Does the his- 
 torian, grave and thoughtful as he is, mean to countenance such vagaries of 
 human reason ? or does he deem the wild mazes of the philosophic dance, in 
 which Hobbes, Spinoza, Bolingbroke, David Hume, and Monboddo join 
 with Diderot, Helvetius, and the D'Holbac revellers, worthy of applause and 
 imitation ? 
 
 " Saltantes satyros imitabitur Alphesiboeus?" 
 
 If such be the blissful vision of his philosophy, then, indeed, may we exclaim, 
 with the poet of Eton College, " "Tis folly to be wise !" But if to possess an 
 unrivalled knowledge of human nature— if to ken with intuitive glance all the 
 secrets of men's hearts — if to control the passions — if to gain ascendency by 
 sheer intellect over mankind — if to civilize the savage — if to furnish zealous 
 and intelligent missionaries to the Indian and American hemisphere, as well as 
 professors to the Universities of Europe, and "confessors" to the court of 
 kings — be characteristics of genuine philosophy and mental greatness, allow 
 me to put in a claim for the Society that is no more ; the downfall of which 
 was the signal for every evil bird of bad omen to flit abroad and pollute the 
 world — 
 
 " Obscoenique canes, importunatque volucres.'' 
 
 And still, though it may sound strange to modern democrats, the first treatise 
 on the grand dogma of the sovereignty of the people was written and pub- 
 lished in Spain by a Jesuit. It was Father Mariana who first, in his book " De 
 Instilutione Regis," taught the doctrine, that kings are but trustees for the 
 benefit of the ration, freely developing what was timidly hinted at by Thomas 
 Aquinas. Bayle, whom the professor will admit to the full honours of a 
 
philosophic chair of pestilence,* acknowledges, in sundry passages, the superior 
 sagacity of those pious men, under whom, by the way, he himself studied at 
 Toulouse ; and if, by accumulating doubts and darkness on the truths of 
 Christianity, he has merited to be called the cloud-compelling Jupiter among 
 philosophers, ui<t>z\iiytpna Zeve, surely some particle of philosophic praise, 
 equivocal as it is, might be reserved for those able masters who stimulated his 
 early inquiries — excited and fed his young appetite for erudition. But they 
 sent forth from their schools, in Descartes, in Torricelli, and in Bossuet, much 
 sounder specimens of reasoning and wisdom. 
 
 I hesitate not to aver, as a general proposition, that the French character is 
 essentially unphilosophical. Of the Greeks it has been said, what I would 
 rather apply to our merry neighbours, that they were " a nation of children," 
 possessing all the frolicsome wildness, all the playful attractiveness of that 
 pleasant epoch in life, but deficient in the graver faculties of dispassionate 
 reflection : 'E\\t|iu« auiirat&et, yipuv <5« 'E\\>ju ovSik. — (Plato, "Timjeus.") 
 In the reign of Louis XIV., Pere Bouhours gravely discusses, in his"Cours 
 de Belles Lettres," the question, "whether a native of Germany can possess 
 wit?" The phlegmatic dwellers on the Danube might retort by proposing as 
 a problem to the University of Gottingen, "An datur philosophus inter 
 Gallos?" Certain it is, and I know them well, that the calibre of their mind 
 is better adapted to receive and discharge "small shot" than "heavy metal." 
 That they are more calculated to shine in the imaginative, the ornamental, the 
 refined and delicate departments of literature, than in the sober, sedate, and 
 profound pursuits of philosophy ; and it is not without reason that history tells 
 of their ancestors, when on the point of taking the capitol, that they were 
 foiled and discomfited by the solemn steadiness of a goose. 
 
 Cicero had a great contempt for the guidance of Greek philosophers in 
 matters appertaining to religion, thinking, with reason, that there was in the 
 Roman gravity a more fitting disposition of mind for such important inquiries : 
 "Cum de religione agitur.Titum Coruncaniumaut Publium Scaevolam, fontijices 
 maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthum, aut Chrysippum sequor." " (De 
 Natura Dear.) The terms of insulting depreciation, Grceculus and Grmcia 
 mendax, are familiar to the readers of the Latin classics ; and from Aristo- 
 phanes we can learn, thai frogs, a talkative, saltatory, and unsubstantial noun 
 of multitude, was then applied to Greeks, as now-a-days to Frenchmen. But 
 of this more anon, when I come to treat of " frogs and free-trade." I am now 
 on the chapter of philosophy. 
 
 Vague generalities, and sweeping assertions relative to national character, 
 are too much the fashion with writers of the Puckler Muskaw and Lady 
 Morgan school : wherefore I select at once an individual illustration of my 
 theory concerning the French ; and I hope I shall not be accused of dealing 
 unfairly towards them when I put forward as a sample the Comte de Buffon. 
 Of all the eloquent prose writers of France, none has surpassed in graceful and 
 harmonious diction the great naturalist of Burgundy. His work combines two 
 qualities rarely found in conjunction on the same happy page, viz. accurate 
 technical information and polished elegance of style : but when he goes beyond 
 his depth — when, tired of exquisite delineations and graphic depicturings, he 
 forsakes the "swan," the "Arabian horse," the "beaver, ' and the "ostrich," 
 for " Sanconiathon, Berosus, and the cosmogony of the world," what a melan- 
 choly exhibition does he make of ingenious dotage t Having predetermined 
 not to leave Moses a leg to stand on, he sweeps away at one stroke of his pen 
 the foundations of Genesis, and reconstructs this terraqueous planet on a new 
 patent principle. I have been at some pains to acquire a comprehensive notion 
 
 "Cathedra pestilentia" is the Vulgate translation of what the authorized ChlirCh- 
 rtn (.nils rh*» " cnat t\F tUn cn-nAil " Denim ■ . O V 
 
The Songs of France. 175 
 
 of his system, and, aided by an old Jesuit, I have succeeded in condensing 
 the voluminous dissertation into a few lines, for the use of those who are dis- 
 satisfied with the Mosaic statement, particularly the professors at the school in 
 Gower Street : — 
 
 1. In the beginning was the sun, from which a splinter was shot off by 
 chance, and that fragment was our globe. 
 
 2. And the globe had for its nucleus melted glass, with an envelope of hot 
 water. 
 
 3. And it began to twirl round, and became somewhat flattened at the 
 poles. 
 
 4. Now, when the water grew cool, insects began to appear, and shell- 
 fish. 
 
 5. And from the accumulation of shells, particularly oysters (torn i. 410. 
 edit. p. 14), the earth was gradually formed, with ridges of mountains, on the 
 principle of the Monte Testacio at the gate of Rome. 
 
 6. But the melted glass kept warm for a long time, and the arctic climate 
 was as hot in those days as the tropics now are : witness a frozen rhinoceros 
 found in Siberia, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 To all which discoveries no one will be so illiberal as to refuse the ap- 
 propriate acclamation of " Very fine oysters ! " 
 
 As I have thus furnished the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 
 with a compendious substitute for the obsolete book of Genesis, I think it 
 right also to supply the Chaldeans of Gower Street with a few notions on 
 astronomy ; wherefore I subjoin a French song on one of the most interesting 
 phenomena of the solar system, in which effusion of some anonymous poet 
 there is about as much wisdom as in Buffon's cosmogony. 
 
 LA THEORIE DES ECLIPSES. ON SOLAR ECLIPSES. 
 
 (A NEW THEORY.) 
 {Jupiter loquitur,} For the use of the London University. 
 
 Jejure le Styx qui tournoie All heaven, I swear by Styx that rolls 
 
 Dans le bays de Tartara, ' Its dark flood round the land of souls ! 
 
 Qua " Cohn-maillard " on jouera Shall play this day at " Blind man's 
 
 Or sus ! tirez au sort, qu'on voie buff.' 
 
 Lequel d'entre vous le sera. Come, make arrangements on the spot ; 
 
 Prepare the 'kerchief, draw the lot- 
 So Jove commands ! Enough ! 
 
 Le bon Soleil l'avait bien dit— Lot fell on Sol : the stars were struck 
 
 Le sort lui e'chut en partage s At such an instance of ill-luck. 
 Chacun rit ; et suivant l'usage, Then Luna forward came, 
 
 Aussitdt la Lune s'offrit And bound with gentle, modest hand. 
 
 Four lui voiler son beau visage. ' O'er his bright brow the muslin band : 
 
 - ' Hence mortals learn'd the ganie. 
 
 It would be scandalous indeed if the palm of absurdity, the bronze medal of 
 impudence in philosophic discovery, were to be awarded to Buffon, when Vol- 
 taire stands a candidate in the same field of speculation. This great man, dis- 
 coursing on a similar subject, in his profound " Questions Encyclopediques," 
 labours to remove the vulgar presumption in favour of a general deluge, derived 
 from certain marine remains and conchylia found on the Alps and Pyrenees. 
 He does not hesitate to trace these shells to the frequency of pilgrims returning 
 with scollops on their hats from St. Jago di Compostello across the mountains. 
 Here are his words, q. e. (art. CoquiUj : "Si nous faisons reflexion a la foule 
 
176 The Works of -Father Prout. 
 
 innombrable de pdleYins qui partent it pied de St. Jaques en Galice, et de 
 toutes les provinces, pour aller a Rome par le Mont Cenis, charges de coquilles 
 aleurs bonnets," &c. &c. — a deep and original explanation of a very puzzling 
 geological problem, and a solution of the difficulty which would elicit from an 
 Italian the acknowledgment, 
 
 " Sc non e vero, e ben trovato." 
 
 But let the patriarch of Ferney hide his diminished head before a late French 
 philosophic writer, citoyen Dupuis, author of that sublime work, " De l'Origine 
 des Cultes." This profound performance is a manual of modern deism, and 
 deservedly has been commemorated by a poet from Gascony ; who concludes 
 his complimentary stanzas to the author by telling him that he has at last drawn 
 up Truth from the bottom of the well to which the ancients had consigned 
 her: 
 
 Vous avez bien merite* Truth in a well was said to dwell, 
 
 De la patrie, Sire Dupuis : From whence no art could pluck it ; 
 
 Vous avez tire - la verite But now 'tis known, raised by the loan 
 
 Du puits ! Of thy philosophic bucket. 
 
 Now, it may not be uninteresting, as assuredly it will be edifying, for the 
 British public to learn that citoyen Dupuis has imagined a simple method of 
 explaining the rise and origin of Christianity, which (setting aside all the rubbish 
 of history) he clearly shows to have been nothing at its commencement but an 
 " astronomical allegory : " Christ standing for the Sun, the twelve apostles 
 representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac, Peter standing for "Aquarius," 
 and Didymus for one of " the twins," &c. ; just with as much ease as a future 
 historian of these countries may convert our grand Whig cabinet into an alle- 
 gorical fable, putting Lord Althorp for the sign of Taurus, Palmerston for the 
 Goat, Ellice for Ursa Major, and finding in Stanley an undeniable emblem of 
 Scorpio. 
 
 Volney, in his " Ruines," seems to emulate the bold theories of Dupuis; and 
 the conclusion at which all arrive, by the devious and labyrinthine paths they 
 severally tread, — whether, with Lamettrie, they adopt plain materialism; or, 
 with Condillac, hint at the possibility of matter being capable of thought: or, 
 with Diderot, find no difference between man and a dog but the clothes (" Vie 
 de Seneque ")— is, emancipation from all moral tie, and contempt for all exist- 
 ing institutions. Their disciples fill the galleys in France, and cause our own 
 Botany Bay to present all the agreeable varieties of a philosophical hortus 
 siccus. But Ireland has produced a specimen of consummate proficiency in 
 the grand fundamental maxims of utilitarianism and philosophy, exemplified 
 in the calm composure, dignified tranquillity, and instructive self-possession, 
 with which death may be encountered after a life of usefulness. For the bene- 
 fit and comfort of our allies the French, I have taken some pains to initiate 
 them, through the medium of a translation, into the workings of an Irish mind 
 unfettered by conscientious scruples on the threshold of eternity. 
 
 THE DEATH OF SOCRATES. LA MORT DE SOCRATE. 
 
 By the Rev.'Rolt. Burrowes, Dean o/St. Par I 'Ahbi de Prout, Curt du Mont-aux- 
 Finbar's Cathedral, Cork. Cressons, pris de Cork. 
 
 The night before Larry was stretch *d, A la veille d'Stre pendu, 
 The boys they all paid him a visit ; Notr'Laurent reotit dans son glte, 
 
 A bit in their sacks, too, they fetch'd — Honneur qui lui emit bien da, 
 They sweated their duds till they riz it ; De nombreux amis la visite ; 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 177 
 
 For Larry was always the lad, 
 When a friend was condemn'd to the 
 squeezer, 
 But he'd pawn all the togs that he had, 
 Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer, 
 And moisten his gob Tore he died. 
 
 " 'Pon my conscience, dear Larry," says I, 
 
 " I'm sorry to see you in trouble. 
 And your life's cheerful noggin run dry, 
 
 And yourself going off like its bubble I** 
 " Hould your tongue in that matter," says 
 he ; 
 "For the neckcloth I don't care a but- 
 ton. 
 And by this time to-morrow you'll see 
 Your Larry will be dead as mutton : 
 All for what? 'kase his courage was 
 good ! " 
 
 The boys they came crowding in fast ; 
 
 They drew their stools close round about 
 him. 
 Six glims round his coffin they placed — 
 
 He couldn't be well waked without 'em. 
 I ax'd if he was fit to die, 
 
 Without having duly repented ? 
 Says Larry, " That's all in my eye, 
 
 And all by the clargy invented. 
 To make a fat bit for themselves." 
 
 Then the cards being call'd for, they 
 play'd, 
 Till Larry found one of them cheated ; 
 Quick, he made a hard rap at his head — 
 
 The lad being easily heated. 
 " So ye chates me bekase I'm in grief ! 
 O ! is that, by the Holy, the rason ? _ 
 Soon I'll give you to know, you d — d thief ! 
 That you're cracking your jokes out of 
 sason, 
 And scuttle your nob with my fist." 
 
 Then in came the priest with his book, 
 
 He spoke him so smooth and so civil ; 
 Larry tipp'd him a Kilmainham look. 
 And pitch'd his big wig to the divil. 
 Then raising a little his head. 
 
 To j*et a sweet drop of the bottle. 
 And pitiful sighing he said, 
 
 " O ! the hemp will be soon round my 
 throttle. 
 And choke my poor windpipe to 
 death ! " 
 
 So mournful these last words he spoke. 
 
 We all vented our tears in a shower ; 
 
 For my part, I thought my heart broke 
 
 To see him cut down like a flower ! 
 On his travels we watch 'd him next day, 
 O, the hangman I thought I could kill 
 him ! 
 Not one word did our poor Larry say, 
 Nor changed till he came to "King 
 William : " 
 Och, my dear ! then his colour turn'd 
 white. 
 
 Car chacun scavait que Laurent 
 A son tour rendrait la pareille, 
 
 Chapeau montre, et veste engageant. 
 
 Four que l'ami put boire bouteille, 
 
 Ni (aire, a gosier sec, le sauL 
 
 " Helas, notre garcon ! " lui dis-je, 
 
 " Cpmbien je regrette ton sort ! 
 Te voila fleur, que sur sa tige 
 
 Moissonne la cruelle mort !"— 
 *' Au diable," dit-il, " le roi George ! 
 
 £a me fait la valeur d'un bouton ; 
 Devant le boucher qui m'egorge, 
 
 Je serai comme un doux mouton, 
 Et saurai montrer du courage ! *' 
 
 Des amis d<ja la cohorte 
 
 Remplissait son e'troit re'duit : 
 Six chandelles, ho ! qu'on apporte, 
 
 Donnons du lustre & cette nuit 1 
 Alors je cherchai a connaitre 
 
 5'il s'etai t dument repenti ? 
 " Bah ! e'est les fourberies des prStres ; 
 
 Les gredins, ils en ont menti, 
 Et leurs contes d'enfer sont faux ! " 
 
 L'on deniande les cartes. Au jeu 
 
 Laurent voit un larron qui tnche ; 
 D'honneur tout rempli, il prend feu, 
 
 Et d'un bon coup de poign I'affiche. 
 " Ha, coquin ! de mon dernier jour 
 
 Tu croyais profiler, peut-etre ; 
 Tu oses me jouer ce tour ! 
 
 Prends ca pour ta peine, vil traStre ! 
 Et apprends a te bien conduire. " 
 
 Quand nous etimes cesse nos e*bats, 
 
 Laurent, en ce triste repaire 
 Pour le disposer au trepas, 
 
 Voit entrer Monsieur le Vicaire. 
 Apres un sinistre regard, 
 
 Xe front de sa main il se frotte, 
 Disant tout haut, " Venez plus tard ! " 
 
 Et tout bas, ** Vilain' cofotte ! " 
 Puis son verre il vida deux fois. 
 
 Lors il parla de l'echafaud, 
 
 Et de sa derniere cravate ; 
 Grands dieux ! que 9a paraissait beau 
 
 De la voir mourir en Socrate ! 
 Le Irajet en chantant il fit — 
 
 La chanson point ne fut un pseaume ; 
 Mais palit un peu quand il vit 
 
 La statue du Roy Guillaume— 
 Les pendards n'aiment pas ce roi 1 
 
178 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 When he came to the nuhbling chit, Quand fut au bout de son voyage, 
 
 He was tuck'd up so neat and so pretty; Le gibet fut pr@t en un clin : 
 
 The nimbler jugg'd off from his feet, Mourant it tourna le visage 
 
 And he died with his face to the city. Vers la bonne ville de Dublin. 
 
 He kick'd too, but that was all pride, II dansa la carmagnole, 
 
 For soon you might see 'twas all over ; Et mourut comme fit Malbrouck; 
 
 And as soon as the noose was untied. Puis nous enterrames le drole 
 
 Then at darkey we waked him in clover, Au cimetiere de Donnybrook. 
 
 And sent him to take a ground-sweat. Que son ame y soit en repos ! 
 
 There has been an attempt by Victor Hugo to embody into a book the 
 principle sof Stoic philosophy which Larry herein propounds to his associates ; 
 and the French poet has spun out into the shape of a long yarn, called " Le 
 dernier Jour d'un CondamneV' what my friend Dean Burrowes had so ably 
 condensed in his immortal ballad. But I suspect that Addison's tragedy of 
 " Cato " furnished the original hint, in the sublime soliloquy about suicide — 
 
 " It must be so ! Plato ! thou reasonest well ; " 
 
 unless we trace the matter as far back as Hamlet's conversation with the grave- 
 digger. 
 
 The care and attention with which ' ' the boys " paid the last funeral honours 
 to the illustrious dead, anxious to testify their adhesion to the doctrines of the 
 defunct philosopher by a glorious "wake," remind me of the pomp and cere- 
 mony with which the sans culottes of Paris conveyed the carcase of Voltaire and 
 the ashes of Jean Jacques to the Pantheon in 1794. The wholesale cut-throat 
 Marat was subsequently added by the same lads to the relics therein gathered ; 
 and never was there an inscription so bitterly ironical as that which blazed on 
 the front of the temple's gorgeous portico — 
 
 " Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante ! " 
 
 The " Confessions " of Rousseau had stamped him a thorough vagabond ; the 
 " Pucelle " of Voltaire, by combining an outrage on morals with a sneer at the 
 purest and most exalted instance of romantic patriotism on record in his own or 
 any other country, had eminently entitled the writer to be "waked" by the 
 most ferocious ruffians that ever rose from the kennel to trample on all the 
 decencies of life, and riot in all the beatitude of democracy. There was a man 
 in those days who deserved to live in better times; but carried away by the 
 frenzy of the season (for " madness ruled the hour"), he voted for the death of 
 Louis XVI. That man was the painter David, then a member of the Con- 
 vention; subsequently the imperial artist, whose glorious picturings of "The 
 Passage of the Alps by Bonaparte," of "The Spartans at Thermopylae," and 
 "The Emperor in his Coronation Robes," shed such radiance on his native 
 land. The Bourbons had the bad taste not only to enforce the act of pro- 
 scription in his case while he lived, but to prohibit his dead body from being 
 interred in the French territory. His tomb is in Brussels, but his paintings 
 adorn the Louvre ; and he has been fortunate enough to be sung by Beranger, 
 thus doubly certain of immortality. 
 
 LE CONVOI DE DAVID, 
 
 Peintre de VEmpereur^ ex-Membre de la Convention. 
 
 Air—" De Roland.'* 
 
 " Noli ! non ! vous ne passcrez pas ! " " Soldat," disent-ils dans leur deuil, 
 Crie un soldat sur la front ifere, " Proscrit-on aussi sa me"rnoire ? 
 
 A ceux qui de David, hllas ! Quoi, vous repoussez son cercueil ! 
 Rapportaient chez nous la poussftre. Et vous he*ritez de sa gloire ! " 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 179 
 
 *' Nod ! non ! vous ne passerez pas ! " 
 
 Dit le soldat avec fune. — 
 " Soldat, ses yeux jusqu'au trepas 
 
 Se sont tournes vers la patrie ; 
 II en soutenait la splendeur 
 
 Du fond d'un exii qui 1'honore : 
 C'est par lui qui notre grandeur 
 
 Sur la toile respire encore/' 
 
 " Non ! non ! vous ne passerez pas ! " 
 
 Redit plus bas la sentinelle. — 
 *' Le peintre de Leonidas 
 
 Dans la libertc n'a vu qu'elle ; 
 On lui dut le noble appareil 
 
 Des jours de joie et d'espe*rance, 
 Ou les beaux arts & leur reveil 
 
 Fetaient le reveil de la France. 1 ' 
 
 " Non ! non ! vous ne passerez pas ! " 
 Dit le soldat ; "c'est ma consigne." 
 
 "Du plus grand de tous les soldats 
 II fut le peintre le plus digne, 
 
 A l'aspect de I'aigle si iter, 
 Plein d'Homere, et l'ame exalted, 
 
 David crut peindre Jupiter — 
 Helas ! il peignit Prome'the'e." 
 
 " Non ! non ! vous ne passerez pas ! M 
 
 Dit le soldat, devenu triste. — 
 " Le hcros apres cent combats 
 
 Succombe, et Ton proscrit l'artiste ! 
 Chez l'etranger la mort 1'atteint— 
 
 Qu'il dut trouver sa coupe amere ! 
 Aux cendres d'un genie e'teint, 
 
 France ! tends les bras d'une mere." 
 
 ** Non ! non ! vous ne passerez pas I " 
 
 Dit la sentinelle attendrie. — 
 '-' Eh bien, retournons sur nos pas ! 
 
 Adieu, terre qu'il a cherie ! 
 Les arts ont perdu le flambeau 
 
 Qui fit pahr l'eclat de Rome ! 
 Allons mendier un tombeau 
 
 Pour les restes de ce grand homme ! " 
 
 THE OBSEQUIES OF DAVID THE PAINTER, 
 
 Ex-Member of t/ie National Convention. 
 
 The pass is barr'd ! " Fall back ! " cries the guard ; " cross not the French frontier ! " 
 
 As with solemn tread, of the exiled dead the funeral drew near. 
 
 For the sentinelle hath noticed well what no plume, no pall can hide, 
 
 That yon hearse contains the sad remains of a banish'd regicide ! 
 
 " But pity take, for his glory's sake," said his children to the guard ; 
 
 " Let his noble art plead on his part — let a grave be his reward ! 
 
 France knew his name in her hour of fame, nor the aid of his pencil scorn'd ; 
 
 Let his passport be the memory of the triumphs he adorn'd ! " 
 
 " That corpse can't pass ! 'tis my duty, alas !_" said the frontier sentinelle.— 
 
 *' But pity take, for his country's sake, and his clay do not repel 
 
 From its kindred earth, from the land of his birth ! " cried the mourners, in their turn. 
 
 " Oh ! give to France the inheritance of her painter's funeral urn : 
 
 His pencil traced, on the Alpine waste of the pathless Mont Bernard, 
 
 Napoleon's course on the snow-white horse — let a grave be his reward ! 
 
 For he loved this land— ay, his dying hand to paint her fame he'd lend her : 
 
 Let his passport be the memory of his native country's splendour ! " 
 
 ".Ye cannot pass," said the guard, " alas ! (for tears bedimm'd his eyes) 
 Though France may count to pass that mount a glorious enterprise.— 
 "Then pity take, for fair Freedom's sake," cried the mourners once again: 
 " Her favourite was Leonidas, with his band of Spartan men ; 
 Did not his art to them impart life's breath, that France might see 
 What a patriot few in the gap could do at old Thermopylae ? 
 Oft by that sight for the coming fight was the youthful bosom fired : 
 Let his passport be the memory of the valour he inspired 1 " 
 
 " Ye cannot pass."—" Soldier, alas ! a dismal boon we crave- 
 Say, is there not some lonely spot where his friends might dig a grave? 
 Oh ! pity take, for that hero's sake whom he gloried to portray 
 With crown and palm at Notre Dame on his coronation day.' 
 Amid that band the wither'd hand of an aged pontiff rose, 
 And blessing shed on the conqueror's head, forgiving his own woes : — 
 He drew that scene— nor dreamt, I ween, that yet a little while, 
 And the hero's doom would be a tomb far off in a lonely isle ! " 
 
" I am charged, alas ! not to let you pass," said the sorrowing sentinelle ; 
 •' His destiny must also be a foreign grave ! "— " 'Tis well ! — 
 Hard is our fate to supplicate for his bones a place of rest. 
 And to bear away his banish'd clay from the land that he loved best. 
 But let us hence ! — sad recompense for the lustre that he cast, 
 Blending the rays of modern days with the glories of the past ! 
 Our sons will read with shame this deed (unless my mind doth err) ; 
 And a future age make pilgrimage to the painter's sepulchre ! " 
 
 How poor and pitiful the attempt to crush the fame of such a man, or to 
 visit on his coffin the error of his political career ! There is a sympathy in our 
 nature that rises in arms against any act of persecution that vents itself upon 
 the dead ; and genius in exile has ever excited interest and compassion. This 
 feeling has been admirably worked upon by the author of the "Meditations 
 Po&iques," a poet every way inferior to Beranger, but who, in the following 
 effusion, has surpassed himself, and given utterance to some of the noblest lines 
 in the French language. 
 
 LA GLOIRE. 
 
 A un PoHe exile, par AlpJionse de la Martini. 
 
 Genereux, favor is des Miles de memoire ! 
 Deux sentiers difTerents devant vous vont s'ouvrjr— 
 L'un conduit au bonheur, l'autre mene a la gloire ; 
 Mortels ! il faut choisir. 
 
 Ton sort, O Manoel ! suivit la loi commune : 
 La muse t'enivra de precoces faveurs ; 
 Tes jours furent tissus de gloire et d'infortune, 
 Et tu verses des pleurs ! 
 
 Rougis, plutdt rougis, d'envier au vulgaire, 
 Le sterile repos dont son cceur est jaloux ; 
 Les dieux ont fait pour lui tous les biens de la terre, 
 Mais la lyre est a nous. 
 
 Les siecles sont a toi, lc monde est ta patrie ; 
 
 8uand nous ne sommes plus, notre ombre a des autels, 
 U le juste avenir prepare a ton genie 
 Des honneurs immortels. 
 
 Oui, la gloire t 'attend ! mais arrete et contemple 
 A quel prix on penetre en ces parvis sacres ; 
 Vois, l'lnfortune, assise a la porte du temple, 
 En garde les degres. 
 
 Ici c'est ce vieillard que l'ingrate Ionie 
 A vu de mers en mers promener ses malheurs ; 
 Aveugle, il mendiait, au prix de son genie, 
 Un pain mouill£ de pleurs. 
 
 La le Tasse, brule" d'une flamme fatale, 
 Expiant dans les fers sa gloire et son amour, 
 Quand il va recueillir la palme triomphale. 
 Descend au noir sejour. 
 
 Par-tout des malheureux, des proscrits, des victimes, 
 Luttant contre le sort, ou contre les bourreaux ; 
 On dirait que le Gel aux cceurs phis magnanimes 
 Mesure plus de maux. 
 
 Impose done silence aux plain tes de ta lyre— 
 Des coeurs no's sans vertu l'infortune est I'ecueil; 
 Mais toi, roi detronti, que ton malheur t'inspire 
 Un ge'ne'reux orgueil. 
 
The Songs of France. 181 
 
 Que t'importe, aprfes tout, que cet ordre harbare 
 'i 'enchaine loin des bords qui furent ton berccau t 
 Que t'importe en quel lieu le destin te prepare 
 Un gforieux tombeau ? 
 
 Ni 1'exil ni le fer de ces tyrans du Tage 
 N'enchaineront ta gloire aux bords oti tu mourras : 
 Lisbonne la reclame, et voila l'he*ritage 
 Que tu lui latsseras. 
 
 Ceux qui l'ont meconnu pleureront le grand homme : 
 Athene a des proscrits ouvre son Pantheon ; 
 Coriolan expire, et les enfans de Rome 
 Kevendiquent son nom. 
 
 Aux rivages des morts avant que de descendre, 
 
 Ovide Ifeve au ciel ses sirppliantes mains : 
 Aux Sarmates barbares U a le*gue* sa cendre, 
 Et sa gloire aux Komains. 
 
 CONSOLATION. 
 
 Addressed by Lamartine to his friend and brother-foei, Manoel, banished from Lisbon. 
 
 It your bosom beats high, if your pulse Quicker grows, 
 When in visions ye fancy the wreath of the Muse, 
 There's the path to renown— there's the path to repose— 
 Ye must choose ! ye must choose ! 
 
 ManoSl, thus the destiny rules thy career, 
 And thy life's web is woven with glory and woe ; 
 Thou wert nursed on the lap of the Muse, and thy tear 
 Shall unceasingly flow. 
 
 O. my friend ! do not envy the vulgar their joys, 
 Nor the pleasures to which their low nature is prone ; 
 For a nobler ambition our leisure employs— 
 Oh, the lyre is our own ! 
 
 And the future is ours ! for in ages to come, 
 The admirers of genius an altar will raise 
 To the poet ; and Fame, till her trumpet is dumb, 
 Will re-echo our praise. 
 
 Poet ! Glory awaits thee ; her temple is thine ; 
 But there's one who keeps vigil, if entrance you claim : 
 *Tis Misfortune ! she sits in the porch of the shrine, 
 The pale portress of Fame ! 
 
 Saw not Greece an old man, like a pilgrim array 'd, 
 With his tale of old Troy, and a staff in his hand, 
 Beg his bread at the door of each hut, as he stray'd 
 Through his own classic land ? 
 
 And because he had loved, though unwisely, yet well, 
 Mark what was the boon by bright beauty bestow 'd — 
 Blush, Italy, blush ! for yon maniac's cell 
 It was Tasso's abode. 
 
 Hand in hand Woe and Genius must walk here below, 
 And the chalice of bitterness, mix'd for mankind, 
 Must be quaff "d by us all ; but its waters o'erflow 
 For the noble of mind. 
 
1 82 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Then the heave of thy heart's indignation keep down ; 
 Be the voice of lament never wrung from thy pride ; 
 Leave to others the weakness of grief ; take renown 
 With endurance allied. 
 
 Let them banish far off and proscribe (for they can) 
 Sadden'd Portugal's son from his dear native plains; 
 But no tyrant can place the free soul under ban, 
 Or the spirit in chains. 
 
 No ! the frenzy of faction, though hateful, though strong, 
 From the banks of the Tagus can't banish thy fame : 
 Still the halls of old Lisbon shall ring with thy song 
 And resound with thy name. 
 
 When Dante's attainder his townsmen repeal'd— 
 When the sons stamp'd the deed of their sires with abhorrence, 
 They summon'd reluctant Ravenna to yield 
 Back his fame to his Florence. 
 
 And with both hands uplifted Love's bard ere he breathed 
 His last sigh, far away from his kindred and home : 
 To the Scythians his ashes hath left, but bequeath'd 
 All his glory to Rome. 
 
 Never does poetry assume a loftier tone than when it becomes the vehicle of 
 calm philosophy or generdus condolence with human sufferings; but when 
 honest patriotism swells the note and exalts the melody, the effect on a feeling 
 heart is truly delightful. List to Beranger:— 
 
 LE VIOLON BRISE. 
 
 Viens, mon chien ! viens, ma pauvre bdte ! 
 
 Mange, malgre mon desespoir. 
 II me reste un g&teau de fate— 
 
 Demain nous aurons du pain noir I 
 
 Les Grangers, vainqueurs par ruse, 
 M'ont dit hier, dans ce vallon ! 
 
 " Fats-nous danser ! " moi je refuse ; 
 L'un d'eux brise mon violon. 
 
 C'e'tait I'orchestre du village ! 
 
 Plus de f6tes, plus d*heureux jours, 
 Qui fera danser sous l'ombrage ? 
 
 Qui reveUlera les amours ? 
 
 Si corde vivement presse*e, 
 Des l'aurore d'un jour bien doux, 
 
 Annonoait a la fiancee 
 Lc cortege du jeune ejpoux. 
 
 Aux cures qui 1'osaient entendre 
 
 Nos danses causaient moins d'effroi ; 
 
 La gaiete 1 qu'il scavait re" pandre 
 Eut deride 1 le front d'un roi. 
 
 S'il preluda dans notre gloire 
 Aux chants quelle nous inspirait. 
 
 Sur lui jamais pouvais-je croire, 
 Que f'tftranger se vengerait ? 
 
 Combien, sous l'ombre ou dans la grange, 
 Le Dimanche va sembler long ! 
 
 Dieu be"nira-t-il la vendange 
 Qu'on ouvrira sans violon ? 
 
 II delassait des longs ouyrages ; 
 
 Du pauvre etourdissait les maux ; 
 Des grands, des impots, des orages, 
 
 Lul seul consolait nos hameaux. 
 
 Les haines il les faisait taire, 
 Les pleurs amers il les sechait : 
 
 Jamais sceptre n'a fait sur terre 
 Autant de bien que mon archet. 
 
 Mais 1'ennemi, qu'il faut qu'on chasse, 
 
 M'a rendu le courage aise ; 
 Qu'en mes mains un mousquet rcmplace 
 
 Le violon qu'il a brise' ! 
 
 Tant d'amis dont je me s£ pare 
 
 Diront un jour, si je peris, 
 " II n'a point voulu qu'un barbare 
 
 Dansftt gaiment sur nos debris I " 
 
 Viens, mon chien ! viens, ma pauvre L6;e ! 
 
 Mange, malgre' mon de*sespoir. 
 II me reste un g&teau de fete— 
 
 Demain nous aurons du pain noir ! 
 
The Songs of France. 183 
 
 THE FRENCH FIDDLER'S LAMENTATION. 
 
 My poor dog ! here ! of yesterday's fes tival-cake 
 
 Eat the poor remains in sorrow ; 
 For when next a repast you and I shall make, 
 It must be on brown bread, which, for charity's sake, 
 
 Your master must beg or borrow. 
 
 Of these strangers the presence and pride in France 
 
 Is to me a perfect riddle ; 
 They have conquer d, no doubt, by some fatal chance. 
 For they haughtily said," You must play us a dance 1 ' 
 
 I refused—and they broke my fiddle ! 
 
 Of our village the orchestra, crush'd at one stroke, 
 
 By that savage insult perish'd ! 
 Twas then that our pride felt the strangers' yoke. 
 When the insolent hand of a foreigner broke 
 
 What our hearts so dearly cherish'd. 
 
 For whenever our youth heard it merrily sound, 
 
 A flood of gladness shedding, 
 At the dance on the green they were sure to be fourid ; 
 While its music assembled the neighbours around 
 
 To the village maiden's wedding. 
 
 By the priest of the parish its note was pronounced 
 
 To be innocent " after service ;' 
 And gaily the wooden-shoed peasantry bounced 
 On the bright Sabbath-day, as they danced undenounced 
 
 By pope, or bonze, or dervisj 
 
 How dismally slow will the Sabbath now run, 
 
 Without fiddle, or flute, or tabor- 
 How sad is the harvest when music there's none— 
 How sad is the vintage satis fiddle begun ! — 
 
 Dismal and tuneless labour ! 
 
 In that fiddle a solace for grief we had got ; 
 
 'Twas of peace the best preceptor ; 
 For its sound made all quarrels subside on the spot, 
 And its bow went much farther to soothe our hard lot 
 
 Than the crosier or the sceptre. 
 
 But a truce to my grief !— for an insult so base 
 
 A new pulse in my heart hath awoken ! 
 That affront I'll revenue on their insolent race ; 
 Gird a sword on my thigh — let a musket replace 
 
 The fiddle their hand has broken. 
 
 My friends, if I fall, my old corpse in the crowd 
 
 Of slaughter'd martyrs viewing, 
 Shall say, while they wrap my cold limbs in a shroud, 
 Twas not his fault if some a barbarian allow'd 
 
 To dance in our country's ruin ! 
 
 It would be a pity, while we are in the patriotic strain of sentiment, to allow 
 the feelings to cool; so, to use a technical phrase, we shall keep the steam up, 
 by flinging into the already kindled furnace 6f generous emotions a truly 
 national ballad, by Casimir Delavigne, concerning a well-known anecdote of 
 the late revolution, July, 1830. 
 
1 84 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 LE CHIEN DU LOUVRE. 
 
 Ca&imir Detavigtie. 
 
 Passant ! que ton front se decouvre ! 
 
 La plus d'un brave est endormi ! 
 Des fleurs pour le martyr du Louvre, 
 
 Un peu de pain pour son ami ! 
 
 C'e'tait le jour de la bataille, 
 II s'llanca sous la mitraille, 
 
 Son chien suivit ; 
 Le plomb tous deux vint les atteindre— 
 Ebt-ce le martyr qu'il faut plaindre? 
 
 Le chien survit. 
 
 Morne, vers le brave il se penche, 
 L'appelle, et de sa tete blanche 
 
 Le caressant ; 
 Sur le corps de son frere d'armes 
 Laisse couler ses grosses Iarmes 
 
 Avec son sang. 
 
 Gardien du terte funeraire, 
 Nul plaisir ne peut le distraire 
 
 De son ennui ; 
 Et fuyant la main qui 1'attire, 
 Avec iristesse il semble dire, 
 
 " Ce n'est pas lui ! " 
 
 Suand sur ces touffes d 'immortelles 
 rillent d'hurnides e*tincelles > 
 Au point du jour, 
 Son ceil se ranime, il se dresse 
 Pour que son ma! tre le caresse 
 A son retour. 
 
 Aux vents des nuits, quand la couronne 
 Sur la croix du tombeau frisonne, 
 
 Perdant 1'espoir, 
 II veut que son maltre l'entende — 
 II gronde, il pleure, et lui demande 
 
 L'adieu du soir. 
 
 St la neige avec violence 
 
 De ses flocons couvre en silence 
 
 Le lit de mort, 
 II pousse un cri lugubre et tendre, 
 On sV couche pour le deTendre 
 
 Des vents du nord. 
 
 Avant de fermer la paupiere, 
 II fait pour soulever la pierre 
 
 t Un vain effort ; 
 Puis il se dit, comme la veille 
 ** II m'appelera s'il s'eveille" — 
 Puis il s'endort. 
 
 La nutt il rflve barricades — 
 Son maltre est sous la fusillade, 
 
 ( Couvert de sang ;— 
 II 1 'en tend qui sifHe dans 1'ombre, 
 Se love, et saute apres son ombre 
 £n genussant. 
 
 THE DOG OF THE THREE 
 DAYS. 
 
 A Ballad, September \ 1831. 
 
 With gentle tread, with uncover'd head, 
 
 Pass by the Louvre-gate, 
 Where buried lie the '* men of July ! '* 
 And flowers are flung by the passers-by, 
 
 And the dog howls desolate. 
 
 That dog had fought 
 
 In the fierce onslaught, 
 Had msh'd with his master on : 
 
 And both fought well ; 
 
 But the master fell— 
 And behold the surviving one ! 
 
 By his lifeless clay. 
 Shaggy and grey. 
 
 His fellow-warrior stood : 
 
 Nor moved beyond. 
 
 But mingled, fond, 
 Big tears with his master's blood. 
 
 Vigil he keeps 
 
 By those green heaps, 
 That tell where heroes be ; 
 
 No passer-by 
 . Can attract his eye, 
 For he knows " it is not he ! " 
 
 At the dawn, when dew 
 
 Wets the garlands new 
 That are hung in this place of mourning, 
 
 He will start to meet 
 
 The coming feet 
 Of him whom he dreamt returning. 
 
 On the grave's wood cross, 
 
 When the chaplets toss. 
 By the blasts of midnight shaken, 
 
 How he howleth ! nark ! 
 
 From that dwelling dark 
 The slain he would fain awaken. 
 
 When the snow comes fast 
 
 On the chilly blast, 
 Blanching the bleak churchyard, 
 
 With limbs outspread 
 
 On the dismal bed ' 
 Of his liege, he still keeps guard. 
 
 Oft in the night, 
 
 With main and might, 
 He strives to raise the stone : 
 
 Short respite takes — 
 
 " If master wakes. 
 He'll call me"— then sleeps on. 
 
 Of bayonet-blades, 
 
 Of barricades, 
 And guns, he dreameth most ; 
 
 Starts from his dream, 
 
 And then would seem 
 To eye a bleeding ghost. 
 
Tlie Songs of France. 
 
 185 
 
 C'est la qu'il attend d'heure en heure, 
 Qu'il ainie, qu'il souffre, qu'il pleure, 
 
 Et qu il mourra. 
 Quel fut sonnom ? C'est un mystere ; 
 Jamais la voix qui lui fut chere 
 
 Ne le dira ! 
 
 Passant ! que ton front se dtScouvre ! 
 
 La plus d'un brave est endormi : 
 Des fleurs pour le martyr du Louvre, 
 
 Un peu de pain pour son ami ! 
 
 He'll linger there 
 
 In sad despair, 
 And die on his master's grave. 
 
 His name ? J Tis known 
 
 To the dead alone — 
 He's the dog of the nameless brave I 
 
 Give a tear to the dead, 
 And give some bread 
 To the dog of the Louvre-gate ! 
 Whert buried lie the men of July, 
 And flowers are flung by, the passers-by, 
 And the dog howls desolate. 
 
 When Diderot wrote that celebrated sentence, that he saw no difference 
 between himself and a dog but the clothes, he, no doubt, imagined he had 
 conferred a compliment on the dumb animal. I rather suspect, knowing the 
 nature of a thorough-bred French philosopher, that the balance of dignity 
 inclines the other way. Certain I am, that anything like honest, manly, or 
 affectionate feeling never had place in the breast of this contributor to the 
 " Encyclopedic" and writer of irreligious and indecent romances. 
 
 What though the pen of some among these sophists could occasionally trace 
 eloquent words and produce specimens of impassioned language in the advo- 
 cacy of their disastrous theories ? — still do they leave on the mind the impres- 
 sion of self-degraded and self-debased intellect, than which nothing can be 
 more dismal ; and these outbursts of talented blasphemy only remind one of 
 the Neapolitan imagery conjured up by the poet for a different purpose, being 
 truly like — 
 
 " The verdant spots -that bloom 
 Around the crater's burning lips, 
 Sweetening the very edge of doom,"— {Lalla Rookh) 
 
 if the result be an eruption of all the evil passions of mankind to desolate the 
 fair face of society. 
 
 It is with unaffected sorrow I find the noble faculties of B^ranger devoted 
 now and then to similar villanies; but in the following he has clothed serene 
 philosophy in appropriate diction. 
 
 LES ETOILES QUI FILENT. 
 
 " Berger ! tu dis que notre etoile_ 
 
 Regie nos jours, et brille aux cieux ? " — 
 *' Oui, mon enfant ! mais de son voile 
 
 La nuit la d^robe a, nos yeux." — 
 " Berger ! sur cet azur tranquille 
 
 De lire on te croit le secret ; 
 Quelle est cette 6toiIe qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparaU?" 
 
 *' Mon enfant, un mortel expire ! 
 
 Son etoile tombe a 1'instant ; 
 Entre amis que la joie inspire 
 
 Cclui-ci buvait en chantant. 
 Heureux, il s'endort immobile 
 
 Aupres du vin qu'il ce*le"brait."— 
 " Encore une e*toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparalt ? " 
 
 SHOOTING STARS. 
 
 " Shepherd ! they say that a star presides 
 
 Over life?"—" Tis a truth, my son ! 
 Its secrets from men the firmament hides, 
 
 But tells to some favoured one." — 
 " Shepherd, they say that a link unbroken 
 
 Connects our fate with some favourite 
 star ; 
 What may yon shooting light betoken, 
 
 That falls, falls, and is quenched afar ? ' 
 
 "The death of a mortal, my son. who held 
 
 In his banqueting-hall high revel ; 
 And his music was sweet, and his wine ex- 
 celled, 
 Life's path seemed long and level : 
 No sign was given, no word was spoken, 
 
 His pleasure death comes to mar. 1 '— 
 ' But what does yon milder light betoken, 
 That falls, falls, and is quenched afar?" 
 I 
 
1 86 
 
 The Works of Father Proitt. 
 
 " Mon enfant ! qu'elle est pure et belle ! 
 
 C'est celle d'un objet charmant ; 
 Fille heureuse ! amante fiddle ! 
 
 On t'accorde au plus tendre amant ; 
 Des fleurs ceignent son front nubile, 
 
 Et de l'Hymen l'autel est prSt." — 
 " Encore une e'toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparaSt? " 
 
 " Mon fils ! c'est l'ftoile rapide 
 
 D'un tres-grand seigneur nouveau-ne* ; 
 Le berceau qu'ii a laisse vide 
 
 D'or et de pourpre etait orne : 
 Des poisons qu'un flatteur distille, 
 
 C'ctait a qui le nourrirait."— 
 " Encore une e*toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparalt?" 
 
 " Mon enfant, quel eclair sinistra ! 
 
 C'e'tait l'astre d'un favori, 
 Qui se ci-ayait un grand mfnistre, 
 
 Quand de iws inaux il avaitri. 
 Ceux qui servaient ce dieu fragile 
 
 Ont deja cache'son portrait. — 
 " Encore une e'toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparalt? " 
 
 " Mon fils, quels pleurs sont les notres ! 
 
 D'un riche nous perdons 1'appui : 
 L indigence glane chez les autres, 
 
 Mais elle moissonnait chez lui ! 
 Ce soir racme, sQr d'un asyle, 
 
 A son toit le pauvre accourait." — 
 " Encore une e'toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparalt?*' 
 
 " C'est celle d'un puissant monarque ! 
 
 Va, mon fils ! garde ta candeur ; 
 Et que ton etoile ne marque 
 
 Par l'e*clat ni par la grandeur. 
 Si tu brillais sans §tre utile, _ 
 
 A ton dernier jour on di rait, 
 ' Ce n'est qu'une e'toile qui file, 
 
 Qui file, file, et disparalt ! '" 
 
 The philosophic humour of the next ballad is not in so magnificent a vein; 
 but good sense and excellent wisdom it most assuredly containeth. I make no 
 apology in these utilitarian days for introducing especially to Lord Goderich's 
 notice a commendatory poem on a much-abused and unjustly depreciated 
 branch of the feathered family. Here then followeth — 
 
 LES OIES 
 
 (1810). 
 
 Des chansonniers damoiseaux ' 
 
 J'abandonne les voies ; 
 Quittant bosquets et r&eaux, 
 J e chante au lieu des oiseaux — 
 Les oies 1 
 
 A PANEGYRIC ON GEESE 
 
 (1S10). 
 
 I hate to sing your hackney 'd birds— 
 
 So, doves and swans, a truce ! 
 Your nests have been too often stirred ; 
 My hero shall be— in a word — 
 A goose ! 
 
 " Tis the knell of beauty !— it marks the ! 
 close 
 Of a pure and gentle maiden ; 
 And her cheek was warm with its bridal 
 rose, 
 And her brow with its bride-wreath 
 laden :— 
 The thousand hopes young love had woken 
 
 Lie crushed, and her dream is past" — 
 "But what canyon rapid light betoken,- 
 That falls, falls, and is quenched so 
 fastr 
 
 " Tis the emblem, my son, of quick decay ! 
 
 'Tis a rich lord's child newly born : 
 The cradle that holds his inanimate clay 
 
 Gold, purple, and silk adorn ; 
 The panders prepared through life to haunt 
 him 
 
 Must seek some one else in his room." — 
 "Look, now! what means yon dismal 
 phantom 
 
 That falls, falls, and is lost in gloom ? " 
 
 "Then, son ! I see the guilty thought 
 
 Of a haughty statesman fail, 
 IVho the poor man's comforts sternly 
 sought 
 
 To plunder or curtail. 
 His former sycophants have cursed 
 
 Their idol s base endeavour, " — 
 " But watch the light that now has burst. 
 
 Falls, falls, and is quenched for ever ! ' 
 
 "What a loss, O my son, was there ! 
 
 Where shall hunger now seek relief ? 
 The poor, who are gleaners elsewhere, 
 
 Could reap in his field full sheaf ! 
 On the evening he died, his door 
 
 Was thronged with a weeping crowd. "— 
 " Look, shepherd ! there's one star more 
 
 That falls, and is quenched in a cloud." 
 
 " 'Tis a monarch's star ! Do thou preserve 
 
 Thy innocence, my child ! 
 Nor from thy course appointed swerve. 
 
 But there shine calm and mild. 
 Of thy star, if the sterile ray 
 
 For no useful purpose shone, 
 At thy death, ' See that star,' they'd say ; 
 
 ' It falls ! falls ! is past and gone 1 ' " 
 
TJie Songs of France. 187 
 
 Rossignol, en vain la bas The nightingale, or else " bulbul," 
 
 Ton gosier se deploie ; By 1 ommy Moore let loose, 
 
 Malgre* tes brillants appas, Is grown intolerably dull — 
 
 En broche tu ne vaux pas / from the feathered nation cull 
 Une oie I A goose ! 
 
 Strasbourg tire vanite - -' Can roasted Philomel a liver 
 De ses pate's de foie ; Fit for a pie produce ? 
 
 Cette superbe cite ■ Fat pies that on the Rhine's sweet river 
 
 Ne doit sa prosperite ( Fair Strasburg bakes. Pray who's the giver? 
 Qu'aux oies ! A goose ! 
 
 On peut faire un bon repas An ortolan is good to eat, 
 
 D ortolans, de lamproies — A partridge is of use ; 
 
 Mais Paris n'en produit pas ; But they are scarce— whereas you meet 
 
 II s'y trouve a chaque pas At Paris, ay, in every street, 
 
 Des oies ! A goose ! 
 
 Les Grecs, d'un commun aveu, When tired of war the Greeks became, 
 
 S'ennuyaient devant Troie ; They pitched Troy to the deuce. 
 
 Pour les amuser un peu, Ulysses, then, was not to blame 
 
 Ulysse inventa le jeu For teaching them the noble "game 
 DeFoia. Of goose X" 
 
 Sur un aigle, au vol brutal. May Jupiter and Buonaparte, 
 
 Jupiter nous foudroie : Of thunder less profuse, 
 
 II nous ferait moins de mal Suffer their eagles to depart, 
 
 S'il choisissait pour cheval Encourage peace, and take to heart 
 
 Une oie. A goose ! 
 
 Wisdom speaketh sometimes enigmatically, and openeth her mouth in 
 parables; hence the oriental fashion of conveying a sober truth by allegorical 
 narrative is occasionally (and gracefully) adopted by the poets of France, one 
 of whom has left us this pretty line, containing in itself the precept and the 
 exemplification : 
 
 " L'allegorie habite un palais diaphane ! " 
 
 Here is one concerning love and his arch-enemy Time, ,by Count de Segur. 
 LE TEMPS ET L'AMOUR. 
 
 A voyager passant sa vie, 
 
 -Certain vici Hard, nomme le Temps, 
 Pres d'un fleuve arrive, et s'e'erie, 
 
 " Prenez pitiel de mes vieux ans ! 
 Eh, quoi ! sur ces bords Ton m'oublie— * 
 
 Moi, qui compte tous les installs ? 
 Jeunes bergeres ! je vous prie 
 
 Venez, venez, passer le Temps ! " 
 
 De l'autre cote", sur la plage, 
 
 Plus d'une fille regardait, 
 Et voulait aider son passage 
 
 Sur une barque qu Amour guidait ; 
 Mais l'une d'elles, bien plus sage, 
 
 Leur repctait ces mots prudens— 
 *' Ah, souvent on a fait naufrage 
 
 En cherchent a passer le Temp* . * 
 
 Amour gaiment pousse au rivage— 
 
 II aborde tout pres du Temps * 
 II lui propose le voyage, 
 
 L'embarquc, et s abandonne aux vents. 
 
1 88 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Agitant ses rames legeres, 
 
 II dit et redit en ses chants — 
 " Vous voyez, jeunes bergeres, 
 
 Que l'Amour fait passer le Temps ! " 
 
 Mais l'Amour bientot se lasse 
 
 Ce fut la toujours son deTaut ; 
 Le Temps prend la rame a sa place, 
 
 Et dit, ''Eh quoi ! quitter sitot? 
 Fauvre enfant, quelle est ta foiblesse ! 
 
 Tu dors, et je chante a mon tour 
 Ce vieux refrain de la sagesse, 
 
 Le Temps fait passer 1 Amour ! " 
 
 TIME AND LOVE. 
 
 Old Time is a pilgrim— with onward course 
 He journeys for months, for years ; 
 
 But the trav Her to-day must halt perforce- 
 Behold, a broad river appears ! 
 
 " Pass me over," Time cried ; ** O ! tarry not, 
 For I count each hour with my glass ; 
 
 Ye, whose skiff is moored to yon pleasant spot — 
 Young maidens, old Time come pass ! " 
 
 Many maids saw with pity, upon the bank, 
 
 The old man with his glass in grief ; 
 Their kindness, he said, he would ever thank, 
 
 If they'd row him across in their skiff. 
 While some wanted Love to unmoor the bark, 
 
 One wiser in thought sublime : 
 " Oft shipwrecks occur," was the maid's remark, 
 
 " When seeking to pass old Tims ! " 
 
 From the strand the small skiff Love pushed afloat— 
 
 He crossed to the pilgrim's side, 
 And taking old Time in his well-trimmed boat, 
 
 Dipt his oars in the flowing tide. 
 Sweetly he sung as he worked at the oar. 
 
 And this was his merry song — 
 " You see, young maidens who crowd the shore. 
 
 How with Love Time passes along? " 
 
 But soon the poor boy of his task grew tired, 
 
 As he often had been before ; 
 And faint from his toil, for mercy desired 
 
 Father Time to take up the oar. 
 In his turn grown tuneful, the pilgrim old 
 
 With the paddles resumed the lay ; 
 But he changed it and sung, " Young maids, behold 
 
 How with Time Love passes away ! " 
 
 I now close this paper by an ode, equal to any ever produced on the subject 
 of "Time," and surpassed in no language, ancient or modern. Its author, a 
 contemporary of the philosophic gang alluded to throughout this essay, was 
 frequently the object of paltry sarcasm, because he despised their infidel theories 
 and kept aloof from their coteries. He is known by a panegyric on Marcus 
 Aurelius. , 
 
 ODE AU TEMPS. ODE TO TIME. 
 
 Si je devais un jour pour de viles richesses If my nind's independence one day I'm to 
 Vendre ma liberte", descendre a des has- sell, 
 
 sesses— If with Vice in her pestilent haunts I'm to 
 Si mon cosur pas mes sens devait dtre dwell — 
 
 amolli— 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 189 
 
 O Temps, je te dirais, hate ma derniere 
 heme, 
 # Hate-toi que je meure : 
 J'aime mieux n'etre pas que de vivre avili. 
 
 Mais si de la vertu les genereuses flammes 
 
 Duivent de mes ecrits passer en quelques 
 Ames — 
 
 Si je dois d'un ami consoler les mal- 
 heurs — 
 
 S'il est des malhcureuxdont 1'obscure indi- 
 gence 
 Languisse sans defense, 
 
 Et dont ma faible main doit essuyer les 
 pleurs : — 
 
 O Temps ! suspends ton vol ! respect ma 
 jeunesse ! 
 
 Que ma mere long-temps, temoin de ma 
 ( tendresse, 
 
 Recoive mes tributs de respect et d'amour ! 
 
 Et vous, Gloire ! Vertu ! deesses im- 
 mortelles, 
 Que vos bnllantes ailes 
 
 Sur mes cheveux blanchis se reposent un 
 jouri 
 
 Then in mercy, I pray thee, O Time ! 
 Ere that day of disgrace and dishonour 
 
 comes on, 
 Let my life be cut short !— better, better be 
 gone m 
 
 Than live here on the wages of crime ! 
 
 But if yet I'm to kindle a flame in the soul 
 Of the noble and free— if my voice can 
 console, 
 In the day of .despondency, some — 
 If I'm destined to plead in the poor man's 
 
 defence — 
 If my writings can force from the national 
 sense 
 An enactment of joy for his home • 
 
 Time ! retard thy departure ! and linger 
 awhile — 
 
 Let my " songs " still awake of my mother 
 the smile — 
 Of my sister the joy, as she sings. 
 
 But, O Glory and Virtue ! your care I 
 engage ; 
 
 When I'm old— when my head shall be sil- 
 vered with age. 
 Come and shelter my brow with your 
 wings 1 
 
190 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 X. 
 
 Stomp cf Jtaiva. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1835.) 
 
 [Prefixed to Reg-mas number for January, 1835, in which appeared Mahony's conclud- 
 ing chapter on " The Songs of France," was that wonderful double-page folding picture 
 pencilled by the master-hand of Alfred Croquis, in which the twenty-seven " Fraserians " 
 were seen clustered round the convivial board in the banqueting-room at 215, Regent 
 Street, on the occasion of a grand symposium. When the Prout Papers were issued in 
 the following year as a substantive publication, Maclise contributed to the close of this one 
 in particular a delightful embellishment, representing the great Chansonnier in his plump 
 adolescence, with an arm round the waist of his grisette— Dans un grenier qn'on est Men 
 A vingt ans— his four boon comrades evidently toasting Liselte the while in that " snug 
 !?,'.!?. •""gdorn up four pair of stairs," sung of in a kindred strain long afterwards by 
 William Makepeace Thackeray.] 
 
 CHAPTER IV.— Frogs and Free Trade. 
 
 " Cantano gli Francesi — pagaranno ! " 
 
 „ _ Cardinal Mazarin. 
 
 "They sing? tax 'em!" 
 
 Prout. 
 
 " Ranae vagantes liberis paludib'us, 
 Clamore magno regem petierunt a Jove, 
 Qui dissilutos mores vi compesceret." 
 
 Ph.edri, Fab. z. 
 
 England for fogs ! the sister-isle for bogs ! 
 France is the land for liberty and frogs ! 
 Angels may weep o'er man's fantastic tricks ; 
 But Louis-Philippe laughs at Charley Dix. 
 France for King Loggy " now has got " a stork : " 
 See Phsedrus— also ^Esop. 
 
 (Signed) O. Yorke. 
 
 When, in excavating our chest of "Prout Papers," we were fortunate 
 enough, last October, to discover among the riches of this inexhaustible mine 
 the happy vein of precious ore which we have since coined at the mint of 
 Regina, and issued under the superscription of " Songs of France," we called 
 the attention of Dr. Bowring to the gratifying fact of this foreign specie freely 
 circulating through the United Kingdom ; and challenged the Doctor to point 
 out any similar result as accruing to us from his labours in the grand enterprise 
 
The Songs of France. 191 
 
 of amalgamating the produce, customs, and opinions of the two rival nations. 
 The itinerant commissioner happened then to be perambulating the vineyards 
 of Burgundy, and, we suppose, was too deeply engaged in comparing and 
 collating the growth of Cdte Roti with that of Joigny and Macon to pick up 
 the gauntlet or respond to our cartel. Neither Silenus in his autumnal progress 
 through Arcadia, nor Sancho Panza when he chanced to he jogging on the 
 sunny roads of prosperous abundance, was remarkable for belligerent propensi- 
 ties ; but now that the Doctor has fallen on evil days, and that his employer, 
 Brougham, is sent to the right-about, and he himself is no longer to be retained 
 as overseer in the vineyard, it is time for him " to render an account of his 
 stewardship." We at that time told him it was too good a thing to last, and 
 that the man on the woolsack would certainly seek to supplant him in his 
 interesting occupation of wine-taster to the French ; since which vaticination 
 of ours (see our October preface to Prout) the event has completely justified 
 our forecast ; for we leam that the ***. chancellor has written a most pressing 
 letter from the Rocher deCancale, offering to act under the new Ministry in the 
 capacity of "chief bottler," or migratory commissioner among the wine- 
 growers of France, selecting the town of Cognac for his head-quarters. 
 
 To return to " the chest." The more we develop these MSS., and the deeper 
 we plunge into the cavity of Prout's wondrous coffer, the fonder we become of 
 the old presbyter, and the more impressed with the variety and versatility of 
 his powers. His was a tuneful soul I In his earthly envelope there dwelt a 
 hidden host of melodious numbers ; he was a walking store-house of harmony. 
 The followers of Huss, when they had lost in battle their commander Zisca, 
 had the wit to strip him of his hide; out of which (when duly tanned) they 
 made unto themselves a drum, to stimulate by its magic sound their reminis- 
 cences of so much martial glory : our plan would have been to convert the 
 epidermis of the defunct father into that engine of harmony which, among 
 Celtic nations, is known by the name of the ' ' bagpipe ; " and thus secure to 
 the lovers of song and melody. an invaluable relic, an instrument of music 
 which no Cremona fiddle could rival in execution. But we should not produce 
 it on vulgar occasions : the ministerial accession of the Duke (1835), should 
 alone be solemnized by a blast from this musicc-cutaneous phenomenon ; aware 
 of the many accidents which might otherwise occur, such as, in the narrative 
 of an Irish wedding, has been recorded by the poet, — 
 
 " Then the piper, a dacent gossoon, 
 Began to play ' Eileen Aroon ; ' 
 Until an arch wag 
 Cut a hole in his bag, 
 Which, alas ! put an end to the tune 
 
 Too soon ! 
 The music blew up to the moon ! " 
 
 Lord Byron, who had the good taste to make a claret-cup out of a human 
 skull, would, no doubt, highly applaud our idea of preserving a skinful of 
 Prout's immortal essence in the form of such an /Eolian bagpipe. 
 
 But song powerful and melodious was not the sole excellence of the mighty 
 genius who is now no more. A nobler faculty gave vigour to his pen. In evolving 
 some of the more recondite papers of this Watergrasshill hermit, vve have made 
 a discovery which will create universal astonishment in the literary world. We 
 say nothing further for the present ; but we can positively announce that, from 
 certain documents found in Prout's chest, in his own handwriting, and bearing 
 the date of Lord North's and the Duke of Grafton's ministry, the long-disputed 
 authorship of " Junius' s Letters," and the famous "Stat nominis umbra," are 
 to us no longer shrouded in mysterious darkness or involved in the labyrinthine 
 mazes of conjectural blind-man's-buff— in fact, Prout was Junius. Butmum! 
 for the present. 
 
192 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 In our last chapter we have given his opinions on the merit of the leading 
 French philosophers— a gang of theorists now happily swept off the face of the 
 earth, or most miserably supplanted in France by St. Simonians and Doc- 
 trinaires, and in this country by the duller and more plodding generation of 
 " Utilitarians." To Denis Diderct has succeeded Dionysius Lardner, both 
 toiling interminable at their cyclopaedias, and, like wounded snakes, though 
 trampled on by all who tread the paths of science, still rampant onwards in the 
 dust and slime of elaborate authorship. Truly, since the days of the great 
 St. Denis, who walked deliberately, with imperturbable composure, bearing his 
 head in his astonished grasp, from Montmartre to the fifth milestone on the 
 northern road out of Paris ; nay, since the still earlier epocli of the Sicilian 
 schoolmaster, who opened a "university" at Corinth, omitting Dionysius of 
 Halicarnassus, and Denis the critic who figures in the " Dunciad," never has 
 the name been borne with greater Mat than by its great modern proprietor. 
 His theories, and those of Dr. Bowring, are glanced at in the following paper, 
 which concludes the Proutean series of the " Songs of France." 
 
 Far be it from us to imagine that either of these learned doctors will turn 
 from their crude speculations and listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he 
 ever so wisely ; we know the self-opinionated tribe too well to fancy such a 
 consummation as the result of old Prout's strictures : but, since the late down- 
 fall of Whiggery, we can afford to laugh at what must now only appear in the 
 harmless shape of a solemn quiz. We would no mine quarrel with them for 
 hugging their cherished doctrines than we would find fault with the Hussites 
 above mentioned ; who, when the Jesuit Peter Canisius came to Prague to 
 argue them into conciliation, inscribed on their banner the following epigram- 
 matic line : 
 
 *' Tu procul esto * Canis/ pro nobis excubat ' anser ! ' " 
 
 The term " Huss" being, from the peculiarity of its guttural sound, among 
 Teutonic nations indicative of what we call a goose. 
 
 With due diligence apply thee, O gentle reader ! to the perusal and under- 
 standing of the following pages ; con over each sagacious axiom, ponder on 
 each grave remark, and having digested well the wisdom of Prout's philosophic 
 lecture, call for another bottle or thy nightcap. Thou art sure to wake next 
 morning a wiser and a better man. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Jan. ist, 1835. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Jan. 1, 1832. 
 
 It is with nations as "with individuals : the greater is man's intercourse with 
 his fellow-man in the interchange of social companionship, and the mutual 
 commerce of thought, the more polished and enlightened he becomes ; and, in 
 the keen encounter of wit, loses whatever awkwardness or indolence of mind 
 may have been his original portion. If the aggregate wisdom of any country 
 could be for a moment supposed hermetically sealed, ab initio, from the inter- 
 fusion of foreign notions, and from all contact with extraneous ideas, rely on it 
 there would be found a most lamentable poverty of intellect in " that land of 
 Goshen," a sad torpor in the public feelings, and a woful stagnation in the deli- 
 cate "fluid " called thought. Peru, Mexico, and China — the first at the period 
 of the Incas, the last in our own day — have offered us specimens of the very 
 highest degree of mental culture which may be expected from a collective body 
 of men, either studiously or accidentally sequestered from the rest of the 
 species ; and still I know not if, in both these instances, the original stock of 
 information derived from the first settlers did not constitute the entire intellectual 
 wealth of these remete dwellers in two secluded sections of the globe, thus 
 
The Songs of France. 193 
 
 casually mentioned by me to illustrate my thesis. Nay, on inquiry, it will be 
 found, that Egypt (which has on all sides been admitted to have been the great- 
 grandmother of inventions in art, science, and literature) was evidently but the 
 dowager widow of antediluvian Knowledge ; and that the numerous progeny 
 which has since peopled the universe, all the offspring of intermarriage and 
 frequent alliance with barbarous and uncivilized nations, bears undoubted marks 
 of family resemblance, and features of a common origin. The literature of 
 Greece and Rome reflects back the image of Hebrew and Eastern composition ; 
 the Scandinavian poets are not without traces of affinity to their Arabic 
 brethren ; the inspiration of Irish melody is akin to that of Persian song ; and 
 the very diversity of detail only strengthens the likeness on the whole : 
 
 " Fades non omnibus una, 
 Nee diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum." 
 
 Ovid. 
 
 See a work by the Jesuit Andres, entitled "Storia di ogni Letteratura." 
 Parma, 1782. 
 
 St. Chrysostom, talking of the link which connects the Mosaic writings with 
 the books of the New Testament, and the common agreement that is found 
 between the thoughts of the prophet of Mount Carmel and those of the sub- 
 lime solitary of the island of Patmos, introduces a beautiful metaphor , as, 
 indeed, he generally does, when he wishes to leave any striking idea impressed 
 on his auditory. "Christianity," quoth he of the golden mouth, "struck its 
 roots in the books of the Old Testament ; it blossomed in the Gospels of the 
 New :" Eppf^ctithj /xf.v tv rots fiijSXtois Ttov irpu<ptjT<i)i/, i(.i\uaT>iai 6e tv tois 
 ivuyytWioi* Tojy airotrfoXuiv. — Homil. de Nov. et Vet. Test. 
 
 If I may be allowed to apply the holy bishop's illustration to matters of 
 minor importance, I would say, that taste and refinement among modern 
 writers are traceable to an intimate and growing acquaintance with the ancient 
 classics; an intimacy which, though not possessed by each individual member 
 of the great family of authors, still influences the whole, and pervades the 
 general mass of our literature. A certain antique bon ton is unconsciously con- 
 tracted even by our female contributors to the common fund of literary enjoy- 
 ment ; and I could mention a fair writer whom I naturally presume innocent 
 of Greek, both in prose and poetry is as purely Attic in style as if, instead of 
 the homely realities of Cockney diet, she had fed in her infancy on the honey 
 of Mount Hymettus. 
 
 The eloquent French lawyer, De Marchangy, in his "Gaule Po&ique " (a 
 book already quoted by me in the opening chapter of these ' ' Songs "), attributes 
 — I know not how justly — the first rise of poetic excellence, and the early 
 development of art, science, and elegant accomplishments in Provence (where 
 taste and scholarship made their first appearance with the troubadours), to the 
 circumstance of Marseilles having been a Grecian colony; and he ascribes 
 the readiness with which the Provencal genius caught the flame, and kindled 
 it on the fragrant hills of that beautiful coast of the M ediierranean, to a certain 
 predisposition in the blood and constitutional habit of the people, derived 
 from so illustrious a pedigree. " 'Twas a glorious day ! " exclaims the poetic 
 attorney-general, going back in spirit to the epoch of that immigration of the 
 Phocians into Gallia Narbonensis — "'twas a noble spectacle to see those sons 
 of civilization and commerce land on our barbarous but picturesque and 
 hospitable shore ! to see the gallant children of Attica shake from their buskins 
 on our territory the dust of the hippodrome, and entwine the myrtle of Gnidus 
 with the mistletoe of Gaul ! When their fleet anchored in our gladdened gulf 
 of Provence, when their voices uttered sounds of cultivated import, when the 
 music of the Lesbian lute and Teian lyre came on the charmed senses of our 
 
194 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 rude ancestors, a shout of welcome was heard from our hills ; and our Druids 
 hailed with the hand of fellowship the priests of Jove and of Apollo. Mar- 
 seilles arose to the sound of harmonious intercourse, and to the eternal triumph 
 of international commingling ! You would have thought that a floating 
 island of Greece, that one of the Cyclades, or Delos the wanderer of the 
 Archipelago, had strayed away and taken root upon our coast, crowned with 
 its temples, filled with its inhabitants, its sacred groves, its arts, its laws, its 
 perfume of refinement in love, and its spirit of freedom ! " 
 
 "Free trade" in all the emanations of intellect has ever had a purely 
 beneficial effect, blessing him who gave and him who received : it never can 
 injure a nation or an individual to impart knowledge, or exchange ideas. This 
 is an admitted principle. From the sun, who lends his brilliancy to the planets 
 and the " silver moon," to the Greenwich pensioner, who lights his pipe at the 
 focus of a neighbour's calumet, fire, and flame, and brightness, are of their 
 nature communicable, without loss or diminution in the slightest way to the 
 communicant. So it is with brilliancy of mind. But to come down from these 
 ethereal and sylph-like speculations, from the fairy domain of fancy to the 
 sober homeliness of fact, are the same principles applicable, under existing 
 circumstances, to the productions of manual toil and the distribution of 
 employment through the different trades and crafts? Is it for the interest of 
 the material and grosser world, who eat, drink, are clothed, and surrounded 
 with household necessities — who are condemned to look for support through 
 the troublesome medium of daily labour — is it fit or judicious, in the com- 
 plicated state of the social frame now established in Europe, to lay level all the 
 barriers which climate, soil, situation, and industry, have raised for the protec- 
 tion of the productive classes in each country ; and for the sake of a theoreti- 
 cal aurora borealis, which has dawned from the north on our school of political 
 economy, to confound all the elements of actual life, and try back on all the 
 wisdom of antiquity? As sagacious and as profound would be a proposal to 
 abolish the quarantine laws, that " free trade " might be enjoyed by the plague ; 
 to break down the dykes of Holland, that the ocean should not be deprived 
 of its " free trade; " to abolish all the " patent laws," that " free trade" maybe 
 possessed by the dull and the uninventive; the "game laws," that all may 
 shoot snipe ; " tolls," that alt may go where they list unimpeded ; " rent," that 
 all may live scot-free ; and, finally, the laws of property, the laws of marriage, 
 and the laws of God, which are more or less impediments in the way of "free 
 trade." 
 
 I am fully aware that the advantages of this grand project for rendering each 
 nation dependent on foreign supply for objects of primest necessity, and establish- 
 ing a nicely balanced equipoise in the commercial relations of every spot in the 
 globe, have been luminously vindicated and laboriously unfolded in many a 
 goodly tome, to the great delight of Miss Martineau, and the infinite edifica- 
 tion of the general public ; but I am humbly of opinion that the best practical 
 treatise on' the subject, and the most forcible recommendation of its benefits to 
 all concerned, have come from the philosophic pen of Beranger, who has, 
 according to his custom, embodied the maxims of "free trade," as well as 
 many other current doctrines, in the short compass of a song. 
 
 LES BOHEMIENS. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF 
 
 Btranger. THE GIPSIES. 
 
 Sorciers, bateleurs, ou filoux ! Sons of witchcraft ! tribe of thieves ! 
 
 Reste immonde Whom the villager believes 
 
 D'un ancien monde ! To deal with Satan, 
 
 Sorciers, bateleurs, ou filoux ! Tell us your customs and your rules : 
 
 Gais Bohemiens ! d'ou venez-vous f Whence came ye to this land of fools. 
 
 On whom ye fatten ? 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 »95 
 
 D'oti nous venons ? L'on n'en srait rien. 
 L'hirondelle, 
 D'oU vous vient-elle? 
 D'ou nous venons ? L'on n'en scait rien, 
 OU nous irons le scait on bien. 
 
 Sans pays, sans prince, et sans Iois, 
 Notre vie 
 Doit faire en vie, 
 Sans pays, sans prince, sans lois, 
 L'homme est heureux un jour sur trois. 
 
 Tous independans nous naissons, 
 Sans dg!isc 
 Qui nous baptise : 
 Tous independans nous naissons, 
 Au bruit du nTre et des chansons. 
 
 Nos premiers pas sont degages 
 Dans ce monde 
 Ou l'erreur abonde ; 
 Nos premiers pas sont degage's 
 Du vieux maillot des pre'juges. 
 
 Au peuple en but h nos larcins, 
 
 Tout grimoire 
 
 En peut faire accroire ; 
 
 Au peuple en but a nos larcins, 
 
 II faut des sorciers et des saints. 
 
 Pauvres oiseaux que Dieu bewit, 
 De la villc 
 Qu'on nous exile i* 
 Pauvres oiseaux que Dieu, benit, 
 Au fond des bois prend notre nid. 
 
 Ton ocil ne peut se detacher, 
 Philosophe 
 De mince e'toffe— • 
 Ton ceil ne peut se detacher 
 Du vieux coq de ton vieux clocher. 
 
 Voir, c'est avoir! allons courir ! 
 Vie errante 
 Est chose enivrante ; 
 Voir, c'est avoir ! allons courir ! 
 Car tout voir c'est tout conquenr. 
 
 Mais a l'homme on crie en tout lieu, 
 Qu'il s'agite, 
 Ou croupisse au ijite ; 
 Mais a l'homme on cne en tout lieu, _ 
 Tu nais, M bonjour!" tu meurs. "adieu I 
 
 " Whence do we come? Whence comes 
 
 the swallow ? 
 Where does our home lie 1 Try to follow 
 
 The wild bird's flight, 
 Speeding from winter's rude approach : 
 Such home is ours. Who dare encroach 
 
 Upon our right ? 
 
 Prince we have none, nor gipsy throne, 
 Nor magistrate nor priest we own, 
 
 Nor tax nor claim ; ' 
 Blithesome, we wander reckless, free, 
 And happy two days out of three ; 
 
 Who II say the same ? 
 
 Away with church-enactments dismal 1 
 We have no liturgy baptismal 
 
 When we are born ; 
 Save the dance under greenwood tree. 
 And the glad sound 01 revelry 
 
 With pipe and horn. 
 
 At our first entrance on this globe, 
 Where Falsehood walks in varied robe, 
 
 Caprice, and whims, ■ 
 — Sophist or bigot, heed ye this ! — 
 The swathing-bands of prejudice 
 
 Bound not our limbs. 
 
 Well do we ken the vulgar mind, 
 Ever to Truth and Candour blind, 
 
 But led by Cunning ; 
 What rogue can tolerate a brother ? 
 Gipsies contend with priests, each other 
 
 In tricks outrunning. 
 
 Your * towered cities ' please us not 
 But give us some secluded spot, 
 
 Far from the millions : 
 Far from the busy haunts of men. 
 Rise for the night, in shady glen. 
 
 Our dark pavilions. 
 
 Soon we are off ; for we can see 
 Nor pleasure nor philosophy 
 
 In fixed dwelling. 
 Ours is a life — the life of clowns, 
 Or drones who vegetate in towns. 
 
 Far, far excelling ! 
 
 Paddock and park, fence and enclosure, 
 We scale with ease and with composure : 
 
 'Tis quite delightful ! 
 Such is our empire s mystic charm, 
 We are the owners of each farm. 
 
 More than the rightful. 
 
 Great is the folly of the wise, 
 If on relations he relies. 
 
 Or trusts in men ; 
 * Welcome 1 ' they say, to babes born 
 
 newly, 
 But when your life is eked out duly, 
 
 1 Good evening ! ' then. 
 
196 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Quand nous mourons, vieux ou bambin. None among us seeks to illude 
 
 Homme ou femme, By empty boast of brotherhood, 
 A Dieu soit notre ame ; Or false affection ; 
 
 Quand nous sommes morts, vieux ou bam- Give, when we die, our souls to God. 
 
 bin. Our body to the grassy sod, 
 On vend le corps au carabin. Or 'for dissection,' 
 
 Mais croyez en notre gaiete*, Your noblemen may talk of vassals, 
 
 Noble ou pretre. Proud of their trappings and their tassels ; 
 Valet ou maitre ; But never heed them : 
 
 Mais croyez en notre gaiete", Ours is the life of perfect bliss — 
 
 Le bonheurc'est la liberie*. Freedom is man's best joy, and this 
 
 Is PERFECT FREEDOM ! " 
 
 This gipsy code of utilitarian jurisprudence, in wisdom far outshining the 
 "Pandects," the "Digest," or the "Code Napoleon," is gratuitously sub- 
 mitted to the disciples of Jeremy Bentham, as the groundwork of legislative 
 reform whenever an experiment is fairly to be made on the "vile body" of 
 existing laws, and when the destinies of this country shall be entrusted to the 
 doctors of destruction. 
 
 To arrive at this blissful millennium is not a matter of easy accomplishment. 
 The chances are becoming every day more unfavourable. The perception and 
 relish of mankind as far as experimental innovation is concerned have been 
 found wofully dull in these latter days ; and great are the trials and lamentable 
 the disappointments encountered by the apostles of popular enlightenment. 
 " Co-operative theories," once the cherished bantlings of the utilitarian family, 
 in England have gone to the grave unwept, unhonoured, and unsung ; while in 
 America the music of " New Harmony," instead of developing its notes 
 
 " In many a bout 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out," 
 
 has snapped off most abruptly.. 
 
 In France, after years of successive change, and the throes of constant 
 revolutionary convulsion, the early dream of Young Philosophy is still 
 unrealized, and the shade of Anacharsis Clootz wanders through the " Elysian 
 fields " dejected and dissatisfied. Sanscullotism is positively more abominated 
 by the occupying tenant of the Tuileries at this moment than in the haughtiest 
 days of the lofty-minded Marie Antoinette ; * and the monarchy has lost nothing 
 of its controlling power, whatever it may have acquired of homeliness and vul- 
 garity. The vague and confused ravings of the first outbreak in r7go, after three 
 years' saturnalia, aptly terminated in the demoniac rule of an upstart " man of 
 the people," and revolution became incarnate in Robespierre. The subsequent 
 years of confusion naturally condensed themselves into the substantive shape of 
 a military despotism, with the redeeming feature of unparalleled glory in arms, 
 and brilliant success in " all the walks of war." That too passed away, and a 
 brief lull came o'er the spirit of the democratic dream, while old Louis XVI 1 1, 
 nodded in that elbow-chair which answered all the purposes of a throne ; the 
 imbecile Charles furnished too tempting an opportunity for another experiment, 
 and it was seized with the avidity of truant schoolboys who get up a " barring 
 out ;" but the triumph of the barricades, and the splendours of the Three Days, 
 met dim eclipse and disastrous twilight in the accession of the citizen king, 
 whose opaque form arose between the sole il de Juillct and the disappointed 
 
 * Can anything be more hideously disgusting than the comparison which the dis- 
 charged Chancellor dared to make in the tuileries between himself (as quondam counsel 
 for the profligate paramour of Bergami) and the veteran French advocate of the martyred 
 Queen of France? There is a river in Monmouth, and one in Macedon ; but, shade of 
 Edmund Burke 1 who can associate the trials of Mane Antoinette and Caroline? 
 
The Songs of France. 197 
 
 republicans casting an ominous shade over the land of frogs. Still loud and 
 incessant is the croaking of the dissatisfied children of the philosophic swamp, 
 little knowing (pauvres grenouilles I) that, did not some such opaque body 
 interpose between the scorching luminary of July and their liquid dwelling, 
 they and their progeny would have been parched, burnt up, and annihilated in 
 the torrid glow of republican fervour. Aristophanes has a ludicrous dialogue 
 between Charon and an unruly mob of frogs, who refuse to cease their querulous 
 outcry, even though threatened with the splashing oar of the ferryman : 
 
 AUa fxriv KtKpufcofiiaQa y' 
 'Oirotroi* h <papvy£ av titimif 
 XavSavrt Si ilfJLtpat 
 
 Barpax- Act i. Scene 5. 
 
 " In our own quagmire, 'tis provoking 
 That folks should think to stop our croaking ! 
 Sons of the swamp, with lungs of leather, 
 Now is our time to screech together ! " 
 
 Aiopwio? AapSnjp. 
 
 But I lose time in these extra-parochial discussions ; and therefore, leaving 
 the utilitarians and their disciples to chorus it according to their own view 
 of the case, I return to the French arbiter of Song, the exquisite model of 
 poetic expression — arbiter elegantiarum — Beranger. None of the heroes who 
 accomplished this last revolution felt their discomfiture of Utopian theories, 
 and the utter annihilation of their fond anticipations, more than our poet, 
 whose ideas are cast in the mould of Spartan republicanism. He must, how- 
 ever, resign himself with philosophic patience to the melancholy result ; and, 
 indeed, if I may judge from a splendid embodying of his notions concerning 
 Providence and the government of this sublunary world, in an ode, which 
 (though tinged somewhat with Deism) contains much excellent matter and 
 impassioned poetic feeling, I should think that in this consummation he still 
 may find comfort in a review of past occurrences, and in the retrospect of his 
 own individual sincerity and disinterestedness throughout the struggle for 
 freedom. 
 
 LE DIEU DES BONNES GENS.* 
 
 II est un Dieu ; devant lui je m'incline, 
 
 Pauvre et content, sans lui demander rien. 
 De I'univers observant la machine, 
 
 Vy vois du mal, et n'aime que le bien ; 
 Mais le plaisir a ma philosophic 
 
 Revele assez de cieux intelligens. 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie 
 
 Au Dieu des bonnes gens 1 
 
 * Extract from the Pleading op Dupin, in the Prosecution against 
 Beranger. 
 " Dans Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens il celebre ^'existence de Dieu : 
 
 'II est un Dieu ; devant lui je m'incline, 
 Pauvre et content, sans lui demander rien.* 
 
 (M. Dupin lit cette piece en entier : la grandeur des idees, la richesse de la poesie, et 
 l'espece d'enthousiasme qui soutient cette lecture, ravissent les auditeurs. Le respect seul 
 peut empecher les applaudissemens d'eclater.) 
 
 " Dieu est mise'ricordieux : 
 
198 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 Dans mon re*duit otx Ton voit l'indigence 
 , Sans m e veiller assise a mon chevet, 
 
 Grace aux amours bcrce par I'espeYancc, 
 ■■ D'un lit plus, doux je reve le duvet ; 
 Aux dieux des cours qu'un autre sacrifie — 
 
 Moi, qui ne crois qu'a des dieux indulgens, 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie 
 
 Au Dieu des bonnes gens ! 
 
 Un conqueYant, dans sa fortune altiere, 
 Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des rois ; , 
 
 Et de ses pieds Ton peut voir la poussicre 
 Empreinte* encor sur le bandeau des rois ; 
 
 Vous rampiez tous, O rois ! qu'on de*ifie — 
 M01, pour braver des maStres exigeans, 
 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie 
 
 1 Au Dieu des bonnes gens ! 
 
 Dans nos palais, ou pres de la victoire 
 Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats, 
 
 J'ai vu du nord les peuplades sans gloire 
 De leurs manteaux secouer les frimats : 
 
 Sur nos de*bris Albion nous de"fie ; 
 Mais la fortune et les riots sont changeans— 
 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me. confie . 
 
 Au Dieu des bonnes gens ! 
 
 Quelle menace un pretre fait entendre? 
 
 Nous touchons tous a. nos derniers instans ; 
 L'etemite va se faire comprendre, 
 
 Tout va finir l'uni vers et le terns : 
 Vous, che'rubins, & la face bouffie, 
 
 Reveillez, .done les morts ueu diligens — 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie 
 
 Au Dieu des bonnes gens ! 
 
 Mais, quelle erreur ! non, Dieu n'est point colere : 
 S'il cr£a tout, a tout il sert d'appui. 
 
 Vins qu'il nous donne, ami tie' tutelaire, 
 Et vous, amours, qui cre*es apres lui, 
 
 Pretez un charme a ma philosophie, 
 Pour dissiper des reves affligeans !— 
 
 Le verre en main, gaiement je me confie 
 
 Au Dieu des bonnes gens 1 
 
 THE GOD OF BKRANGER. 
 
 There's a God whom the poet in silence adores. 
 But molests not his throne with importunate prayer ; 
 
 For he knows that the evil he sees and abhors, . 
 There is blessing to balance, and balm to repair. 
 
 " II est juste : 
 
 * Mais, quelle erreur ! non, Dieu n'est point colere : 
 S'il crea tout, a tout il sert d'appui. ' 
 
 ' Dieu qui punit le tyran et 1'esclave, 
 Veut te voir libre, et libre pour toujours.' 
 
 " Be*ranger croit a l'immortalite" de 1'ftme : 
 
 ' Ah I sans regret, mon Ahie, partes vite ; 
 En souriant, remontez vers les cieux.* 
 
 " Du reste, je vous si fait connaftre ses priheipes religieux ; il ne vous est plus permis 
 de reVoquer en dome son respect pour la Divimte*: mats vous savez aussi quel est son 
 Dieu ; ce n'est pas celui de la vengeance — e'est le Dieu ties founts getts." — It. ibid* 
 
TJie Songs of France. 199 
 
 But the plan of the Deity beams in the bowl. 
 
 And the eyelid of beauty reveals his design : 
 Oh ! the goblet in hand, I abandon my soul 
 
 To the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 At the door of my dwelling the children of want 
 Ever find the full welcome its roof can afford! 
 
 While the dreams of the rich pain and poverty haunt, 
 Peace awaits on my pillow, and joy at my board. 
 
 Let the god of the court other votaries seek- 
 No I the idol of sycophants never was mine ; 
 
 But I worship the God of the lowly and meek. 
 In the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 I have seen die a captive, of courtiers bereft, 
 
 Him, the sound of whose fame through our hemisphere rings ; 
 I have mark'd both his rise and his fall ; he has left 
 
 The imprint of his heel on the forehead of kings. 
 Oh, ye monarchs of Europe ! ye crawl'd round his throne— 
 
 Ye, who now claim our homage, then knelt at his shrine; 
 But I never adored him, but turn'd me alone 
 
 To the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 The Russians have dwelt in the home of the Frank ; 
 
 In our halls from their mantles they've shaken the frost ; 
 Of their war-boots our Louvre has echoed the clank, 
 
 As. they pass'd, in barbarian astonishment lost. 
 O'er the rums of France, take, O England ! take pride ! 
 
 Yet a similar downfall, proud land ! may be thine ; 
 But the poet of freedom still, still will confide 
 
 In the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 This planet is dpom'd, by the priesthood's decree, 
 
 To deserved dissolution one day, O ! my friends ; 
 Lo ! the hurricane gathers ; the bolt is set free ! 
 
 And the thunder on wings of destruction descends. 
 Of thy trumpet, archangel, delay not the blast ; 
 
 Wake the dead in the graves where their ashes recline : 
 While the poet, unmoved, puts his trust to the last 
 
 In the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 But away with the nightmare of gloomy forethought ! 
 
 Let the ghoul Superstition creep back to its den ; 
 Oh ! this fair goodly globe, hll'd with plenty, was wrought 
 
 By a bountiful hand, for the children of men. 
 Let me take the full scope of my years as they roll, 
 
 Let me bask in the sun's pleasant rays while they shine ; 
 Then, with goblet in hand, I'll abandon my soul 
 
 To the Giver of genius, love, friendship, and wine ! 
 
 Whatever may be the failings and errors of our poet, the result of the times in 
 which he has lived, and the disastrous days on which his youth has fallen, there 
 is discernible in his writings the predominant character of his mind — frankness, 
 single-heartedness, and candour. It is impossible not to entertain a friendly 
 feeling towards such a man ; and I am not surprised to learn that he is cherished 
 by the French people, ever prompt to detect genuine disinterestedness in their 
 patriots, with a fervency akin to idolatry. He\* no tuft-hunter, nor Whigling 
 sycophant, no ungenerous trafficker in his merchandise of song. Neither has 
 he sought to convert his patriotism into an engine for picking the pockets of 
 the poor. He has set up no pretensions to nobility; although, had he chosen to 
 figure in the plastic pages of the genealogical Mr. Burke, he could no doubt 
 trump up a story of Norman ancestry, and convert some old farm-house on the 
 sea-coast into an " abbey." It is not with the affectation and hypocrisy of a 
 swindling demagogue, but with the heartfelt cordiality of one of themselves, 
 
that he glories in belonging to the people. What poet but Beranger ever thought 
 of commemorating the garret where he spent his earlier days? 
 
 LE GRENIER DE BERANGER. 
 
 Je reviens voir l'asyle oil ma jeunesse 
 
 De la misere a subi les lemons; 
 J'avais vingt ans, une folle maltresse, 
 
 Be francs amis, et l'amour des chan- 
 sons ; 
 Bravant le monde, et les sots, et les sages, 
 
 Sans avenir, riche de mon printems, 
 Leste et joyeux, je montais six Stages — 
 
 Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt 
 ans ! 
 
 C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on 
 l'ignore : 
 LUL fut mon lit, bien chetif et bien dur ; 
 La fut ma table ; et je retrouve encore 
 Trois pieds d'un vers charbonntis sur le 
 mur. 
 Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel Age, 
 
 Que d'un coup d'ceil a fustige le terns ! 
 Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en 
 gage- 
 Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt 
 ans ! 
 
 Lisette ici doit surtout apparattre, 
 
 Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau ; 
 Deja sa main a I'etroite fen§tre 
 
 Suspend son schale en guise de rideau : 
 Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette — 
 
 Respecte, Amour ! ses plis longs et 
 flottans : 
 J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette — 
 
 Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt 
 
 A table un jour, jour de grande richesse, 
 De mes amis les voix brillaient en 
 choeur, 
 Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'alegresse, 
 
 Qua Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur ! 
 Le canon gronde— un autre chant com- 
 mence — 
 Nous cciebrons tant de faits eclatans ; 
 Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France — 
 Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt 
 ans ! 
 
 Quittons ce toit, ou ma raison s'enivre — 
 
 Oh, qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettes ! 
 Jechangerai ce qu'il me reste a vivre 
 
 Contre un des jours qu'ici Dieu m'a 
 comptes, 
 Pour rever gloire, amour, plaisir, folie, 
 
 Pour dcpenser sa vie en peu d'instans, 
 D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie— 
 
 Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt 
 ans 1 
 
 THE GARRET OF BERANGER. 
 
 Oh ! it was here that Love his gifts le- 
 stow*d 
 On youth's wild age ! 
 Gladly once more I seek my youth's 
 abode, 
 In pilgrimage : 
 Here my young mistress with her poet 
 dared 
 Reckless to dwell : 
 She was sixteen, I twenty, and we 
 shared 
 This attic cell. 
 
 Yes, 'twas a garret ! be it known to all, 
 
 Here was Love's shrine : 
 There read, in charcoal traced along the 
 wall, 
 Th' unfinished line — ■ 
 Here was the board where kindred hearts 
 would blend. 
 The Jew can tell 
 How oft I pawn'd my watch, to feast a 
 friend 
 In attic cell ! 
 
 O ! my Lisette's fair form could I recall 
 
 With fairy wand ! 
 There she would blind the window with 
 her shawl — 
 
 Bashful, yet fond ! 
 What though from whom she got her dress 
 I've since 
 
 Learnt but too well, 
 Still in those days I envied not a prince 
 
 In attic cell ! 
 
 Here the glad tidings on our banquet 
 burst, 
 __ Mid the bright bowls : 
 Yes, it was here Marengo's triumph first 
 
 Kindled our souls ! 
 Bronze cannon roar'd ; France with re- 
 doubled might 
 Felt her heart swell ! 
 Proudly we drank our consul's health that 
 night 
 In attic cell ! 
 
 Dreams of my joyful youth) I'd freely 
 give, 
 Ere my life's close, 
 All the dull days I'm destined yet to live. 
 
 For one of those ! 
 Where shall I now find raptures that were 
 felt, 
 Joys that befell. 
 And hopes that dawn d at twenty, when I 
 dwelt 
 In attic cell ? 
 
Nothing can offer a more ludicrous and at the same time a more disgusting 
 image to the mind of a dispassionate observer of passing transactions, than the 
 assumption of radical politics by some men whose essential nature is thoroughly 
 imbued with contempt for the mob, while they are straining every nerve to 
 secure its sweet voices. I could name one who has written a "fashionable" 
 novel with intent to record his assumed sentiments respecting the distinctions 
 of hereditary rank in this country, and who would feel very acutely the depriva- 
 tion of the rank and name he bears, or an inquiry into the devious and question- 
 able title by which he retains them. None are so sensitive on this point as the 
 characters I allude to ; and the efforts they make to conceal their private feelings 
 before the swinish multitude remind me of the lines of the poet addiessed to 
 the republicans who paraded the streets of Paris in 1793 : 
 
 " Mais enfoncez dans vos culottes 
 Le bout de linge qui pend ! 
 On dim que les patriotes 
 Ont de*ploye* le * drapeau Wane' " 
 
 Autobiography is the rage. John Gait, the Ettrick Hogg, the English 
 Opium-eater, Sir Egerton Brydges, Jack Ketch, Grant-Thorburn, and sundry 
 other personages, have lately adorned this department of our literature. In 
 his song, the "Tailor and the Fairy," Beranger has acquitted himself of a task 
 which has become indispensable in modern authors. 
 
 LE TAILLEUR ET LA FEE. 
 
 Dans ce Paris, plein d'or et de misere, 
 
 En l'an du Christ mil sept cent quatre-vingt, 
 Chez un tailleur, mon pauvre et yieux grand-pere> 
 
 yid\ nouveau-ne", sachez ce qui m'advint. 
 Rien ne pre"dit la gloire d'un Orphee 
 A mon berceau, qui n'e*tait pas de fleurs ; 
 Mais mon grand-pere, accourant a mes pleurs, 
 Me trouve un jour dans les bras d'une fee. 
 
 Et cette fee, avec de gais refrains, 
 Calmait le cri de mes premiers chagrins. 
 " Le bon viellard lui dit ; L'ame inquiete ! 
 A cet enfant quel destin est promts ? " 
 Elle repond ; "' Vois le sous ma baguette, 
 
 Garcon d'auberge, imprimeur, et commis ; 
 Un coup de foudre* ajoute a mes presages — 
 Ton fils atteint, va pdrir consume^ ; 
 Dieu le regarde, et l'oiseau ranime* 
 Vole en chantant braver d'autres orages." 
 
 Et puis la fee, avec de gais refrains, 
 Calmait le cri de mes premiers chagrins. 
 
 " Tous les plafcirs, sylphes de la jeunesse, 
 Eveilleront sa lyre au sein des nuits ; 
 Au toit du pauvre il repand 1'ale'gresse, 
 
 A l'opulence il sauve des ennuis. 
 Mais quel spectacle attriste son langage ? 
 Tout s'engloutit et gloire et liberte* ! 
 Comme un pecheur qui rentre e'pouvante", 
 II vient au port reconter leur naufrage." 
 
 Et puis la fee, avec de gais refrains, 
 Calmait le cri de mes premiers chagrins." 
 
 * Beranger tells us in a note, that in early life he had well nigh perished by the electric 
 fluid in a thunder-storm. The same is related of Martin Luther, when at the university ; 
 and made such an impression on the father of reform that he turned monk. The Hash 
 which, in Luther's case, changed the student into a monkish habit, in Berangei 's con- 
 verted the tailor's goose into a swan. — Prout. 
 
202 The Works of Father ProuL 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF P. J. DE BERANGER. 
 
 From French Verse upset into English Recitative. 
 
 Paris ! gorgeous abode of the gay 1 Paris ! haunt of despair ! 
 
 There befell in thy^ bosom one day an occurrence most weighty, 
 At the house of a tailor, my grandfather, under whose care 
 
 I was nursed, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty. 
 By no token, 'tis true, did my cradle announce a young Horace— 
 And the omens were such as might well lead astray the unwary ; 
 But with utter amazement one morning ray grandfather, Maurice, 
 Saw his grandchild reclining asleep in the arms of a fairy ! 
 And this fairy so handsome 
 Assumed an appearance so striking. 
 And for me seemed to take such a liking, 
 That he knew not what gift he should offer the dame for my ransom. 
 
 Had he previously studied thy Legends, O rare Oofty Croker ? 
 
 He'd nave learnt how to act from thy pages— ('tis there that the charm is !} 
 But my guardian's first impulse was rather to look for the poker, 
 
 To rescue his beautiful boy from her hands vi et artnis. 
 Yet he paused in his plan, and adopted a milder suggestion. 
 
 For her attitude, calm and unternfied, made him respect her ; 
 So he thought it was best to be civil, and fairly to question, 
 Concerning my prospects in life, the benevolent spectre. 
 And the fairy, prophetical, 
 Read my destiny's book in a minute. 
 With alt the particulars in it : 
 And its outline she drew with exactitude most geometrical. 
 
 " His career shall be mingled with pleasure, though chequer'd with pain, 
 And some bright, sunny hours snail succeed to a rigorous winter : 
 See him first a garcon at a hostelry — then, with disdain 
 
 See him spurn that vile craft, and apprentice himself to a printer. 
 As a poor university-clerk view him next at his desk ; — 
 
 Mark that flash ! — he will have a most narrow escape from the lightning : 
 But behold after sundry adventures, some bold, some grotesque, a 
 The horizon clears up, and his prospects appear to be brightening." 
 And the fairy, caressing 
 The infant, foretold that, ere long, 
 He would warble unrivall'd in song ; 
 All France in the homage which Paris had paid acquiescing. 
 
 " Yes, the Muse has adopted the boy 1 On his brow see the laurel ! 
 In his hand 'tis Anacreon's cup !— with the Greek he has drank it. 
 Mark the high-minded tone of his songs, and their exquisite moral, 
 
 Giving joy to the cottage, and heightening the blaze of the banquet 
 Now the future grows dark— see the spectacle France has become ! 
 
 Mid the wreck of his country, the poet, undaunted and proud. 
 To the public complaints shall give utterance : slaves may be dumb. 
 But he'll ring in the hearing of despots defiance aloud !" 
 And the fairy addressing; 
 My grandfather, somewhat astonish'd, 
 So mildly my guardian admonish'd, 
 That he wept while he vanish d away with a smile and a blessing. 
 
 Such is the man whose works will form the most enduring monument of the 
 literature of France during the first quarter of the ninteenth century. It is the 
 pride of my old age to have recorded in these " papers " my admiration of this 
 i extraordinary writer; and when, at a future period, commentators and critics 
 will feed on his ever-verdant pages, and disport themselves in the leaves of bis 
 immortal poetry, it will be perhaps mentioned by some votary of recondite lore, 
 that an obscure clergyman, on a barren Irish hill, made the first effort to trans- 
 
The Songs of France. 20 j 
 
 plant hither some slips of that luxuriant tree ; though he fears that, like the 
 " mulberry," it cannot be naturalized in these islands, and must still continue 
 to form the exclusive boast and pride of a happier climate. 
 
 Next to the songster-laureate of France, posterity will hail in Victor Hugo 
 the undoubted excellence of original thought, and the gift of glowing expres- 
 sion. Before these two lofty minds the minor poets, Lamartine and Chateau- 
 briand, will sink into comparative insignificance. Thus Burns and Byron will 
 be remembered and read when Bob Montgomery and Haynes Bayly will be 
 swept away with the v coteries who applauded them. " Opinionum commenta 
 delet dies," quoth the undying Tully; " naturae judicia confirmat." But, after 
 all, what is fame ? It is a question that often recurs to me, dwelling frequently, 
 in sober pensiveness, on the hollow futility of human pursuits, and pondering 
 on the narrow extent of that circle which, in its widest possible diffusion, 
 renown can hope to fill here below. Never has a Pagan writer penned a period 
 more replete with Christian philosophy, and more calculated to make a deep 
 impression on our fellow-men, in the hour of ambitious yearning afier worldly 
 applause, or in the moment of disappointed vanity, than the splendid passage 
 which memory brings me here in the natural succession of serious reflections 
 that crowd on my mind :— " Igitur alt£ spectare si voles, et nsternam domum 
 contueri, neque te sermonibus vulgi dederis, neque in prsemiis humanis spem 
 posueris rerum tuarum. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipsi videant; loquentur 
 tamen. Sermo autem omnis ille et angustiis cingitur iis regionum quas vides ; 
 nee unquam de ullo perennis fuit ; et obruitur hominum interitu ; et oblivione 
 posteritatis extihguitur 1 " — ClC. Som. Scip. 
 
 To return to Victor Hugo. It would be unpardonable in me to have written 
 a series of papers on the "Songs of France," and not to have given some 
 specimens of his refined and delicate compositions. Hugo does not address 
 himself so much to the popular capacity as his energetic contemporary : he is 
 a scholar, and seeks ' ' fitting audience, though few." The lyrical pieces, how- 
 ever, which I here subjoin, will be felt by all in their thrilling appeal to our most 
 susceptible sensibilities. 
 
 Though I do not regret the space I have devoted to the beauties of Beranger, 
 it is still with a feeling of embarrassment that I bring forward thus late, and 
 towards the close of my lucubrations on this interesting subject, so deserving 
 a claimant on the notice of the public. Be that as it may, here goes ! and, 
 gentle reader, thou hast before thee two gems of the purest water. The first is 
 an Oriental emerald. 
 
 LE VOILE. ORIENTALE. 
 Victor Hugo. 
 " Avez-vous fait votre priere ce soir, Desdemona?"— Shakespeare. ' 
 
 LA SCEUR. LA SCEUR. 
 
 Qu'avez-vous, qu'avez-vous, mes freres ? Je revenais du bain, mes freres ; 
 
 Vous baissez des fronts soucieux ; Seigneurs, du bain je revenais, 
 
 Conime des lampes funeraires Cachee aux regards temcraires 
 
 Vos regards brillent dans vos yeux. Des Giaours et des Albanais. 
 
 Vos ceintures sont dechirees ! En passant pres de la mosquee, 
 Deja trois fois hors de l'dtui, Dans mon palanquin reconvert, 
 
 Sous vos doigts a demi tirees, L'air de midi m'a surfoquee, 
 Les lames des poignards ont lui. Mon voile un instant s'est ouvert. 
 
 LE FRERE AINE. LE SECOND FRERE. 
 
 N'avez-vous pas leve" votre voile aujourd'- Un homme alors passait ? un homme en 
 hui? caftan vert? 
 
204 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 LA SCEOR. LA SCEUR. 
 
 Oui ?— peut-etre — mais son audace Gr&ce ! qu'ai-je fait ? Grflce ! gr&ce ! 
 
 N'a pas vu ties traits deVoiles. — Dieu ! quatre poignards dans mon flanc ! 
 
 Mais vous vous parlez a voix basse ! Ah ! par vos genoux que j'embrasse — 
 
 A voix basse vous vous parlez ! Oh, mon voile ! oh, mon voile blanc ! 
 
 Vous faut-il du sang ? sur votre ame, Ne fuyez pas mes mains qui saignent, 
 
 Mes freres, il n'a pu, me voir. Mes freres, soutenez mes pas ! 
 
 Grace ! Tuerez-vous une femme, Car sur mes regards qui s'e'teignenL 
 
 Foible et nue, en votre pouvoir? S'e*tend un voile de trepas. 
 
 LE TROISIEME FRERE. LE QUATRIEME FRERE. 
 
 Le soleil etait rouge a son coucher ce soir ! C'en est un que du moins tu ne leveras 
 
 THE VEIL. AN ORIENTAL DIALOGUE. 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 " Have you pray'd to-night, Desdemona?"— Shakespeare. 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 What has happen'd, my brothers? Your spirit to-day 
 
 Some secret sorrow damps : 
 There's a cloud on, your brow. What has happen'd? oh, say ! 
 For your eyeballs glare but with a sinister ray, 
 
 Like the light of funeral lamps. 
 
 The blades of your poniards are half-unsheathed 
 
 In your zone — and ye frown on me ! 
 There's a woe untold, there's a pang unbreathed, 
 
 In your bosom, my brothers three ! 
 
 ELDEST BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara, make answer ! Hast thou, since the dawn, 
 To the eye of a stranger thy veil withdrawn ? 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 As I came, O my brothers !— at noon— from the bath- 
 As I came — it was noon — my lords — 
 And your sister had then, as she constantly hath, 
 Drawn her veil close around her, aware that the path 
 Is beset by these foreign hordes. 
 
 .But the weight of the noonday's sultry hour 
 Near the mosque was so oppressive. 
 
 That— forgetting a moment the eye of the Giaour — 
 I yielded to heat excessive. 
 
 SECOND BROYHER. 
 
 Gulnara, make answer ! Whom, then, hast thou seen, 
 In a turban of white, and a caftan of green ? 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 Nay, he might have been there ; but I muffled me so, 
 He could scarce have seen my figure.—— 
 
 But why to your sister thus dark do you grow? 
 
 What words to yourselves do you mutter thus low 
 Of "blood," and " an intriguer?" 
 
The Songs of France. 
 
 205 
 
 Oh ! ye cannot of murder bring down the red guilt 
 On your souls, my brothers, surely ! 
 
 Though I fear— from your hand that I see on the hilt, 
 And the hints you give obscurely. 
 
 THIRD BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara ! this evening when sank the red sun, 
 
 Hast thou mark'd how like blood in descending it shone ? 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 Mercy ! Allah 'three daggers ! have pity ! oh, spare ! 
 
 See ! I cling to your knees repenting ! 
 Kind brothers, forgive me ! for mercy, forbear I 
 Be appeased at the voice of a sister's despair, 
 
 For your mother's sake relenting. 
 
 O God ! must I die ? They are deaf to my cries ! 
 
 Their sister's life-blood shedding : 
 They have stabb'd me again — and I faint— o'er my eyes 
 
 A Veil of Death is spreading ! — 
 
 A Veil of Death is spreading ! 
 
 eldest brother. 
 
 Gulnara, farewell ! take that veil ; 'tis the gift 
 Of thy brothers — a veil thou wilt never lift ! 
 
 Hugo, in this Eastern scene, as well as in his glorious romance of " Notre 
 Dame de Paris," seems to take delight in harrowing up our feelings by the 
 invariably sad catastrophe of all his love adventures. The chord of sympathy 
 for broken affections and shattered hearts seems to be a favourite one with this 
 mighty master of the Gallic lyre. kx. gr. : 
 
 LA FIANCEE DU TIMBALIER. THE BRIDE OF THE CYMBALEER. 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 Monseigneur, le Due de Bretagne, 
 A pour les combats meutriers, 
 
 Convoque de Nante a Mortagne, 
 Dans la plaine, et sur la campagne, 
 V arriere-ban de ses guerriers. 
 
 Ce sont des barons, dont les armes 
 
 Ornent des forts ceints d'un fosse, 
 Des preux vieiliis dans les alarmes, 
 Des ecuyers, des hommes d'armes — 
 L'un d'entre eux est mon fiance. 
 
 II est parti pour l'Aquitaine 
 
 Comme timbatier, et pourtant 
 On le prend pour tin capitaine, 
 Rien qua voir sa mine nautaine, 
 Et son pourpoint d'or e'clatant. 
 
 Dermis ce jour l'effroi m'agite ; 
 
 J'ai dit, joignant son sort au mien, 
 '* Ma patronne, Sainte Brigitte, 
 Four que jamais il ne le quitte, 
 
 Surveillez son ange gardien ! " 
 
 J'ai dit a- notre abbe', 
 
 Friez bien pour tous nos soldats ! 
 Et comme on scait qu'il-le desire, 
 J'ai brule" trois cierges de cire 
 
 Sur la chasse de Saint Gildas. 
 
 A Ballad. 
 
 My liege, the Duke of Brittany, 
 Has summon'd his vassals all, 
 The list is a lengthy litany ! 
 
 Nor 'mong them shall ye meet any 
 But lords of land and hall. 
 
 Barons, who dwell in donjon-keep, 
 And mail-clad count and peer. 
 
 Whose fief is fenced with fosse" deep ; 
 
 But none excel in soldiership 
 My own loved cymbaleer. 
 
 Clashing his cymbals forth he went, 
 With a bold and gallant bearing ; 
 Sure for a captain he was meant, 
 To judge from his accoutrement, 
 And the cloth of gold he's wearing. 
 
 But in my soul since then I feel 
 
 A fear, in secret creeping ; 
 And to Saint Bridget oft I kneel, 
 That she may recommend his weal 
 To his guardian angel's keeping. 
 
 I've begged our abbot, Bernardine, 
 
 His prayers not to relax ; * 
 And, to procure him aid divine, 
 I've ournt upon Saint Gilda's shrine 
 Three pounds of virgin wax. 
 
206 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 A Notre Dame de Lorctte 
 
 J'ai promis, dans mon. noir chagrin, 
 D attacher sur ma gorgerette, 
 Ferme'e a la vue indiscrette, 
 
 Les coquilles du pclcrin. 
 
 II n'a pu, par d'amoureux gages. 
 
 Absent, consoler mes foyers ; 
 Pour porter les tendres messages 
 La vassale n'a point de pages, 
 Le vassal n'a point d'ecuyers. 
 
 II doit aujourd'hui de la guerre 
 Revenir avec monseigneur— 
 
 Ce n'est plus un amant vulgaire ; 
 
 Je lcve un front baisse naguere, 
 £t mon orgueil est du bonheur. 
 
 I<e due triomphant, nous rapporte 
 
 Son drapeau dans les camps froisse ; 
 Venez tons, sous la vieille porte, 
 Voir passer la brillante escorte, 
 Et le prince et mon fiance ! 
 
 Venez voir, pour ce jour de fSte, 
 
 Son cheval caparacone* ; 
 Qui sous son poids hennit, s'arrete, 
 Et marche en secouant la tete, 
 
 De plumes rouges couronne, 
 
 Mes sceurs, a vous parer trop lentes, 
 Venez voir, pres, de mon vainqueur, 
 
 Ces timbales dtincelantes 
 
 Qui, sous sa main toujours trcmblantes, 
 Sonnent, et font bondir le cceur. 
 
 Venez surtout le voir lui-meme, 
 Sous le manteau que j'ai brodc ! 
 
 Qu'il sera beau ! C'est lui que j'aime ; 
 
 II porte comme un diademe 
 Son casque de crins inondes I 
 
 L'Egypticnne sacrilege, 
 
 M attirant derriere un pilier, 
 
 M'a dit bien (Dieii me protege !) 
 
 Qu'k-la fanfare du cortege 
 II manquerait un timbalier. 
 
 Mais j'ai tant prie* que j'espere, 
 
 Quoique, me montrant de la main 
 Uu sepulcre, son noir repaire, 
 La vieille, aux regards de vipcre, 
 M'ait dit je l'attends la demain. 
 
 Volons ! plus de noires pensees ! 
 
 Ce sont les tambours que j'entends ! 
 Voici les dames entassees, 
 Les tentes de pourpre dressees, 
 
 Les fleurs et les drapcaux flottans ! 
 
 Sur deux rangs le cortege ondoie : 
 D'abord, les piquiers aux pas lourds ; 
 
 Puis, sous l'e'tendard qu'on deploie, 
 
 Les barons, en robes de soie, 
 Avec leurs toques de velours. 
 
 Our Lady of Loretto knows 
 
 The pilgrimage I vow'd ; 
 " To wear the scollop I propose, 
 If liealth and safety from the foes 
 
 My lover is allow d." 
 
 No letter (fond affection's gage !) 
 
 From him could I require, 
 The pain of absence to assuage — 
 A vassal-maid can have no page, 
 
 A liegeman has no squire. 
 
 This day will witness, with the duke's, 
 
 My cymbaleer's return : 
 Gladness and pride beam in my looks. 
 Delay my heart impatient brooks, 
 
 All meaner thoughts I spurn. 
 
 Back from the battle-field elate, 
 His banner brings each peer ; 
 Come, let us see, at the ancient gate. 
 The martial triumph pass in state. 
 And the duke and my cymbaleer. 
 
 We'll see from the rampart-walls of Nantz 
 What an air his horse assumes ; 
 
 His proud neck swells, his glad hoofs 
 prance. 
 
 And on his head unceasing dance, 
 In a gorgeous tuft, red plumes ! 
 
 Be quick, my sisters ! dress in haste ! 
 
 Come, see him bear the bell. 
 With laurels deck'd, with true-love graced ; 
 While in his bold hand, fitly placed, 
 
 The bounding cymbals swell ! 
 
 Mark well the mantle that he'll wear, 
 
 Embroider'd by his bride : 
 Admire his burmsh'd helmet's glare, ': - 
 O'ershadow'd by the dark horsehair : 
 
 That waves in jet folds wide 1 - 
 
 The gipsy (spiteful wench !) foretold 
 
 Wi(h voice like a viper hissing. 
 (Though I had cross'd her palm with gold.) 
 That from the ranks a spirit bold ' 
 Would be to-day found missing. 
 
 But I have pray 'd so hard, I trust 
 
 Her words may prove untrue ; 
 Though in her cave the hag accurst 
 Mutter'd "Prepare thee/or the worst!" 
 With a face of ghastly hue. 
 
 My joy her spells shall not prevent 
 
 Hark ! I can hear the drums, 
 And ladies fair from silken tent 
 Peep forth, and every eye is bent 
 
 On the cavalcade that comes ! 
 
 Pikemen, dividing on both flanks, 
 
 Open the pageantry ; 
 Loud, as they tread, their armour clanks, 
 And silk-robed barons lead the ranks, 
 
 The pink of gallantry ! 
 
The Songs of France, 
 
 207 
 
 Voici les chasubles des pr§tres ; 
 
 Les herauts sur un blanc coursier ; 
 Tous, en souvenir des ancetres, 
 Portent 1 caisson de leurs maftres 
 
 Peint sur leur corselet d'acier. 
 
 Admirez l'armure Persanne 
 
 Des Templiers, craints de 1'enfer ; 
 Et, sous la longue pertui.sane, 
 Les archers velus de Lausanne, 
 
 Vetus de bufHe, armes de fer. 
 
 Le due n'est pas loin : ses bannieres 
 
 Flottent parmi les chevaliers ; 
 Quelques enseignes prisonnieres, 
 Honteuses, passent fes dernieres. 
 
 Mes sceurs i voici les timbaliers ! " 
 
 Elk dit, et sa vue errante 
 
 Plonge, hdlas ! dans les rangs presses 
 Puis, dans la foule indiffe'rente 
 Elle tomba, froide et mourante f— 
 
 Les timbaliers itaient posse's . 
 
 By way of contrast to the Gothic reminiscences of the olden time, and the 
 sentimental delicacy of the foregoing ballad, 1 subjoin a modern description of 
 Gallic chivalry, — a poetical sketch of contemporary heroism. Nothing can be 
 more striking than the change which seems to have come over the spirit of the 
 military dreams of the French since the days of Lancelot and Bayard, if we 
 aretoadopt this as an anthentic record of their present sentiments in matters of 
 gallantry. I cannot tell who the author or authoress of the following dithyramb 
 may be ; but I have taken it down as I have heard it sung by a fair girl who 
 would sometimes condescend to indulge an old cilibataire with a snatch of 
 merry music. 
 
 In scarfs of gold, the priests admire ; 
 
 The heralds on white steeds ; 
 Armorial pride decks their attire, 
 Worn in remembrance of a sire 
 
 Famed for heroic deeds. 
 
 Fear'd by the Paynim's dark divan, 
 
 1'he Templars next advance ; 
 Then the brave bowmen of Lausanne, 
 Foremost to stand in battle's van. 
 
 Against the foes of France. 
 
 Next comes the duke with radiant brow, 
 
 Girt with his cavaliers ; 
 Round his triumphant banner bow , 
 Those of the foe. Look, sisters, now ! 
 
 Now come the cymbaleers ! 
 
 She spoke— with searching eye surveyed 
 Their ranks— then pale, aghast. 
 Sunk in the crowd ! Death came in aid— 
 "i'was mercy to that gentle maid : 
 The cymbaleers had pass" d I 
 
 LA CARRIERE MILITAIRE. 
 
 En France, 
 
 Ah, le bel e*tat ! 
 
 Que 1'ctat de soldat ! 
 Battre, aimer, chanter, et boire — 
 Voila toute notre histoire ! 
 
 Et, ma foi, 
 
 Moi jc crois 
 Que cet etat-Ia vaut bien 
 Celui de tant de gens qui ne font rien ! 
 
 Vainqueurs, entrons-nous dans une ville? 
 
 Les autoritcs et les habitans 
 Nous viennent. d'une facon fort civile, 
 Ouvrir les portes a deux battans : 
 C'est tout au plus s'ils sont contens ; 
 Mais c'est tout de meme — 
 11 faut qu'on nous aime — 
 Ran, tan, plan ! 
 On bien qu'on fasse semblant. 
 Puis quand vient le clair de Iune, 
 Chacun cholsit sa chacune, 
 En qualite* de conquerant. 
 Kan, tan, plan ! 
 Ah, le bel that, etc 
 
 THE MILITARY PROFESSION. 
 
 In France, 
 
 Oh, the pleasant life a soldier leads t 
 Let the lawyer count his fees, 
 Let old women tell their beads, 
 Let each booby squire breed cattle, if he 
 please, 
 Far better 'tis, I think, 
 To make love, tight, and drink. 
 Odds boddekin ! 
 Such life makes r. man to a god akin. 
 
 Do we enter any town ? 
 The portcullis is let down, 
 And the joy-bells are rung by municipal 
 authority ; 
 The gates are open'd wide, 
 And the city-keys presented us beside, 
 Merely to recognize our vast superiority. 
 The married citizens, 'tis ten to one. 
 Would wish us fairly gone ; 
 But we stay while it suits our good plea- 
 sure. 
 Then each eve, at the rising of the 
 
 moon. 
 The fiddler strikes up a merry tune. 
 We meet a buxom partner full soon. 
 And we foot it to a military measure. 
 
 [Chorus 0/ dntms. 
 
208 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Mais c'est quand nous quittons la ville 
 
 Qu'il faut voir I'effet des adieux ; 
 Et toutes les femmes a la file _ 
 Se lamenter a qui mieux, mieux — 
 C'est une riviere' que leurs yeux. 
 " Reviens t'en pien vlte !" 
 Oui da, ma petite ! 
 Le plus souvent, 
 Le plus souvent, 
 Je ne suis pas pour le sentiment. 
 Ran, tan, plan ! 
 Vive le regiment ! 
 
 Et puis lorsqu'en maraude, 
 
 Chacun rode alentour ; 
 On va, le sabre a la main, en fraude, 
 Faire la chasse a la basse-cour. 
 Faut bien que chaque victime ait son tour— 
 Poulles innocentes ! 
 Interessantes ! 
 Sans retour ! sans retour ! 
 Helas ! voila votre dernier jour \ 
 
 Ran, tan, plan ! 
 Cot ! cot ! cot ! la sentinelle 
 Vous appele ! 
 Elles passent la tete et caquetant, 
 Et s'en vont a la broche du regiment. 
 
 Puis, a notre retour en France, 
 Chaque village, en goguette, en danse, 
 Nous ret;oit, cceur et tambour battans — 
 Tic, tac, ran, tan, plan ! 
 En I'honneur du regiment. 
 Ah, le bel e'tat ! 
 Que l'dtat de soldat ! 
 
 When our garrison at last gets " the rout," 
 
 Who can adequately tell 
 The regret of the fair all the city through- 
 out, 
 And the tone with which they bid us 
 " farewell V 
 Their tears would make a flood— a perfect 
 river : 
 And, to soothe her despair, 
 Each disconsolate maid entreats of us to 
 
 give her. 
 Ere we go, a single lock of our hair. 
 Alas ! it is not often 
 That my heart can soften 
 Responsive to the feelings of the fair ! 
 
 {C/torus of drums. 
 
 On a march, when our gallant divisions 
 
 In the country make a halt, 
 Think not that we limit our provisions 
 To Paddy's fare, "potatoes and salt." 
 Could such beggarly cheer 
 Ever answer a French grenadier ? 
 No ! we send a dragoon guard 
 To each neighbouring farm-yard, 
 To collect the choicest pickings — 
 Turkeys, sucking-pigs, and chickens. 
 For why should mere rustic rapscallions 
 Fatten on such tit-bits, 
 Better suited to the spits 
 Of our hungry and valorous battalions? 
 
 ■ But, oh \ at our return 
 To our dear native France, 
 Each village in its turn, 
 With music, and wine, and merry dance, 
 Forth on our joyful passage comes ; 
 And the pulse of each heart beats time to 
 the drums. 
 
 [C/iarus of drums. 
 Oh, the merry life a soldier leads ! 
 
 But my page is filling fast, and my appointed measure is nearly replenished. 
 Adieu, then, to the " Songs of France ! " Reminiscences of my younger life ! 
 traditions of poetic Gaul ! language of impassioned feeling ! cultivated elegance 
 of ideas and imagery ! bold, gay, fantastic picturings of social existence ! — 
 farewell ! You have been to me the source of much enjoyment, much mental 
 luxury, much intellectual revelry, — farewell ! Yet still, like Ovid quitting Rome 
 for Scythia— 
 
 " Ssepe vale dicens, multum sum deinde locutus, 
 Et quasi discedens oscula summa dedi : 
 Indulgens animo, pes mihi tardus erat " — 
 
 loth to depart, I have once more opened the volume of the enchanter, and 
 must indulge myself in a last lingering look at one— perhaps the loftiest of 
 B^ranger's lays. It is addressed by him to a fair incognita; but in my version 
 I have taken the liberty of giving a more intelligible and, 1 fear not to add, 
 more appropriate direction to the splendid allegory. 
 
The Songs of France, 209 
 
 L'ANGE EXILE. 
 A Corinne de £****»*. 
 
 Je veux pour vous prendre un ton moins frivole, 
 
 Corinne ! il fut des anges revoltes : 
 Dieu sur letir front fait tomber sa parole, 
 
 Et dans 1'abSme its sont pre"cipite"s. 
 Doux, mais fragile, un seul dans leur ruine, 
 
 Contre ses maux garde un puissant secours, 
 II reste arme* de sa lyre divine — 
 
 Ange aux yeux bleus, protegez-moi toujours ! 
 
 L'enfer mugit d'un effroyable rire, 
 
 Quand, de'gouti; de l'orgueil des m&hans, 
 L'ange, qui pleure en accordant sa lyre, 
 
 Fait e*clater ses remords et ses chants. 
 Dieu d'un regard l'arrache au gouffre immonde, 
 
 Mais ici bas veut qu'il charme nos jours ; 
 La Poe'sie enivrera le monde — 
 
 Ange aux yeux bleus, protegez-moi toujours ! 
 
 Vers nous il vole, en secouant ses ailes, 
 
 Comme l'oiseau que 1'orage a mouille" ; 
 Soudain la terre entend des voix nouvelles, 
 
 Maint peuple errant, s'arrSte e'mcrveille'. 
 Tout culte alors n'e'tait que l'harmonie — 
 
 Aux cieux jamais Dieu ne dit, ' ' Soyez sourds ! " 
 L'autel s'epure aux parfums du genie ! — 
 
 Ange aux yeux bleus, protcgez-moi toujours ! 
 
 En vain l'enfer, des clameurs de I'envie, 
 
 Poursuit cet ange, echappe* de ces rangs ; 
 De l'homme inculte il adoucit la vie, 
 
 Et sous le dais montre au doigt les tyrans. 
 Tandis qua tout sa voix pretant des charmes, 
 
 Court jusqu'au pole eveiller les amours : 
 Dieu compte au ciel ce qu'il seche de larmes !— 
 
 Ange aux yeux bleus, protegez-moi toujours ! 
 
 Qui peut me dire oh luit son aureole? 
 
 De son exil Dieu l'a-t-il rappele*? 
 Mais vous chantez, mais votre voix console — 
 
 Corinne, en vous l'ange s'est de*voile" ! 
 Votre printems veut des fleurs e*ternelles, 
 
 Votre beaute* de celestes atours ; 
 Pour un long vol vous deployez vos ailes ! — 
 
 Ange aux yeux bleus, protegez-moi toujours ! 
 
 THE ANGEL OF POETRY. 
 
 To L. E. L. 
 
 Lady ! for thee a holier key shall harmonize the chord — 
 In Heaven's defence Omnipotence drew an avenging sword ; 
 But when the bolt had crush'd revolt, one angel, fair though frail, 
 Retain 'd his lute, fond attribute ! to charm that gloomy vale. 
 The lyre he kept his wild hand swept ; the music he'd awaken 
 Would sweetly thrill from the lonely hill where he sat apart forsaken : 
 There he'd lament his banishment, his thoughts to grief abandon, , 
 And weep his full. 'Twas pitiful to see him weep, fair Landon ! 
 
210 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 He wept his fault ! Hell's gloomy vault grew vocal with his song ; 
 liut all throughout derision's shout burst from the guilty throng : 
 God pitying view'd his fortitude in that unhallow'd den ; 
 Freed him from hell, hut bade him dwell amid the sons of men. 
 Lady ! for us, an exile thus, immortal Poesy 
 Came upon earth, and lutes gave birth to sweetest minstrelsy : 
 And poets wrought their spellwords, taught by that angelic mind, 
 And music lent soft blandishment to fascinate mankind. 
 
 Religion rose ! man sought repose in the shadow of her wings ; 
 Music for her walk'd harbinger, and Genius touch d the strings : 
 Tears from the tree of Araby cast on her altar burn'd, 
 But earth and wave most fragrance gave where Poetry sojourn'd. 
 Vainly, with hate inveterate, hell labour'd in its rage. 
 To persecute that angel's lute, and cross his pilgrimage ; 
 Unmoved and ca'.m, his songs pour'd balm on sorrow all the while : 
 Vice he unmask'd, but virtue bask'd in the radiance of his smile. 
 
 O where, among the fair and young, or in what kingly court. 
 In what gay path where Pleasure hath her favourite resort, 
 Where hast thou gone, angelic one ? Back to thy native skies ? 
 Or dost thou dwell in cloister'd cell, in pensive hermit's guise? 
 Methinks I ken a denizen of this our island — nay, 
 Leave me to guess, fair poetess ! queen of the matchless lay ! 
 The thrilling line, lady ! is thine ; the spirit pure and free ; 
 And England views that angel muse, Landon ! reveal'd in thee \ 
 
 -SSEaB'-SS- 
 
XL 
 
 )t Songs of <v M 
 
 {Frasers Magazine, February, 1835.) 
 
 [Mahony's first batch of the Songs of Italy appeared in the number of Fraser 
 containing Croquis' capital sketch of "Yours ratherish unwell " Charles Lamb. The 
 Author of " Klia " in this wonderfully characteristic portrait of him was represented as 
 seated at a table eagerly leaning forward, over one or two of his " midnight darlings," 
 the ponderous folio he was employed in reading having upon either side of it a candle, 
 while at his elbow, handily within reach, were not only tumbler and spoon, but a bottle 
 with a rakish cork, cocked sidewise. Under the table, one took note of what Hood 
 dubbed the essayist's " immaterial legs," slenderly black-gaitered, and above it of the 
 finely-cut profile, and the noble head Leigh Hunt likened to that of Aristotle. By way 
 of embellishment to this particular paper from the hand of Prout, when it came to be 
 republished in the following year with the rest of the collected "Reliques," Maclise pen- 
 cilled by way of tailpiece to the chapter "The Wine Cup Bespoken," a classic tazza, 
 revealing on it in alto-relievo Silenus with his attendant nymphs and satyrs, the sculp- 
 tured vase garlanded about with purple grape-bunches and vine-leaves.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ** Latius opinione dlsseminatum est hoc malum : manavit non solum per Galliam, sed 
 ctiam transcendit Alpes, et obscure serpens multas jam provincial occupavit." 
 
 Cicero in Catilinam, Or. IV 
 
 Starting from France, across Mount Cents, 
 Prout visits Mantua and Venice ; 
 Through many a tuneful province strolls, 
 "Smit with the love " of barcarolles. 
 Petrarca's ghost he conjures up, 
 And with old Dante quaffs a cup ; 
 Next, from her jar Etruscan, he 
 Uncorks the muse of Tuscany. O. Y. 
 
 From the contents of " the chest " hitherto put forth by us to the gaze of a 
 discriminating public, the sagacious glance of the critic, unless his eye happen 
 to be somehow " by drop serene or dim suffusion veiled," must have scanned 
 pretty accurately the peculiar cast and character of old Prout' s genius. Though 
 somewhat "Protean" and multiform, delighting to make his posthumous 
 appearance in a diversity of fanciful shapes, he is still discoverable by certain 
 immutable features; and the identity of mind and purpose reveals itself 
 throughout this vast variety of manifestation. An attentive perusal of his 
 
212 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 "Papers" (of which we have now drawn forth eleven, hoping next month 
 to crack the last bottle of the sparkling dozen) will enable the reader to detect 
 the secret workings of his spirit, and discover the " bee's wing" in the tran- 
 sparent decanter of his soul. Prout's candour and frankness, his bold, 
 fearless avowal of each inward conviction, his contempt for quacks and 
 pedants, his warm admiration of disinterested patriotism and intellectual 
 originality, cannot but be recognized throughout his writings : he is equally 
 enthusiastic in his predilections, and stanch in his antipathies. Of his classical 
 namesake, Proteus, it has been observed by Virgil, that there was no catching 
 him in any definite or tangible form ; as he constantly shifted his position, and, 
 with the utmost violation of consistency, became at turns "a pig," " a tiger," 
 or " a serpent," to suit the whim of the moment or the scheme of the hour ; 
 
 " Fiet enim subitd sus horridus, atrave tigris, 
 Squamosusve draco." Georgic. IV. 
 
 But in all the impersonations of the deceased P. P. of Watergrasshill the man 
 is never lost sight of ; it is still he, whether he be viewed showing his tusks to 
 Tommy Moore, or springing like a tiger on Dr. Lardner's wig, or lurking like 
 a bottle-imp in Brougham's brandy-flask, or coiled up like a rattle-snake in the 
 begging-box of O'Connell. 
 
 But still he delights to tread the peaceful paths of literature ; and it is then, 
 indeed, that he appears in his proper element. Of all the departments of that 
 interesting province, he has selected the field of popular poetry for his favourite 
 haunt. " Smitten," like old Milton, " with the love of sacred song," he lingers 
 with "fond, reluctant, amorous delay," amid the tuneful *' groves." Ballad- 
 singing was his predominant passion. In his youth he had visited almost 
 every part of the continent ; and though not unobservant of other matters, nor 
 unmindful of collateral inquiries, he made the songs of each country the object 
 of a most diligent investigation. Among the tenets of his peripatetic 
 philosophy, he had adopted a singular theory, viz. that the true character of a 
 people must be collected from their "songs." Impressed with this notion, to 
 use the words of the immortal Edmund Burke, "he has visited all Europe; 
 not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples ; not 
 to make accurate measurement of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to 
 form a scale of the curiosities of modern art ; not to collect medals, or to col- 
 late MSS. : but to pick up the popular tunes, and make a collection of song- 
 books; to cull from the minstrelsy of the cottage, and select from the 
 bacchanalian joviality of the vintage ; to compare and collate the Tipperary 
 bagpipe with the Cremona fiddle ; to remember the forgotten and attend to 
 the neglected ballads of foreign nations; and to blend in one harmonious 
 system the traditionary songs of all men in all countries. It was a voyage of 
 discovery, a circumnavigation of melody. " 
 
 Lander and Mungo Park have traced the course of the Niger ; Bruce and 
 Belzoni the sources of the Nile ; Sterne journeyed in pursuit of the sentimental. 
 Syntax in search of the picturesque; Eustace made a ' ' classical " tour through 
 Italy, Bowring an "utilitarian ' excursion through France: but we greatly 
 miscalculate if the public do not prefer, for all the practical purposes of life, 
 Prout's " tuneful " pilgrimage. Any accession to the general stock of harmony, 
 anything to break the monotonous sameness of modern literature, must be 
 hailed with a shout of welcome; and in the Watergrasshill chest we possess 
 an engine of melodious power, far preferable to the hackneyed barrel-organs 
 that lull and stultify the present generation. The native Irish have at all times 
 been remarkable fur a keen perception of musical enjoyment, and it therefore 
 is not astonishing that the charms of sweet sound should have so fascinated 
 the youthful mind of our hero, as to lead him captive from land to land— a 
 
willing slave, chained to the triumphal chariot of Polyhymnia. His case has 
 been graphically put by a modern writer (not Hogg)— 
 
 " When I was a boy in my father's mud edifice. 
 Tender and bare as a pig in a sty. 
 Out of the door as I look'd, with a steady phiz, 
 Who but Thade Murphy the piper went by ! 
 
 ' Arrah, Thady ! the drone of your pipe so comes over me, 
 
 Naked I'll wander wherever you goes ; 
 And if my poor parents should want to discover me, 
 Sure it wont be by describing my clothes ! ' " 
 
 "Journeying with this intent," our excellent divine (as maybe seen in the 
 last four numbers of Rf.gina) hath not been idle in France ; having wreathed 
 a garland of song, culled where those posies grew wild on the boulevards of 
 Paris, the fields of Normandy, and the fragrant hills of Provence — land of 
 troubadours. We have now to follow him through other scenes : to view him 
 seated in a gondola, and gliding under the " Bridge of Sighs ; " or wandering 
 on the banks of the Po ; or treading, with pensive step, the Miltonic glen of 
 Vallombrosa. Each guardian spirit of that hallowed soil, each tutelary genius 
 loci, the dryades of the grove and the naiades of the flood, exult at the 
 approach of so worthy a visitant, sent with a special mission on an errand of 
 the loftiest consequences, and gifted with a soul equal to the mighty task ; a 
 modem by birth, but an old Roman in sentiment — 
 
 " Redonavit Quiritem 
 Dis patriis Italoque coelo ! — Hor. lib. ii. ode 7. 
 
 It has been the misfortune of that beautiful peninsula, ever since the decline 
 and fall of the Roman empire, to have been invaded by a succession of 
 barbarians from the North. Longobards and Ostrogoths, Alaric and Genseric, 
 Sam Rogers and Frederick Barbarossa, Atilla king of the Huns, and Leigh 
 Hunt king of the Cockneys, have already spread havoc and consternation 
 through that delightful country ; but the vilest and most unjustifiable invasion 
 of Italy has been perpetrated by Lady Morgan. We know not to what extent 
 impunity may be claimed by " the sex," for running riot and playing the devil 
 with places and things consecrated by the recollections of all that is noble in 
 our nature, and exalted in the history of mankind ; but we suppose that her 
 Irish ladyship is privileged to carry on her literary orgies in the face of the 
 public, like her fair countrywoman, Lady Barrymore, of smashing notoriety. 
 Heaven knows, she has often enough been ' ' pulled up " before the tribunals of 
 witticism for her misdemeanours ; still, we find her repeating her old offences 
 with incorrigible pertinacity, — and Belgium is now the scene of her pranks. 
 She moreover continues to besprinkle her pages with Italian, of which she 
 knows about as much as of the language of the Celestial Empire ; for, let her 
 take our word for it, that, however acquainted she may possibly be with the 
 " Cruiskeen lawn," she has but a very slight intimacy with the " Vocabulario 
 della Crusca." 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Fei. 1, 1833. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Fei. 1830. 
 
 DURING these long wintry nights, while the blast howls dismally outside this 
 mountain-shed, and all the boisterous elements of destruction hold a " radical " 
 meeting on yonder bog, — seated before a snug turf-fire, and having duly 
 conned over the day's appointed portion of the Roman breviary, I love to 
 
give free scope to my youthful recollections, and wander back in spirit to those 
 sunny lands where I spent my early years. Memory is the comforter of old 
 age, as Hope is the guardian-angel of youth : — the emblematic anchor, which 
 antiquity has given but to one, ought in my mind to be equally the symbol of 
 both. To me my past life seems a placid, a delightful dream ; and I trust that 
 when I shall, at no distant moment, hear the voice which will bid me " awake" 
 to the consciousness of enduring realities, and the enjoyment of immortal 
 existence, memory still may remain to enhance, if possible, the fruition of 
 beatitude. 
 
 But a truce to these solemn fancies, which, no doubt, have been suggested to 
 my mind by those homilies of Chrysostom and soliloquies of Augustin which I 
 have just now been perusing, in this day's office of our ancient liturgy. And 
 to resume the train of ideas with which I commenced, a few minutes ago, this 
 paper of "night-thoughts," — gladly do I recur to the remembrance of that 
 fresh and active period of my long career, when, buoyant with juvenile energy, 
 and. flushed with life's joyous anticipations, I passed from the south of France 
 into the luxuriant lap of Italy. Full sixty years now have elapsed since I first 
 crossed the Alpine frontier of that enchanting province of Europe ; bat the 
 image of all I saw, and the impression of all I felt, remains indelible in my 
 soul. My recollections of gay France are lively and vivid, yet not so deeply 
 imprinted, nor so glowingly distinct, as the picturings which an Italian sojourn 
 has left on the " tablets of memory." I cherish both ; but each has its own 
 peculiar attributes, features, and physiognomy. The spiritutllt Madame de 
 Sevi^ne and the impassioned Beatrice Cenci are two very opposite impersona- 
 tions of female character, but they pretty accurately represent the notion I 
 would wish to convey of my Italy and my France. There is not more differ- 
 ence between the "Allegro" and "II Penseroso" of Milton. France rises 
 before me in the shape of a merry-andrew jingling his bells, and exhibiting 
 wondrous feats of agility ; Italy assumes the awful shape of the spectre that 
 stood before Brutus in the camp, and promised to meet him at Philippi. 
 
 In those days a Franciscan friar, called Ganganelli (Clement XIV.), sat in 
 the pontine chair ; and, sorrowful to tell, being of a cringing, time-serving, 
 and worldly-minded disposition, did considerable damage to the church over 
 which, in evil hour, he was appointed to preside. The only good act of his I 
 am disposed to recognize is the addition to the Vatican gallery, called after 
 him the "Museum Clementinum : " but that was but a poor compensation for 
 the loss which literature and science sustained (through his ineffable folly) in 
 the unwarrantable destruction of that unrivalled "order" of literati, the 
 Jesuits.* The sacrifice was avowedly meant to propitiate the demon of 
 Irreligion, then first exhibiting his presence in France ; but, like all such con- 
 cessions to an evil spirit, it only provoked further exigencies and more impera- 
 tive demands, until Talleyrand, by proposing in the National Assembly the 
 abolition of church property, effectually demolished the old Gallican glories of 
 Christianity, and extinguished the lamp that had burnt for ages before the 
 altar of our common God. It was, no doubt, an act of forgetfulness in the 
 preceding pope, Prosper Lambertini (Benedict XIV.), to open a correspon- 
 dence with Voltaire, to whom, in return for the dedication of his tragedy of 
 "Mahomet," he sent his "apostolical blessing; " but it was reserved for the 
 friar-pope to inflict an irrecoverable wound on the cause of enlightened 
 religion, by his bull of the 21st of July, 1773. 
 
 I dwell on this topic con amore, because of my personal feelings of attach- 
 ment to the instructors of my youth ; and also because the subject was often 
 
 * A book was in circulation called "Ganganelli's Letters ;" but it is an imposition on 
 public credulity, to be classed in the annals of forgery alongside of Macpherson's 
 '"Ossian," Chatterton's "Rowley," and the "Decretals" of Isidorus Mercator.— 
 Prout. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 215 
 
 the cause of a friendly quarrel between myself and Barry the painter, whom I 
 met at Rome, and knew intimately. He was a "wild fellow," and, by some 
 chance, had for me a sort of confiding fondness, owing, no doubt, to our 
 being both natives of Cork, or, at least, citizens thereof : for / was born in 
 Dublin, as duly set forth in that part of my autobiography called "Dean 
 Swift's Madness ; a Tale of a Churn." Now Barry was so taken with Gan- 
 ganelli's addition to the Vatican collection, that he has placed him among the 
 shades of the blessed in his picture of Elysium, at the hall of the Adelphi, 
 London: giving a snug berth in "hell" to Pope Adrian IV., who bestowed 
 Ireland on Henry II. I question not the propriety of this latter arrangement ; 
 but I strongly object to the apotheosis of Ganganelli. 
 
 This digression, however unconnected with the " Songs of Italy," may serve 
 as a chronological landmark, indicative of the period to which I refer in my 
 observations on the poetry of that interesting country. Alfieri had not yet re- 
 kindled the fire of tragic thought; Manzoni had not flung into the pages of 
 romantic narrative a pathos and an eloquence unknown to, and undreamt of, 
 by Boccaccio ; Silvio Pellico had not appalled the world with realities far sur- 
 passing romance.; Pindemonte had not restrung the lyre of Filicaia. But 
 Heaven knows there was enough of genius and exalted inspiration in the very 
 oldest ornaments of Italian composition, in the ever-glorious founders of the 
 Toscana. favella, to render unnecessary to its triumph the subsequent corps 
 de reserve, whose achievements in the field of literature I do not seek to under- 
 value. 
 
 Poets have been the earliest writers in every language, and the first elements 
 of recognized speech have invariably been collected, arranged, and systematized 
 by the Muse. The metrical narrative of the Arabian Job, the record of the 
 world's creation as sung by Hesiod, the historical poetry of Ennius, the glorious 
 vision of Dante, the songs of Mar&t and Malherbe, the tales of Chaucer, have 
 each respectively been the earliest acknowledged forms and models on which 
 the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, the French, and the English 
 idioms were constructed. I have placed these six languages (the noblest and 
 most perfect vehicles of human intercourse that have ever existed) in the rota- 
 tion of their successive rise and establishment, and have purposely excluded all 
 mention of German or Teutonic dialects, being thoroughly convinced that a 
 contempt for Germany is the " beginning of wisdom." Taking them chrono- 
 logically, the Hebraic patent of precedency .is undoubted. The travels of 
 Hesiod, Homer, and Herodotus, through Egypt and Asia Minor, sufficiently 
 explain the subsequent traces of that oriental idiom among the Greeks; the 
 transmission of ideas and language from Greece to Italy is recorded in set terms 
 by the prince of Latin song, who adopts the Greek hexameter as well as the 
 topics of Hesiod : 
 
 " Ascrseumque cano Romana per oppida carmen." 
 
 Ceorgk. 11. 
 
 The Italians, when Latin ceased to be the European medium of international 
 communication, were the first to form out of the ruins of that glorious parlance 
 an idiom, fixed as early as 1330, and perfect in all its modern elegance ; — so 
 perfect, indeed, as to warrant the application to it of the exclamation of 
 Horace : 
 
 "O matre pulchra filia pulchrior ! " 
 
 Lib. i. ode 16. 
 
 France followed next in the development of its happy vocabulary, under 
 Francis I. ; and England, under the reign of Queen Anne, finally adopted its 
 modern system of phraseology. 
 
216 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, but not the less true, that Dante (who had studied at 
 the university of Paris, where he maintained with applause a thesis, " De 
 omni Re scibili "), on his return to Italy, meditating his grand work of the 
 "Divina Commedia," was a long time undecided to what dialect he should 
 commit the offspring of his prolific mind. His own bias lay towards the Latin, 
 and he even had commenced in that tongue the description of hell, the opening 
 verse of which has been preserved : 
 
 " Pallida regna canam, fluido contermina mundo ! " 
 
 But the monks of Bobbio, having seen a specimen of the poem in the popular 
 version, strongly advised the young poet to continue it in the vernacular tongue ; 
 and that decision influenced the fate of Italian literature. 
 
 Petrarca is known to have considerably underrated the powers of Dante, 
 whose style and manner he could not relish : indeed, no two writers could 
 possibly have adopted a more opposite system of composition, and out of the 
 same materials constructed poetry of so distinct a character. Rude, massive, 
 and somewhat uncouth, the terza rima of the " infernal laureate " resembled 
 the Doric temples of Paestum ; delicate, refined, and elegant, the sonnets of 
 Petrarca assimilate in finish to the Ionic structure at Nismes dedicated to Diana. 
 But the canzoni of Laura's lover are the most exquisite of his productions, and 
 far surpass in harmony and poetic merit the sonelti. Such is the opinion of 
 Muraton, and such also is the verdict of the ingenious author of the ' ' Secchia 
 Rapita." These canzoni are, in fact, the model and the perfection of that 
 species of song of which the burden is love; and though some modem poets 
 have gone farther in the expression of mere animal passion (such as Moore and 
 Byron), never has woman been addressed in such accomplished strains of elo- 
 quence and sentiment as Donna Laura by the hermit of Vaucluse. 
 
 There may be some partiality felt by me towards Petrarca. He belonged to 
 " my order ;" and though the union of the priest and the poet (combined in 
 the term vates) is an old association, the instances in the Catholic priest- 
 hood have been too rare not to prize the solitary example of sacerdotal min- 
 strelsey in the archdeacon of Parma. Jerome Vida, the bishop of a small town 
 in Italy, was distinguished as a Latin poet — 
 
 " Immortal Vida, on whose honour' d brow 
 The critic's bays and poet's ivy grow ; " 
 
 (Pope, Essay on Criticism.) 
 
 and several Jesuits have felt the inspiration of the Muse : but the excellence 
 of Petrarca as a poet has caused his theological acquirements, which were of 
 the highest order, to be quite forgotten. I was greatly amused some days ago, 
 in turning over the volume of Bellarmin, " De Scfiptoribus Ecclesiasticis," 
 to find at page 227 (4to. Romas, 1613) the following notice of the sonnet- 
 teer : 
 
 " Franciscus Petrarca, archidiaconus Parmensis, lusit elegant issi mis versibus 
 amores suos erga Lauram, ut haberet materiam exercendas musae ; sed tempus 
 consumptum in illis cantiunculis deflevit, et multa opera gravia atque utilia 
 scripsit. Pie obiit 1374." 
 
 The learned cardinal, no doubt, valued much more these grave and useful 
 works, which are doomed to lurk amid cobwebs in the monastic libraries of the 
 continent, than the exquisite outpourings of soul and harmony which have 
 filled all Europe with rapture. A chacun son goitt. 
 
 Long before I had crossed the Alps I had been an admirer of Petrarca. My 
 residence at Avignon ; my familiar acquaintance with the church of St. Clair, 
 where, in his twenty-fifth year (Friday, April _6, 1337), he for the first time saw 
 the Madonna Laura, then aged seventeen ; my frequent excursions to the source 
 
The Songs of Italy. 
 
 217 
 
 that limpid torrent, called by Pliny, Vallisclausa, and by the French, Vaucluse, 
 had drawn my attention to his writings and his character. An enthusiastic love 
 of both was the natural result ; and I sometimes, in the perusal of his senti- 
 ments, would catch the contagion of his exquisite Platonism. Yes 1 Laura, 
 after the lapse of five centuries, had made a second conquest ! 
 
 " Je redemandais Laure a l'lcho du vallon, 
 Et l'echo n'avait point oublie* ce doux nom." — Delille. 
 
 It has been said, that no poet's mistress ever attained such celebrity as the 
 Platonic object of Petrarca's affections : she has, in fact, taken her place as a 
 fourth maid of honour in the train of ' ' graces " that wait on Venus ; and the 
 romantic source of the Sorga has become the Castalian spring of all who would 
 write on love. 
 
 ALLA FONTANA DI VAL- 
 CHIUSA. 
 
 Canzone di Francesco Petrarca* 
 
 Chiare, fresche, e dolci acque, 
 Ovc le belle membra 
 Pose colei, che sola a me par donna ; 
 Gentil ramo, ove piacque 
 (Con sospir mi rimembra) 
 A lei di fareal bel fianco colonna; 
 Erba e fior, che la gonna 
 
 Leggiadra. ricoverse 
 Con F angelieo seno ; 
 Aer sacro sereno, 
 OV amor co'begli occhi il cor m* aperse ;- 
 Date udienza insieme 
 Alle dolenti mie parole estreme. 
 
 S' egl 4 pur mip destino, 
 £ 1 cielo in ci5 s' adopra, 
 Ch' amor quest' occhi lagrimand chiuda ; 
 Qualohe grazia il meschino 
 Corpo fra voi ricopra ; 
 £ torni V alma al proprio albergo ignuda. 
 La morte fia men cruda, 
 Se questa speme porto 
 A quel dubbioso passo : 
 Che lo spirito lasso 
 Non poria mai in piu riposato porto, 
 
 Ne 'n piii tranquilla fossa 
 Fuggir la carne travagliata el 1' ossa. 
 
 Tempo verra ancor forse, 
 Che all' usato soggiorno 
 Torni la fera bella e mansueta ; 
 £ la, V ella rai scorse 
 
 PETRARCA'S ADDRESS 
 
 To the Summer Haunt of Laura. 
 
 Sweet fountain of Vaucluse ! 
 The virgin freshness of whose crystal bed 
 The ladye, idol of my soul ! hath led 
 Within thy wave her fairy bath to 
 
 choose ! 
 And thou, O favourite tree ! 
 Whose branches she loved best 
 To shade her hour of rest— 
 Her own dear native land's green mul- 
 berry ! 
 Roses, whose earliest bud 
 To her sweet bosom lent 
 Fragrance and ornament ! 
 Zephyrs, who fan the murmuring flood ! 
 Cool grove, sequestered grot ! 
 Here in this lovely spot 
 I pour my last sad lay, where first her 
 love I wooed. 
 
 If soon ray earthly woes 
 Must slumber in the tomb. 
 And if my life's sad doom 
 
 Must so in sorrow close ! 
 Where yonder willow grows. 
 
 Close by the margin lay 
 
 My cold and lifeless clay, 
 That unrequited love may find repose ! 
 Seek thou thy native realm, 
 
 My soul ! and when the fear 
 
 Of dissolution near. 
 And doubts shall overwhelm, 
 A ray of comfort round 
 
 My dying couch shall hover, 
 
 If some kind hand will cover 
 My miserable bones in yonder hallowed 
 ground ! 
 
 But still alive for her 
 Oft may my ashes greet 
 The sound of coming feet ! 
 And Laura's tread gladden my sepulchre ! 
 K 
 
218 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Relenting, on my grave, ' 
 
 My mistress may, perchance, 
 With one kind pitying glance 
 Honour the dust of her devoted slave. 
 Then may she intercede, 
 With prayer and sigh, for one 
 Who, hence for ever gone, 
 Of mercy stands in need ; 
 And while for me her rosary she tells, 
 
 May her uplifted eyes 
 ■ Win pardon from the skies, 
 While angels through her veil behold the 
 tear that swells ! 
 
 Visions of love ! ye dwell 
 In memory still enshrined.— 
 Here, as she once reclined, 
 A shower of blossoms on her bosom fell ! 
 And while th' enamoured tree 
 From all its branches thus 
 Rained odoriferous, > 
 She sat, unconscious, all humility. 
 Mixed with her golden hair, those blos- 
 soms -sweet 
 Like pearls on amber seemed ;-*- 
 Some their allegiance deemed 
 Due to her floating robe and lovely feet : 
 Others, disporting, took 
 Their course adown the brook ; 
 Others aloft,, wafted in airy sport, 
 Seemed to proclaim, " To-day Love holds 
 his merry court ! " 
 
 I've gazed upon thee, jewel beyond price ! 
 Till from my inmost soul 
 This secret whisper stole — 
 " Of Earth no child art thou, daughter of 
 Paradise ! " 
 Such sway thy beauty held 
 O'er the enraptured sense, 
 And such the influence 
 Of winning smile and form unparalleled ! 
 And I would marvel then 
 " How came I here, and when, 
 Wafted by magic wand, * 
 
 Earth's narrow joys beyond ? " 
 O, I shall ever count 
 My happiest days spent here by this ro- 
 - mantic fount ! 
 
 In this graceful effusion of tender feelings, to which a responsive chord must 
 vibrate in every breast, and compared with which the most admired of modern 
 love-ditties will seem paltry and vulgar, the tenderness, the exalted passion, the 
 fervid glow of a noble heart, and the mysterious workings of a most gifted 
 mind, exhibit themselves in every stanza. What can be more beautifully de- 
 scriptive than the opening lines, equalling in melodious cadence the sweetest of 
 Horace, 
 
 " O.fons Bandusix, splendidior vitro ; " 
 
 but infinitely superior in delicacy of sentiment and pathetic power! The 
 calm melancholy Of the succeeding strophe has been often admired, and 
 has, of course, found great favour among the Tommy Moores of every 
 country — 
 
 " Imitatores, servum pccus." 
 
 Nel benedetto giorno, 
 Volga la vista desiosa e lieta 
 
 Cercandomi ; ed, o pieta ! 
 Gia terra in fra le pietre 
 
 Videndo, amor V inspiri 
 
 In guisa, che sospiri 
 Si dolcemente, che merce m' impetre, 
 
 E faccia forza al cielo, ' 
 
 Asciugandosi gli occhi col bel velo. 
 
 Da* be' rami scendea, 
 (Dolce nella memoria,) 
 Una pioggia di nor sovra 'I suo grembo ; 
 Ed ella si sedea 
 Umile in tanta gloria, : ■ 
 Coverta gia dell' amoroso nembo ; 
 Qual nor cadea sul lembo, 
 Qual sulle trecce bionde ; 
 Ch' oro forbito, e perle 
 Eraii quel dl a vederle : 
 Qual si posava in terra, e qual sull' onde ; 
 
 Qual con un vago errore 
 Girando, parea dir, *' Qui regna Amore." 
 
 Quante volte diss' io 
 Allor pien di spavento, 
 " Costei per fermo nacque m Paradiso ;*' 
 Cosl carco d' obblio, 
 Il'divin portamento, 
 E '1 volto, e le parole, e '1 dolce riso 
 M' aveano, e si diviso 
 
 Dall' immagine vera, 
 Ch' io dicea sospirando, 
 " Qui come venn* io, o quando? " 
 Credendo esser in ciel, non la, dov' era : 
 
 Da indi in qua mi piace 
 Quest" srba si, ch' altrove non ho pace. 
 
Tommy has given us his List dying-speech in that rigmarole melody, 
 
 " When in death I shall calm recline ;" 
 
 but this bard's legacy is a sad specimen oi mock-turtle pathos, and, with the 
 affectation of tenderest emotion, is, in style and thought, repugnant to all 
 notions of real refinement and simplicity. In the last will of Petrarca — a most 
 interesting document — there is a legacy which any one may be pardoned for 
 coveting; it is the poet's lute, which he bequeaths to a friend, with a most 
 affecting and solemn recommendation : " Magistro Thomse de Ferrara lego 
 leutum meum bomtm, ut eum sonet non pro vanitate sasculi fugacis, sed ad 
 laudem Dei aeterni." — (Testament, Petrar.) I am pretty certain that into 
 whatever hands that bequest has since found its way our Tommy has not got 
 hold of it. 
 
 As the Hibernian melodist has had his name thus smuggled into my essay on 
 the " Songs of Italy," it may not be irrelevant (as assuredly it will be edifying) 
 to point out some of his ' ' rogueries " perpetrated in this quarter. Not content 
 with picking the pockets of the French, he has extended his depredations to 
 the very extremity of Calabria. I shall have many opportunities of recording 
 as I go along these unblushing robberies ; but Petrarca' s case is one of peculiar 
 hardship. Laura's lover, in the enthusiasm of eloquent passion, takes a wide 
 range in one of his songs, and ransacks the world, east and west, for images 
 drawn from the several phenomena which nature exhibits in each country 
 through which his muse wanders uncontrolled. Among other curious compari- 
 sons and happy flights, of fancy, he introduces the fountain of the Sun, near 
 the temple of Jupiter Amnion ; and, describing the occasional warmth and suc- 
 cessive icy chill which he experiences in the presence or absence of his beloved, 
 compares his heart to that mysterious water, which, cold at mid-day, grew warm 
 towards eve. Would the reader wish to see With what effrontery Moore appro- 
 priates, without the slightest acknowledgment, the happy idea of Petrarch? 
 Here are the parallel passages : 
 
 PETRARCA. TOM MOORE. 
 
 "Sorge nel mezzo giorno, " Fly not yet ! the fount that play'd, 
 
 Una fontana, e tien nome del Sole, In days of old, through Amnion's shade, 
 
 Che per natura suole Though icy cold by day it ran, 
 
 Bollirla notte, e'n sul giorno esser fredda. Yet still, like souls of mirth, began 
 * * * * To burn token night was near. 
 
 Cosl avien a me stesso And thus should woman's heart and looks 
 
 Che mio sol s' allontaoa At noon be cold as wintry brooks, 
 
 Ardo allor," &c. But kindle when the night's returning 
 
 Canzont di Petr. 31, st. 4. Brings the genial hour ior burning." 
 
 The learned priest had been at the trouble of perusing Quintus Curtius, lib. 
 iv. cap. 7, where he had found : " Est etiam Ammonis nemus ; in medio habet 
 fontem ; aquam solis vocant ; sub lucis ortum trepida manat, medio die frigida 
 eadem fluit, inclinato in vesperam calescit, media nocte fervida exaestuat." He 
 had also, no doubt, read the lines in Silius Italicus, " De Bello Punico," refer- 
 ring to this same source : 
 
 " Quae nascente die, quae deficiente tepescit, 
 Quaeque riget medium ctim sol ascendit Olympum." 
 
 But his property, in the application of the simile, has been invaded, and all the 
 fruits of his labours have been enjoyed, by Tommy, who had read nothing of 
 the sort — 
 
 " Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes !" 
 
 After all, I am wasting my time on such minor matters. 
 
In the celebrated address above quoted of the hermit of Vaucluse to that 
 Immortal fountain, I have given what I consider a fair specimen of Italian 
 amatory poesy : but though the poets of that genial climate are "all for love," 
 still they are also "a little for the bottle." Hence it is that I consider it my 
 duty, as an essayist, to bring forward a sample of their bacchanalian songs; 
 and I do so the more readily as one suggests itself just now to my memory of 
 a very early date and of a highly classical tenour. It has evidently been 
 modelled on a well-known ode of Anacreon, and there is infused through it a 
 vigour and a fancy indicative of sterling genius. 
 
 SONETTO DITIRAMBICO. 
 
 Claudia Tolomei. 
 
 Non mi far, O Vulcan ! di questo argento 
 
 Scolpiti in vaga schiera uomini ed armi : 
 
 Fammene una gran tazza, ove bagnarmi 
 Possa i dent i, la lingua, i labbri, e T mcnto. 
 
 Non mi ritrar in lei ploggia ne vcnto, 
 
 Ne sole o stelle per vaghezza darmi ; 
 
 Non puo '1 Carro o Boote allegro farmi— 
 Ch* altrove b la mia gioia e '1 mio contento. 
 
 Fa delle viti ed alle viti intomo 
 
 Pendir' dell* uve, e r uve stillin vino, 
 Ch' io bevo, e poi dagli occhi ebro distillo ; 
 
 E 'n mezzo un vaso, ova in bel coro adarno, 
 
 Coro piti ch' altro lieto e piu divino, 
 Pestino I uve Amor, Bacco, e BatUlo ! 
 
 THE WINE-CUP BESPOKEN. 
 Air—" One bumper at parting.'* 
 
 Great Vulcan ! your dark smoky palace. 
 
 With these ingots of silver, I seek ; 
 And I beg you will make me a chalice, 
 
 Like the cup you once forged for the Greek. 
 Let no deeds of Bellona "the bloody" 
 
 Emblazon this goblet of mine ; 
 But a garland of grapes, ripe and ruddy, 
 
 In sculpture around it entwine. 
 
 The festoon (which you'll gracefully model) 
 
 Is, remember, but part of the whole ; 
 Lest, perchance, it might enter your noddle 
 
 To diminish the size of the bowl. 
 For though dearly what's deem'd ornamental, 
 
 And of art the bright symbols, I prize ; 
 Still I cling with a fondness parental 
 
 Round a cup of the true good old size. 
 
 Let me have neither sun, moon, nor planet, 
 
 Nor "the Bear," nor "the Twins, nor "the Goat: 
 Yet its use to each eye that may scan it, 
 
 Let a glance at its emblems denote. 
 Then away with Minerva and Venus ! 
 
 Not a rush for them both do I care ; 
 But let jolly old Father Silcnus, 
 
 Astride on his jackass, be there ! 
 
The Songs of Italy. 221 
 
 Let a dance of gay satyrs, in cadence 
 
 Disporting, be seen mid the fruit ; 
 And let Pan to a group of young maidens 
 
 Teach a new vintage-lay on his flute ; 
 Cupid, too, hand in hand with Bathyllus, 
 
 May purple his feet in the foam : 
 Long may last the red joys they distil us ! 
 
 Tho Love spread his winglets to roam ! 
 
 Each line of the above is pregnant with meaning ; and the images are so 
 gracfully arranged, that it would be an easy task for the artist to embody in 
 basso-relievo the conceptions of the poet. 
 
 The songsters of Italy have not confined themselves so exclusively to the 
 charms of the ladies and the fascinations of the flask, as not to have felt the 
 noble pulse of patriotic emotion, and sung the anthem of independence. 
 There is a glorious ode of Petrarch to his native land : and here is a well-known 
 poetic outburst from a truly spirited champion of his country's rights, the 
 enthusiastic but graceful and dignified Filicaia. 
 
 ALLA PATRIA. 
 
 Italia ! Italia ! o tu cui feo la sorte 
 
 Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai 
 
 Funesta dote d' infiniti guai 
 Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte ; 
 
 Deh ! fossi tu men bella, o almen piu forte 
 
 Onde assai piii ti pa ventasse, o assai 
 
 T' amasse men chi del tuo bello a' rai 
 Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte. 
 
 Che giu dall' Alp! non vedrei torrenti 
 
 Scender d" armati, ne di sangue tinta 
 Bever 1' onda del Po gallici armenti ; 
 
 Ne te vedrei del non tuo ferro cinta 
 Pugnar col braccio di straniere genti 
 Per servir sempre, o vincitrice o vinta ! 
 
 TO PROSTRATE ITALY. 
 
 Filicaia. 
 
 Hast though not been the nations* queen, fair Italy 1 though now 
 Chance gives to them the diadem that once adorn d thy brow t 
 Too beautiful for tyrant's rule, too proud for handmaid's duty — 
 Would thou hadst less of loveliness, or strength as well as beauty I 
 
 The fatal light of beauty bright with fell attraction shone, 
 Fatal to thee, for tyrants be the lovers thou hast won ! 
 That forehead fair is doom'd to wear its shame's degrading proof, 
 And slavery's print in damning tint stamp'd by a despot's hoof ! 
 
 Were strength and power, maiden ! thy dower, soon should that robber-band, 
 That prowls unbid thy vines amid, fly scourged from off that land ; 
 Nor wouldst thou fear yon foreigner, nor be condemn'd to see 
 Drink in the flow of classic Po barbarian cavalry. 
 
 Climate of art ! thy sons depart to gild a Vandal's throne ; 
 To battle led, their blood is shed in contests not their own ; — 
 Mix'd with yon horde, go draw thy sword, nor ask what cause 'tis for: 
 Thy lot is cast— slave to the last 1 conquer'd or conqueror ! 
 
Truly is Italy the " climate of art," as I have designated her in my version : 
 for even the peasantry, admitted as they constantly are, by the wise munificence 
 of the reigning princes, to all public collections of sculpture and painting, 
 evince an instinctive admiration of the capi d' opera of the most celebrated 
 masters, easily distinguishing them from the multitude of inferior productions 
 with which they are generally surrounded. This innate perception appears the 
 birthright of every son of Italy ; and I have often listened with surprise to the 
 observations of the artificers of Rome, and the dwellers of the neighbouring 
 hills, as they strolled through the Vatican gallery. There is one statue in 
 rather an unfrequented, but vast magnificent church, of the Eternal City, round 
 which I never failed to meet a group of enthusiastic admirers : it is the cele- 
 brated Moses ; in which Frenchmen have only found matter for vulgar jest, 
 but which the Italians view with becoming veneration. One of the best odes 
 in the language has been composed in honour of this glorious effort of Buona- 
 rotti's chisel. 
 
 IL MOSE DI MICHEL ANGELO. 
 
 Sonet to di Giambattista Zafipi. 
 
 Chi e costui, che in si gran pietra scolto 
 
 Siede, gigante, e le piil illustri e conte 
 
 Opre dell' arte avanza, e ha vive e pronte 
 Le labbra si che le parole ascolto? 
 
 Questi e Mos6 ; ben me *1 diceva il folto 
 Onor del mento, e '1 doppio raggio in fronte * 
 Questi e Mose, quando scendea dal monte, 
 
 E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto. 
 
 Tal era allor, che le sonante e vaste 
 
 Acque ei sospese ased' in torn o ; e tale 
 Quando il mar chiuse, e ne fe tomba altrui. 
 
 E voi, sue turbe, un rio vitello alzaste? 
 
 Alzata aveste immago a questa eguale ; ' 
 Ch' era men fallo 1' adorar costui. 
 
 ODE TO THE STATUE OF MOSES 
 
 A t the foot of the Mausoleum of Pope Julius II. in the Church of St. Peter ad 
 Vvicula, Rome — the Masterpiece of Michael Angela. 
 
 Statue ! whose giant limbs 
 Old Buonarotti plann'd, 
 And Genius carved with meditative hand, — 
 Thy dazzling radiance dims 
 The best and brightest boasts of Sculpture's favourite land. 
 
 What dignity adorns 
 That beard's prodigious sweep ! 
 That forehead, awful with mysterious horns 
 And cogitation deep, 
 Of some uncommon mind the rapt beholder warns. 
 
 In that proud semblance, well 
 My soul can recognize 
 The prophet fresh from converse with the sides ; 
 Nor is it hard to tell 
 The liberator's name,— the Guide of Israel. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 
 
 223 
 
 Well might the deep respond 
 Obedient to that voice. 
 When on the Red Sea shore he waved his wand, 
 And bade the tribes rejoice, 
 Saved from the yawning gulf and the Egyptian's bond 1 
 
 Fools ! in the wilderness 
 Ye raised a calf of gold 1 
 Had ye then worshipp'd what I now behold, 
 Your crime had been far less — 
 For ye had bent the knee to one of godlike mould ! 
 
 There is a striking boldness in the concluding stanza, warranted however by 
 the awful majesty oi the colossal figure, of which no plaster-cast can furnish 
 an adequate idea. 
 
 Smollett has given us a delightful "Ode to Leven Water," in which, with 
 enraptured complacency, he dwells on the varied beauties of the Scottish 
 stream, its flowery banks, its scaly denizens, and its numerous other aquatic ex- 
 cellencies. By way of contrast, it may not be unpleasant to peruse an abusive 
 and angry lyric addressed to the Tiber by an Italian poet, who appears to have 
 been disappointed in the uncouth appearance of that turbid river ; having 
 pictured it to his young imagination as an enchanting silvery flood. The 
 wrath of the bard is amusing ; but he is sometimes eloquent in his ire. 
 
 AL TEVERE. 
 
 Alessandro Guzdu 
 
 10 credea che in queste sponde 
 
 Sempre 1" onde 
 Gisser limpide ed amene ; 
 E che qui soave e lento 
 
 Stesse il vento, 
 £ che d' or fosser 1' arene. 
 
 Ma vagd lungi dal vero 
 
 II pensiero 
 In formar si hello il fiume ; 
 Or che in riva a lui mi seggio 
 
 Io ben veggio 
 
 11 sup volto. e il suo costume. 
 
 LINES ADDRESSED TO THE 
 TIBER. 
 
 By Alessandro Guidi, 
 
 Tiber ! my early dream, 
 My boyhood's vision of thy classic stream, 
 Had taught my mind to think 
 That over sands of gold 
 Thy limpid waters roll'd, 
 And ever-verdant laurels grew upon thy brink. 
 
 But far in other guise 
 The rude reality hath met mine eyes. 
 Here, seated on thy bank, 
 All desolate and drear 
 Thy margin doth appear, 
 With creeping weeds, and shrubs, and vegetation 
 rank. 
 
 Non con onde liete e chiare 
 
 Corre al mare ; 
 Passa torbido ed oscuro : 
 I suoi lidi austro percuote 
 
 £ gli scuote 
 Freddo turbine d' Arturo. 
 
 Fondly I fancied thine 
 The wave pellucid, and the Naiad's shrine, 
 ' In crystal grot below ; 
 But thy tempestuous course 
 Runs turbulent and hoarse, 
 And, swelling with wild wrath, thy wintry waters 
 flow. 
 
 Quanto e folle quella nave 
 
 Che non pave 
 I suoi vortici sdegnosi, 
 E non sa che dentro 1* acque 
 A lui piacgue 
 Di fondar perigli ascosi. 
 
 Upon thy bosom dark 
 Peril awaits the light confiding bark, 
 In eddying vortex swamp'd ; 
 Foul, treacherous, and deep, 
 Thy # winding waters sweep, 
 Enveloping their prey in dismal ruin prompt 
 
224 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 Suol trovarsi in suo cammino 
 
 Quivi il pino 
 Tra profonde anrpiecaverne;_ 
 D improwiso ei giunge at lito 
 Di Cocito 
 A solcar quell' onde inferne. 
 
 Quando in Sirio il Sol riluce, 
 
 E conduce 
 L' ore fervide inquiete, 
 Chi conforto al Tebro chiede 
 
 Ben' s' awede 
 Di cercarlo in grembo a Lete. 
 
 Ognun sa come spumoso, 
 
 Orgoglioso, 
 Sin con mar prende con tesa, 
 Vuol talor passar veloce 
 
 L* alt a foce, 
 Quando Teti e d' ira accessa. 
 
 Quindi awien ch' ei fa ritorno 
 
 Pien di scorno, 
 E s' awenta alle rapine : 
 Si divora il bosco, e il solco, 
 
 £ il bifolco 
 Nuota in cima alle ruine. 
 
 Quei frequenti illusbi allori, 
 
 Quegli onori 
 Per cui tan to egli si noma 
 Fregi son d' antichi eroi, 
 
 E non suoi, 
 E son doni alfin di Roma. 
 
 Lui fan chiaro il gran tragitto 
 
 Dell' invitto 
 Cor di Clelia al suol Romano, 
 E il guerrier che sopra il ponte 
 
 JL' alta fronte 
 Tenne incontro al reToscano. 
 
 Fu di Romolo la gente 
 
 Che il tridente 
 Di Nettuno in man gli porse ; 
 
 Ebbe allor del mar 1' impero, 
 
 w Ed altera 
 Trionfando intorno corse. 
 
 Ma il crudel, che il tutto oblia, 
 
 E desia 
 Di spezzar mai sempre il freno, 
 Spesso a Roma insulti rende, 
 
 Ed offende 
 L'ombre auguste all' urne in seno. 
 
 Fast in thy bed is sunk 
 The mountain pine-tree's broken trunk, 
 Aim'd at the galley's keel ; 
 And well thy wave can waft 
 Upon that broken shaft 
 The barge, whose sunken wreck thy bosom will 
 conceal. 
 
 The dog-star's sultry power. 
 The summer heat, the noontide's fervid hour. 
 
 That fires the mantling blood, 
 
 Yon cautious swain can't urge 
 
 To tempt thy dangerous surge, 
 Or cool his limbs within thy dark insidious flood. 
 
 I've mark'd thee in thy pride, 
 When struggle fierce thy disemboguing tide 
 With Ocean's monarch held ; 
 But, quickly overcome 
 By Neptune's masterdom. 
 Back thou hast fled as oft, ingloriously repell'd. 
 
 Often, athwart the fields 
 A giant's strength thy flood redundant wields, 
 Bursting above its brims- 
 Strength that no dyke can check : 
 Dire is the harvest-wreck ! 
 Buoyant, with lofty horns, th' affrighted bullock 
 swims ! 
 
 But still thy proudest boast, 
 Tiber ! and what brings honour to thee most, 
 Is, that thy waters roll 
 Fast by th' eternal home 
 
 Of Glory's daughter, Rome ; 
 And that thy billows bathe the sacred Capitol. 
 
 Famed is thy stream for her, 
 Clelia, thy current's virgin conqueror, 
 And him who stemm'd the march 
 Of Tuscany's proud host, 
 When, firm at honour's post. 
 He waved his blood-stain'd blade above the 
 broken arch ! 
 
 Of Romulus the sons, 
 To torrid Africans, to frozen Huns, 
 Have taught thy name, O flood ! 
 And to that utmost verge. 
 Where radiantly emerge 
 Apollo's car of flame and golden-footed stud. 
 
 For so much glory lent, 
 Ever destructive of some monument, 
 Thou makest foul return ; 
 Insulting with thy wave 
 Each Roman hero's grave. 
 And Scipio's dust.that rills yon consecrated urn t 
 
 Turn we now to Dante. I have always been of opinion, that the terza 
 rima in which he wrote was so peculiar a feature of the language, and a form of 
 verse so exclusively adapted to the Italian idiom, as to render any attempt to 
 translate him in the same rhymed measure a dangerous experiment* I think 
 Byron, in adopting the triplet metre in his " Prophecy of Dante," has failed to 
 
 • [Longfellow's masterly translation of the whole of the Divina Commedia in terza 
 rima has since then, as Mahony would have been the first to acknowledge, disproved 
 
 this triumphantly.] 
 
The Songs of Italy. 225 
 
 render it acceptable to our English ear. The " sonnet " is also, in my humble 
 judgment, an unnatural poetic structure, and as little suited to our northern 
 languages as the Italian villa-style of Palladio to our climate. No English 
 sonnet has ever gained popular celebrity. There is a lengthened but not 
 unmusical sort of line, in which I think the old Florentine's numbers might 
 sweep along with something like native dignity. 
 
 LA PORTA DEL INFERNO. 
 
 Dante, Cant. III. 
 
 "Per me si va nella citta dolente, 
 
 Per me si va nell' eterno dolore. 
 
 Per me si va tra la pbrduta gente. 
 
 • • * * 
 
 Dinanzi a me non fur cose create, 
 se non eterne ed io eterno duro, 
 Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' inthate." 
 
 Queste parole, di colore oscuro, 
 
 Vid' io scritte al sommo d' una porta 
 Perch' io, " Maestro ! il senso lor m' e duro." 
 
 Ed egli a me come persona accorta, 
 " Qui si convien lasciar ogni sospetto, 
 Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta. 
 
 Noi semvenuti al luogo ov' i' t' o detto, 
 
 Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose, 
 Ch' hanno perduto 1 ben' dell' intelletto. " 
 
 E poiche la sua mano alia mia pose, 
 Con tieto volto, ond io mi confortai. 
 Mi mise dentro alle secrete cose ; 
 
 Quivi sospiri, pianti, ed alti guai 
 
 Risonavan per 1* aere senza stelle, 
 Perch' io nel cominciar ne lagrimai. 
 
 Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, 
 Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira, 
 Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle, 
 
 Facevano un tumulto il qual s' aggira 
 
 Sempre 'n quell' aria senza tempo tinta, 
 Come 1' arena quando '1 turbo spira. 
 
 Ed io, ch' avea d' orror la testa cinta, 
 Dissi, " Maestro, che e quel' ch' i odo 1 
 E che gent' e che par nel duol si vinta ? " 
 
 Ed egli a me : "Questo misero modo 
 
 Tengon I' anime triste di coloro, 
 Che visser senza infamia e senza lodo, 
 
 Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro 
 Degli angeli che non furon ribelli, 
 Ne fur fideli a Die ma per se foro. 
 
 Cacciarli i ciel* per non esser men belli, 
 
 Ne lo profondo inferno gli riceve, 
 Ch' alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d' elli." 
 
 Ed io : " Maestro, che e tanto greve 
 A lor che lamentar gli fa si forte? 
 Rispose : "Dicerolti molto breve. 
 
226 The- Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Quest! non hanno speranza di morte, 
 
 E la lor cieca vita e tanto bassa 
 Che 'nvidiosi son d' ogni altra sorte. 
 
 Fama di lor il mondo esser non lassa ; 
 Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna, 
 Non ragionam' di lor, ma guarda e passa ! " 
 
 THE PORCH OF HELL. 
 
 Dante. 
 
 "Seek ye the path traced bye the wrath of God for sinfull mortals? 
 Of the reprobate this is the gate, these are the gloomy portals ! 
 For sinne and crime from the birth of tyme dugge was this Gulph Infernal. 
 Guest ! let all Hope on this threshold stop ! here reigns Despair Eternal," 
 
 I read with tears these characters— tears shed on man's behalf; 
 Each word seem'd fraught with painful thought, the lost soul's epitaph. 
 Turning dismay 'd, "O mystic shade ! " I cried, " my kindly Mentor, 
 Of comfort, say, can no sweet ray these dark dominions enter t " 
 
 " My son ! " replied the ghostly guide, " this is the dark abode 
 
 Of the guilty dead — alone they tread hell's melancholy road. 
 
 Brace up thy nerves ! this hour deserves that Mind should have control, 
 
 And bid avaunt fears that would haunt the clay-imprison'd soul. 
 
 Mine be the task, when thou shalt ask, each mystery to solve ; 
 Anon for us dark Erebus back shall its gates revolve — 
 Hell shall disclose its deepest woes, each punishment, each pang, 
 Saint hath reveal'd, or eye beheld, or Aame-tongued prophet sang." 
 
 Gates were unroll'd of iron mould— a dismal dungeon yawn'd ! 
 We pass'd — we stood— 'twas hell we view'd ! — eternity had dawn'd ! 
 Space on our sight burst infinite — echoes were heard remote ; 
 Shrieks loud and drear startled our ear, and stripes incessant smote. 
 
 Onward we went. The firmament was starless o'er our head, 
 Spectres swept by inquiringly— clapping their hands they fled ! 
 Borne on the blast strange whispers pass'd ; and ever and anon 
 Athwart the plain, like hurricane, God's vengeance would come on ! 
 
 Then sounds, breathed low, of gentler woe soft on our hearing stole ; 
 Captives so meek fain would I seek to comfort and console : 
 " O let us pause and learn the cause of so much grief, and why 
 Saddens the air of their despair the unavailing sigh ! ' 
 
 " My son ! Heaven grants them utterance in plaintive notes of woe ; 
 In tears their grief, may find relief, but hence they never go. 
 Fools ! they believed that if they lived blameless and vice eschew'd, 
 God would dispense with excellence, and give beatitude. 
 
 They died ! but naught of virtue brought to win their Maker's praise ; 
 No deeds of worth the page set forth that chronicled their days. 
 Fix'd is their doom — eternal gloom ! to mourn for what is past, 
 And weep aloud amid that crowd with whom their lot is cast. 
 
 One fate they share with spirits fair, who, when rebellion shook 
 God's holy roof, remain'd aloof, nor part whatever took ; 
 Drew not the sword against their Lord, nor yet upheld his throne : 
 Could God for this make perfect bliss theirs when the fight was won? 
 
 The world knows not their dreary lot, nor can assuage their pangs. 
 Or cure the curse of fell remorse, or blunt the tiger's fangs. 
 Mercy disdains to loose their chains— the hour of grace has been ! 
 Son ! let that class unheeded pass— unwept, though not unseen." 
 
The Songs of Italy. 227 
 
 The very singular and striking moral inculcated by Dante in this episode, 
 where he consigns to hopeless misery those "good easy souls" who lead a 
 worthless career of selfishness, and are, as we express it familiarly in Ireland, 
 neither good for " King nor country," is deserving of serious attention, and 
 contains in its simple exposition, 
 
 Much that may give us pause, if ponder'd fittingly," 
 
 From Dante's "Hell," the transition to the "Wig of Father Roger Besco- 
 vich " may appear abrupt ; but I never terminate a paper in gloomy or doleful 
 humour. Wherefore I wind up this first dissertation on Italian song by a 
 specimen of playful poetry, taken from a very scarce work printed at Venice in 
 1804, and entitled "Le Opere Poetiche dell' Abate Giulio Cesare Cordara," 
 ex-Jesuit, who had been before the suppression ex-historiographer to the Society, 
 and connected by long friendship with his confrere^ the scientific and accom- 
 plished Boscovich, concerning whom there is a short notice, if I recollect rightly, 
 in one of my papers entitled " Literature and the Jesuits," to which I refer my 
 reader, should he be inclined to know more about the proprietor of the wig 
 in question. Nor will a Latin translation of tbisjeu d esprit be unacceptable, 
 I trust, to lovers of polyglot poetry. 
 
 ALLA PERRUCCA DEL PADRE RUGGERO BOSCOVICH. 
 
 Capitolo dal Gesuita Giulio Cordara t dci Conti de Calamemdra. 
 
 O crinc, o crin che un ill fosti stromento 
 
 Di foil! amori, e sol femminea cura, 
 Or sei del mio Rugger strano ornamento ; 
 
 Conosci tu 1' eccelsa tua ventura, 
 E ti saresti mai immaginato 
 Di fare al mondo una si gran figura ? 
 
 Qual che si fosse il capo in cui sei nato, 
 
 Fosse pur di leggiadro e nobil volto, 
 Certo non fosti mai tanto onorato. 
 
 Di vaga donna in fronte eri piu colto ; 
 Ma i dl passavi neghittosi e vili 
 A un lucido cristallo ognor rivolto. 
 
 Sol pensier vani, e astuzie femmmilt 
 
 Coprivi allor, e insidiosa rete 
 Co' tuoi formavi innanellati fili. 
 
 Quando costretto le follie consuete 
 A sentir d' un' amante che delira, 
 
 Quando smanie a veder d' ire inqmete. 
 
 Forse talor ti si awentd con ira 
 
 A scapigliarti un' invida rivale, > 
 Come femmina suol quando s' adira ; 
 
 Infin, nido di grilli originate, 
 . Testimonio di frodi e di menzogne,- 
 T' aveva fatto il tuo destin fatale. 
 
 Ne i fior vermigli e 1' odorate sogne, 
 
 Ne la Candida polve, ond' eri asperso, 
 Faeean compenso a t ante tue vergogne. 
 
 Ma come fatto sei da te diverso, 
 Dacche reciso dalla vil cervice, 
 Di non tuo capo in crin, fo sti converso. 
 
228 The Works of Father ProuU 
 
 Fra tutte le perrucche or sei felice, 
 
 Che sebbcn' torta, incoka, e mal contesta, 
 (Come pur troppo immaginar ne lice), 
 
 Puoi perb gloriarti, e fame festa 
 Che altra non fu giammai dal ciel eletto 
 A ricoprir si veneranda testa ! 
 
 ODE TO THE WIG OF FATHER BOSCOVICH, 
 
 THE CELEBRATED ASTRONOMER. 
 
 By Giulio Cordara, Sac. Jesu, 
 
 With awe I look on that peruke. 
 
 Where Learning is a lodger, 
 And think, whene er I see that hair 
 Which now you wear, some ladye fair 
 
 Had worn it once, dear Roger ! 
 
 On empty skull most beautiful 
 
 Appear 'd, no doubt, those locks, 
 Once the bright grace of pretty face ; 
 Now far more proud to be allow'd 
 
 To deck thy "knowledge-box." 
 
 Condemn'd to pass before the glass 
 Whole hours each blessed morning, 
 
 Twas desperate long, with curling-tong 
 
 And tortoise-shell, to have a belle 
 Thee frizzing and adorning. 
 
 Bright ringlets set as in a net. 
 
 To catch us men like fishes ! 
 Your every lock conceal'd a stock 
 Of female wares — love's pensive cares, 
 
 Vain dreams, and futile wishes ! 
 
 That ckevelure has caused, I'm sure, 
 
 Full many a lovers' quarrel ; 
 Then it was deck'd with flowers select 
 And myrtle-sprig : but now a wig, 
 
 'Tis circled with a laurel ! 
 
 Where fresh and new at first they grew, 
 Of whims, and tricks, and fancies. 
 
 Those locks at best were but a nest : — 
 
 Their being spread on learned head 
 Vastly their worth enhances. 
 
 From flowers exempt, uncouth, unkempt- 
 Matted, entangled, thick t 
 Mourn not the loss of curl or gloss — 
 Tis in/jra dig: Thou art the wig 
 Of Roger Boscovich t 
 
 DE FICTA COMA ROGERI BOSCOVICHII. 
 
 Elegia. 
 
 Caesarles ! vanum vesani nuper amoris 
 Forsitan illicium, curaque faeminea, 
 
 Grande mei nuper gestamen facta Roger!, 
 Novisti an sortis fata secunda tux T 
 
Sper&stine istud laudis contingere oilmen, 
 Mortalesque inter tam fore conspicua? 
 
 Culta magis fueras intonsae in fronte pnellac, 
 Sed ton suerunt turpiter ire dies ; 
 
 Tunc coram specula contorta, retorta gemebas, 
 Dum per mille modos futile pergit opus. 
 
 Nunc meliore loco (magnum patris ornamentum), 
 Esto sacerdotis, non muliebris, honos ! 
 
 O quoties ferro immiti vlbrata dolebas, 
 Ut fieres vafras cassis ad insidias ! 
 
 Audlsti quoties fatui deliria amantis, 
 Vidisti et caecus quidquid ineptit amor ! 
 
 Forsan et experta es furias rivalis arnica;, 
 Dum gravis in cirros insilit ira tuos. 
 
 Quippe tuum fuerat lugubre ab origine # fatmr', 
 Esses ut tegmen fraudibus atque dolis, 
 
 Utque fores nidus gerris male plcnus ineptis, 
 Tale ministerium fata dedere tibi ; 
 
 Nee compensabant dirae mala sortis odores, 
 Unguenta, et pulvis vel nive candidior. 
 
 Nunc data tam docto munimen forte cerebro, 
 Sis impexa licet, sis licet horridula, 
 
 Sume triumphatrix animos hinc jure superbos. 
 Quod tantum foveas ambittosa caput ! 
 
 There is extant among the poems of Cardura a sad lamentation, occasioned 
 by the fact of this wig having been sold, after Boscovich's death, to a Jew 
 broker — 
 
 " Venduta, o caso perfido e reo ! 
 Per quindici bajocchi, ad un Hebreo ! " 
 
 from whom it was purchased by a farmer, and ultimately fixed on a pole, in a 
 cabbage-garden, to fright the birds, "per spaventar gli uccelli," '—But I feel 
 an unusual drowsiness to-night, and cannot pursue the subject. Molly 1 bring 
 my nightcap 1 
 
 * ■ 9 Z 
 
230 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Sed neque Medorum sylvs, ditissima terra, 
 Necpulcher Ganges, atque auro turbidus Hermus, 
 Laudibus Italiae certent : non Bactra, neque Indi, 
 Totaque thuriferis Panchai'a pinguis arenis." — VlKC. Ceorg. II. 
 
 We've met with glees "from the Chines/el" translations "from the Persian;" 
 
 Sanscrit we've had, from Hydrabad, Sir William Jones's version. 
 
 We've also seen (in a magazine) nice jawbreakers "from Schiller; " 
 
 And "tales " by folks, who give us "jokes," omitting "from yoe Miller." 
 
 Of plain broad Scotch a neat hotch-potch Hogg sends us from the Highlands. 
 
 There are songs, too, "from the Hindu," and "from the Sandwich Islands." 
 
 "I'is deemed most wise to patronize Munchausen, Goethe, Ossian ; 
 
 To make a stand for "fatherland," or some other land of Goshen. 
 
 Since we must laud things from abroad, and smile on foreign capers, 
 
 The land for me is Italy, with her SONGS "from the Prout Pafers."—0. Y. 
 
 There has arisen of late years in England a remarkable predilection for the 
 literature of the continent. The establishment of that excellent periodical the 
 
 XII. 
 
 * Songs of $: 
 
 (Frase^s Magazine, March t 1835.) 
 
 [The number of Rcgina containing Prouf s second and concluding batch of the Songs 
 of Italy, gave as the fifty-eighth Literary Portrait, Croquis' delightful picture of Piene 
 Jean Beranger, seated in slippered ease by. his fireside, with grapes, and pineapples, 
 and wine on the table at his elbow — altogether presenting him to view very much as the 
 Editor of the present volume has described him elsewhere (see " Footprints on the 
 Road," p. 51), as he might well be imagined, with fairies playing at hide-and-seek 
 between his slippers, or a stray Cupid secreting itself on the. sly in one of his pockets, 
 his cheek flushed with the praise rather than with the quaffing of the delicious draughts 
 of the love, wine, and glory he had sung of: that old man in the old coat— slipshod and 
 bald-pated— being the song-writer of his age, the boast of French literature, and the 
 darling of the French population. Maclise's portrait of Beranger was reprinted from 
 Fraser, in 1836, as an appropriate embellishment to the tenth Prout Paper on the first 
 collective publication of the " Reliques." As original illustrations to the present twelfth 
 instalment of the posthumous effusions of the Parish Priest of Watergrasshill, the same 
 artist depicted first of all how*' He (the Father) dieth and is chested "— Mahony in the 
 picture thus entitled being represented as seated in his library by the side of the wide- 
 open and well-filled coffer, holding in his hand some of the precious manuscripts — his 
 housekeeper the while replenishing from the kettle a capacious jug upon a table laden 
 with fruit, wine, and whisky ; while in another drawing the draughtsman revealed "The 
 Gift of Venus," to wit, the presentation, through the hand of Cupid, of a swan-quill to 
 a dreaming lyrist.] 
 
 J 
 
The Songs of Italy. 23 1 
 
 Foreign Quarterly is one of the many symptoms of this chronic distemper of 
 the public mind ; and the statistic returns of his majesty's custom-house, pre- 
 senting a steady progression in the import of wit and thought from beyond 
 seas, though highly gratifying to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have 
 created considerable jealousy among our starving manufacturers of printed 
 books at home. The great annual fair at Leipsic is, we are sorry to state, 
 drawing more and more the attention of our booksellers; and "the Row" is 
 doomed to experience all the manifold and often-commented-upon grievances, 
 abuse, and abomination of a "foreign supremacy.'" Nor are our historians 
 and poets, our artisans in the novel-making line (male and female), our humble 
 cobblers at the dramatic buskin, and our industrious hodnren from the sister 
 island who contribute to build Cyclopaedias, the only labouring poor thrown 
 out of employment by this unjust preference bestowed On a class of operatives 
 totally unknown to the trade ; but even our brothers in poverty and genius, 
 the old English ballad-singers, blind fiddlers, and pipers, have been compelled 
 to give place to the barrel-organ, a mere piece of machinery, which has super- 
 seded industry and talent. The patronage of the rich no longer flows into the 
 accustomed and recognized channels; the old national claimants on public 
 generosity, sailors with wooden legs and broken-down " match-venders," have 
 given way to Polish " Counts " and Bavarian " broom-girls." This is a deplor- 
 able state of things, but nevertheless a true picture. 
 
 Matters must have gone hard with Tom Moore, since we learn with deep 
 feelings of compassion that he is driven to compile a " History of Ireland ; " 
 ostensibly for Dinny Lardner's "Cyclopaedia," but we fear eventually for the 
 grocers. Theodore Hook is determined to make hay while the sun shines, and 
 has taken " the Bull" by the horns : we are to have three vols. 8vo, of " rost 
 bif." Alas, Theodorick, hast thou never ruminated over the axiom of Boileau — 
 
 " Un diner rechauffe ne valut jamais rien ?" 
 
 Lady Blessington and Lady Morgan, aware of the prevailing epidemic, have 
 just now come out with sketches of continental manners : the former graceful, 
 dignified, and rational, as she is ever wont ; the latter flippant, shallow, and 
 pedantic— incapable of appreciating the social circle abroad, and degrading by 
 vulgar caricature the circle from which she sprang at home. So convinced is 
 our friend Tom Campbell of the utter hopelessness of giving to public taste 
 any other save a foreign direction, that he has gone to Algiers determined on 
 exploring the recondite literature of the Bedouins. We understand that he 
 has made surprising progress in the dialects of Fez, Tunis, and Mauritania ; 
 and that, like Ovid among the Scythians, he has astonished the natives with 
 his proficiency — 
 
 " Jam didici Getic5 Sarmaticeque Ioqui." 
 
 Fears are entertained lest he may venture too far into the interior of the 
 country, and become a captive to some barbarian prince, who may detain him 
 as a laureate: We hope not. Our partiality for so pleasing an author gene- 
 rates no wish to hear of his being " bound in Morocco." 
 
 And still even the taste for foreign belles lettres is subject to variation and 
 vicissitude. The gorgeous imaginings of oriental fancy, of which the "Arabian 
 Nights' Entertainments" and the elegant eclogues of Collins were the dawn, have 
 had their day : the sun of the East has gone down in the western tale of the 
 fa&uiorshippers to rise no more. A surfeit is the most infallible cure for an 
 inordinate love of sugar-plums; and when we recollect the voracity with which 
 ' ' Lalla Rookh " was at first devoured, and the subsequent disrelish of the " read- 
 ing public" for that most luscious volume, we become convinced that authors 
 have to cater for the cravings of an overgrown child, waxing capricious from 
 
indulgence, and ever calling out for change. There is an end to the run of 
 popularity once enjoyed by camels, houris, bulbuls, silver bells, silver veils, 
 cinnamon groves, variegated lamps, and such other stock items as made up the 
 oriental show-box. This leads to a melancholy train of thought : we sometimes 
 detect ourselves " wandering in dreams " to that period of our schoolboy remi- 
 niscences when Tommy was in high feather, a poetical rara avis — 
 
 "And oft when alone at the close of the year, 
 We think, — Is the nightingale singing there yet ? 
 Are the roses still sweet by the calm Bendemeer ?" 
 
 He has since tried his hand at Upper Canada and Lower Egypt — he has spent 
 some " evenings in Greece; but " disastrous twilight" is fast approaching, and 
 the " chain of silence " (whatever that ornament may be) hangs over him. 
 
 We would recommend a joint-stock association of poor and enterprising 
 authors, for the purpose of exploring that unvisited portion of the north-eastern 
 hemisphere lying between the wall of China and the Arctic circle. The "liter- 
 ature of the Calmuck Tartars " would not fail to become a general favourite ; 
 and the tide of patronage, which under the influence of the Foreign Quarterly 
 has been flowing towards New Zealand and Polynesia, might perhaps in the 
 ebbings of that capricious flood visit the MSS. of Thibet and the elucubrations 
 of poets in Kamskatka. " Horse Sinicse " found favour in the " barbarian eye ; " 
 and Viscount Kingsboro' has been smitten with the brunette muses of Mexico. 
 Lord Byron set up " Hebrew Melodies," and had a season of it; but Murray 
 was soon compelled to hang the noble poet's Jew's harp on the willows 
 of modern Babylon. We recollect when there was a rage for German and 
 High Dutch poetry. The classics of Greece and Rome, with their legitimate 
 descendants, those of France, Italy, and England, were flung aside for the 
 writers of Scandinavia and the poets of the Danube. Tired of nectar and 
 ambrosia, my public sat down to a platter of sourcrdut with Kant, Goethe, 
 and Klopstock. The crude chimaeras of transcendental and transrhenane phi- 
 losophy found admirers ! — 'twas the reign of the nightmare — 
 
 " Omnigenumque Defim monstra, et latrator Anubis, 
 Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam." — sEneid. VIII. 
 
 But latterly Teutonic authors are at a sad discount ; and, in spite of the Ger- 
 manic confederacy of quacks and dunces, common sense has resumed its 
 empire. Not that we object to the introduction of foreign literature amongst 
 us, provided we get productions of genius and taste : far from considering it 
 as derogatory to the national pride, we hail the strangers with enthusiastic 
 welcome. The Romans in their palmiest day of conquest gave a place in the 
 Pantheon to the gods of each province they had added to their empire ; but 
 they took care to select the most graceful and godlike of these foreign deities, 
 eschewing whatever was monstrous, and leaving to the natives the comfort of 
 possessing each idol too ugly to figure in company with Apollo. Turn we now 
 to Prout and his gleanings in the fertile field of his selection, ' ' Hesperii. in 
 magnti." 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 233 
 
 Watergrasshill, Feb. 1830. 
 
 I resume to-night the pleasing topic of Italian minstrelsy. In conning over 
 a paper on this subject penned by me a few evenings ago, I do not feel, on 
 second perusal, quite satisfied with the tenor of my musings : symptoms of 
 drowsiness are but too perceptible in that performance of unhappy memory. 
 The start from the fountain of Vaucluse was pretty fair ; but after gliding 
 along the classic Po and the majestic Tiber, it was an unseemly termination of 
 the devious and meandering course of that essay to engulf itself in the cavity 
 of an astronomer's bob-wig. The peruke of Roger Boscovich was an unlucky 
 " cul de sac," into which I must have strolled under some somewhat of sinister 
 guidance. Did Molly put an extra glass into my vesper bowl ? 'Twas a 
 boisterous night, and the old hag might have justified her pia.fra.us by that 
 usual canonical plea, the " inclemency ' ' of the weather. For the future I'll mix 
 for myself. 
 
 When the frost is abroad and the moon is up, and naught disturbs the 
 serenity of this mountain wilderness, and the bright cheerful burning of the 
 fragrant turf-fire betokens the salubrity of the circumambient atmosphere, I 
 experience a buoyancy of spirit and a certain intellectual vigour unknown to 
 the grovelling sensualist or the decrepit votary of fashion's enervating pursuits. 
 To them rarely does it occur to relish that highest state of human enjoyment, 
 expressed with a curious felicity in the old ecclesiastical adage, " Mens sana in 
 corpore sano." Their nights are spent "in toys, and lust, and wine;" but, 
 could they relish with blind old Milton the nocturnal visitings of poesy, or feel 
 the deep enthusiasm of those ancient hermits who kept the desert awake with 
 canticles of praise, or with that oldest of poets, the Arabian Job, commune 
 with heaven, and raise their thoughts to the beneficent Being "who giveth 
 Songs in the night" (Job, c. xxxv. v. 10), they would acknowledge that mental 
 luxuries are cheaply purchased by the relinquishment of grosser delights, and 
 that there are ecstasies undreamt of in their Epicurean philosophy. A Greek 
 writer (Eustathius) gives to Night the epithet of twppovn, or " parent of bappy 
 thoughts ; " and the " Noctes Atticse " of Aulus Gellius, noble prototype of the 
 numerous elucubrations rejoicing in a similar title, from the " millc et une 
 vuits" to the " nolle romane al sepolcro degli Scipioni," from Young's plaintive 
 " Night Thoughts" to the " Ambrosian Gossip'' of Timothy Tickler,— all bear 
 testimony to the genial influence of the stilly hour. The solemn bird of Minerva 
 was the symbol of wisdom, not from any sagacious manifestations of a prim& 
 facie nature, but from the mere circumstance of its midnight predilections, and 
 its contempt for the vulgarities of day; and Horace sighs with becoming 
 emotion when he calls to his recollection the glorious banquetings of thought 
 and genius of which the sable goddess was the ministrant. O noctes ccenaque 
 De&m I The accomplished Tertullian, whose writings Tom Moore has had the 
 impertinence to call "harsh, muddy, and unintelligible" (because above his 
 pigmy comprehension), tells us, in the secondchapter of the immortal "Apology" 
 that the early Christians spent the night in pious melodies, and that morning 
 often dawned upon their ' ' songs "—antel-ucanis horis canebant. He refers to 
 the testimony of Pliny (in the celebrated letter to Proconsul Trajan) for the 
 truth of his statement. But, with all these matters staring him in the face, 
 Tommy, led away by his universal levity, and addressing some foolish girl as 
 giddy as himself, thinks nothing of the sinful proposal " to steal a few hours 
 from the night, my dear I" a sacrilege which, in his eye, no doubt, amounted 
 only to a sort of petty larceny ; he having stolen, in the course of his 
 " rogueries," property of a far more valuable description.* But Tom Camp- 
 bell, with that philosophic turn of mind for which he is so remarkable, con- 
 nects the idea of inspiration with the period of ' ' sunset ; " the evening of life, 
 
 * Vide Prout, in loco, passim. — O. Y. 
 
according to the soothsayer of " Lochiel," never fails to bring " mystical lore." 
 Imprest with these convictions, the father of Italian song, in the romantic 
 dwelling which he had built unto himself on the sloping breast of the Euga- 
 neian hills, spent the decline of his days in the contemplation of loftiest theeries, 
 varying his nocturnal devotions with the sweet sound of the lute, and rapt in 
 the alternate elysium of piety and poetry. In these ennobling raptures he 
 exhaled the sweet perfume of his mind's immortal essence, which gradually 
 disengaged itself from its vase of clay. To use the beautiful words of the 
 elegiast on "A Country Churchyard," "oblivion stole upon his vestal lamp :" 
 and one morning he was found dead in his library, reclining in an arm-chair, 
 his head resting on a book, soth July, 1374. 
 
 I know not whether the enviable fate of Petrarcha may not be mine. My 
 career has not been unlike his, as the revelations of yon chest, the posthumous 
 disclosures of my history, the narrative of my sojourn in France and Italy, of 
 my early affections and blighted hopes, may one day make manifest. But, 
 like him, I find in literature and the congenial admixture of holier meditations 
 a solace and comfort in old age. In his writings, in his loves, in his sorrows, 
 in the sublime aspirations of his soul, I can freely sympathize. Laura is to me 
 the same being of exalted excellence and cherished purity ; and, in echoing 
 from this remote Irish hill the strains of his immortal lyre, I hope to share the 
 blessing which he has bequeathed to all who should advance and extend the 
 fame of his beloved : 
 
 " Benedette sian le voce tante ch' io, 
 Chiamando il nome di mia donna ho sparte, 
 £ benedette start' tutte le charte, 
 Ove io fama ne actiuisto." 
 
 If my "papers" can promote his wishes in this respect, I shall die happy. 
 Disengaged from all the ties that bind others to existence, solitary, childless, 
 unmolested by the busy cares of this world, what occupation more suitable to 
 my remnant of life could I possibly adopt than the exercise of memory and 
 mind of which these compositions are the fruit ? When I shall seek my lonely 
 pillow to-night, after "outwatching the bear," when exhausted nature will 
 compel me to terminate this second chapter of Italian reminiscences, I shall 
 cheerfully consign another document to " the chest, " and bid it go rejoin in that 
 miscellaneous aggregate the numerous mental progeny of my old age. This 
 " chest " may be the coffin of my thoughts or the cradle of my renown. In it 
 my meditations may be nursed and matured by some kind editor into ultimate 
 strength and manhood, to walk the world and tell of their parentage, or else it 
 may prove a silent sarcophagus, where they may moulder in gradual decay, 
 and perish with the hand that traced them for posterity. But in either case I 
 am resigned. I envy not the more fortunate candidates for public favour : I 
 hold enmity to none. And as for my readers, if I have any, all I wish or expect 
 on their part is that they may exhibit towards a feeble garrulous old man the 
 same kindly disposition he is sure he feels for them. 'Ootjv Siavoiav cyw Sia- 
 tiXui s\ul> 7rooc travTts vjuas TOirauTTjl/ SiaTiXiffTat fioi trpov tovtoi/i tqv 
 aytova. (Aii/jiotrd. iript crst^nv.) 
 
 This reference to the beautiful exordium of that grand masterpiece of Greek 
 eloquence, in which the Athenian orator vindicates his title to the crown of 
 gold presented by his admiring fellow-citizens, leads me by a natural transition 
 to a very memorable event in Petrarcha's life, that splendid ebullition of 
 national enthusiasm, when the senators of Rome, at the suggestion of Robert, 
 King of Naples, and with the applause and concurrence of all the free states of 
 Italy, led the poet in triumph to the Roman Capitol, and placed on his venerable 
 
head a wreath of laurel. The coronation of the laureate, who first bore the 
 title, and first received that proud and flattering distinction, is too important a 
 circumstance to be lightly glanced at in a paper like this. The ingenious German 
 novelist, Madame de Stael (a lady who has done more to give vogue and 
 currency to her country's literature than the whole schiittery of Dutch author- 
 ship and the " lanttstolje " of Teutonic writers), in her beautiful romance of 
 "Corinna," has seized with avidity on the incident, and has made it one of the 
 most striking features of her narrative. 
 
 Concerning this triumphant reception of our songster by the Roman people, 
 and his solemn incoronation on that rock of imperishable glory, Capitoli 
 immobile saxum, we have from the pen of an eye-witness, Guy d'Arezzo, the 
 most circumstantial details, told in style most quaint, and with sundry charac- 
 teristic comments. In those days of primeval simplicity, in the absence of 
 every topic of excitement (for the crusades had well nigh wom themselves out 
 of popular favour), the novelty and iclat attendant on this occurrence attracted 
 the attention of contemporary quidnuncs, and the proceedings possessed a sort 
 of European interest. The name of the " Laureate " (a title which, after cen- 
 turies of eventful vicissitude, is now worn by the venerable dweller of the lakes, 
 the patriarch Southey) was then first proclaimed, amid the shouts of applauding 
 thousands, on the seven hills of the Eternal City, and echoed back with enthu- 
 siasm from the remotest corners of Christendom. In a subsequent age, when 
 the same honour, with the same imposing ceremonial, was to be conferred on 
 Tasso, I doubt whether the event would have enlisted to the same extent the 
 sympathies of Europe, or the feelings of the Italian public. It were bootless, 
 however, to dwell on the probabilities of the case, for Death interposed his veto, 
 and stretched out his bony hand between the laurel wreath and the poor maniac's 
 brow, who, on the very eve of the day fixed for his ovation, expired on the 
 Janiculum hill, in the romantic hermitage of St. Onuphrio. Oft have I sat 
 under that same cloister wall, where he loved to bask in the mild ray of the 
 setting sun, and there, with Rome's awful volume spread out before me, 
 pondered on the frivolity of fame. The ever-enduring vine, with its mellow 
 freight dependent from the antique pillars, clustered above my head ; while at 
 my feet lay the flagstone that once covered his remains; and " Ossa TORquATl 
 Tasso," deep carved on the marble floor, abundantly fed the meditative mind, 
 Petrarcha's grave I had previously visited in the mountain hamlet of Arqua, 
 during my rambles through Lombardy ; and while I silently recalled the in- 
 scription thereon, I breathed for both the prayer that it contains — 
 
 " Fkigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarce 
 suscipb virgo parens animam ! sate* vikgine parce ! 
 fessaque jam terr1s, cceli requiescat in arcs." 
 
 But a truce to this moralizing train of thought, and turn we to the gay scene 
 described by Guy d'Arezzo. Be it then understood, that on the morning of 
 Easter Sunday, April 15, 1341, a period of the ecclesiastical year at which 
 crowds of pilgrims visited the shrine of the apostles, and Rome was thronged 
 with the representatives of every Christian land, after the performance of a 
 solemn high mass in the old Basilica of St. Peter's (for religion in those days 
 mixed itself up with every public act, and sanctified every undertaking), the 
 decree of Robert, King of Naples, was duly read, setting forth as how, after a 
 diligent examination and trial in all the departments of poetry and all the 
 
 * The Rev. Laurence Sterne, in his very reputable work called " Tristram Shandy," 
 has the brazen effrontery to translate the curse of Ernulphus, Ex autoritate Dei et 
 Virginis Dei genet rids Maria, " By the authority of God and of the Virgin, mother 
 and patroness of our Saviour ! thus wilfully perverting and .distorting the. original, 
 to insinuate a foolish prejudice against a class of fellow-Christians. Fie, Yorick I — 
 Prout. 
 
accomplishments of elegant literature, in addition to a knowledge most exten- 
 sive of theology and history, Francis Petrarcha had evinced unparalleled profi- 
 ciency in all the recognized acquirements of scholarship, and given undoubted 
 proofs of ability and genius ; wherefore, in his favour, it seemed fit and becom- 
 ing that the proudest mark of distinction known among the ancient Romans 
 should be conferred on him, and that all the honours of the classic triumph 
 should be revived on the occasion. It will be seen, however, from the narra- 
 tive of Guy, that some slight variations of costume and circumstance were in- 
 troduced in the course of the exhibition, and that the getting up of the affair 
 was not altogether in literal accordance with the rubrics which regulated such 
 processions in the days of Paulus .<Emilius, when captive kings and the milk- 
 white bulls of Clytumnus adorned the pageantry — 
 
 "Romanos ad templa Deum duxere triumphos."— Gcorg. II. 
 
 Here are some details from the Italian chronicler, descriptive of the outfit 
 and robes of the poet, who must have presented a strange figure in the accou- 
 trements allotted to him : 
 
 " They put on his right foot (Guy loguiiur) a sandal of red leather, cut ina queer 
 shape, and fastened round the ankle with purple ligatures. This is the way tragic poets 
 are shod. His left foot they then inserted into a Kind of buskin of violet colour, made 
 fast to the leg with blue thongs. This is the emblem worn by writers in the comic line, 
 and those who compose agreeable and pleasant matters. Violet is the proper colour of 
 love. , 
 
 " Over his tunic, which was of grey silk, they placed a mantle of velvet, lined with 
 green satin, to show that a poet's ideas should always be fresh and new. Round his 
 neck they hung a chain of diamonds, to signify that his thoughts should be brilliant and 
 clear. There are many mysteries in poetry. 
 
 "They then placed on his head a mitre of gold cloth, tapering upwards in a conical 
 shape, that the wreaths and garlands might be more easily worn thereon. It had two 
 tails, or skirts, falling behind on the shoulders like the mitre of a bishop. There hung by 
 his side a lyre (which is the poet's instrument) suspended from a gold chain of interwoven 
 figures of snakes, to give him to understand that his mind must figuratively change its 
 skin, and constantly renew its envelope, like the serpent. When they had thus equipped 
 him, they gave him a young maiden to hold up his train, her hair falling loose in ringlets, 
 and her feet naked. She was dressed in the fur of a bear, and held a lighted torch. 
 This is the emblem of folly, and is a constant attendant on poets ! " 
 
 The account of the day's proceedings would have been a godsend to the 
 penny-a-liners, and other gentlemen of the press (if such a thing existed in 
 those times), far more fertile in incident than the Lord Mayor's show, or the 
 King's going down o open the new parliament. It appears, too, that when 
 " the business of the day" was over, the modern fashion of winding up such 
 displays was perfectly well understood even at that remote period, and that a 
 capital dinner was given to the lion of the hour in the still sumptuous hall of 
 the Palazzo Colonna. The "feeding time" being duly got through, poetry 
 and music closed the eventful evening ; and the same trusty reporter from 
 whom I have borrowed the above particulars, informs us that Petrarcha 
 delighted his noble host and the assembled rank and fashion of Rome by 
 dancing a Moorish "pas seul " with surpassing grace and agility. This is a part 
 of the ceremony which it may be advisable to revive now-a-days, when public 
 entertainments are given to distinguished characters in the political world. 
 Many of these honourable guests would be found fully adequate to the task, 
 being for the most part skilled in that branch of the saltatory art called the 
 "pirouette." 
 
 Covered with honours and flushed with the applause of his fellow-country- 
 men, the father of Italian song was not insensible to the fascinations of literary 
 renown, nor deaf to the whisperings of glory ; but love, the most exalted and 
 refined, was still the guiding star of his path and the arbiter of his destiny. He 
 
The Songs of Italy. 237 
 
 has left the avowal himself, in that beautiful record of his inmost feelings which 
 he has entitled " Secretum Francisci Petrarchse," where, in a fancied dialogue 
 with the kindred soul of St. Augustin, he pours forth the fulness of his heart 
 with all the sincerity of nature and of genius. In the midst of his triumph his 
 thoughts wandered away to the far distant object of his affection ; and his 
 mind was at Vaucluse while the giddy throng of his admirers showered 
 garlands and burnt incense around his person. He fondly pictured to himself 
 the secret pride which the ladye of his love would perhaps feel in hearing of 
 his fame ; and the laurel was doubly dear to him, because it recalled her 
 cherished name. The utter hopelessness of his passion seemed to shed an 
 undefined hallowedness over the sensations of his heart ; and it must be in 
 one of those moments of tender melancholy that he penned the following grace- 
 ful, but mysterious, narrative of a supposed or real apparition. 
 
 SONETTO. 
 
 Una Candida cerva sopra llierba 
 Verde m' apparve con duo coma d' oro, 
 Fra due riviere a 1' ombra d' un alloro 
 Levando il sol a la stagion acerba. 
 
 Era sua vista si dolce superba 
 Ch' i' lasciai per seguirla ogni lavorcv 
 Come T avaro che 'n cercar thesoro 
 Con diletto 1' affanno desacerba. 
 
 " Nessun mi tocchi," al bel collo d' intorno 
 Scritto havea di diamanti e di topati 
 "LlBERO FARMI AL MIO CesARE PARVE." 
 
 Ed era U sol gia volto al t mezzogiorao 
 Gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar non sati 
 Quand io caddi nel* aqua, ed ella sparve. 
 
 THE VISION OF PETRARCHA. 
 
 A form I saw with secret awe — nor ken I what it warns ; 
 Pure as the snow, a gentle doe it seemed with silver horns, 
 Erect she stood, close by a wood between two running streams ; 
 And brightly shone the morning sun upon that land ot dreams ! 
 
 The pictured hind fancy designed glowing with love and hope. 
 Graceful she slept, but distant kept, like the timid antelope ; 
 Playful, yet coy — with secret joy her image filled my soul ; 
 And o'er the sense soft influence of sweet oblivion stole. 
 
 Gold I beheld and emerald on the collar that she wore ; 
 Words too— but theirs were characters of legendary lore : 
 
 " CESAR'S DECREE HATH MADE MB FREE ; AND THRO' HIS SOLEMN CHARGE, 
 
 Untouched by men o'er hill and glen I wander here at large." 
 
 The sun had now with radiant brow climbed his meridian throne, 
 
 Yet still mine eye untiringly gazed on that lovely one. 
 
 A voice was heard— quick disappeared my dream. The spell was broken. 
 
 Then came distress— to the consciousness of life I had awoken ! 
 
 Still the soul of Petrarch was at times accessible to sterner impressions. The 
 call of patriotism never failed to find a responsive echo in the breast of Italy's 
 most distinguished son ; and when, at the death of Benedict XII. r which 
 occurred at this juncture, there arose a favourable chance of serving his 
 country, by restoring the papal residence to the widowed city of Rome, he 
 
238 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 eagerly offered himself as one of the deputies to proceed to Avignon for the 
 accomplishment of this wished-for consummation. Whether a secret anxiety 
 to revisit the scene of his early affections, and to enjoy once more the presence 
 of his mistress, may have mixed itself up with the aspirations of patriotism, it 
 would not be easy to decide, but he entered into the project with all the warmth 
 of a devoted lover of Italy. His glorious dythyrainbe to that delightful, but 
 conquered and divided land, so often quoted, translated, and admired, is 
 sufficient evidence of his sentiments : but he has taken care to put the matter 
 beyond doubt in his vigorous pamphlet, De lihertate capessendd exhortatio ad 
 Nicolaum Laurentium. This "Nicholas" was no other than the famous 
 tribune Kienzi, who, mainly excited by the prose as well as the poetry of 
 Petrarch, raised the standard Of independence against the petty tyrants of the 
 Eternal City in 1345, and for a brief space rescued it from thraldom. 
 
 Poetry is the nurse of freedom. From Tyrteus to Beranger, the muse has 
 befriended through every age the cause of liberty. The pulse of patriotism 
 never beats with bolder throb than when the sound of martial song swells in the 
 full chorus of manly voices ; and it was in a great measure the rude energy of 
 the "Marseillaise" that won for the ragged and shoeless grenadiers of the 
 Convention the victories of Valmy and Jemmappe. In our own country, Dib- 
 din's naval odes, full of inspiriting thought and sublime imagery, have not a 
 little contributed to our maintaining in perilous times the disputed empire of the 
 ocean against Napoleon. Never was a pension granted with more propriety 
 than the tribute to genius voted in this case at the recommendation of 
 George III. ; and I suppose a similar reward has attended the authors of the 
 " Mariners of England," "The Battle of Copenhagen," and " The Sea ! the 
 Sea ! " If not, it is a crying disgrace to the country. As we have come 
 insensibly to the topic of maritime minstrelsy, I imagine that a specimen of the 
 stuff sung by the Venetian sailors, at the time when that Queen of the Adriatic 
 reigned over the waters, may not be uninteresting. The subject is the naval 
 victory which, at the close of the fourteenth century, broke the colossal power 
 of the Sublime Porte ; for which occurrence, by the bye, Europe was mainly 
 indebted to the exertions of Pope Pius V. and the prowess of one Miguel 
 Cervantes. 
 
 BARZELLETTA DA CANTAR PER LA VITTORIA DI LEPANTO. 
 
 Cantiam tutti allegramente Cantiam pur allegramente 
 
 Orstl putti attentamente Come poi piu delie venti 
 
 Cantiam tutti la rovina Ne fur prese cento e ottanta 
 
 Ch' alia gente Saracina £ dei morti poi sessanta 
 
 Dato tra Dio si fortemente. Mila e piu di quella gente. 
 
 Cantiam tutti allegramen te Cantiam tutti allegramente — 
 
 Che con straccio al fier dragone Ma ben duolmi a dir ch' i nostri 
 
 Squarcid it fronte si crudele Fur da sette nila ed otto 
 
 Che mai piu drizzera vele ' I vi morti (se '1 ver noto) 
 
 Che nel mar sia si possente. Combattendo audacemente. 
 
 Cantiam tutti allegramente Cantiam tutti allegramente— . 
 
 Cantiam putti pur ognora Dopo questi, altri guerrieri 
 
 Ch' il ladron di Caracossa Vendicar coir arme in mano 
 
 Fatt' a I" aqua-salsa rossa Quelli e il nom Christiano 
 
 Del suo sangue di serpente. Per virtu d' Iddio clemente. 
 
 Cantiam putti allegramente Cantiam tutti allegramente 
 
 Dl tre set d' otto e di ventl Per cotal vittoria e tanta 
 
 Galeotte e altri legni Doveremmo ogni au far festa 
 
 Fu rt fracasso— o Turchi degni Per che al mondo altra che questa 
 
 Del gran fuoco eternamente I Non fu mai d" alamo in mente. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 239 
 
 POPULAR BALLAD ON THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO. 
 
 Let us sing how the boast of the Saracen host 
 
 In the Gulf of Lepanto was scattered, 
 When each knight of St. John's from his cannon of bronze 
 
 With grape-snot their argosies battered ; 
 Oh ! we taught the Turks then that of Europe the men 
 
 Could defy every infidel menace — 
 And that still o'er the main float the galleys of Spain, 
 
 And the red lion standard of Venice 1 
 
 Quick we made the foe skulk, and we blazed at each hulk. 
 
 While they left us a splinter to fire at ; 
 And the rest of them fled o'er the waters, blood red 
 
 With the gore of the Ottoman pirate ; 
 And our navy gave chase to the infidel race, 
 
 Nor allowed them a moment to rally ; 
 And we forced them at length to acknowledge our strength 
 
 In the trench, in the field, in the galley ! 
 
 Then pur men gave a shout, and the ocean throughout 
 
 Heard of Christendom's triumph with rapture, 
 Galeottes eighty-nine of the enemy's line 
 
 To our swift-sailing ships fell a capture ; 
 And I firmly maintain that the number of slain 
 
 To at least Sixty thousand amounted ;— 
 To be sure 'twas sad work— if the life of a Turk 
 
 For a moment were worth being counted. 
 
 We may well feel elate ; yet I'm sorry to state, 
 
 That although by the myriad we've slain 'em, 
 Still the Sons of the Cross have to weep t for the loss 
 
 Of six thousand who fell by the Faynim. 
 Full atonement was due for each man that they slew. 
 
 And a hecatomb paid for each hero ; 
 But could all that we'd kill give a son to Castille, 
 
 Or to Malta a brave cavalhero? 
 
 St. Mark for the slain intercedes not in vain- 
 There 's a mass at each altar in Venice ; 
 
 And the saints we implore for the banner they bore 
 Are Our Lady, St. George, and St. Denis. 
 
 For the brave while we grieve, in our hearts they shall live— 
 In our mouths shall their praise be incessant ; 
 
 And again and again we will boast of the men 
 Who have humbled the pride of the Crescent. 
 
 The Venetians have been ever remarkable for poetic taste ; and the very 
 humblest classes of society amongst them exhibit a fondness for the, great 
 masters of their native language, and a familiarity with the glorious effusions of 
 the national genius, quite unknown in the corresponding rank of tradesmen and 
 artisans in England. Goldoni, who wrote in their own dialect, knew the sort 
 of critics he had to deal with; and it is a fact that the most formidable judges 
 of dramatic exce'lence at the theatres of Venice were the gondoliers. Addison, 
 or rather Isaac Bickerstaff, tells us a droll story about a certain trunkmaker, who 
 stationed himself in the gallery of Drury Lane, and with a whack of his oaken 
 cudgel ratified the success or confirmed the downfall of each new tragic per- 
 formance. I think the author of the Spectator must have had the original hint 
 of that anecdote during his stay at Venice, where such a verdict from such a 
 quarter was a matter of habitual occurrence. There is great delicacy of feeling 
 and polish of expression in the following ingenious popular barcarolle of 
 Venetian origin : — 
 
240 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 BARCAROLLE. 
 
 Oh pescator dell' onda, 
 
 Fidelin, 
 
 Vieni pescar in qua 
 
 Colla bella sua barca. 
 
 Colla bella se ne va, 
 
 Fidelin, lin, la. 
 
 Che cosa vuol, ch' io peschi? 
 
 Fidelin, 
 L'anel che m' e casca 
 Colla bella sua barca. 
 Colla bella se ne va* &c 
 
 Ti dard cento scudi, 
 
 Fidelin, 
 Sta borsa ricama 
 Colla bella sua barca 
 Colla bella se ne va, &c. 
 
 Non voglio cento scudi, 
 
 Fidelin, 
 Ne borsa ricama 
 Colla bella sua barca. 
 Colla bella se ne va, &c. 
 
 Io vo un basin d' amore, 
 
 Fidelin, 
 Che quell mi paghera 
 Colla bella sua bocca. 
 Colla bella se ne va, &c. 
 
 " Pr[ythee, young fisherman, come over — 
 
 Hither thy light bark bring ; 
 Row to this bank, and try recover 
 
 My treasure— 'tis a ring ! " 
 
 The fisher boy of Como's lake 
 His bonny boat soon brought her, 
 
 And promised for her beauty's sake 
 To search beneath the water. 
 
 " I'll give thee, " said the ladye fair, 
 One hundred sequins bright, 
 
 If to my villa thou wilt bear, 
 Fisher, that ring to-night." 
 
 " A hundred sequins I'll refuse 
 
 When I shall come at eve : 
 But there is something, if you choose, 
 
 Ladye, that you can give ! " 
 
 The ring was found beneath the flood ; 
 
 Nor need my lay record 
 What was that ladye' s gratitude, 
 
 What was that youth s reward. 
 
 A Milanese poet, rejoicing in the intellectual patronymic of Nicodemo, has 
 distinguished himself in a different species of composition, viz. the heroic. 
 There is, however, I am free to confess, a rather ungenerous sort of exultation 
 over a fallen foe perceptible in the lyrical poem which I am about to introduce 
 for the first time to a British public. Dryden has very properly excited our 
 commiseration for the " great and good Darius, deserted in his utmost need by 
 those his former bounty fed;" but far different are the sentiments of Signor 
 Nicodemo, who does not hesitate to denounce the vanquished in no very 
 measured terms of opprobrious invective. I suspect he has been equally pro- 
 fuse of lavish encomium during its prosperous days on that Power which he 
 seeks to cover with derision in its fall : and I need not add that I totally dissent 
 from the political opinions of the author. However, let the gentle reader form 
 his own estimate of the poet's performance. 
 
 Lafuga di Napoleone Buona- 
 Parte senza spada, e senza 
 hastone, e senza capello, e 
 ferito in testa ; V acquisto 
 /at to dei Prussian i di oro, 
 argento, brillianti, e di suo 
 manto imperiali ; e final- 
 mente ilfelice ritorno tiella 
 citta di Parigi di sua 
 **aestaLuigiJCVIII. Di 
 Nicodemo Lermil. 
 
 Aria di " Malbrook." 
 
 Gia vinto Napoleone, 
 Con fuga desperata 
 Fra la Prussians armata 
 De trapassar tentb ; 
 
 A true Ballad, containing- the Flight of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, with the loss of his sword t his hat, 
 and imperial baton, besides a wound in the head ; 
 the good luck of the Prussians in getting hold of 
 his valuables, in diamonds and other property ; 
 and, lastly, the happy entry of his Majesty, 
 Louis Dixhuit, into Paris. From the Italian of 
 Nicodemus Lermil. 
 
 Tune, " On Linden when." 
 
 When Bonaparte', overcome. 
 
 Fled from the sound of Prussian drum, 
 
 Aghast, discomfited, and dumb, 
 
 Wrapt in his roquelaure — 
 
Tlte Songs of Italy. 
 
 241 
 
 Ma sgombro di tesori, 
 Delis > nei disegni — 
 Privo d impero e regni, 
 Qual naque, ritornu. 
 
 Affiitto e delirante, 
 Confuso e sbi gottito, 
 Col capo suo ferito 
 II misero fuggi 
 
 Senza poter portarsi, 
 Spada, baston, capello, 
 Involto in un mantello 
 Da tutt' i suoi sparl. 
 
 Argento, oro, brilliant!, 
 II manto suo imperiale 
 Con gioia universale 
 Da Prussi s* acquistd. 
 
 Ma non pote acquistarsi 
 (Ben che non v* e paura) 
 U autor d' ogni sventura 
 Che tutti rovind. 
 
 Fugitto Bonaparte, 
 Subito entrb in Parigi 
 11 buon sovran Luigi 
 Che tutti rallegro. 
 
 Fu la citta di notte 
 Da ognuno illuminata ; 
 Fill vista amena e grata 
 ' Giammai non si miro. 
 
 Rembombo de* canoni, 
 Acclamazion di, ewiva 
 Per tutto se sentiya 
 Frequente replicar. 
 
 La Candida bandiera, 
 C01 gigli che teneva, 
 Per tutto si videva 
 Piu spesso ventilar. 
 
 Spettacolo si vago, 
 Ricordo si giocondo, 
 Parigi Italia, il mondo, 
 Fe tutti consolar. 
 
 Perche fuggi ramingo, 
 £ con suo deshonore, 
 L' indegno usurpatore— 
 E non puo piu regnar. 
 
 Marat e Napoleone 
 Tenete i cuori a freno 
 Non vi awilite almeno 
 Che e cosa da schiattar. 
 
 Ma si desperazione 
 Mai vi togliese il lume 
 II piu vicino ftume 
 Potete ritrovar. 
 
 To wealth and power he bade adieu — 
 Affairs were looking mighty blue : 
 In emblematic tatters flew 
 
 The glorious tricolor. 
 
 What once had seemed fixt as a rock. 
 Had now received a fatal shock ; 
 And he himself had got a knock 
 
 From a Cossack on the head ! 
 
 Gone was his hat, lost was his hope ; 
 The hand that once had smote the Pope, 
 Had even dropped its telescope 
 
 In the hurry as he fled. 
 
 Old Butcher's corps a capture made 
 Of his mantle, sabre, and cockade ; 
 Which in " Rag Fair " would " from the trade " 
 No doubt a trifle fetch. 
 
 But tho' the Prussians ('tis confest) 
 Of all his wardrobe got the best 
 (Besides his military chest), 
 
 Himself they could not catch. 
 
 He's gone somewhere beyond the seas 
 To expiate his rogueries : 
 King Louis in the Tuileries 
 
 Has recommenced to reign. 
 
 Gladness pervades the allied camps, 
 And nought the public triumph damps ; 
 But every house is lit with lamps, 
 
 Even in each broken pane. 
 
 Paris is one vast scene of joy ; 
 
 And all her citizens employ 
 
 Their throats in shouting vive le roy, 
 
 Amid the roar of cannon. 
 
 Oh ! when they saw the " blauc drafeau " 
 Once more displayed, they shouted so. 
 You could have heard them from the Po, 
 
 Or from the banks of Shannon. 
 
 Gadzooks ! it was, upon my fay, 
 An European holiday ; 
 And the land laughed, and all were gay 
 Except the sans culottes. 
 
 You'd see the people playing cards, 
 And gay grisettes and dragoon guards 
 Dancing along the boulevards— 
 
 Of brandy there was lots 1 
 
 Now Bonaparte* and Murat, 
 
 My worthy heroes ! after that, 
 
 I'd like to know what you'll be at— 
 
 I think you must feel nervous ! 
 
 Perhaps you are not so besotted 
 As to be cutting the "carotid" — 
 But then — the horsepond ! — there I've got it ! 
 From such an end preserve us 
 
 If this poet Nicodemo be in reality what I surmise he is, a literary renegade, 
 
242 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 and a wretch whose venal lyre gives forth alternate eulogy and abuse, just as 
 the political thermometer indicates rise or fall, I should deem him a much fitter 
 candidate for the " horsepond" than either Bony or Joachim. But, alas ! how 
 many sad instances have we not known of similar tergiversation in the conduct 
 of "gens de lettres." I just now happened to mention the name of Dryden, 
 commonly denominated " glorious John," and what a sad example is there of 
 political dishonesty I The only excuse I can see for Master John's unsteadiness, 
 is the fact of the habitual state in which he generally was to be found, and 
 from which I suppose originated the surname of glorious, applied in his case. 
 After flattering in turns Oliver Cromwell and Charles II., King James and 
 King William, the poor devil died of a broken heart, deserted by all parties. 
 I cannot help indulging in a melancholy sort of smile when I read his panegyric 
 on that canting thief old Noll, the opening lines of which are worth any money. 
 It would seem that the poet was at a loss how to grapple with his mighty 
 subject, and could not discover a beginning to his praise ; the perfect rotundity 
 of the theme precluding the possibility of rinding either a commencement or an 
 end 
 
 " Within a fame so truly circular! " 
 
 But turning from such conceits, and from the affectation of courtly writers to 
 a simpler and more unsophisticated style of thought, may I venture to think 
 this trifling, but genuine rustic lay worthy of perusal : — 
 
 CANZONETTA. VILLAGE SONG. 
 
 Son povera ragazza Husbands, they tell me, gold hath won 
 
 E cerco di marito More than aught else beside ; 
 
 Se trovo buon partito Gold I have none ; can I find one 
 
 Mi voglio mantar To take me for his bride ? 
 
 Ma chi sa? Yet who knows 
 
 Chi lo sa ? How the wind blows — 
 
 Io cerco di marito Or who can say 
 
 Se lo posso ritrovar ? I'll not find one to-day ? 
 
 Io faccio la sartora, < I can embroider, I can sew — 
 
 Questo e il mio mestiero, A husband I could aid ; 
 
 Vi dico si davvero I have no dowry to bestow— 
 
 E so ben travagliar Must I remain a maid ? 
 
 Ma chi sa? Yet who knows 
 
 Chi lo sa ? How the wind blows — 
 
 Io cerco di marito Or who can say 
 
 Se lo posso ritrovar? I'll not find one to-day ? 
 
 Gia d' anni vintiemque A simple maid I've been too long- 
 Mi trovo cosi sola, A husband I would find ; 
 Vi giuro e do parola But then to ask — no ! — that were wrong ; 
 Mi sento alfin mancar. So I must be resigned : 
 Ma chi sa ? Yet who knows 
 Chi Io sa? How the wind blows — 
 Io cerco di marito Or who can say 
 Se lo posso ritrovar? I'll not find one to-day? 
 
 Simplicity is the inseparable companion of the graces ; and the extreme per- 
 fection of art is to conceal itself under the guise of unstudied negligence. This 
 excellence is only attainable by few ; and (if I be allowed to dogmatize) among 
 all the writers of antiquity is most remarkable in the delightful pages of 
 Xenophon. Never in my mind will the "true ease in writing," which, 
 according to that most elaborate versifier, but still most fluent writer, Pope, 
 " comes from art, not chance," be acquired otherwise than by a diligent study 
 of the old classics, and in particular of what Horace calls the exemplaria 
 Graca. Flaccus himself, in his sermo pedestris> as well as in his inimitable 
 
The Songs of Italy. 243 
 
 lyrics, has given us beautiful specimens of what seems the spontaneous flow of 
 unstudied fancy, but is in reality the result of deep thought and of constant 
 " lima labor" Menzini, the author of the following sonnet on a very simple 
 subject, must, in my opinion, have drunk deeply at the source of Grecian 
 elegance. 
 
 IL CAPRO (MENZINI). 
 
 Quel capro maledetto ha presa in uso 
 Gir tra le vite, e sempre in lor s' * m p a rria ; 
 Deh ! per farlo scotdar di simil tiaccia 
 Dagli d* un sasso tra le coma, e '1 muso. 
 
 Se Bacco il guata, ei scendera ben giuso 
 Da quel suo carro a ciii le tigri allaccia ; 
 Piu feroce lo sdegno oltre si caccia 
 Quand* e con quel suo vin' misto e* confuso. 
 
 Fa di scacciarlo, Elpin ; fa che non stenda 
 Maligno il dente ; e piu non roda in vetta 
 L' uve nascenti, ed il lor nume offenda. 
 
 Di lui so ben ch' un di 1* altar 1' aspetta ; 
 Ma Bacco e da temer che ancor non prenda 
 Del capro insieme e del pastor vendetta. 
 
 THE INTRUDER. 
 
 There's a goat in the vineyard ! an unbidden guest- 
 He comes here to devour and to trample ; 
 
 If he keep not aloof, I must make, I protest, 
 Of the trespassing rogue an example. 
 
 Let this stone, which I fling at his ignorant head, 
 Deep imprest in his skull leave its moral, 
 
 That a four-footed beast 'mid the vines should not tread, 
 Nor attempt with great Bacchus to quarrel 
 
 Should the god on his car, to which tigers are yoked. 
 
 Chance to pass and espy such a scandal. 
 Quick he'd mark his displeasure — most justly provoked 
 
 At the sight of this four-footed Vandal. 
 To encounter his wrath, or be found on his path, 
 
 In the spring when his godship is sober. 
 Silly goat ! would be rash ;— and you fear not the lash 
 
 Of the god in the month of October ! 
 
 In each bunch, thus profaned by an insolent tooth. 
 
 There has perished a goblet of nectar ; 
 Fitting: vengeance will follow those gambols uncouth. 
 
 For the grape has a jealous protector. 
 On the ahar of Bacchus a victim must bleed. 
 
 To avert a more serious disaster ; 
 Lest the ire of the deity visit the deed 
 
 Of the goat on his negligent master. 
 
 _ But still it is not part of my code of criticism to tolerate, under the plea of 
 simplicity, that maudlin, enervated style, which some modern scribblers have 
 adopted, and which finds an appropriate refuge in the pages of a certain 
 decayed magazine. Haynes Bayly is the grand lama of this sect of poetasters. 
 And indeed among the Italians, owing to the smoothness of the language 
 and the facility of finding rhyme (when reason is scarce), there are many 
 
244 ^* Works of Father Prout 
 
 lamentable specimens of Haynesbaylyism. Here is one which I have very 
 inadequately done into English :— 
 
 A SERENADE (VITTORELLI). 
 
 Guarda che bianca luna Ella che ilsente appena 
 
 Guarda che notte azzurra Gia vien di fronda in fronda 
 
 Un' auro non susurra £ par che gli risponda 
 Non tremola uno stel. Non piangere, son qui. 
 
 L' usignuoletto solo Che dolci affetti, o Irene, 
 
 Va dalla siepe all' orno Che gemiti son questi ! 
 
 E sospirando intorno Ah mai tu non sapesti 
 
 Chiama la sua fidel Rispondermi cosi. 
 
 Pale to-night is the disc of the moon, and of azure unmixt 
 
 Is the bonnie blue sky it lies on ; 
 And silent the streamlet, and hushed is the zephyr, and fixt 
 
 Is each star in the calm horizon ; 
 And the hamlet is lulled to repose, and all nature is still — , 
 
 How soft, how mild her slumbers ! 
 And nought but the nightingale's note is awake, and the thrill 
 
 Of his sweetly plaintive numbers. 
 
 His song wakes an echo ! it comes from the neighbouring grove- 
 Love's sweet responsive anthem ! 
 
 Lady ! list to the vocalist ! dost thou not envy his love. 
 And the joys his mate will grant him? 
 
 Oh, smile on thy lover to-night ! let a transient hope 
 Ease the heart with sorrow laden : 
 
 From yon balcony wave the fond signal a moment— and ope 
 Thy casement, fairest maiden ! 
 
 The author of the above is a certain VittorelH, celebrated among the more 
 recent poets of Italy for the smooth amenity of his anacreontics; which, how- 
 ever, I regret to state, are of a very washy consistency, and present for the 
 most part nothing but what the French critics call M de Veau clairt" An 
 additional sample of his style will give a sufficient notion of his capabilities in 
 the sentimental line : — 
 
 IL DONO DI VENERE. THE GIFT OF VENUS, 
 
 Cinta le bionde chiome With roses wreathed around his ringlets. 
 
 Delia materna rosa Steeped in drops of matin dew, 
 
 Sull' alba rugiadosa Gliding soft on silken winglets, 
 
 Venne il fanciullo amor. Cupid to my study flew ; 
 
 On my table a decanter 
 
 Stood— perhaps there might be two— 
 When I had with the enchanter 
 (Happy bard !) this interview. 
 
 E colla dolce bocca Sure it was the loveliest vision 
 
 Mi disse in aria lieta : — Ever poet gazed upon— 
 
 " Che fai gentil poeta -^ B P t "* ecstasy elysian, 
 
 D' Irene lodatart 1 * Or inspired by cruiskeen lawn. 
 
 " Poet," said the urchin, *' few are 
 
 So far favoured among men- 
 Venus sends by me to you her 
 Compliments and a new pen. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 
 
 245 
 
 guesta nevosa pert na 
 i cigno immacolato 
 Sul dcsco fortunato 
 Io lascio in dono a te. 
 
 Serba la ognor, geloso ! 
 £ scriverai d' amore ; 
 Non cede il suo candore 
 Che a quel della tua fe. 
 
 " Take this quill— 'tis soft and slender. 
 
 Fit for writing billets doux — 
 Fond avowals, breathings tender. 
 
 Which Irene may peruse. 
 Tis no vulgar acquisition— 
 
 'Twas from no goose pinion drawn ; 
 But, by Leda's kind permission, 
 
 Borrowed from her favourite swan. 
 
 " Sully not the virgin candour 
 
 Of its down so pure and white ; 
 Let it ne'er be dipt in slander, 
 
 Nor lascivious ballads write. 
 Lend it not to that Patlander, 
 
 Denny Lardner ; and be sure 
 That it never acts the pander. 
 
 Like the pen of ' Little ' Moore.*' 
 
 What a difference between the feeble and emasculate tone of these modern 
 effusions, and the bold, manly, and frequently sublime conceptions of the bards 
 who wrote in the golden age of Leo X. t under the influence of that magic 
 century which gave birth to such a crowd of eminent personages in all the 
 walks of literature. The name of Michel Angelo is familiar to most readers in 
 the character of an artist ; but few, perhaps, will be prepared to make his 
 acquaintance in the capacity of a poet. Nevertheless, it gives me unmixed 
 satisfaction to have it in my power thus to introduce the illustrious Buonarotti 
 to the British public, as a poetical writer of no ordinary merit ; a greater proof 
 of which will not be requisite than the following noble and edifying com- 
 position :— 
 
 AL CROCIFISSO. 
 
 Giunto e gi& il corso della vita mia, 
 
 Per tempestoso mar con fragil barca, 
 
 Al comun porto ove a render se varca 
 Conto e ragion d' ogni opra triste e pia. 
 Ma 1" alta affettuosa fantasia, 
 
 Che 1' arte mi fece idolo e monarca, 
 
 Conosco or ben quanto sia d' error carca, 
 E quel che ma! suo grado ognun desia ; 
 Gli amorosi pensier gia vani e lieti 
 
 Che fien or s' a due morte m* awicino ? 
 
 D' uno so certo, e 1* altra mi minaccia. 
 Ne pinker nh scolpir fia piU che queti 
 
 L anima volta a quel amor divino 
 
 Che aperse in croce a prender noi le braccia. 
 
 MICHEL ANGELO'S FAREWELL TO SCULPTURE. 
 
 I feel that I am growing old— 
 
 Thy flame, my lamp of clay, behold ! 
 
 'Gins to burn low : and I've unrolled 
 
 My life's eventful volume t 
 
 The sea has bome my fragile bark 
 Close to the shore— now, rising dark, 
 0*er the subsiding wave I mark 
 
 This brief world's final column. 
 
 Tis time, my soul, for pensive mood, 
 For holy calm and solitude ; 
 Then cease henceforward to delude 
 
 Thyself with fleeting vanity. 
 
The pride of art, the sculptured thought, 
 Vain idols that my hand hath wrought — 
 To place my trust in such were nought 
 But sheer insanity. 
 
 What can the pencil's power achieve? 
 What can the chisel's triumph give? 
 A name perhaps on earth may ave, 
 And travel to posterity. 
 
 But let, O Rome ! thy Pantheon tell, 
 
 If for the soul of Raffaelle 
 
 His glorious obsequies could quell 
 
 The Judgment Seat's severity? 
 
 Yet why should Christ's believer fear, 
 While gazing on yon image dear — 
 Image adored, maugre the sneer 
 
 Of miscreant blasphemer. 
 
 Are not those arms for me outspread ? 
 What mean those thorns upon thy head ? 
 And shall I, wreathed with laurels, tread 
 
 Far from thy paths, Redeemer ? 
 
 Such was the deeply religious tone of this eminent man's mind, and such 
 the genuine tvaiflua of Michel Angelo. An unfeigned devotedness to the 
 doctrines of our common Christianity, and a proud consciousness of the dignity 
 which the avowal of those feelings is calculated to confer in the view of every 
 right-minded person, are traits of character which we never fail to meet in 
 all the truly great men of that period. Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Tasso, 
 Raffaelle, Sannazar, Bembo, Brunelleschi, and a host of imperishable names, 
 bear witness to the correctness of the remark. Nor is Petrarcha deficient in 
 this outward manifestation of inward piety. The death of Laura forms an 
 epoch in his biography ; and the tendency of his thoughts, from that date to 
 the hour of his death, appears to have been decidedly religious. Those 
 exquisite sonnets, into which he has breathed the pious sentiments of his soul, 
 rank among the most finished productions of his muse ; and the intensity of 
 his kindling fervour awakens corresponding emotions in the reader's breast. So 
 true it is that the poet who sings not of religion has broken the finest chord of 
 the lyre. Laura, spiritualized into an angelic essence, still visits his nocturnal 
 visions, but only to point the way to that heaven of which she is a dweller, and 
 to excite him to deeds worthy of immortality. The opening stanza of one of 
 these songs, which form the second part of the collection, thus distinguished 
 from those written during the lifetime of his beloved, will suffice as a specimen 
 of the tone that pervades them all. 
 
 CANZONE DOPO LA MORTE DI DONNA LAURA. 
 
 Quando il soave mio fido conforto 
 
 Per dar riposa alia mia vita stanca 
 
 Fonsi del letto in su la sponda manca 
 Con quel suo dblce ragionar accorto ; 
 Tutto di pieta e di paura smorto 
 Dico " Onde vien tu ora, o felice alma?" 
 
 Un ramoscel di palma 
 E un di lauro trae del suo bcl seno 
 
 E dice :— '* Dal sereno 
 Ciel empireo, e di quelle sante parti, 
 Mi mossi : e vengo sol per fconsolarti &c. Sfcc. 
 
The Songs of Italy. 247 
 
 PETRARCHA'S DREAM. 
 
 After the Death of Laura. 
 
 She has not quite forgotten me ! her shade 
 
 My pillow stilt doth haunt, 
 
 A nightly visitant. 
 To soothe the sorrows that herself had made ; 
 
 And thus that spirit blest, 
 Shedding sweet influence o'er my hour of rest. 
 Hath healed my woes and. all my love repaid. 
 
 Last night, with holy calm, 
 
 She stood before my view, 
 
 And from her bosom drew 
 A wreath of laurel and a branch of palm : 
 
 And said, "To comfort thee, 
 
 O child of Italy ! 
 
 From my immortal home, 
 
 Fetrarcha, I am come ! " &c, &c. 
 
 Towards the close of his career, when the vanity of all earthly affection be- 
 came still more palpable to his understanding, there is something like regret 
 expressed for having ever indulged in that most pardonable of all human weak- 
 nesses, the hopeless and disinterested admiration of what was virtuous and 
 lovely, unmixed with the grossness of sensual attachment, and unprofanecl by 
 the vulgarities of animal passion. Still he felt that there was in the pursuit of 
 that pleasing illusion something unworthy of his profession as a clergyman ; 
 and he has recorded his act of contrition in the following beautiful lines, with 
 which I close : — 
 
 I' vo piangendo i miei passati tempi, 
 
 I quai posi in amar cosa mortal*-, 
 
 Senza levarmi a volo, avend' io 1 ale, 
 Per dar forse di me non bassi esempi. 
 
 Tu, che vedi i miei mali indegni ed cmpi, 
 
 Re del cielo invisibile, immortale ; 
 
 Soccorri all' alma disviata e frale, 
 E '1 suo difetto di tua grazia adempi ; 
 
 Siche s' io vissi in guerra ed in tempesta, 
 
 Mori in pace ed in porto ; e se la stanza 
 Fu vana, almen sia la partita onesta. 
 
 A. quel poco di viver , che m' avanza 
 
 Ed al morir degni esser tua man presta ; 
 
 TU SAI BEN, CHE'N ALTSUI NON HO SFERANZA. 
 
 THE REPENTANCE OF PETRARCHA. 
 
 Bright days of sunny youth, irrevocable years ! 
 
 Penod of manhood's prime, 
 O'er thee I shed sad, but unprofitable tears — 
 
 Lapse of returnless time : 
 Oh ! I have cast away, like so much worthless dross. 
 
 Hours of most precious ore — 
 Blest hours I could have coined for heaven, your loss 
 
 For ever III deplore ! 
 
 Contrite I kneel, O God inscrutable, to thee, 
 
 High heaven's immortal king ! 
 Thou gayest me a soul that to thy bosom free 
 
 Might soar on seraph wing : 
 
248 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 My mind with gifts and grace thy bounty had endowed 
 
 To cherish thee alone— 
 Those gifts I have abused, this heart I have allowed 
 
 Its Maker to disown. 
 
 But from his wanderings reclaimed, with full, with throbbing heart, 
 
 Thy truant has returned : 
 Oh ! be the idol and the hour that led him to depart 
 
 From thee for ever mourned. 
 If I have dwelt remote, if I have loved the tents of guilt— 
 
 To thy fond arms restored, 
 Here let me die ! On whom can my eternal hopes be built* 
 
 Savs upon Thee, O Lord ! 
 
XIII. 
 
 iJarrir iit % ©aftran. 
 
 (Frasers Magazine, April, 1835.) 
 
 [As originally published in Regtna, tnis tnirteenth of the Prout Reliques was vaguely 
 entitled " Notte Romane nel Palazzo Vaticano." Afterwards, in its reprinted form, it 
 was headed at once more laconically and more specifically " The Painter Barry." Its 
 designation in its present re-issue indicates at a glance both its hero and Us locality. The 
 coarseness and vulgarity of Oliver Vorke were, perhaps, never more flagrantly evidenced 
 than by the flippant remarks prefixed to this paper, in which the great master of fiction, 
 who had but just then created a soul under the ribs of death by re-peopling with pagan 
 life the disentombed solitudes of Pompeii, was insolently denounced for what was in 
 reality an achievement in literature, as though he had been guilty, on the contrary, of per- 
 petrating some high crime and misdemeanour. The passages to which allusion is here 
 made have been struck out by the present editor with the scorn to which they are alone 
 entitled. Maclise's pencilling, by the way, in the same number of Fraser, presented to 
 view, elaborately veiled and frilled, and meditatively stirring a cup of coffee, Miss Jane 
 Porter, authoress of " Thaddeus of Warsaw," " The Scottish Chiefs," and " The Pastor's 
 Fireside."] 
 
 Rome, 1760. 
 
 " Nothing could have made me more really happy than your very kind letter. It came 
 most opportunely to support my spirits at a time when I was ill of a fever, which I 
 believe was occasioned by a cold caught while working in the Vatican." 
 
 James Barry (R.A.) to (Sir) Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 Apparet domus intus et atria longa patescunt 
 Apparent Priami et veterum penetralia regum." 
 
 MneuL II. 
 
 His magic wand Prout waves again, and opes 
 Those hallowed halls inhabited by Popes : 
 Where (through an odd rencontre that befell) he 
 Enjoys some * table talk " with Ganganelli. — O. Y. 
 
 The historian on whom, in a future age, will devolve the melancholy task of 
 tracing " a la Gibbon" the decline and fall of English literature, must neces- 
 sarily devote an ample chapter to our modern writers of romance. This class 
 of authors has obtained, in our days, a predominance which will suffice to 
 establish, in the dispassionate judgment of after years, the degenerate imbecility 
 of the national mind during the period of its influence. A motley and undisci- 
 plined horde, emerging from their native haunts on the remote boundary of the 
 literary domain, these lawless dwellers of the regions of fiction, these denizens 
 
 L 
 
250 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 of the frontier provinces that confine on the legitimate territory of the belles- 
 lettres, have rushed down with a simultaneous war-whoop on the empire of 
 learning, and seriously threaten not to leave a vestige of sober knowledge or 
 classic taste throughout the wide range of their Vandalic excursions. No por- 
 tion of antiquity's most precious records, no memorable transaction of bygone 
 centuries, no important epoch in the annals of the world, is held sacred from 
 the rude inroad and destructive battle-axe of the "Historical" novelist. The 
 ghost of old Froissart revisits nightly the glimpses of the moon to complain of 
 those who molest and torture his simple spirit. Rapin, Matthew Paris, 
 Hollingshed, De Thou, Hume, Clarendon, and Robertson are doomed to 
 undergo a post-mortem species of persecution, which those eminent chroniclers 
 scarcely anticipated as the fruit of their learned labours. The gentle sister- 
 hood of the sacred valley have taken the affair seriously to heart, and each 
 muse in her turn sheds a tear of sympathy and condolence over the disfigured 
 page of Clio. 
 
 Nor has the department of individual biography been exempt from the 
 general devastation. Richelieu, Cromwell, William Wallace, Henri Quatre, 
 Cardinal Borromeo, Queen Elizabeth, Brinsley Sheridan, and a host of similar 
 illustrious victims, have been successively immolated with barbarous rites on 
 the shrines of Colburn and Bentley. Vain is it henceforward to hope that any 
 great man's ashes may be suffered to repose in their monumental um. After 
 disinterring by dozens the memorable dead who fain would sleep in West- 
 minster Abbey, these literary ghouls have traversed the continent, with true 
 vampire voracity, in quest of prey; and few, indeed, are the distinguished 
 characters of European celebrity on whose substance they have not fed their 
 indiscriminate and insatiate maw. 
 
 It is very unfair to accuse Sir Walter Scott of being the parent of this literary 
 monster ; it was full grown, or, at least, in its teens, when he adopted it, fling- 
 ing the mantle of his genius over its native deformity. Towards the close of 
 the last century the muse of a French abW, Marmoniel, brought it forth in 
 " B&isaire." Florian stood sponsor to the urchin in " Gonsalve de Cordoue; " 
 and Jane Porter acted the part of wet nurse in "Thaddeus of Warsaw." 
 
 To the philosophic observer of the secret workings by which the human 
 soul reveals its hidden attributes, unconscious of its own betrayal, it may be a 
 fruitful study to watch how each of these novels reflects, as in a toilette mirror, 
 the personal feelings and private life of its author or fair authoress. Le Comte 
 de Buffon showed vast sagacity in his celebrated academic discourse, wherein 
 he proved the startling proposition " Le style e'est Vhomme ; " but of our recent 
 dabblers in fiction, it may be still more confidently asserted that the writer's 
 own biography is sure to exhibit a " tout d 'oreille ' ' through the assumed envelope 
 of his story. Tom Moore, in a production called the "Epicurean," painted 
 an Egyptian miniature of his own emasculate little-ness ; but as the book is long 
 since defunct, de mortuis nil, &c, &c. We observe with satisfaction that our 
 friend Rookwood-Ainsworth, a clever fellow, and a decided lady-killer, is about to 
 give us his adventures under the convenient blind of a new romaunt, to be entitled 
 "The Admirable Crichton." And why not? since Rousseau published " Con- 
 fessions " — since Theodore Hook, under the name of "Gilbert Gurney," shrives 
 himself every month, infusing a vein of quicksilver into the pages of a stupid 
 periodical. If Madame de StaSl thought proper to depict herself in " Corinne," 
 why should not our especial favourite, the accomplished L. E. L., be permitted 
 to shadow forth, with delicate tints, fresh carnation, and delicate drapery, her 
 own graceful image as " Franceses Carrara ? " Revelations such as these, which 
 never would have been vouchsafed to our dull ears were it not for the allegorical 
 vehicle through which it suits modesty to whisper its claims on our admiration, 
 are surely enough to reconcile us to this sort of authorship. Let us, then, rather 
 congratulate ourselves on the invention of the historical novel, if it furnish us 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 251 
 
 with details which through no other channels could possibly find their way to 
 the public; and let us join in the judicious conclusion of that scapegrace 
 Voltaire — 
 
 " Tous les gens sont bons — hors le genre ennuyeux. * 
 
 We have been led into these remarks by the circumstance of meeting among 
 the papers of our sacerdotal sage (which are far from being exhausted) a 
 singular account of men and of things which now belong to history — a start- 
 ling narrative which, did we not deprecate the imputation, might be taken for 
 romance. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Waterghasshill, March, 1830. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, among his admirable essays, under the character of a " Ram- 
 bler, has a paper, if I recollect right, entitled "The Journey of a Day: a 
 Picture of Human Life." In it " Obadiah sets out in the morning," and so on, 
 to the close of the gentleman's adventures. But the story of my earthly career, 
 comprised in the miscellaneous contents of yonder chest, will not, I fear, pre- 
 sent that regular progression and chronological method observed in the bio- 
 graphy of " Obadiah." The chronicler of my life must, I apprehend, take the 
 trouble of collating and systematizing the various and confused records which 
 will form this posthumous collection. Indeed, the safest and easiest style of 
 publication would be to pull forth a handful at random, and affixing thereto the 
 title of " Proutiana," give thus, volume after volume, in the "prevailing 
 monthly form," until the whole shall have been exhausted. This, however, is 
 no concern of mine, and as Chief Baron O'Grady once said to a jury of his 
 countrymen, in recapitulating, after a protracted trial in Tipperary, the usual 
 mass of conflicting evidence, ' ' Gentlemen," say I to my future publishers, 
 " there's the bone — pick it as you like." 
 
 I have been a sojourner in many lands. In the days of my youth I felt the 
 full value of that vigorous period's unwasted energies, and took care that my 
 faculties of body and mind should not be sluggishly folded in a napkin, and 
 hidden beneath the clod of my native isle. Hence, wafted joyfully o'er the 
 briny barrier that encloses this unfortunate "gem of the western world," I 
 early landed on the shores of continental Europe, and spent my best and 
 freshest years in visiting her cities, her collegiate halls, her historic ruins, her 
 battle-fields. Tommy Moore and I may say with truth, that 
 
 " We have roamed through this world." 
 
 But my proceedings (unlike Tommy's) bore no resemblance to the conduct 
 of " a child at a feast" It was not in pursuit of pleasure that I rambled 
 through distant provinces ; neither, like Childe Harold, did I travel to stifle the 
 voice of remorse — to 
 
 " Fling forgetfulness around me." 
 
 I had other views. A transient, but not unobservant pilgrim, I have kept the 
 even tenor of my way through many a foreign tract of interesting country ; 
 rarely mingling in the busy hum of men, though carefully noting down with 
 meditative mind the varieties of character and demeanour, the discrepancies of 
 national thought and feeling as I went along. I have been keenly awake to 
 each passing occurrence in the cities where I dwelt,though, like the stranger 
 at Carthage, unnoticed myself and unperceived : 
 
 " Per medios, miscetque viris neque cernitur ulli. "— (sEueid. I.) 
 
 But I have paused longer at Rome. Not that other cities were divested of 
 
252 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 attraction : other places possessed interesting features, no doubt : they claimed 
 and they obtained their share of a traveller's attention ; yet, at no inferior 
 threshold, at no minor shrine, could I be induced to depose the staff, the scrip, 
 and the scallop-shell. Eager to hasten forward, and carefully reserving my 
 best homage for that unrivalled sanctuary of the scholar's worship, of the anti- 
 quary's idolatry. The name and the history of so memorable a spot had long 
 been familiar to my childhood. Even now, in the decline and decrepitude of 
 old age, the reminiscences of the seven hills, recalling all my youthful associa- 
 tions, and refreshing the verdant enthusiasm of my boyhood, return sweetly, 
 welcomed like the visits of early friendship ; and although I had an oppor- 
 tunity of renewing my acquaintanceship with the cities of France some thirty 
 years ago, at the peace of Amiens, still the recollections of my Roman sojourn, 
 bearing the remote millesimo of 1769, have kept themselves (to use a conse- 
 secrated expression) "greener" in my soul. O Rome! how much better and 
 more profitable I feel it is to dwell, though but in spirit, amid the glorious ruins 
 of thy monumental soil, than corporeally to reside in the most brilliant and 
 frivolous of modern capitals. Quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam 
 tui meminisse ! 
 
 There is a splendid song by some English bard, highly expressive of the 
 sentiments of patriotic attachment, which the poet must have felt for the island 
 that gave him birth — sentiments enhanced by a Reference to the proud position 
 it holds among the countries of Europe in arms, in arts, in the comforts of 
 civilization, commerce, and freedom ; but the very soul of the composition is 
 exhaled and finds utterance in that brief condensation of impassioned eulogy, 
 " England, the Home of the World ! " What this country now is, Rome was. 
 That city the philosopher Seneca terms (in his treatise De Consolatione. cap. 6) 
 communem gentibus patriam ,- and the idea is re-echoed by the naturalist Pliny 
 in nearly the same words (lib. 35, cap. 5). How often does the sensitive mind 
 of the Mantuan shepherd dwell with complacency on the attractions he found 
 in the city of his adoption — 
 
 " Rerum pulcherrima Roma \ " (Georgic. III.) 
 And again : 
 
 " Urbem, quam dicunt Romam, Melibaee putavi 
 Stultus ego huic nostra similem." 
 
 (Eclogue I.) 
 
 Not less perceptible is the real tendency of Horace's affections. When that 
 genuine specimen of a Roman " man on Town," slyly exhorts some friend to 
 try the effects of rustication— 
 
 " Omitte mirari beata 
 Fumum et opes strepitumque Roma; ! * 
 
 But Ovid's case is more peculiarly interesting in this respect. He who had 
 formed the chief ornament of polished society, the sought for and the 
 caressed of every Roman boudoir, the arbiter of refinement and elegance at 
 the brilliant court of Augustus, is suddenly banished to Scythia, a province 
 much resembling the bogs of modern Iveragh, or the wilderness of Connemara. 
 Placed in so woful a predicament, is it to be wondered at that he should envy 
 the happiness of his own books, which would go through so many editions in 
 the capital, and be handed about in every circle, while he himself was pining 
 among the tasteless brutes and ignorant savages of ihefaludes Propontidis. 
 
 " Parve _. ; . sine me liber ibis in Urbem 
 Hei mihi quo Domino non licet ire tuo." 
 
 Thus even at a later age, in the decline of the Empire, that eminent scholar 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 253 
 
 and highly-gifted writer, St. Jerome, having withdrawn from the fascinations 
 of the Eternal City to a romantic hermitage in Palestine, complained sadly 
 that his retirement was invaded, and his solitude perpetually haunted, by the 
 well-remembered images of the Roman ladies, and certain fairy visions of 
 profane beauty and accomplishments. This is recorded by Erasmus in the 
 life of the saint prefixed to the editio princeps — (S " - Hieronomi Opera, t. i. 
 folio, Basilese, 1526). But a truce to these frivolous preliminaries. Rome was not 
 recommended to my affections and cherished in my heart merely because of 
 her Pagan excellence, her martial glory, her literary fame. I was a Christian 
 man, and I aspired to the Christian priesthood in that city, which the code of 
 Justinian has not hesitated, in ancient days, to call the fountain of sacerdotal 
 honour — " fons sacerdotii," in that city which St. Prosper, a graceful poet and 
 a father of the Church (A.D. 470), addressed in terms of veneration and 
 endearment : 
 
 " Sedes Roma Petri, quae pastoralis honoris 
 Facta caput mundo quidquid non possidet armis. 
 Regligione tenet ; " 
 
 in that city which a modern French poet, the unfortunate Gilbert, has charac- 
 terized in the following splendid line — 
 
 " Veuve d'un peuple roi, mais Reine encore du monde." 
 
 I looked on Rome as the grand cemetery of the thousand martyrs, whose 
 ashes commingle there with the dust of the Scipios, and whose bones (to 
 use the strange words of the Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius) were ground into 
 flour by the lions of the amphitheatre, to become the bread of Christ. I remem- 
 bered that on this spot Peter suffered, and Paul bled in vindication of our 
 common Christianity ; and therefore I looked on Rome with the eyes of old 
 Chrysostom, whose glorious declaration comes fresh on my memory when, 
 commenting on PauTs Epistle to the Romans, he beautifully exclaims : Eyw 
 Kai T>jy Pw/iiji; Sta tovto <pi\u) Kat fiaKapt^to orrt kui £aw avrots tvvous rjv Kat 
 Ton j3tov £K£( KartXuas. Aio Kat £7rio"n/jio« ij iro\tv evteu0ej/, 1} alto Ttov aWtolf 
 attavrtav Kai Kadairip amfia fxiya Kat toryi/poj/ otpOaXfiovv eYft Suo \afiirov~ 
 tui, futv ayttov TouTiav ta fjtufxa-ra. EfCEtdev apirdyrjaTtTo llau\o<; } ekeiOei/ 
 n«T/>os" EyyoijuaTf ts Kat tppt^aTE otov o\j/£TO dtafia Pw/xij, tov TlavKov 
 tfcattpvriv avt<TTafi£vov ato t»js tirjKijv eke(i/t]s fitTa YltTpov, xat aipofitvou lis 
 airaVTtjirtv tov K.vptov. Ota awoaTeWet rria Xpurrtu poSa ij Pwfirj (Homilia 
 in Epist. Paul, ad Romanos, ad finem). An eloquent effusion thrilling with 
 magnificent enthusiasm, the spirit of which may be 'recognized in a hymn of 
 our Church composed by St. Prudentius in the fifth century, for the festival of 
 Peter and Paul : 
 
 " O Roma felix que duorum principum 
 Es consecrata glorioso sanguine 
 Horum cruore purpurata caeteras 
 Excellis orbis una pulchritudines ! " 
 
 Ex officio Breviar. Rom. 29 Junii. 
 
 So alluring a topic, as I confess this to be, suggesting to my mind so many 
 solemn reflections, must not however lead me away from the subject of to- 
 night's paper, which I intend shall relate an occurrence that befell myself and 
 my old schoolfellow, the painter Barry, in the capital of the Christian world. 
 It is an inveterate habit with my imagination to run riot when once the reins 
 are loosed and the ground tempts to a fit of discursiveness, nor is it the first 
 time in the course of these compositions that I have felt conscious of over- 
 
254 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 freely indulging in illustration and soliloquy. I beg leave to apologize to the 
 gentle reader for trespassing on his patience, and I do so without availing my- 
 self of the excuse an erratic French poet gives for the aberrations of his 
 muse : — 
 
 " Pardon, messieurs, si je m'egare, 
 C'est que j'imite un peu Pindare ! " 
 
 Which, being interpreted, will be found to mean — 
 
 " I've got a fault I cannot hinder, 
 A knack of imitating Pindar." 
 
 Promising, therefore, to keep, as far as human frailty will allow, with straight- 
 forward adherence to the thread of my narrative, I will eschew unnecessary 
 speeches, and though memory should be ever so anxious to pour forth the 
 mellow gatherings of her horn of plenty, I will sternly decline the offerings of 
 the pleasant but whimsical cornucopia. 
 
 It was towards the close of the autumn of 1769 that I reached the Eternal 
 City. Never shall I forget the rapturous exaltation with which I caught a 
 glimpse from the heights above the "Pons Milvius" of that glorious landscape 
 of ruins ; most distinctly is my mind still impressed, at this distance of space 
 and time, with the solemn silence of those seven hills, the deep gliding of the 
 voiceless Tiber, the frequent cypress rising in the suburban solitude— and, 
 above all, yon gorgeous dome of the Galilean fisherman, swelling in triumph 
 over the circus of Nero. Onward I went with eager eyes, with throbbing 
 heart, and with elastic step ; for I had alighted from the clumsy vehicle of my 
 Florentine veiturino, sure to rejoin him at the traveller's inevitable rendezvous, 
 the Dogana Pontificia ; alone and on foot I arrived at the gate of Rome, and 
 stood on the Piazza del Popolo. What was the precise current of cogitation 
 that flowed through my mind I cannot exactly remember, but I was suddenly 
 aroused from my reverie by the rough grasp of honest and affectionate 
 welcome j and mine eye gazed on the well-known countenance of fames Barry. 
 Then and there was I destined to meet thee once more, best loved of my boy- 
 hood and earliest associate of my school-days ! with whom I had often played 
 the truant from the hedge-academy of Tim Delany. 
 
 " Meorum prime sodalium ! 
 Cum quo morantem sxpe diem 
 Fregi. ' — Hor. lib. ii. ode 7. 
 
 Ay, then and there was it my lot to encounter him, whom I had remembered a 
 shoeless, stockingless, and reckless urchin, yet withal the life and soul of fun in 
 the classic purlieus of Blarney Lane ; ripe for every mischief, but distinguished 
 among the pupils of our excellent didasculus by the graphic accuracy with 
 which his embryo genius could trace in chalk on the school-door, or with slate 
 pencil on those tablets sacred to Euclid, the aforesaid pedant's respectable 
 proboscis. A red cow, in fresco, over Mick Flannagan's public-house, still 
 exists to attest the early development of his pictorial talent ; and even then 
 his passion for the fine arts was demonstrated by the fact of his having removed 
 from its pedestal, and conveyed in the dead of night to his own garret, the 
 wooden effigy of a blackamoor that adorned the Widow Brady's tobacco shop. 
 I afterwards lost sight of him when he migrated from Cork to the miserable 
 hamlet of Passage, on the harbour. There his father, who had been a builder 
 while in town, became, it appears, the owner of a small coasting craft ; in 
 which, sadly against his inclination, my poor James was doomed to roam the 
 blue deep, until he at last rebelled against his maritime destiny,- and ' ' taking 
 up arms against a sea of troubles,'* determined, in opposition to parental 
 authority, at once to " end them." His subsequent fate and fortunes since he 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 255 
 
 had "cut the painter" I had no means of ascertaining, till thus accosted by 
 what seemed, to my startled eye, the most unaccountable of apparitions ; nor 
 was it till I had fairly scanned his outward semblance, and heard the genuine 
 Munster brogue, in its pure unsophisticated Atticism, vibrate on his tongue, 
 that doubt gave place to the unfeigned delight of mutual recognition. Barry's 
 wonderment at discovering his quondam acquaintance in a semi-ecclesiastical 
 garb, was not the least amusing feature in the striking group we both presented 
 under the pedestal of Aurelian's obelisk, that flung its lengthy shadow across 
 the spacious piazza as the glorious Italian sun still lingered on the verge of the 
 horizon. 
 
 An immediate adjournment was voted, by mutual acclamation, to the 
 nearest hospitable shed; which, I remember well, was that most classically- 
 named establishment the Osleria della Syhilla, in the " Corso." There, to 
 use the language of a kindred soul in a similar rencontre — 
 
 " O qui complexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt ! 
 Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico " 
 
 {Iter Bnttidusit) — 
 
 mine host was summoned to produce flask after flask of sparkling Orvieto and 
 generous "lachryma;" nor was the swelling tear of joyous enthusiasm 
 unnoticed by me in the full eye of kindling genius, when subsequently, we 
 drank to his "art," and his "hopes," both coupled with the name of 
 " Edmund Burke, his noble, his generous protector ! " 
 
 We parted at a late hour, after fully comparing and collating our autobio- 
 graphies, well pleased at the coincidence that had reunited us once more. 
 Barry had but to cross the street to his modest stanzina, in the "Vicolo del 
 Greco." I tarried for the night in the cave of " the sybil," and dreamed over 
 many a frolic of bygone days, over many a deed of Roman heroism ; com- 
 mingling the recollections of Tim Delany with those of Michael Angelo, and 
 alternately perambulating in spirit the "Via Sacra" and "Blarney Lane." 
 
 This renewal of acquaintanceship was of no small advantage to us both 
 during the period of our residence in Rome. Though the object of our several 
 inquiries, and the path of our respective pursuits, were widely dissimilar, there 
 was necessarily on both sides much of acquired attainment : the interchange 
 of which was mutually delightful. In all that cou'd illustrate the memorials 
 of Roman story, the early annals of the republic, with reference to trophies, 
 triumphal arches, the deciphering of inscriptions, and such antiquarian lore as 
 could be gathered from the previous perusal of much that had been written on 
 this exhaustless topic, Barry found in his friend an humble but cheerful nomen- 
 clator— an almanac of constant and useful reference, more especially in that 
 department of sacerdotal knowledge which embraces the records and proceed- 
 ings of primitive Christianity ; of which Rome, its catacombs, its churches, its 
 sepulchres, and its MSS. are the richest and most faithful depositories.* In 
 return for such hints, suggestions and traditionary legends, as I was enabled to 
 communicate, it was Barry's pride to develop to me the sound principles of 
 taste and criticism — the whole theory of the art he loved — those noble views 
 and comprehensive speculations which he had derived from nature, and from 
 the cultivated intercourse of " A Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful." Com- 
 mingling thus our notions of the pleasing reciprocity of observation and judg- 
 ment, together we explored all the monumental remains that lay strewn in 
 giant fragments over the seven hills, from that magnificent relic of imperial 
 
 * There is an elaborate work, by Father Aringhi, bearing the quaint title of Roma 
 Subterranea, 2 vols, folio, Rom. 1663, which embodies much of the information heie 
 alluded to. — Prout. 
 
2S6 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 grandeur " l'anfiteatro Flavio," to that mighty utilitarian deposit of sepulchral 
 glory, the "Cloaca Maxima." 
 
 Among the attributes of a powerful mind, and the peculiarities of extra- 
 ordinary intellect, there has been often noticed an occasional playfulness, a 
 whimsical boyishness, with which the tame prudery of mediocre talent is rarely 
 chargeable, and the dull eye of commonplace thinkers is awfully scandalized. 
 This remarkable characteristic in the idiosyncrasy of the mental faculties was 
 observable in Barry : he had retained in the maturity of manhood that never- 
 failing accompaniment of inborn genius — he possessed the unsophisticated 
 heart of childhood still fresh and warm in his breast. My friend dearly loved 
 a frolic. I know not whether it was the irresistible impulse of those early 
 school day associations which my unexpected presence had then and there 
 communicated to his brai , but certain it is, that in the most sober and solemn 
 localities, when the insp. rations of the spot would seem to preclude the 
 remotes: idea of fun, a sudden unaccountable whim would take possession 
 of his fancy — the distinguished painter would disappear by some enchantment 
 and leave nought behind but the wild urchin of the streets of Cotk. Thus, 
 for instance : in examining the environs of the Capitol and surveying the well- 
 known topography of that classic neighbourhood, it suddenly occurred to him, 
 as we looked up with reverential awe at the ci-devant precipice yclept the 
 Tarpeian Rock, to suggest that I should climb the pinnacle, and place myself in 
 the attitude of an ancient criminal about to take the last fatal step, in supposed 
 accordance with the senatus consultant in such cases made and provided. Of 
 course I had no objection to gratify his wishes thereupon, but had scarcely 
 folded my classical gown into the most approved fashion of a Roman toga, and 
 assumed a look of the most sublime and devoted attachment, even in death, to 
 the laws of my country, extending my arm to the statue of Jupiter Stator, — 
 when a blow of a cabbage stump, aimed with unerring precision from the 
 kitchen garden where Barry stood below, had well-nigh completed the tragic 
 performance and hurled me from my " evil eminence," thus adding another to 
 the crowd of distinguished characters whose final departure for the nether 
 world (to speak with Homer) that rock had witnessed — 
 
 IloWae 3' itp6t/iovs i/rv^as niii irpdiatytv 'Hpwcov. K. t. A. 
 
 Fruitlessly did I remonstrate with the wayward artist, and vainly did I claim 
 the protection of canon law, which excommunicates the perpetrator of a 
 similar enormity (Si guts, suadente diabolo, clericum percusserit, &c. canon £ de 
 percussoribus, sect. 3, dejactu caul.) ; for he would urge my own oft-repeated 
 quotation from Horace, expressly authorizing poets and painters to attempt 
 anything within the range of human audacity, with impunity, — guidlibet 
 audendi (De Arte Poet., v. 10). 
 
 We loved, at the solemn hour of sunset, ere twilight grey had flung his 
 misty mantle o'er the scene, to ascend together the Janiculum Hill (near the 
 Vatican) because of the unrivalled prospect which, from the grand reservoir of 
 the Acqua Paolina, on the summit of that elevation, maybe enjoyed in the cool 
 of the evening, commanding a view over the whole surface of the ancient and 
 modern city, — its palaces, its domes, and its campanili contrasting in pic- 
 turesque confusion with the giant pillars of Trajan and Antonine,— the full 
 circumference of its walls — its aqueducts stretching in broken series across the 
 desolate campagna, — the silent course of the Tiber winding its serpent length 
 through the whole compass of the horizon, with the distant hills of Tivoli and 
 Alba on the verge of the landscape, that lost itself among the Apennines. — 
 there would we sit and contemplate awhile the matchless vision, with emotions 
 far deeper than those felt by Catullus, whose eye scanned the same tract of land 
 from the same eminence in olden days :— 
 
 " Hinc septem dominos videre montes 
 Et totam licet astimare Romam." 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 257 
 
 Then anon the sportive spirit would rush upon Barry, and, strangely jarring 
 on the harmony of local reminiscences, amid the awfulness of historic cogita- 
 tion, would burst forth with a wild and grotesque song, composed in honour 
 of the maritime village where he had spent his young days — manifestly an imita- 
 tion of that unrivalled dythyramb "The Groves of Blarney, ' with a little of 
 its humour and all its absurdity. 
 
 THE ATTRACTIONS OF A FASHIONABLE IRISH 
 WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 The town of Passage 
 
 Is both large and spacious. 
 
 And situated 
 
 Upon the say, 
 Tis nate and dacent , 
 And quite adjacent 
 To come from Cork 
 
 On a summer's day : 
 There you may slip in 
 To take a dipping. 
 Foment the skipping 
 
 That at anchor ride. 
 Or in a wherry 
 Come o'er the ferry, 
 To Carrigaloe, 
 
 On the other side. 
 
 Mud cabins swarm in 
 This place so charming. 
 With sailor garments 
 
 Hung out to dry ; 
 And each abode is 
 Snug and commodious. 
 With pigs melodious 
 
 In their straw-built sty. 
 It's there the turf is, 
 And lots of murphies, 
 Dead sprats and herrings 
 
 And oyster-shells ; 
 Nor any lack, O ! 
 Of good tobacco — 
 Though what is smuggled 
 
 By far excels. 
 
 There are ships from Cadiz, 
 And from Barbadoes, 
 But the leading trade is 
 
 In whisky-punch ; 
 And you may go in 
 Where one Molly Bowen 
 Keeps a nate hotel 
 
 For a quiet lunch. 
 But land or deck on. 
 You may safely reckon. 
 Whatsoever country 
 
 You came hither from. 
 On an invitation 
 To a jollification, 
 With a parish priest 
 
 That's called " Father Tom."* 
 
 * This cannot possibly refer (without a flagrant anachronism) to the present incumbent, 
 the Rev. 7 kcmas England, P.P., known to the literary world by "a life" of the cele- 
 brated Friar, Arthur O'Leary, chaplain to a Club which Curran, Yelverton, Earls Moira, 
 Charlemont, &c, &c, established in 1780, under the designation of " The Monks of the 
 Screw."— O. Y. 
 
Of ships there's one fixed 
 For lodging convicts, 
 A floating " stone jug " 
 
 Of amazing bulk ; 
 The hake ana salmon, 
 Playing at backgammon, 
 Swim for divarsion 
 
 All round this "hulk;" 
 There " Saxon "Jailors 
 Keep brave repailors. 
 Who soon with sailors 
 
 Must anchor weigh 
 From the em'rald island, 
 Ne'er to see dry land 
 Until they spy land 
 
 In sweet Bot'ny Bay. 
 
 Some people will think this conduct of my departed friend very childish, and 
 so it was, doubtless : but, to quote the language of his patron, Edmund Burke, 
 in one of those immortal pamphlets, replete with a wisdom and a philosophy 
 never granted to the soul of an utilitarian, " Why not gratify children ? Law- 
 yers, I suppose, were children once. Is the world all grown up ? is childhood 
 dead ? or is there not in the bosom of the worst and the best some of the child's 
 heart left to respond to its earliest enchantments?" There is a remark made 
 by Coleridge relative to the propensity of superior mental power to humble 
 itself to the capacity and the pursuits of the infant mind, which, if I recollect 
 his exact words, I would here record;* but I have constantly observed in my 
 own experience of life, and my own range of reading, that such has ever been 
 the tendency of all gifted and extraordinary men in every age, from Agesilaus 
 to Henri Quatre — from the prophet who adapted himself to the proportions of 
 infancy, "his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, his hands upon his 
 hands" (2 Kings, chap. iv. v. 34), to our own immortal patriot Grattan, who, in 
 the home a nation gave him, amid the woods of Finnahinch, played hide-and- 
 seek with his children ; where (as Tom Moore says) he who had guided the 
 councils of the collective wisdom, 
 
 " The most wise of the old, 
 Became all that the youngest and simplest hold dear."— Monody, &c 
 
 Some weeks passed on, and I began to see less of Barry. Anxious to store 
 my mind with whatever knowledge was to be obtained in the haunts of learn- 
 ing of the metropolis, I spent my days in frequenting the halls of the Univer- 
 sity (archigymnus, rom) and imbibing the wisdom of its professors. To some of 
 these I willingly pay the tribute of grateful acknowledgment; they were men of 
 acute and quick perception, clear and lucid delivery, easy and affable inter- 
 course ; their lectures were at once animated and substantial ; while others 
 (alas !), like our modern Denny Lardners, operated on the crowd of eager 
 students like the reading of the riot act— dull-plodding, pompous, pragmatical, 
 and empty-headed. 
 
 While I was thus engaged in sounding the depths of Thomas Aquinas, my 
 friend and countryman was ardently pursuing his favourite vocation, and dili- 
 gently studying the antique ; while I was busied with the rude forms of 
 syllogistic disputation, he was tracing the graceful shapes of fawn and nymph 
 
 _ * The remark, of which Prout only recollects the substance, may be found in Cole- 
 ridge's Autobiograph. Liter., Vol. 1, p. 85; " 'to carry on the feelings of childhood 
 into the powers 0/ manhood is the privilege of genius" &c, &c Pope seems to have 
 had a foretaste of the metaphysical discovery made by Coleridge when he wrote that line 
 on his friend Gay — 
 
 " In wit a man, simplicity a child." — O. Y. 
 
Barry in tlie Vatican. 259 
 
 — Psyche and Ganymede ; I wrestled with Duns Scotus and Peter Lombard, 
 he grappled with the dying gladiator, or the still-breathing Laocoon ; that 
 huge block called the torso of Hercules was the grand object of his idolatry ; 
 / worshipped an equally ponderous and gigantic folio of Cornelius a Lapide. 
 
 Months rolled away. I began to receive occasional visits from the painter; 
 but I could observe that his brow wore the mask of a disturbed and unquiet 
 spirit, and that he laboured under fits of depression and annoyance. He made 
 no difficulty of communicating to me the subject of his tribulations, which 
 had little foundation in reality, but were sufficient to sting to madness an over- 
 sensitive mind such as my friend unfortunately possessed. He had persuaded 
 himself that the English artists in Rome were in a combination against him, 
 that he was doomed to be for ever the victim of jealous envy, that his efforts to 
 gain celebrity, and take his allotted place among the ornaments of his profes- 
 sion, would be ever thwarted, by undue preferences bestowed on inferior craft 
 and intriguing dulness. To those troubles of his fancy's creation there was 
 superadded the straitened circumstances in which he was placed; wholly 
 dependent on the small annuity which Edmund Burke (by no means wealthy 
 at that period) contrived to bestow on him (50/.)* 
 
 All these symptoms of his internal organization, which afterwards in London 
 broke out into such fearful manifestations of irritability and unhappy temper, 
 required my utmost skill in the art of persuasion to soothe and to pacify. 
 Poets have been termed an angry, susceptible, and sensitive race, ever prone 
 to take umbrage at the most imaginary slight, and industriously conjuring up 
 spectral apparitions of unintentional offence and visionary wrongs ; but Barry 
 belonged to the most exalted class of the genus irritabile, and this unfortunate 
 impatience of mind, in conjunction with, and deriving intensity from, physical 
 and constitutional habit, brought ou his premature death, ere that plenitude 
 of fame, and that fulness of renown, on which he might securely have counted, 
 could in the course of human affairs be granted to his too eager anticipation. 
 How beautifully is the line of observation into which I have thus been in- 
 advertently led, followed up, and how feelingly is the same sentiment 
 expressed, by le Baron de Fontanes in his consolatory address to M. de 
 Chateaubriand ! — 
 
 " Ainsi les maitres de la lyre 
 
 Partout exhalent leur chagrins, 
 Vivants la doulcur les dechire ; 
 Et ces dieux que la terre admire 
 
 Ont peu compte de jours sereins, 
 
 Longtemps une ombre fugitive 
 
 Semble tromper leur noble orgueil ; 
 La Gloire enfin pour eux arrive, 
 
 Et toujours sa palme tardive 
 Crolt plus belle au pied d'un ceecueil." 
 
 I've marked the youth with talents cursed, 
 I've watched his eye, hope-lit at first — 
 Then seen his heart indignant burst 
 To find his genius scorned ! 
 
 • Barry was not the only English (?) artist whose poverty at Rome was proverbial ; the 
 eminent landscape painter Wilson was sadly unprovided with the precious metals while 
 a student in the capital. There is an odd story told of his doffing his coat one fine day 
 for a game of tennis in the baths of Caracalla (where the English had got up a sort of 
 ball alley), when lo ! on his back, by way of lining to his waistcoat, a splendid waterfall 
 with grottos, &c., &c, became visible ; a contrivance, no doubt, of bis laundress to turn 
 his productions to some profitable purpose. — O. Y. 
 
260 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Soft on his secret hour I stole. 
 
 And saw him scan with anguished soul 
 
 Glory's immortal muster-roll 
 
 His name should have adorned ! 
 
 His fate had been, with ardent mind 
 
 To chase the phantom fame, — to rind 
 
 His grasp eluded : — calm, resigned — 
 
 He knows his fate — he dies ! 
 
 Then comes Renown ! then Fame appears 1 
 Glory proclaims the coffin hers ; 
 Aye greenest over sepulchres 
 Palm-tree and laurel rise. 
 
 In the midst of those manifold vexations, there arose on the destiny of my 
 friend a guiding star, a light to illumine his path, and to cheer him on his 
 pilgrimage, a mild and holy influence, which had it not been withdrawn 
 suddenly, and for ever, might have rescued Barry from the dominion of his 
 own unruly imaginings and linked him to social existence. The rudest and 
 most ungovernable natures are the most docile and pleasant under the angelic 
 sway of female loveliness ; and there is a secret spell, by which the gentle 
 voice of beauty's admonition finds access to the most ironbound and intract- 
 able tempers. In his frequent visits to the Vatican, Barry had been noticed by 
 the old custode who tenanted the Torrione dei Venti at the extreme end of the 
 palace. Fabio Centurioni (such was the honoured name of this respectable 
 veteran, the senior officer of the Vatican gallery) was in himself an object not 
 unworthy of the antiquarian's attention. He belonged to a race of men 
 totally distinct in character, feeling, and outward semblance from the vulgar 
 crowd of Italians who crawl through the streets of Rome. He was of an old 
 transtiberine family; that is to say he claimed, in common with the trasfe- 
 verini, or inhabitants of that quarter of the city separated from the rest by the 
 Tiber, an undoubted and uncontaminated pedigree, ascending through all the 
 vicissitudes of intervening barbarism to the ancient masters of the world. 
 Whether he traced the relationship to Fabius Maximus 
 
 " Unus qui nobis cunctando restituit rem" (JSnnius) — 
 
 is a point which I omitted at the time to ascertain ; but if a solemn, imperturb- 
 able gait, a gravity of deportment, an absence of all unnecessary speed in 
 word or gesture, were symptoms of genealogical import, his descent in a direct 
 line from the great Cunctator was unquestionable. His affection for young 
 Barry originated in a sort of fancied resemblance to the old Roman character 
 which he thought he could trace in the young foreign artist, and certainly, 
 as far as energy, vigour, a proud and generous disposition, and an uncom- 
 promising dignity were typical of the sons of Romulus, the Irish painter 
 justified the old gentleman s sagacity and vindicated his discernment ; hence 
 he entertained for my friend a predilection which he took every opportunity of 
 exhibiting, being heard to declare that Barry was more of a Roman than the 
 whole tribe of degenerate wretches who dwelt on the right bank of the river. 
 But what set the seal to the custode's approbation, and firmly established the 
 foreigner in his esteem, was the unbounded veneration and respectful homage 
 which both felt in common for the huge torso of Hercules at the extremity 
 of the gallery — a colossal fragment, well-known throughout Europe from the 
 many casts that have been taken therefrom, and which in shape, size, and 
 wonderful attributes can only be compared to the Blarney stone, of which, to 
 the uninitiated vulgar, it appears an exact fac-simile. Fabio's eye glistened with 
 delight as he watched our enthusiast sketching his glorious block day after 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 261 
 
 day, in every position and attitude. An invitation to his apartments in the 
 palace was the result ; and thus Barry became acquainted with the accom- 
 plished, the unrivalled Marcella. 
 
 Pure, delightful, heavenly being 1 sixty years have passed over my head, and 
 revolutions have swept over the face of Europe, and monarchies have passed 
 away, and for more than half a century thy ashes have slept in the church of 
 Santa Cecilia in trastevtre, but thy image is now before me, lovely and animated 
 as when thy smile cheered the wild Irish artist, whom thou didst devotedly and 
 unfeignedly love ! In that church, near the tomb of the martyred saint (thy 
 model and thy patroness), a marble tablet, carved by the hand of thy heart- 
 broken father, may yet be seen, with the words— " Marcella Centurioni, 
 
 DI ANNI 13, VERGINE ROMANA, PACE IMPLOHA." 
 
 That peace is assuredly thine. Of too gentle a texture wert thou to endure 
 the trials of life, and the rude contact of adversity. Hence in mercy wert thou 
 withdrawn from this boisterous world, and received into the harbour of eternal 
 rest. With grief I record thy early fate : but I sorrow not for thee ! My 
 mind loves to dwell on the probable destiny of my friend had Heaven but 
 granted him a partner through life, an adviser, a helpmate, a tutelary deity, 
 in the adored person of her whom he had the unspeakable misfortune to lose 
 forever. But of what avail are the fond speculations of friendship? Both 
 are long since no more, and I myself must soon rejoin them in the mysteri- 
 ous region that stretches out beyond the grave. 
 
 Never shall I forget the Christmas of 1769. In Italy, the annual recurrence 
 of that merry festival is accompanied, in the family circle, as well as in the 
 public rejoicings, with certain demonstrations of religious feeling, and is not 
 merely, as in England, a season of carousing and revelry The picturesque 
 appearance and grotesque costume of the rustic minstrels, who come down 
 from the Apennines at that period of the year and fill the city with the 
 melody of their bagpipes (not unlike a group of Bethlehem shepherds), is not 
 the least interesting feature of the solemnity. The ceremonies and liturgy 
 of the Church, appealing to the senses of the people (for, in spite of the march 
 of intellect, there must ever be an outward and visible display of religious 
 worship for the bulk of mankind), kindle in a marvellous degree the fervour 
 of those southern votaries of our common Christianity, and are admirably 
 adapted for impressing them with sentiments appropriate to the commemora- 
 tion of Christ's nativity. It was then that, through Barry, who was a constant 
 visitor of Fabio Centurioni, and, in fact, was looked upon in the light of an 
 accepted son-in-law, I became intimate with the old custode's family. Many 
 were the pleasant hours, and countless the happy evenings, we spent in the 
 society of those good and hospitable people — many the moments of unmixed, in- 
 effable enjoyment. Excellence in musical accomplishments is the birthright of 
 every daughter of Italy ; but Marcella's voice thrilled with a delicacy of feeling 
 and a depth of expression it has never been my fortune to meet in any part of 
 the continent. Memory will occasionally, at this distance of time, bring back 
 some fleeting snatches of that exquisite melody; and just now a simple ballad, 
 replete with graceful piety, which I believe to be of her own composition, pre- 
 sents itself to my recollection. It is but a fragment j but as I never saw it any- 
 where in print, I cannot supply the portion that is deficient, to complete the 
 poem, which contains a supposed dialogue between the Virgin Mary, a gipsy, 
 and St. Joseph, in the land of Egypt 
 
 LA ZINGARELLA. 
 
 Ben venuto vecchiaxello Siete stanch! e meschini 
 
 Con questo bambino bello Credo, poveri pellegrini, 
 
 Che' sto core m' inamora ; Che cercate-d' alloggiare 
 
 Dio ti salvi, bella signora ! Vuol signora scavakare ? 
 
262 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 Alia tua bella presenza 
 Tutta mi sento ri verenza, 
 £ ancor credo per certo 
 Che venite del deserto. 
 
 Siete stanch! della via, 
 Vi offerisco la casa mia ; 
 Benche sono poverella, 
 Son una donna Zingarella. 
 
 Se non e come meritate 
 Signoruccia perdonate, _ 
 Quest' onor volete farm! ? 
 Questo piacer volete darmi? 
 
 Aggia quS. una stallella 
 Buona per" sta somarella ; 
 Paglia e fieno ce ne getto 
 Vi a per tutti lo ricetto. 
 
 E tu, vecchiarello, siedi !^ 
 Sei venuto sempre a piedi ; 
 Avete fatto, o bella figlia, 
 Da trecento e tante niiglia. 
 
 O ch' e bello' sto figliarello 
 Che par fatto con pennello, 
 Non ci so dar assomiglio 
 Bella madre e bello figlio. 
 
 Non aveta piu paura 
 V* indovino V aventura, 
 Nol signora cosl sino 
 Facciam sempre 1' indovino. 
 
 Quel picciolin' mi tocca il core 
 Mostra mi dunque per favore, 
 Fammi grazia signorina 
 Dammi qui la sua manina, etc. 
 
 THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 
 
 A Ballad. 
 
 There's a legend oft told of a gipsy that dwelt 
 
 In the land where the Pyramids be ; 
 And her robe was embroider d with stars, and her belt 
 
 With devices right wondrous to see. 
 And she lived in the days when our Lord was a child 
 
 On his mother's immaculate breast ; 
 When he fled from his foes— when to Egypt exiled, 
 
 He went down with St. Joseph the Blest. 
 
 This Egyptian held converse with magic, methinks, 
 
 And the future was given to her gaze ; 
 For an obelisk mark'd her abode, and a sphinx 
 
 Kept watch on her threshold always. 
 She was pensive, and ever alone, nor was seen 
 
 In the haunts of the dissolute crowd, 
 But communed with the ghosts of the Pharaohs, I ween, 
 
 And with visitors wrapp'd in a shroud. ... 
 
 And there came an old man from the desert one day 
 
 With a maid on a mule, by that road, 
 And a child on her bosom reclined — and the way 
 
 Led them straight to the gipsy's abode : 
 And they seem'd to have travell d a wearisome path 
 
 From their home, many, many a league — 
 From a tyrant's pursuit, from an enemy's wrath, 
 
 Spent with toil, and o'ercome with fatigue. 
 
 And the gipsy came forth from her dwelling, and pray'd 
 
 . That the pilgrims would rest there awhile ; 
 And she offer'd her couch to that delicate maid, 
 
 Who had come, many, many a mile ; 
 And she fondled the babe with affection's caress, 
 
 And she begg'd the old man would repose ; 
 * Here the stranger,'' she said, " ever finds free access, 
 
 And the wanderer balm for his woes." 
 
 Then her guests from the glare of the noonday she led, 
 
 To a seat in her grotto so cool, 
 Where she spread them a banquet of fruits ; and a shed 
 
 With a manger was found for the mule : 
 
Barry in the Vatican. 263 
 
 With the wine of the palm-tree, with dates newly cull'd, 
 
 All the toil of the road she beguiled ; 
 And wkh song in a language mysterious she lull u 
 
 On her bosom the wayfaring child. 
 
 When the gipsy anon in her Ethiop hand 
 
 Placed the infant's diminutive palm, 
 Oh 'twas fearful to see how the features she scann'd 
 
 Of the babe in his slumber so calm ! 
 Well she noted each mark, and each furrow that cross d 
 
 O'er the tracings of destiny's line : 
 " Whence came ye?" she cried, in astonishment lost, 
 
 "For this child is of lineage divine I" 
 
 " From the village of Nazareth," Joseph replied, 
 
 " Where we dwelt in the land of the Jew ; 
 We have fled from a tyrant, whose garment is dyed 
 
 In the blood of the children he slew. 
 We were told to remain till an angel's command 
 
 Should appoint us the hour to return ; 
 But till then we inhabit the foreigner's land, 
 
 And in Egypt we make our sojourn. 
 
 " Then ye tarry with me," said the gipsy with joy, 
 
 " And ye make of my dwelling your home ; 
 Many years have I pray'd that the Israelite boy_ 
 
 (Blessed hope of the Gentiles) would come. 
 And she kiss'd both the feet of the infant, and knelt, 
 
 And adored him at once— and a smile 
 Lit the face of his mother, who cheerfully dwelt 
 
 With her host on the banks of the Nile. 
 
 The character and prospects of Barry never presented themselves to his 
 friends under a brighter aspect than during the period of his intimacy with the 
 amiable and cultivated indwellers of the Torrione de Vmti in the Vatican 
 gardens. The soothing influence of the milder affections became manifest in 
 the submissive and quasi-fi\\a\ attention with which he deferred to the counsels 
 of Marcella's father, who, having, in virtue of his office, seen many successive 
 generations of young enthusiasts engaged in the same professional walk, was 
 eminently qualified' to guide and to advise. The privilege of access to the 
 gallery at hours when, by the established regulations, all others were excluded, 
 was an advantage which Barry knew how to appreciate, and which I particu- 
 larly notice, because it gave occasion to an occurrence of which I alone was 
 witness, and which I promised during his lifetime never to disclose, bince 
 his death, I have had no motive either for publishing or concealing this 
 anecdote ; and, to tell the truth, I apprehended that its very singularity would, 
 perhaps, in the estimation of many, be a sufficient reason for refusing all 
 credence to the narrative; but in the eyes of the select few, for whom I write 
 (contentus paucis lectoribus), I venture to hope that the romantic nature of 
 the transaction will not, merely on that ground alone, damage the statement 
 or prejudice my veracity ; it being a recognized truth, that matters far more 
 extraordinary have occurred in real life than are recorded in the wildest pages 
 of contemporary fiction. . 
 
 Barry loved to study in the Vatican gallery by night— an indulgence 
 which the mildness of the season (it was now the close of May, 1770) in the 
 genial climate of Italv) would occasionally allow of. The modern custom of per- 
 mitting foreigners to explore the museum by torchlight, on payment of certain 
 fees, and under particular circumstances, had not yet been established, so that. 
 James had no apprehension of intruders on the privacy of his studious 
 hours. There, by the glare of a bronze lamp, he would sit while the city 
 
was hushed in repose ; and while the glimmering flame would cast its shadowy 
 lustre on the contour of some antique group, he would delight to sketch the 
 ghostlike forms of the mighty dead, drinking deep of the pure fount of Greek 
 inspiration. I believe that I have before adverted to the strange notion he had 
 imbibed that the English artists at Rome were jealously watchful of his studies ; 
 that they sought to appropriate the conceptions of his teeming fancy and to 
 rob him of his originality. Hence, to Barry, the conviction of being alone and 
 unobserved constituted the real charm of these nocturnal pursuits : none but 
 I could boast of ever being allowed access to his vigils in the gallery. 
 
 On the evening of the 20th of May (the date I have not forgotten) we had 
 both been staying up late with the old custode in the Torriont, and Barry had 
 been rather warmly engaged with his host in a controversy respecting the rela- 
 tive merits of the recumbent Cleopatra, and the reclining figure of a colossal 
 river god, generally supposed to be the Nile ; when, as he imagined I took 
 some interest on behalf of his favourite the Cleopatra, he offered to accompany 
 me thither with, the old custode' s permission, and give me ocular demonstration 
 of the correctness of his views. As by this time (it was near midnight) we had 
 demolished not a few flasks of gtnsano, I felt nothing loth : so we folded our 
 cloaks about us, and I bore the torch. I question whether Diomed and 
 Ulysses, in their famous night excursion across the plain of Troy, experienced 
 loftier emotions than did we, as with echoing tread we paced the solemn halls 
 of the pontifical palace between ranks of antique statues, confronting us in 
 every possible variety of attitude — menace, grief, admiration, welcome, or 
 terror. 
 
 Nothing to my imagination appeared so illustrative of a visit to the shades of 
 Erebus, such as were penetrated by the hero of the ".lEneid" and his mystic 
 guide — 
 
 " Ihant obscuri sold sub nocte per umbram, 
 Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et mania regna " (vi. 268). 
 
 Barry would occasionally pause before some of his marble favourites, intro- 
 duce me to their individual merits, and teach me to throw the light judiciously, 
 delivering himself withal of some of those striking theories which I loved to 
 trace in his subsequent printed lectures on the art he adored. But as we slowly 
 approached the Sola de Cleopatra, the term of our appointed pilgrimage, a 
 sudden and unaccountable start on the part of my friend dashed the torch out 
 of my hand — and " I'll be hanged, Prout !" cried he, "if the ruffians a'nt 
 listening to every word I utter : did you not see that scoundrel Nollekens 
 lurking there behind the Antinous?— by G — d.'tishe!" "Forshame!" Ire- 
 joined ; " can't you keep from cursing at this hour of night, and in the very 
 residence of the sovereign pontiff?" " Tis true, by hell!" cried out my 
 infuriated friend, reckless of that stern reporter for the celestial press, the 
 recording angel, who, no doubt, dropped a detersive tear upon an oath the 
 decided offspring and evidence of monomania: "but I'll teach the rascal to 
 exercise elsewhere his talents as an eavesdropper, a spy, and a plagiarist ! " So 
 saying, he rushed to the spot where he fancied he had seen his foe : and spite 
 of the obscurity of the hall, on the floor of which lay the extinguished torch, I 
 could still perceive that he had, in fact, grappled not with a mere creature of 
 his troubled fancy, but with a bond fide human shape, muffled in the ample folds 
 of a long ecclesiastical robe, and yielding, apparently without resistance, to the 
 rude energy of his assailant. Barry soon relaxed his grasp, when he had clearly 
 ascertained that his prisoner was an old priest and an Italian ; but muttered 
 still with indomitable wrath, " You may thank your stars, my boy, that you 
 weren't that blackguard Nollekens." "Grazie tante," was the ejaculation of 
 the venerable captive, when he had sufficiently recovered from his fright. 
 " Your mistake has well-nigh had consequences which none would regret more 
 
than yourselves. You are foreigners, and, if I may judge from your idiom, 
 English ; I am a resident of the palace. No doubt a love for the arts has 
 occasioned your presence here at this unusual hour. 'Tis well. Follow me 
 towards the Sala di San Damaso." There was something authoritative, as well 
 as conciliatory, in the tone of our new acquaintance : and as I showed a dispo- 
 sition to accept the invitation of one whom I guessed to be a dignitary of the 
 Papal court, Barry did not hesitate to accompany me. 
 
 We paused not, we spoke not. Onwards we went through the different cor- 
 ridors and antechambers that separate the Vatican gallery from that portion of 
 the palace which our guide had mentioned. Each busola, each door seemed 
 to recognize the passage of a master, flying open at his touch. At length we 
 entered what appeared to be a study. The walls were hung with Flemish 
 tapestry, and a bronze lamp of antique fashion, dependent from the gilt oak 
 ceiling, faintly illuminated the apartment. In the centre, a table, inlaid with 
 exquisite mosaic, was strewed with various documents, seemingly of an official 
 character ; amongst which, a single book, though torn and disfigured, quickly 
 attracted my eye. I knew at a glance the familiar folio. It was a copy of that 
 splendid code of unrivalled philosophy and exalted wisdom, the magna cliarta 
 of science combined with religion, the standard regulations of my old tutors — 
 " Institutum Societatis Jesu." We were seated at the Italian prelate's 
 request. A servant in the papal livery was summoned, by a rapid signal, from 
 the adjoining room : a brief order to bring wine and refreshments was 
 delivered, and executed with magic promptitude. Meantime, Barry kept his 
 eye on me to ascertain what I thought of our singular position. Our host left 
 no space for reflection, but pressed us with genuine hospitality to partake of 
 what lay before us. Wine is the great dissolvent of all distrust, the great 
 generator of cordiality. Never was this recognized truth more forcibly exem- 
 plified than in my friend's case, who, totally oblivious of the late awkward 
 scuffle between himself and the most reverend dignitary, launched out into 
 a diversity of topics connected with the fine arts, of which our entertainer 
 appeared to be a sincere and ardent admirer. 
 
 Thinking it high time to mix in the conversation, "I am happy to find," 
 said 1, quaffing a glass of Malaga, ' ' that the Jesuits have a friend at the court 
 of Ganganelli." 
 
 "Speak you thus, abbatino!" rejoined our host. "You are, then, an 
 admirer of Loyola's institute. Are there many such in France, where, it 
 appears, you have studied ? " 
 
 I described the whole episcopal body of the Gallican Church, than which 
 there never existed, in any age of Christianity, a more learned and pious body 
 of men, as unanimously adverse to the proposed destruction of that invaluable 
 Society. 
 
 ' ' The King of France and the Kings of Spain and Portugal happen to think 
 differently, young man," said the prelate with some warmth, and with a tone 
 that only served to kindle my zeal in defence of my old professors. 
 
 "The profligate Duke de Choiseul and the very reputable Madame de Pom- 
 padour may have persuaded the imbecile Louis XV. to adopt the views of the 
 writers in the ' ' Encyclopedic" D'Alembert and Diderot may possibly think that 
 the conductors of that troublesome periodical, Le Journal de Trevoux, might 
 be advantageously suppressed ; the Minister of his Most Catholic Majesty of 
 Spain may no doubt fancy the property of the Society in the mother country, 
 in South America, and in the East Indies, a fair object of plunder ; the respect- 
 able Marquis de Pomtal may entertain similar opinions at Lisbon : but surely 
 the judgment of a knot of courtly conspirators acting in unhallowed concert, 
 should find its proper weight in the balance of the sanctuary. If 1 mistake not, 
 Catherine of Russia and the great Frederick of Prussia (heretics though they 
 be) think differently of the merits of those extraordinary men, and openly pro- 
 
fess t*heir readiness to offer them an asylum in their respective territories. But 
 if it be true (as it is rumoured in the Piazza Colohna) that the restoration of 
 Avignon and its confiscated territory, estreated by France during the late 
 pontificate, is to be the reward of Ganganelli's subserviency in this matter to 
 the court of Versailles, then I must say, and I don't care who hears me, that a 
 more flagrant case of simony and corruption never disgraced the annals of the 
 Vatican. As to the wretched province regained to the Holy See by such means, 
 it may well bear the denomination given of old to the Potter's field, Hakel- 
 DAMA ! " ' 
 
 A dismal scowl passed over the brow of the prelate. "Is it not the first 
 duty of the supreme pastor," he hastily observed, " to conciliate the heads of 
 the Christian flock ? Your own country teaches a lesson on pontifical obstinacy. 
 Had Clement VII. shown less rigour in refusing to propitiate your Eighth 
 Harry, by sacrificing to his whim the rights of Queen Katherine, England 
 would at this day be the most valuable feoff of St. Peter's domain. In bygone 
 days, the request of Philippe le Bel, backed by the Emperor and the Kings of 
 England and Spain, was deemed sufficient in the teeth of evidence to condemn 
 the noble brotherhood of the Temple. These orders are of human institution : 
 the Jesuits must be yielded up to the exigency of the times. To appease the 
 outcry, to calm the effervescence of the moment, the Pope may safely dismiss 
 his 'Janissaries.' " 
 
 "Yet the day may come," I replied, "when Catholicity may want the 
 powerful aid of science and of literature— when the paltry defence of ignorant 
 bigotry will be no longer of any avail, when all the motley host of remaining 
 monks and friars, white, black, and grey, will find their inability to fill the 
 space left void by the suppression of that intellectual and redeeming order, 
 and when all the resources of learning and genius will be required to fight the 
 battle of Christianity." 
 
 Two hours had now elapsed since our midnight adventure, and the warning 
 chime of the palace belfry gave me an opportunity, in accordance with Barry's 
 repeated signals, to take leave. The prelate, having carefully ascertained our 
 names and address, placed us under the guidance of the attendant in waiting, 
 who led us by the cortile dci Suizzeri to the Scala Regia ; and we finally stood 
 in front of St. Peter's Church. We paused there awhile, little dreaming that 
 it was the last night we should pass in Rome. The moon was up, and the 
 giant obelisk of Sesostris, that had measured the sands of Lybia with its 
 shadow, now cast its gnomon to the very foot of that glorious portico. Gushing 
 with perennial murmur, the two immense jets d'eau flung out their cataracts on 
 each side of the sublime monument, and alone broke with monotonous sound 
 the silence of the night. 
 
 Poor Marcella ! those two hours had been a space of severe trial and sad 
 suspense for thee ; but we knew not till months had elapsed the fatal conse- 
 quences that ensued. Barry, when he parted with her father, had promised to 
 remain but a moment in the gallery, and old Centurioni bade his daughter 
 wait up for his guests while he himself sought his quiet pillow. Hours rolled 
 on, and we came not. The idea of nocturnal assassination, unfortunately too 
 familiar to the Roman mind, awakened by the non-appearance of the Irish 
 artist, took rapid possession of her kindling imagination as she watched in the 
 Torrione in vain for his return. 
 
 The transition from doubt to the certainty of some indefinable danger was 
 the work of an instant. Yielding to the bold impulse of hereditary instinct, 
 she seized the bronze lamp that burned on the mantelpiece, grasped a Damas- 
 cene blade, the weapon of some crusader in olden time, and gliding with the 
 speed of thought, was soon far advanced in her searching progress through the 
 corridors and galleries of the palace. Had the statue of Lucretia leaped from 
 its pedestal, it might present a similar appearance in gesture and deportment. 
 
Alas, she was never to re-enter the parental dwelling ! Erethe morning dawned 
 the romantic girl was a prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo, under suspicion of 
 being employed by the Jesuits to assassinate Ganganelli ! 
 
 Strange whispers were current at break of day— "An Irish painter and an 
 Irish priest, both emissaries of ' the Society,' had been detected lurking in the 
 Vatican : an assault had been made on the sacred person of the pontiff : they 
 had avowed all in a secret interview with his Holiness, and had confessed that 
 they were employed by Lawrence Ricci, the general of the order." At the 
 English coffee-house in the Piazza di Spagna, the morning's gossip was early 
 circulated in Barry's hearing. The truth flashed on his mind at once. He ran 
 to my apartments : I was thunderstruck. 
 
 Nothing had as yet transpired concerning Marcella's imprisonment : and we, 
 unfortunately, resolved on a step which gave a colourable pretext to accusation. 
 In the hurry of our alarm we agreed on quitting, Rome at noon. Barry took the 
 road to Bologna, and I was by noon in the Pontine marshes on the road to 
 Naples. Our friends thought us safely immured in those cells which the 
 "holy office" still keeps up at its headquarters in the Dominican convent 
 called, ironically enough, La Minerva. 
 
 Old Centurioni was debarred the privilege of seeing his daughter : in silent 
 anguish he mourned over the fate of his child,- and bemoaned that of the young 
 foreigners, who, he doubted not, were equally in the hands of "justice." But 
 the worst was to come. That angelic being, whose nature was too pure, and 
 whose spirit was too lofty, to endure the disgrace and infamy imputed to her, 
 remained haughtily and indignantly passive under the harsh and unmerited 
 infliction. She gave no sign. An inflammatory fever, the combined result of 
 uncertainty concerning the fate of her lover, and irritation at the very thought 
 of such heinous guilt thus laid to her charge, closed, in less than a fortnight, 
 her earthly career. Her death set the seal on my friend's evil destiny through 
 the remainder of his unblest and reckless pilgrimage. 
 
268 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 §ap of Erasmus. 
 
 [Fraser's Magazine, May, 1835.) 
 
 [Through this paper of Prout's aj> curious a side-light is thrown upon the history of 
 Erasmus as that cast upon it fully a quarter of a century afterwards by Charles Reade's 
 " Cloister and the Hearth," a work which, it may be interesting to remark, is, among 
 all its author's writings, his own especial favourite. That the good Father of Water- 
 grasshill had an almost painful interest in and sympathy for the theme he had here 
 selected is naively enough admitted by him at its very outset. It is with the sense 
 as of a random shaft that rankles — kceret tateri lethalis arundo— that he cites from 
 Pope in allusion to Erasmus "the glory of the priesthood and the shame." In his 
 scholarship and in his wit, if in nothing else, Mahony was distinctly Erasmian. In the 
 number of Fraser containing this ingenious dissertation on the Dutch scholiast 
 appeared Maclise's sketch of Lady Morgan, author of " O'Donnell," or, better still, of 
 j Florence Maccarthy," as the once wild Irish girl Sydney Owenson was supposed to look 
 in her maturity, when critically trying on her new bonnet in front of a cheval glass. The 
 fleering spirit of the time in which Prout and his Fraserian compeers flourished, was 
 signally evidenced by Maginn's allusions, in the accompanying letterpress, to Lady 
 Morgan's sire having been a gentleman's gatekeeper, and to her husband having been 
 an apothecary who Had suffered the penalty of knighthood at the hands of a facetious 
 lord-lieutenant.] 
 
 EPASMIH-n-EXeia 
 TLoQtv iroQeir TTETatrcrac 
 Hodtv fivptov TOffovrtav 
 Eir' ijpos Oeoutra 
 
 HfEElS TE KCtt l/fEtfa^Etf. 
 
 Anacreon, Ode 9. 
 
 Gentle shade of the scholar whose writings combined 
 With the lore of the priesthood the views of a sage : 
 Wit and wisdom allied in thy volumes I find, 
 And the perfume of piety breathes from thy page. 
 
 Prout. 
 
 The restoration of letters, with the general revival of classic taste, of which 
 the pontificate of Leo X. gave the signal to Europe, forms an epoch of sur- 
 passing interest, and we are not displeased at the opportunity afforded us, by 
 the following rhapsody from Prout's coffer, of reverting to those ' ' prime of 
 days." Right pleasing and delectable, in mental as well as physical enjoy- 
 ments, is variety. Hence, turning awhile from the frivolous pastimes of a 
 novel-writing generation, it is our design to commune for a sober hour with 
 men of another age, to exchange the foolscap octavo and the glittering Annual 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 269 
 
 for the parchment tome and the copper-fastened folio. Thus shall we best 
 eschew the horrors of monotony, and " minister to the mind diseased " a dose 
 of true " physic for the soul." 
 
 To us, deep pondering on the present posture of literary affairs, and much 
 meditating on the future prospects of the learned republic, the retrospect 
 becomes an exercise of solemn and official duty, nor is it without befitting 
 anxiety that we are compelled to notice, in comparing our actual position with 
 the past, strong symptoms of a state which we will describe best in our friend 
 Lardner's phraseology, by the scientific terms " backward advancement and 
 retrograde progression." For it will sometimes occur to us, in our meditative 
 soliloquy, to pass in review before our mind's eye and name aloud one by one 
 the most illustrious of our living authors : and when we have gone through 
 the motley nomenclature, a palpable conclusion offers itself as the result of 
 our scrutiny ; we find that we have arrived at a period when, to flourish as a 
 literary character, it is no longer necessary to have devoured and digested the 
 contents of libraries, to have wasted a puncheon of midnight oil, to have lived 
 on terms of long and close intimacy with the coy sisterhood (who are known 
 to be rather shy of indiscriminate acquaintanceship), or to have held converse 
 with the mighty dead, whose shades will not arise unless evoked by a kindred 
 spirit. Nous avons changt tout cela. Far different are the qualifications 
 required to obtain success in the field of modern publication. The candidate 
 for celebrity in the current literature of the day need not have impaired the 
 energies of his intellect by too intense thinking, or, what is equally destructive, 
 a too extensive perusal of bygone authors. His (or her) mind must be as nearly 
 as possible a delightful blank — what in the philosophy of Locke and Descartes 
 is denominated a tabula rasa — what Tom Moore calls a "virgin page" on 
 which study has made no previous impression whatsoever. It is of the utmost 
 consequence that the neophyte who is anxious to be numbered among the 
 elect, that he (or she) carefully avoid the habits and pursuits of a bookworm : 
 antiquated practices which (to quote the same distinguished poet and moralist) 
 should be abandoned, like " points of belief," 
 
 " To simpleton sages or reasoning fools,'' 
 
 the memory of modern literati being of too polished a surface, their fancy of 
 too delicate a texture, their ideas too " transient and brief," 
 
 " To be sullied or stained by the dust of the schools." 
 
 Hence, if there happen to be some traces of early reading, some remnants 
 faint and indistinct, of classical instruction, the sooner they are obliterated the 
 better. The scribes who flourished during the " decline and, fall," when they 
 got hold of a vellum disfigured by compositions of the Augustan age, took 
 especial pains to efface every appearance of the previous characters etc they 
 converted it into a. palimpsest. 
 
 A striking circumstance in the condition of modern authorship is the 
 multitude of female aspirants to literary renown. But we think we can 
 readily account for it. The sex is quick-sighted. Perceiving that it was no 
 longer necessary, under the new system, to have accumulated (oleo vigilante) 
 a stock of ideas ere commencing business as a bookmaker, they could not 
 brook that the men should enjoy a monopoly. Learning hath no longer any 
 propria qua maribus. Heretofore they had abstained, from the false notion 
 that there existed some such kind of Salic law in the republic of letters ; but 
 on bringing the point to issue, they have found no disqualifying obstacle to 
 their ambition. Already do we contemplate literature in that state which, to 
 French jurisprudence, is known by the term " tombie en quenouille." Success 
 the most triumphant has crowned their labours ; for these female lucubrations 
 
270 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 possess a je tie scais quol not given to the dull effusions of their male com- 
 petitors. Who would not prefer a treatise on utilitarian philosophy by 
 Martineau or Edgeworfh to the Benthamite ravings of Brougham or Bowring? 
 Can Basil Hall as a writer of travels bear comparison with the sagacious 
 Trollope ? Is the poetry of Haynes Bayly or Bob Montgomery a whit better 
 than that of Mrs. Norton or Mrs. Barry Wilson? Does not the eccentric 
 and flaring planet of Mother Morgan run a career of glory in breadth and 
 brilliancy far surpassing the narrow orbit through which creeps along the 
 
 minor star of ? And since the appearance of a late work on 
 
 the " Connexion of the Physical Sciences," have we not seen the transcendent 
 blue light of Mrs. Somerville, F.R.A.S., rise to an astonishing altitude in the 
 regions of astronomy, while the lantern of Lardner sank proportionally below 
 the horizon? How much superior is the learned lady to the discomfited 
 quack, and how well does she wear her laurels ! 
 
 " D'otl vient qu'elle a l'ceil trouble et le teint si t6nue ? 
 C'est que sur le calcul, dit-on, de Cassini, 
 Un astrolabe en main elle a, dans sa gouttiere, 
 A suivre Jupiter passe 1 la nuit entiere." 
 
 Boilcait, Sat. x. v. 43a 
 
 It was formerly considered the peculiar attribute of Bologna to produce female 
 lecturers on the abstruse sciences ; but that celebrated city can no longer boast 
 of exclusively possessing she professors. 
 
 Nor, in contemplating the surrounding phenomena of the publishing world, 
 should we overlook the labours of the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge — 
 that wondrous apparition ! foreseen and foretold as early as the reign of Queen 
 Anne by the author of a poem called the ' ' Dunciad," who, through a vista of 
 coming years, in the depth of futurity got a glimpse of the many-plumed 
 phantom sitting on the dome of the London University, 
 
 " With wings outspread. 
 To hatch a new Satumian age of lead." 
 
 The benevolent individuals with whom this diffusive project originated saw 
 that learning, like landed property, was very unequally divided among man- 
 kind ;an d with a philanthropic ardour resolved to apply the principle of the 
 agrarian law, which had hitherto only been thought applicable to estates and 
 visible wealth, to the riches of the intellect. Strange to say, people have been 
 found so wedded to existing abuses, as to question whether society would, in 
 either case, be bettered by the achievement ; and the intellectual levellers have 
 been accused of wishing to introduce that chaos and confusion into the 
 domain of the mind which their brethren, the radicals, seek to establish in 
 the political world. Meantime " feriiel opus" the Penny Magazine circulates 
 its thousands, and the " Penny Cyclopaedia" its tens of thousands. The old 
 modes of acquiring knowledge, our traditionary routines of study, our halls 
 and collegiate institutions, must shortly give place to a more enlightened 
 system. But, alas ! that the writers thus enlisted and en-regimented in the 
 service of diffusion should be so generally known as a motley crew of half- 
 taught blockheads. Even so, and it doth certainly seem unto us, who state 
 the fact with sorrow, that the selection of the men appears to have been made 
 on the principle adopted by Gideon in the choice of his soldiers, to « it, all who 
 have stooped down to drink deep and leisurely of the stream that flows from 
 the fountain of Helicon, have been carefully excluded, to make way for those 
 ruder heroes who have quaffed in their rugged palm en passant barely enough 
 to moisten their barbarous lips ere they set out on their crusade of " diffusion." 
 Whether the light that is to shine from their broken pitchers, and the dis- 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 271 
 
 cordant noise of their penny trumpets, will be eventually triumphant, time 
 will tell. 
 
 The sixteenth century opened with different views, and the writers of that 
 day were folks of a different calibre. Long and well-regulated study, a con- 
 stant recurrence to the great models that adorned the age of Tully and 
 Pericles, laborious habits, indefatigable enthusiasm, cautious inquiry, with 
 modesty and diffidence, are qualities invariably found in those who, at the 
 time of Leo X., contributed to the development of solid information and the 
 spread of classic taste — Sicfortis Etruvia craiit. It may be useful to glance 
 at the period of the revival in these utilitarian days, when the value of such 
 studies is more than questioned ; when a shower of -useful publications shot 
 forth from the crater of "diffusion," like the ashes that overwhelmed Pompeii, 
 bid fair to bury in oblivion every trace of classic literature, every vestige of 
 Greek and Roman elegance. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Watergrasshill, 1830. 
 Erasmus of Rotterdam, who was, according to a Catholic poet, 
 
 " The glory of the priesthood, and the shame " (rope), 
 
 may naturally enough be supposed to have drawn on his character, writings, 
 and biography much of sacerdotal attention. His "Life and Times" present 
 interest and attraction for all, because mixed up with two coeval events, the 
 most important in modern times — the restoration in letters and the reformation 
 in religion, but to "his order" such a man must ever be an object of curious 
 speculation and careful study. What the Eikwk IWiXi/rt) is to kings should the 
 " Opera Erasmi " be to priests — a manual of deep and wholesome reflection. 
 
 It was the fate of Erasmus during life to be abused by the blind zealots of 
 both parties, while the enlightened and pacific spirits on either side invited 
 him to their ranks, and claimed him as a friend. The abettors of the reforma- 
 tion still seek to number him among the promoters and instigators of that 
 daring measure, while the sincere and dispassionate. defenders of the old faith 
 indignantly deny the claim, and pronounce him decidedly their own. Troy 
 and Greece contended for the corpse of Patroclus : angels fought for the body 
 of Moses. 
 
 The learned Benedictine, Montfaucon, in that work of wonderful erudition, 
 " Diailum Italicum" (4to, Paris, 1792), at page 50, gives us an account of a 
 certain library in Venice, belonging to the Dominican friari, in which, to his 
 surprise, he found Erasmus figuring among a group of Illustrious heretics 
 carved in wood, and undergoing appropriate chastisement in effigy, a sight 
 which seems to have roused the bile of the distinguished traveller and 
 judicious ecclesiastic, who thus records his disapproval— " Bibliotheca ist luzc 
 ornata ligneis staiuis est Catholicorum insignium virorum hinc hereticorum 
 inde; inter heretkos visuntor ERASMUS, catenis onustus et Gulielmus a 
 Sto. Amore pariter alligatus appositis djcteriis (lampoons) hosce viros quam 
 Lutherum et Calvinum infamantibus." * Such has ever been the practice 
 of . ignorant fanatics; if you denounce their mischievous intolerance, or 
 
 * Those exquisite wood-carvings by Erustolim which, ;n 1702, excited the attention of 
 Montfaucon, have in the course of events been removed from the library of SS. Giovanni 
 e Paulo at Venice, and have found their way, after sundry vicissitudes, to this country, 
 and are now exhibited at No. 21, Bond Street ; and have been pronounced by connois- 
 seurs to be admirable specimens of that species of sculpture of which the " truncus 
 llentous " supplies the material. — O. Y. 
 
272 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ridicule their cherished absurdities, you will infallibly be proclaimed the foe of 
 Virtue and Religion, with which they have the modesty to identify them- 
 selves. 
 
 " Qui n'aime pas Cotin n'estime pas son roi, 
 Et n'a Iselon Cotin) ni Dieu, m foi, ni loi." 
 
 This tendency to repudiate the most distinguished of their brethren, and to 
 stigmatize with odious imputations characters in whom they ought to glory, is 
 too frequently observable among certain classes of churchmen : and it is pitiful 
 to find a similar attempt to tarnish the fair fame of the Franciscan Roger Bacon, 
 by the historian of his order (Wadding, A.D. 1278, § 26). The inventor of 
 gunpowder was, it appears, by no means in good odour among his cowled 
 brethren, who fancied him in league with Beelzebub. There was, doubtless, a 
 certain atmosphere redolent of brimstone in his cell ; he was accordingly 
 doomed to expiate, in canonical confinement, the sin of genius. Roger 
 Bacon laboured in his day under strong suspicion of heresy or atheism, 
 from which, however, he has been fully absolved by the just verdict of 
 posterity. 
 
 " Vois-tu dans la carriere antique 
 
 Autour des coursiers et des chars 
 Voler la poussicre olympique 
 
 Qui les derobe a nos regards ! 
 Dans sa course ainsi le genie, 
 Par les nuages de i'envie, 
 
 Marche iongtemps environne 
 Mais au terme de la carriere 
 Des flots de l'indigne poussiere 
 
 II sort vainqueur et couronne." 
 
 Lamartine, 
 
 " Hast thou marked, in the Circus of Rome, 
 
 The course of the charioteer? 
 While his figure, obscured by the dust and the foam, 
 Grows confused on the sight, through the broad hippodrome 
 
 Still he holds His proud career. 
 Thus Genius is doomed to awaken the wrath 
 Of the envious and dull, in his conquering path 
 
 _ Proclaimed as an offender : 
 But the victor anon, amid welcoming friends, 
 While the vapours subside, from his chariot descends 
 
 At the goal in a flood of splendour." 
 
 He who records in these pages his honest admiration of the sage of Rotter- 
 dam may possibly come in for a share of the abuse lavished on his hero ; but 
 he has provided, in posthumous publication, a comfortable method of escaping 
 from the dunce's comment and the bigot's uncharitableness. Into whatever 
 hands those papers are destined to fall, whatever eye they are fated to meet, 
 whether, mixed in gay confusion with the novels of the season, they are pre- 
 destined to bestrew the rosewood table of the boudoir, or, wrapped in parch- 
 ment winding-sheet, they are to be solemnly inurned in the British Museum 
 with the Cottonian and Harleian MSS. ; whether they are to ride swimmingly on 
 the tide of public favour, or sink to the bottom with the " Cabinet Cyclopaedia," 
 many years before their contents undergo perusal, their unknown and unpre- 
 tending writer shall have gone down into the impregnable security of the grave. 
 Unheeded as the empty wind, the voice of calumny may whistle over his rest- 
 ing-place, the incense of flattery may breathe alike its disregarded fragrance 
 on the breeze that fans his mountain-bed. Prout will sleep on, safe from the 
 clamour, the passions, and the bitterness of the world. 
 
 He hopes, with the blessing of Heaven, never to pen a sentence which, dying, 
 he should wish to blot; but dead, he must be henceforth insensible to all 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 273 
 
 worldly considerations. Cicero, writing to his friend, the historian Lucceius, on 
 a subject of peculiar delicacy, begins his letter with the celebrated maxim, 
 Epistola lion erubescit. But whom does the ci-devant incumbent of Water- 
 grasshill care to propitiate or fear to offend ? What fellow-mortal's opinion 
 can benefit or injure him, who has already appeared before that tribunal where 
 all shall, in due time, take their turn with naught to follow them but their 
 works,* where each shall have to account for a career of usefulness or a life of 
 indolence, of honourable exertion or dishonourable sloth, where all things will 
 be reduced to their simplest expression, and all men will find their proper level 
 — the unsceptred monarch, the unermined judge, the unmitred prelate, the 
 uncowled monk, and the unmasked hypocrite. 
 
 The drift and tendency of those remarks will be caught by the initiated for 
 whom he writes. To them it will not be necessary, in the language of old 
 Chrysostom, to cry out itrairiv 01 fjLiftmjfitvot ra Kiyofxiva. To those who 
 have known the pastor of Watergrasshill, it will be needless to protest of his 
 unalterable fidelity to that Church which first won his affectionate adhesion and 
 kept it to the last unimpaired. 
 
 " Ilia meos primflm quae me sibi junxit, amores 
 Abstulit : ilia habeat secum servetque sepulchro. " 
 
 ^ueid. IV. 
 
 But he thinks it right thus to lay stress and emphasis on the sincerity of his 
 attachment to that faith, lest it might be presumed for a moment that, in 
 chasing the foes of enlightenment and of literature, his aim was directed against 
 what he holds sacred — lest what occurred to Diomed under the walls of Troy, 
 might happen to Prout in the course of his rambling essay, if, by a fatal mis- 
 chance, he should wound a goddess in seeking to slay an enemy of the 
 Grecians. 
 
 I find I have quoted from the Greek bishop one of those formulas which early 
 Christianity borrowed from the Eleusinian mysteries, when a warning to depart 
 was intimated to all persons not qualified to take part in the subsequent rites. 
 Its introduction here may serve as a signal for the frivolous and profane to re- 
 linquish any further perusal of this paper, of which they will relish little and 
 comprehend less. Should any such persist in following the writer through the 
 details and disquisitions that may ensue, disappointed in the results, they will 
 most probably act like some who visited the incommunicative Sibyl in her 
 cave, — 
 
 " Inconsulti abeunt, sedemque odere Sibylla." 
 
 The period during which Erasmus thought, wrote, and travelled, alternately 
 shedding the influence of his genius over Germany and England, Italy and 
 France, happens to coincide with that brilliant epoch selected by the judicious 
 Robertson, as the most fitted for the display of his comprehensive views as an 
 historian. Throughout that valuable essay, the professor has proved himself 
 an acute inquirer into the secret causes that worked out the destinies of society 
 during the reign of Charles V. Most diligently and impartially has he set 
 forth the awful changes of that eventful crisis when first began those religious 
 struggles that have long convulsed Europe, and which now seem to have con- 
 centrated their most ferocious energies within the narrow circle of these 
 islands : 
 
 * This strain of melancholy musing seems to have been an hereditary accomplishment 
 transmitted to Prout from his illustrious parent, the Dean, who, in a poem entitled 
 " Verses on my own Death," thus supposes his friends to commemorate the event : — 
 
 " Where is this favourite of Apollo? 
 Departed— and his works must follow," &c. — O. Y. 
 
274 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " Motum ex Metello consule civicum 
 
 Bellique causus et arma 
 
 Nondum expiates uncta cruoribus." 
 
 In that first outbreak of politico-theological warfare, many men played 
 many parts. But Robertson appears, in allotting to each power and each 
 potentate his due share in producing the general result, to have overlooked or 
 underrated the importance of one whom he affects to regard as a mere homme 
 de lettres. The sword of Francis, the sceptre of Henry, the imperial diadem 
 of Charles, the hat of Wolsey, the tiara of Leo, have ensured to them a pro- 
 portionate space in the chronicler's narrative. Amidst the tumult of contend- 
 ing armies and the political movement of the sixteenth century, we are made 
 distinctly to hear the boisterous harangues of the rebel Saxon monk, answered 
 by the echoing thunders of the Vatican ; the quiet tracings of the pen are not 
 heard ; yet in the midst of the turbulence of the reformers and the denuncia- 
 tions of their antagonists, there was a gentle spirit at work, whose calm effu- 
 sions, not addressed to the passions of the mob, but conveyed with persuasive 
 efficacy to the ear of dispassionate reason, obtained wholesome ascendency 
 over thinking minds. The opinions of Erasmus, fraught with moderation and 
 clothed with elegant diction, taught Europe that the cause of enlightenment 
 was not exclusively advocated by the enemies of Rome ; his views of the point 
 at issue between us and the reformers showed how abuses might be corrected 
 and rotten boughs lopped off, without laying the axe to the root of that parent 
 tree which for so many ages had overshadowed the earth ; and his exertions on 
 its behalf proved, that though some of the clerical body might be satisfied to 
 repose under its branches while it fed them in indolence (glande sues laeti), 
 others were feelingly alive to the necessity of working for its preservation. The 
 circulation obtained by the writings of Erasmus would be prodigious at the 
 present day. Those exquisite com positions, falling like drops of oil on the waters 
 of controversy, to a certain extent controlled and lulled the fury of theological 
 wrath. By the grace of style, and the charm of wit, a simple ecclesiastic, in 
 the retirement of his study, perceptibly swayed the judgment of his contem- 
 poraries, and became the arbiter of Opinion at a time when it exercised a vital 
 influence on the destiny of nations ; thus he, too, might have exclaimed, like 
 Mirabeau, when reminded of the "powers" of Europe, " Cette lite est aussi 
 une puissance." 
 
 Neither am I satisfied with the sort of cursory notice bestowed on Erasmus 
 in Bosio's " Leo X." The intimacy and affectionate correspondence which sub- 
 sisted between those two distinguished churchmen, so well fitted to appreciate 
 each other, did honour to both ; but it would not be easy to decide, on a close 
 scrutiny of causes and effects, the relative proportion in which the munificent 
 patronage of the pontiff and the indefatigable labours of the priest contributed 
 to the diffusion of classic taste and the revival of elegant literature. It is with 
 pleasurable feelings that I record as it occurs en passant a gratifying proof of 
 co-operation between those two kindred minds ; I allude to the edition of the 
 New Testament in Greek, the first ever published,* which Erasmus appropri- 
 ately dedicated to the liberal occupant of the papal chair ; a homage accepted 
 by Leo with pride, and becomingly acknowledged in a brief, dated 1516. 
 The pope reiterated his approbation in 1518, when a monkish clamour had 
 been raised against the editor in Spain and the Low Countries. But I 
 anticipate on the events which marked the career of the learned priest in the 
 progress of his literary life^-a career which brought him in contact with almost 
 
 * The Polyglot Bible of Alcala, which comprised, of course, the Greek Testament (and 
 for which the world is indebted to Cardinal Ximenes), though printed in 1514, was not 
 published till 1522, so that the honour of the cditio princeps belongs to Erasmus. — 
 Prout. 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 275 
 
 every contemporary personage of celebrity in Europe. Erasmus was born at 
 Rotterdam, 28th October, A.D. 1467, and thus saw the light shortly subsequmt 
 to the discovery of the printing press. There is a species of romance connected 
 with his parentage. She who gave him birth was the daughter of a physician in 
 the small hamlet of Sevenberghen, in Brabant. An attachment grew up between 
 this girl and a youth named Gerard ; but the friends of the latter most un- 
 reasonably opposed their lawful union. Harsh treatment was resorted to, and 
 threats held out to deter the lover from the proposed alliance. Forced at 
 length to fly from Holland, he took refuge in Rome, where in the character of 
 a copyist, being a skilful penman, and the craft not yet being superseded by 
 the "mighty engine," he contrived to maintain himself, and prosecuted his 
 studies as a disciple of physic, being resolved to conquer an independence and, 
 in spite of destiny, marry the object of his affections. Meantime the evil fate 
 attendant on true love tracked his footsteps across the Alps ; reports and letters, 
 and irrefragable proofs, were conveyed to him by his relatives of the death of 
 her who alone made life and its pursuits of value to the enthusiastic student. 
 This was a concocted falsehood, but it accomplished the object of his persecu- 
 tors. Careless of future happiness on earth, and turning his undivided aspira- 
 tions towards the immortal existence of which he fondly imagined his love was 
 already participant, he presented himself as a candidate for the priesthood, and 
 thus solemnly renounced all ties of perishable and worldly affection. And yet 
 his Marguerite of Sevenberghen was living ; nay, more, ^ix" s "' tv tj>i\orr\Ti ere 
 he had quitted Holland, he had become the parent of Erasmus. Fearing the 
 shame of disclosure, the young lady secretly withdrew to Rotterdam, and there, 
 in a house still honoured by the worthy citizens of that respectable seaport, 
 gave birth to the greatest man in literature that ever claimed Holland as the 
 place of his nativity. Stratford-on-Avon is not prouder of her Shakspere 
 than they of their learned townsman. Sundry inscriptions adorn the old- 
 fashioned mansion, composed in a vast variety of idioms— Greek, Latin, Spanish, 
 and High Dutch ; nay, it would further appear that the infant, when grown up 
 to the maturity of manhood, duly ratified the choice of his parent in the selec- 
 tion of his birthplace, for in all his writings, epistles, and title-pages, be in- 
 variably glories in the surname of Rotterdamus : Desiderius Erasmus " of 
 Rotterdam." 
 
 His luckless parent was shortly afterwards carried off by the plague ; and 
 his father, who only returned from Rome to learn the full extent of the sacrifice 
 he had made in becoming an ecclesiastic, did not survive many months the 
 object of his youthful attachment. 
 
 A learned pundit of the subsequent century, Pontus Heuterus, has written a 
 singular book, which he has entitled " De Libera Hominis Nativitate." It is a 
 faithful exposition and catalogue raison(e of the quantity of talent and genius 
 which, from time to time, has been thus illegitimately introduced into the world. 
 Among others similarly circumstanced, the chronicler dwells, with peculiar 
 emphasis, on the birth of three writers, whose works formed the substratum 
 on which the canon law, "the theology and ecclesiastical history of the middle 
 ages, were entirely built, though all three had been smuggled into this sub- 
 lunary state of endurance by the same process that regulated the entrie of him 
 of Rotterdam. These worthies were Petrus Lombardus, the "Master of the 
 Sentences," Gratianus, the compiler of the " Decretals," and Petrus, the author 
 of the "Historia Scholastica." And accordingly, in the spirit of the pious 
 .lEneas — 
 
 " Nemo ex hoc numero mihi non laudatus abibit," 
 
 Lombard, or Peter Magister, enjoyed in his day, A.D. 1150, the title which is 
 now conferred by Teutonic literati on one whose writings bear many traits of 
 resemblance to the book of the, ". Sentences."^! mean,iWlth all deference, "Der 
 
meistre " Goethe. For if a bold, rambling, discursive mysticism made the 
 fortune of Lombardus in the dark ages, the modern German prodigy is fairly 
 entitled to his due share of contemporary applause. Both founded " a school," 
 both have had their sworn adherents, and both equally deserved the enthu- 
 siastic admiration of the kindred herd whom they lead to pasture, et vit-ula, tu 
 digitus et hie. The number of writers who, taking for their text the ' ' Master 
 of the Sentences," sought to unfold the recondite philosophy therein contained, 
 was prodigious in bygone days, but Thomas Aquinas was by far his most cele- 
 brated commentator, and truly evinced wonderful ingenuity in his " Summa," a 
 vast repertory, devoted to the discussion of the brilliant ideas of " the master." 
 Aquinas possessed an intellect of undoubted superiority, though the industrious 
 exercise of so much thought on such unsubstantial theories reminds one 
 irresistibly of the avocations of the shades in Elysium of whom Scarron 
 singeth — 
 
 Et la sous l'ombre d'un rocher 
 
 Nous vimes l'ombre d'un cocher 
 
 Qui frottait l'ombre d'un carrosse 
 
 Aveque l'ombre d'une brosse. 
 
 An occupation of the mind which was known to the ancient Greeks under the 
 name of v\tofia\ia. 
 
 The labours of Gratianus were of a more positive and less visionary charac- 
 ter. He devoted himself, during twenty-four years, to the diligent collection 
 and systematic arrangement of the early canons of the church, the decrees of 
 the councils, and the edicts issued by papal authority. These, with extracts 
 from the code of Theodosius, and scraps from the capitularies of Charlemagne, 
 have long formed the groundwork of church discipline and canon law, and 
 have supplied the basis of innumerable works on jurisprudence and divinity. 
 Finally, Petrus " Comestor" was so called, not because he was a gross feeder, 
 but allegorically, in allusion to the supposed quantity of learning which he 
 must have accumulated in absorbing the contents of innumerable libraries. 
 Still it does not appear that good digestion followed this extraordinary mental 
 appetite; his "Historia Scholastica" is a strange jumble of holy writ, San- 
 choniathon, Plato, Josephus, and the Talmud. He died in 1185, and was 
 honoured with an appropriate epitaph : — 
 
 "Petrus eram quern petra tegit — dictusque "comestor/ 
 Nunc comedor, praebens vermibus ipse cibum ! " 
 
 Which quaint effusion I would not think worthy of quotation did it not bear 
 some reference to my subject, inasmuch as it furnished the idea of the follow- 
 ing two lines by Friar Stunica, who appears to be the representative of the wit 
 and judgment of the whole fraternity : 
 
 " Hie jacet Erasmus, qui vivens pravus erat mus 
 Hunc vermes rodunt, rodere qui solitus." 
 
 I have been led accidentally into this episode by the work of Pontus on 
 brilliant illegitimates (with which, by the way, Cobbett seems to be totally 
 unacquainted) ; but to complete the picture of ecclesiastical authorship previous 
 to the days of Erasmus, I should devote more space to the writers of the pre- 
 ceding century than would be either convenient or judicious. The works of 
 Albertus Magnus, the subtleties of DunsScotus, and, above all, the career and 
 extravagances of Abelard, who in more than one respect resembled Origen of 
 Alexandria, and from whom his most brilliant disciple, Peter Lombard, derived 
 the raw material of the " Sentences, " would draw me into an interminable and 
 inextricable maze of confused and inextricable speculations. 
 
 " Quo signa sequendi 
 Falleret indeprendus et insemeabilis error."— Virgil. 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 277 
 
 We have but few memorials of the early studies of Erasmus, yet the name 
 of his first didasculus has been preserved in the grateful remembrances of the 
 Dutch ; and thus posterity will not be ignorant that one Peter Winkel kept ill 
 those remote days a sort of hedge-school, in the village of Tergoa, near 
 Rotterdam. We next find him at the flourishing academy of Deventer, in 
 Guilderland ; there he had for a schoolfellow a sedate Flemish lad, subsequently 
 elevated to the papal chair under the name of Adrian IV., but who, at the head 
 of the Christian world, was as fondly and admiringly attached to his quondam 
 College chum as in the freshest days of unsophisticated boyhood. To Adrian is 
 dedicated the edition of ' ' Arnobius : " and few indeed of the writings of Erasmus 
 have come to us unaccompanied with lines of distinct approval from the pen of 
 the future pontiff. 
 
 From Deventer, our student passed to an experimental acquaintanceship 
 with monastic observances among the canons regular of Stein, but his sojourn 
 in the cloister seems to have been a monotonous blank in his youthful career, 
 to which he rarely alludes ; and when he does refer to that period of his life, 
 it is with few commendations of the monastery or its inmates. From Stein, how- 
 ever, is dated the first (A. D. 1489) of his voluminous epistolary effusions; and in 
 this remarkable composition he warmly espouses the cause of the celebrated 
 grammarian Laurence Valla, then at loggerheads with the same sort of 
 unteachable dunces whom he himself was destined through life to encounter, 
 and who (to borrow a phrase from Edmund Burke) yelped at his heels in 
 the persevering hunt of calumny to his very grave. He was released from the 
 dalness of Stein by the Bishop of Cambray, by whom he was supplied with 
 funds to prosecute his studies at Paris, in the College of Montagu (1496). Of 
 this College, of its sour wine and rotten eggs, we have a graphic description 
 in his ' ' Colloquy on Fish Diet ; " and it would seem that the principal advantage 
 that accrued to our student from his stay in Paris was the acquaintance he 
 there formed with young William Blount, Lord Montjoye, who chose him as 
 his tutor, and by whose introduction he became known to the leading men of 
 the day in England. We find him at Oxford in 1499. This first visit appears 
 to have been one of short duration, for in the same year we have an account of 
 his being despoiled at Dover by the Custom House officers, on his leaving our 
 shores, of his stock of the precious metals, amounting to fifty angels, or £10, 
 under some statute prohibiting the exportation of bullion — a species of plunder 
 of which he loudly complains, and, I imagine, not unreasonably. The exchequer 
 of Henry VII. could well have spared the scholar's mite at this epoch. We 
 have letters dated Paris 1501, and Orleans same year, Louvain 1502, and St. 
 Omer 1503 ; in which last residence he composed and published his first work, 
 a very remarkable production for that period, the " Militia Christiani." This 
 treatise is a judicious and manly exposition of Catholic piety, in which, while 
 the main features of our ancient religion are carefully preserved, the excrescences 
 of fanatical folly, and the mischievous delusions of false devotion, are unspar- 
 ingly dealt with ; it is a manual of true catholicity, presenting our doctrines in 
 such a light as to disarm the hostility of our bitterest foes, and refuting by 
 anticipation the yet unborn assertions of Luther and Calvin. Had such unex- 
 ceptionable views of the ancient faith been more generally entertained at the 
 period preceding the reformation, it is probable that no such event had occurred 
 to unsettle Christianity and convulse the world. 
 
 His reputation as a literary character seems to have early entitled him to 
 the notice of courts and princes, for we find him selected to pronounce the 
 panegyric on Philippe le Beau, on his arrival at Brussels in 1504 ; an effusion 
 of eloquence for which he received a present of fifty gold ducats. In May, 
 1506, we discover him again in England, at the country seat of Lord Mbntjoye, 
 near Greenwich ; from which his visits to Thomas More, then a simple student 
 in chambers at Lincoln's Inn, were frequent, and, no doubt, mutually delightful. 
 
278 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 In his retrospective essay prefixed to the collected edition of his works, pub- 
 lished long afterwards at Bale (1540), he recurs with pleasing emotion to those 
 interviews with the embryo chancellor, and, among other circumstances, records 
 the details of a visit which he and More made on horseback to Eltham,* then 
 a sort of nursery for the family of Henry VII. " There we saw all the royal 
 progeny, except Arthur, the eldest. Henry, then only a boy of nine years old, 
 seemed a boy of goodly promise ; on his right was Margaret, his sister, since 
 married to King James of Scotland ; the Lady Mary, four years old, was play- 
 ing on his left, and the infant Edmunc! was carried in arms." In the same 
 curious document he relates a singular conversation which he had with 
 Groscyn, in the boat that pUed at Lambeth ferry, as he returned from a visit 
 to Archbishop Wareham, to whom he had been presenting his new translation 
 of the " Hecuba" of Euripides.— Oper, Bras., torn. 1, Basil, 1540. 
 
 The same year he started from England for Italy with young Montjoye. At 
 Bologna he witnessed the triumphal entry of the warrior Pope, Julius II. , the 
 only occupant of the papal chair of the five pontiffs who flourished in succes- 
 sion in the days of Erasmus, by whom he was not cherished and patronized. 
 The opinions he entertained on the subject of war, even when waged by mere 
 secular princes, stood recorded in his treatise called " Querela pacia undique 
 profligata, " and it is highly probable that they were not to the taste of the war- 
 like representative of Peter, who seemed to confine his reading of the life of 
 the apostle to that passage where he cuts off with his trusty sword the ear of 
 Malchus. The love of peace, and a decided aversion to violent and sanguinary 
 measures, constituted the most prominent feature of the scholar's character ; 
 and some German Quakers have long since collected from his works and pub- 
 lished, under the title of " Antipolemes," his sentiments on the folly and depra- 
 vity of the belligerent mania of the time.f Nor is his hatred of bloodshed less 
 conspicuous (on a smaller scale) in the energy with which he denounces the 
 practice of flogging schoolboys, apropos of Dean Colet's practice at the 
 academy of St. Paul's — Quam multa felicitissima ingenia perduni isti cami~ 
 fices, eVc, &v. / though Solomon appears to have entertained a different opinion 
 in his celebrated commendation of the rod— an opinion most fatal to all succes- 
 sive generations of boyhood, and by which the King of Israel has occasioned 
 to after-ages the demolition of more birch-trees than he had cut down in his 
 lifetime cedars of Lebanon. 
 
 But to return to Bologna. At this Italian university he condescended to 
 receive the degree of doctor, though it is manifest that he attached but little 
 value to so sadly profaned a designation; he also completed there the most 
 laborious and learned of all his works, the " Adagiorum Chiliades," in which 
 gigantic undertaking, unaided and alone, by the mere force of reading the 
 most extensive, and memory the most retentive, he has contrived to embody all 
 the wisdom and wit of antiquity — Greek, Roman, and barbarian — ranging 
 through every century and every land, collecting from every source the proverbs, 
 axioms, trite sayings, condensed and pointed expressions of every country and 
 every age — their origin, idiom, and tendency ; illustrating them with anecdote, 
 corollary, and comment as he goes along. This vast repertory has supplied the 
 writers who succeeded him with inexhaustible stores of ready and cheap erudi- 
 
 * Eltham in Kent was the residence of the Roper family ; and it is possible that More's 
 visit had another object beside that of seeing the King's nursery, and that he was then 
 contemplating the establishment of one for himself.— Prout. [The Father, in saying 
 this, is apparently forgetful of the fact that it was not More himself but his daughter 
 Margaret who married into the Roper family.] 
 
 t Leigh Hunt, between whom and Erasmus, in style, genius, and spirit there are 
 many points nf resemblance, has lately given us, under the title of " Captain Sword and 
 Captain Pen," a no less ingenious than benevolent effusion, in which most of the thoughts 
 are truly Erasmian.— 0. Y. 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 279 
 
 tion, and more than once in modern compositions has it been my lot to recog- 
 nize most enjoyingly "original" reflections and " novel" remarks, startling 
 propositions and brilliant "ideas" which I could at once identify as "lost, ' 
 " stolen," or " strayed " from the fold of Erasmus. 
 
 A printer was to be found worthy of the work. He therefore repaired to 
 Venice, where old Aldo Manuzio had just then set up his immortal presses, and 
 to whom Erasmus was a godsend of no every-day occurrence. The Aldine 
 Academy was at once formed ; its members were Bembo (subsequently cardinal 
 and secretary to Leo X.) ; Bolzani, author of the first Greek grammar ; 
 Navigero, Alcander, Erasmus, and Demetrius Calchondylus, who gave the 
 first edition of Homer. The workshop of the printer was the centre of literary 
 attraction throughout Europe. Erasmus blushed not to perform the part of 
 corrector-general of the proof sheets, as each classic author issued forth in suc- 
 cession, an occupation which bis enemy Scaliger had the bad taste soon after 
 to cast in his teeth as a reproach, in one of those furious invectives wherein he 
 asserts, with incredible impudence, that, getting drunk on Cyprus wine, our 
 hero occasionally disturbed the pressmen, and threw everything into confusion : 
 Nonne tu m Aldi offieina quaestum frcisti corrigtitdis exemplaritus I — Jul. 
 Cas., Seal., cr. ii. 
 
 On the strength of this infuriate and unprincipled diatribe, the elder Scaliger* 
 a name hitherto unknown to the republic of letters, first obtained a sort of 
 celebrity. It was a most discreditable dibul, and was felt as such by him who 
 inherited the name and redeemed it from odium, Joseph Scaliger duly apolo- 
 gizing for the offensive proceeding of his parent Julius. The thing had 
 originated in an ingenious satire which Erasmus had published against a sect 
 of writers known as Ciceronians, who affected to eschew every Latin term not 
 sanctioned by the authority of the Roman orator. The ridiculous purism 
 superinduced by these enthusiasts was forcibly exposed by our scholar, and 
 found a fit champion in the pedant who took up the gauntlet in its defence. 
 He had hoped to draw from Erasmus a reply, which he knew would inevitably 
 carry his name to posterity. But the grub was not destined to be preserved in 
 amber. No immortalizing essay was elicited from his lofty antagonist, and the 
 father of the Scaligers was compelled to adopt a less objectionable path to 
 eminence as a writer. He was consequently more successful in giving his 
 attention to matters more consonant to his professional pursuits : the " Botany " 
 of Theophrastus, the " Physics " of Aristotle, and " Insomnia" of Hippocrates, 
 subjects on which hehas thrown some light ; while in literature and things poetical 
 he has evinced a most depraved taste, and a most preposterous judgment, 
 ranking the dramatic works of Seneca with the tragedies of Euripides, pro- 
 nouncing Juvenal superior to Horace, and finding nought but what was 
 " vulgar " and "trivial " in the graceful effusions of Catullus. 
 
 Meantime, the labours of Erasmus in the Aldine workshop were incessant, 
 and seem to have been fully appreciated by that illustrious father of typography, 
 who rendered such important service to the cause of solid learning at that 
 interesting period. To the meritorious printer, his learned friend has paid a 
 fitting homage in his " Adagia," in the article " Festina lente." From these 
 avocations he was, however, summoned, in pursuance of an agreement entered 
 into ere his departure from England, to take charge of an illustrious pupil at 
 Padua, in the person of the young Archbishop of St. Andrews, a natural son 
 of James, King of Scotland. This scion of royalty, according to the mis- 
 chievous practice of those days, since happily discontinued, had been invested 
 in early youth with the archiepiscopal dignity, and sent to pursue his ecclesias- 
 
 * In her last novel, Lady Blessbgton very properly rebukes old Scaliger for " his 
 petulant attack on Erasmus," vol. iii. p. 210. The whole chapter is full of judicious 
 criticism, put in the form of a conversation between " two gentlemen at Verona," in the 
 amphitheatre by moonlight. — O. V. 
 
280 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 tical studies at a foreign university. Erasmus seems to have brought his whole 
 mind to the education of the future Archbishop, for whom he composed sundry 
 treatises ; and it would no doubt have been a happy circumstance for Scotland 
 had his pupil lived to rule, as primate, that Church which was so soon to be 
 visited by the frenzy of Knox, and was to witness the brutal murder of Arch- 
 bishop Sharpe. The sentiments of liberal and tolerant theology which, from 
 the see of St. Andrews, would have spread around their wholesome and tran- 
 quillizing influence, might have averted the subsequent scenes of fanaticism and 
 barbarity. But the career of the Erasmian primate was cut short ere any 
 beneficial result could ensue from the principles instilled by so qualified a pre- 
 ceptor ; he fell with the flower of Scottish chivalry on Flodden Field. Eccle- 
 siastical dignitaries were not exempt in those days from fulfilling their feudal 
 obligations by personal attendance at the army. The son of James was one 
 of that ill-fated host who met their doom in that disastrous camp : victory, as 
 usual, awaiting on the standard of St. Cuthbert, which was never known to 
 return inglorious from battle, and which was that day displayed for the last 
 time by an English monarch. Sir Thomas More commemorated the death of 
 the young Archbishop in a feeling and appropriate elegy; and so endeared was 
 his memory to Erasmus that he affectionately preserved, and used on all occa- 
 sions, a signet given to him by his pupil, formed of antique pierre gravtc, the 
 subject a terminus with the motto " cedo nulli," a device which gave rise to 
 much silly and uncharitable comment.* 
 
 In company with his Hive, be proceeded to Sienna and thence to Rome. 
 The Eternal City had long been the favourite object of his aspirations, and it 
 may well be imagined with what mental jubilee he explored its monuments, its 
 libraries, and its MSS. On more than one occasion did he subsequently regret 
 his refusal to accept the many pressing invitations of the papal court to fix his 
 abode in the midst of so many resources for the prosecution of his learned 
 labours, but more especially the friendly solicitations of the Cardinal John de 
 Medicis, whose discriminating mind soon discerned the merit of the learned 
 Dutchman. I love to contemplate the probable result of his permanent 
 sojourn in that capital : it is one of the favourite day-dreams in which I 
 indulge at times, when the rancour of polemics and the horrors of religious 
 controversy, embittering all the relations of society around me, force my mind 
 to revert to the origin of those calamitous differences. Fondly, in those 
 visionary imaginings, do I picture to myself Erasmus quitting the counsels of 
 his distinguished patron, who has ascended the papal throne as Leo X. ; in that 
 pleasing illusion I fancy him exerting a salutary influence over the superior 
 pastor, not merely promoting the interests of literature and art, but advising 
 the adoption of conciliatory plans for the speedy termination of theological 
 wrangling. I discover him with complacency seeking to heal the wounds of 
 the Church which the unskilfulness of fanaticism had only tended to exasperate ; 
 counselling the infusion of more oil and less vinegar ; and addressing the 
 shepherd of the flock of Christ in words not less elegant than forcible, from 
 their graceful allusion to his family patronymic : — 
 
 " Et medicas adhibere manus ad vulnera pastor ! '* 
 
 Georg. III. 
 
 As an adviser of Leo at the perilous crisis which was shortly to ensue, and as a 
 member of the pontifical council at the outbreak of the Lutheran disturbance, 
 Erasmus would have been a most valuable accession to the Vatican interest ; 
 
 * The dunces who took offence at this motto, imagining it to be spoken by Erasmus in 
 propria persond, and not understanding its reference to the engraved figure on the gem, 
 loudly denounced his arrogance and presumption ; like Stunica, who, finding in one of 
 his devotional works the phrase germanum apostolorum theologium, accused him of 
 representing the apostles as being imbued with the German (/) doctrines of Luther. 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 281 
 
 but when Paul III. subsequently offered him a cardinal's hat, and proposed 
 sending him as his representative to the Council of Trent, the favourable oppor- 
 tunity of conciliating the Reformers had passed away, the mollia temporafandi 
 had been suffered to elapse, and the plague of irretrievable dissension was 
 entailed on Europe for ever. 
 
 While he was thus resident in the capital of the Christian world, mingling in 
 the society of its most distinguished sqavans, in constant communication with 
 Jerdme Vidas, Saunazar, Fracastor, and the other wits of the day, and enjoying 
 the wondrous spectacle which Rome then presented in the creations of painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture, as they hourly developed their rival prodigies, a 
 hurried despatch reached him from Sir Thomas More urging his immediate 
 return to England. The letter announced lo him the agreeable tidings of 
 young Henry's accession to the throne : and More dwelt with confidence on 
 the expectations which this event gave him reason to entertain. Nor was 
 Erasmus less disposed to augur favourably of the new sovereign : and the 
 terms in which he couched his reply designating the young king as " Henricus 
 Octavus seu/orsam Octavius," sufficiently expresses the nature of his antici- 
 pations. He set out on horseback (his invariable mode of travelling), and 
 reached England towards the end of May. It was during this equestrian 
 expedition, and while crossing the Alps, that his ever-active mind conceived 
 the plan and collected the materials of that most exquisite composition the 
 Maipucs tyxufitov. This fact I gather from the preface, in which he dedicates 
 the " Praise of Folly " to More : — " Superioribus diebus cum me ex ItaliA in 
 Angliam reciperum ne totum id tempus quo eqtiofuit inseden dum illiteratis 
 fabulis tereretur, statui vel aliquid de communibus nostris studiis agiture 
 vel amicorum recoredatione frui inter quos tu mi More vel in primis occur- 
 rebas, &c. &c. He then proceeds to demonstrate the fitness of things in the 
 selection of Mcopos as the patron of his undertaking, perpetrating that lowest 
 species of witticism called a pun, but by no means authorizing the author of 
 the " Fudge Family" to make use of the joke in after times, as if it had been 
 with him an original discovery. 'Tis "too bad" that we cannot go a step in the 
 domain of literature without alighting on some of the innumerable rogueries of 
 Tommy. 
 
 To those who are not intimately conversant with the graces of Latin phrase- 
 ology, it would be hopeless to attempt an exposition of what constitutes the 
 excellence of this elaborate trifle ; its perpetual allusion to classic passages, 
 its terse and lively diction, its sparkling elegance, and perfect purity of style, 
 are lost to the "country gentleman," and to members of the "London 
 University." But it evinces at the same time a knowledge of the world, and 
 gives an insight into the social system during the days of Erasmus, which must 
 appear extraordinary, as the production of a man supposed to have vegetated 
 all his life amid the dust and cobwebs of black-letter acquirement. With the 
 keen penetration and withering irony of Swift, it unites the smooth facility and 
 harmonious elegance of Addison— a playful and discursive fancy, an inex- 
 haustible power of illustration, a tone of delicate persiflage, of which antiquity 
 had supplied no model, and in which he has not been surpassed by any writer 
 of modern times. 
 
 If there be a department of literary excellence in which we have fairly out- 
 shone "the ancients," it is in this species of composition. The extreme 
 simplicity of classic wit, and the quiet jocularity of Greek and Roman Ion mots, 
 do not come up to the standard of modern fastidiousness. Their " epigrams " 
 are proverbially obtuse ; and to excite laughter in former days, it apparently 
 required but little expenditure of fancy. Phaedrus gravely tells us that his 
 "Fables" were intended to provoke the risible faculties of contemporary 
 readers. 
 
 " Duplex libelli desert quod risum movet," &c. &c, and Cicero, an eminent 
 
 M 
 
282 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 punster and humorist in his day informs us that a Roman joke was vast!/ 
 superior to a Greek one, — Romani sales salsiores sunt quam Mi Alticorum. 
 However, as a set-off against the orator's opinion, we have the testimony of 
 Caesar in favour of the comic talent of the Athenians, in those celebrated lines 
 in which he styles Terence a dimidiates Menander, and wishes him to attain 
 the piquancy of his prototype, Utinam adjuncta foret vis comica, &c. &c. 
 Still I rather suspect that when Angelo Mai is fortunate enough to discover this 
 long-lost budget of fun comprised in the writings of Menander, the laughing 
 public will be sadly disappointed. Lucian and Aristophanes are but sorry dogs 
 compared with Cervantes, Moliere, - Fielding, or Rabelais ; and the Jesuit 
 Vavasseur has written an express treatise, " De Sermone Ludicre," to prove the 
 distaste of the ancients for this favourite modern accomplishment. 
 
 Erasmus was the first to set the example and to show the efficacy of well- 
 directed ridicule. He was not only witty himself, but could appreciate the wit 
 of others; for the perusal of the "Epistole Obscurorum Virorum," from the 
 pen of his friend Bullenger, published shortly after, so affected him, that in the 
 paroxysms of laughter, an aposthume of the face, under which he laboured at 
 the time, and which the usual remedies had failed to cure, burst from the 
 exertion, and immediate relief was the result. 
 
 Having had occasion to make a cursory mention of Rabelais, and as that 
 celebrated pundit flourished in those days at the court of Francis I., it might 
 not be amiss, after the manner of the Boeotian Plutarch, to institute a parallel 
 between the curate of Meudon and the sage of Rotterdam. But, on second 
 thoughts, i fear it would be derogatory to the elegant scholarship and truly 
 sacerdotal accomplishments of the one, to place him in any sort of contact or 
 contrast with the gross buffoonery of the other. The chronicler of Gargantua 
 possessed, doubtless, a very extensive, though perplexed and ill-assorted stock 
 of learning, and this unworthy member of the Franciscan order was endowed 
 with a keen perception of the vices and follies of his age ; but he appears not 
 to respect himself, and his reader can have no personal esteem for an author of 
 his description. So much profane and ribald merriment, which would be 
 scandalous in a layman, becomes insufferable in an ecclesiastic ; and though 
 occasionally some amusement may be found amid the effusions of his exuberant 
 imagination, and the audacious oddity of his conceits, disgust and loathing 
 quickly supervene at the constant obtrusion of cynicism and indecency. 
 
 Erasmus, once more in England, applied himself with renewed energy to 
 the great purpose of his life, and powerfully contributed to the diffusion of 
 classic taste among our countrymen. With enthusiasm, we find him recording 
 the result of his labours ' ' apud Anglos triumphant bonae litem recta studio. " 
 (lib. xvi. cap. 19. ) And he is loud in his praise of those eminent men whom he 
 had the good fortune to count among his associates and patrons. Besides 
 More, we find mention made of Linaker (the King's physician), Wareham, 
 Cuthbert Tunstall, Groscyn, Lilly, Latimer, Colet, Bullock (whom he calls 
 Bovillus), and Fisher (who figures as Piscator), all good men and true. 
 
 " Animas neque candidiores 
 Terra tulit. 
 
 Linked in close intimacy, those illustrious friends found in the pursuits of 
 Greek and Roman literature an inexhaustible source of generous emotion, and 
 it was a sad change that came o'er the spirit of their classic dreams when the 
 din of controversy arose, startling the muse from her classic haunts, and inter- 
 rupting the pleasures of refined companionship, to superinduce the odium theo- 
 logicum-, and the plus quam civillia bella. 
 
 The professorship of Divinity and Greek at Cambridge did not prevent him 
 from enjoying occasionally the society of his acquaintances in London, where 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 283 
 
 he possessed apartments in the convent of Austinfriars, Broad Street. His 
 visits to More, who had a residence at Chelsea, were fond and frequent ; and 
 we subsequently find him invested by Wareham with the rectory of Aldingham, 
 in Kent ; but his mind was not adapted to the routine of parochial functions ; 
 and we do not learn that he ever entered on the duties or responsibility of the 
 parish, which he soon resigned into the hands of the archbishop. 
 
 The motives which eventually led him to quit England — a country for which 
 he expressed, through life, the most enthusiastic affection — have not been suffi- 
 ciently explained ; but it seemed that he augured nothing good from the con- 
 tinued ascendency of Wolsey over the Kings mind. The year 1513 marked 
 his departure for the Continent, and we do not find that he ever afterwards 
 revisited these islands. 
 
 Still one event, celebrated by the historians of the day, and which attracted 
 to the scene of its occurrence a sort of European attention, gave him an 
 opportunity of mingling once more with his old associates, and renewing the 
 bonds of cherished intimacy. I allude to the remarkable exhibition of feudal 
 pomp and pageantry which took place on the French coast, between Calais and 
 Boulogne in 1520, and which gained for an obscure plain in the neighbour- 
 hood the proud title of the " Field of the Cloth of Gold." Thither. flocked 
 the illustrious personages of every land — the French and Henry vied with 
 each other, not merely in the display of gorgeous equipages, but in the rank and 
 celebrity of their followers and courtiers. More, Linaker, Wolsey, Fisher, and 
 Erasmus formed the literary strength of the English camp ; Bude, Rabelais, St. 
 Gelais, and Clement Marot kept the table of the French monarch in a roar. 
 It must have been, in truth, an interesting congress, and as brilliant in its intel- 
 lectual character as in the matdriel of its outward scenery. The chivalry of 
 England had oft before met their rivals in mortal conflict ; but though Henry 
 still wore the keys of France suspended to his girdle, it was in no hostile 
 mood that the descendants of Talbot encountered the representatives of 
 Duguesclin. Our Percies, Stanleys, and Howards, received the friendly grasp 
 of Bayard, Lapalisse, and Chabannes ; and the unfortunate Countess de Cha- 
 teaubriand met there the no less ill-fated Anne de Boleyn. While their eyes 
 "rained influence" over this fairyland, little thought either, I ween, of the 
 shadows of coming adversity, but moved gaily amid the admiring throng, or 
 listened to the mu^e of Clement Marot, in whose writings we find an appro- 
 priate chant, beginning thus : — 
 
 June 1520. AU CAMP D'ARDRES ET GUIGNES. 
 
 " Au camp des roys, Ies plus haulx de ce monde, 
 
 Sont arrives trois riches estandards ; 
 Amour tiente l'un de coleur blanche et munde, 
 
 Triumphe l'autre aveque ses souldards. 
 Vivement peinct de couleur cele'stine. 
 Beaute apres, en sa main noble et digne, 
 Porte le tiers tainct de vermeille sorte ; 
 
 Ainsi chascun richement se comporte, 
 Et en tel ordre et pompe primeraine, 
 
 Sont venus veoir la royale cohorte, 
 Amour, Triumphe, et Beaute souveraine," &c., &c. 
 
 HENRY VIII. AND FRANCIS AT GUIGNES, June 1520. 
 
 Where o'er the mead yon camp is spread with purple and vermilion, 
 Two Kings hold court of merry sort, each in his bright pavilion ; 
 In silken tent for the tournament their gallant knights prepare, 
 And ladies' eyes will judge the prize of manly valour there. 
 
284 The Works of Father Front 
 
 Three standards float while trumpet note proclaims the gay programme. 
 But what may be the mystery of that triple oriflamme? 
 Valour combined with Love refined, and peerless Beauty, hold 
 United sway in the camp to-day on the *' field of the cloth of gold/' &c, &c. 
 
 Such a camp was of too pacific a character not to suit in every respect the 
 genius of Erasmus ; but a protracted war between his patron, the newly- 
 elected emperor, Charles, and the French King, interrupted the amicable 
 relations which he had hoped to enjoy with the learned who composed the 
 court of Francis. Of these, Clement Marot was perhaps the individual whose 
 suavity of disposition and ingenuous nature would have most attracted his 
 notice and sympathy ; and I dwell on this point because in studying the career 
 of the father of French poetry, I find him driven into the arms of the 
 Huguenots by the intolerant proceedings of the Sorbonne; and thus was the 
 weight of the poet's popularity among all classes of his song-loving country- 
 men thrown into the scale of Calvinism. It is well known that his metrical 
 version of the psalms, far superior in their idiom to the vulgar rhapsodies of 
 Stemhold and Hopkins, took a powerful hold on the lower orders of the 
 French, and became mainly instrumental in promoting sectarian views. Marot 
 exhibits in his poems a wondrous energy of expression, and a singular com- 
 mand of language for the period in which he lived. In some papers of mine 
 on the songs Of modern France, I have borne testimony to his distinguished 
 merits, but as a specimen of contemporary French poetry in the days of 
 Erasmus I here insert an ode which the songster of the " camp de drop aor" 
 composed in the following year on a more warlike occasion ; in fact, it seems 
 to have been the model of the ' ' Marseillaise Hymn, " and must have been very 
 popular among the soldiers of Francis. 
 
 AU DUC D'ALENgON COMMANDANT DE L'AVANT GARDE 
 DE L'ARMSE FRANgAISE, 1521. 
 
 D\ vers Hainault, sur les fins de champagne, 
 
 Est arrive^ le bon Due d'Alencon, 
 Aveque honneur qui toujours l'accompagnc 
 
 Comme le sien propre et vrai ecusson : 
 La petit on veoir sur la grande plaine unie 
 De bons soudars son enseigne munie, 
 Pres d'employer leurs bras fulminatoire, 
 A repousser dedans leurs territoire 
 
 L'ours Hanvier, gent, rustique, et brutalle, 
 Voulant marcher sans raison peremptoire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentals 
 
 Prenez hault cceur, donques, France et Bretagne ) 
 
 Car si en ce camp tenez fiere facon, 
 Foudre verrez devant vous 1'Allemagne, 
 
 Comme au soleil blanche neige et gla$on : 
 Fiffres ! tambours ! sonnez en harmonic ; 
 Aventuriers ! que la pique on manic 
 Pour les choquer et mettre en accessoire, 
 Car dSja sont au royal possessore : 
 
 Mais comme je crois destinee fatallc 
 Voult miner leur outrageuse gloire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. 
 
 Donques pistons marchans sur la campagne, 
 Foudroyez tout sans rien prendre a rancon ; 
 
 Preux chevaliers, puisqu'honneur on y gagne, 
 Vos ennemies poussez hors de l'ar^on, 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 285 
 
 Faites rougir du sang de Germanie 
 
 Les clairs ruisseaux dont la terre est garnie ; 
 
 St seront mis vos hauls noms en histoire : 
 Frappez done tous de main gladiatoire, 
 
 Qu'apres leur mort et deflaicte totalle 
 Vous rapportiez la palme de victoire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. 
 
 France ! rempli de haut los meritoire, 
 Faisons les tous, si vous me voules croire, 
 
 Aller humer leur cervaise et godalle ; 
 Car de nos vins ont grand desir de boire 
 
 Sur les climats de France occidentale. 
 
 ADDRESS TO THE VANGUARD OF THE FRENCH UNDER 
 THE DUC D'ALENCON, 1521. 
 
 CLEMENT MAROT. 
 
 Soldiers ! at length their gather'd strength our might is doom'd to feel- 
 Spain and Brabant comilitant — Bavaria and Castile. 
 Idiots, they think that France will shrink from a foe that rushes on, 
 And terror damp the gallant camp of the bold Due d'Alencon ! 
 But wail and woe betide the foe that waits for our assault ! 
 And to his lair our pikes shall scare the wild boar of Hainault. 
 La Meuse shall flood her banks with blood, ere the sons of France resign 
 These glorious fields— the land that yields the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Then draw the blade ! be our ranks array'd to the sound of the martial fife. 
 
 In the foeman's ear let the trumpets blow a blast of deadly strife ; 
 
 And let each knight collect his might, as if there hung this day 
 
 The fate of France on his single lance in the hour of the coming fray : 
 
 As melts the snow in summer s glow, so may our helmets' glare 
 
 Consume their host ; so folly's boast vanish in empty air. 
 
 Fools ! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine 
 
 Our Gallic fields— the land that yields the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Can Germans face our Norman race in the conflict's awful shock — 
 Brave the war-cry of " Brittany ! " the shout of " Languedoc !" 
 Dare they confront the battle's brunt — the fell encounter try 
 When dread Bayard leads on his guard of stout gendarmerie ? _ 
 Strength be the test — from breast to breast, ay, grapple man with man ; 
 Strength in the ranks, strength on both flanks, and valour in the van. 
 Let war efface each softer grace ; on stern Bellona's shrine 
 We vow to shield the plains that yield the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Methinks I see bright Victory, in robe of glory drest, 
 
 Joyful appear on the French frontier to the chieftain she loves best ; 
 
 While grim Defeat, in contrast meet, scowls o'er the foeman's tent, 
 
 She on our duke smiles down with look of blythe encouragement. 
 
 E'en now, I ween, our foes have seen their hopes of conquest fail ; 
 
 Glad to regain their homes again, and quaff their Saxon ale. 
 
 So may it be while chivalry and loyal hearts combine, 
 
 A sword to wield for the plains that yield the olive and the vine ! 
 
 Though Erasmus, in his new capacity of aulic councillor to Charles V., 
 attended the diet of Worms in 1521, we do not find that he took any prominent 
 part in the intrigues of Germanic diplomacy. In fact , he was then engaged on 
 the most popular of his works, the " Colloquia," which appeared at Paris the 
 following year, and of which twenty thousand copies were in a few weeks 
 bought up, a rumour having been set afloat that the Sorbonne would prohibit 
 its circulation. Of this work, the effect in forming the mind of Europe, and 
 influencing the opinions of the generation that succeeded, has not, that I know 
 of, ever been inquired into sufficiently ; but when it is considered that those 
 
286 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 dialogues, ostensibly intended as "school exercises," and couched in familiar 
 yet elegant phraseology, take the full range of contemporary topics and breathe 
 the opinions of the writer on most of the current subjects of discussion, it may 
 be readily understood how powerful an impression their adoption in every 
 European academy, as a class book, and their perusal by the students of every 
 land, produced in the days of Erasmus. The newspaper press is doubtless, 
 in our own time, a vast engine for the diffusion of any given theory, and 
 the popular songs of a country, could they be wielded by any single 
 individual, or made subservient to the promotion of any special object, 
 would prove a mighty instrument of moral and political influence ; but in the 
 case of the author who penned those " Colloquies," and imbued them with his 
 spirit, it might be emphatically said that the power of the schoolmaster 
 was abroad in 1522. The strictures with which certain abuses and follies 
 originating with the mendicant friars are visited and exposed, in order that no 
 argument might thence be gathered to assail the substance of our faith, are far 
 from being the least valuable portion of the text ; and that Erasmus looked on 
 these blind zealots as the grand obstacle to a speedy termination to the troubles 
 of the Church, is evident from the following passage in one of his letters :— 
 " In dies mitesc.it febris Lutherana adeo ut ipse Luther us de singulis prope- 
 modum scribit palinodiam, sed vereor ne quorumdum monachorum stolida im- 
 probitas excitet nobis allam trag&diam." — Ep. 63, lib. xx. 
 
 That we are indebted to the paltry squabble of these mendicants, about the 
 sale of " indulgences," for the outbreak of what is called the Reformation, is 
 but too true ; and that Erasmus, in seeking to throw the rubbish overboard and 
 so ease the bark of Peter for the coming storm, acted the part of a sensible and 
 conscientious Catholic, no one at this time of day can doubt ; nay, that such 
 was the opinion of Paul III. will appear to any one who reads his brief, bear- 
 ing date August 1, 1535, addressed to the enlightened priest a year before his 
 death. In it the pope sets forth that his piety, superior acquirements, and 
 services rendered the Roman see, have induced the father of the faithful to con- 
 fer on him the prebend of Deventer, in the diocese of Utrecht, of the value of 
 six hundred florins ; intending this favour as the prelude of higher dignities. 
 
 Francis I. so admired the " Colloquies," that he issued orders to the Sorbonne 
 to desist from interfering with their circulation ; but certain folks, who felt more 
 particularly annoyed at the graphic touches of this master hand, were not so 
 quiescent under the lash. One Louis Campestor adopted a new method of re- 
 futing an antagonist ; he published a castrated edition of the book interspersed 
 with 1//-E1/00 colloquies, and adorned with a preface of his own ; in which, 
 assuming the name of Erasmus, he condemns as spurious the copies generally 
 in use; an imposture of which the indignant author loudly complains {Epist. 
 32, lib. xxi.) : " Lutetian Dominicanus quidam corrupit inea colloquia, et 
 addidit prefationum meo nomine in quo damno meipsum." But he subse- 
 quently laughed at the pia fraus, ingeniously observing, that his foes must 
 have taken the hint of this summary proceeding from the practice of the tyrant 
 Mezentius in the "^Eneid," and by placing his "Colloquies" in conjunction 
 with those of Campestor, seemed resolved to revive that terminti genus of 
 which Virgil singeth (lib. ix.). 
 
 The controversy between him and Luther on the obscure maUer of ' ' free 
 will " possesses no interest ; the subject could not have been more unhappily 
 selected — they fought in a mist and wrestled in a swamp. Many have 
 attributed the pamphlet of Henry VIII. to the pen of Erasmus ; but though 
 the royal author seems to have copied the style of his distinguished friend, we 
 have a positive disclaimer from the latter of having had any part in winning 
 for the Kings of England the title of Defender of the Faith. He was also sup- 
 posed by his contemporaries to have written More's " Utopia." There is certainly 
 a singular coincidence of opinions and taste between the writings of the chan- 
 
The Days of Erasmus. 287 
 
 cellor and those of the priest ; but the " Tom Moore " of those days was a 
 writer of undoubted originality, incapable of publishing as his own the 
 opinions of another. I could have wished to give Melancthon, the friend and 
 admirer of Erasmus, a place in this paper worthy of that accomplished and 
 delightful character ; but my allotted limits prelude the indulgence of my wishes 
 in this respect. Neither can I afford to notice the career and genius of Hans 
 Holbein, of whom our scholar was the first patron, and whose earliest efforts 
 were woodcuts to adorn the " Praise of Folly." 
 
 Erasmus took up his abode for the remaining years of his life in the town of 
 Bale, where he had found an intelligent printer in the person of Jerome Frebon : 
 there, with a press at his command, he pursued to the last his career of 
 utility, — 
 
 " Hie illius arma 
 Hie currus fuit." 
 
 The edition of St. Jerome occupied ten years, and is a noble monument : Basil, 
 Athanasius, and Chrysostom, Isocrates, Plutarch, Lucian, and Demosthenes, 
 alternately issued from his hands. Nor was he sparing of original composition 
 on various themes — philology, criticism, pulpit eloquence, Greek pronunciation 
 (for it was he who established the received mode, known in our universities as 
 the " Erasmian "), leaving scarcely a topic in the wide range of literature un- 
 touched and unadorned. 
 
 There are few examples among " les gens de lettres " of brilliant talent com- 
 bined with such untiring industry, and devoting its energies in silent and un- 
 ostentatious toil to the editorial drudgery of so many years. Erasmus set a 
 noble example. It was a favourite joke of the martyred chancellor on his 
 friend's name, that it conveyed the notion of his having been formerly, in the 
 Pythagorean theory of pre-existence and transmigration, a very inferior animal— 
 Eras-mus. The idea might be easily worked up into an illustration of the old 
 fable concerning a lion, who, when enclosed in a hunter's net, was set free by 
 the indefatigable teeth of a field-mouse, as related by my esteemed friend 
 Phsedrus, sound learning and classic taste being typified by the "lion," who, 
 liberated from the meshes of scholastic entanglement, was enabled thus to walk 
 the earth and roam abroad through every European land. To speak in 
 Miltonic strain : 
 
 " The grassy clods now calved ; now half appeared 
 The tawny Hon, pawing to get free 
 His hinder parts : then springs, as broke from bonds, 
 And rampant shakes his brindled mane." 
 
 B. vii. v. 465. 
 
 Worn out in the cause, and spent with fatigue, this eminent scholar expired on 
 the 12th of July, 1536, in the sentiments of sincere piety which have animated 
 his whole life. The last letter we have from his pen is dated but a fortnight 
 previous, and expresses his firm perseverance in the religious convictions he 
 had always professed. It is also interesting from the peculiarity of the signa- 
 ture, " Desiderius Erasmus Rot. aegra man-u." Three days after his death, 
 Charles V. and his army entered Bale ; the body was solemnly disinterred, and 
 again recommitted to the earth with extraordinary pomp. By none was he 
 more sincerely regretted than by that emperor; but regret was universal among 
 all the friends of piety, meekness, genius, liberality, and elegant scholarship., 
 
 " Fatalis series nobis invidit Erasmus 
 Sed Desiderium tollere non potuit." 
 
288 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Wuiax Hugo's ifewal ^aiixg. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, July, 1835.) 
 
 [Immediately between the fourteenth and fifteenth of the Prout Papers — that is, the one 
 on Erasmus in the May number and the one on Vida's " Poem of the Silkworm," in the 
 August number of Fraser for 1835 — there appeared three choice specimens of the incom- 
 parable lyrics of Victor Hugo, " La Grandmere," " Le Voile," and " Le Repas," " upset" 
 into English by Mahony. Prefixed to them, with an unmistakable Proutean flavour 
 about it, was a discursive criticism on the poet's recently-published historical romance — 
 " Notre Dame de Paris," transformed by the English translator of it into the " Hunch- 
 back of Notre Dame, the Deformed Bell-ringer Quasimodo." Croquis' portrait in the 
 number of Regina containing this double-barrelled discharge in honour of Victor Hugo 
 depicted Lord Francis Egerton, the translator of " Faust," brother of a duke, and posses- 
 sor of a small competence of ,£00,000 a year, delicately sealing a billet-doux.'] 
 
 $o\kos tt\v x«»Xos t' irtpov 7ro6V tw 6e oi wua> 
 Kuotui, eirc o-TtjBos avvoyutKOTV av-rap iiicspue 
 <J>o£os Eiji/ KtcpaKijv, uVtoVn d' eitei/iii/o0£ Xayyrj. 
 
 Iliad, b' 21k. 
 
 Lame of one foot, this elf, of stature brief, 
 With head shaped like the Peak of Teneriffe, 
 Was bald and squinted : all which to enhance, 
 Rose on his back a proud protuberance. 
 
 In the venerable chest of " Prout Papers," which is still in our safe keeping — 
 albeit, acting on the plan of the Cumasan sibyl, we have latterly withheld its 
 treasures from a giddy generation that did not seem sufficiently to appreciate 
 their value — there is a voluminous essay, indeed a regular historical work, to 
 which the learned divine, with that fondness for alliteration which he so fre- 
 quently manifests, has affixed the title of "Gesta Gibborum ; or, The History 
 of Hunchbacks." He appears, from some cause or other, to have been ambi- 
 tious of figuring as the chroniclerof that very neglected but highly intelligent class 
 of individuals (who have not hitherto had their Plutarch) ; and, in the execu- 
 tion of this laudable undertaking, he has left aproud memorial of hisindustrious 
 philanthropy. Such, however, is the distaste for rational and elaborate com- 
 positions of this nature, and such the predilection of the reading public for 
 light and unsubstantial literature, that this grave historical performance would 
 not probably at the present moment attract a whit more notice than the still- 
 born che/s-a'asuvre of the same kind that are monthly brought forth by the 
 " Cabinet Cyclopaedia ; " and which are duly buried, after having been properly 
 
Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. 289 
 
 christened by the Rev. Dionysius Lardner. We have no wish to send Prout's 
 work to ' ' Limbo "in that fashion, although the Doctor has applied to us for 
 it, promising that, like the rest of the series, it would be, in the language of 
 his advertisement, " translated into all the continental languages." France and 
 Europe, he tells us, will be enraptured with the very announcement of "La 
 Biographie des Bossus," forming the 69th volume of the Lardnerian " Sigh- 
 clopagia." We have no doubt it would help to get off a copy or two of his 
 unsaleable collection, but we have declined the proposal. 
 
 We needed not, it is to be hoped, the testimony of Homer, as quoted above, 
 to establish, for the satisfaction of the Royal Antiquarian Society, the remote 
 antiquity of that singular configuration of the dorsal spine in the human sub- 
 ject; the simple proverbial comparison " as old as the hills" being quite con- 
 clusive on the point to the mind of any reflecting F.R.A.S. We only regret 
 that the father of poetry has thought proper to confer so honourable a distinc- 
 tion on so unworthy a character as Thersites. In truth, the blind bard of 
 Mseonia seems to have felt that he had made a. faux pas in this matter; and we 
 may remark, that he never again mentions, in the whole course of the " Iliad," 
 the personage who figures in our quotation, as if conscious of having blundered 
 in depicturing such a scoundrel possessed of this badge of eminence. Msop 
 nobly redeemed the feature; and, in truth, from that ingenious fabulist to 
 the incomparable Scarron — from the husband of Madame de Maintenon to the 
 profound and philosophic Godwin, the bump of genius seemeth to have been 
 the rightful inheritance of hunchbacks. Richard III. and the great Frederic 
 of Prussia owed not a little of their energetic disposition to this peculiarity of 
 structure ; and as to its evincing in its owner a thirst for inquiry and investiga- 
 tion, there was more philosophy than meets the eye in the discovery of some 
 wit of Queen Anne's day, who compared the figure of Pope to a note of inter- 
 rogation. These crooked specimens of humanity seem to have been marked as 
 it were, by the hand of nature in italics, lest they might be confounded with 
 the rest of men, and passed over without due attention to their recondite signi- 
 ficance : the hump seems to be a sort of acute accent placed upon them, not 
 without a sly meaning of its own. We might here refer to the " Cours de Belles 
 Lettres " of Abbe " Bossu," but we do not wish to accumulate instances of 
 eminent men similarly distinguished ; in sooth, to heap up all the examples 
 were an useless attempt — imponere Pelio Ossam. 
 
 A French writer of considerable ingenuity has, in our opinion, made a sad 
 mistake when he wrote the following epigram against the poet Desorgues : 
 it was no doubt intended as a sarcasm, but had he given himself the trouble 
 of considering the thing soberly, he would have seen that he had paid his 
 enemy the most delicate compliment imaginable : 
 
 " Quand Polichinel Desorgue, 
 Ce petit bossu rhodomont, 
 Sur la montagne & double front 
 A voulu grimper avec morgue, 
 
 On croirait que le double mont, 
 Four se venger de cet affront, 
 
 Lui-MEME A GR1MPE SUR DESORGUE ! " 
 
 Desorgues might have answered his less favoured antagonist, by quoting 
 the well-known sonnet of Cardinal Bembo, which, though originally addressed 
 to one of the Apennines, would be far more appropriately applied to the pro- 
 montory in question : 
 
 " Re degli altri sacro superbo monte 
 Tu sarai il mio Parnaso," &c, &c. 
 
 We could readily enlarge on this curious topic, and swell it out, but that 
 
 M * 
 
290 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 we do not wish to anticipate on Prout's historico-philosophical work, which will 
 be published in due season ; nor will our readers accuse us of travelling out of 
 the record, in ushering in the " Hunchback " of Victor Hugo with a few words 
 on dwarfs in general : such practice being established as the oldest and most 
 received method of reviewing an authors work, which is generally considered 
 only as a peg whereon to hang up the critic's wig of miscellaneous learning. 
 
 We greatly admire Mr. Bentley's sagacity in the case before us. Hugo, in 
 the simplicity of unsophisticated genius, had called his book, in the original 
 French edition, by the mere title of " Notre Dame de Paris," fancying, probably, 
 good easy man ! that the old cathedral was the real hero of the story, and that 
 the minor personages of flesh and blood were but secondary and subservient 
 to the giant of stone, who, from beginning to end, holds his ground, and 
 sways the destiny of all around him. The bellringer Quasimodo, he no doubt 
 thought (as we do) a fine creation among the other dramatis persona ; but 
 Notre Dame herself was to be, in his cast of the characters, the unrivalled 
 prima donna. However, under Bentley's management, this was found not to 
 be judicious catering for a British auditory, ft was deemed expedient before 
 an English public to put the best foot foremost, to sink the building, and to 
 invest the misshapen dwarf with the "leadership" of the romance. Hence 
 the liberty taken with Hugo's title-page by the " traditore;" hence, instead of 
 a hero of stone, if we be allowed to speak in the language of Cornelius h 
 Lapide, the translator has given us a son of Abraham. 
 
 A hunchback, or a lusus natum of some kind or other, in modem works of 
 fiction, is a sine qmX non — an essential ingredient in the romantic cauldron. 
 Banim's first and best work, " Croohooreof the Bill-Hook" is a proud evidence of' 
 what can be made out of a scarecrow. Need we refer to Scott's " Black Dwarf," 
 or the splendid " Hunchback" of our admired friend Sheridan Knowles? And 
 here let us observe, that we do not agree with the notorious sceptic Hobbes, in 
 his definition of a vicious man — mains, puer robustus. Are not the Leprechauns 
 of Crofton Croker a pleasant race of beings, and is he not himself a notable 
 Leprechaun ? In truth, Crofty hath therein selected a fitting subject for his 
 pen— parvum parva decent. The adjective parvus (but not the verb decent) 
 brings Tom Moore to our recollection. His "veiled prophet," ugly and 
 stunted though he be, makes decidedly the most interesting character in that 
 long-since-forgotten Oriental romance called " Lalla Rookh." It must be 
 admitted, however, that Tommy's monster is an exception to the general good 
 character of such personages ; being, in fact, an instance of unqualified and 
 unmitigated malignity : — 
 
 " Then turn and look, and wonder if thou wilt, 
 That I should hate, should take revenge by guilt, 
 Upon that hand, whose mischief or whose mirth 
 Sent me thus maimed and monstrous upon earth ; 
 And on that race, who, though more vile they be 
 Than mowing apes, are demigods to me ! 
 Here judge if hell, with all its powers to damn, 
 Could add one curse to the foul thing lam!" 
 
 Those who have strolled through the Vatican palace must have remarked, in 
 the fresco of Raphael that adorns the Sala di Costantino, with what peculiar 
 care the painter has delineated the muscular urchin, a dwarf of Pope Julius, in 
 the attitude of trying on a helmet. Such figures are by no means unfrequent 
 in the grandest efforts of the historical pencil ; and whether introduced for the 
 sake of contrast, or to gratify a secret feeling of self-complacency which is apt 
 to rise in the breast of the beholder, they are standing jokes of art with the 
 craft. We have an antique statue of the favourite bossu of Augustus among 
 the remains of Roman sculpture ; and it appears, from unquestionable autho- 
 
Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. 291 
 
 rity, that the Emperor Domitian* became highly popular for a week at Rome 
 by introducing on the arena of the amphitheatre two pigmy gladiators, homun- 
 culos gibbosos. Punch and Judy are old-established candidates for unbounded 
 applause ; the former, doubtless, because of his bump, — for deprive him but 
 in thought of that dorsal protuberance, and Polichinello at once merges into a 
 vulgar commonplace member of the buffoon fraternity. 
 
 We remember, before the passing of the Reform-bill, there used to be about 
 the purlieus of the House of Commons a very remarkable little fellow, closely 
 answering the description of Quasimodo, and performing about Westminster 
 Hall and St. Stephen's Chapel pretty nearly the functions ascribed by Hugo to 
 the hunchback of Notre Dame. He would pilot " strangers from Yorkshire" 
 through the labyrinth of dark passages that then led to the two houses. He 
 would be equally useful in indicating of the narrow door that leads to the 
 " Poets' Corner " in the Abbey. During the session he would be occasionally 
 seen holding the horse of some M.P., by the toleration of the servant, when it 
 was curious to watch with what an astonished eye the captive quadruped would 
 scrutinize his keeper. There was an air of dignity withal about the urchin, 
 and a sense of his important attributions quite becoming. For the last thirty 
 years he has been known as an integral part of "his majesty's high court of 
 parliament holden at Westminster," but latterly he has disappeared. Whither 
 has he flown? Like the " petit homme rouge" of whom Beranger singeth. and 
 who haunted the Tuileries, was he the fairy guardian of the pile, and is his 
 sudden evanescence ominous of evil ? We fear he was burnt in the late fire 
 with the Exchequer tallies. 
 
 Charles Lamb, who saw all manner of things with the shrewd eye of philo- 
 sophy, and to whom every feature of the metropolis was the subject of much 
 internal soliloquy, as musing he passed through her busy streets, has a remark- 
 able passage in that profound essay of his called ' ■ A Complaint of the Decay of 
 Beggars ; " which we here subjoin on the triple principle of Horace, viz. 
 
 " Et sapit et pro me facit, et Jove judicat aequo.'' 
 
 He complaineth thus : 
 
 "These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or 
 
 fart of the figure, of a man who used to glide his comely upper half oyer the pavements of 
 .ondon, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood — a spec- 
 tacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a sailor- 
 like complexion ; and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural 
 curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare 
 at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise 
 his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty heart of this half-limbed 
 giant. Few but must have noticed him ; for the accident which brought him low took 
 place during the (no popery) riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He 
 seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neigh- 
 boured. He was a grand fragment — as good as an Elgin marble. The nurture which 
 should have recruited his reft legs and thighs was not lost, but only retired into his upper 
 parts. 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 
 'et half of the body portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting, and 
 le 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." 
 
 * In his Life, by Suetonius, we further learn that this emperor once had a dream, in 
 which he fancied himself transformed into rather a novel species of hunchback, fert-ur 
 somniasse gibbam auream pone cervicem sibi enatam fuisse I — In Vit. Vomit, ad 
 finem. 
 
 I 
 
292 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 In Sir Joshua's time, among the models of the Royal Academy, many of 
 whom were foreigners, there was a human oddity of French manufacture, who 
 posed, stood, or squatted, as the case might be, for all characters of extra defor- 
 mity, and whose good humour made him a general favourite with the artists of 
 that day. Competition, however, had begun even then to enter into every 
 professional career ; and great was the indignation of our bossu, when a rival of 
 considerable pretensions sought to "push him from his stool" at the drawing 
 establishment : swelling with wrath at the invasion of his vested rights, he 
 would take every opportunity of exalting his own claims and disparaging the 
 merits of the new-comer. "// est passablement laid, sans doute, le cuistrel" 
 exclaimed our hero to the president one day ; but, added he, with a lofty feel- 
 ing of conscious superiority, " MAIS moi je suis unique ! " 
 
 Victor Hugo's Quasimodo is eminently entitled to use the same tone of 
 triumphant defiance. From his very first appearance in the narrative before us 
 he makes a decided conquest, and elicits from a brilliant assembly shouts of 
 admiration; for the novel opens with a dramatic representation, or "mystery," 
 which, on the 6th of January, 1482, is enacted in the grande salle of the old 
 Palais de Justice of Paris (a sort of French Westminster Hall), and which ter- 
 minates in a scene of which the hint is evidently borrowed from a paper in 
 Addison's ' ' Spectator," but is admirably worked up for the purpose of introduc- 
 ing the hunchback. Those who recollect how well Isaac Bickerstaff describes 
 our old English amusement of "grinning through a horse-collar," will recognize 
 a kindred vein of humour in the opening chapter of this romance. If the 
 original idea belongs to Addison, the improvements are still so many, and the 
 picture of ugliness is so elaborately complete in the sketch of the Frenchman, 
 that we really know not to whom the apple justly belongs; and we therefore 
 leave this point undecided — "detur Utriori." 
 
 From the tenor of our remarks thus far, and from what may seem to super- 
 ficial minds the idle tone of our comments hitherto, some (who know not our 
 ways) may possibly imagine that we look on this book emanating from the 
 first genius of France as a performance only calculated for the amusement of 
 the frivolous, and that we would class it with the Morganic, Maryattic, and 
 Nortonian productions of the day. Far otherwise. This work has within it 
 all the elements of immortality : the bellringer of Notre Dame has nought in 
 common with the tinkling cymbals of contemporary novelmongers. He sends 
 forth a peal loud and deep, that thrills to the very inmost penetralia of 
 the soul. 
 
 " Were ne'er prophetic sound so full of woe ! " 
 
 Human passion in its most fearful development — the affections of our nature, 
 first wrought up to preternatural intensity, and then shown to us in their most 
 excruciating disseverance — the flebile ludibrium of dark but scrutinizing satire — 
 and, painfully visible throughout the whole performance, the awful workings of 
 a strong mind, unwilling to be vanquished by the evidences of faith, but whose 
 convulsive struggles under its victorious predominance are hence the more strik- 
 ingly apparent; — such are component parts of this romance, such do we behold 
 Victor Hugo in the Gothic sanctuary of that Christian shrine, under the garb 
 of a novelist, discoursing, like Milton s fallen spirits, of "fate, freewill, fore- 
 knowledge absolute," and, like them, "finding no end," but lost in the inex- 
 tricable mazes of doubt and despair. 
 
 In the very striking preamble to his novel he thus reveals his object : 
 
 " II y a quelques anndes qu'en visitant Notre Dame, l'auteur trouva dans un recoin 
 obscur d'une de ses tours ce mot grave sur le mur, 'ANArKH. Ces majuscules Grecques, 
 noires de vetuste, et profondement entaillees dans la pierre, y furent tracees par une main 
 du moyen age : leur sens lugubre et fatal , le frapperent vivement. C'est sur ce mot qu'on 
 a fait ce hvre. 
 
This is the ivipySiov of his narrative: in those preliminary lines he sounds 
 the key-note of his song. And it is a truly singular coincidence — an odd 
 instance of fortuitous agreement occurring between two writers separated by 
 the lapse of ages, albeit discussing the same topics of philosophy— the one a 
 nominal Christian, the other an eminent disciple of Socrates— that both such 
 have stumbled on this identical form of introduction, with the simple change 
 from a temple of Saturn, or "Time," to a Gothic church of "Our Lady." 
 We allude to the romantic allegory of Cebes, that celebrated picture of human 
 life in which the ethics of enlightened paganism, such as they were, are lucidly 
 developed, and of which the opening sentence, if we remember right, runs as 
 follows : 'Ervyxavontv vepitraTouimt iv tu too Kpovov Upft>, in w iroWa 
 nai a\\a dvavtjtiara idtwpoufxiv, cvckcito oe TUNAS TIS. K. *r. A. 
 
 There is a certain antique solemnity in that exordium, and, at the same time, 
 a graceful simplicity ; nor is it easy to pronounce, in this case, whether the 
 circumstance of complete similarity between it and the first lines of Hugo's 
 romance ought to be attributed to the instinctive suggestion of innate taste, or 
 set down as an intentional imitation of Attic elegance. 
 
 Nevertheless, if we be permitted to indulge in a few speculations of our own, 
 the awful word, the appalling trisyllable which so forcibly struck the fancy of 
 the Frenchman, as it suddenly met his eye in exploring the gloomy cathedral of 
 his frivolous metropolis, may have been traceable after all to a very simple and 
 unphilosophical origin. It might have been a maiden effort at Greek caligraphy, 
 perpetrated in the " days of Erasmus" by some ingenious choir-boy {enfant at 
 chaur), on whose head nature had formed a precocious bump, impelling him 
 to lapidary inscriptions. Again, from its occurring in one of the towers, "dans 
 un reeoin obscur," in a remote recess, might it not have indicated the peculiar 
 destination of the alcove it adorned, a destination which, with praiseworthy re- 
 serve, the writer chose to convey in a recondite language, so as to be unintelligible 
 to the profane. — Honi soil qui mat y pense. — If this latter interpretation be 
 questioned by the " Acadimie des Inscriptions," we must only leave the 
 decision of the point to the sagacious editor of the " Cabinet Cyclopaedia," 
 whose peculiar province it concerneth. 
 
 But it strikes us there is yet another theory by which it might be explained. 
 Some poor scholar, or starving Greek tutor (of which genus there has been a 
 plentiful supply in every age and country), might he not perchance, by the deep 
 traces of that fatal 'ANA TKH. have sought to eternize in stone his keen percep- 
 tion of gnawing WANT, and thus left a votive memento of famine, a monumental 
 record of HUNGER ad perpetuam rei memoriam. We know that Job on his 
 dunghill was visited by a similar desire to perpetuate his sentiments, and loudly 
 wished that his words might be "graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock 
 for ever." Too many such memorials of anguish and endurance are, alas ! 
 strewn over the surface of the earth. Many a sigh of bygone woe thus finds 
 perennial utterance ; many a bitter tear, shed in ages past, has been thus 
 "crystallized and made immortal." 
 
 The child of enthusiasm delights in raising ghosts and conjuring up phan- 
 toms. What will seem but a windmill to Sancho, is to his master a giant in 
 full panoply. The imagination of Hugo, of course, kindled at the mystic 
 word, and the spirit of romance rushed upon him. Beneath his glowing eye, 
 fate, necessity, PREDESTINATION, doom, all lurked under the letters that 
 made up that one noun-substantive. It was clearly indicative of ruin to some 
 one, it was hieroglyghic of perdition somewhere. It was the sad epitaph of 
 crushed hopes, the last fragment of some dread moral shipwreck, the finis of 
 some terrible volume. In that word were contained the primordial elements of 
 a grand catastrophe, the seminal principle (as Burke has it) of some glorious 
 horror — an " Iliad" in a nutshell. 
 
 It is curious to observe how many different, and what singularly dissonant 
 
294 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 meanings the same written characters will convey to the minds of men, 
 according to the previous casual or habitual disposition of the parties. We 
 just now remember a queer case in point. The letters O.T.P.Q.M.V.D., 
 which in the reign of Louis XV. figured gorgeously on the drop-curtain of the 
 French theatre, were, by the learned manager of that day, intended to recall 
 the hackneyed line, 
 
 " Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci." 
 
 Notwithstanding this palpable intention on the part of the contriver, the jaun- 
 diced eye of Freron (who wrote theatrical criticisms at that period) could not 
 decipher the true sense of those simple initials ; he foolishly insisting that they 
 should be read thus : 
 
 " CEdipe Tragldie Pitoyable Que Monsieur Voltaire Donne." 
 
 We trust we have not dwelt too long on these prolegomena, remembering the 
 author's declaration that he wrote his book to interpret for posterity this fatal 
 " hand-writing on the wall" of Notre Dame, which he considers as the found- 
 ation of his romance, and which, being once understood, explains the whole 
 story. It was, in truth, a discovery which genius alone could have made, 
 though the thing may now appear quite simple and natural to the badauds de 
 Paris ; his novel, apparently like the egg of Columbus, only required to have 
 a proper basis established by an ingenious hit, and there it stands before them 
 bolt upright, a miracle of contrivance. 
 
 We are told by Gibbon, that he found the original idea of his grand work on 
 the " Decline and Fall " one moonlight night, while sitting among the ruins of 
 the Flavian amphitheatre. We are, of course, bound to believe the statement ; 
 but we suspect he may have also read the early composition of Montesquieu, 
 " Sur la Grandeur et la Decadence des Romains." The topic clearly is iden- 
 tical : it is only the manner of treating it that seems somewhat different, just as 
 in the case before us ; the"destiny" that presides over Hugo's "Notre Dame" 
 differs, in detail and development, from that which Diderot had previously 
 depicted in his wretched novel of "Jacques le Fataliste." 
 
 From the Stoics to the Manicheans, and from them to the Jansenists, " free- 
 will," "fore-knowledge," and "fate," have been favourite subjects of human 
 contemplation, assuming different aspects as men were disposed to view the 
 awful subject in its bearings on the conduct of life. Erasmus (de servo arbitrio 
 Lutheri), and Leibnitz (in his Harmona Prastabitita), not to enumerate 
 Calvin and Kant, Swedenborg and Spinosa, with a host of others, have lost 
 themselves in the inquiry. They ventured on " that great Serbonian bog where 
 armies whole have sunk," and sank accordingly. They had better have left 
 the matter where they found it. Virgil long ago had picked up the notion 
 that knowledge could control and regulate the destiny of the true sage : 
 
 " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Atque metus omnes et inexorable jfoftftn 
 Subjccit pedibus strepitum que acnerontis avari." 
 
 Georgic. II. 
 
 And surely there was more genuine philosophy in that position than is to be 
 found in his friend Horace's droll representation of ivayitti, or necessity ; a 
 personage whom, in his " Ode to Fortune," he decks out in all the attributions 
 Of a travelling tinker or Jew pedlar selling old irons : 
 
 " Te semper anteit serva Necessitas 
 Clavos trabales et cuneos manu, 
 Gestans ahena, nee severus 
 Uncus abest, liquidumque plumbum !" 
 
Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. 295 
 
 In the work before us, the doings of destiny are principally exemplified in 
 the fatal and uncontrollable passion entertained by a learned priest for a beautiful 
 gipsy wench, terminating as it does in the destruction of both its victims : the 
 author suitably delineates the progress of this untoward frenzy, as on the one 
 hand it blights and consumes the bud of beauty and innocence, while on the 
 other it withers and blasts the fair fruits of virtue and of science ; he illustrates 
 the tale with much correlative depicturing, in which an evil genius seems to 
 delight in thwarting the kindliest affections of our human nature ; but the grand 
 result is a book, with all its faults, the most powerfully written, and the most 
 intensely interesting, that has issued from the press of modern France. 
 
 Hugo seems to have concentrated his whole strength in creating the character 
 of Claude Frollo, the mysterious and impassioned archdeacon of Notre Dame. 
 How bright and pure in his early career of studious pursuits and virtuous 
 deeds ! how imperceptible the subsequent transition from science, in its legiti- 
 mate uses and appliances, to the dark researches of forbidden knowledge — 
 from the/as to the nefas of contemporary learning ! until, to give the final blow 
 to his prospects and his piety, 
 
 " Love's witchery came ; " 
 
 when, full soon under the fearful dominion of unhallowed passion, he sinks 
 into a reprobate of the deepest dye, and becomes a very demon of depravity. 
 
 All which is meant as a commentary on the word 'ANATKH . 
 
 Much as we admire the skill and pathetic power with which the novelist has 
 wrought out his tale of sorrow, we cannot bring ourselves to lay all the blame of 
 this sacerdotal catastrophe at the door of destiny. We would ascribe the fall of 
 Frollo to the operation of much simpler agency; and we cannot help expressing 
 our regret that, gifted as the archdeacon was with superior talents, he had not 
 rather chosen to profit of the newly invented art of printing, and bethought 
 himself of turning author or editor : an occupation which would have effec- 
 tually banished the "gipsy," and, moreover, secured to us a few goodly tomes 
 in folio, bearing on their title-page 1482 — a date which brings a pretty good 
 price at "the sales " we have lately attended. 
 
 There are many points of resemblance between this unfortunate ecclesiastic 
 and one who had flourished on the same spot two centuries before ; for, need 
 we remind our readers that in those same cloisters of Notre Dame a certain 
 Peter Abelard had lived and loved. Nor is it improbable that he supplied 
 the model of Hugo's archdeacon. One would have imagined that the mis- 
 chances of that celebrated personage ought to have served as a lesson to his 
 successors, and that these local reminiscences would not have been without 
 their moral ; yet, strange to say, Frollo seems never to have dwelt on the matter, 
 and not the slightest allusion to the affair of Heloisa occurs in the work 
 before us. 
 
 That was in truth a sad affair, divesting it of all the poetry with which it has 
 been ingeniously bedizened, and reducing it to a plain unvarnished tale. Petrus 
 Abselardus will be found to have played the part of a deliberate seducer in the 
 first instance, and to have displayed consummate selfishness subsequently 
 throughout the whole transaction : not that we totally approve of the vengeance 
 taken by old uncle Fulbert, who was far too savage on the occasion (Kiovnaadni 
 to ipamiKa juEpt), as our much-esteemed friend Origen, a high authority in such 
 matters, has it, cap. vii., contra Celsum), but we certainly think that the noble- 
 minded girl deserved a more chivalrous lover than this pedant proved : all the 
 heroism, all the delicacy, all the romance, all the refinement was hers. 
 
 Of Abelard, as a literary character, in days when such accomplishments 
 Were scarce, we are far from wishing to speak disparagingly ; though we deem 
 his great contemporary, St. Bernard (the accomplished abbot of Clara Vallis, 
 
or Clairvaux), to have been far his superior in elegant acquirements, as well as 
 in purity of life. The excellence of the former was chiefly confined to a certain 
 adroitness in disputation, and a quickness in reply, which was the great test of 
 merit in the scholastic exhibitions of the day when the universalists, the 
 nominalists, and the realists, battled with unceasing verbosity. And it is 
 highly amusing, at this distance of time, to peruse the critique which Abelard 
 passes on a rival wrangler, yclept Anselmus, whose defects he graphically 
 delineates in the following passage, apparently unconscious of its application 
 to himself : 
 
 " Mirabilis quidem erat in oculis auscultantium, sed nullus in conspectu qusestionan- 
 tium. Verborum usum habebat mirabilem, sed sensu contemptibilem et ratione vacuum. 
 Cum ignem accenderet domum suam fumo implebat, non luce illustrabat. Arbor ejus tota 
 infoliis alonge conspicua vtdebatur, sed propmquantibus et diligenter intuentibus infruc- 
 tuosa reperiebatur. Ad banc, igitur, cum accessissem ut fructum inde colligerem, depre- 
 hendi illam esse ficulneam cui maledixit Dominus, seu illam veterem quercum cui Pom- 
 peium Lucanus comparat. 
 
 1 Stat magni nominis umbra, 
 Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro.' " 
 
 But our present business is not with Abelard, his character, opinions, or 
 adventures. Are not these things rather of the cognizance of Father Prout, 
 and are they not written in some one of his yet unpublished papers ? Turn we, 
 then, to the book of Hugo. 
 
 His young gipsy is an exquisite creature; La Esmeralda is in truth a 
 beautiful conception, and divinely bodied forth. We regret to find that her 
 goat has, in certain quarters, been most unjustifiably attacked — being illiberally 
 denounced as a plagiarism from Sterne's Maria : but were it even so (a conces- 
 sion which we make for the sake of peace and quietness), has she not taught it 
 a thousand original tricks, has she not so improved its education and general 
 accomplishments as to render it almost impossible for the poor maniac, whom 
 Yorick met at Moulines, to recognize her property in the dumb animal? The 
 controversy appeareth to us a mere quibble ; what the schoolmen would 
 appropriately call litem, de lan& caprina. Then, as to her Platonic marriage 
 with that singular impersonation, the poet Gringoire, that is surely an incident 
 of which it would be difficult to find the prototype anywhere, unless folks will 
 discover a parallel case in the union of the fascinating Creole (De Maintenon) 
 with the illustrious cripple Scarron. The devoted love which, in the course of 
 the story, the fair enthusiast suddenly conceives for a brainless and heartless 
 coxcomb — the genuine representative of a class of very plausible characters with 
 which every age and country abounds — Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers must 
 be accounted for, we imagine, by attributing it to the uncontrollable influence 
 of that grim 'ANAXKH which frowns out cf the old towers of Notre Dame on 
 all who come within the magic circle of its sway. But the grand chord which 
 is made to vibrate with deepest thrill in the reader's breast is the narrative and 
 discovery of her parentage. The half-saint, half-savage penitent of the 
 anchorite cell (or ' ' trou aux rats "), who for fifteen long years since the disappear- 
 ance of her child has wept and prayed, until reason has almost wom itself out, 
 and nought remains but the sense of that one sad bereavement, is perhaps the 
 most feelingly depicted personage in any modern work of fiction. Dante, of 
 course, in his memorable scene of Count Ugolino and his children in the 
 tower, stands yet unrivalled ; but the concluding passages of this romance, 
 where the mother is grouped with her long-lost infant, now grown up into the 
 full maturity of life and loveliness — for the scaffold ! — offer some of the most 
 pathetic pages we ever remember to have bedewed with (irresistibly flowing) 
 tears. There are certain soliloquies, certain sad and solitary outbursts of 
 maternal tenderness, dispersed through the volume, of which the eloquence is 
 
truly heart-rending. But thus to recover the long-prayed-for object of her 
 affections, merely to see it transferred to the gibbet, is a powerfully affecting 
 result of the fatal uuayicxi that regulates her portion. 
 
 If the readers of Regin a have not perused the French work, it is fit they 
 should be made aware that the " trou aux rats " above alluded to was a sort of 
 underground oratory, which formerly existed on the Place de Greve at Paris, 
 and was tenanted in succession by a voluntary female recluse, whom penitential 
 feeling, or some other all-absorbing motive, would induce to take up her 
 quarters in that gloomy cell, there to end her days in fasting and prayer. 
 "Tu Or A" was the appropriate recommendatory motto, inscribed in large 
 Gothic characters over the entrance of the subterranean dwelling, and helped 
 to remind all those learned in the dead languages of a solemn duty. But the 
 uninitiated vulgar had put their own construction on it, and, by a simple 
 process of popular interpretation, it came to signify the "trou aux rats." 
 It was probably on this hint that La Fontaine wrote his capital fable of " The 
 Rat turned Hermit" (livre vii. fab. iii.). 
 
 " Les Levantuis en leur legende 
 Disent, qu'un certain rat, las des soins d'ici-bas, 
 
 Dans un fromage de Hollande 
 
 Se retira loin du monde. 
 
 La solitude etait profonde 
 
 S'e*tendant tout a la ronde, 
 Notre hermite nouveau setablit la dedans ; 
 
 II fit tant de pieds et des dents, 
 Qu'il eut au fond de cet hermitage 
 L*e vivre et le couvert. Que faut-U d'avantage t 
 II devint gros et gras. Bieu prodigue ses biens 
 A ceux qui font vceu d'etre siens." 
 
 Nor can we dismiss this topic without remarking the perverse ingenuity with 
 which the vulgar in every country will translate such terms of art, or science, 
 or foreign import, as come in their way, so as to attach some intelligible mean- 
 ing of their own to the words. It is one of the curiosities of language. By 
 this process sometimes black becomes white ; as is literally exemplified among 
 the sailors in the Uowns, who call the headland near Calais "Blackness" 
 seeing it marked on the French chart as Blanc Nez. The mistake of the 
 Parisians, however, in the matter of tu ora may be matched by an instance of 
 London hermeneutics. A pious tavern-keeper in Holborn, under Cromwell's 
 protectorate, had placed over his taberna the common emblem of a serpent 
 forming a circle, surrounded with the motto " God encompasseth us." Could 
 the old Roundhead come to life and revisit his quondam tap, he would find, to 
 his surprise, that the lofty truth which he had emblazoned on his sign has 
 become (farce detorta !) 
 
 "The Goat and Compasses." 
 
 But, returning to our tale — is "the hunchback" a mere titular functionary? 
 is Quasimodo kept in abeyance in the progress of the romance? is the " part 
 of Hamlet" omitted? By no means. He is studiously mixed up with every 
 incident, endowed with gigantic energies, evinces wondrous instinct, and seems 
 gifted with a marvellous ubiquity ; yet chiefly and conspicuously doth he shine 
 within the precincts of Notre Dame. 
 
 " Ilia se jactat in aula,"' 
 
 The huge cathedral had been to him, since the hour he was left a foundling 
 on its cold, damp, marble floor, a cradle, a home, a native land. No cabin- 
 boy's attachment to the gallant frigate on board of which he was bora can sur- 
 
298 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 pass Quasimodo's affection for the venerable pile. He is the life and soul of 
 the Gothic edifice, in himself presenting a Gothic model of human architec- 
 ture. Identified with the place body and mind, he would seem to be the Aai/uwi/, 
 or genius loci—axi. integral part of the church. " II y avait une sorte d'har- 
 monie mysteneuse et prS-existante entre cette creature et cet eojfice. Lorsque 
 tout petit, encore il se trainait tortueusement, et par soubresauts sous les 
 tenebres de ses voutes, il semhlait le reptile naturel de cette dalle humide et 
 sombre." It is the bell-ringer who vivifies this mighty mass of stone — mens 
 agitat molem : and, then, the delights of the belfry ! those loud-tongued birds 
 of heaven, singing out of their gigantic cage in the towers of Notre Dame. 
 For these, his bronze favourites, the hunchback feels a real passion, a most 
 romantic love : he had, quoth Hugo, fifteen bells in his seraglio— ('tis a pity 
 the pun won't hold good in French)— but the big one was his sultana elect. 
 Why ? He had rung himself deaf, and she alone could now make an impres- 
 sion on the tympanum of his ear. Hence her lover's preference. We could 
 say something here about matrimonial squabbles, but we forbear. 
 
 Our author shows amazing genius in the delineation of this dwarf, especially 
 in the anatomy of his mental qualities; where, with a keen dissecting-knife, he 
 cuts the rude envelopes that fold up the tfruxi of Quasimodo, laying open the 
 internal workings of this singular being, and displaying the inner operations of 
 nature in so odd a specimen of her handicraft. The hunchback is, in sooth, 
 a most poetical monster, a most accomplished machine, possessed of a double 
 entity like the centaurs— half man, half bell. Hugo seems, noreover, to sym- 
 pathize with the bell-ringer in his tintinnabular enthusiasm ; for never is his style 
 more animated than when, as on one occasion, he sets all the steeples of Paris 
 into simultaneous commotion : an admired passage, which will be found quoted 
 at full length by Prout, in his " Rogueries of Tom Moore,"* wherein the father 
 showeth how "Those Evening Bells" were stolen by Tom, who, we verily 
 believe, would steal the great Tom of Lincoln, were his strength commensurate 
 with his predatory propensities. This case of robbery is duly provided against 
 in the code of Justinian, who has enacted (in Leg. Rust, titul. ii.), " Siquis 
 crepitaculum bovis abstulerit flagellator ui fur." And as we are on this sub- 
 ject, we may refer the curious to the treatise of Magius, "De Tintinnabulis;" 
 as also to a book by Durandus, called " Campanologia." To these authorities 
 we could wish to add a work by some German friar, who wrote in 1320 to prove 
 that an unlimited faculty of bell-ringing will form part of the celestial beatitude. 
 We have unfortunately forgotten the good man's name, which bath such an 
 undoubted right to be loudly tolled. 
 
 The old cathedral of Paris which gives its name to the book is still the main 
 point of attraction towards which all the events and characters naturally gravi- 
 tate, and round which the whole story revolves. There is an admirable sketch 
 of the ancient university, the pays Latin, and the abbey of St. Germains, which 
 was far from presenting in those days the appearance which that " noble faux- 
 bourg" has since assumed; there is also a splendid account of the " four dis 
 Miracles," or St. Giles's district ; nor is it possible to find in any work, ancient 
 or modern, a more minute and vivid picture of the capital of France at the 
 close of the fifteenth century than has been drawn by the lively pencil of our 
 author : still, in the most devious wanderings of his narrative, taking as it does 
 the range of the whole city, we never for a moment lose sight of the venerable 
 pile of Notre Dame. Proudly swelling over the undulating surface of Gothic 
 roofs, halls, colleges, monasteries, prisons, hotels, and inferior edifices (which 
 he has so accurately described in a special chapter devoted to a bird's-eye view 
 of the metropolis), the cathedral rears itself in massive grandeur conspicuous 
 above them all — an architectural leviathan. 
 
 *' Dorsum immane mari summo. " 
 * See Recina, vol. ix. p. 908, 
 
Victor Hugds Lyrical Poetry. 299 
 
 The only rival that can for a moment divide the interest of the reader with 
 that mighty monument is the wondrous citadel of bygone despotism— the 
 never-to-be-forgotten Bastille. Of that memorable construction not a vestige 
 now remains; but in the solidity of its materials and the vastness of its giant 
 proportions it appears to have had no equal among the ponderous dungeons 
 that have encumbered the earth. The cell at the summit of one of its towers, 
 wherein Louis Onze is introduced at the dead of night, in converse with his 
 prime minister and barber, Olivier le Mauvais, attended by his chief hangman, 
 Tristan l'Hermite, is full of historical truth — a merit which we are not able to 
 recognize in Sir Walter Scott's ■ ' Quentin Durward, " treating of the same matter. 
 In fact, we have heard old Beranger express himself greatly dissatisfied with 
 Sir Walter's French delineations ; and we think there are solid grounds for the 
 strictures with which, in our hearing, the chansonnier visited that performance. 
 As to Louis Onze, by the way, the best idea of his character is to be found in 
 Beranger's own song, in which the tyrant, by a striking and effective contrast, 
 is described as looking out, from his watch-tower of Plessis les Tours, on a 
 village-dance in the neighbouring hamlet, through the iron bars of his gloomy 
 chateau. That " donjon" and the Bastille were the monarch's favourite resi- 
 dences. The latter, as all the world knows, has been blown down by the 
 breath of popular wrath ; and an elephant in plaster of Paris having been, for 
 some reason or other, erected in its place, a restaurateur conceived the 
 bright idea of establishing his salon in the capacious interior of the colossal 
 animal, where we recollect to have eaten a cbtelktte a la Maintenon, in 1828 ; 
 but we learn that both the elephant and the artiste have been latterly com- 
 pelled to pack up their trunks, to make way for a bronze column in honour of 
 the three days. All this is at it should be. Buildings crumble into dust, or 
 are swept away by hands : lightning, earthquakes, or artillery, soon dispose of 
 the mighty mass; but it is given to genius to reconstruct of more durable 
 materials the monuments of history. The towers of Ilion are still erect in song ; 
 Kenilworth still rears its gigantic form in the page of Scott ; and even the Bas- 
 tille has obtained from Hugo a species of existence. 
 
 '' Quod non imber edax non aquilo impotens 
 Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis, 
 Annorum series et fuga temporum.'' 
 
 Lib. iii. ode 30. 
 
 The day may yet come when this romance will be the only local habitation 
 of the cathedral itself, — when its glorious porch, like the Scasan gate, Will have 
 no other existence than what poetry and eloquence will have secured to it— 
 when Utilitarianism will have discovered that its stones and materials might be 
 converted to some more useful purpose, and that (as well observed by a Ben- 
 thamite disciple, anno domini 33) "they might be sold for more than three 
 hundred pence, and given to the poor." When that event shall have taken 
 place, generations yet unborn will solace themselves in the work of Hugo, 
 which will in that distant age be read with, if possible, greater avidity than by 
 the sons of modern France, amongst whom more than a dozen editions have 
 already been devoured. We trust, however, that our anticipation of destruction 
 to the venerable monument may not be too speedily realized, even though such 
 a consummation would enhance the value of this admirable novel. 
 
 "Tarda sit ilia dies et nostro serior cevo ! " 
 
 We may, in conclusion, be allowed to draw attention to the striking dif- 
 ference as to matter, style, and thought, between the work before us and the 
 performances which in the reign of the Grand Monarque— the classic days of 
 French composition — issued under the name of novels from the press of that 
 
country. Pope, who had a keen relish for the productions of the Gallic muse 
 in all other departments of literature, has recorded his opinion of those 
 romances in terms not to be mistaken. The following sarcastic juxtaposition, 
 which occurs in his ' ' Rape of the Lock " would indicate that he rated their intel- 
 lectual character very low indeed ; it is the recital of a burnt-offering to frivolity 
 —a holocaust made up of truly kindred materials — 
 
 "An altar built 
 Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
 There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, 
 Trophies and tokens of his former loves ; 
 Then with a billet-doux he lights the pyre. 
 And breathes an amorous sigh to raise the fire." 
 
 Cant. II. v. 37. 
 
 The progressive improvement which works of fiction have undergone among 
 our neighbours is indeed remarkable. In the days of Boileau, the current 
 chef-d 'auvres in that line were D'Urfey's " Astrea," with the "Clelia" and other 
 absurdities of Madlle. de Scuderi, a lady who seems to have enjoyed a patent 
 for the supply of such productions, and who, by the voluminous fecundity of 
 het genius in this line of writing (crebris partibus, as Abbe de Sade would say), 
 deserved to be commemorated by the French satirist thus : 
 
 " Heureuse Scuderi dont la fertile plume, 
 Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume." 
 
 Sat. II. v. 77. 
 
 But the shepherds and shepherdesses whose sentimental doings were therein 
 chronicled might as well, for any chance of flourishing in the record of fame, 
 have gone to their graves "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung." 
 
 The model on which all these novels were constructed seems to have been a 
 certain work which the great Racine himself is known to have diligently studied 
 and vastly admired: we allude to a Greek romance entitled "Theagenesand 
 Char idea," written by one Heliodorus, bishop of Trica, in the fourth century. 
 This novel is quoted by the learned heresiarch Photius, in his " Bibliotheca," 
 where, at page 157, he gives an extract, accompanied with comments, in the 
 style of a modern reviewer. It made some noise in its day, for, in consulting 
 an accurate ecclesiastical historian, Nicephorus, lib. 12, cap. 24, we find that 
 such was the scandal occasioned by so flagrant an instance of episcopal frivolity, 
 as the composition of such a work evinced on the part of its author, that he 
 was summoned to disavow his book or resign his mitre. We believe he chose 
 the latter alternative. In the ninth century, however, Turpin, archbishop of 
 Rheims, undaunted by the fate of his venerable predecessor in the path of 
 novel-writing, composed the celebrated romance of " Roland and Charlemagne," 
 the oldest tale of European chivalry. This may be looked on as the earliest 
 work of that species in modern literature; and was followed by a mass of 
 similar productions, as silly as their prototype. The " Roman de la Rose" falsely 
 attributed to Abelard, was one of the most popular. " Amadis de Gaul" was 
 another of these crude narratives. 
 
 But it was reserved for a third episcopal functionary to give a rational tone 
 and a philosophic tendency to professed works of fiction ; and the delightful 
 Fenelon de Cambray, in his immortal "Teleroaque," opened the list of more 
 dignified and intellectual authorship in the province of romance. We know 
 not whether the adventures of the son of Ulysses in search of his father be not 
 the first instance of the historical novel : we strongly incline to place the ' ' Cyro- 
 pasdia" of the accomplished Xenophon at the head of the catalogue. Be that 
 as it may, the form of narrative was now discovered to be the readiest and most 
 
Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. 301 
 
 acceptable vehicle for conveying information or establishing a theory. From 
 the "Telemaque"of Fenelon to the " Anacharsis" of Abbe Bartholemi it was 
 adopted with success by the writers of France. Rousseau wrote his "Emile" and 
 his "Heloise," Voltaire his "Candide," Bernardin de St. Pierre his " Paul et 
 Virginie," Chateaubriand his " Martyrs," avowedly with those views. But we 
 firmly assert, that of the fictions we have enumerated, and to which we might 
 add a dozen more of minor celebrity by Florian, Marmontel, De Genlis, and 
 DeStael (Le Sage forming a class apart, a distinct genus in himself), though 
 many are superior in the utility of their object, and the value of their incul- 
 cations, none can vie in execution and in detail with the work of Hugo. In 
 all the qualities that attract and rivet attention, in deep and original thought, 
 in brilliancy of wit and playfulness of fancy, in accuracy of costume and faith- 
 ful portraiture of the times, in pathos and dramatic effect, in all the evidences 
 of true genius, his book is far beyond them all. 
 
 On this work rests his renown. He has written much, and will doubtless 
 write more ; but nothing has hitherto issued from his pen, and we fear nothing 
 is likely to follow, that can bear the remotest comparison with this extraordinary 
 achievement. His "Bugjargal" is a pitiful performance; his "HansD'Islande" 
 is extravagant and unnatural ; his " Lucrece Borgia" and " Marie Tudor" 
 border on the ravings of insanity. He of course is the fittest judge of what 
 is best for his interests as an homme de letlres, subsisting by the labours of his 
 pen, and naturally turning his attention to what is most profitable in the pur- 
 suits of literature ; but dramatic productions, in the taste ofhis late works for the 
 French theatre, however applauded by the debased sensualists, shallow cox- 
 combs, and ruffian satis culotterie, that decide on these matters at the porte St. 
 Martin, will not add to the glory he has won by his " Notre Dame." To us he 
 seems to be miserably wasting his energies on the stage ; but the field of his- 
 torical romance is the champ clos where he may be truly irresistible and un- 
 rivalled. Ajax mad, furens or fiao-Tiyotpopo?, is but a pitiable object, venting 
 his rage on cattle and slaughtering a flock of sheep in the tragedy. The same 
 hero, in the epic narrative, stands erect and dignified on the plains of Troy, 
 the " buckler of the Grecians." 
 
 In lyrical poetry, Hugo has shown a more delicate perception of nature, and 
 a more correct judgment, than in his melancholy attempts at the drama; 
 though there also is much to reprehend in the volumes he has put forth under 
 the various titles of " Orientales," " Feuilles d'Automne," and "Bailads." His 
 versification is vigorous ; and great originality is displayed in the selection of his 
 topics, as well as in the point of view he chooses to consider them ; but he has 
 neither the finished grace nor the forcible simplicity of the inimitable Beranger. 
 We are enabled to subjoin a few specimens of his genius in this department, 
 by the circumstance of meeting with the following among some loose papers 
 in the chest of Father Prout. We give them without a word of commentary. 
 
 LA GRAND-MERE. 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 " Dors-tu ?— R6veiIle-toi, mere de notre mere ! 
 D'ordinaire en dormant ta bouche remuait : 
 Car ton sommeil souvent ressemble a ta priere, 
 Mais ce soir on dirait la Madonne de pierre, 
 Ta levre est immobile et ton souffle est muet. 
 
 Pourquoi courber ton front plus bas que de coutume? 
 
 Quel mal avons-nous fait pour ne plus nous cherir? 
 Vols, la lampe palit, l'astre scintille et fume ; 
 Si tu ne paries pas, le feu qui se consume, 
 
 Et la lampe et nous deux, nous allons tous mourir ! 
 
302 The Works of Father Front 
 
 Donne-nous done tes mains dans nos mains rechauffees ; 
 
 Chante-nous quelque chant de pauvre troubadour ; 
 Dis-nous ces chevaliers qui servis par les fe*es, 
 Pour bouquets a leurs dames apportaient des trophies, 
 
 Et dont le cri de guerre e*tatt un chant d'amour. 
 
 Dis-nous quel divin signe est funeste aux fant6mes — 
 Quel hermite dans 1 air vit Lucifer volant — 
 
 guel rubis e"tincelle au front du roi des Gnfimes — 
 t si le noir demon craint plus dans ses royaumes 
 Les psaumes de Turpin ou le fer de Roland. 
 
 Ou montre-nous ta Bible aux images dorees ; 
 
 Les saints, vetus de blanc, protecteurs des hameaux ; 
 Les vierges de rayons dans leur joye entourees, 
 Et ces feuillets ou luit, en lettres ignore'es, 
 
 Le langage inconnu qui dit a Dieu nos maux. 
 
 Mere ! helas, par de*gre*s s'affaise la lumiere ! 
 
 I /ombre joyeuse danse autour du noir foyer ; 
 Les esprits vont peut-etre entrer dans la chaumiere ; 
 Oh, sors de ton sommeil interromps ta priere ! 
 
 Toi qui nous rassurais, veux tu nous effrayer ! 
 
 Dieu, que tes bras sont froids ! Ouvre les yeux !...Naguere 
 
 Tu nous parlais d'un monde ou nous menent nos pas, 
 Et de ciel, et de tombe, et de vie e*phe*mere — 
 Tu parlais de la mort ! Dis-nous, O notre mere ! 
 Quest-ce done que la mart ? Tu ne nous repond pas ? " 
 
 Leur gemissante voix longtemps se plaignit seule, 
 La jeune aube parut sans reVeiller l'ayeule ; 
 
 La cloche frappa l'air de ses funebres coups, 
 Et le soir, un passant, par la pone entrouverte, 
 Vit, devant le saint livre et la couche de*serte, 
 
 lies deux petits enfans qui priaient a genoux. 
 
 THE GRANDCHILDREN. 
 
 A Ballad. 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 Still asleep ! We have been since the noon thus alone. 
 
 Oh, the hours we have ceased to number ! 
 Wake, grandmother !— speechless say why art thou grown? 
 Then thy lips are so cola !— the Madonna of stone 
 
 Is like thee in thy holy slumber. 
 
 We have watch'd thee in sleep, we have watch'd thee at prayer, 
 
 But what can now betide thee ? 
 Like thy hours of repose all thy orisons were. 
 And thy lips would still murmur a blessing whene'er 
 
 Thy children stood beside thee. 
 
 Now thine eye is unclosed, and thy forehead is bent 
 
 O'er the hearth, where ashes smoulder ; 
 And, behold ! the watch-lamp will be speedily spent. 
 Art thou vex'd ? have we done aught amis ? Oh, relent ! 
 
 But. ..parent, thy hands grow colder ! 
 
Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. 303 
 
 Say. with ours wilt thou let us rekindle in thine 
 
 The glow that has departed ? 
 Wilt thou sing us some song of the days of lang syne ? 
 Wilt thou tell us some tale, from those stories divine, 
 
 Of the brave and the noble-hearted ? 
 
 Of the dragon, who, crouching in forest or glen, 
 
 Lies in wait for the .unwary — 
 Of the maid, who was freed by her knight from the den 
 Of the Ogre, whose blade was uplifted, but then 
 
 Turn'd aside by the wand of a fairy? 
 
 Wilt thou teach us spell words that protect from all harms 
 
 And thoughts of evil banish? 
 What goblins the sign of the cross may disarm? 
 What saint it is good to invoke ? and what charm 
 
 Can make the demon vanish ? 
 
 Or unfold to our gaze thy most wonderful book, 
 
 So fear'd by hell and Satan ; 
 At its hermits and martyrs in gold let us look, 
 At the virgins, and bishops with pastoral crook, 
 
 And the hymns and the prayers in Latin. 
 
 Oft with legends of angels, who watch o'er the young, 
 
 Thy voice was wont to glad us ; 
 Have thy lips got no language ? no wisdom thy tongue ? 
 Oh, see ! the light wavers, and, sinking, hath flung 
 
 On the wall mysterious shadows ! 
 
 Wake ! awake ! evil spirits perhaps may presume 
 
 To haunt thy holy dwelling ; 
 Pale ghosts are, perhaps, coming into the room — 
 Oh, would that the lamp were relit ! — with the gloom 
 
 These fearful thoughts dispelling. 
 
 Thou hast told us our parents lie sleeping beneath 
 
 The grass, in a churchyard lonely : 
 Now thine eyes have no motion, thy mouth has no breath, 
 And thy limbs are all rigid ! Oh say, Is this death, 
 
 Or thy prayer or thy slumber only 2 
 
 Envoy. 
 
 Sad vigil they kept by that grandmother's chair, 
 
 Kind angels hover'd o'er them — 
 And the dead-bell was toll'd in the hamlet— and there, 
 On the following eve, knelt that innocent pair, 
 
 With the missal-book before them. 
 
 LE VOILE. 
 
 Orientates. 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 *" Avez-vous fait votre priere ce soir, Desdemona? "—Shakespeare. 
 
 LA SCSUR. 
 
 Qu'avez-vous, qu'avez-vous, mes freres? Vos ceustures sont de*chire*es ; 
 
 Vous baissez des fronts soucieux. Deja trois fois hors de l'ltui, 
 
 Comme des lampes funeYaires, Sous vos doigts a demi t frees, 
 
 Vos regards brillent dans vos yeux. Les lames .des poignards ont lui. 
 
304 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 LE frere aine. Vous faut-il du sang? sur votre femes. 
 
 N'avez-vous pas leve* votre voile aujourd'- „ Mes freres, il n'l pft me voir. 
 
 hui ? Grfice ! Tuerez vous une femme, 
 
 Foible et nue, en votre pouvoir? 
 
 LA SCEUR. 
 
 Je revenais du bain, mes freres ; LE TROISlfeME FR £ RE> 
 
 Seigneurs, du bain je revenais, , *wwLm* mam*. 
 
 Cachee aux regards temeraires, Le soleu e*tait rouge a son coucher ce soir ! 
 Des Giaours et des Albanais ; 
 
 En passant prfes de la mosquee, LA sceur. 
 
 Dans mon palanquin recouvert, Grace ! qu'ai-je fait ? Grace ! grace ! 
 
 L'air de midi m'a suffoquee, Dieu ! quatre poignards dans mon flanc ! 
 
 Mon voile un instant s'est ouvert- Ah ! par vos g/snoux que j'embrasse .. 
 
 Oh, mon voile ! oh, mon voile blanc ! 
 
 LE SECOND FRERE. 
 
 Un homme alors passait ? un homme en Ne fuyez pas mes mains qui saignent, 
 
 caftan vert ? Mes freres soutenez mes pas ! 
 
 Car sur mes regards qui s'eteignent 
 
 la sceur. S'iftend un voile de trepas. 
 Oui ! ..peut-etre...mais son audace 
 N'a pas vu mes traits devoiles. — 
 
 Mais vous vous parlez a voix basse ! LE Q^atrieme frere, 
 
 A voix basse vous vous parlez ! C'en est un que du moins tu ne leveras pas ! 
 
 THE VEIL. 
 
 An Oriental Dialogue. 
 
 Victor Hugo. 
 
 the sister. 
 
 What has happen'd, my brothers? Vour spirit to-day 
 
 Some secret sorrow damps : 
 There's a cloud on your brow. What has happen'd ? oh, say ! 
 For your eye-balls glare out with a sinister ray. 
 Like the light of funeral lamps. 
 
 And the blades of your poniards are half-unsheathed 
 
 In your zone.. .and ye frown on me ! 
 There's a wo untold, there's a pang unbreathed 
 
 In your bosom, my brothers three. 
 
 ELDEST BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara, make answer ! Hast thou, since the dawn, 
 To the eye of a stranger thy veil withdrawn ? 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 As I came, O my brothers !...at noon.. .from the bath... 
 
 As I came.. .it was noon. ..my lords... 
 1 And your sister had then, as she constantly hath, 
 Drawn her veil close around her, aware that the path 
 
 Is beset by these foreign hordes. 
 
 But the weight of the noonday's sultry hour, 
 
 Near the mosque was so oppressive, 
 That... forget ting a moment the eye of the Giaour, 
 
 I yielded to heat excessive. 
 
 SECOND BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara, make answer ! Whom, then, hast thou seen. 
 In a turban of white and a caftan of green? 
 
Victor Hugds Lyrical Poetry. 305 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 Nay, he might have been there ; but I muffled me so, 
 
 He could scarce have seen my figure.— 
 But why to your sister thus dark do you grow ? 
 What words to yourselves do you mutter thus low. 
 
 Of " blood," and " an intriguer " ? 
 
 Oh ! ye cannot of murder bring down the red guilt 
 
 On your souls, my brothers, surely ! 
 Though I fear.. .from your hand that I see on the hilt, 
 
 And the hints you give obscurely. 
 
 THIRD BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara ! this evening when sank the red sun, 
 
 Hast thou mark'd how like blood in descending it shone? 
 
 THE SISTER. 
 
 Mercy ! Allah ! three daggers ! have pity ! oh, spare ! 
 
 See ! I cling to your knees repenting ! 
 Kind brothers, forgive me ! for mercy, forbear ! 
 Be appeased at the voice of a sister's despair, 
 
 For your mother's sake relenting. 
 
 O God ! must I die ?^ They are deaf to my cries ! 
 
 Their sister's life-blood shedding ; 
 They have stabb'd me again. ..and I faint. ..o'er my eyes 
 A Veil of Death is spreading! — 
 
 ELDEST BROTHER. 
 
 Gulnara, farewell ! take that veil ; 'tis the gift 
 Of thy brothers — a veil thou never wilt lift ! 
 
 LE REPAS LIBRE. 
 
 Aux Rots de I'Enrofe* 
 
 " II y avait a Rome un antique usage : la veille de l'execution des condamnes a mort, 
 on leur donnait, a la porte de la prison, un repas publique, appele Le Refias libre.*'— 
 Chateaubriand, Les Martyrs. 
 
 Lorsqu a l'antique Olympe immolant I'evangile, 
 Le preteur, appuyant d'un tribunal fragile, 
 
 Ses temples odieux, 
 Livide, avait proscrit des Chretiens pliens de joie, 
 Victimes qu'attendaient, acharnes sur leur proie, 
 
 Les tigres et les dieux. 
 
 Rome offrait un festin a leur elite sainte, 
 Comme si, sur les bords du calice d'absinthe, 
 
 Versant un peu de miel ; 
 Sa pitie des martyrs ignorait L'energie, 
 Et voulait consoler, par une folle orgie, 
 
 Ceux qu'appelait le ciel. 
 
 Le pourpre recevait ces convivss austeres ; 
 Le falerne ecumait dans de larges crateres, 
 
 Ceints de myrtes fleuns ; 
 Le miel d'Hybla dorait les vins de Malvoisie, 
 Et, dans les vases d'or, les parfums de l'Asie 
 
 Lavaient leurs pieds meutris. 
 
306 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 Un art profond, mdlant les tributs des trois mondes, 
 D^vastait les forets et depeulait les ondes 
 
 Pour ce Jibre repas ; 
 On eut dit qu'epuisant la prodigue nature, 
 Sybaris conviait aux banquets d'Epicure 
 
 Ces e*lus du trepas. 
 
 Les tigres cependant s'agitaient dans leur chatne ; 
 Les leopards captifs de la sanglante arene 
 
 Cherchaient le noir cnemin ; 
 Et bientot, moins cruels que les femmes de Rome, 
 Ces monstres, s'etonnaient d'etre applaudis par l'homme, 
 
 Baigncs de sang humain. 
 
 On jetait aux lions les confesseurs, les pretres, 
 Telle un main servile a de dedaigneux maitres 
 
 Offre un mets savoureux ; _ 
 Lorsqu'au pompeux banquet siegeait leur saint conclave, 
 La pale Mort, debout comme un muet esclave, 
 
 Se tenait derriere eux. 
 
 O rots ! comme un festin s'e*coule votre vie ; p 
 La coupe des grandeurs, que le vulgaire envie, 
 
 Brille dans votre main : 
 Mais au concert joyeux de la fete e"phemere, 
 Se mele le cri sound du tigre populaire 
 
 Qui vous attend demain. 
 
 THE FEAST OF FREEDOM. 
 
 To the Kings of Europe. 
 
 "There existed at Rome an ancient custom : prisoners condemned to die, on the eve of 
 their execution were treated to a public banquet, in the porch of the prison— a ceremony 
 called the ' Ccena Libera.' " — Chateaubriand, Les Martyrs. 
 
 When the Christians were doom'd to the lions of old 
 By the priest and the praetor combined to uphold 
 
 An idolatrous cause, 
 Forth they came, while the vast Colosseum throughout 
 Gather'd thousands look'd on, and they fell 'mid the shout 
 
 Of " the people's " applause. 
 
 On the eve of that day, of their evenings the last ! 
 At the gates of their dungeon a gorgeous repast, 
 
 Rich, unstinted, unpriced, 
 That the doom'd might (forsooth !) gather strength ere they bled, 
 With an ignorant pity their gaolers would spread 
 
 For the martyrs of Christ 
 
 Oh ! 'twas strange for a pupil of Paul to recline 
 On voluptuous couch, while Falernian wine 
 
 Fill'd his cup to the brim ! 
 Dulcet music of Greece, Asiatic repose, 
 Spicy fragrance of Araby, Italy's rose, 
 
 All united for him ! 
 
 Every luxury known through the earth's wide expanse, 
 In profusion procured, was put forth to enhance 
 
 The repast that they gave ; 
 And no Sybarite, nursed in the lap of delight, 
 Such a banquet e'er tasted as welcomed that night 
 
 The elect of the grave. 
 
Victor Hugds Lyrical Poetry. 307 
 
 And the lion, meantime, shook his ponderous chain ; 
 Loud and fierce howl'd the tiger, impatient to stain 
 
 The bloodthirsty arena : 
 While the women of Rome, who applauded those deeds, 
 And who hail'd the forthcoming enjoyment, must needs 
 
 Shame the ruthless hyena. 
 
 They who figured as guests on that ultimate eve, 
 In their turn on the morrow were destined to give 
 
 To the lions their food ; 
 For behold, in the guise of a slave at that board, 
 Where his victims enjoy'd all that life can afford, 
 
 Death administering stood. 
 
 Such, O rnonarchs of earth ! was your banquet of power ! 
 But the tocsin has burst on your festival hour — 
 
 'Tis your knell that it rings ! 
 to the popular tiger a prev is decreed, 
 And the maw of Republican hunger will feed 
 
 On a banquet of kings! 
 
XVI. 
 
 % Stoma of HJUfomt % aim f atte. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, August, 1835.) 
 
 [This learned and curiously discursive dissertation— the first of a triad— was contributed 
 by Mahony to the number of Regina in which appeared Maclise's commemorative 
 sketch of Henry O'Brien, author of the " Round Towers of Ireland." The grateful 
 tribute accompanying it in the letterpress, though ostensibly from the hand which usually 
 held the pen for those jottings down in the Gallery — meaning that of Maginn— was in 
 reality from the hand and heart of the good father of Watergrasshill. Confronting the 
 forty-fifth stanza of Vida's ''Silkworm," in the first edition of the "Reliques," that of 1836, 
 appeared young Croquis* exquisite delineation of the " Robing of Venus," the audacity 
 of the undulating lines of beauty in which would not only have justified Hogarth's theory, 
 could the master painter only have beheld them in prevision, but would for certain, while 
 so doing, have fairly captivated his admiration.] 
 
 CHAPTER I.— The Silkworm : A Poem. 
 By JEROME VIDA. 
 
 " Ecco Alessandro il mio signor Farnese ; 
 O dotta compagnia che seco mena ! 
 Blosio, Pierio, e Vida Cremonese 
 D'alta facondia inessicabil vena." 
 
 Akiosto, Orl. Fur., cant, ult., st. xiii. 
 
 " Immortal Vida ! on whose honour'd brow 
 The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow." 
 
 Pope's Essay on Criticism, 
 
 AT the southern extremity of the French metropolis there lieth an extensive 
 burying-ground, which rejoiceth (if any such lugubrious concern can be said 
 to rejoice) in the name of " CimetUre du Mont Parnasse." Some Cockney 
 tourists have had the curiosity to visit this Parnassian graveyard, under the im- 
 pression that it was a kind of Gallican " Poets' Corner," a sort of sepulchral 
 " limbo," set apart for the deceased children of the Muse, in the same national 
 spirit that raised the " H6tel des Invalides," and inscribed on the church of 
 Ste. Genevieve, or " Pantheon " (where Marat and Mirabeau and Voltaire were 
 entombed), that lapidary lampoon, "Aux grands homines la patrie reconnais- 
 sante." No such object, however, appears to have been contemplated by the 
 municipal authorities of Paris, when they inclosed the funereal field thus 
 whimsically designated. 
 
A Series of Modern Latin Poets. 309 
 
 A collection of poetical effusions in any one of the dead languages would, 
 wc apprehend, considering the present state and prospects of literature, turn 
 out to be, in the gloomiest sense of the word, a grave undertaking. Hebrew, 
 Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, are truly and really dead, defunct, mute, 
 unspoken. 
 
 "Monsieur Malbrook est mort, est mort et enterre." 
 
 Hebrew is dead, and no mistake ! — the Wandering Jew must have found that 
 out long since. We venture to affirm that Salathiel (who, according to Croly, 
 lurks about the synagogue in St. Albans Place) has often laughed at the shcvas 
 of our modern Kabbim, and at those pothooks "with points" which are 
 hawked about among the learned as copies of the original Hebrew Scriptures. 
 As to the idioms of King Alfred, the venerable Bede, or Queen Boadicea, how 
 few of our literati are conversant therein or cognizant thereof! Kemble, 
 Wright, and Lingard (pauciquos cequus amavit Jupiter), enjoy an undisturbed 
 monopoly of Anglo-Saxon. — Greek exhibits but few symptoms of vitality; no 
 Barnes, no Porson, no Wolff, grace these degenerate days : nay, the mitre 
 seems to have acted as an extinguisher on the solitary light of Blomfield. 
 Oxford hath now nothing in common with the Boacpopos but the name, and the 
 groves of Cam have ceased to be those of Academus. Things are not much 
 better on the Continent. While Buonaparte from the rock of St. Helena still 
 threatened Europe, we recollect, in a provincial city of France, a candidate for 
 the office of town librarian who was outvoted by an ignorant competitor, and, 
 on inquiry, found that many of the royalist constituency, hearing of his being 
 an ardent "Hellenist," nor dreaming that the term could bear any other inter- 
 pretation, had fancied him a very dangerous character indeed. Latin is still 
 the language of the Romish liturgy, and consequently may have some claim to 
 rank, if not as a living tongue, at least as one half-alive : " defunctus adhuc 
 loquitur." Though, in sober truth, if we are to judge from the quantity of 
 dog-Latin afloat in that quarter, we should be inclined to say that the tongue 
 of Cicero had long since gone to the dogs. 
 
 We are tempted, however, to try an experiment on these "unknown 
 tongues," and to essay on them the effects of that galvanic process which is 
 known to be so successful in the case of a dead frog. We open the under- 
 taking with a name that may give assurance to our first attempt, and prevent 
 uncharitable folks from applying to our operations the old surgical sarcasm of 
 experimentum in anim& vili. The beautiful poem of Vida shall fitly introduce 
 our series, and usher in these " modern instances " of lively composition— lively 
 even in a dead language. It will soon be seen whether Prout can be allowed 
 by the local authorities to carry on the trade of resurrectionist in the Cimetiere 
 du Mont Parnasse. If the "subjects he has disinterred " be not found fresh 
 enough for the purposes of critical dissection, still we do not despair ; something 
 may be made of the most thin and meagre anatomies, and a good price is 
 occasionally got for a skeleton. Prout gives them such as he has dug them up. 
 The hermit of Watergrasshill never pretended to enjoy the faculty of old 
 Ezekiel — to clothe with substantial flesh the dry frame-work, the "disjecta 
 membra," the poetical bones scattered over the vale of Tempe ; though such 
 miraculous gift might find full scope for its exercise in the Golgotha of Par- 
 nassus. " And behold, there were very many bones in the open valley, and lo ! 
 they were very dry." — Ezekiel, xxxvii. 2. 
 
 We had first decided on calling this new batch of Prout Papers a "modern 
 Latin anthology," but, on reflection, we have discarded that commonplace 
 title ; the term anthology bearing obvious reference to a still blooming flower- 
 garden, and being far too fresh and gay a conceit for our purpose. Prefixed to 
 a poetic miscellany in any of the living tongues, it might pass and be deemed 
 suitable ; applied to Latin or Greek, it would be a palpable misnomer. Dried 
 
3 io The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 plants, preserved specimens, and shrivelled exotics, may perhaps make up a 
 /tortus siccus : they cannot be said to form a garland or a nosegay. 
 
 Defunct dialects have one great advantage, however, oyer living languages. 
 These latter are fickle and perpetually changing (like the sex), varium et muta- 
 bile : whereas the former, like old family portraits, are fixed in form, feature, 
 and expression. Flesh and blood, confessedly, have not the durability of a 
 marble bust ; the parlance of the ancients is effectually petrified. There is 
 nothing ' ■ movable " in the ' ' characters " of Greek and Latin phraseology : all 
 is stereotype. It is pleasant to compose in an idiom of which every word is 
 long since canonized, and has taken its allotted place equally beyond the reach 
 of vulgarism and the fear of vicissitude. Poor Geoffrey Chaucer knows to his 
 cost the miseries attendant on the use of an obsolete vocabulary. Some modern 
 journeyman has found it expedient to dislocate all his joints, under a pretext 
 that his gait was awkward : to rejuvenate the old fellow, it was thought best to 
 take him to pieces on the plan of those Greek children who boiled their grand- 
 father in a magic cauldron, and, as might be expected, found ' ' death in the 
 pot." Who can now relish Sir Walter Raleigh, or sigh with Sir Philip Sidney, 
 pr sing the merry ballads of Sir Thomas More, whose popular poems graced 
 the dawn of metrical composition in England? Alas I 
 
 " Every wave that we danced on at morning ebbs from us, 
 And leaves us at eve on the cold beach alone " 
 
 O'Doherty, in his younger days, deeply pondering on the fleeting nature of 
 the beauties of modern compositions, and the frail and transitory essence of all 
 living forms of speech, had a notion of rescuing these charming things from 
 inevitable decay, and announced himself to the public as a poetical embalme r. 
 He printed a proposal for wrapping up in the imperishable folds of Greek and 
 Latin, with sundry spices of his own, the songs and ballads of these islands ; 
 which, in a few centuries, will be unintelligible to posterity. He had already 
 commenced operating on " Black-eyed Susan," and had cleverly disembowelled 
 "Alley Croaker; " both of which made excellent classic mummies. " Wapping 
 Old Stairs," in his Latin translation, seemed to be the veritable "Gradus ad 
 Parnassumj" and his Greek version of "Twas in Trafalgar Bay" beat all 
 -lEschylus ever sung about Salamis. What became of the project, and why Sir 
 Morgan gave it up, we cannot tell : he is an unaccountable character. But 
 while we regret this embalming plan should have been abandoned, we are 
 free to confess that, in our opinion, "Old King Cole," in Hebrew, was his 
 best effort. It was equal to Solomon in all his glory. 
 
 These prolegomena have led us in a somewhat zigzag path far away from our 
 starting-point, which, on looking back, we find to be Jerome Vida's poem of 
 the " Silkworm." From a memorandum in the chest, we learn that Prout was 
 induced to undertake this translation in the year 1825, when 400,000 mulberry- 
 trees were planted on the Kingston estates by what was called " the Irish Silk 
 Company,' with a view to " better the condition of the peasantry in the south 
 of Ireland." That scheme, somewhat similar to the lottery humbug lately got up 
 by Messrs. Bish and O'Connell, produced in its day what is sought to be again 
 effected by designing scoundrels now— it created a temporary mystification, 
 and staved off the enactment of poor-laws for the season. Prout early 
 discovered the hollow treachery of all these projects, and locked up his MS. in 
 disgust. He seems, however, to have reperused the poem shortly before his 
 death ; but the recollection of so many previous attempts at delusion, and the 
 persevering profligacy with which the dismal farce is renewed, seems to have so 
 strongly roused his indignant energies, that, if we decipher right the crossings 
 in red letters on the last page, this aged clergyman, deeming it an act of virtue 
 to feel intense hatred for the whole of the selfish crew that thrives on Irish 
 
A Series of Modem Latin Poets. 311 
 
 starvation, has laid his dying curse on the heads, individually and collectively, 
 of Lord Limerick, Spring Rice, and Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 Oliver Yohke. 
 
 Watergrasshill, May, 1825. 
 
 When at the revival of letters the beauties of ancient literature burst on the 
 modern mind, and revealed a new world to the human intellect, the first impulse 
 of all who had the luck to be initiated in the mysteries of classic taste, was to 
 model their thoughts and expressions on these newly-discovered originals, and, 
 like Saul among the prophets, to catch with the very language of inspiration a 
 more exalted range of feelings and a strain of loftier sentiment. The literati of 
 Europe conversed in Latin and corresponded in Greek. It had not yet entered 
 into their heads that the rude materials of Italian, French, and Eng'lish, might 
 be wrought up into forms of as exquisite perfection as they then possessed in 
 the remnants of classic eloquence and poetry. They despaired of making a 
 silken purse out of a sow's ear. The example of Dante and Petrarch had not 
 emboldened them : the latter, indeed, always considered his Latin poem, 
 written on the second Punic war, and entitled "Africa," as much more likely 
 to ensure him permanent renown than his sonnets or canzoni ; and the former 
 had to struggle with his own misgivings long and seriously ere he decided on not 
 trusting his " Comasdia" to the custody of Latin. Ariosto has left two volumes 
 of Latin poetry. It was deemed a hazardous experiment to embark intellectual 
 capital on the mere security of a vulgar tongue ; and to sink the riches of the 
 mind in so depreciated a concern was thought a most unprofitable investment. 
 Hence genius was expended on what appeared the more solid speculation, and 
 no others but Greek and Latin serif ta were "quoted " in the market of litera- 
 ture. All this " paper " has wofully fallen in value : I see little prospect of its 
 ever again looking up. 
 
 Lord Bacon and Leibnitz, Newton, Grotius, and Milton, long after modern 
 languages had become well established as vehicles of valuable thought, still 
 adhered to the safer side, and thus secured to their writings European perusal. 
 An Universal Language, a General Pacification, and a Common Agreement 
 among Christian sects, were three favourite day-dreams of Leibnitz ; but, alas ! 
 each of these projects seems as far as ever removed from any prospect of reali- 
 zation. Latin, however, may, in some sense, be considered the idiom most 
 universally spread throughout the republic of letters. The Roman empire and 
 the Roman church, by a combined effort, have brought about this result ; and 
 Virgil seems to have a prophetic vision of both these majestic agents actively 
 engaged in the dissemination of his poetry, when he promises immortality to 
 Nisus and Euryalus : 
 
 " Fortunati ambo ! si quid mea carmina possunt 
 Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximec sevo 
 Dum domus JEnece capitoli immobile saxum 
 Accolet, imperiumque Pater Romamts habebit" 
 
 If by domus &nece he mean the dynasty of the Cassars, the Pater Romanus 
 must allude to the popes; and Leo X. was probably in his mind's eye when he 
 made this vaticination. 
 
 To excel in Latin poetry was, under that golden pontificate, a favourite 
 accomplishment. Vida and Sanazar, Bembo and Fracastor, cultivated with 
 success this branch of the humanities in Italy. The reformer Theodore Beza 
 was a distinguished Latin poet at Geneva, though, in the selection of some of 
 his subjects, he shows a taste rather akin to that of our own Theodore Hook 
 
 -3 
 
than marked by any evangelical tendency. The Jesuits, while they upheld the 
 papal empire, powerfully contributed also to enlarge the dominions of the 
 Roman muse ; and Casimir Sarbievi, Rapin, Vaniere, and Sidronius, were at 
 one time the admiration of all European academies. Buchanan is far better 
 known abroad by his carmina than by his Scotch history ; and the Latin 
 poems of Addison, Milton, Parnell, with those of that witty Welshman, 
 Owenus (not to speak of the numerous Musts Anglican^, Musce Etonenses, 
 &c. etc.), have fully established our character for versification on the continent. 
 It is not sufficiently known, that the celebrated poem " De Connubiis Florutn," 
 which gave the hint of the "Loves of the Plants,"* and of Darwin's "Botanic 
 Garden," was, in fact, the production of an Irishman, who, under the name of 
 Demetrius de la Croix, published it at Paris in 1727. He was from Kerry, 
 and his real patronymic was Diarmid M'Encroe ;t though, like his immortal 
 countryman, Dinnish Lardner, he exchanged that for a more euphonous apel- 
 lation. Scotland's illustrious son, the " admirable " Crichton, whose brilliant 
 career and character should, one would imagine, have attracted the notice of 
 Sir Walter Scott, they being wonderfully susceptible of historicc-romantic 
 development,^ possessed, among other singular accomplishments, the faculty 
 of extemporizing in Latin verse ; and on one occasion, before the assembled 
 literati of Mantua, having previously dazzled his auditory with a display of 
 philosophy, mathematics, divinity, and eloquence, he wound up the day's pro- 
 ceedings by reciting a whole poem, on a subject furnished by his antagonist, 
 and dismissed the astonished crowd in raptures with his unpremeditated song. 
 Thomas Dempsterus, another native of "that ilk," won his laurels in this 
 department of composition ; as did William Lilly the grammarian, and 
 Thomas Moras the chancellor, in England. In Holland, Johannes Secundus 
 gained renown by his " Basia ;" Hugo, by his " Pia Desideria;" not to mention 
 Daniel Heinsius and Boxhorn. In Spain, Arias Montanus, so well known by 
 his edition of the Hebrew Bible, was not inelegant as a Latin versifier. 
 Cardinal Barberini (afterwards Pope Urban VIII.) ranks high among the 
 favoured of the muse : the Oxford edition of his poems (e typis Clarendon, 
 1726) lies now before me. Ang. Politian, Scaliger and Sfondrat (De raptu 
 Helenai) should not be omitted in the nomenclature of glory : neither should 
 the Jesuit Maffeus, who recited his daily breviary in Greek, lest the low 
 language of our liturgy might corrupt the pure Latinity of his style ; and who, 
 deeming the epic action of Virgil's poem incomplete, has written a thirteenth (I) 
 canto for the "./Eneid." But of all who at the restoration of classic learning 
 trod in the footsteps of Horace and Virgil, none came so close to these great 
 masters as Jerome Vida ; and the encomium which Pope takes every oppor- 
 tunity of passing on his style of excellence is not undeserved : 
 
 " But see ! each muse in Leo's golden days 
 Starts from her trance and trims her wither'd bays, 
 Rome's ancient Genius o'er the ruins spread. 
 Shakes off the dust, and rears its reverend head. 
 
 Then Sculpture and her sister arts revive ; 
 Stones leap to form, and rocks begin to live ; 
 With sweeter notes each rising temple rung, 
 A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung." 
 
 The author of the " Essay on Criticism" has more than once dwelt with 
 evident complacency on the merits of Vida; but it was by largely borrowing 
 
 • These, in their turn, produced the " Loves of the Triangles," in the Antt-Jacobm. 
 
 t See " Botanicon Parisiense" of Levaillant, edit by Boerhave, p. 3. 
 
 t We are glad to find that the author of " Rookwood has taken up the cudgels for this 
 neglected Scot. We anticipate a romance in the true can spirito style already employed 
 so felicitously in the case of the " admirable " Turpin. 
 
A Series of Modern Latin Poets. 313 
 
 from his writings (as also in the case of Boileau) that he principally manifested 
 his esteem and predilection. The celebrated lines on adapting the sound to 
 the sense, 
 
 " Soft is the strain when zephyr/' &&, 
 
 are a nearly literal translation of a passage in our Italian bishop's poem, " De 
 Arte Poetica : " a fact which Pope has had the candour to indicate in a note in 
 the early editions : 
 
 "Turn si laeta canunt hilari quoque carmina vultu," &c. 
 
 Lib. iii. v. 403. 
 
 But a more flagrant instance of unacknowledged plagiarism occurs in the ' ' Rape 
 of the Lock, where card-playing being introduced (canto the third), not only 
 is the style and conduct of the Cartesian narrative borrowed from Vida's 
 " Schacchia Ludus, ' or " Game of Chess," but whole similes are unhesitatingly 
 appropriated by his English imitator. These are sometimes awkwardly enough 
 — ludicrously, need I add? — compelled *' a double debt to pay," being applied 
 to the party at "ombre" and lose much of their original grace by the transfer. 
 Ex. gratifa ; 
 
 Pope. 
 
 " Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder seen, 
 With throngs promiscuous strew the level green ; 
 Thus when dispersed a routed army runs, 
 Of Asia's troops and Afric's sable sons, 
 With like confusion different nations fly, 
 Of various habit and of various dye : 
 The fierce battalions disunited fall 
 In heaps on heaps— one fate awaits them all." 
 
 Vida. 
 
 " Non aliter campis Zepo se buxea utrinque 
 Composuit duplici digestis ordine turnus, 
 
 Adversisoue ambge fulsere coloribns alas 
 Quam gallorum acies alpino frigore lactea 
 Corfora, si tendunt albis in praelia signis 
 Auroras popujos contra et Phaetonte perustos, 
 Insuper iEthiopas et nigri Memnonis agmen." 
 
 Schacchia, c. i. v. 80. 
 
 Vida himself was addicted to copying Virgil in rather too close a fashion, 
 and in his poetics he candidly confesses the manner in which he went to work, 
 giving advice to all future marauders in the same line. The precept and the 
 example are both contained in the following ingenious verses : 
 
 " Cumvero cultis moliris furta poetis 
 
 Cautius ingredere et raptus memor occule versis, 
 Verborum indkiis atque ordine falle legentes." 
 
 Lib. iii. 320. 
 
 The robber Cacus having been described by Virgil as eluding the pursuit of 
 the shepherds, whose cattle he had abstracted by dragging the animals back- 
 ward by the tail, and thus inverting the foot-tracks in the neighbourhood of 
 his den : 
 
 " Cauda in speluncam tractos versisque viarum 
 Indkiis raptos saxo occultabat opaco." 
 
 ASneid, lib. viii. 
 N 
 
314 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 This work (foeticorum lihri tres) may be well considered as a standard 
 production, and cannot be too sedulously recommended to the frequenters of 
 our universities. It is dedicated to the children of Francis I. (then detained 
 as hostages for their father at Madrid), and is evidently intended for youthful 
 perusal. As a treatise embodying, in eloquent language and terse versification, 
 the canons of poetical criticism, this work of Vida is wonderful for the time 
 in which he lived, and produced a most salutary effect in the forming of a pure 
 and classic taste among the contemporary writers. Scaliger has quoted with 
 admiration the following lines, in which the young poet is described pruning 
 down the redundancy of his juvenile ideas into proper trim : 
 
 " Turn retractat opus, commissa piacula doctx 
 Palladis arte luens, nunc haec, nunc rejicit ilia, 
 Omnia tuta timens melioraque sufficit illis ; 
 Attonditque comas stringens, sylvamque fiuentem 
 Luxuriemque minutatim depascit inanem ; 
 Exercens durum imperium, dum funditus omnem, 
 Nocturnis instans operis operisque diurnis, 
 Versibus eluerit labem et commissa piarit." 
 
 Vida was born at Cremona, in 1480. After going through his collegiate 
 course with distinction at the universities of Padua and Bologna, we find him, 
 at the accession of Leo X. to the pontifical throne, a resident canon at the 
 church of St. John Lateran. His brilliant acquirements were not long in 
 attracting the notice of the Roman court, of which he at once became the 
 delight and ornament. Familiar with all the branches of contemporary learn- 
 ing, his peculiar excellence as a Latin poet pointed him out to Leo as the fittest 
 person to execute a project which that prince had long wished to see realized, 
 viz. a grand epic poem, of which the establishment of Christianity was to 
 furnish the theme, and Virgil's " ./Eneid " the model. Vida had too much 
 sagacity and too delicate a taste not to perceive at once the utter hopelessness 
 of creating anything worthy of the proposed subject in avowed imitation of 
 that all-accomplished original ; and, though a perfect master of all the 
 resources of language and art, he still felt that it would require a greater 
 genius than that of the Mantuan bard himself to achieve, with the severe 
 materials of the Gospel, an imaginative epic such as the pontiff had in con- 
 templation. The wishes of his illustrious patron, however, could not well be 
 disregarded ; especially when the request came accompanied with the gift of a 
 rich priory (that of St. Silvester, at Tusculum), to enable the poet to compose 
 at leisure in that classic spot the work in question. The result of his Tusculan 
 meditations on the Christian epoprza, was not published till after the death of 
 its pontifical projector, and then appeared " Christiados, libri XII. ;" a poem, 
 no doubt, of considerable merit, but which was far from realizing the beau 
 idial of a " religious epic," that glorious consummation being reserved for 
 John Milton. The comparison with the " vEneid " was fatal to its success ; and 
 by too closely approaching his professed prototype, Vida enfeebled his own 
 native powers. This unfortunate juxtaposition might, perhaps, warrant us in 
 exclaiming with the shepherd in the "Eclogue :" 
 
 " Mantua ! vae miserx niminm vicina Cremonae ! " 
 
 Clement VIII., however, rewarded the bard with a bishopric : Vida was 
 promoted to the see of Alba. In him the episcopal character did not 
 neutralize the inspirations of the muse ; nor, though wedded to his diocesan 
 spouse, did he repudiate the ancillary graces of elegant scholarship. While 
 he sedulously watched on the plains of Lombardy over the spiritual interests 
 of his Christian flock, he did not neglect his poetical attributions as a 
 shepherd of Arcadia. The little town of Alba, on the Tenaro, will be ever 
 
held honourable as the residence of this distinguished poet and exemplary pre- 
 late : his memory has been Jong and justly by the albani patres cherished. 
 To him the inhabitants were indebted, on one occasion, for protection against 
 a French army, and for subsistence during a famine. His brave and deter- 
 mined conduct in the town's defence at that crisis is highly eulogized by the 
 historian Paul Jovio. Than Vida no more distinguished prelate sat at the 
 Council of Trent, if good sense and good taste, learning, and liberality, could 
 distinguish a member of that assembly. He lived to be near a hundred years 
 old (thirty of which were spent in discharging the functions of episcopacy), 
 and died in the sentiments of unaffected piety which animated his whole life. 
 
 Such is the personage from whose numerous poems I am about to select one 
 by way of specimen, and I aln 'willingly guided in my choice by circumstances 
 of a local nature. The introduction of silkworms into this district, as 
 calculated to afford industrious occupation to the Munster peasantry, has 
 engaged my most ardent wishes for the successful result of so philanthropic 
 an experiment; and I shall feel happy if Vida's poem "DeBombycibus "can be 
 made subservient to the purposes of the " Irish Silk Company." I greatly 
 fear that the habits of my countrymen (so dissimilar from those of the Italian 
 peasantry who cultivate this delightful branch of industry) will prove an insur- 
 mountable obstacle to the ultimate and permanent establishment of the thing 
 in the county of Cork ; but a fair trial ought to be given to the worms. 
 
 The social position of the Irish peasantry is radically wrong ; and the land 
 of their birth, teeming as it is with plenty for the landlord, might as well, as 
 far as they are concerned, be a barren wilderness. To all the nations of the 
 habitable globe, to all the children of earth — tiis ytjs oiKou/ievt]?, the soil is a 
 common parent, on whose exuberance all have an undoubted claim ; and all, 
 more or less, have "that claim allowed." Not so here! The sun that 
 illumines all creation shines not on the mere Irish ; and alma mater tellus is 
 to them but an injusta noverca. But "let that pass." The subject of poor- 
 laws, and the conduct of those who, for very palpable purposes, oppose their 
 enactment, are subjects on which I cannot enter with a steady pulse. I shall 
 reserve my views for a more serious hour ; and then, if deep conviction can 
 give vigour to the words of a feeble old man — \ifacit indignatio version, I 
 shall do justice to the theme. But now to Vida. 
 
 THE SILKWORM. 
 
 A Poem. 
 
 CANTO FIRST. 
 
 I. 
 
 List to my lay, daughter of Lombardy ! 
 
 Hope of Gonzaga s house, fair Isabelle ! 
 Graced with thy name the simplest melody 
 
 Albeit from rural pipe or rustic shell, 
 
 Might all the music of a court excel : 
 Light though the subject of my song may seem, 
 
 'Tis one on which thy spirit loves to dwell ; 
 Nor on a tiny insect dost thou deem 
 Thy poet's labour lost, nor frivolous my theme. 
 
 II. 
 
 For thou dost often meditate how hence 
 
 Commerce deriveth aliment ; how art 
 May minister to native opulence, 
 
 The wealth of foreign lands to home impart, 
 
 And make of Italy the general mart. 
 
316 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 These are thy goodly thoughts : how best to raise 
 
 Thy country s industry. A patriot heart 
 
 Beats in thy gentle breast — no vulgar praise ! 
 
 Be then this spinner-worm the hero of my lays ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Full many a century it crept, the child 
 
 Of distant China or the torrid zone ; 
 Wasted its web upon the woodlands wild, 
 
 And spun its golden tissue all alone, 
 
 Clothing no reptile's body but its own.* 
 So crawl'd a brother-worm o'er mount and glen. 
 
 Uncivilized, uncouth ; till, social grown, 
 He sought the cities and the haunts of men — 
 Science and art soon tamed the forest denizen. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Rescued from woods, now under friendly roof 
 Foster'd and fed, and shelter'd from the blast, 
 
 Full soon the wondrous wealth of warp and woof- 
 Wealth by these puny labourers amass 'd, 
 Repaid the hand that spread their green repast : 
 
 Right merrily they plied their jocund toil, 
 And from their mouths the silken treasures cast, 
 
 Twisting their canny thread in many a coil. 
 While men look'd on and smiled, and hail'd the shining spoil 
 
 Sweet is the poet's ministry to teach 
 How the wee operatives should be fed ; 
 
 Their wants and changes ; what befitteth each ; 
 What mysteries attend the genial bed, 
 And how successive progenies are bred. 
 
 Happy if he his countrymen engage 
 In paths of peace and industry to tread ; 
 
 Happier the poet still, if o'er his page 
 Fair Isabella s een shed radiant patronage ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thou, then, who wouldst possess a creeping flock 
 Of silken sheep, their glossy fleece to shear, 
 
 Learn of their days how scanty is die stock : 
 Barely two months of each recurring year 
 Make up the measure of their brief career ; 
 
 They spin their little hour, they weave their ball. 
 And, when their task is done, then disappear 
 
 Within that silken dome's sepulchral hall ; 
 And the third moon looks out upon their funeral. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Theirs is, in truth, a melancholy lot, 
 Never the offspring of their loves to see ! 
 
 The parent of a thousand sons may not 
 Spectator of his children's gambols be. 
 Or hail the birth of his young family. 
 
 From orphan-eggs, fruit of a fond embrace, 
 Spontaneous natch'd, an insect tenantry 
 
 Creep forth, their sires departed to replace : 
 Thus, posthumously born, springs up an annual race. 
 
 * Tenui nee honos nee gloria filo ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 Still watchful lest their birth be premature, 
 From the sun's wistful eye remove the seed. 
 
 While yet the season wavers insecure, 
 While yet no leaves have budded forth to feed 
 With juicy provender the tender breed ; 
 
 Nor usher beings into life so new 
 Without provision. 'Twere a cruel deed ! 
 
 Ah, such improvidence men often rue ! 
 Tis a sad, wicked thing, if Malthus telleth true. 
 
 IX. 
 
 But when the vernal equinox is pass'd, 
 
 And the gay mulberry in gallant trim 
 Hath robed himself in verdant vest at last 
 
 CTis well to wait until thou seest him 
 
 With summer-garb of green on every limb), 
 Then is thy time. Be cautious still, nor risk 
 
 The enterprise while yet the moon is dim, 
 BuL tarry till she hangeth out her disc, 
 Replenish'd with full light ; then breed thy spinners brisk. 
 
 X. 
 
 Methinks that here some gentle maiden begs 
 
 To know how best this genial deed is done : 
 Some on a napkin strew the little eggs. 
 
 And simply hatch their silkworms in the sun ; 
 
 But there's a better plan to fix upon.* 
 Wrapt in a muslin kerchief pure and warm, 
 
 Lay them within thy bosom safe ; nor shun 
 Nature's kind office till the tiny swarm 
 Begins to creep. Fear not ; they cannot do thee harm. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Meantime a fitting residence prepare, 
 Wherein thy pigmy artisans may dwell, 
 
 And furnish forth their factory with care : 
 Of season'd timber build the spinners' cell. 
 And be it lit and ventilated well ; 
 
 And range them upon insulated shelves, 
 Rising above each other parallel, 
 
 There let them crawl— there let the little elves 
 On carpeting of leaf gaily disport themselves. 
 
 XII. 
 
 And be their house impervious, both to rain 
 And to th' inclemency of sudden cold. 
 
 See that no hungry sparrow entrance gain, 
 To glut his maw and desolate the fold, 
 Ranging among his victims uncontroll'd. 
 
 Nay, I have heard that once a wicked hen 
 Obtain'd admittance by manoeuvre bold, 
 
 Slaughtering the insects in their little den : 
 If I had caught her there, she would not come again. 
 
 * Tu conde sinu velamine tecta 
 
 Nee pudeat roseas inter fovisse papillas. 
 
3 r8 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Stop up each crevice in the silkworm-house, 
 Each gaping orifice be sure to fill ; 
 
 For oftentimes a sacrilegious mouse 
 Will fatal inroad make, intent on ill, 
 And in cold blood the gentle spinners kilL* 
 
 Ah, cruel wretch ! whose idol is thy belly, 
 The blood of innocence why dost thou spill ? 
 
 Dost thou not know that silk is in that jelly? 
 Go forth, and seek elsewhere a dish of vermicelli. 
 
 XIV. 
 When thy young caterpillars 'gin to creep, 
 
 Spread them with care upon the oaken planks ; 
 And let them learn from infancy to keep 
 
 Their proper station, and preserve their ranks — 
 
 Not crawl at random, playing giddy pranks. 
 Let them be taught their dignity, nor seek, 
 
 Dress'd in silk gown, to act like mountebanks : 
 Thus careful to eschew each vulgar freak, 
 Sober they maun grow up industrious and meek. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Their minds kind Nature wisely pre-arranged, 
 And of domestic habits made them fond ; 
 
 Rarely they roam or wish their dwelling changed, 
 Or from their keeper's vigilance abscond : 
 Pleased with their home, they travel not beyond. 
 
 Else, woe is me ! it were a bitter potion 
 To hunt each truant and each vagabond ; 
 
 Haply of such attempts they have no notion, 
 Nor on their heads is seem the bump of locomotion. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The same kind Nature (who doth all things right) 
 Their stomachs hath from infancy imbued 
 
 Straight with a most tremendous appetite, 
 And till the leaf they love is o'er them strew'd. 
 Their little mouths wax clamorous for food. 
 
 For their first banquetings this plan adopt — 
 Cull the most tender leaves in all the wood. 
 
 And let them, ere upon the worms they're dropp'd, 
 Be minced for their young teeth, and diligently chopp'd. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Pass'd the first week, an epoch will begin, 
 A crisis which maun all thy care engage ; 
 
 For then the little asp will cast his skin. 
 Such change of raiment marks each separate stage 
 Of childhood, youth, of manhood and old age : 
 
 A gentle sleep gives token when he means 
 To doff his coat for seemlier equipage ; 
 
 Another and another supervenes, 
 And then he ls,Ttrow, no longer in his teens. 
 
 * Improbus irreptat tabulis ssevitque per omnes 
 Csede madens. 
 
A Series of Modern Latin Poets. 3*9 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Until that period, it import eth much 
 
 That no ungentle hand, with contact rude, 
 Visit the shelves. Let the delightful touch 
 
 Of Italy's fair daughters— fair and good ! — 
 
 Administer alone to that young brood. 
 Mark how yon maiden's breast with pity yearns, 
 
 Tending her charge with fond solicitude, . . . 
 Hers be the blessing she so richly earns ; 
 Soon may she see her own wee brood of bonny bairns ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Foliage fresh gather'd for immediate use, 
 
 Be the green pasture of thy silken sheep ; 
 For when ferments the vegetable juice, 
 
 They loathe the leaves, and from th' untasted heap 
 
 With disappointment languishingly creep. 
 Hie to the forest, evening, noon, and morn ; 
 
 Of brimming baskets quick succession keep ; 
 Let the green grove for them be freely shorn. 
 And smiling Plenty void her well-replenish'd horn. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Pleasant the murmur of their mouths to hear. 
 
 While as they ply the plentiful repast, 
 The dainty leaves demohsh'd, disappear 
 
 One after one. A fresh supply is cast ; 
 
 That like the former vanisneth as fast. 
 But. cautious of repletion (well yclept 
 
 The fatal fount of sickness), cease at last ; 
 Fling no more food— their fodder intercept. 
 And be it laid aside, and for their supper kept 
 
 XXI. 
 
 To gaze upon the dew-drop's glittering gem, 
 
 T inhale the moisture of the morning air, 
 Is pleasantness to us ; — 'tis death to them.* 
 
 Shepherd, of dank humidity beware, 
 
 Moisture maun vitiate the freshest fare ; 
 Cull not the leaves at the first hour of prime, 
 
 While yet the sun his arrows through the air 
 Shoots horizontal. Tarry till he climb 
 Half his meridian height : then is thy harvest-time. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 There be two sisters of the mulberry race, 
 
 One of complexion dark and olive hue ; 
 Of taller figure, and of fairer face, 
 
 The other wins and captivates the view, 
 
 And to maturity grows quicker too. 
 Oft characters with colour correspond ; 
 
 Nathless the silkworm neither will eschew, 
 He is of both immoderately fond, 
 Still he doth dearly love the gently blooming blonde, t 
 
 * Pabula semper 
 
 Sicca legant null&que fluant aspergine sylvac 
 t Est bicolor moras, bombyx vescetur utr&que 
 Nigra albensve fuat, &c, &c. 
 The worm will always prefer to nibble the white mulberry-leaf, and will quit the black 
 for it readily. 
 
 1 
 
320 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 With milder juice and more nutritious milk 
 She feedeth him, though delicate and pale ; 
 
 Nurtured by her he spins a finer silk, 
 And her young sucklings, vigorous and hale, 
 Aye o'er her sister's progeny prevail. 
 
 Her paler charms more appetite beget. 
 On which they aye right greedily regale : 
 
 She bears the bell in foreign lands ; and yet. 
 Our brown Italian maids prefer the dark brunette.* 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The dark brunette, more bountiful of leaves, 
 With less refinement more profusion shows ; 
 
 But often such redundancy deceives. 
 What though the ripen'd berry ruddier glows 
 Upon these tufted branches, than on those. 
 
 Due is the preference to the paler plant. 
 Her to rear up thy tender nurslings choose, 
 
 Her to thy little orphans' wishes grant, 
 Nor use the darker leaves unless the white be scant 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Ovid has told a tender tale of Thisbe, 
 
 Who found her lifeless lover lying pale 
 Under a spreading mulberry. Let his be 
 
 The merit and the moral of that tale. 
 
 Sweet is thy song, in sooth, love's nightingale ! 
 But hadst thou known that, nourish'd from that tree. 
 
 Love's artisans would spin their tissue frail, 
 Thou never wouldst of so much misery 
 Have laid the scene beneath a spreading mulberry. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Now should a failure of the mulberry crop 
 Send famine to the threshold of thy door. 
 
 Do not despair ; but, climbing to the top 
 Of the tall elm, or kindred sycamore, 
 Young budding germs with searching eye explore. 
 
 Practise a pious fraud upon thy flock, 
 With false supplies and counterfeited store ; 
 
 Thus for a while their little stomachs mock, 
 Until thou canst provide of leaves a genuine stock. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 But ne'er a simple village-maiden ask 
 To climb on trees t — for her was never meant 
 
 The rude exposure of such uncouth task ; 
 Lest, while she tries the perilous ascent, 
 
 * Quamvis Ausoniis laudetur nigra puellis. 
 v The good bishop's gallantry is herein displayed to advantage : — 
 Nee robora dura 
 Ascendat permitte in sylvis innuba virgo 
 Ast operum patiens anus et cut durior annis 
 Sit cutis (ingratse facilis jactura senectse) 
 Munere fungatur tali. Ne forte quis alt& 
 Egressus sylvA satyrorum e gente procaci 
 Suspiciat, tenerscque pudor notet ora puellae. 
 
A Series of Modern Latin Poets. 321 
 
 On pure and hospitable thoughts intent, 
 A wicked Fawn, that lurks behind some bush, 
 
 Peep out with upward eye— rude insolent ! 
 Oh, vile and desperate hardihood ! But, hush ! 
 Nor let such matters move the bashful muse to blush. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The maiden's ministry it is to keep 
 Incessant vigil o'er the silkworm fold, 
 
 Supply fresh fodder to the nibbling sheep. 
 Cleanse and remove the remnants of the old. 
 Guard against influence of damp or cold, 
 
 And ever and anon collect them all 
 In close divan ; and ere their food is doled, 
 
 Wash out with wine each stable and each stall, 
 Lest foul disease the flock through feculence befall. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Changes will oft come o'er their outward form, 
 
 And each transition needs thy anxious cares : 
 Four times they cast their skin. The spinner-worm 
 
 Four soft successive suits of velvet wears ; 
 
 Nature each pliant envelope prepares. 
 But how can they, in previous clothing pent, 
 
 Get riddance of that shaggy robe of theirs ? 
 They keep a three days' fast. When by that Lent 
 Grown lean, they doff with ease their old accoutrement* 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Now are the last important days at hand— 
 The liquid gold within its living mine 
 
 Is ripe. Nor nourishment they now demand. 
 Nor care for life ; impatient to resign 
 The wealth with which diaphanous they shine ! 
 
 Eager they look around— imploring look, 
 For branch or bush their tissue to entwine ; 
 
 Some rudimental threads they seek to hook, 
 And dearly love to find some hospitable nook. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Anticipate their wishes, gentle maid ! 
 
 Hie to their help ; the fleeting moment catch. 
 Quick be the shelves with wickerwork o'erlaid ; 
 
 Let osier, broom, and furze their workshop thatch. 
 
 With fond solicitude and blithe despatch. 
 So may they quickly, 'mid the thicket dense, 
 
 Find out a spot their purposes to match ; 
 
 So may they soon their industry commence, 
 
 And of this round cocoon plan the circumference. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Their hour is come. See how the yellow flood 
 Swells in yon creeping cylinder ! how teems 
 
 Exuberant the tide of amber blood ! 
 How the recondite gold transparent gleams, 
 And how pellucid the bright fluid seems I 
 
 Proud of such pregnancy, and duly skill'd 
 In Dedalscan craft, each insect deems 
 
 The glorious purposes of life fulfil I'd, 
 If into shining silk his substance be distill'd ! 
 
322 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Say, hast thou ever mark'd the clustering grape, 
 Swoll'n to maturity with ripe produce, 
 
 When the imprison'd pulp pants to escape, 
 And longs to joy ** emancipated " juice 
 In the full freedom of the bowl profuse ? 
 
 So doth the silk that swells their skinny coat 
 Loathe its confinement, panting to get loose : 
 
 Such longing for relief their looks denote — 
 Soon in their web they'll find a " bane and antidote." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 See ! round and round, in many a mirthful maze, 
 
 The wily workman weaves his golden gauze ; 
 And while his throat the twisted thread purveys. 
 
 New lines with labyrinthine labour draws, 
 
 Plying his pair of operative jaws. 
 From morn to noon, from noon to silent eve, 
 
 He toileth without interval or pause,* 
 His monumental trophy to achieve, 
 And his sepulchral sheet of silk resplendent weave ! 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Approach, and view thy artisans at work ; 
 
 At thy wee spinners take a parting glance ; 
 For soon each puny labourer will lurk 
 
 Under his silken canopy's expanse — 
 
 Tasteful alcove ! boudoir of elegance ! 
 There will the weary worm in peace repose. 
 
 And languid lethargy his limbs entrance ! 
 There his career of usefulness will close ! 
 Who would not live the life and die the death of those !t 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Mostly they spin their solitary shroud 
 
 Single, apart, like ancient anchoret ; 
 Yet oft a loving pair will,! if allowM* 
 
 In the same sepulchre of silk well met, 
 
 Nestle like Romeo and Juliette. 
 From such communing be they not debarr'd, 
 
 Mindful of her who hallow'd Faraclet ; 
 Even in their silken cenotaph 'twere hard 
 To part a Heloise from her loved Abelard. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The task is done, the work is now complete ; 
 
 A stilly silence reigns throughout the room ! 
 Sleep on, blest beings ! be your slumbers sweet, 
 
 And calmly rest within your golden tomb — 
 
 Rest till restored to renovated bloom. 
 Bursting the trammels of that dark sojourn, 
 
 Forth ye shall issue, and rejoiced, resume 
 A glorified appearance, and return 
 To life a winged thing from monumental urn. 
 
 • Quaere, Without jaw* ?—P. Devil, 
 
 t Mille legunt releguntque vias atque orbibusorbes 
 Agglomerant donee coeco se carcere condant 
 Sponte su&. Tama est edendi gloria fill ! 
 
 t Quin et nonnullae paribus communis curis 
 Associant opera et nebula clauduntur eadem. 
 
A Series of Modem Latin Poets. 323 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Fain would I pause, and of my tuneful text 
 Reserve the remnant for a fitter time : 
 
 Another song remains. The summit next 
 Of dbuble-peak'd Parnassus when I climb, 
 Grant me, ye gods ! the radiant wings of rhyme ! 
 
 Thus may I bear me up th' adventurous road 
 That windsaloft— an argument sublime ! 
 
 But of didactic poems 'tis the mode. 
 No canto should conclude without an episode. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Venus it was who first invented silk! — 
 ' Lin f.n Had long, by Ceres patronized, 
 Supplied Olympus : ladies of that ilk 
 
 No better sort of clothing had devised — 
 
 Linen alone their garde ae robe 'comprised. 
 Hence at her cambric loom the "suitors " found 
 
 Penelope, whom hath immortalized 
 The blind man eloquent : nor less renown'd 
 Were "Troy's proud dames," whose robe's of linen swept the ground. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Thus the first female fashion was for flax ; 
 
 A linen tunic was the garb that graced 
 Exclusively the primitive "Almack's." 
 
 Simplicity's costume ! too soon effaced 
 
 By vain inventions of more modern taste. ' 
 
 Then was the reign of modesty and sense. 
 
 Fair ones, I ween 1 , were not more prude and chaste, 
 Girt in 'hoop petticoats' circumference 
 Or stays — but, Honisoit the rogue qui malypenst. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Wool, by Minerva manufactured, met 
 With blithe encouragement and brisk demand ; 
 
 Her loom, by constant ouyers was beset, 
 " Orders from foreign houses " kept her hand 
 Busy supplying many a distant land. 
 
 She was of woollen stuffs the sole provider, 
 .Till some were introduced by contraband : 
 
 A female call'd Arachne thus defied her, 
 But soon gave up the trade, being turn'd into a spider. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Thus a complete monopoly in wool, 
 "Almost amounting to a prohibition," 
 
 Enabled her to satisfy in full 
 The darling object of her life's ambition. 
 And gratify her spiteful disposition. 
 
 Venus,.* she had determined, should not be 
 Suffer'd to purchase stuffs on no condition ; 
 
 While every naked Naiad nymph was free 
 To buy h°r serge, moreen, and woollen draperie. 
 
 * Tanihm nuda Venus mcerebat muneris expers 
 Egregiam ob formam textrici invisa Minervae. 
 
324 The Works of Father ProuU 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Albeit " when unadorn'd adora'd the most,'* 
 
 The goddess could not brook to be outwitted ; 
 How could she bear her rival's bitter boast. 
 
 If to this taunt she quietly submitted ? 
 
 Olympus (naked as she was) she quitted, 
 Fully determined to bring back as fine a 
 
 Dress as was ever woven, spun, or knitted ; 
 Europe she search'd, consulted the Czarina, 
 And, taking good advice, cross'd o'er " the wall M to China. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Long before Europeans, the Chinese 
 
 Fossess'd the compass, silkworms, and gunpowder, 
 And types, and tea, and other rarities. 
 
 China (with gifts since Nature hath endow'd her) 
 
 Is proud ; what land hath reason to be prouder? 
 Her let the dull " Barbarian Eye" respect. 
 
 And be her privileges all allow'd her : 
 She is the widow (please to recollect) 
 Of one the deluge drown'd. Primordial Intellect. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The good inhabitants of Pekin, when 
 
 They saw the dame in downright dishabille 
 Were shock'd. Such sight was far beyond the ken 
 
 Of their Confucian notions. Full of zeal 
 
 To guard the morals of the commonweal, 
 They straight deputed Svlk, a mandarin, 
 
 Humbly before the visitant to kneel 
 With downcast eye, and offer Beauty's queen 
 A rich resplendent robe of gorgeous bombazine. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 VsNtTS received the vesture nothing loth, 
 
 And much its gloss, its softness much admired, - 
 And praised that specimen of foreign growth, 
 
 So splendid, and so cheaply, too, acquired ! 
 
 Quick in the robe her graceful limbs attired, 
 She seeks a mirror— there delighted dallies ; 
 
 So rich a dress was all could be desired. 
 How she rejoiced to disappoint the malice 
 Of her unfeeling foe, the vile, vindictive Pallas !* 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 But while she praised the gift and thank'd the giver, 
 
 Of spinner-worms she sued for a supply. 
 Forthwith the good Chinese fill'd Cupid's quiver 
 
 With the cocoons, in which each worm doth lie 
 
 Snug, until changed into a butterfly. 
 The light cocoons wild Cupid shower d o'er Greece, 
 
 And o'er the isles, and over Italy, 
 Into the lap of industry and peace ; 
 And the glad nations hau'd the long-sought " Golden Fleece."t 
 
 * Rettulit insignes tunicas, nihil indiga lanse. 
 t Gratum opus Ausoniis dum volvunt fila puellis. 
 
XVII. 
 
 Utotorn fa&t $ art*. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, September, 1835.) 
 
 [In the same number of Fraser which contained this second instalment of Prout's 
 dissertation on some of the modern and minor Latin poets, appeared the posthumous 
 sketch of a popular M.P., then but very recently deceased, Michael Thomas Sadler, 
 author of the " Law of Population." The dark-eyed, melancholy-looking; politician there 
 depicted by a few lifelike touches from the genial etching-needle of Alfred Croquis, 
 won for himself the double glory, first of having pulverized the stony-hearted theory of 
 Parson Malthus, and secondly, of having penned a book that was declared even by his 
 opponents to be the best ever written upon the subject, and one, therefore, which must 
 have endeared him about equally to Maclise, Maginn, and Mahony — his great work, pub- 
 lished as long ago as 1827, on the "Evils of Ireland, and their Remedies."] 
 
 CHAPTER II.— Casimir Sarbiewski, S. Sannazar, Jerome 
 Fracastor. 
 
 " In omnibus requiem quacsivi et non inveni nisi in nookins et in bookins " (quod 
 Teutonic^ sonat in anguiis et libellis). — Thomas a Kempis. See Elzevir edition of 
 Imitat. Xti., p. 247, in vitd. 
 
 " I beg to lay particular emphasis 
 On this remark of Thomas a Kempis's." 
 
 Prout. 
 
 It has often occurred to us, while engaged in the arrangement and editing of 
 these papers, that surely so gifted a man as the late incumbent of Watergrass- 
 hill must have felt himself miserably misplaced in that dull and dreary district. 
 We are informed by Archdeacon Paley, in his " Natural Theology " (a book on 
 which Brougham has of late fixed his claws in the true Harpy fashion), that to 
 meet with a stone on a barren heath is a common incident, whereas to find a 
 chronometer in such an out-of-the-way place would immediately suggest a 
 bright chain of argument, and lots of conjectural cogitation. What would not 
 Paley have thought and said, had he stumbled on the curiously-wrought peri- 
 cranium of Prout in his rambles over the bogs and potato-fields of the parish, 
 met him on "bottle hill," or found him on the brink of the " brook that flows 
 fast by the" castle of Blarney? In addition to this palpable unfitness of the 
 
326 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 spot, where for him the lines of destiny had fallen— in aggravation of this local 
 solecism, there would further ftem to be something chronologically wrong in the 
 disposal of so much antique wisdom on a flimsy and a frivolous age. Properly 
 speaking, Prout should have lived at another epoch of the world altogether : 
 we say for his own sake, not for ours. It is clear, that of the current qualifi- 
 cations for successful authorship he knew nothing ; he was lamentably unin- 
 itiated in our contemporary school of puffery, quackery, and presumption. 
 With a mind habitually recurring to the standard models of everlasting elegance, 
 ever fondly communing with the illustrious dead, he must have had the dis- 
 agreeable consciousness of being here on earth an incarnate anachronism. Of 
 his personal feelings we unfortunately know but little, as he modestly suppresses 
 all allusion to such matters — (how very unlike everybody else now-a-days !) — 
 but we should assimilate them, if we may, be allowed to indulge in a fancy of 
 our own, to the jarring sensations of an Etruscan vase surrounded by vulgar 
 crockery. 
 
 This is mere guess-work, mark ye ! for in his writings we have not yet dis- 
 covered a single line indicative of dissatisfaction at the decrees of Providence in 
 his regard ; not a word that would betray a tendency to repine at his condition. 
 What a contrast to all around us ! 
 
 There was a time when Tom Moore (who has at last snugly settled down into 
 a Whig pensioner) fancied " he was born for much more " than mere melody- 
 mongering, and accordingly gave out that 
 
 " The chord which now languishes hose o'er the lyre 
 Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior's dart." 
 
 On which data we have often tried to conjure up a warlike image of the 
 minstrel in our mind's eye, but, for the life of us, could only see on our mental 
 retina a tomtit, holding in its claw a bow and arrow. 
 
 To return to our author. Of him we are quite safe in predicating that he 
 "was born for much more" than the humble post he filled in the Romish 
 hierarchy in Ireland, and that he might have expanded his views of earthly 
 aggrandizement with every prospect of success. 
 
 " Majores nido pennas extendisse." 
 
 Hot. Ep. I. XX. 21. 
 
 But ambition had no place in the organization of his inward man. He sought 
 not the ephemeral honours of this transitory scene ; he wooed not perishable 
 glory; and so insensible was he to the fascinations of Fame, that, far from 
 courting that meretricious nymph in her devious haunts, he would have rudely 
 repelled her, were she to be found where Solomon met Wisdom, ' ' sitting at his 
 gate." And still we incline to think that man, after- all, is but the creature of 
 circumstances; and that in another order of things, in "happier hours" and 
 a happier climate, Prout would have developed himself in a grander form. 
 Had he flourished with Vida at the court of the Medici, like him he would have 
 worn a mitre, and like him would have shed lustre on "his order," instead of 
 deriving from it, as some do, all their importance in society. Had he lived at 
 Madrid in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, he would have been (under 
 Cardinal Ximenes) chief editor of the great Complutensian Polyglott; and we 
 can easily fancy him at the court of Louis XIV., indulging at once his literary 
 and piscatorial propensities among those who got up the classics in usum 
 Dclphini. 
 
 In the wilderness of Watergrasshill he was a mere <f>wi>ii tv iptuuw, and 
 the exemplary old pastor's resemblance to the Baptist was further visible in 
 his peculiarity of diet ; for small do we deem the difference between a dried 
 •ocust and a red herring. 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 327 
 
 However, when we say that he was totally unappreciated in Ireland during 
 his lifetime, we must make one honourable exception in favour of a citizen of 
 Cork, the Roscoe of that seaport; an individual of vast learning and compre- 
 hensive judgment, who proved his possession of both by rightly understanding 
 Prout. It was said of Roscoe by Geoffry Crayon, that, like Cleopatra's pillar 
 on the shore of Alexandria, he rose above the commercial vulgarities of Liver- 
 pool, and stood forth to the eye of the stranger a conspicuous but solitary 
 specimen of antique and classic grandeur. Such is the eminent scholar to whom 
 we allude, and of whom Cork may be justly proud. Three roaches, nageant en 
 azur, form that gentleman's escutcheon ; and these fishes seem to have given 
 rise to much punning and innuendo. Great was his friendship for the priest ; 
 many and valuable are the marginal notes with which he has adorned these 
 papers ; and we further suspect the following lines on the deceased hierophant 
 to be from his terse and judicious pen : 
 
 "Sacr. Manib. Andr. Prout. 
 Quern licet extrema rapuerunt fata senectS, 
 
 Et vita: saturum sopiit alta quies, 
 Nos tamen hunc velut immature funere raptum 
 
 Flemus et effusis diffiuimus lachrymis. 
 Hie igitur periit, quondamque ilia, ilia diserta, 
 
 Et dulci manans nectare lingua tacet ! 
 Ingeniumque sagax et amor virtutis et aequi. 
 
 Omnia sub parvo condita sunt tumulo.' 
 
 To that gentleman belongs the praise of singular discrimination in detecting, 
 with intuitive glance, the latent accomplishments of the rural divine ; and it 
 must be a peculiar gratification to him to perceive, that however blind folks 
 have been to his merits while alive, there has been but one opinion as to his 
 high endowments now that he is no more. There is, in fact, but one voice of 
 unanimous acclamation in favour of the old priest, since the publication of his 
 posthumous compositions; and never was the aged Chrysias, the mild and 
 unassuming chaplain of Apollo, more popular in the camp before Troy than 
 Father Prout among the reading public. 
 
 Ei>0' aXXoi fxtv iravrcv cirevdnijttntrai/ Avaioi. 
 
 AIAEI26AI 6'IfiPHA Kat AfAAA AJEXBAI AIIOINA. A' 23. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Sept. 1826. 
 Among all the fanciful embellishments that adorn the pages of our legend, 
 none partakes of a more truly poetical character than the story related by St. 
 Gregory of Tours, in his tract " De Gloria, Martyrum," lib. i. cap. 93, about 
 seven youths, who, flying to a mountain-cave from the persecution that raged 
 in Ephesus, fell there into a deep and miraculous slumber ; whence awaking, 
 after nearly two centuries of balmy rest, they walked abroad, and were some- 
 what startled at the sight of a cross triumphantly emblazoned over the gates 
 of the city. Still greater was their surprise when a baker, to whom they 
 tendered what they considered the current coin of the empire, eyed them 
 suspiciously, asking where they had dug up that old medal of the pagan 
 persecutor Decius, and hinting that in the new Theodosian code there were 
 certain laws relative to treasure trove, which might possibly concern them. 
 Much do I fear, that my appearance in the literary market with these specimens 
 of antiquated and exploded composition, with this depreciated coinage of the 
 human brain, long since gone out of circulation in the republic of letters, may 
 
subject me to the inconveniences experienced by the seven sleepers, and to 
 a similar rebuke from the critical fraternity. But the fact is, I am totally un- 
 provided with the specie that forms the present circulating medium, and must 
 needs obtrude on the monetary system of the day some rusty old denarii 
 and sestertia. 
 
 I trust, however, that in comparing my operations in this matter to the 
 proceedings recorded in the legend of those never-to-be-forgotten "sleepers," 
 the snatches of Latin poetry I am about to produce may not receive the com- 
 mendation somewhat equivocally bestowed by a shepherd in the " Eclogue" on 
 the verses of another tuneful swain, viz. : 
 
 11 Tale tuum carmen nobis divine poeta, 
 Quale sopor 1" 
 
 it being my assiduous care to keep my readers constantly awake during the 
 progress of each paper of mine, preferring, for that purpose, to wear occasion- 
 ally the cap and bells of innocent Folly, rather than don for a single moment 
 the cotton nightcap of solemn Dulness. 
 
 The name of Vida, whose poetry occupied the opening chapter of this series, 
 has ever been (thanks to Pope !) familiar to the British public. Not so with 
 the three worthies whom I have grouped together on the present occasion. 
 Thousands, who have abundantly heard of Bob Montgomery and Barry Corn- 
 wall, never have even suspected the existence of these Latin luminaries, that 
 shed such a mild effulgence in the remote region through which they revolve : 
 in the same manner, thousands who, with nose upturned, gaze on the ephemeral 
 rockets of Vauxhall, never have, by any chance, fixed an admiring eye on the 
 satellites of Jupiter or the ring of Saturn. Talking of Jupiter and Saturn, it 
 is related in Lcmpriere's "Dictionary," that when the unnatural father was 
 kicked out of Heaven by his unruly son, aided by Titan, he fled into Latium, 
 and there hid himself; whence the name of that Latin country originated 
 & latendo. This allegory is very appropriate to the case of my three modern 
 Latin poets, who have effectually escaped the attention of mankind by wrapping 
 up their precious conceptions in an idiom inaccessible to the vulgar. 
 
 However, one experiences great delight in treading a path hitherto untrod- 
 den, in exploring a tract of undiscovered territory, in finding quasi a north- 
 west passage through the wilderness of Parnassus. Virgil himself was not 
 insensible to the glad sensations attendant on such recondite ramblings, and 
 does not conceal his preference for the by-ways (or what we call in Ireland the 
 " bortens ") that intersect the land of poesy : 
 
 " Me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulds 
 
 Raptat amor : juvat in jugis qua nulla priorum 
 Castaliam molh divertitur orbita clivo." 
 
 Georg. iii. v. 292. 
 
 With similar feelings I enter on the hitherto unreconnoitred ground marked 
 out on the poetical chart by the three names that figure as my text, and con- 
 fess that I take a wild pleasure, and, as Gray says (vide an Ode to Eton College), 
 I " snatch a fearful joy," in expatiating on the unfrequented fields belonging 
 to Casimir Sarbiewski, Actius Sannazaro, and Jerome Fracastor. 
 
 These three poets I have united here in one dissertation, not from any dis- 
 inclination to consider them separately and individually (each having sufficient 
 merit of his own to entitle him to an especial essay), but the truth is, there are 
 so many candidates for notice in the department of modern Latin poetry, that, 
 unless I adopt this plan of producing them in batches, I might never see the 
 end on't. To embalm thus their triple memory in one shrine will not be 
 thought derogatory or disrespectful, when it is remembered that the three 
 
Horatii were buried together in one tomb, on the declivity of the hill of Alba, 
 as may be seen in Piranesi's etchings; and that even three saints have 
 occasionally been huddled together in a joint occupancy of the sepulchre, as 
 may be learned from the following distich, descriptive of the burial-place of 
 SS. Patrick, Bridget, and Columkille, at Downpatrick : 
 
 tf In sacro Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno 
 Brigida, Patricius, atque Columba pius." 
 
 " Qua cum ita tint" (as Cicero has it), I enter en matiSre. 
 
 Casimir Sarbiewski, who in his day was hailed by all Europe as the Horace 
 of Poland (which I learn from the Cambridge pocket edition of his poems 
 now before me), belonged to one of the noblest houses of the kingdom, and 
 was born in 1596. Having been initiated among the Jesuits at their college of 
 Wilna, he quickly rose to eminence in that distinguished fraternity, and was 
 subsequently induced by Count Nicolai to accompany him on a tour of classic 
 enjoyment to Italy. They were waylaid and robbed in the mountains of the 
 Tyrol ; for, alas ! our Latin poet, not having written in a vulgar tongue, could 
 not, like Ariosto overawe the brigands by revealing his name, and claiming the 
 safeguard of the Muse. Nicolai never recovered from the effects of the adven- 
 ture, and died on his arrival at Rome ; but Sarbiewski had within him that 
 which consoled the shipwrecked Simonides, and being enabled to exclaim 
 " Omnia mea mccum porto," was but little affected by his disaster. We find 
 him at Rome, studying archaeology and numismatics under the illustrious 
 Donate and soon attracting, by the sweetness of his poetic talent, the notice 
 'of a brother bard, Pope Urbani VIII. (Barberini). By orders of the pontiff, 
 he was engaged in revising the hymns of the Roman breviary, of which a new 
 version was then put forth ; and to him may be attributed some of the pathetic 
 and classic touches that occasionally are perceptible among the rude canticles 
 of our liturgy. 
 
 During Sarbiewski's residence in the capital of the Christian world, he made 
 many friends and admirers among the dignitaries of the Roman purple and 
 the nobles of Italy ; of whose intimacy with this lyrist of the north there are 
 abundant traces in his metrical effusions. But the family of Pope Urban, 
 distinguished as it was from the earliest period in arts and arms, enjoyed most 
 the poet's society, and added to its previous illustrations the merit of 
 patronizing and cherishing the modern Horace. To his pontifical Mecaenas 
 he had addressed very many of his odes, and I feel great pleasure in selecting 
 from the number the following graceful specimen, because of its melodious 
 cadences and exquisite Latinity : 
 
 Odarum, Lib. 3, Ode XV. 
 
 AD APES BARBERINAS. 
 
 Me Ileum venisse Saculnm. 
 
 Cives Hymetti, gratus Attica: lepos, Laboriosis quid ju vat volatibus 
 
 Virginia; volucres, Rus et agros gravidis 
 
 Flavaeque veris filise ! Perambulare cruribus. 
 
 Furcs rosarum, turba praedatrix thymi, Si Barberino delicata principe 
 
 Nectaris nrtifices, Saecula melle fluant, 
 
 Bonaeque u is hospitx I Farata vobis saecula ! 
 
330 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 TO THE BEES 
 
 {Armorial Bearings of the Barberini Family), on Urban the EightUs Elevation to the 
 Pontificate. 
 
 Casimir Sarbiewski. 
 
 Citizens of Mount Hymettus, Of that race a pontiff reigneth, 
 
 Attic labourers who toil, Sovereign of imperial Rome ; 
 
 Never ceasing till ye get us Lo ! th' armorial bee obtaineth 
 
 Winter store. of honeyed spoil t For its hive St. Peter's dome ! 
 
 Nectar ye with sweets and odours, Hitherto a rose's chalice 
 Hebes of the hive, compose, Held thee, winged artisan ! 
 
 Flora's privileged marauders. But thou fillest now the palace' 
 Chartered pirates of the rose ! Of the gorgeous Vatican. 
 
 Gipsy tribe, gay, wild, and vagrant, And an era now commences, 
 
 Winged poachers of the dawn, By a friendly genius plann'd ; 
 
 Sporting o er each meadow fragrant, Princely bee, Urban dispenses 
 
 Thieving it on every lawn ! - - Honeyed days throughout the land. 
 
 Every plant and flower ye touch on, Seek no more with tuneful humming 
 Wears, I ween, a fresher, grace ; Where the juicy floweret grows. 
 
 For ye form the proud escutcheon Halcyon days for you are coming — 
 Of the Barberini race. Days of plenty and repose ! 
 
 Emblem bright, which to embroider, Rest ye, workmen blithe and bonnie ; 
 
 While her knight was far away, Be no more the cowslip suck'd ; 
 
 Many a maiden hath employed her Honeyed flows the Tiber, honey 
 
 Fairy fingers night and day 1 Fills each Roman aqueduct. 
 
 Bees, though pleased your flight I gaze on, Myrtle groves are fast distilling 
 
 In the garden or the field. Honey ; honeyed falls the dew, 
 
 Brighter hues your wings emblazon Ancient prophecies fulfilling 
 
 On the Barberini shield ! A millennium for you ! 
 
 It is related in the natural history of the stork, by the learned Bocrlinckius, 
 that some Polish amateur of feathered animals having had one in his posses- 
 sion, was-HKkieed- ta try an experiment-as to its -migratory propensities. He 
 accordingly set it free, having previously attached to its neck a tin collar, or 
 label, on which was inscribed a poetical indication for the use of those whom 
 it might visit, viz. : 
 
 " HJBC CICON1A, 
 EX POLONIA." 
 
 The liberated stork flew o'er the Carpathian mountains, across Tartary ; and 
 after having, in double quick time, performed the " overland journey to India," 
 was caught by some Jesuit missionaries on the coast of Malabar. The learned 
 fathers, with the instinctive sagacity of their order, easily understood the 
 motive which had dictated that inscription ; they therefore substituted for the 
 tin label one of gold, and the carrier-stork was subsequently recaptured in 
 Poland, when the lines were found altered thus : 
 
 " INDIA CUM DONIS, 
 
 ALEM REMITTIT POLONIS." 
 
 Such appears to have been the generous conduct of Urban towards Sar- 
 biewski. On his departure for his native land, he loaded him with presents; 
 and some biographers make especial mention of a ponderous gold medal, 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 
 
 331 
 
 valued at one hundred sequins, which the holy father bestowed on the child 
 of song. 
 
 On his return to Wilna, he was appointed professor of rhetoric in, the 
 society's college, and for several years poured forth the sunshine of his genius 
 on the heads of his delighted compatriots. While he taught the young idea 
 how to shoot, he was not unmindful of giving a patriotic direction to the 
 studious exercises over which it was his pleasing duty to preside; and it is 
 probably about this period that he composed many of those inspiriting war- 
 songs which crowd the pages of his book, and bear evidence of the proud 
 emotions with which he contemplated the military glories of his countrymen. 
 The chord, which he appears most willingly to awaken, is that which throbs in 
 unison with the pulse of the patriot brave ; and from a vast variety of martial 
 dithyrambs, offering to the selector Vembarras des richesses, I lay the following 
 before my readers, in the full confidence of their rising from its perusal 
 impressed with the vigour and manliness of the poet's mind. The victory' it 
 commemorates was of immense importance to Europe at that period, the 
 young sultan, Osman II., having advanced to the frontiers of Christendom 
 with an army of four hundred thousand men ; and were it not for the prowess 
 of Poland, placed as it were by Providence at the post of peril, and shielding 
 the whole family of civilized nations from the inroads of barbaric strength, the 
 Turk would infallibly have overrun our fairest provinces, and spread desolation 
 throughout the whole western continent. Were it but for these considerations 
 alone, that unfortunate land deserves the sympathy of every friend to generous 
 achievements and noble deeds. 
 
 Ode IV.. Lib. 4. 
 
 In Polonorum celebrem de Osmano 
 Turcarum Imperatore Victqriam, 
 A.D. MDCXXI. Septembris Idibus. 
 
 Casimirus Sarbievius, S.J. 
 
 .Ed«s*Gafesus, fertilis accola 
 Galesus Istri, dum sua Dacicis 
 Fatigat in campis aratra, 
 Et galeas clypeosque passim, ac 
 
 Magnorum acervos emit ossium ; 
 Vergente serum sole sub hesperum 
 
 Fessus resedisse, et solutos 
 Non solito tenuisse cantu 
 
 Fertur juvencos : " Carpite dum licet, 
 Dum tuta vobis otia ; carpite 
 
 Obiita jam vobis vireta, 
 
 Emeriti mca cura tauri ! 
 
 Victor Polonus dum posita super 
 Respirat hastil, sic etiam vigil 
 
 Saevusqiie, Proh ! quantis, Polone ! 
 
 Molda vici tegis arva campi 
 
 Ode IV., Book 4. 
 
 Ode on the signal Defeat of the Sultan 
 Os?nan t by the Army of Poland 
 and her A Hies. September 1 62 1 . 
 
 Casimir Sarbiewski, 
 
 As slow the plough the oxen plied, 
 Close by the Danube's rolling tide, 
 With old Galeski for their guide — 
 
 The Dacian farmer — 
 His eye amid the furrows spied 
 
 Men's bones and armour. 
 
 The air was calm, the sun was low, 
 Calm was the mighty river's, flow, „, 
 And silently, with footsteps slow, 
 
 Laboured the yoke ; 
 When fervently, with patriot glow, 
 
 The veteran spoke : 
 
 *' Halt ye, my oxen ! Pause we here 
 Where valour's vestiges appear, 
 And Islaam's relics far and near 
 
 Lurk in the soil ; 
 While Poland on victorious spear 
 
 Rests from her toil. 
 
 And well she may triumphant rest. 
 Adorn with glory's plume her crest, 
 And wear of victory the vest 
 
 Elate and flushed : 
 Oft was the Paynim's pride repressed— 
 
 Here it was crushed 1 
 
Thracum minis ! quas ego Bistonum 
 Hie cerno strages ! quanta per avios 
 
 Disjecta late scuta colles ! 
 
 Quae Geticis vacua anna truncis I 
 
 Here the tremendous deed was done, 
 Here the transcendent trophy won, 
 Where fragments He of sword and gun, 
 
 And lance and shield, 
 And Turkey's giant skeleton 
 
 Cumbers the field ! 
 
 Hac acer ibat Sarmata (Thracibus 
 Captivus olim nam memini puer), 
 Hie aere squallentes et auro 
 
 Concanus explicuit catervas. 
 
 Heu quanta vidi praelia cum ferox 
 Rigeret hastis campus, et horridi 
 Collata tempestas Gradivi 
 
 Ambiguis fluitaret armis. 
 
 Heavens ! I remember well that day, 
 Of warrior men the proud display, 
 Of brass and steel the dread array — 
 
 Van, flank, and rear ; 
 How my young heart the charger's neigh 
 
 Throbbed high to hear ! 
 
 How gallantly our lancers stood, 
 Of bristling spears an iron wood, 
 Fraught with a desperate hardihood 
 
 That naught could daunt, 
 And burning for the bloody feud, 
 
 Fierce, grim, and gaunt ! 
 
 Suspensa paullum substitit alitis 
 Procella ferri, donee ahenea 
 Hinc inde nubes sulphurato 
 Plurima detonuisset igni. 
 
 Then rose the deadly din of fight ; 
 Then shouting charged, with all his might, 
 Of Wilna each Teutonic knight, 
 
 And of St. John's, 
 While flashing out from yonder height 
 
 Thundered the bronze. 
 
 Turn vera sigms signa, viris viri, 
 Dextrseque dextris, et pedibus pedes, 
 
 Et tela respondere telis 
 
 Et clypeis clypei rotundi. 
 
 Dire was the struggle in the van, 
 Fiercely we grappled man with man, 
 Till soon the Paynim chiels began 
 
 For breath to gasp ; 
 When Warsaw folded Ispahan 
 
 In deadly grasp. 
 
 Non tanta campos grandine verberat 
 Nivalis Arctos ; non fragor Alpium 
 Tantus renitentes ab imo 
 Cum violens agit Auster ornos. 
 
 So might a tempest grasp a pine, 
 
 Tall giant of the Apenmne, 
 
 Whose rankling roots deep undermine 
 
 The mountain's base : 
 Fitting antagonists to twine 
 
 In stem embrace. 
 
 Hinc quantus, atque hinc impetus aerec* 
 Diffusus imbri ! Miscet opus frequens, 
 
 Furorque, virtusque, et perenni 
 
 Immoritur brevis ira famae. 
 
 Loud rung on helm, and coat of mail, 
 
 Of musketry the rattling hail ; 
 
 Of wounded men loud rose the wail 
 
 In dismal rout ; 
 And now alternate would prevail 
 
 The victor's shout. 
 
 Diu supremam nutat in aleam 
 Fortuna belli. Stat numerosior 
 
 Hinc Bessus : hinc contra Polonus 
 
 Exiguus metuendus alls. 
 
 Long time amid the vapours dense 
 The fire of battle raged intense, 
 While Victory held in suspense 
 
 The scales on high : 
 But Poland in her faith's defence 
 
 Maun do or die ! 
 
 Sed quid Cydones, aut pavidi Daha:, 
 Mollesque campo cedere Concani ; 
 Quid Seres, aversoque pugnax 
 Parthus equo, Cilicumque turmae. 
 
 Rash was the hope, and poor the chances 
 Of blunting that victorious lance ; 
 Though Turkey from her broad expanse 
 
 Brought all her sons. 
 Swelling with tenfold arrogance, 
 
 Hell's myrmidons ! 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 
 
 333 
 
 Contra sequacis pectora Sannatae 
 Fossent fugaces? Hinc ruit impiger 
 
 Polonus, illinc Lithuanus; 
 
 Quale duplex ruit axe fulmen. 
 
 Pol ! quam tremendus fulminat seneo 
 Borussus igni ! non ego Livonum 
 Pugnas et inconsulta vitae 
 Transierim tua Russe signa I 
 
 Vobis fugaces vidi ego Bistonum 
 Errare lunas, signaque barbaris 
 
 Direpta vexillis et actam 
 
 Retro equitum peditumque nubem. 
 
 Virtute pugnant non numero viri, 
 Et una sylvam saepius erruit 
 Bipennis, et paucx sequuntur 
 Innumeras acquilse columbas. 
 
 Heu qua? jacentum strata cadavera, 
 Qualemque vobis i£donii fugS, 
 Campum retexSre ! Hlc Polonam 
 Mordet adhuc Ottomannus hastam. 
 
 Hie fusus Uracil, hlc Arabum manus 
 Confixa telis ; hlc Caracas jacet 
 Conopeis subter Lechorum, 
 Non bene pollicitus minaci 
 
 Stout was each Cossack heart and hand. 
 Brave was our Lithuanian band. 
 But Gallantry's own native land 
 
 Sent forth the Poles ; 
 And Valour's flame shone nobly fann'd 
 
 In patriot souls. 
 
 Large be our allies' meed of fame ! 
 
 Rude Russia to the rescue came, 
 
 From land of frost, with brand of flame — 
 
 A glorious horde : 
 Huge havoc here these bones proclaim, 
 
 Done by her sword. 
 
 Pale and aghast the crescent fled, 
 Joyful we clove each turbann'd head, 
 Heaping with holocausts of dead 
 
 The foeman's camp : 
 Loud echoed o'er their gory bed 
 
 Our horsemen's tramp. 
 
 A hundred trees one hatchet hews ; 
 A hundred doves one hawk pursues ; 
 One Polish gauntlet so can bruise 
 
 Their miscreant clay : 
 As well the kaliph kens who rues 
 
 That fatal day. 
 
 What though, to meet the tug of war, 
 Osman had gather'd from afar 
 Arab, and Sheik, and Hospodar, 
 
 And Turk, and Guebre, 
 Quick yielded Pagan scimitar 
 
 To Christian sabre. 
 
 Here could the Turkman tum and trace 
 The slaughter-tracks, here slowly pace 
 The field of downfall and disgrace, 
 
 Where men and horse. 
 Thick strewn, encumbered all the place 
 
 With frequent corse. 
 
 Ccenam tyranno. Spes nimias Deus 
 Plerumque foedos ducit ad exitus, 
 Ridetque gaudentem superbum 
 Immodicis dare vela votis ; 
 
 Sic forsan olim dextra Polonica 
 
 Cruore inunget littora Bosphori 
 
 Damnata ; nee ponet secures 
 
 Donee erunt satures ruinft." 
 
 Well might his haughty soul repent 
 That rash and guilty armament ; 
 Weep for the blood of nations spent 
 
 His ruined host ; 
 His empty arrogance lament, 
 
 And bitter boast. 
 
 Sorrow, derision, scorn, and hate, 
 Upon the proud one's footsteps wait ; 
 Both in the field and in the gate 
 
 Accursed, abhorr'd ; 
 And be his halls made desolate 
 
 With fire and sword ! " 
 
 3uo me canentem digna trahunt equis 
 Son arma tauris ? Sistite, barbarac ! 
 Non haec inurbanft Camaenx 
 Bella decet memorare buxo, 
 
 Such was the tale Galeski told, 
 Calm as the mighty Danube roll'd ; 
 And well I ween that farmer old, 
 
 Who held a plough. 
 Had fought that day a warrior bold 
 
 With helmed brow. 
 
Majore quondam quae recinent tuba But now upon the glorious stream 
 
 Sen nepotes : et mea jam suis The sun Aung, out his parting beam, 
 
 Aratra cum bubus reverti The soldier-swain unyoked his team, 
 Frsecipiti monet axe vesper. Yet still he chanted 
 
 The live-long eve ; — and glory'r. dream 
 His pillow haunted. 
 
 So exasperated, we may add, were the Janissaries at the untoward result of 
 the campaign, that they murdered the young sultan on his return to C. P. He 
 was the sixteenth leader of the faithful, counting from Mahomet, but the first 
 whose life terminated in that tragical manner; albeit such an event since then 
 has been of common occurrence on the banks of the Bosphorus. 
 
 In the year 1636 a memorable ceremony took place at the university of Wilna. 
 The degree of " doctor" was, with unusual pomp and unexampled iclat, con- 
 ferred on the illustrious poet, in presence of King Wladislas and the highest 
 personages of the realm, who had flocked thither to do honour to their distin- 
 guished countryman. The thesis was, of course, a display of singular bril- 
 liancy ; and so pleased was his royal admirer at the evidences of native talent 
 thus afforded, that he took the ring from his own finger, and begged it might 
 be used in the ceremony of wedding the learned bachelor to his doctorial 
 dignity. That ring is still preserved in the archives of Wilna, and is used to 
 the present day in conferring the doctorate per annulum on the students of the 
 university. 
 
 The patronage and friendship of royalty was now secured to Sarbiewski, and 
 Wladislas insisted on his accompanying him even in his hunting excursion. I 
 remember in one of the epistles of Pliny, addressed, I believe, to Tacitus, a 
 passage, in which the proconsul invites the historian to partake of the pleasures 
 of the chase ; and tells him, that during his visit to the moors he may still 
 prosecute his favourite studies : ' ' Experies," says that elegant letter-writer, 
 " Palladem non minus libenter venari in montibus quam Dianam." This 
 appears to have been the case with the learned Jesuit, for I find mention made 
 in the catalogue of his works of a collection of poems, entitled " Silviludia," 
 referring, I imagine, to the woodland achievements of the northern Nimrod ; 
 but I have not met with the book itself. He also appears to have written an epic 
 poem, on the exploits of some ancient Polish monarch (" Lechiados," lib. xii.) ; 
 but no copy of it has fallen into my hands. Probably it may be classed with 
 the ' ' King Arthur " of Sir Richard Blackmore, the " Colotnbiad" of Joshua Bar- 
 low, the " Charlemagne" of Lucien Buonaparte, and many other modern epics 
 too tedious to mention. His last occupation was writing a commentary on 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, before the termination of which enterprise he died, 
 A.D. 1640. I intend writing one myself, if X live long enough. 
 
 Turn we now to the second name on our list, that of Jacobus Actius Sincerus 
 k Sto. Nazaro, vulgarly called (for shortness) Sannazar, The township form- 
 ing the family inheritance, and giving its name to this poet, is situated between 
 the Po and the Tessino, but he himself was born at the foot of Mount Vesu- 
 vius, in 1458. As the vine ripens quickly on that volcanic soil, so the germs of 
 genius were rapidly unfolded in the Neapolitan child ; and not only do we find 
 him, like Alexander Pope, " lisping in numbers, for the numbers came," but, 
 like Dante and Byron, falling desperately in love at an exceeding early period 
 of his youthhood. Every one has heard of the mysterious Beatrice, and of the 
 itSwXtw of Byron's boyish adoration; but few have learned to pronounce with 
 sympathetic devotion the name of Charmosyni. Whether under this harmo- 
 nious tetrasyllable a living and sentient being of flesh and blood was in the 
 young poet's eye, or whether a mere ideal impersonation of metaphysical 
 loveliness, beyond the homely reality of Earth's corporeal daughters, haunted 
 his refined and sensitive imagination, has not been decided by his biographers. 
 But, that he had serious thoughts of suicide, and other lofty notions, at a time 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 335 
 
 of life when boys in England are accustomed to undergo the wholesome process 
 of occasional flagellation, is quite evident, and ought to be recorded as proof 
 of his precocious intellect. Such a fact would be invaluable in the life of some 
 German quack-sentimentalist : ex.gr., the author of the " Sorrows of Werter," 
 or "Wilhelm Meister." Whatever may have been the object of this morbid 
 passion, absence from Naples, and a retreat among the romantic glens of 
 Salerno, seem not to have proved an effectual antispasmodic ; for we finally 
 find him flying from 1 1 aly and wandering through France, where he wrote a book 
 — the very best thing a disconsolate lover can possibly do ; which production 
 of his exile is known by the same name as the work of our own euphuyst, Sir 
 Philip Sidney, being entitled ' ' Arcadia." It was amazingly popular in its day 
 throughout Italy. On his return to Naples in 1492, I find no further allusion 
 to Charmosyne, who, if a mortal beauty, must have undergone the usual pro- 
 cess of mortality, or, if of sylph-like proportions and ethereal essence, perished 
 in some different way ; for which he might console himself with the lines of 
 Pope, in the " Rape of the Lock : " 
 
 " Before the fatal engine closed, 
 A wretched sylph too fondly interposed ; 
 Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain : 
 But airy substance soon unites again." 
 
 Canto iii. 150. 
 
 He now appeared in a new character, that of farce-writer to the court, which, 
 being principally composed of Spanish hidalgos (a branch of the Madrid 
 family, holding at that period the sovereignty of the Two Sicilies), must have 
 been naturally pleased at the subjects selected by him for dramatic illustration ; 
 viz., the "Conquest of Grenada," and the "Fall of the Moors." These 
 comedies are written inthe low slang of the lazzaroni, and, though well received 
 on their first appearance, have fallen into complete oblivion. 
 
 He next took to the sword, and joined his royal patron's army in an inroad 
 which it pleased the King of Naples (a vassal of the holy see) to make on the 
 patrimony of St. Peter. The church was then disgraced by the pontificate of 
 the ruffian Alexander, and the atrocities of his hopeful nephew, Caesar Borgia; 
 nevertheless the gallant Ludovico Sforza (aided by the French under Charles 
 VIII., who came to the rescue of the pontifical monster) drove the invaders 
 out of the ecclesiastical state, and, taking the offensive, soon rolled back the 
 tide of war into the enemy's territory, and swept the Spanish dynasty from the 
 throne. Faithful in adversity to the fallen prince whose patronage he had 
 experienced in prosperous days, Sannazar became the companion of his 
 banishment, and travelled with him through Spain and Southern France. It 
 was at this time that he formed a friendship with the famous Gonzalvo of 
 Cordova. On the restoration of the exiled house to the throne pf Naples, 
 Frederick, who succeeded Ferdinand II., conferred on his faithful adherent 
 the villa of Margellina, in the vicinity of that delightful capital ; and it was 
 in the rural repose of this suburban retreat that he gave himself up to the cul- 
 tivation of Latin poetry. 
 
 Of the reputation which these compositions obtained for him at the revival 
 of classic taste throughout Europe, an adequate idea may be collected from 
 the epitaph written on his tomb by Cardinal Bembo, a rival in the same walk 
 of literature : 
 
 " DA SACRO CINERI FLORES ! HIC ItXE MARONI 
 SANNAZARUS MUsA PROXIMUS UT TUMULO." 
 
 And, undoubtedly, no two sepulchres could be more approximately placed in 
 juxtaposition on the romantic promontory of Pausilippe. The grand poem of 
 Sannazar, "De partu Virginis", which occupied twenty years of his life, is 
 
336 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 replete with evidence of a fine imagination and exquisite perception of 
 rhythmic melody, surpassing in both these respects the otherwise elaborate 
 production of Vida on a similar subject (Christiados, lib. xii.). Every passage 
 in this highly polished epic furnishes abundant proofs of genuine poetic feeling ; 
 but as I must select some few lines to warrant my judgment of the composi- 
 tion, I will content myself with the following extract, which refers to the 
 arrival of St. Joseph and the Virgin at Bethlehem : it is preceded by a magni- 
 ficent description of the census ordered to be taken throughout the Roman 
 empire by Augustus Caesar, when " all went to be taxed, every one in his own 
 city." — Luke, chap. ii. 
 
 " Nee minus et casts senior cum virgine custos 
 Ibat ut in patria nomen de more genusque 
 Ederet, et jussum non segnis penderet aurum ; 
 Hie domum antiquam et regnata parentibus arva 
 Invisens, secum proavos ex ordine reges 
 Claraque facta ducum pulchramque ab origine gentem 
 Mente recensebat tacita, numerumque suorum, 
 Quamvis tunc pauper, quamvis incognitus ipsis 
 Agnatis, longe adveniens explere parabat. 
 Turn fines Galilaea tuos emensus et imas 
 Carmeli valles, quseque altus vertice opacat 
 Rura Thabor, sparsamque jugis Samaritida terram 
 Falmiferis ; — Solymas e hevfi liquerat arces 
 Cum simul e tumulo muros et tecta domorum 
 Prospexit, patriseque agnovit mcenia terra: ; 
 Continuo lachrymis urbem veneratur obortis, 
 Intenditque manus, et ab imo pectore fatur. 
 
 Bethlemise turres ! et non obscura meorum 
 Regna patrum, magnique olim salvete penates ! 
 Tuque O terra ! parens regum, visuraque regem 
 Cui Sol et gemini famulentur cardinis axes, 
 Salve iterum ! Te vana Jovis cunabula Crete 
 Horrescet ponetque suos temeraria fastus ; 
 Farva loquor ! prono veniet diademate supplex 
 Ilia potens rerum terrarumque inclyta Roma, 
 Atque orbis dominam submittet ad oscula frontem ! " 
 
 Lib. ii. 236. 
 
 There is, however, a very strange want of tact in the constant obtrusion of 
 pagan mythology, with its fabulous and profane nomenclature, throughout the 
 course of this poem : a defect, indeed, which vitiates most of the sacred poetry 
 of that period. It was a remnant of the old mysteries and of that solemn 
 buffoonery which had been so long tolerated as to give, perhaps, no offence to 
 contemporary taste, however fastidious the world has since grown in the matter 
 of religious minstrelsy. It would certainly be very hard to justify the following 
 allusion to old Silenus and to the Rape of Europa, apropos of the ox and the 
 ass who figured at the crib of Bethlehem : 
 
 " Protmtts agnoscens dominum procumbit humi bos, 
 Cernuus et mora nulla simul procumbit asellus, 
 Submittens caput et trepidanti poplite adorat ; 
 Fortunati ambo I non vos aut tabula Gretas 
 Polluet antiqui referens mendacia furti 
 Sidoniam mare per medium vexisse puellam ; 
 Aut sua dum madidus celebret portenta Cithxron 
 Infames inter thyasos vinosaque sacra, _ 
 Arguet obsequio senis insudasse profani." 
 
 Lib. ii, 360. 
 
 This odd jumble of the gospel history with pagan imaginings was not con- 
 
fined to the poets ; it was in vogue even among the writers of a more serious 
 class, and was only eventually scouted by the satiric pen of Erasmus, espe- 
 cially in his production entitled *' Ciceronianus." The papal secretary, Cardinal 
 Bembo, in his zeal for i//6u<5o-classic purity of diction, made no scruple of intro- 
 ducing "perdeos immortalcs," in an earnest request to the Venetian republic 
 concerning some points of church discipline. And our "Lady of Loretto" 
 was unscrupulously termed, in some of the bulls of that period, " Dea 
 Lauretana I" — the form of ecclesiastical excommunication being expressed in 
 a manner equally ludicrous : " Ab aguA et igni interdicatur." 
 
 From the pen of Sannazar, besides this epic, we have three books of elegies, 
 two of lyrical and miscellaneous poetry, and the six piscdtorial eclogues on 
 which his fame principally rests. Most of the elegies are addressed to the 
 friends who cheered the calm evening of his days, and frequent allusions occur 
 to the delightful residence of the villa Morgellina, the gift of his royal bene- 
 factor. Here is a sample of the poet's sentiments and versification : 
 
 DE FONTE STI. NAZARI, IN FUNDO SUBURBANO MEO. 
 
 Est mihi rivo vitreus perenni 
 Fons arenosum prope littus, undo 
 Saepe discedens sibi nauta rores 
 Haurit amicos. 
 
 Unicus nostris scatet ille ripis 
 Montis immenso siticnte tractu, 
 Vitifer qua Fausilipus vadosum ex- 
 Currit in aequor. 
 
 Hunc ego vitta- redemitus alb&, 
 Flore, et asstivis veneror coronis, 
 Cum timent amnes et hiulca saevum 
 Arva leonem. 
 
 Antequam festse redeant calends 
 Funis Augusti, superantque patri 
 Quatuor luces mihi tempus onini 
 Dulcius avo. 
 
 Bis mihi sanctum, mihi bis vocandum, 
 Bis celebrandum potiore cultu, 
 Duplici voto, gemin&que semper 
 
 Thuris acerra. 
 
 Namque ab extremo properans Eoo 
 Hiic die primum mihi vagienti 
 
 Phoebus illuxit, pariterque dias 
 Hausimus auras. 
 
 Hftc et insigni peragenda ritu 
 Sacra solemnes veniunt ad arus, 
 Nazari unde onmes tituli measque 
 Nomina gentis. 
 
 Hlnc ego grata scopulorum in umbr& 
 Rusticum parvis statui columnis 
 
 Nazaro fanum, simul et sacravi 
 Nomine fontem. 
 
 O decus cceli ! simul et tuorum 
 Rite quern parva veneramur asde 
 Cui frequentandas populis futuris 
 Pommus aras. 
 
 Accipe aestivam, nova serta, citrum ! 
 Et mihi longos liceat per annos, 
 Hie tuum castis sine fraude votis 
 Poscere numen. 
 
 Si mihi primos generis parentes, 
 Si mihi lucem pariter dedist i. 
 Hue age et fontem tibi dedicatum 
 Saepe revise. 
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF ST. NAZARO. 
 
 There's a fount at the foot of Pausilippe's hill, 
 
 Springing up on our bay's sunny margin, 
 And the mariner loveth his vessel to fill 
 
 At this fount, of which I am the guardian, 
 "lis the gem of my villa, the neighbourhood's boast, 
 
 And with pleasure and pride I preserve it ; 
 For alone it wells out, while the vine-cover 'd coast 
 
 In the summer lies panting and fervid. 
 
 When the plains are all parch'd, and the rivers run low. 
 
 Then a festival comes I love dearly; : 
 Here, with goblet in hand, my devotion I show 
 
 To the day of my birth that comes yearly. 
 
338 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 Tis the feast of my patron, Nazaro the Saint ; 
 
 Nor for aught that fond name would I barter : 
 To this fount I have nx'd that fond name, to acquaint 
 
 All mankind with my love for the martyr. 
 
 He's the tutelar Genius of me and of mine, 
 
 And to honour the saints is my motto ; 
 Unto him I devoted a well, and a shrine 
 
 Unto him I have built in the grotto. 
 There his altar devoutly with shells I have deck'd — 
 
 I have deck'd it with crystal and coral ; 
 And have strew'd all the pavement with branches select 
 
 Of the myrtle, the pine, and the laurel. 
 
 By the brink of, this well will I banquet the day 
 
 Of my feast, on its yearly recurring ; 
 Then at eve, when the bonny breeze wrinkles the bay, 
 
 And the leaves of the citron are stirring, 
 To my peaceable villa before 1 repair. 
 
 To the Father of Mercy addressing. 
 In a spirit of thankfulness, gratitude s prayer, 
 
 I'll invoke on his creatures a blessing. 
 
 And long may the groves of Pausilippe shade, 
 
 By this fount, holy martyr, thy client : 
 Thus long may he bless them for bountiful aid, 
 
 And remain on thy bounty reliant. 
 To thy shrine shall the maids of Parthenope' bring 
 
 Lighted tapers, in yearly procession ; 
 While the pilgrim hereafter shall visit this spring, 
 
 To partake of the Saint's intercession ! 
 
 His pastoral poetry, to which I have already adverted, has obtained him 
 great celebrity ; if pastoral it may be called, since it chiefly refers to the bay of 
 Naples, and the manners, customs, and loves of the fishermen who ply on that 
 romantic basin. There was the charm of novelty, however, in the idea of 
 maritime eclpgu.es; and the same freshness of imagery which gave a sort of 
 vogue to the Oriental pastorals of Collins, rendered attractive in this case an 
 otherwise dull and somniferous sort of composition. Few can relish such stuff 
 as lackadaisical shepherds and other twaddling interlocutors pour forth in the 
 ordinary class of bucolics, but Sannazar balled up new spirits from the vasty 
 deep, and reinvigorated the imbecile muse of the eclogue. The crook was 
 happily exchanged for the fishing-rod, and well-replenished nets were sub- 
 stituted for bleating folds. On looking over these pastorals, I just now alight 
 on an odd idea attributed by the poet to a Neapolitan fisherman, but which, on 
 consideration, will be pronounced a very natural one, respecting the phenomena 
 of ocean-tides. The Mediterranean being exempt from the moon's influence in 
 this respect, the lazzaroni waterman may be excused for putting forth the 
 following theory : 
 
 " Et quae cseruleos procul aspicit ora Britannos, 
 Qua (nisi vana ferunt) quoties maris undaresedit 
 Indigenes captant nudos per littora pisces." 
 
 The ebbing and flowing of the tide would, doubtless, have furnished the early 
 Greek and Roman poets with abundant moral and poetical allusion, had they 
 such a transition constantly before their eyes as we have ; and I make no 
 apology for noticing in this place a flagrant robbery of Tom Moore, who has 
 unscrupulously made use of a French author's ideas on this topic, and trans- 
 ferred the whole piece into his " Melodies." Ex. gr. : 
 
Modern Latin Poets, 339 
 
 VERSES WRITTEN BY FONTENELLE IN THE ALBUM 
 OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS. 
 
 " Je voyais du rivage, au lever de l'aurore, 
 
 Un esquif sur les flots, qui voguait tout joyeux ; 
 Je revins sur le soir...il y etait encore, 
 Mais, h&as ! delaisse par le flot dedaigneux. 
 
 Je me suis dit alors : * C'est l'esquif du bel 8ge, 
 C'est le flot du bonheur qui le berce au niatin J 
 
 Mais la barque au reflux reste ici sur la plage, 
 Et voila du plaisir l'ephemere destin ! 
 
 On m'a vante" la paix et la gloire finale, 
 Qui courronnent le sage au declih de ses jours ; 
 
 Mais, O dieux ! rendez-moi la fraicheur matinale, 
 La rosee et les'pleurs de mes premiers amours. 
 
 Quime rendra ce terns d'ineffables delices, t 
 Oil mon cceur s'exhalait en amoureux desirs ; 
 
 Comme un bois d" Arable aux pieux sacrifices, 
 Qui s'immole en jettant de parfumes soupirs ! ' " 
 
 MOORE'S TRANSLATION. 
 
 " I saw from the beach, when the morning was shining, 
 A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on ; m 
 I came to that beach when the sun was declining, 
 The bark was still there, but the waters were gone. 
 
 Ah, such is the type of our life's early promise ! 
 
 So passing the spring-tide of joy we have known ! 
 Every wave that we danced on at morning ebbs from us, 
 
 And leaves us at eve on the cold beach alone. 
 
 Ne'er tell me of glories serenely adorning 
 The close of our day, the calm eye of our night ; 
 
 Give me, back, give me back, the bright freshness of morning ! 
 Her smiles and her tears are worth evening's best light. 
 
 Ah ! who would not welcome that moment's returning. 
 When passion first woke a new life through his frame; 
 
 And his soul, like the wood that grows precious in burning, 
 Gave out all its sweets to love's exquisite flame ? " 
 
 Little else remains to be said of Sannazar, who died at the age of seventy- 
 two, on the margin of that delicious bay where he had judiciously pitched his 
 tent towards the close of a long and adventurous career, and where he had 
 surrounded himself with all that can make existence pleasant — the charms 
 of friendship, the pursuits of literature, and the consolations of religion, 
 A.D. 1530. 
 
 Jerome Fracastor, like the two who have preceded him in the course of this 
 essay, was the offspring of noble parentage, and saw the light at Verona in 
 1483. A singular feature remarked in him on his first appearance in this 
 clamorous and noisy world, was the anatomical rarity of a mouth so her- 
 metically sealed, and of lips so perfectly adhering to each other, as to require 
 the surgeon's bistouri to make an aperture for vocal sounds and respiration. 
 Not less extraordinary was a subsequent occurrence in the history of his child- 
 hood. One day, while in the arms of his mother, the electric fluid during a 
 thunder-storm was pleased to deprive the parent of life, leaving the infant poet 
 
unscathed and untouched by the fatal visitation. At the early age of nineteen 
 he had already acquired such distinction in the more sequestered walks of 
 study, that he was deemed fit to fill the chair of logic at the brilliant university 
 of Padua. Having embraced the medical profession, he quickly attained 
 eminence in the healing art : and such was the splendour of his name through- 
 out Italy, that he was summoned to Rome and invested with the post of 
 apxtarpos, or state-physician to Pope Paul III. It was in this capacity 
 that he attended the Council of Trent, and there maintained the ascendency of 
 genius, for on the appearance in 1547 of certain symptoms of a contagious dis- 
 temper in that neighbourhood, the physician waved his wand, dissolved the 
 meeting of the oecumenical fathers, and ordered them to transfer their labours 
 to the more salubrious city of Bologna ; which mandate was at once obeyed 
 by that illustrious assembly, deeply and duly impressed with the wisdom of 
 Fracastor. He died in 1553, at the advanced age of seventy ; beyond which, 
 according to the Psalmist, there is nothing but trouble, dulness, and drivelling. 
 Old Talleyrand is, however, an exception. 
 
 To speak of the works of our poet is now the difficulty ; fericulosce plenum 
 of us alee : for his principal, if not his only claim to renown as a writer, is 
 founded on a didactic poem, of which the very name cannot be breathed to ears 
 polite.* We may, however, indicate the subject on which his muse, oddly 
 enough, has chosen to expatiate with all the naiveti of unsophisticated genius, 
 by stating that it bears some analogy to the commentaries of Julius Caesar, 
 " De Bello Gallico." Perhaps the opening lines will be more explanatory : 
 
 " Qui casus rerum varii, qua semina morbum 
 Insuetum nee longa ulli per sascula visum 
 Attulerint ; nostra qui tempestate per omnem 
 Europam, partemque Asia?, Lybyxque per urbes 
 Saeviit ; in Latiura vera per tristia bella 
 Gallorum irrupit, nomenque a gente recepit : 
 Hinc canere incipiam. Nature suavibus horti 
 Floribus invitant et amantes mira Camcena; !" 
 
 I regret exceedingly that the fastidiousness of modern taste does not allow 
 me to enter on a critical dissection of this extraordinary work, in which there is 
 a marvellous display of inventive ingenuity, of exuberant fancy, great medical 
 skill, and great masterdom over the technical terms of the art, so as to blend 
 them with the smooth current of poesy. The episodes are particularly deserv- 
 ing of commendation, and the whole performance stamps the author as a man 
 of superior accomplishments and high philosophy. But the subject is intract- 
 able; and, though folks may write about the devil himself, and compose a poem 
 on Satan, they may not approach a matter like this of Fracastor. Let it be 
 taken for granted, then, that he is a poet, and one of very distinguished rank, 
 among the modern cultivators of Latin versification. 
 
 He was not the first who adopted this metrical method of conveying medical 
 theories : the school of Salerno, in the eleventh century, had clothed their pre- 
 cepts in verse ; and the distichs of the " Schola Salernitana " were long quoted 
 with reverence by the faculty. They are addressed to Robert of Normandy, 
 who stopped at Salerno, on his return from the Holy Land, to get his arm cured 
 of an issue ; and as he was on his way to take possession of the throne of 
 England, he is saluted as king in the opening of the book, though he never 
 lived to sway the sceptre of these islands : 
 
 " Anglorum regi scribit Schola tota Salerni," &c. 
 
 We have no remnant of similar practice among modern physicians, except the 
 
 * Old Prout appears rather squeamish in this matter : Lady Blessington has had no 
 scruple in dwelling on the praises of Fracastor in her last novel, " The Two Friends," 
 voL iii. p. 310.— O. Y. 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 341 
 
 solitary instance of a well-known distich, perpetrated on the label of a phial 
 by some tuneful apothecary : 
 
 " WHEN TAKEN, 
 
 TO BE WELL SHAKEN.'' 
 
 And which, being wrongly interpreted by the attendants of an elderly gentle- 
 man — they applying it to the patient, not to the liquid— brought on a fatal 
 catastrophe : they shook the old man to death, as related in full by Joe Miller, 
 chap. xliv. page 2461. 
 
342 The Works of Father Prozit. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 (Fraser' s Magazine, October, 1835.) 
 
 [Croquis* etching in the number of Fraser containing this third and concluding 
 chapter by Prout on the Modern Latin Poets was the likeness of one whom Lord 
 Calling some years afterwards well described as typically "The Contentious Man," 
 'William Cobbett, author of the " Political Register. ' The whimsical incongruity of 
 paper and portrait is hardly to be realized without a glance back at that presentation to 
 view of Maclise's vera effigies of Peter Porcupine cheek-by-jowl with Mahony's dis- 
 quisition upon Theodore Beza, Jacques Vaniere, and Geordie Buchanan.] 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Theodore Beza, Father Vaniere, George 
 Buchanan. 
 
 " Tros Rutulusve fuat nullo discrimine habebo." 
 
 jEneid, lib. 1. 
 
 " Je ne decide pas entre Geneve et Rome.*' 
 
 Hettriade, cant. ii. v. 6. 
 
 Prout conjures up three ghosts, to sup to-night on a red-herring ; 
 These ghostly guests he interests, of the art they loved conferring : 
 With a cordial greet the Jesuit hails the two other gemmen — 
 The cannie Scot, and the Huguenot, from the borders of Lake Leman. 
 
 O. Y. 
 
 The character of our sacerdotal luminary gradually unfolding itself in each 
 successive essay, is, we imagine, by this time fully developed ; and the contem- 
 plative eye has long since scanned every feature in the physiognomy of his 
 mind. Nay, the very lineaments of his face, the exact contour of his coun- 
 tenance, the outlines of his very visage, must, at this stage of the business, be 
 familiar to the fancy of those who (like ourselves) have been debarred the 
 privilege of personal acquaintanceship with the pastor of W. G. Hill. The 
 public, we venture to affirm, hath conceived as satisfactory an idea of his out- 
 ward man, though depictured by the mere crayon of imagination, as if we had 
 gone to the vast trouble and expense of a woodcut to grace the cover of our 
 Magazine ; and had there ostensibly hung him out in effigy, sign-board fashion, 
 looking unutterable things from a circling festoon of watercresses and laurel. 
 Albeit we have not yet discarded all notion of bringing Prout' s head to " the 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 343 
 
 block " (a threat which we may put into execution some of these days) , still 
 we are quite confident that his writings have already furnished so graphic a 
 portraiture of their author, that any pictorial attempt would only be a gilding 
 of refined gold, and a painting of the lily. Some faces are necessarily 
 characteristic of the mind, and, vice versd,, some minds so essentially associated 
 with a corresponding facial index, that there can be (to use the memorable 
 word of Wellington) "no mistake." Where is the bat so blind as not to 
 recognize in the duke's eye and beak the eagle of Torres Vedras, the condor 
 of Seringapatam ? Who sees not at a glance the ruffian Radical in the phi: 
 of Fieschi? What better "illustration" could even M 'Crone get for a new 
 edition of Goldsmith than Brougham's head as the rueful schoolmaster of the 
 "deserted village ? " Have not the Lords, during the whole session, 
 
 " Leamt to trace 
 The night's disasters in his evening face ? " 
 
 Speaking of which last remarkable object, the Hon. Mrs. Norton has of late 
 been heard to declare that it always reminded her of "an abridgment of 
 profane history." What can she mean ? 
 
 Our reason for thus adverting to heads may be understood at once by a 
 reference to certain craniological proceedings, reported to have taken place in 
 Dublin. Every one who has read the paper, published by us in July, 1834, 
 entitled "Swift's Madness; a Tale of a Churn," must know that Prout's 
 parents were the Dean and the accomplished Stella. Those two high 
 authorities, Mr. Burke, the genealogist, and Sir William Betham, Ulster king- 
 at-arms, have admitted the fact. Now it appears that a " scientific association" 
 (a show got up somewhat on the principle of Wombwell's travelling menagerie) 
 hath been recently visiting the Irish capital ; and this impersonation of fair 
 Science, having played her antics there for the amusement of ah enlightened 
 public, in return for sundry capers exhibited in the Rotunda, hath requested 
 (out-Heroding Herodias !) that the skulls of Swift and Stella should be pre- 
 sented on a charger for her inspection. The result of the phrenological 
 inquest is announced to be the discovery of ' ' the organ of combativeness " in 
 Prout's father "very large;" that of " destructiveness" equally Brobding- 
 nagian; "wit" being at a very low mark — "imperceptible." We cannot let 
 this pass without comment. Several other matters, to be sure, deserve notice 
 in these Dublin doings : such, for instance, as the jury of medical matrons 
 impanelled to report on the hip-bone of poor Charley Mathews ; and Dinny 
 Lardner's grand lecture, so clearly demonstrative of what wonders may be 
 still achieved with the jaw-bone of an ass. But are not all these things written 
 in the Athenaum t To it we refer. 
 
 Our object in alluding to these "transactions" at all is simply to put the 
 ■public on its guard against the implied insinuation that Prout inherited from 
 the Dean these combative and destructive bumps, along with the " impercep- 
 tible " share of wit which we are willing to admit fell to his lot, and formed 
 indeed (with a lock of Stella's hair) his sole patrimony. There is not a word 
 of truth in the vile innuendo. Mild and tolerant, ever ready to make allowance 
 for other people's prejudices, sympathizing with all mankind, there was not an 
 atom of pugnacity in his composition ; we are confident that, had an autopsia 
 taken place at his death, the gall-bladder would have been found empty. He 
 was particularly free from that epidemic disease which has ever raged among 
 clergymen of all persuasions, and for the eradication of which no nostrum has 
 been as yet discovered — we mean the scurvy disorder called, by Galen, Odium 
 Theologicum. This virulent and immedicable distemper could never make 
 the slightest inroad on his constitution. To his brethren of the cloth he 
 recommended literary application, as the best remedial regimen and most 
 
344 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 likely preservative against the contagion of polemics, without going so far as 
 to pronounce the belles Uttres a complete and effectual prophylactic; still it was 
 one of his innocent superstitions, that the Castalian spring possessed an 
 efficacy somewhat akin to the properties which Tertullian ascribes to " holy 
 water," and that, like the " aqua lustralis," it could equally banish evil spirits, 
 chase ghouls and vampires, and lay the ghost of bygone dissension wherever 
 it was sprinkled. 
 
 Having thus fairly disposed of the " combative bump," and put our adver- 
 saries, as far as that goes, totally hors de combat, we pass to the "destructive" 
 protuberance, which, it is hinted. Swift transferred to his venerable child. Ye 
 gods 1 Prout a destructive ! No, no, the padre had too innate a sense of 
 propriety, and had too much gentle blood in his veins, to exhibit himself in the 
 character of a priestly sansculotte ; and Vinegar Hill was not the mount on 
 which he paid his political adorations. Like Edmund Burke, he wished to see 
 " no ruin on the face of the land." His youthful reminiscences of the Jacobin 
 Club, of Marat, of Danton, and of Santerre (who, by the bye, like Dan, kept 
 a brewery), had given a conservative tone to his feelings. He was deeply 
 distrustful of mere empirical experiment on the social body, and experience 
 had taught him the striking truth, rather bluntly expressed by the pious and 
 sagacious Dr. Johnson, that "patriotism " was the last refuge of scoundrels. 
 This he believed to hold good from Wat Tyler and Jack Straw to the leaders 
 of the Birmingham Union, the " Trades " and the " Com Exchange ; " from 
 Alderman Wilkes to Lancet Wakley; from Robespierre to Roebuck; from 
 the " Assignats" to Hume's "Greek Bonds" and O'Connell's "Bank." As 
 for the lay abbot of Derrynane "Abbey," he had watched his early proceed- 
 ings with a certain degree of interest, and from some memoranda in the chest 
 had actually, it appears, entertained at one time a belief in the lad's political 
 honesty ; but we find that he soon smoked the swindling charlatan, when the 
 accounts of "the Catholic Association " began to get somehow "unaccount- 
 ably mixed up " with his own balances in the banker's ledger ; which mistake, 
 we believe, happened as early as 1827 : and Prout's prophetic eye foresaw at 
 once the lawyer's bag distending itself, by a miraculous process, into the sub- 
 sequent giant dimensions of the beggar's wallet. Not that he questioned the 
 right which every public performer, from Punch and Judy up to Paganini, 
 most undoubtedly possesses to send round the hat or the wig for " voluntary 
 contributions; " but the bludgeon system, the theory of "cross bones," the 
 chapel-door profanation, the mixture of bullying and blarney employed in the 
 collection of these coppers by Dan's tax-gatherers, from bis head-agent in 
 Dublin, one Vincent Fitzpatrick (who pockets a per centage), down to the 
 lowest keeper of a rural whisky-shop, who finds it his interest to rattle the box, 
 created in Prout's political stomach an indescribable nausea. In one of his 
 sermons to the faithful of Watergrasshill (the MS. is in the chest), he employs, 
 as usual when he seeks to illustrate any topic of importance, a quotation from 
 one of the holy fathers ; and the passage he selects is from a homily of St. 
 Augustin, addressed to the people of Hyppo in Africa : — " Proverbium notum 
 est Punicum quod quidem Latini vobis dicam quia Punici non omnesnostis; 
 NUMMUM QUdERIT FESTILENTIA ? DUOS ILLI DA, ET DUCAT SE ! " (Sena. 
 CLXVII. Sti.Aug. Opera, tome v. p. 804, Benedictine Ed.) i.e. "There is an 
 old proverb of your Phoenician ancestors which I will mention in Latin, as you 
 don't all speak the Punic dialect : ' Does the plague put forth its 
 
 HAND FOR ALMS? INSTEAD OF A PENNY GIVE TWO, THAT YOU MAY BE 
 
 more speedily rid of the grim applicant.' Now, my good parishioners, 
 this aphorism of our Carthaginian forefathers (I am sorry we have not been 
 favoured by St. Augustin with the original Celtic) would hold good if the 
 mendicant only paid us a fortuitous visit ; but if he were found to wax impor- 
 tunate in proportion to the peace-offering of pence, and if this claimant of 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 345 
 
 eleemosynary aid announced to us a perpetual and periodical visitation, we 
 should rather adopt the resolution of one Laurence Sterne (who has written a 
 volume of sermons), and, buttoning up our pocket, stoutly refuse to give a 
 single sou." — Sermon for Tribute Sunday, in MS. 
 
 The fits of periodical starvation to which the agricultural labourers through- 
 out (farmers they cannot be called) are subject — the screwing of rents up to an 
 ad libitum pressure by the owners of the soil — the "clearing of. estates," 
 against which there is no legal remedy, and which can only be noticed by a 
 Rockite billet-doux — the slow, wasting process of inanition, which carries off 
 the bulk of the peasantry (for though famine sometimes takes the appearance 
 of a chronic distemper, and is then visible to all, there is a slow-fever of 
 hunger endemic through the land, and permanent like the malaria of Italy) ; 
 — these, in Prout's view of things, are (and have been since the days of Swift) 
 the only real grievances of the country. In his opinion, it was "too bad" 
 that there should be but one single family among the aborigines entitled to 
 parochial relief, and that one bloated beggarman, bearing like the Turk no 
 brother-mendicant near his throne, should absorb the subsistence of the rest. 
 Municipal arrangements, and the woes of disqualified aspirants after aldermanic 
 turtle, did not excite Prout's sympathy while the ejected peasant of the Irish 
 hovel was suffered by law to die in a ditch ; and the gratifying of sectarian 
 vanity, by what are called liberal measures, gave him no pleasure while the 
 cottier was allowed to be trampled on by the landlord (Popish or Protestant) 
 with uniform heartlessness and impunity. 
 
 " Pellitur in sinu ferens Deos, 
 Et vir et uxor sordidosque natos." 
 Hor. 
 
 Impressed with this irrefutable doctrine, when the thrilling appeal of Doyle, 
 on behalf of the forsaken and forgotten poor, had forced a blush of conscious 
 guiltiness into the callous cheek of the " man of the people," and when the 
 giant culprit announced his return to the plain principles of decency and jus- 
 tice as the result of the good bishop's touching eloquence, Prout, in common 
 with others, hailed the conversion as a miracle of Providence. How little had 
 he sounded the motives which impelled the sordid neophyte to simulate 
 conviction ! 
 
 " Un jour Harp AGON, touche par le prone 
 
 Be son Cure, dit : ' Je vais m'amender ; 
 Rien n'est si beau, si touchant que l'aumone, 
 
 Et de ce pas, je vais — la dem an der ! * " 
 
 Any debt fairly due to this man by his co-religionists for oratorical exertions, 
 which probably had the effect of antedating by several years the act of their 
 "emancipation," was, in the father's estimate, long since discharged. 
 'Ax"pi<TTot i Sti/ios ; Prout would ask, in the words of iEschines, and with 
 him answer, Oux 1 Alt nEX"^-<"t>P a "' (Oral, in Ctesiphont.). Why, then, 
 we ask, does the annual farce of " the rent" still form a dismal after-piece to 
 the sad tragedy of " Irish starvation ?" Dicky Shiel's knowledge of things 
 theatrical may perhaps furnish a reply. Both melodrames appear to be "stock- 
 pieces." 
 
 Amid the orgies of Glasgow and the Dionysiacs of Modern Athens, sur- 
 rounded by the drunken Radicals of this island or the cringing parasites that 
 encircle him at home, a truth will necessarily force itself on Dan's recollection, 
 were none of his caudatarii to remind him of it; i.e., that though he has 
 embittered Irish society, and called into active existence more of hateful 
 religious and party feeling than any other man, he has never added a single 
 potato to the farmer'sfeast, or brought a single legislative blessing to the peasant's 
 O 
 
346 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 door. The patriot who would protect his fellow-countrymen from dying of 
 actual hunger, would feel more real joy and a more hallowed delight than the 
 proprietor of a copper-mine producing ^80,000 in five years — than the hero 
 of a hundred speeches. The true lover of his country will ever, like Mar- 
 cellus, enjoy more pure sunshine of the breast than the idol of a deluded mob, 
 with a Whig cabinet at his tail, and (proh pudor I), must we add (until next 
 election), 
 
 " With a senate at his heels ? " 
 
 These were Prout's poBTics : some may prefer his poetry. We like both. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Oct 1826. 
 
 Resuming to-night the subject of modern attempts at Latin versification, a 
 name suggests itself sufficiently distinguished, Heaven knows ! in the annals of 
 ecclesiastical warfare, but not as familiar as it deserves to be in literary circles. 
 I allude to Beza. Those who imagine that his title of successor to John 
 Calvin, in that snug little popedom established at the head-quarters of schism 
 and watchmaking, Geneva, would in the least influence my judgment as to his 
 poetical merits, are wofully ignorant of my way of doing business. To be sure, 
 to those of our cloth, the recollections connected with that neighbourhood are 
 not of the most delectable description. Fraught with certain controversial 
 reminiscences, I cannot .exactly say with Byron that 
 
 " Lake Leman woos me with her crystal face " 
 
 (Canto iii. st. 68),— 
 
 but am rather inclined to join in the testy remark of the Ferney patriarch : "// 
 y a toujour* iu des tempites dans ce verre d'eau." A strange and mysterious 
 attraction seems to have drawn to the borders of this romantic fish-pond Calvin 
 and Madame de Stael, Rousseau and Gibbon, Beza and Sir Egerton Brydges, 
 Voltaire and Sir Humphry Davy (or, as the Italians called him, Zoromfridnii), 
 St. Francis de Sales, Monsieur Necker, Monsieur de Haller, and a host of 
 celebrities in religion, politics, and literature. 
 
 " Lausanne and Femey ! ye have been the abodes 
 Of names which unto you bequeathed a name — 
 Mortals who sought and found, by dangerous roads, 
 
 A path to perpetuity of fame. 
 ■They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim 
 t Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile 
 Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame 
 Of heaven again assail'd, if heaven the while 
 On man and man s research could deign do more than smile." 
 
 Whatever may have been the peculiar fascination of this lake for sensitive 
 souls, it appears to have exercised a wholesome influence on the bodily health 
 of the denizens on its margin ; for, not to mention the octogenarian author of 
 the ' ' Henriade, " our Theodore himself furnished a career of almost a full century, 
 being born in 1519, and deferring his departure from this life to the protracted 
 millesimo of 1605! Vezelai, a village of Burgundy, was the cradle of our 
 poet ; in early infancy he was transferred to the house of an old uncle, Nich. de 
 Beze, a lawyer in Paris, whence, at the age of ten, he was removed to Orleans, 
 and placed under the tuition of Melchior Wolmar, one of the greatest scholastic 
 luminaries of the day : and from him the embryo reformer imbibed the first 
 principles of free judgment in church matters. In his last will and testament 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 347 
 
 he thanks God that at the early age of sixteen he had already, in his secret 
 soul, shaken off the trammels of popery. This did not prevent him from ac- 
 accepting the clerical tonsure and petit collet to qualify for a church living, viz. 
 the priory of Longjumeau, which he held until the year 1548. He had great 
 expectations from an old uncle, who would infallibly have left him on his death 
 ecclesiastical revenues to the amount of 15,000 livres : things turned out other- 
 wise. Idle and thoughtless, he mixed for years in the gaieties of the French 
 capital, publishing in the intervals of fun and frolic his " Poemata Juvenilia; " 
 when a serious attachment to a young lady of great mental accomplishments, 
 and also a fit of sickness, caused a change to come o'er the spirit of his life's 
 young dream. On recovery from his illness, during which no doubt he had 
 enjoyed the services of a most amiable nurse-tender, he renounced his priory, 
 bid adieu to his avuncular prospects, and fled to Geneva, where his superior 
 education and acknowledged scholarship caused him to be received with accla- 
 mation. I had forgot to add (indeed it were unnecessary to make formal men- 
 tion of it to the intelligent reader) that Candida, the lady of his love, was the 
 partner of his flight. If we are to judge of her beauty and sylph-like form by 
 the standard of Beza's glowing verses, "Ad pedem Candidas," 
 
 " pes ! quern geminas premunt columns," &c, &c. 
 
 she must have been a fitting Egeria to supply the new legislator of divinity with 
 graceful inspirations. He was made Greek professer at Lausanne, an occupa- 
 tion to which he devoted ten years ; and at that place he wrote a Latin tragedy, 
 called the " Sacrifice of Abraham," which Paquier says drew tears from his eyes: 
 but we fear its melodramatic pathos would be scarcely felt now-a-days, modern 
 play-readers are so hard-hearted. At Lausanne he also published a French 
 translation of the New Testament, and carried on a controversy against Sebas- 
 tian Castalio, a brother reformer and rival translator, between whom and Beza 
 there appears to have been no love lost. This Castalio had the impudence to 
 censure Calvin for burning Servetus, and our Theodore accordingly wrote a 
 book in his master's defence, which was printed by Robert Etienne (1 vol. Svo, 
 Paris, 1554), "under the sign of the olive," and entitled " De Hsereticis a civili 
 Magistratu puniendis." The doctrine of putting heretics to death is more boldly 
 and strenuously enforced in this celebrated tract than in all the bigot Dens' 
 stupid book of theology, which I regret to see disinterred from the congenial 
 cobwebs of Louvain, by order of some shallow-pated people in Dublin, and 
 thrust on the conferences of the Irish priesthood merely to fill old Dicky Coyne 
 the bookseller's pocket. Beza, of course, little thought what use might be 
 made of his own doctrines, and how easily their application to the Huguenots 
 would suggest itself to the Papists : that sort of foresight which Horace praises 
 in the Roman hero Regulus did not form part of his character ; he did not 
 look to the consequences. 
 
 " Hoc caverat mens provida Reguli 
 Dissentientis conditionibus 
 
 Saivis et EXEMPLO TRAHENTI 
 
 Perniciem veniens in <evum." 
 
 Hor., Ode v. lib. iii. 
 
 It is but fair to add, that Melancthon differed totally from the tenets of his 
 brethren at Geneva on this matter. 
 
 The death of Calvin left him the recognized chief of European Protestantism 
 in 1564, previous to which he had appeared as the representative of the cause 
 at the famous Collogue de Poissy; which, like all such exhibitions of religious 
 wrangling, ended in each party being as wise as ever. He presided at the 
 synod of Rochelle in 1570, and his wife, Candida, dying in 1588, he remarried 
 
348 
 
 The Works, of Father >Prout 
 
 a young spouse, whom he calls the ' ' Shunamite " : rather a gay thought for a 
 theologian in his seventy-third year. This, however, is no business of ours. 
 Let us have a stave of his poetry. 
 
 Most of his verses are in the hen decasyllabic metre, of which he is a com- 
 plete master, and the choice of which indicates what were his favourite authors 
 among the Latin writers of the Augustan age. 
 
 THEODORUS BEZA 
 
 Musis tineam sacrificat. 
 
 Si rogat Cereremque Liberumque 
 Vitas sollicitus suae colonus ; 
 Si Mavortis opus petit crucntus 
 Miles sollicitus suae salutis ; 
 Quidni, Calliope, tibi tuisque 
 Jure sacra feram, quibus placere 
 Est unum studium mihi, omnibusque 
 Qui vatum e numero volunt habere? 
 
 Vobis ergo ferenda sacra, musae ! 
 Sed quae victima grata? quae Camenae 
 Dicata hostia? parcite, o sorores ; 
 Nova haec victima sed tamen suavis 
 Futura arbitror, admodumque grata. 
 Accede, o tbea ! ilia quas pusillo 
 Ventrem corpore geris voracem. 
 
 Tene Pieridum aggredi ministros ? 
 Tene arrodere tam sacros labores? 
 Nee factum mihi denega :■ ecce furti 
 Tui exempla tuae et voraci tatis ! 
 Tu fere mihi " Passerem " Catulli, 
 Tu fer6 mihi " Lesbiam " abstulisti. 
 
 Nunc certe meus ille Martialis 
 Ima ad viscera rosus ecce languet, 
 Et quaerit medicum suum ** Triphonem ; 
 Imo, et ipse Maro, cui pepercit 
 Olim flarama, tuum tamen terebrum 
 Nuper, o fera ter sceksta, sensit. 
 
 euid dicam innumeros bene eruditos, 
 uorum tu monumenta et labores 
 Isto pessimo ventre devorasti ? 
 
 Prodi jam, tunicam relinque ! prodi ! 
 Vah ! ut callida stringit ipsa sese 
 Ut mortem simulat ! Scelesta, prodi, 
 Pro tot criminibus datura poenas. 
 Age, istum jugulo tuo mucronem, 
 Cruenta, accipe, et istum ! et istum I et is- 
 tum ! 
 Vide ut palpitet ! ut cruore largo 
 Aras polluerit profana sacras. 
 
 At vos, Pierides bonaeque musae, ' 
 Nunc gaudete ! jacet fera interempta : 
 Jacet sacrilega ilia quae solebat ' 
 Sacros Pieridum vorare servos. 
 
 LINES BY BEZA, 
 
 Suggested by a Moth-eaten Book. 
 
 The soldier soothes in his behalf 
 Bellona, with a victim calf ; 
 The farmer's fold victims exhaust — 
 Ceres must have her holocaust : 
 And shall the bard alone refuse 
 A votive offering to his muse, 
 Proving the only uncompliant, 
 Unmindful, and ungrateful client? 
 
 What gift, what sacrifice select, 
 May best betoken his respect ? 
 Stay, let me think... O happy notion ! 
 What can denote more true devotion, 
 What victim give more pleasing odour, 
 Than yon small grub, yon wee corroder. 
 Of sluggish gait, of shape uncouth, 
 With Jacobin destructive tooth ? 
 
 Ho, creeper ! thy last hour is come ; 
 
 Be thou the muses' hecatomb !* 
 
 With whining arts think not to gull us : 
 
 Have I not caught thee in Catullus, 
 
 Converting into thy vile marrow 
 
 His matchless verses on "the Sparrow "? 
 
 Of late, thy stomach had been partial 
 To sundry tit-bits out of Martial ; 
 Nay, I have traced thee, insect keen-eyed ! 
 Through the fourth book of Maro's 
 
 "/Eneid." 
 On vulgar French couldst not thou fatten, 
 And curb thy appetite for Latin ? 
 Or, if thou wouldst take Latin from us. 
 Why not devour Duns Scot and Thomas? 
 Might not the " Digest " and " Decretals " 
 Have served thee, varlet ! for thy victuals? 
 
 Victim ! come forth ! crawl from thy nook ! 
 Fit altar be this injured book ; 
 Caitiff ! 'tis vain slyly to simulate 
 Torpor and death ; thee this shall immo- 
 late— 
 This penknife, fitting guillotine 
 To shed a bookworm s wood obscene ! 
 Nor can the poet better mark his 
 Zeal for the muse than on thy carcase. 
 
 The deed is done ! the insect Goth, 
 Unmourn'd (save by maternal moth). 
 Slain without mercy or remorse, 
 Lies there, a melancholy corse. 
 
 * Quaere, Hack a tome?— printers Devil. 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 349 
 
 Hanc vobis tunicam, has dico, Camoenae, The page he had profaned 'tis meet 
 
 Vobis exuvias, ut hunc tropheum Should be the robber's winding-sheet ; 
 
 Parnasso in medio locetis : et sit While for the deed the Muse decrees a 
 
 Hiec inscriptio, De fera interempta Wreath of her brightest bays to Beza. 
 
 BBZ<GUS SPOLIA H-EC OH MA MUSIS. 
 
 I know not whether the laureate Southey, whose range of reading takes in, 
 like the whirlpool of the Indian ocean, sea-weed and straws, as well as frigates 
 and merchantmen, has not found, in this obscure poem of Beza, the prototype 
 of his fanciful lines 
 
 ON A WORM IN THE NUT. 
 
 Nay, gather not that filbert, Nicholas ; 
 
 There is a maggot there : it is his house, 
 
 His castle— oh, commit not burglary ! 
 
 Strip him not naked ; 'tis his clothes, his shell, 
 
 His bones, the very armour of his life, 
 
 And thou shalt do no murder, Nicholas ! 
 
 It were an easy thing to crack that nut, 
 
 Or with thy crackers or thy double teeth : 
 
 So easily may all things be destroyed ! 
 
 But 'tis not in the power of mortal man 
 
 To mend the fracture of a filbert-shell. 
 
 Enough of dangers and of enemies 
 
 Hath Nature's wisdom lor the worm ordain'd. 
 
 Increase not thou the number ! him the mousr Y 
 
 Gnawing with nibbling tooth the shell's defence. 
 
 May from his native tenement eject ; 
 
 Him may the nut-hatch, piercing with strong bill. 
 
 Unwittingly destroy ; or to his hoard 
 
 The squirrel bear, at leisure to be crack'd. 
 
 Man also hath his dangers and his foes 
 
 As this poor maggot hath ; and when I muse 
 
 Upon the aches, anxieties, and fears, 
 
 The maggot knows not, Nicholas, methinks 
 
 It were a happy metamorphosis 
 
 To be enkernell'd thus : never to hear 
 
 Of wars, and of invasions, and of plots, 
 
 Kings, Jacobins, and tax-commissioners ; 
 
 To feel no motion but the wind that shook 
 
 The filbert-tree, and rock'd me to my rest ; 
 
 And in the middle of such exquisite food 
 
 To live luxurious ! the perfection this 
 
 Of snugness ! it were to unite at once 
 
 Hermit retirement, aldennanic bliss, 
 
 And Stoic independence of mankind." 
 
 But perhaps Lafontaine's rat, who retired from the world's intercourse to the 
 hermitage of a frontage d'Holiande, was the real source of Southey's inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 In another effusion, which he has entitled "Ad Bibliothecam," Beza's enthu- 
 siasm for the writers of classic antiquity breaks out in fine style; and as the 
 enumeration of his favourites may possess some interest, insomuch as it affords 
 a clue to his early course of reading, I insert a fragment of this glorious 
 nomenclature. The catalogue requires no translation : 
 
 " Salve te incolumes mei libelli, 
 Meae deliciae, meas salutes ! 
 Salve mi Cicero, Catulle, salve ! 
 Salve mi Mara, Pliniumque uterque ! 
 Mi Cato, Columella, Varro, Livi ! 
 Salve mi quoque Plaute, tu Terenti, 
 
3 So The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Et tu salve Ovidi, Fabi, Properti ! 
 
 Vos salvete etiam disertiores ' 
 
 Graeci ! ponere guos loco priore 
 
 Decebat, Sophocles, Isocratesque, 
 
 Et tu cui papillaris aura nomen 
 
 Dedit ; tu quoque magne Homere salve 1 
 
 Salve Aristoteles, Plato, Timcee ! 
 
 Et vos, O reliqui ! quibus negatum est 
 
 Includi numens phaleuciorum." 
 
 The words which I have marked in italics would seem to convey the theory 
 subsequently broached by Professor Wolff, and maintained with such prodigious 
 learning ; viz. that Homer was a mere ens rationis, a nominis umbra, repre- 
 senting no individual of the species — such poet never having, in fact, existed — 
 but that the various rhapsodies forming the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were 
 collected throughout Greece, and the authorship ascribed to this imaginary 
 personage about the time of Lycurgus. The scepticism of Beza would greatly 
 corroborate the Wolffian doctrine ; but Alexander Pope would not, I fear, be 
 found easy to persuade on this head, if we may judge from his ridiculing 
 similar assertions made in his day by some hero of the " Dunciad" : 
 
 " With him all authors steal their works, or buy — 
 Garth did not write his own ' Dispensary.'" 
 
 We have no similar list of his favourite authors among the modern or con- 
 temporary writers, but it would appear that he had a great partiality for old 
 Frank Rabelais, and that he relished exceedingly the learned buffoonery of that 
 illustrious Theban. Witness the following commendatory distich, in which he 
 has recorded his admiration : 
 
 " Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat, 
 Seria cum scribet, die modo-qualis erit? " 
 
 If jokes and fun he show such might in, 
 What would he be in serious writing ? 
 
 Of Beza, as a religionist, it does not become me to say a word. Henri 
 Quatre, in the supposed interview with Queen Elizabeth, is introduced by the 
 poet as declaring his incompetency to pronounce on the rival merits of Rome 
 and Geneva: a passage which the facetious Morgan O'Doherty, when on a 
 visit to WatergrasshilJ, distorted to a very singular meaning. I asked the 
 baronet whether he preferred Irish alcohol to Jamaica spirits, French brandy to 
 London gin. " Mou ion fire I je tu decide fas," was his reply (delivered with 
 unusual modesty), 
 
 " ENTRE GINEVRE ET RUM ! 
 
 as the poet says, but send round the whisky-bottle, by all means." 
 
 A notice of Jacques Vaniere must be necessarily brief, as far as hiograpbical 
 detail. His was the quiet, peaceful, but not illiterate life of the cloister; days 
 of calm, unimpassioned existence, gliding insensibly, but not unpleasingly nor 
 unprofitably, onwards to the repose of the grave and the hopes of immortality. 
 He was born in the south of France, near Montpellier, in 1664 ; was enrolled 
 among the Jesuits at the age of sixteen ; and died at Toulouse in 1739, at the 
 advanced age of seventy-three. By the bye, Latin poetry seems to act most 
 beneficially on the constitution of its modern cultivators; and it behoves the 
 managers of insurance companies to look sharpjy after annuitants addicted to 
 the use of the hexameter. Let them ponder over the following scale of 
 longevity, which I submit gratis to their inspection : 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 35 1 
 
 Jerome Vida 
 
 Sincerus Sannazar 
 
 . at. 97 
 
 72 
 
 Jerome Fracastor 
 Theodore Beza . 
 
 
 86 
 
 Jaques Vaniere . 
 
 73 
 
 George Buchanan 
 
 • 76 
 
 The only incident that broke in on the calm monotony of his career was a 
 law-suit about a library, bequeathed to his college by the Archbishop of Tou- 
 louse, and which the surviving relatives of Monsgr. de la Berchere chose to liti- 
 gate. The affair took ten years, and was then sent up to the privy-council j 
 whither Vaniere followed it, preceded by the reputation which his " Praedium 
 Rusticum" had justly acquired. On his way to Paris through Lyons, the 
 academy of this latter place met him in grand ceremony at the city-gates ; aad 
 still higher honours were paid him in the metropolis. His visit to the 
 Bibliotheque du Roi was deemed an event fit to be recorded in the annals of 
 the establishment, where it is extant ; but a more durable memorial of the 
 sensation he created exists in the shape of a bronze medal, struck in honour of 
 the poet ; an impression of which may be seen in the " Musseum Mazzucheli- 
 anum," II. pi. 169, with the exergue " Ruris opes et delitI/E." Notwith- 
 standing all this, and the protection of Cardinal Fleury, he lost his suit, but 
 never his temper, which was singularly mild. Schoolboys are not aware that 
 they owe him a vast debt of gratitude ; he being the compiler of that wondrous 
 ladder of Jacob yclept " Gradus ad Parnassum," by the aid of which many 
 an Etonian and Harrowite has been enabled to exclaim with Horace, 
 
 " Sublimi feriam sidera vertice !" 
 
 The " Praedium Rusticum" comprises sixteen books, each on a separate sub- 
 ject of agricultural interest, but all distinguished by a brilliant fancy, a kindly 
 feeling, and a keen relish for the pursuits of rural life. The topics best 
 handled are "vineyards," "fish-ponds," "poultry," "gardening," "game- 
 preserves," and "sheep-walks ;" nor dol know any book which conveys such 
 a beautiful and detailed picture of farming operations in France before the 
 Revolution. Since that event, the whole system of landed property having 
 been dashed to pieces, a totally different state of society has supervened, and 
 the morals, habits, and character of the French peasantry are altogether 
 different. In Vaniere' s poem there are evidences of an abundance and a cheer- 
 ful industry, with habits of subordination and happy simplicity, of which not a 
 trace remains among the present generation. 
 
 There are several singular notions broached in this book : ex. gr. in depre- 
 cating the destruction of forests, our poet points out the value of firewood, 
 much lamenting over the necessity which compels the English to burn coals, 
 and then resort to Montpellier to get cured of subsequent consumption : 
 
 ". . . . Antiquos ferro ne dejice lucos ! 
 Aspice defosso terns carbone Bntanni, 
 Quam male dissolvunt frigus ! quam ducitur xgre 
 Spiritus ! infesto nl labescentibus igne 
 
 Monspeliensis opem tulerit pulmonibus aer." 
 
 The digging of the canal of Languedoc, " gemino faciens commercia fonto," 
 forms a glorious episode (lib. i.) ; as also does the memorable plague of 
 Marseilles (lib. iii.), celebrated by Pope, and during which our poet's confreres 
 distinguished themselves by their heroic devotedness. The description of a 
 village festival, in honour of the patron saint (lib. vii.), has been deservedly 
 admired, having been translated by Delille. The famous year of the hard 
 frost, which, towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV., destroyed all the 
 
352 ' The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 olive plantations in the south of France, is also fittingly sung (lib. viii.); but 
 commend me to a cock-fight (lib. xii.) : 
 
 " Colla rigent hirsuta jubis— -palearea mento 
 Dira rubent— pugnas praeludia nulla— sed ambo 
 Partibus adversis facto simul impete duris 
 Pectora pectoribus quatiunt, hostilia rostris 
 Rostta petunt, strictosque repulsant unguibus ungues. 
 Avulsae volitant plumae t cruor irrigat artus ; 
 Necdum odiis iraeque datum satis, horrida necdum 
 Bella cadunt, domitum victor dum straverit hostem ; 
 Ductaque pulset ovans plaudentibus ilia pennis 
 Et sublime caput circumferat atque triumphum 
 Occinat et vacua solus jam regnat in aula," 
 
 The various habits of the swan, the peacock, the turkey, and other feathered 
 subjects, are capitally struck off; nor is there a more pathetic passage in the 
 " Sorrows of Werter " than the one descriptive of a hen's grief. This hen is 
 made to "sit" on a batch of duck's eggs, and when the ducklings have 
 appeared she still believes them to be chickens, and acts accordingly, until, by 
 some fatal chance, they are led to the brink of a pond ; when lo ! the secret of 
 their birth is revealed : they rush instinctively into the deep, and leave their 
 disconsolate ijrzvSo -parent "on the bleak shore alone." The passage, how- 
 ever, which I have selected for translation is in a higher key, and gives a very 
 favourable idea of the father's candour and benevolence. It occurs towards 
 the close of his poem. 
 
 " Hactenus in sterili satis eluctatus arena, 
 Et fodere et ferro laetas compescere vites 
 Edocui, falcem tractans durosque ligones. 
 Nunc cratere manum armatus, nunc sordida musto 
 Vasa gerens, cellas et subterranea Bacchi 
 Hospitia ingredior. Proh quanta silentia ! quantus 
 Horror inest ! lato pendet curvamine fornix 
 Luce carens fumoque niger. Slant ordine longo 
 Dolia, quae culicum globus obsidet, atque bibaci 
 Guttula si qua men costis dependeat ore, 
 Sugit et in varios circumvolat ebrius orbes," &c, &c. 
 
 Vaniere's Pradium Rusiicum, Ub. xL 
 
 MEDITATIONS IN A WINE-CELLAR. 
 
 BY THE JESUIT VAN I fe RE. 
 
 " Introduxit me in cellam vinariam. "— Sane- of Solomon, cap. ii. v. 4. 
 (Vulgate version.) 
 
 I. 
 
 I've taught thus far a vineyard how to plant, 
 
 Wielded the pruning-hook, and plied the hoe, 
 And trod the grape ; now. Father Bacchus, grant 
 
 Entrance to where, in many a goodly row, 
 
 You keep your treasures safely lodged below. 
 Well have I earn'd the privilege. I ask ; 
 
 Then proudly down the cellar-steps I go : 
 Fain would I terminate my tuneful task, 
 Pondering before each pipe, communing with each cask. 
 
 II. 
 
 Hail, horrors, hail ! Welcome, Cimmerian cellar ! 
 
 Of liquid bullion inexhausted mine I 
 Cumean cave ! . no sibyl thy indweller : 
 
 Sole Pythoness, the witchery of wine ! 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 353 
 
 Pleased I explore this sanctuary of thine, 
 An humble votary, whom venturous feet 
 
 Have brought into thy subterranean shrine ; 
 Its mysteries I reverently greet, 
 Pacing these solemn vaults in contemplation sweet 
 
 III. 
 
 Arm'd with a lantern though the poet walks, 
 Who dares upon those silent halls intrude, 
 
 He cometh not a pupil of Guy Faux, 
 O'er treasonable practices to brood 
 Within this deep and awful solitude ; 
 
 Albeit Loyola claims him for a son, 
 Yet with the kindliest sympathies imbued 
 
 For every human thing heaven shines upon, 
 Naught in his bosom beats but love and benison. 
 
 IV. 
 He knows nor cares not what be other men's 
 
 Notions concerning orthodox belief; 
 Others may seek theology in " Dens," 
 
 He in this grot would rather take a leaf 
 
 From Wisdom's book, and of existence brief 
 Learn not to waste in empty jars the span. 
 
 If jars there must be in this vale of grief, 
 Let them h&Juilones ! let the flowing can 
 Reign umpire of disputes, uniting man with man. 
 
 V. 
 
 'Twere better thus than in collegiate hall, 
 Where huge infolios and ponderous tomes 
 
 Build up Divinity's dark arsenal, 
 Grope in the gloom with controversial gnomes — 
 Geneva's gospel still at war with Rome's : 
 
 Better to bury discord and dissent 
 In the calm cellar's peaceful catacombs, 
 
 Than on dogmatic bickerings intent, 
 Poison the pleasing hours for man's enjoyment meant 
 
 VI. 
 
 Doth yonder cask of Burgundy repine 
 
 That some prefer his brother of Bordeaux? 
 Is old Garumna jealous of the Rhine? 
 
 Gaul, of the grape Germanic vineyards grow ? 
 
 Doth Xeres deem meek Lachryma his foe ? 
 On the calm banks that fringe the blue Moselle, 
 
 On Leman's margin, on the plains of Po, 
 Pure from one common sky these, dew-drops fell. 
 Hast thou preserved the juice in purity? 'lis well ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Lessons of love, and light, and liberty, 
 Lurk in these wooden volumes. Freedom's code 
 
 Lies there, and Pity's charter. Poetry 
 And Genius make their favourite abode 
 In double range of goodly puncheons stow'd ; 
 
 Whence welling up freely, as from a fount, 
 The flood of Fancy in all time has flow'd. 
 
 Gushing with more exuberance, I count. 
 Than from Pierian spring on Greece's fabled mount. 
 
354 The Works of Father Prout, 
 
 VIII. 
 
 School of Athenian eloquence ! did not 
 
 Demosthenes, half-tonsured, love to pass 
 Winters in such preparatory grot, 
 
 His topics therein fit array to class, 
 
 And stores of wit and argument amass ? 
 Hath not another Greek of late arisen, 
 
 Whose eloquence partaketh of the glass, 
 Whose nose and tropes with rival radiance glisten, 
 And unto whom the Peers night after night must listen? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Say not that wine hath bred dissensions — wars ; 
 
 Charge not the grape, calumnious, with the blame 
 Of murder' d Clytus. Lapithae, Centaurs, 
 
 Drunkards of every age, will aye defame 
 
 The innocent vine to palliate their shame. 
 O Thyrsus, magic wand I thou mak'st appear 
 
 Man in his own true colours — vice proclaim 
 Its infamy — sin its foul figure rear, 
 Like the recumbent toad touch'd by Ithuriel's spear ! 
 
 X. 
 The glorious sun a savage may revile,** 
 
 And shoot his arrows at the god of day ; 
 Th' ungrateful Ethiop on thy banks, O Nile ! 
 With barbarousshout and insult may repay 
 Apollo for his vivifying ray, 
 Unheeded by the god, whose fiery team 
 Prances along the sky's immortal way ; 
 1 While from his brow, flood-like, the bounteous beam 
 Bursts on the stupid slaves who gracelessly blaspheme. 
 
 XI. 
 
 That savage outcry some attempt to ape, 
 
 Loading old Bacchus with absurd abuse ; 
 But, pitying them, the father of the grape, 
 
 And conscious of their intellect obtuse. 
 
 Tells them to go (for answer) to the juice : 
 Meantime the god, whom fools would fain annoy, 
 
 Rides on a cask, and, of his wine profuse, 
 Sends up to earth the flood without alloy, 
 Whence round the general globe circles the cup of joy. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Hard was thy fate, much-injured Hylas ! whom 
 
 The roguish Naiads of the fount entrapp'd ; 
 Thine was, in sooth, a melancholy doom — 
 
 In liquid robes for wintVy wardrobe wrapp'd, 
 
 * " Le Nil a vu sur ses rivages 
 
 Les noirs habi tans des deserts 
 Insulter, par de cris sauvages, 
 L'astre brillant de l'univers. 
 Cris impuissans ! fureurs bizarres ! 
 Tandis que ces monstres barbares 
 
 Poussent d'inutiles clameurs, 
 Le Dieu, poursuivant sa carriere. 
 Verse des torrens de lumiere 
 
 Sur ses obscurs blasphemateurs." 
 This, of all the voluminous effusions from the pen of Le Franc de Pompignan, is the 
 only stanza which will be remembered by posterity : it occurs in a collection of poetry 
 which he has entitled "Poesies Sacrees —a large quarto book. "Sacrtfes elles sont" says 
 Voltaire, " car personm n'y touche"— Prout. 
 
Modern Latin Poets. 355 
 
 And " in Elysium " of spring-water lapp'd ! " 
 Better if hither thou hadst been enticed, t ■ 
 
 Where casks abound and generous wdne is tapp'd ; 
 Thou wouldst not feel, as now, thy, limbs all iced, 
 But deem thyself in truth blest and imparadised. 
 
 XIII. 
 A Roman king— the second of the series— 
 
 Nu.ma, who reign'd upon Mount Palatine, 
 Fossess'd a private grotto cal I'd Egeria's ; 
 
 Where, being in the legislative line, 
 
 He kept an oracle men deem'd divine. 
 What nymph it was from whom his " law " he got 
 
 None ever knew ; but jars, that smelt of wine. 
 Have lately been discover'd in a grot 
 Of that Eg&rian vale. Was this the nymph ? God wot 
 
 XIV. 
 Here would I dwell, oblivious !* aye shut out 
 
 Passions and pangs that plague the human heart, 
 Content to range this goodly grot throughout, 
 
 Loth, like the lotus-eater, to depart, 
 
 Deeming this cave of joy the genuine mart ; 
 Cellar, though dark and dreary, yet I ween 
 
 Depot of brightest intellect thou art ! 
 Calm reservoir of sentiment serene ! 
 Miscellany of mind.! wit's glorious magazine ! 
 
 Of George Buchanan Scotland may be justly proud ; though I suspect there 
 exists among our northern friends a greater disposition to glory in the fame he 
 has acquired for them than an anxiety to read his works, of which there was 
 never an edition published on the other side of the great wall of Antonine save 
 one, and that not until the year 1715, by Ruddiman, in 1 vol. folio. The con- 
 tinental editions are innumerable. The Scotch have been equally unmindful of 
 certain earlier celebrities, such as John Hollybush, known abroad by the name 
 of Sacrobosco, who flourished in 1230 ; Duns Scotus, who made their name 
 famous among the Gentiles in 1300, and concerning whom a contemporary 
 poet thought it necessary to observe — 
 
 " Non Skotos a tenebris sed jSkwto? nomine dictus, 
 A populo extremum qui colit oceanum." 
 
 Then there was John Mair, a professor of Sorbonne, born among them in 1446 ; 
 not to speak of Tom Dempster, professor at Bologna, and Andrew Melvin the 
 poet, on whose patronymic the following execrable pun was perpetrated : 
 
 " Qui non mel sed fel non vinum das sed acetum 
 Quam male tarn belli nominis omen habes." 
 
 As to the admirable Crichton, the pupil of Buchanan, I don't much blame 
 them for not making a fuss about him, as the only copy of his works (in MSS.) 
 happens to be in my possession, having been discovered by me in an old trunk 
 in Mantua, and shown to no human being except Mr. Ainsworth, who men- 
 tioned to me his project of sketching off that brilliant character when last he 
 visited Watergrasshill. These unpublished works will be found among my 
 papers by my executors. To return to Buchanan, he has taken the precaution 
 of writing his own life, conscious that if left to some of nature's journeymen it 
 would be sadly handled. Born in 1506, in the shire of Lennox, poor and 
 penniless, he contrived to get over to Paris, where, having narrowly escaped 
 
 * " Quittons ce lieu ou. ma raison s enivre."— BkK anger. 
 
35 6 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 starvation at the university (the fare must have been very bad on which a Cale- 
 donian could not thrive), he returned "bock agin, " and enlisted at Edinburgh 
 in a company of French auxiliaries, merely, as he says, to learn "military 
 tactics." Our soldier spent a winter in hospital, which sickened him of martial 
 pursuits. So to Paris he sped on a second spree, and contrived to get appointed 
 master of grammar at the college of Ste. Barbe. Here a godsend fell in his 
 way in the shape of a young Scotch nobleman, Kennedy, Earl of Cassilis, who 
 brought him to Scotland, and introduced him at court. James made him tutor 
 to one of his bastard sons ; another being placed under the care of Erasmus. 
 These lads were born with a silver spoon ! Meantime Buchanan's evil star led 
 him to lampoon the Franciscan friars, at the request, he says, of the king, who 
 detested the fraternity ; but it cost him dear. Were it not for the kind offices 
 of the young Princess Mary (whom he subsequently libelled), it would have 
 gone hard with him. Be that as it may, he contrived to get out of prison, fled 
 from the vengeance of Cardinal Beaton into England, where Henry was then 
 busy bringing to the stake folks of every persuasion ; wherefore he crossed to 
 France, but found Beaton before him at Paris : so he proceeded to Bordeaux, 
 and met a friendly reception from Andre Govea, the Portuguese rector of that 
 Gascon university. While in this city he composed the tragedy of " JephteV' to 
 discourage the foolish melodrames of that period called "mysteries," of which 
 Victor Hugo has given such a ludicrous specimen in the opening chapters of 
 "Notre Dame;" he also presented a complimentary address to Charles V. onhis 
 passage from Madrid to Paris. Govea subsequently took him to Coimbra, of 
 which celebrated academy he thus became one of the early founders. But the 
 friars, who never yet lost sight of a foe, got him at last here into the clutches of 
 the Inquisition, and, during a long captivity in Banco St. Dominici, he was at 
 leisure to execute his glorious translation of the Psalms into Latin lyrical verse. 
 From Portugal he managed to escape in a Turkish vessel bound for London, 
 and thence repaired to France, for which country he appears to have had a 
 curious predilection. He there got employment as tutor in the Marshale 
 Brissac's family ; and meantime wrote verses in honour of every leading con- 
 temporary event, such as the raising of the siege of Metz, the taking of Ver- 
 celles, and the capture of Calais by the Due de Guise in 1557. This latter 
 occurrence is one of such peculiar interest to an English reader, and gives 
 Buchanan such an opportunity of expressing his real sentiments towards 
 England, that I have selected it for translation. It is strange that in his auto- 
 biography he abuses the hero whom he celebrates in his ode, and who was no 
 other than the celebrated Guise le Balafrl (so called from a cicatrice on the 
 cheek), whose statue may be seen in our own day on the market-place of 
 Calais, and whose military genius and activity much resembled the rapid con- 
 ceptions and brilliant execution of Buonaparte. The allusion to the prevalent 
 astrological mania at court is quite characteristic of the philosophic poet, ever 
 grave and austere even in the exercise of fancy ; but the abuse lavished on the 
 ex-emperor Charles V. is not a proof of Buchanan's consistency. 
 
 AD FRANCIiE REGEM, HEN- ODE ON THE TAKING OF 
 RICUM II., POST VICTOS CALAIS, 
 
 CALETES, Addressed to Henry II., King of France, 
 Georgius Buchanan, Scotus. by George Buchanan. 
 
 Non Parca fati conscia, lubricae -Henry ! let none commend to thee 
 
 Non sortis axis, sistere nescius. Fate, Fortune, Doom, or Destiny, 
 
 Non siderum lapsus, sed unus Or Star in heaven's high canopy, 
 
 Rerum opifex moderatur orbem. With magic glow 
 
 Shining on man s nativity. 
 For weal or woe. 
 
Qui terram inertem stare loco jubet, 
 Mquor perennes volvere vortices, 
 Coelumque nunc lucem tenebris, 
 Nunc tenebras variare luce. 
 
 3ui temperatae sceptra modesttae, 
 Sat et protervae frcena superbiae, 
 
 gui lachrymis fccdat tnumphos, 
 t lachrymas hilarat triumphis. 
 
 Rather, O king ! here recognize 
 A Providence all-just, all-wise. 
 Of every earthly enterprise 
 
 The hidden mover ; 
 Aye casting calm complacent eyes 
 
 Down on thy Louvre. 
 
 Prompt to assume the right's defence, 
 Mercy unto the meek dispense, 
 Curb the rude jaws of insolence 
 
 With bit and bridle, 
 And scourge the chiel whose frankincense 
 
 Bums for an idol. 
 
 Exempla longe ne repetam ; en ! jacet 
 Fractusque et exspes, quern grenuo suo 
 Fortuna fotum nuper omnes 
 Per populos tumidum ferebat. 
 
 Who, his triumphant course amid, 
 Who smote the monarch of Madrid, 
 And bade Pavla's victor bid 
 
 To power farewell ? 
 Once Europe's arbiter, now hid 
 
 In hermit's cell. 
 
 Nee tu secundo flamine quern super 
 
 Felicitatis vexerat sequora 
 Henrice ! virtus,— nesciisti, 
 Umbriferae frenulum procellae. 
 
 Sed pertinax hunc fastus adhuc premit, 
 Urgetque pressum, et progeniem sui 
 Fiduciaque pari tumentem, 
 Clade pari exagitat Philippum. 
 
 Te qui minorem te superis geris, 
 
 Culpamque fletu diluis agnitam, 
 
 Mitis parens placatus audit, 
 
 Et sohtum cumulat flavorem. 
 
 Thou, too, hast known misfortune's blast ; 
 Tempests have bent thy stately mast, 
 And nigh upon the breakers cast 
 
 Thy gallant ship : 
 But now the hurricane is pass'd — 
 
 Hush'd is the deep. 
 
 For Philip, lord of Arragon, 
 
 Of haughty Charles the haughty son, 
 
 The clouds still gather dark and dun, 
 
 The sky still scowls ; 
 And round his gorgeous galledn 
 
 The tempest howls. 
 
 Thou, when th' Almighty Ruler dealt 
 The blows thy kingdom lately felt. 
 Thy brow unhelm'd, unbound thy belt, 
 
 Thy feet unshod, 
 Humbly before the chastener knelt, 
 
 And kiss'd the rod. 
 
 Redintegratae nee tibi gratise 
 Obscura promit signa. Sub algido 
 N ox Capricorno longa terras 
 Perpetms tenebris premebat, 
 
 Pardon and peace thy penance bought ; 
 Joyful the seraph Mercy brought 
 The olive-bough, with blessing fraught 
 
 For thee and France ; — 
 God for thy captive kingdom wrought 
 
 Deliverance. 
 
 Rigebat auris bruma nivalibus, 
 Amnes acuto constiterant gelu, 
 Deformis horror incubabat 
 Jugeribus viduis colono. 
 
 Twas dark and drear! 'twas winter's 
 
 reign! 
 Grim horror walk'd the lonesome plain ; 
 The ice held bound with crystal chain 
 
 Lake, flood, and rill ; 
 And dismal piped the hurricane 
 
 His music shrill. 
 
 At signa castris Francus ut extulit 
 Ductorque Franci Guizius agminis, 
 Arrisit algenti sub arcto 
 Temperies melioris aurae. 
 
 But when the gallant Guise displayed 
 The flag of France, and drew the blade, 
 Straight the obsequious season bade 
 
 ' Its rigour cease ; 
 And, lowly crouching, homage paid 
 The Fleur db Lys. 
 
358 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 Hyems retuso languida spiculo 
 
 Vim mitigavit frigoris asperi, 
 Siccis per hybernum serenum 
 Ntbe cavQ. stetit imber arvis. 
 
 Ergo nee altis tuta paludibus 
 Tulere vires mcenia Gallicas ; 
 Nee arcibus tutae paludes 
 Praecipitem tenuere cursum. 
 
 Lor^nb prmceps ! prascipuo Del 
 Favore felix, praecipuas Deus 
 Cui tradidit partes, superbos 
 Ut premeres domitrice dextrft. 
 
 Unlus anni curriculo sequent _ 
 Vix credet aetas promeritas tibi 
 Tot laureas, nee si per aethram 
 Fegasea* veherere penna* 
 
 Cessere saltus ninguidi, et Alpium 
 Inserta ccelo culmina, cum pater 
 Romanus oraret, propinquae ut 
 Subjiceres humeros ruinae. 
 
 Defensa Roma, et capta Valentia, 
 Coacta pacem Parthenope pati, 
 Fama tui Segusianus 
 Barbarica face Hberatus. 
 
 iEquor procellis, terra paludibus, 
 Armis Britannus, mcenia sseculis 
 Invicta longis insolentes - 
 Munierant animos Caletum : 
 
 Loraena virtus, sueta per inyia 
 Non usitatum carpere tramitem, 
 Invicta devincendo, famam 
 Laude nova veterem refelUt. 
 
 Ferox Britannus viribus antehac 
 Gallisque semper cladibus imminens, 
 Vix se putat securum ab hoste 
 Fluctibus Oceani diremptus. 
 
 Winter his violence withheld, 
 His progeny of tempests quell'd, 
 His canopy of clouds dispell'd, 
 
 Unveil'd the sun— 
 And blithesome days unparallel'd 
 
 Began to run. 
 
 'Twas then beleaguer'd Calais found, 
 With swamps and marshes fenced around, 
 With counterscarp, and moat, and mound, 
 
 And yawning trench, 
 Vainly her hundred bulwarks frown'd 
 
 To stay the French. 
 
 Guise ! child of glory and Lorraine, 
 Ever thine house hath proved the bane 
 Of France's foes ! aye from the chain 
 
 Of slavery kept herj 
 And to the teeth of haughty Spain 
 
 Upheld her sceptre. 
 
 Scarce will a future age believe 
 The deeds one year saw thee achieve : 
 Fame in her narrative should give 
 
 Thee magic pinions 
 To range, with free prerogative, 
 
 All earth's dominions. 
 
 What were the year's achievements ? first. 
 Yon Alps their barrier saw thee burst, 
 To bruise a reptile's head, who durst, 
 
 With viper sting, 
 Assail (ingratitude accurst !) 
 
 Rome's Pontiff-King. 
 
 To rescue Rome, capture Plaisance, 
 Make Naples yield the claims of France, 
 While the mere shadow of thy lance 
 
 O'erawed the Turk :— 
 Such was, within the year's expanse, 
 
 Thy journey-work. 
 
 But Calais yet remain'd unwon — 
 
 Calais, stronghold of Albion, 
 
 Her zone begirt with blade and gun, 
 
 . In all the pomp 
 And pride of war ; fierce Amazon I 
 Queen of a swamp ! 
 
 But even she hath proven frail, 
 Her walls and swamps of no avail ; 
 What citadel may Guise not scale, 
 
 Climb, storm, and seize? 
 What foe before thee may not quail, 
 
 O gallant Guise ! 
 
 Thee let the men of England dread, 
 Whom Edward erst victorious led, 
 Right joyful now that ocean's bed 
 
 Between them rolls 
 And thee I— that thy triumphant tread 
 
 Von wave controls. 
 
 * Buchanan appears to have the following verse of Hesiod in view: 
 
 Ttjc fitv nifyoo'oc ctAc km «ff0Aof BeAAcpof/wvTij?.— TJucgonia, 
 
Modem Latin Poets. 
 
 3S9 
 
 Regina, pacem nescia perpeti 
 Jam spreta mceret fcedera : Jam Dei 
 Iram timet sibi imminentem 
 Vindicis et furise flagellum. 
 
 Huic luce terror Martius assonat, 
 Diraeque caedis mens sibi conscia, 
 Umbrseque nocturnal, quietem- -■ 
 Terrificis agitant figuris. 
 
 Let ruthless Mary learn from hence 
 
 That Perfidy's a foul offence ; 
 
 That falsehood hath its recompense J 
 
 That treaties broken. 
 The anger of Omnipotence 
 
 At length have woken. 
 
 May evil counsels prove the bane > 
 And curse of her unhallow'd reign ; 
 Remorse, with its disastrous train, 
 
 Infest her palace ; 
 And may she of God's vengeance drain 
 
 The brimming chalice ! 
 
 Every schoolboy knows that this event broke Queen Mary's heart, so incon- 
 solable was she for the loss of those " keys of France" which the monarchs of 
 England, from Edward to the bluff Harry, had gloried in wearing suspended 
 to the royal girdle. 
 
 Of Buchanan's career on his return to Scotland, and his conduct as a poli- 
 tician and courtier, I rather say nothing, than not enter fully into that intricate 
 subject as it deserves. The limits of this paper do not allow me the latter 
 alternative. As a poet his career terminated when the gates of state intrigue 
 were thrown open to his ingress, and so I bid him farewell on the threshold. His 
 " Maiae Calendar," his " Epiccedium on the Death of John Calvin," his poem 
 " De SphasrsV' his translations from Euripides, his elegiac poetry, all his titles to 
 renown had been already won ere he entered on the stage as a political partisan. 
 By the way, John Milton has translated his tragedy of ' ' Baptistes," if we are to 
 credit Pecks edition of the bard of Paradise. Certain it is, however, that 
 Buchanan's "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," a wonderful step in Radicalism for 
 that day, was fheprototype of the Cromwellian secretary's ' ' Defensio pro Populo 
 Anglicano," It appears that Buchanan had some share in the education of 
 Michel Montaigne — a glorious feather in his cap, if it be not a borrowed one. 
 Crichton was certainly his scholar ; and no better proof of the fact can be 
 afforded than the following lyric (from the MS. found by me in an old trunk, as 
 before stated), a copy of which I fear has got abroad in Burns' s time, he having 
 somehow transferred the sentiments it expresses most literally too. song of his 
 set to a Well-known tune. However, it is clear that Crichton's claim cannot be 
 invalidated by any ex post facto concern ; to him the original version of the 
 matter belongs undoubtedly, or else I am no judge. In fact, the thing speaks 
 for itself. 
 
 JOANNEM ANDREW FILIUM 
 ANUS UXOR ALLOQUITUR. 
 
 (From the unpublished Works of the 
 Admirable Crichton.) 
 
 Senex Joannes ! dulcis amor tuae 
 Anilis aequfe conjugis ! integrd 
 
 Cum nos juventa jungeremur 
 
 Quam bene caesaries nitebat ! 
 Frontis marito qualis erat decor ! 
 Nunc, heu ! nivalis canities premit, 
 
 Nulla; sed his canis capilhs 
 
 Illecebrae mini cariores ! 
 
 THE OLD HOUSEWIFE'S 
 ADDRESS TO HER GUDE- 
 
 MAN. 
 
 ( Translated into broad Scotch by Robert 
 Burns, of the Excise!) 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 - When we were first acquent. 
 Your "locks were like the raven, 
 
 Your bonnie brow was brent ; 
 But now your head's tum'd bald, John, 
 
 Your locks are like the snow, 
 But blessings on your frosty pow, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
36o 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 Suando, Joannes ml bone ! primitus 
 atura rerum finxit imagines 
 Formam elaboravit vinlem, 
 Hoc ut opus fieret magistrum. 
 Sed, inter omnes quas opifex pia 
 Struxit figuras artifici manu, 
 Curavit ut membris et ore 
 Nulla foret tibi par Joannes E 
 
 Tibi rosarum primitias dedi, ■ 
 Vemosque virgo Candida, flosculos, 
 
 Nee fonte miraris quod illo 
 
 Delicias repetam perennes : 
 Jam te senilem, jam veterem vocant ; 
 Verum nee illis credula, nee tibi, 
 
 Oblita vel menses, vel annos, 
 
 Haurio perpetuos amores. 
 
 Propago nobis orta parent ibus, 
 Crevit remoti aucta nepotibus, 
 At nos in asmborum calentes 
 Usque sinu recreamur ambo ; 
 Hyems amori nulla supervenit — 
 Nos semper ulnis in mutuis beat, 
 Tibique perduro superstes 
 Quahs eram nitid& juventa. 
 
 Patris voluptas quanta domesticam 
 (Diim corde mater palpitat intimo) 
 Videre natorum coronam 
 Divitias humilis taberme ! 
 Videre natos reddere moribus 
 Mores parentum, reddere vultibus 
 Vultus, et exemplo fideles 
 Tendere cum proavis Olympo. 
 
 Heu ! ml Joannes, Temporis alite 
 Penn& quot anni, quotque boni dies 
 Utrumque fugerunt ! suprema 
 Jamque brevi properabit hora. — 
 Mortis prehendet dextera conjuges 
 Non imparatos, non timidos mori, 
 Vitftque functos innocenti, 
 Nee sine spe melioris xvi ! 
 
 ViUe labores consociavimus, 
 Montana juncti vicimus ardua, 
 Et nunc potiti gaudiorum 
 Culmine quid remoramur ultra ? 
 Dextris revinctis, per semitas retrd 
 Lenes, petamus vallis iter senex ! 
 Quft vir et uxor dormiamus 
 Unius in gremio sepulchri. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 When Nature first began 
 To try her cannie hand, John, 
 
 Her master-work was man ; 
 And you amang them all, John, 
 
 Sae trig frae top to toe, 
 She proved to be nae joumey-wark, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 Ye were my first conceit, 
 And ye need na think it strange, John, 
 
 That I ca' ye trim and neat : 
 Though some folks say you're old, John, 
 
 I never think ye so, 
 But I think you're aye the same to me, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 We've seen our bairnies' bairns, 
 And yet, my dear John. Anderson, 
 
 I'm happy in your arms ; 
 And so are ye in mine, John — 
 
 I'm sure you'll ne'er say no, 
 Tho' the days are gane that ye have seen, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 What pleasure does it gi'e 
 To see sae many sprouts, John, 
 
 Spring up 'tween you and me ! 
 And ilka lad and lass, John, 
 
 In our footsteps to go, 
 Make perfect heaven here on earth, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 Frae year to year we ve pass'd. 
 And soon that year maun come, John, 
 
 Will bring us to our last ; 
 But let not that affright us, John, 
 
 Our hearts were ne'er our foe. 
 While in innocent delight we lived, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
 John Anderson my jo, John, 
 
 We've clamb the hill thegither, 
 And monie a cantie day, John, 
 
 We've had wi' ane amther ; 
 Now we maun totter down, John, 
 
 But hand in hand we'll go, 
 And we'll sleep thegither at the foot, 
 
 John Anderson my jo. 
 
XIX. 
 
 Jfctfrer f rout's girgc. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, January, 1836.) 
 
 [Considerably more than half the opening instalment of Regina for 1836 was set apart, 
 to the number of exactly eighty pages, for a laboured piece of pleasantry purporting to 
 be a Parliamentary Report of the Proceedings instituted at the close of last session to 
 inquire into the conduct and to regulate the future management of Fraser's Magazine. 
 Instead of Lords and Commons, Immortals to the number of twenty, and Mortals to the 
 number of one hundred and thirty-six, were there represented as having been called together 
 by Oliver Yorke in the name of his and their putative Sovereign. The record of the 
 proceedings, now that it comes to be looked back at in cold blood, presents to view the 
 wildest imaginable extravagance, the contributors and their friends (and enemies) indulg- 
 ing in horse-play and high jinks alternately. Songs and speeches, about as coherent as 
 Foote's nonsense verses, are intermingled in the utmost confusion. There is a procession 
 like a march through Coventry, and a festival of Gargantuan proportions, that is in the 
 delirium of its fun ; and, as the climax of it all, the Ghost of Father Prout, rising in 
 answer to the crowning incantation, delivers the speech and chants the dirge which are 
 here subjoined.] 
 
 The Ghost of Father Prout here held forth his whisky bottle, and begged to 
 be heard in a case of ' ' narration." Even the feminines were quieted instanter. 
 He addressed himself to the subject not before the meeting in these interesting 
 and disinterested terms of art : — 
 
 "Yorke and Boys! — without exception, you are the queerest lads ever 
 generated out of the beautiful city called Cork. Well, let all that be buried 
 in immemorial oblivion. Living heroes of the world of letters, listen ! Immortal 
 as are your lustrous and illustrious souls, you can't live here on earth for ever. 
 No clay could ever stand the steadfast fires of your ardent minds for more 
 than a hundred years. Down your tenements must inevitably fall ; for the sus- 
 taining life within them, now glowing like a candle ' in a grotto ' of oyster- 
 shells, must soar to — 
 
 ' An ampler ether, a diviner air, 
 And fields invested with purp ureal gleams.' 
 
 There can be no question but you will be chuckled over, shouted over, howled 
 over by ' the base, the dull, the cold.' Supposing, then, that you were all dead 
 igreatsensation) — supposing, I say, that you were all dead (increasing sensation), 
 supposing (but I won't repeat) that you, gentlemen, were each of you ' one 
 of us,' the dirge which I should submit, not to you but to your adversaries, 
 would run as follows : — 
 
362 The Works of Father ProuL 
 
 *' DIRGE. 
 
 " Now Dullmen all be merry, O ! 
 While the Fraser hoys they bury, O ! 
 
 To curse their grave, 
 
 I'll chant a stave 
 To the tune of Deny, deny, O ! 
 
 "So give your hearts to glee for once. 
 And we will have a spree for once ; 
 While our lemonade, 
 In proud cascade, 
 Shall rival barley bree for once. 
 
 " Sing riggledum diggledum razor, O ! 
 Now we 11 astonish each gazer, O ! 
 
 And to sky-cock'd ears 
 
 We'll bray proud cheers 
 'Gainst the Lions who roar'd in Fraser, O ! 
 
 " Don't, Dullmen, be too merry, O ! 
 Should the Fraser boys they bury, O ! 
 For the bright and brave, 
 In a glorious grave, 
 Will be deaf to your Derry, deny, O ! 
 
 " So rather plunge in grief each dunce, 
 Shedding iron tears,' that brief, for once, 
 Has been the reign 
 Of blood and brain 
 That gave the world relief, for once ! 
 
 " Sing riggledum diggledum razor, O ! 
 There'll be tears in the eyes of each gazer, ! 
 
 As they follow the hearse 
 
 Of deep Prose and Verse, 
 Which we feel will be buried with Fraser, O ! '* 
 
 This solemn psalm caused the blushes of the ladies to be transferred to the 
 cheeks of the gentlemen ; and, "smoothing the raven down of darkness till it 
 smiled," the bright Aurora bowed her sable rival out of "cloudland, gorgeous 
 land," and " Honour to Woman" once again sung, the ladies withdrew, to give 
 a beautiful embodiment of the Byronian image — 
 
 " The slumbers of each folded flower." 
 
 And, as for the men, having shaken hands (if hand-shaking it could be called) 
 with the ghosts, 
 
 " Evanishing amid the storm," 
 
 they— the men, not the ghosts— took care of themselves as true Fraserians 
 always can and do. 
 
XX. 
 
 fa%r ||nmt'g Bdf-€,mmxnvdian. 
 
 {Fraser*s Magazine, March, 1836.) 
 
 m [Father Prout, in this Paper, may be said to have adventured, as scrupulously as might be 
 in any way possible, under the circumstances, upon a sort of serio-comic self-examination. 
 Like each of his other Papers, it is introduced with incidental remarks, purporting to convey 
 the dispassionate opinions of an outsider on the disquisitions of the dead-and-gone Parish 
 Priest of Watergrasshill. This comprehensive criticism by himself of the whole of the 
 Reliques when they were collectively republished, appeared in the number of Fraser 
 containing Maclise s whimsical etching of. the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, author, in 
 1786, of Fourteen Sonnets, representing the bald-headed sonneteer seated, swathed in 
 cloak and arrayed in hessians, each of the latter a world too wide for his shrunk shank, 
 his hat and umbrella being at the same time disposed about him as conspicuously as Paul 
 Pry's might have been in a well-posed portrait of that farcical hero.] 
 
 H <t>tkov avrjp' 1} d)i\oc oydov 
 
 <Pi\a yap Ktntvdtv tiQn 
 * * * 
 
 101 IKOV 
 
 E\0' air* aKpov KOpufi 
 
 ftov oxQov KapSofMotpopoio.— Eschyl. Persa* 
 
 "An infallible cure for the Maw-worms ;— Poti' fortis quartum unum, rowlorum 
 brownorum ad minimum tres : his addaturbutyri culinaris quantum valeat duos denarios, 
 cum bunsho radishorum vel Watergrass."— Swift, Tripos, Act I. (Scott's Edition, 
 vol. iv. p. 231.) 
 
 The thinking portion of the public must have felt considerable uneasiness, 
 and the rest of mankind lost itself in vain conjecture, to account for the glaring 
 fact of our having, for several months back, stopped the supplies from Water- 
 grasshill, and discontinued our accustomed issues of Prout Paper. It were 
 hard, in sooth, to cloak so obvious a deficit in the economy of our immortal 
 Magazine ; and we therefore fain admit that, as far as those valuable documents 
 are concerned, Regina hath, sifcce November last, exhibited, what scientific 
 men are agreed to denominate, "a solution of continuity," while grammarians 
 describe such appearance by the established formula " hiatus valdedeflendus" 
 the same being called, by Lady Morgan, "a hole in the ballad." No doubt 
 Glorvina's vernacular phraseology properly describes the true nature of the 
 case ; nor can we account for the circumstance otherwise than by laying the 
 
blame on a Fraserian who went off last autumn to Italy, taking with him the 
 key of the chest. A gaping void was thus occasioned in the periodical litera- 
 ture of the land — an awful chasm, to fill up which no "Roman" has been 
 found willing to devote himself to the infernal gods. The known abhorrence of 
 forgery in all its branches has prevented us from applying to the Smiths (James 
 or Horace). The coffer has remained unopened, and the vacuum unclosed. 
 
 Even had we been disposed to practise an imposition on the public, the thing, 
 in this instance, were impossible, Prout's chest and its contents being matters 
 apart and unique ; nor could any modern homme de kttres be found to per- 
 sonate successfully our vieux de la montagne. 
 
 To bend the bow of Ulysses, to wield the gridiron of Cobbett, to revive the 
 sacred pigeon of Mahomet, to reinflate the bagpipe of Ossian, to reproduce 
 the meal-tub of Titus Oates, or (when Dan goes to his long account) to get 
 up a begging-box, must necessarily be hopeless speculations. Under the 
 management of the original and creative genius these contrivances may work 
 well ; but they invariably fail in the hands of copyists or imitators. 
 
 This affords us a desirable opportunity of animadverting on the erroneous 
 theories of a new weekly periodical, called Fraser's Literary Chronicle, in the 
 fifth number of which appeared a polyglot " Lament of all Nations on the 
 Death of the late Mr. Simpson," the renowned Master of Ceremonies at Vaux- 
 hall. In the cecumenic grief for Simpson we cordially concur ; great men are, 
 in fact, becoming every day more scarce among us — 
 
 " We are fallen on evil days, 
 - Star after star decays ; 
 
 but we cannot approve of the arrangement proposed for supplying the deficiency. 
 Not attending to the fact, that a truly original character can have no successor 
 in whatever peculiar department of excellence he has made his own, this 
 imaginative chroniqueur has indulged in the fanciful contemplation of various 
 personages undertaking to fill the vacant office ; and finally hits, with curious 
 infelicity, on a ci-devant Lord High Chancellor of England as the best quali- 
 fied of the numerous aspirants for the empty cock hat. We give insertion to 
 this " Lament," that all may judge of its absurdity : — 
 
 Ergo Ludorum periit Magister 
 Et suburban! moderator horti 
 Arbiter Simpson elegantium 
 
 Ivit ad orcum. 
 
 Jamque vulgaris petit umbra manes, 
 Splendido frontem minor heu galero 
 Nee senis, dextram regit, ut soiebat, 
 Aurea virga. 
 
 Horrida turba male mixtus errat, 
 Nee salutantem tenet hortus ilium 
 Amplius noster, neque dirigentum 
 Pubhca festa. 
 
 Sub viri tanti poterit subire, 
 unus et diram reparare damnum ! 
 Quam vocat Vauxhall mage candidatum 
 Sede vacante. 
 
 Cui dabit partes nemus hoc habendi 
 Jupiter I tandem venias precamur 
 J&re mendicos humeros omustus 
 
 Suavis O'Connell. 
 
Father Prout's Self-Examination. 365 
 
 Sive tu mavis benedicte Roebuck, 
 Quem decor linguse notat et venustas 
 Quippe deposcunt ea delicatos 
 
 Munera mores. 
 
 Sive mutata veterum figure . 
 Simpsonem in terris imitatis, altae 
 Curiae praeses patiens vocari ■ 
 
 " Brougham et VauxhalL" 
 
 Sumat Henricus vacuos honores 
 Hie amet dici pater atque prasses 
 Ccetui quendo procerum praecosse 
 
 Curia non vult. 
 
 The writer of these Sapphics evidently takes it as a matter of course that, on 
 the extinction or disappearance of any shining light, an equivalent may be 
 readily found in some fresh luminary; or that, as among the torch-carriers 
 (caoouxoi) of old, the transfer of Simpson's gold-headed cane to the hands 
 that whilom wielded with such becoming dignity the chancellor's mace, were 
 a natural and feasible operation. This is a grave mistake. The process would, 
 if generally adopted, produce unspeakable confusion in the social and political 
 world. It is in vain to argue that some men are endowed by nature with such 
 prodigious versatility of talent, that it is to them a matter of indifference 
 whether they fill the highest situation on what is called the bench (scammum), 
 or preside as tutelary genius over a garden— Furum aviumque maxima formido. 
 This may be very well as far as they are concerned ; but the public likes to see 
 every one in his proper place; the " fitness of things" being best promoted by 
 such arrangements. Nostradamus, arrayed in the solemn accoutrements of his 
 profession, and engaged in the diffusion of useful knowledge among the rustics 
 of France, forms in our mind's eye an impersonation of individual excellence 
 distinct, one, and indivisible ; Petronius Arbiter supplies another. Brougham 
 and Simpson may have each had a particular of the auro divinior which dwelt 
 in the corporeal envelope of their great predecessors ; but the metempsychosis, 
 in my fuller sense, can never be said to take place, much less (as in the pro- 
 posed transmission of the M. C.ship of Vauxhall) can the functions of the one 
 at all coalesce in our imagination, or amalgamate with the attributions of the 
 other. Some fancy they can perceive, in the quarter alluded to, a counterpart 
 of the illustrious Lord Verulam. As we just said, there are points of resem- 
 blance ; but the ingenuity of Plutarch would be expended in vain, on eking 
 out those points into an historical parallel. A cracked barrel organ has a term 
 in common with the " Novum Organum," and the merest gammon may claim 
 some sort of affinity to Bacon. 
 
 In the annals of literary, as well as political impostorship, we apprehend the 
 same trick will hardly be found to succeed twice ; and a remarkable instance 
 just now occurs in the untimely end of the " Roebuck Pamphlets," which we 
 find registered in the bills of periodical mortality. A case far more akin to 
 Prout's Papers suggests itself to us in that of the " Persian Letters," which, at 
 their first appearance in 1721, carried Paris by storm, and from the bold effron- 
 tery of their mock orientalism, led to a general belief in their authenticity. 
 The consequence was obvious. "Faites nous des ' Lettres Persannes ' " was the 
 injunction of every French bookseller to his hack. The idea was quickly caught 
 up, and worked out into innumerable forms ; but none produced the effect 
 wrought on gentle readers when Montesquieu's youthful production first beamed 
 on the dulness of contemporary publications. "Chinese Letters," "Lettres 
 Peruviennes," " The Turkish Spy," Don Espriella's "Letters from England," 
 and "Anacharsis in Greece" were some of the numerous maggots hatched into 
 
366 The Works of Fattier Prout. 
 
 life by the brilliant ray of that original conception ; an " illustrious foreigner's" 
 opinion of things in general became the received vehicle of conveying gossip, 
 criticism, and information. But it was in the nature of things that little of the 
 primaeval spark should have communicated itself to the slimy spawn that crawled 
 into being under the warm influence of Montesquieu's creative fancy; and in a 
 late specimen called "Pencillings by the Way,"" written under the fictitious 
 character of an American attache, may be seen how wofully the information 
 and the criticism have departed from that species of composition, leaving gossip 
 alone as the flat and unprofitable residuum. 
 
 These considerations have deterred us from adopting the practice too preva- 
 lent in the world of letters of personating a dead or favourite writer, and so 
 deluding the public by supposititious authorship. Hence, since the above- 
 mentioned epoch (viz., the Hegira of the Key), no paper has been sent abroad 
 by us under the name of Prqut : the. chest has remained 
 
 " Lone as the hung-up lute, that ne'er hath spoken 
 Since the sad .day its master-chord was broken." 
 
 Meantime our country correspondent; have waxed clamorous at the cessation 
 of these monthly essays, in a way that abundantly testified the serious nature 
 of the privation. Marco Tulli, quid agis f was of old the searching inter- 
 rogatory addressed by all Italy to her consul in the heated imagination of Cicero 
 (Cat. IV.). The same question has been put to us in black and white from 
 every quarter of the empire. Brute dormis ? was the billet-doux flung into the 
 Uctico of a reluctant and justly hesitating conspirator, by some kind friend 
 anxious in those days, like many a patriot in our own, 
 
 "To make the fun stir" 
 
 at the risk and peril of another. To us the same challenge has been conveyed 
 with a less tragic intent, though in equally laconic form, viz.— 
 
 Father Prout 
 What are ye about ? — 
 
 an exbortatory couplet from the pen of Jerdan, the illustrious Gazetteer. 
 
 All have not confined themselves to exhortation. Some folks have got it into 
 their heads that we are not at liberty to withhold these "Papers" from the 
 public, and that Prout's coffer should of right be, like the crown of these realms, 
 " merely held in trust for the benefit of the people." Our claims to these post- 
 humous treasures is not recognized unless subject, as hitherto, to monthly divi- 
 dends ; and the stoppage is viewed as an attempt to defraud a host of creditors. 
 By the Lord ! from the tenor of some communications, it would be supposed 
 that the pillar at the end of the street was erected to Oliver Yorke, and not 
 to a far more illustrious personage. 
 
 It were useless to remonstrate with these people. Such continued and mer- 
 ciless exigency would refuse to old Homer, were he under their control, the 
 enjoyment of an occasional nap, or to Milton his usual idL season, which we 
 believe regularly came on about the equinox. They would have us shower 
 down Prout Papers on the world all the year round, with the facility and pro- 
 fusion of " leaf-shaking Pelion"— 
 
 YlnXiov tivoai<pv\\ov. 
 
 They would require us to strew the paths of literature with the foliage of 
 Watergrasshill— 
 
Father Proufs Self-Examination. 367 
 
 " Thick as autumnal leaves 
 In Vallombrosa." 
 
 With these we do not stop to reason or apologize, but content ourselves with 
 repeating that we are sorry to have been under the necessity, for the reason 
 already assigned, of disobliging, during the late recess, the numerous admirers 
 of our old gentleman ; the editing of whose MSS. we hope shortly to resume to 
 the satisfaction of the public— 
 
 " Carraina turn melius cum venerit ipse canemus." 
 
 Nevertheless, it strikes us there has been no lack of appropriate publications, 
 pending the interruption of our series, while Sol was in his apogee, and while 
 the town was empty. The interval has, for instance, been made jocund by the 
 simultaneous concert of those innocent and playful vocalists, the Annuals, 
 who, with instinctive sagacity, have selected that period for their praiseworthy 
 performances. " Soft was the strain," as the poet of the " Deserted Village " 
 says of them, when in the spirit of prophecy he enumerates their several 
 characteristics : — 
 
 "At evening's close, 
 On yonder hill the village murmur rose, 
 The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung : 
 The tuneful cow that low'd to meet her young ; 
 The playful children just let loose from school, 
 The noisy ducks that gabbled o'er the pool." 
 
 All these melodious outpourings, we think, amply compensated for the 
 silence of the Father, and soothed the ear of the deserted metropolis with an 
 agreeable diversion or diversity of sound :— 
 
 "All these in sweet succession sought the shade, 
 And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made." 
 
 ' In the meantime we have not been idle, we have recogitated and reperused, 
 we have " collected and arranged." The mere transitory enjoyment of good 
 things has not sufficed to satisfy or to satiate us ; and we know we will readily 
 find excuse and sympathy if we acknowledge to have cast a lingering look of 
 retrospection on our bygone jollifications with the pastor of Watergrasshill. In 
 the writings of Diodorus Siculus (1. ii. p. 109), there is a sentiment attributed 
 to Sardanapalus, which in a literary sense we are tempted to adopt, as expressive 
 of what we experienced in ruminating over these recollections : — 
 
 K* iv cyw otrtr itpayov Kai itpvflpicra Kcti just' eptarov 
 Te/iflV sTraOoi/' ta 3k iroWa teat, oXfiia irdvra \t\etir Tat; 
 
 which Greek couplet has had the distinguished honour of having been trans- 
 lated by no less a distinguished versifier than Cicero, whose Latin distich is to 
 the following effect: — 
 
 '' Hare habeo quae edi, quasque exsaturata libido 
 
 Hietsit Ut ECCE JACENT QUANTA ET, PR^CLARA RELICTA.'' 
 
 Whereupon, though Aristotle has denounced the Assyrian's effusion in no 
 very measured terms, stating it to be only "fit for a hog," we will imitate 
 Tully, and give it currency in our native idiom : — 
 
 " I've revell'd at the gorgeous board- 
 Oft as they fill'd the cup, I drank it : 
 Unsated still ; fain would I hoard 
 
 The splendid remnants of the banquet ! " 
 
368 TJie Works of Father Prout. 
 
 So spoke the voluptuary of Nineveh, who never dreamed that we would 
 apply his dying speech, after a lapse of ages, to the relics of Father Prout, and 
 by that redeeming use of a swinish sentiment rebuke the saying of the Stagyrite. 
 
 " Gather the fragments " was addressed to the disciples of old on the occa- 
 sion of a beneficent miracle. The consequence of such injunction was, that they 
 filled twelve baskets with what had otherwise been wasted in the desert. We 
 have brought together, into two small octavo volumes, the scattered remnants 
 of Prout's loaves and fishes, under the impression that some may be glad to 
 feed again on that which has already banqueted so many thousands. 
 
 Owing to the limited capacity of our two octavo baskets, we have not been 
 able to stow away all the hitherto exhibited morsels (disjecta, membra) of the 
 Father within the prescribed dimensions. We have, therefore, contented our- 
 selves with securing the first twelve essays, twelve being a long-established 
 numeral in high credit with antiquity, sacred and profane. Are there not the 
 twelve labours of Hercules, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve tribes, twelve 
 tables, twelve cantos, twelve judges, twelve months, and twelve pence ? 
 
 The first of these volumes opens with an "Apology for Lent," elicited by 
 Bunn's smuggling attempt to get up the sacred oratorio of " Jephthah," during 
 this solemn season at Covent Garden, two years ago. Truly there is no study 
 so instructive as the inquiring into cause and effect ; nor any that occasionally 
 unfolds such unexpected combinations. Thus, Bishop Blomfield's vigorous 
 and successful resistance to Bunn's flagrant innovation led to the publication 
 of Prout's defence of salt-fish, and the subsequent conveyance of his chest into 
 our possession. 
 
 An account of the Father's death, " his funeral and an elegy," are appended 
 to that deipnosophistic dissertation. It is suitably followed up by " A Plea for 
 Pilgrimages," with a full narrative of Sir Walter Scott's peregrination to 
 Blarney during the summer of 1825. Huic accedunt, the polyglot version of 
 "The Groves," the Father's carousal on Watergrasshill, the secret of his 
 parentage, revealed in " Dean Swift's Madness : a Tale of a Churn," an 
 edifying exposi of the " Rogueries of Tom Moore," an argument in the manner 
 of Tully, pro domo sua, entitled " Literature and the Jesuits," the tome being 
 wound up with Gresset's immortal poem, "Vert-Vert," "done"into English. 
 
 The contents of the second volume comprise the Father's four papers on the 
 songs of France, with two on the lyrical poetry of the Italians— per die and 
 per baccho ! a goodly selection of exotic minstrelsy ! In careful juxtaposition 
 with Prout's translative and hermeneutic labours, we have placed the ever-endur- 
 ing originals, embodying, as they do, the choicest specimens utrinsquc lingua. 
 The French is furnished by Beranger, Victor Hugo, Casimir de la Vigne, Cha- 
 teaubriand, Milleroye, Alp. de la Martine, Clement Marot, &c; while Petrarch, 
 Filicaia, Dante, Zappi, Tolomei, Guidi, Menzini, Vitorelli, and Michael Angelo, 
 supply the Italian. That there might be a pendant to Gresset's poem of "The 
 Parrot," which concludes Vol. I.', we have added (from the series of Latin 
 poets by the Father) Bishop Vida's canto on the " Silkworm," as a becoming 
 finale to volume the second. 
 
 Of the luminous effulgence flung round all these matters by that brillant 
 enlightener (Kafnra6o<j>opos) Alfred Croquis, we know not in what style to 
 speak fittingly, or where to find adequate terms of eulogy. "Illustrated" 
 books are, now-a-days, common enough ; but we must say that Prout has been 
 singularly fortunate in meeting with such an Apelles as figures here. Pos- 
 terity will be justly puzzled to decide whether the letterpress was got up to act 
 as handmaid to the engravings, or whether the latter was destined to be ancil- 
 lary to the book ; just as it is still a quastio vexata wnong the learned whether 
 Virgil composed his episode from having previously seen the Laocoon, or the 
 sculptor his group from the outline in the "^Eneid. " Our own opinion is so well 
 expressed by Miguel Cervantes, that we shall content ourselves with quoting 
 
Father P routs Self -Examination, 369 
 
 the original Spanish : " Para mio solo nocio (Don Quixote) y yo para el, El 
 supo obrar y yo esorivir, Solos los dos somos para en uno." The present is the 
 first continuous exploit of Croquis in this particular province of pictorial 
 embellishment ; the work of etching on copper, as well as the designs, being 
 exclusively his handicraft. And, of a verity, since the day when the youthful 
 genius of Hans Holbein decorated with woodcuts the "Praise of Folly," by 
 Desiderius Erasmus, never has an experimental operation been so successfully 
 performed. Truly hath our Alfred, already distinguished in the very highest 
 departments of professional excellence, revealed himself to the gaze of men in 
 a new and unexpected character; and while future ages will stand enraptured 
 before the canvas over which he has flung, with that profusion so characteristic 
 of opulent genius, the creations of his exuberant fancy, a voice will add that 
 his was — 
 
 " The pencil of light 
 That illumined the volume." 
 
 To these gems of art we would gladly advert seriatim, but knowing how 
 fully attractive they will prove by the bare indication of the name of Croquis, 
 and mindful of the proverbial recommendation to the priest to christen his own 
 child first, we would say a few words in our editorial capacity of the essays 
 themselves, i.e. 
 
 " For us and for our tragedie." 
 
 When Voltaire, at Potsdam, or Sans Souci, was employed by Frederick in 
 overlooking and arranging for the press the poetical effusions of his royal 
 patron, he is known to have described his avocation in very vulgar terms, to 
 wit, " Je lave le tinge s&le de sa majesti." Far be it from us to depict in any 
 such contemptuous and disparaging language the nature of our functions in 
 connection with the Father and his chest of MSS. On the contrary, the task of 
 overhauling these miscellaneous sheets has been to us hitherto, and is likely 
 long to continue, a labour of love. But we have another meaning in our eye. 
 There is a certain supplementary process which these compositions are probably 
 doomed to undergo on issuing from our hands — in fact, there are such people 
 as reviewers, Regionam di lor. 
 
 This class of operatives in literature have been called by Bob Southey, in his 
 " Life and Remains of Kirke White," " the ungentle craft," — a term which the 
 Laureate had at the time sundry sound reasons for applying. Maturer 
 reflection has, no doubt, confirmed him in the wisdom of the phrase ; notwith- 
 standing that, since then, he has continued to take a notable part himself in 
 their quarterly labours. We will probably be thought guilty of great foolhardi- 
 ness ill giving utterance to what we are about to say, but we can' t help finding the 
 figurative language of Voltaire wonderfully expressive of these gentlemen's 
 detersive functions : nor can we choose but consider their employment as curi- 
 ously similar to that in which Ulysses found Princess Nausicaa engaged on the 
 sea-shore of Phaeacia — 
 
 Tai 6 1 ' &ir, awiji^s 
 Eifiaru x^patv k\oirro xal itrtpopeov MEAAN VAQP. 
 
 , Odyss. 1. go. 
 
 It is not necessary to be very conversant with the current business of the 
 learned republic to be aware of the tremendous quantity of author's soiled 
 linen that lies accumulated in this fashion awaiting the labours of the craft , 
 and, notwithstanding that a vast increase has lately been visible in the number 
 of establishments where "washing is taken in" and "mangling performed" 
 and "gentlemen done for," it is found quite impossible to keep pace with the 
 influx of business. Could not some plan be devised for alleviating the drudgery 
 of these hard-working and meritorious individuals? 
 
370 The Works of Father Prout, 
 
 This has been in the present article the object of our ambition. Towards 
 so desirable an end, and to ease them of their toil, would it not be 
 advisable for every author, like us, to review and puff his own book, 
 impelled by the same philanthropy that induces the member for the 
 County Tipperary to act as his own reporter. Bulwer, to do him justice, set a 
 forcible example in this respect during > his brilliant but, alas ! too brief 
 management of the New Monthly. But here, as indeed in other matters, the 
 " Student " did not, properly speaking, originate the idea on which he so 
 skilfully improved ; the theory had been previously taught by Brougham in 
 one of his useful knowledge publications, entitled " Every Man his own Washer- 
 woman." 
 
 It would be a want of sincerity on our part were we not to add, that another 
 motive, besides our professed anxiety to lighten the labours of a toil-worn 
 fraternity, hath impelled us to draw up this " critical notice" ourselves. Those 
 who know us need not be told how devoutly we venerate the writings of the 
 great defunct, and with what deferential awe we are accustomed to approach 
 these emanations of sacerdotal authorship. Looking at these volumes in a 
 peculiar light — esteeming them, in fact, as a sort of 
 
 " Lapsa ancilla ccelo," 
 
 we cannot entertain without abhorrence the idea of their being handled by the 
 uninitiated and the profane. To obviate such rude manipulation, we would 
 claim for Prout the old ' ' benefit of clergy," not in the vulgar sense of mere safety 
 from the gallows which a knowledge of reading was supposed to guarantee 
 among our ancestors, but as implying the broad principle of clerical exemp- 
 tion from all secular tribunals, for which the martyred Thomas k Beckett so 
 strenuously combated. Good reason had all true clerks to make a pilgrimage 
 to Canterbury ! By the old law of the land— per legem terra, as Chandos has it — 
 ecclesiastical, delinquents were not amenable to the common authorities; and no 
 mere layman could sit in judgment on Prout' s literary preparations. Every 
 man of old was tried by his peers. Were the rule to obtain at the present 
 day, where could a reviewer be found for our author? 
 
 " Quando ullum invenient parem." 
 
 Ode xxiv. lib. i. 
 
 When we emblazoned the word Reliques on the title-page, we sufficiently 
 indicated our views as to the mood of mind with which all true votaries, accord- 
 ing to us, should visit the shrine. To scrutinize with cold, anatomic eye the 
 vertebra:, tibia, ribs and os coccygis of the late pastor of Watergrasshill, 
 were, to our fancy, a quasi desecration of canonized bones. And it is fair to 
 presume that we have rightly interpreted his wishes in this respect, when we 
 inscribed under the graphic vignette of Croquis (vol. i. p. 46) the significant 
 phrase Pace impiora. 
 
 A peculiar sensitiveness (technically called criticopkotid) has possessed the 
 mind of every great author of whose mental state we may be said to possess any 
 pathological details ; and all have experienced a vivid horror of the strange 
 liberties which folks were likely to take with their writings. Homer, in the 
 opening scenes of the " Iliad," while ostensibly dwelling on the post-mortem 
 liability of his heroes — 
 
 KwEffmi' 
 Olinvotat Tiiraai — 
 
 is supposed by a German scholiast to denote the doom he bitterly anticipates 
 for his own poem, denouncing, under the veil of allegory, the "dogs" and 
 "vultures" of criticism. Many other matters were foreseen by blind Maeo- 
 nides, who, like Rabelais, had a fashion of wrapping up his wisdom in the 
 recondite folds of apparent triviality. 
 
Father Prout s Self-Examination. 371 
 
 It is, at the very least, equally obvious that Shakespeare entertained similar 
 apprehensions of the treatment that awaited him, if we may judge from his 
 pathetic appeal, deprecatory beforehand, of such unholy doings: — 
 
 " Kind friend, for Jesu's sake, forbear,'' etc., etc., 
 an adjuration, in our opinion, by far too emphatic and impassioned to be only 
 intended as a caution to the parish grave-digger. An admonition so solemnly 
 conveyed could not, of course, be meant for so low a functionary. Hence 
 we may safely infer, that while apparently soliciting the forbearance of the 
 sexton, he figuratively sought to warn off the pickaxe of the annotator ; eluci- 
 dative commentary on his writings, doubtless, seemed a more formidable bore 
 than that which could but perforate his coffin. 
 
 It was not for his "bones," but for his works, that he would have felt a 
 qualm in this Christian country. His dreams were haunted by a vision of 
 mangled tragedies — 
 
 " Que des chiens devorans se disputaient entr'eux." 
 
 Athalie. 
 
 We grieve for Homer— we are filled with commiseration for the woes of 
 Shakespeare ; but Prout possesses naturally enough the core of our sympathies. 
 The fact is, we happen to have some knowledge of ' ' the ungentle " practitioners 
 into whose hands lie is likely to fall, and hence ariseth our concern for the good 
 old gentleman. In the " Acta Sincera Martyrum," by that laborious Benedic- 
 tine, Don Ruinart, a book to us of fond and frequent perusal, we have often 
 shuddered at one particular formula, of constant recurrence under the truculent 
 Diocletian ; but we now feel inclined to transfer to Prout the feelings with 
 which we used to read Damnatus ad Bestias affixed to the name of some 
 primitive Christian. 
 
 Yet of what avail is the expression of our misgivings ? Can Regin a shield 
 him from the onslaught or blunt the mandibula of a single critic ? We fear 
 not. She is no sorceress ; nor is it without reason that Horace records 
 
 " Ossa ab ore rapta jejuni canis " (Epod.) 
 
 among the exploits of Canidia. 
 
 There is, however, one crumb of comfort : — the process of gnawing these 
 reliques, in the ordinary course of things, must be speedily interrupted by the 
 substitution of more attractive and succulent matter. 
 
 Such is the rapid succession of living candidates for critical dissection, that 
 these tough remains will be quickly superseded. American Willis may happily 
 publish a fresh " book," or Bob Montgomery a new " poem," to the inexpres- 
 sible delight of the reviewers. Some such tit-bits are such to be found floating 
 on the mare magnum of publication : — 
 
 " At length they caught two boobies and a noddy, 
 And then they left off eating the dead body." 
 
 Not that we would institute a parallel between our author and him who "left 
 the cloisters of the classic Salamanca," as .travelling, tutor .to the incorrigible 
 Juan ; there, was nothing in common between Prout and the licentiate Pedrillo, 
 save, perhaps, the penchant for polyglot erudition (Juan, ii. 25), a remarkable 
 trait in the character of both these distinguished churchmen. 
 
 A priest's book, in sober earnest, is a sort of rarity, as times go ; for the 
 sic raro scribis, so totally inapplicable to every other rank, trade, class, or pro- 
 fession in this country, can only be with truth addressed to the Romish clergy. 
 Why they "should thus studiously abstain from taking part in the current 
 literature of the day we are not hi a position to explain ; but the fact is as we 
 state it When we speak of literature, we do not of course mean to recognize 
 
$J2 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 as such Pastorini's " Prophecies;" neither can we admit the claim of Dens' 
 " Complete Body of Theology," which we charitably presume was never meant 
 by its worthy author to be read beyond the circle of his ecclesiastical brethren, 
 but a book on topics extra professional, a volume on matters of general accept- 
 ance, not confined to the politician or the religionist — 
 
 " Sed quae legat ipsa Lychoris " — 
 
 such a volume penned by a priest is not a thing of every-day occurrence. 
 
 The " Classical Tour" of the late Rev. Chetwinde Eustace, the historical 
 labours of the Rev, Dr. Lingard, a quarto on the literature of the Middle Ages 
 by the Rev. Joseph Berrington, Alban Butler's " Lives of the Saints," a work of 
 immense research, concerning which we need only quote Gibbon's significant 
 and characteristic remark — " the learning was his own, the faults those of his 
 subject," these, with the "Scriptores rerum Hiberni curum," edited at Stowe by 
 the Rev. Charles O'Connor of Ballanagar, form the only contributions fiom 
 that quarter to the common fund of British belles lettres. We know none else 
 of late years — we had almost said since the Reformation. 
 
 But here we stand rebuked by Sam Hall, the discriminating editor of the 
 " Book of Gems." In that exquisite selection from the early poets of Great 
 Britain, the intelligent gem nosophist, to whom we are indebted for the choice 
 and arrangement of the dazzling bijouterie, has introduced some specimens 
 from the works of a bygone Jesuit, whom, in defiance of national and perhaps 
 reasonable antipathies, he nevertheless delights to honour. We allude to the 
 poems of Southwell, which Sam has hauled up from the "well of English 
 undefiled, " where they lay, like Truth, long awaiting the assistance of a friendly 
 bucket. Were Prout alive he would not fail to express his gratitude to the 
 compiler for the following :— 
 
 " Robert Southwell, born in the year 1560, at St. Faith's, in Norfolk, received 
 his early education at Douay ; and at sixteen, while residing at Rome, was re- 
 ceived into the ' Society ' in 1584 ; he returned as a missionary priest to his 
 native country, but appears to have been disheartened by the vain issue of his 
 attempts to stay the progress of the Reformation, ' living like a foreigner, finding 
 among strangers that which among his nearest blood he presumed not to seek.' 
 In England, notwithstanding, he continued to reside, labouring, and with 
 sincerity until the year 1592, when he was arrested on a charge of sedition 
 and committed to a dungeon in the Tower, so noisome and filthy, that his 
 father was induced, successfully, to petition Elizabeth, that his son, being a 
 gentleman, might be treated as such. He continued three years in prison, and, 
 it is said, was ten several times put to the rack. At length, death appearing 
 more easy and welcome than such continued torture, he applied to the Lord 
 Treasurer Cecil that he might be brought to trial. The brutal answer of the 
 Lord Treasurer is recorded, ' If he was in such haste to be hanged, he should 
 quickly have his desire.' 
 
 " On the 5th of February, 1595, he was tried at Westminster on a charge of 
 high treason, in that he, being a Popish priest, born in the dominion of the 
 Crown of England, had come over thither from beyond seas, and had tarried 
 there longer than three days without conforming and taking the oaths. He 
 was found guilty on his own confession, and was executed at Tyburn according 
 to the horrible practice of the age, adding one to the long list of victims 
 sacrificed to the inveterate and unchristian spirit which characterized the times." 
 
 That Southwell had a genius of a very high order is undeniable — genius 
 worthy of the high and ennobling themes of which he wrote — and in the 
 treatment of which he is seldom or ever uncharitable. They consist of " St. 
 Peter's Complainte, and St. Magdalene's Funerall Teares, with sundry other 
 selected and devout Poemes; " " Maeonias ; or, certain excellent Poemes and 
 
Father Proul's Self-Examination. 373 
 
 Spiritual Hymnes , " " The Triumph over Death ; or, a consolatory Epistle for 
 afflicted Mindes on the affects of dying friends, first written for the consolation 
 of one, but now published for the good of all." 
 
 It is remarkable, observes Mr. Ellis, that the few copies of his works that 
 now exist are the remnants of twenty-four different editions, of which eleven 
 were printed between 1593 and 1600'. They must, therefore, have obtained 
 considerable celebrity, though now but little known. 
 
 Sam Hall, from whose copious and tasteful industry we derive the knowledge 
 of a Jesuifs claim to rank on the national Parnassus, illustrates his discovery 
 by some delightful extracts, for which we referwith confidence to his " Book of 
 Gems." "Per Gemini/" (as was eloquently said by Ugo Foscolo in his 
 sonnet to the author of Rimini), we do approve, Hall, of thy judicious 
 undertaking, and exhort thee to persevere therein, to the gratification of the 
 public and thy own peculiar privilege of treasure trove. Thou wilt assuredly 
 find a literary Golconda in the neglected sterquilinium of old English author- 
 ship — 
 
 " Enni de stercore gemmas ; " 
 
 such employment offering, in sooth, a far more lucrative prospect than what 
 is called "original writing," which is much like "gathering samphire" — a 
 " dreadful trade." 
 
 We know not if we must ascribe to the tragic end of this tuneful son of 
 Loyola the fact of none of his brethren having since then made any attempt to 
 emulate his literary achievements ; for it is a curious anomaly, that while the 
 men of his order throughout the rest of Europe freely contributed to every 
 department of art, science, and literature, the name of the Jesuit Southwell 
 should appear alone as a writer on the muster-roll of British celebrity. 
 
 The wisdom of the usually sagacious Lord Burleigh does not shine in this 
 transaction. His " war to the knife " against the emissaries of the Vatican was, 
 no doubt, sound policy, and the security of the Queen's government required 
 strong measures; but Cecil should have known that fondness for elegant lore 
 with a cultivated taste was a sufficient guarantee in its possessor against 
 treachery and sedition. It is not from rightly disciplined minds that the well- 
 being of society has anything to dread. A kindly and peaceable disposition is 
 the result and the index of intellectual refinement ; nor is it without reason that 
 the belles lettres have been termed, from their obvious and natural tendency, 
 Litterce Humaniores. Turbulence and treason most go hand in hand with 
 ignorance and fanaticism ; and it must be a very illiterate priesthood in the 
 ranks of which a conspirator will find his confederates, or a demagogue his 
 tools. We do not, therefore, approve of the mandate that handed Southwell 
 over to the functionary at Tyburn. To be sure, it was wrong to deny the 
 Queen's supremacy ; it was also wrong in Orpheus of old to deny the sovereign 
 empire of the sex; but, for the honour of poetry, we are far from sanctioning 
 the proceedings either of Cecil or — 
 
 " Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard 
 In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 
 For rapture, till the savage clamour drown'd 
 Both harp and voice ! nor could the Muse defend her boy." 
 
 Religious rancour, the plague of all social intercourse, will' rarely be found to 
 co-exist with a relish for those studies, or a predilection for those " ingenuous 
 arts," to cultivate which with fidelity has ever been deemed the surest recipe 
 for taming the ferocity of individual as well as national manners. Many 
 theories have been broached for the tranquillization of the sister country; but 
 concerning Ireland " we have a vision of our own ; " nor do we deem it a whit 
 less substantial than other visionary systems. Tom Moore, expatiating some- 
 where on the supposed juxtaposition of a tear and a smile in Erin's eye, talks 
 
374 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 incidentally of the rainbow, and finds therein a symbol of peace and concord. 
 There are, undoubtedly, many points of resemblance between a black eye and 
 the prismatic colours : neither do we deny that the arc en ciel suggests the 
 idea of conciliation — the thought is as old as the flood ; but we rather fear 
 that it were vain to count on the blissful consummation devoutly sighed for by 
 the melodist — vain to hope that the green island will become an Arcadia until 
 the nvun Xauiv acquire other habits and gentler natures : until the ' ' humani- 
 ties " obtain a portion of that leisure time that is devoted to electioneering, 
 and some fountain of Hippocrene be discovered that may supersede the 
 ' ' Devil's Punchbowl " in Kerry. 
 
 We speak thus in the sincerity of our souls, having nothing but the general 
 welfare at heart, and unaffectedly anxious to promote universal cordiality. A 
 great poet has said that he— 
 
 " Wish'd well to Trojan and to Tyrlan, j 
 
 Having been bred a moderate Presbyterian." 
 
 We should hope that our aspirations for the happiness of our fellow-subjects ! 
 are not the less vivid and comprehensive. We are far from despairing of im- 
 provement and amelioration in the quarter alluded to, for we see no reason 
 why what has been may not be again. " The Papacy during the Middle Ages ' 
 was nbthing but a confederacy of the learned men of the west of Europe i 
 against the barbarism and ignorance of the time. The Pope was the head of 
 this confederacy."* We would respectfully submit the case of Ireland as a 
 " casus fcederis " to his Holiness. 
 
 Of a truth, could we fancy Prout debarred from the resources afforded by 
 his favourite pursuits, we should feel at a loss how to comprehend the possi- i 
 bility of his existence during so long a period on the summit of his parochial 
 Pisgah ; the prospect before him must have been as dreary as the ' ' long hollow 
 valley of Bagdad" in the "Vision of Mirza." Without the converse of the 
 Muses, we can scarcely imagine how the stillness of domestic solitude could be 
 made endurable at Watergrasshill. 
 
 " Martiis ccelebs quid agam calendis." 
 
 Hor. lib. 3. 
 
 Such must have been the sad self-interrogatory, not merely on the recurrence 
 of this present 1st of March, but throughout the whole calendar. It was haply 
 otherwise with the Father. Endowed with scholarly propensities, the wilderness 
 for him teemed with populous thoughts — antiquity ever present to his medita- 
 tions, and erudition still inviting " to see her stones unrolled." His childless 
 and lonely position singularly favoured such habits and appliances ; nor can 
 we deny that he was much more advantageously circumstanced for the pursuits 
 of learning than were he beset with such troubles as befell the Vicar of Wake- 
 field. Among the many curious passages that occur in the correspondence 
 of Abelard with her who became prioress of Paraclete, we are favoured with 
 the lady's opinion as to the total inexpediency of a family establishment for a 
 man of letters, and the utter incompatibility of conjugal avocations with those 
 of learning. Heloise's Latinity (which, by the way, is throughout far purer than 
 that of her quondam lover) expresses the sentiment with such graphic energy, 
 that an English translation would much impair the force of her observations ; 
 we therefore leave them in their original vigour:— "Quissacrisvelphilosophicis 
 meditationibus intentus, pueriles vagitus, nutricum quae hos mitigant ncenias 
 tumultuosam familias rurbam sustinere poterit? Quis etiam inhonestas ilia 
 parvulorum sordes assidui tolerare valeat." t 
 Prout's life at Watergrasshill appears to have thus been one of leisure. By 
 
 * Coleridge's "Table Talk," vol. i., p. 163. London : Murray, 
 t "Opera Abelard," p. 14. 
 
Father Proufs Self*Examination. 375 
 
 the philosophic seclusion of his old age, he fittingly wound up the adventurous 
 period of his rambles over the Continent. After such a fluctuating existence 
 final repose was natural and desirable ; no matter where Noah's ark rested on 
 the top of Ararat, Prout's chest was on as bleak a mountain. A halo of glory 
 will, however, encircle the hill : 
 
 '* Qui nunc misenus ab illo 
 Dicitur asternumque tenet per saecula nomen " 
 
 {/Eneid, vi. 234);— 
 
 or, to quote from Pindar (the general tenor of this article being Pindaric in the 
 extreme), 
 
 Aiyoirrai filav fiporwv 
 
 'O\ft0V VTTtpTU TOV Ot 
 
 Xtiv — oits Kai vpua/iairvxaiv 
 
 Ms Xirofiivau iv opEi 
 
 Mditrav 
 
 Atov. PYTH. T. cirwS. 8. 
 
 A biographical account of his earlier history is yet a desideratum ; but of his 
 later years, the affection of his parishioners and the contents of his chest are 
 the intelligible records. We know not whether he has any chance of the 
 honours of canonization, for we have not read Lambertini's (Benedict XIV.) 
 quarto book " De Beatificatione SS." in which the qualifications are set forth.' 
 But if we be not authorized (until he obtain brevet rank in the calendar) to say 
 of him in positive terms, 
 
 " Candid-us insuetum miratur limen Olympi" 
 
 we may at least confidently assert that, as far as human testimony can go, 
 
 " He had kept 
 The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept." 
 
 Ck. Har. iiL 57. 
 
 In corroboration of which, we have been informed by Croquis (who, 
 previous to illustrating his works, paid a visit to the hill) that the lap of earth in 
 which he is laid has produced a most luxuriant crop of shamrocks— a circum- 
 stance the more remarkable, in our opinion, as from the Father's known anti- 
 pathy to quacks, he cannot have been much addicted to the use of Morrison's 
 Vegetable Pills. But what is conclusive of the miraculous nature of this ver- 
 dure is, that it offers abundant specimens of that genuine Irish plant, the 
 guadri/oliated trifolium, or " four-leaved shamrock," concerning the properties 
 of which we need only refer to Lover's delightful song. The peasantry, 
 according to Alfred's account, deem the herbs to possess sundry Hygiestic vir- 
 tues; some wearing them all round their hat — as a specific for the ague— others 
 preferring to take them inwardly, as an antiphlogistic, in a glass of whisky. 
 All that we can say is, that the transmission of the Father's spirit into these 
 shamrocks is not without parallel in the legendary pages of the aytoypu(poi 
 and as for a classical precedent, we need only refer to the account of Polidorus, 
 and the shrubs that grew up from the turf that wrapped his clay, as set forth in 
 the third book of the "^Eneid," v. 45. 
 
 One thing is, however, certain— that he despised the frivolities of the world, 
 and in the retirement of his solitude bestowed a proper degree of attention on 
 the cares of futurity. From sundry passages in the translation of Vida's 
 " Silkworm " it is evident that he had understood well the nature of this tran- 
 
376 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 sitory existence — that, with old Dante, he was fully convinced of it being only 
 a state of grub-like lowliness preparatory to a brilliant ira\iyyivtaia. 
 
 " Noi siam verm 
 Natl per formar l'angelica furfalla.*' 
 
 Hence his views were fixed on loftier objects than the pursuits of ordinary 
 men ; his musings were those of a priest, priestly. In his intercourse with the 
 nine sisters, he taught them not to imitate the foolish virgins in the Gospel, who 
 neglected to put oil in their lamps ; and the waters of Siloa's brook mingled in 
 his cup with those of the classic Aganippe. To be known to mankind as a 
 writer or a savant was the least of his aspirations ; for he had evidently medi- 
 tated on a passage of Seneca which he has traced on sundry fly-leaves in the 
 chest, and which is so like a sentence from the Epistles, that it must have been 
 penned by Nero's tutor after one of his many interviews with St. Paul— 
 
 " iLLi MORS GRAVIS 1NCURAT 
 
 Qui notus Nimis omnibus 
 Ignotus Moritur sibi." 
 
 Sen., Trnged. of Thysa. 
 
XXI. 
 
 %\t Songs at Horn*. 
 
 {Fraser's Magazine, July, 1836.) 
 
 [Croquis' contribution to the number of Regina containing this first of the five 
 decades of the Songs of Horace done into English by Prout, was his smooth-faced, 
 boyish-looking effigy of Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, standing, evidently by a dessert-table, 
 leaning his hand on the back of his chair, either proposing a toast or returning thanks. 
 With good reason has the preference been given, with one accord, among all Manony's 
 Horatian translations, to his incomparable version, " See how the Winter Blanches," of 
 the " Vides ut altfr stet nive candidum." In it not only the words but the thoughts and 
 feelings underlying them have been caught and echoed back in another tongue to a very 
 miracle.) 
 
 Decade the First. 
 ANO TON nOTAMQN IEPON XQPOYSI tlArAI. 
 
 EuRii'iD., Meaea. 
 
 " Quis sub ARCTO 
 Rex gelidae metuatur owe 
 Quid Terridatem terreat unice 
 Securus est qui fontibus integris 
 Gaudet." 
 
 Lib. i. ode xxvi. 
 
 Deeming it wasteful and ridiculous 
 To watch Don Carlos or Czar Nicholas — 
 Sick of our statesmen idiotic — 
 Sick of the knaves who (patriotic) 
 Serve up to clowns, in want of praties, 
 " Repale " and "broken Limerick traties," 
 With whom to grudge their poor a crust is, 
 To starving Ireland ' ' doing justice " — 
 Sick of the moonshine called "municipal" 
 Blarney and Rice, Spain and Mendiz&bfil, 
 Shiel and shilelahs, Dan" and "Maurice," 
 Prout turns his thoughts to Rome and Horace. 
 
 O. Y. 
 
 " Chassons loin de chez nous tous ces rats du Pamasse, 
 Jouissons, 6crivons, vivons avec Horace." 
 
 Volt., Epitres. 
 From the ignoble doings of modern Whiggery, sneaking and dastardly in its 
 proceedings at home, and not very dignified in its dealings abroad — from Mel* 
 bourne, who has flung such unwonted telat round the premiership of Great 
 Britain (addens cornua pauperi), and Mulgrave, who has made vulgarity and 
 F 
 
2,7 & The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ruffianism the supporters of a vice-regal chair (Regis Kupili pus alquevenenum), 
 it is allowable to turn aside for a transient glimpse at the Augustan age, when 
 the premier was Mecasnas, and the proconsul, Agrippa. The poetic sense, 
 nauseated with rank and ribald effusions, such as Lord Russell's pension can 
 elicit from Lord Lansdowne's family-piper, finds relief in communing with 
 Horace, the refined and gentlemanly Laureate of Roman Toryism. In his 
 abhorrence of the "profane Radical mob " (lib. iii, ode i.)— in his commenda- 
 tion of virtue, " refulgent with uncontaminated honour, because derived from 
 a steady refusal to take up or lay down the emblems of authority at popular 
 dictation" (lib. iii. ode ii. ) — in his portraiture of the Just Man, undismayed 
 by the frenzied ardour of those who would force on by clamour depraved mea- 
 sures (lib. iii. ode iii.)— need we say how warmly we participate ? That the 
 wits and sages who shed a lustre on that imperial court should have ended by 
 becoming thorough Conservatives, and have merged all their previous theories 
 in a rooted horror of agitators and sans-culottes, was a natural result of the 
 intellectual progress made since the unlettered epoch of Marius and the Gracchi. 
 In the bard of Tivoli, who had fought under the insurrectionary banners of 
 Brutus, up to the day when "the chins of the unshaven demagogues were 
 brought to a level with the dust " (lib. ii. ode vii. ) , Tory principles obtained a 
 distinguished convert ; nor is there any trace of mere subserviency to the men 
 in power, or any evidence of insincerity, in the record of his political opinions. 
 He seems to have entertained a heartfelt ton&Jide detestation of your " men of 
 the people," and a sound conviction that there exist not greater foes to the com- 
 mon weal, or greater pests to society. 
 
 The Georgian era has, in common with the age of Augustus, exhibited more 
 than one striking example of salutary resipiscence among those who started in 
 life with erroneous principles. Two eminent instances just now occur to us : 
 Southey among the poets, Burke among the illustrious in prose ; though, per- 
 haps, the divine gift of inspiration, accompanied with true poetic feeling, was 
 more largely vouchsafed to the antagonist of the French Revolution than to the 
 author of " Roderick, the Last of the Goths." What can be more opposite to the 
 train of thought in which we are indulging, and to the actual posture of affairs, 
 than the following exquisitely conceived passage, in which the sage of Beacons- 
 field contrasts the respective demeanour and resources of the two parties into 
 which public opinion is divided? — 
 
 " When I assert anything concerning the people of England, I speak from observation, 
 and from the experience I have had in a pretty extensive communication with the inhabi- 
 tants of this kingdom, begun in early life, and continued for near forty years. I pray 
 yuu, form not your opinion from certain publications. The vanity, restlessness, and 
 petulance of those who hide their intrinsic weakness in bustle, and uproar, and puffing, 
 and mutual quotation of each other, make you imagine that the nation's contemptuous 
 neglect is a mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you ! Be- 
 cause half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate 
 chink, while thousands of great cattle, reposing under the shadow of the British oak, 
 chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the 
 only inhabitants of the field. 
 
 It is right, however, in common fairness towards Horace, to remark, that 
 while fighting in his juvenile days under the banners of Brutus, even then he 
 never for a moment contemplated Mob-ascendency in Rome as the ultimate 
 result of his patriotic efforts. Like Catp and Tully, in the part he took he 
 merely espoused the cause of the Senate, in opposition to that of a frenzied 
 rabble, rushing on, with swinish desperation, to political suicide ; for in that, as 
 in every age, the deluded multitude, in his view, was sure to become the dupe 
 of some designing and knavish demagogue, unless rescued, in very despite of 
 itself, by such interposition as the " Senators " could exercise in Rome ; o Il 
 
The Songs of Horace. 379 
 
 we may add, the "Barons" in England— both the hereditary guardians of 
 liberty. When the adhesion of the conscript fathers had sanctioned the pro- 
 tectorate of Augustus, the transition to openly Conservative politics, on the 
 poet's part, was as honourable as it was judicious. The contempt he felt, 
 through his whole career, for the practice of propitiating the sweet voices of the 
 populace by a surrender of principle, is as plainly discoverable throughout the 
 whole of his varied writings as his antipathy to garlic, or his abhorrence of 
 " Canidia." 
 
 His little volume contains the distilled quintessence of Roman life, when at 
 its very acme of refinement. It is the most perfect portraiture (cabinet size) 
 that remains of the social habits, domestic elegance, and cultivated intercourse 
 of the capital, at the most interesting period of its prosperity. But the philo- 
 sophy it inculcates, and the worldly wisdom it unfolds, is applicable to all times 
 and all countries. Hence, we cannot sympathize with the 'somewhat childish 
 (to say the least of it) distaste, or indisposition, evinced by the immortal pil- 
 grim, Harold (canto iv. st. lxxv.), for reverting, even in the full maturity of ex- 
 perienced manhood, to those ever-enduring lyrics that formed the nourishment 
 of our young intellect, in our schoolboy days, "when George the Third was 
 king." The very affectation of alluding to the "drilled dull lesson, forced 
 down, word for word, in his repugnant youth," proves the alumnus of Harrow 
 on the Hill to have relished and recollected the almost identical lines of the 
 author he feigns to disremember — Carmina Livi memini plagosum mini 
 farvo Orhilium dictare (Epist. ii. 70) ; and (though Peel may have been a 
 more assiduous scholar) we can hardly believe the beauties of Horace to have 
 been lost on Byron, even in his earliest hours of idleness. It is apropos of 
 Mount Soractd, on which he stumbles in the progress of his peregrination, that 
 the noble poet vents his " fixed inveteracy" of hatred against a book which, at 
 the same time, he extols in terms not less eloquent than true : 
 
 " Then farewell, Horace 1 whom I hated so ; 
 Not for thy faults, but mine ! It is a curse 
 To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow, 
 To comprehend, but never love, thy verse. 
 Although no deeper moralist rehearse 
 Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art. 
 
 Nor livelier satirist the conscience pierce, 
 Awakening without wounding the touch 'd heart. 
 Farewell ! upon Soracte's ridge we part ! " 
 
 We can readily imagine the comic nature of such a " parting." We picture 
 in our mind's eye him of Newstead Abbey bidding him of the Sabine farm 
 
 " Farewell ! — a word that has been, and shall be ; " 
 
 while we fancy we can hear the pithy " Bon voyage, milor," with which sig- 
 nificant formula (in Latin) he is gently dismissed by the weeping Flaccus— 
 
 caKpvxitvv ytXaaas. 
 
 Prout was not addicted to this aristocratic propensity for cutting all school- 
 boy acquaintances. In him was strikingly exemplified the theory which attri- 
 butes uncommon intensity and durableness to first attachments : it is guieraliy 
 applied to love ; he carried the practice into the liaisons of literature. The odes 
 of Horace were his earliest mistresses in poetry; they took his fancy in youth, 
 their fascinations haunted his memory in old age — 
 
 "l'on revient toujours 
 x ses premiers amours." 
 
 Most of the following papers, forming a series of Horatian studies, were 
 penned in Italy, often on the very spots that gave birth to the effusions of the 
 
380 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 witty Roman ; but it appears to have afforded the Father considerable satisfac- 
 tion to be able, in the quiet hermitage of his hill, to redigest and chew the cud 
 of whatever might have been crude and unmatured in his juvenile lucubrations. 
 He seems to have taken an almost equal interest in the writers, the glories, and 
 the monuments of Pagan as of Papal Rome : there was in his mental vision 
 a strange but not unpleasant confusion of both ; the Vaticani monlis imago 
 (lib. i. 20) forming, in his idea, a sort of bifurcated Parnassus — St. Peter on the 
 one peak, and Jupiter on the other. Mr. Poynder has written a tract on this 
 supposed "alliance between Popery and Heathenism," which Dr. Wiseman, 
 in these latter days, has thought .worthy of a pamphlet in reply. The gravity 
 of the question deters us from entering on it here ; but, to reconcile the matter, 
 might we not adopt the etymological medius terminus of Dean Swift, and 
 maintain that Jove — Zeus varvp, or Sospiter— was nothing, after all, but the 
 Jew Peter? 
 
 We are not without hopes of finding, among Prout's miscellanies, an elabo- 
 rate treatise on this very topic. The French possess a work of infinite erudi- 
 tion, called " L'Histoire veritable des Tems Fabuleux," in which the " Iliad " 
 is shown to be an arrant plagiarism from the three last chapters of the Book of 
 Judges; the Levite's wife being the prototype of Helen, and the tribe of Ben- 
 jamin standing for the Trojans. Wit, says Edmund Burke, is usually displayed 
 by finding points of contact and resemblance ; judgment, or discrimination, 
 generally manifests itself in the faculty of perceiving the points of disagreement 
 and disconnection. 
 
 But it is high time to resume our editorial seat, and let the Father catch the 
 eye of the reader. 
 
 " With faire discourse the evening so they passe, 
 
 For that olde man of pleasaunte wordes had store, 
 And well could file his tongue as smoothe as glasse : 
 He tolde of saintes and popes, and evermore 
 He strowed an Ave-Mary after and before." 
 
 FaXry Qtteene, canto L stanaa 35. 
 
 Regent Street, June i-jth. Oliver Yorke. 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 I. Prout. 
 II. An Elzevir. i2mo. 
 III. A Jug of Punch. 4to. 
 Scene. — Walergrasshill. 
 
 Here's a health to Horace ! ' ' Vivi tul" Songster of Ti voli, who alone 
 of all the tuneful dead, alone of Greek and Roman wits, may be said to live. 
 If to be quoted and requoted, until every superficial inch of thy toga has be- 
 come (from quotation) threadbare, constitute perpetuity of poetical existence, 
 according to the theory of Ennius (volitu -oivu per ora virum), such LIFE has 
 been pre-eminently vouchsafed to thee. In the circle of thy comprehensive 
 philosophy, few things belonging to heaven or earth were undreamt of; nor 
 did it escape thy instinctive penetration that in yonder brief tome, short, plump, 
 and tidy, like its artificer, thou hadst erected a monument more durable than 
 brass, more permanent than an Irish "round tower," or a pyramid of 
 King Cheops. It was plain to thy intuitive ken, that, whatever mischance 
 might befall the heavier and more massive productions of ancient wisdom, thy 
 lyrics were destined to outlive them all. That though the epics of Varius 
 
might be lost, or the decades of Livy desiderated^ remotest posterity would 
 possess thee (like the stout of Barclay and Perkins) ' ' entire " — would enjoy 
 thy book, undocked of its due proportions, uncurtailed of a single page — 
 would bask in the rays of thy genius, unshorn of a single beam. As often as 
 the collected works of other classic worthies are ushered into the world, the 
 melancholy appendage on the title-page of 
 
 " Omnia qua; extant " 
 
 is sure to meet our eye, reminding us, in the very announcement of the feast of 
 intellect, that there is an amari a liquid ,- viz. that much entertaining matter 
 has irretrievably perished. The torso of the Belvidere is, perhaps, as far as it 
 goes, superior to the Apollo ; but the latter is a complete statue : a Greenwich 
 pensioner with a wooden leg is a very respectable— but truncated — copy of 
 humanity. Thy MSS. have come down to us unmutilated by the pumice- 
 stone of palimpsestic monk, unsinged by the torch of Calif Omar, ungnawed 
 by the tooth of Time. The perfect preservation of thy writings is only equalled 
 by the universality of their diffusion — a point especially dwelt on in that joyously 
 geographic rhapsody of a prophetic soul (lib. ii. ode 20), wherein thou pourest 
 forth thy full anticipation of cecumenic glory. If thou canst hardly be said still 
 to haunt the "shores of the Bosphorus," take "Oxford "as a literal sub- 
 stitute : though disappointed of fame among the "remote Geloni," thou hast 
 an equivalent in the million schoolboys of South America. Should the 
 "learned Iberian" chance to neglect thee amid the disasters of his country, 
 hanging up thy forsaken lyre on the willows of the Guadalquiver — should they 
 "who drink the Rhone" divide their affections between (thy brother bard) 
 Beranger and thee, thou mayest still count among "the Dacians" of the 
 Danube admirers and commentators. Thou hast unlooked-for votaries on the 
 Hudson and the St. Lawrence ; and though Burns may triumph on the Tweed, 
 Tom Moore can never prevent thee from being paramount on the Shannon, nor 
 Tom D'Urfey evict thee from supremacy on the Thames. In accordance with 
 thy fondest aspiration, thou hast been pointed out as the "prime performer 
 on the Roman lyre," by successive centuries as they passed away (digito 
 pratereuntium) : the dry skeleton of bygone criticism hung up in our libraries, 
 so designates thee with its bony index : to thee, Prince of Lyric Poets ! is 
 still directed in these latter days, albeit with occasional aberrations (for even the 
 magnetic needle varies under certain influences), the ever-reverting finger of 
 Fame. 
 
 Here, then, I say, is a health to Horace ! Though the last cheerful drop 
 in my vesper-bowl to-night be well-nigh drained, and the increasing feebleness 
 of age reminds me too plainly that the waters are ebbing fast in my Clepsydra 
 of life, still have I a blessing in reserve — a benison to bestow on the provider 
 of such intellectual enjoyment as yon small volume has ever afforded me ; nor 
 to the last shall I discontinue holding sweet converse, through its medium, with 
 the Graces and the Nine. 
 
 Ov Travao/xai t<zb yapiTa? 
 Movoaiai avyKaTfuyvvs 
 HSiorau avQiyuiv. 
 
 In the brief biographic memoir left us by Suetonius, we read that the em- 
 peror was in the habit of comparing the poet's book, and the poet himself, to a 
 FLAGON— cum circuitus voluminis sit oynwiearaTm, sicut est ventriculi tui. 
 Various and multiform are the vitrified vases and terracotta jars dug up at 
 Pompeii, and elsewhere, with evidence of having served as depositories for 
 Roman sack; but the peculiar Horatian shape alluded to by Augustus has not 
 been fixed on by antiquaries. The Florentine academy delta crusca, whose 
 
382 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 opinion on this point ought to obtain universal attention, have considered them- 
 selves authorized, from the passage in Suetonius, to trace (as they have done, 
 in their valuable vocabulary) the modern words, fiaccone fiasco (whence our 
 flask), to Q. Horat. Flaccvs. The origin of the English term bumper, it is 
 fair to add, has been, with equal sagacity, brought home by Joe Miller to our 
 " bon pere," the pope. But commend me to the German commentators for 
 transcendental ingenuity in classical criticism. Need I more than instance the 
 judicious Milcherlick's hint, that the birth of our poet must have presented a 
 clear case of lustis natum ; since, in his ode Ad Amphoram (xxi. lib. iii.), we 
 have, from his own lips, the portentous fact of his having come into the world 
 "in company with a bottle," under the consulship of Manlius? Should the 
 fact of his having had a twin-brother of that description be substantiated, on 
 historical and obstetric principles, we shall cease, of course, to wonder at the 
 similitude discovered by the emperor. Byron maintains — though without any 
 data whatever to warrant his assertion — that " Happiness was born a twin" 
 (Juan, canto ii. st. 172) ; the case was, perhaps, like that imagined by Mil- 
 cherlick. 
 
 My own theory on the subject is not, as yet, sufficiently matured to lay it 
 before the learned of Europe ; but from the natural juxtaposition of the two 
 congenial objects now before me, and the more than chemical affinity with 
 which I find the contents of the Elzevir to blend in harmonious mixture with 
 those of the jug, I should feel quite safe in predicating (if sprightliness, vigour, 
 and versatility constitute sufficiently fraternal features) that the "spirit in the 
 leaves " is brother to the " bottle imp." 
 
 "Alteriussic, 
 Altera poscit opem res et conjurat amice 1 . " 
 
 Art. Poet., 408. 
 
 The recondite philosophy of the common expression, " Animal Spirits," 
 has not, that I am aware of, been thoroughly investigated, or its import fully 
 developed, by modern metaphysicians. How animal matter may become so 
 impregnated, or, to use the school term, " compenetrated," by a spiritual 
 essence, as to lose its substantive nature and become a mere adjective, or modi- 
 fication of the all-absorbing irvev/ia, is a "rub" fit to puzzle Hamlet. In my 
 Lord Brougham's "Natural Theology," which gives the solution of every known 
 question, this difficulty is unaccountably neglected. There is not a single word 
 about animated alcohol. An ingenious doubt was expressed by some great 
 thinker— Jack Reeve, or Doctor Wade— after a protracted sitting, whether, 
 legally, the landlord could remove him off the premises without a "permit." 
 That was genuine metaphysics, far above all Kant's rubbish. How are we, in 
 fact, to draw the distinction ? Is there to be one law for a living vessel, and 
 another for an inert jar ? May not the ingredients that go to fill them be the 
 same? the quantity identical in both recipients? Why, then, should not the 
 Excise anxiously track the footsteps of so many walking gallons of X X X, 
 with the same maternal solicitude she manifests in watching the progress and 
 removal of spirit in earthenware? This common-sense view of the matter 
 was long ago taken up by Don Quixote, when, acting on the suggestion of 
 calm logic, he gave battle to certain goat-skins, distended with the recent 
 vintage of Valdepenas. Cervantes may sneer, but the onslaught does not 
 appear to me irrational. Was the knight to wait till the same juice should 
 offer itself under the form and colour of blood, to be shed from the bodies of 
 bloated buffoons in buckram ? Clearly not I 
 
 But to return. , If by animal spirits be meant that state of buoyancy and 
 elevation in which the opaque corporeal essence is lost in the frolicsome play of 
 the fancy, and evaporates in ethereal sallies, a collateral and parallel process 
 takes place when the imaginative and rarefied faculties of mind are, as it 
 
The Songs of Horace. 383 
 
 were, condensed so as to give a precipitate, and form a distinct portion of 
 visible and tangible matter. Yon Elzevir is a case in point. In the small 
 compass of a duodecimo we hold and manipulate the concentrated feelings and 
 follies, the " quips and cranks," the wit and wisdom, of a period never 
 equalled in the history of mankind : the current conversational tones and 
 topics are made familiar to us, though the interlocutors have long since 
 mouldered in the grave. The true falernian wine ripens no more on the 
 accustomed slope ; the fokmiani colles are now barren and unprofitable ; 
 but, owing to the above-mentioned process, we can still relish their bouquet in 
 the odes of Horace : we can find the genuine smack of the Caecubean grape in 
 the effusions it inspired. 
 
 I recollect Tom Moore once talking to me, after dinner, of Campbell's ' ' Exile 
 of Erin," and remarking, in his ordinary concetto style, that the sorrows of 
 Ireland were in that elegy crystallized and made immortal. Tommy was 
 right ; and he may be proud of having done something in that way himself : 
 for when the fashion of drinking "Wright's champagne" shall have passed 
 away, future ages will be able to form a notion of that once celebrated 
 beverage from the perusal of his poetry. There it is, crystallized for 
 posterity. 
 
 Horace presents us, in his person, with an accomplished specimen of the 
 ion vivant; such as that agreeable variety of the human species was under- 
 stood by antiquity. Cheerfulness and wit, conjointedly with worldly wisdom, 
 generally ensure a long, jolly, and prosperous career to their possessor. 
 
 I just now adverted to the good luck which has secured his writings against 
 accident : his personal preservation through what Mathews would term the 
 " wicissitudes and waccinations " of life, appears to have been, from his own 
 account, fully as miraculous. A somewhat profane French proverb asserts, 
 quit y a une Providence pour les ivrognes ; but whatever celestial surveillance 
 watches over the zigzag progress of a drunkard — whatever privilege may be 
 pleaded by the plenipotentiary of Bacchus, poetry would seem, in his case, to 
 have had peculiar prerogatives. Sleeping in his childhood on some mountain- 
 top of Apulia, pigeons covered him with leaves, that no " bears" or "snakes" 
 might get at him (lib. iii. ode iv.) ; a circumstance of some importance to 
 infant genius, which, alas t cannot always escape the " hug" of the one or the 
 " sting " of the other. Again, at the battle of Philippi, he tells us how he had 
 well-nigh perished, had not Mercury snatched him up from the very thick of 
 the melie, fully aware of his value, and unwilling to let him run the risk to 
 which vulgar chair A canon is exposed. Subsequently, while walking over 
 his grounds at the Sabine farm, the fallen trunk of an old tree was within an 
 ace of knocking out his brains, had not Faun, whom he describes as the 
 guardian-angel of mercurial men — mercurialium custos virorum— interposed 
 at the critical moment. To Mercury he has dedicated many a graceful hymn ; 
 more than one modern poet might safely acknowledge certain obligations to 
 the same quarter. But all are not so communicative as Horace of their 
 personal adventures. ._..•' . -'' ■-.<-.-.' 
 
 What he states "in his' banteringepxstle to Julfiis' Florius cannot be true; viz. 
 that poverty made a poet of ■ hint ? 
 
 " Pattperiai impulit atidax 
 Ut versus facerem" ' 
 
 Ep. &,?, 51, 
 
 On the contrary, far from offering any symptoms of jejune inspiration or garret 
 origin, his effusions bear testimony to the pleasant mood of mind in which 
 they were poured forth, and are redolent of the joyousness of happy and 
 convivial hours. Boileau, a capital, judge, maintains that the jovial exhilara- 
 
384 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 tion pervading all his poetry betrays the vinous influence under which he 
 wrote— 
 
 ** Horace a bu son saoul quand il voit Us Menades ; " 
 
 an observation previously made by a rival satirist of Rome — 
 
 " Satur est cum dicit Horatius omb ! " 
 
 Hints of this kind are sometimes hazarded in reference to very grave writers, 
 but, in the present instance, will be more readily believed than the assertion 
 made by Plutarch, in his Xvpiroaiov, that the gloomy Eschylus "was habitually 
 drunk when he wrote his tragedies." 
 
 In adopting the poetical profession he but followed the bent of his nature : 
 thus, lyrics were the spontaneous produce of his mind, as fables were of a 
 kindred soul, the naif Lafontaine. " V&iUk un figuiek," said the latter one 
 day to Madame de la Sabliere, in the gardens of Versailles \ * % et moi, je suis un 
 fablier." Let us take the official manifesto with which Horace opens the 
 volume of his odes, and we will be at once put in possession of his views of 
 human life, through all its varied vanities ; of which poetry is, after all, but one, 
 and not the most ridiculous. 
 
 ODE I.— TO MECiENAS. 
 
 " Mecaenas ! atavis edite regibus," &c. 
 
 Mv friend and patron, in whose veins runneth right royal blood. 
 
 Give but to some the Hyppodkomb, the car, the prancing stud. 
 
 Clouds of Olympic dust— then mark what ecstasy of soul 
 
 Their bosom feels, as the rapt wheels glowing have grazed the goal. 
 
 Talk not to them of diadem or sceptre, save the whip— 
 
 A branch of palm can raise them to the gods' companionship. 
 
 And there be some, my friend, for whom the crowd's applause is food, 
 Who pine without the hollow shout of Rome's mad multitude ; 
 Others, whose giant greediness whole provinces would drain — 
 Their sole pursuit to gorge and glut huge granaries with grain. 
 
 Yon homely hind, calmly resigned his narrow farm to plod. 
 Seek not with Asia's wealth to wean from his paternal sod : 
 Ye can't prevail I no vamish'd tale that simple swain will urge. 
 In galley built of Cyprus oak, to plough th Egban surge. 
 
 Your merchant-mariner, who sighs for fields and quiet home. 
 While o'er the main the hurricane howls round his path of foam, 
 Will form, I trow, full many a vow, the deep for aye t' eschew. 
 He lands - what then ? Pelf prompts again— his snip's afloat anew ! 
 
 Soft Leisure hath its votaries, whose bliss it is to bask 
 In summer's ray the livelong day, quaffing a mellow flask 
 Under the greenwood tree, or where, but newly born as yet. 
 Religion guards the cradle of the infant rivulet. 
 
 Some love the camp, the horseman's tramp, the clarion's voice ; aghast 
 Pale mothers hear the trumpeter, and loathe the murderous blast. 
 
 Lo ! under wint'ry skies his game the Hunter still pursues ; 
 And, while his bonny bride with tears her lonely bed bedews, 
 He for his antler 'd foe looks out, or tracks the forest whence 
 Broke the wild boar, whose daring tusk levell'd the fragile fence. 
 
 Thee the pursuits of learning claim— a claim the gods allow ; 
 Thine is the ivy coronal that decks the scholar's brow : 
 
The Songs of Horace. 385 
 
 Me in the woods' deep solitudes the nymphs a client count, 
 The dancing Faun on the green lawn, the Naiad of the fount. 
 For me her lute (sweet attribute !) let Polyhymnia sweep ; 
 For me, oh ! let the flageolet breathe from Euterpe's lip ; 
 Give but to me of poesy the lyric wreath, and then 
 Th' immortal halls of bliss won't hold a prouder denizen. 
 
 His political creed is embodied in this succeeding ode; and never did 
 patriotism, combined (as it rarely is) with sound sense, find nobler utterance 
 than in the poet's address to the head of the government. The delicate 
 ingenuity employed in working out his ultimate conclusion, the apparently 
 natural progression from so simple a topic as the "state of the weather, ' 
 even coupled as it may have been with an inundation of the Tiber, to that 
 magnificent denouement — the apotheosis of the emperor — has ever been 
 deservedly admired. 
 
 ODE II. 
 
 *' Jam satis terris ni vis atque dirae Grandinis," &c. 
 
 I. 
 
 Since Jove decreed in storms to vent 
 The winter of his discontent, 
 Thundering o'er Rome impenitent 
 
 With red right hand, 
 The flood-gates of the firmament 
 
 Have drench'd the land ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Terror hath seized the minds of men. 
 Who deem'd the days had come again 
 When Proteus led, up mount and glen, 
 
 And verdant lawn, 
 Of teeming ocean's darksome den 
 
 The monstrous spawn. 
 
 III. 
 
 When Pyrrha saw the ringdove's nest 
 Harbour a strange unbidden guest, 
 And, by the deluge dispossest 
 
 Of glade and grove, 
 Deers down the tide, with antler'd crest, 
 
 Affrighted drove. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We saw the yellow Tiber, sped 
 Back to his Tuscan fountain-head, 
 Overwhelm the sacred and the dead 
 
 In one fell doom, 
 And Vesta's pile in ruins spread, 
 
 And Numa's tomb. 
 
 Dreaming of days that once had been. 
 He deem d that wild disastrous scene 
 Might soothe his Ilia, injured queen ! 
 
 And comfort give her, 
 Reckless though Jove should intervene, 
 
 Uxorious river ! 
 
386 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Our sons will ask, why men of Rome 
 Drew against kindred] friends, and home, 
 Swords that a Persian hecatomb 
 
 Might best imbue— 
 Sons, by their fathers' feuds become 
 
 Feeble and few ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Whom can our country call in aid? 
 Where must the patriot's vow be paid? 
 With orisons shall Vestal maid 
 
 Fatigue the skies ? 
 Or will not Vesta's frown upbraid 
 
 Her votaries ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Augur Apollo ! shall we kneel 
 To thee, and for our commonweal 
 With humbled consciousness appeal ? 
 
 Oh, quell the storm ! 
 Come, though a silver vapour veil 
 
 Thy radiant form ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Will Venus from Mount Eryx stoop, 
 And to our succour hie, with troop 
 Of laughing Graces, and a group 
 
 Of Cupids round her ? 
 Or comest thou with wild war-whoop, 
 
 Bread Mars t our founder ? 
 
 X. 
 
 Whose voice so long bade peace avaunt ; 
 Whose war-dogs still for slaughter pant ; 
 The tented field thy chosen haunt, 
 
 Thy child the Roman, 
 Fierce legioner, whose visage gaunt 
 
 Scowls on the foeman. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Or hath young Hermes, Maia's son. 
 The graceful guise and form put on 
 Of thee, Augustus ? and begun 
 
 (Celestial stranger !) 
 To wear the name which thou hast won— 
 
 " Cesar's Avenger ? " 
 
 XII. 
 
 Blest be the days of thy sojourn. 
 Distant the hour when Rome shall mourn 
 The fatal sight of thy return 
 
 To Heaven again; 
 Forced by a guilty age to spurn 
 
 The haunts of men. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 387 
 
 xni. 
 
 Rather remain, beloved, adored. 
 Since Rome, reliant on thy sword, 
 1 To thee of Julius hath restored 
 
 The rich reversion ; 
 Baffle Assyria's hovering horde, 
 
 And smite the Persian 1 
 
 It was fitting that thus early in the series of his lyrics there should appear a 
 record of his warm intimacy with the only Roman poet of them all, whose 
 genius could justly claim equal rank with his. It is honourable to the 
 author of the " ^Lneid " that he feared not,, in the first instance, to introduce 
 at the court of Augustus, where his own reputation was already established, one 
 who alone of all his contemporaries could eventually dispute the laureateship, 
 and divide the applause of the imperial circle, with himself. .Virgil, however, 
 though he has carefully embalmed in his, pastorals the names of Gallus, Asinius 
 Pollio, Varius, and Cinna ; nay, though he has wrapt up in the amber of his 
 verse such grubs as Bavius and Masvius, has never once alluded to Horace— at 
 least, in that portion of his poems which has come down to us— whilst the 
 lyrist commemorates his gifted friend in more than a dozen instances. I should 
 feel loth to attribute this apparently studied omission to any discreditable . 
 jealousy on the part of the Mantuan ; but it would have been better had he 
 acted otherwise. Concerning the general tenor of the following outburst on the 
 shores of the Adriatic, while Virgil's galley sunk below the horizon, it will be 
 seen that his passionate attachment leads him into an invective against the 
 shipping interest, which I do not seek to justify. 
 
 ODE III.— TO THE SHIP BEARING VIRGIL TO GREECE. 
 
 " Sic te diva potens," &c. 
 
 I. 
 
 May Love's own planet guide thee o'er the wave ! 
 Brightly aloft 
 Helen's star-brother's twinkling, 
 And Eolus chain all his children, save 
 A west-wind soft 
 Thy liquid pathway wrinkling, 
 Galley ! to whom we trust, on thy parole, 
 Our Virgil,— mark 
 Thou bear him in thy bosom 
 Safe to the land of Greece ; for half my soul, • . . , 
 
 O gallant bark ! 
 
 Were lost if I should lose him. 
 
 II. 
 
 A breast of bronze full sure, and ribs of oak, 
 Were his who first 
 Defied . the tempest-demon ; .-„,.. 
 
 Dared in a fragile skiff the blast provoke, 
 And boldly burst 
 Forth on the deep a Seaman ! 
 Whom no conflicting hurricanes could daunt, 
 Nor Boreas chill, 
 • Nor weeping Hyads sadden, 
 E'en on yon gulC whose lord, the loud Levant, 
 Can calm at will, 
 Or to wild frenzy madden. 
 
388 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 III. 
 
 What dismal form must Death put on for him 
 Whose cold eye mocks 
 The dark deep's huge indwellers ! 
 Who calm athwart the billows sees the grim 
 Ceraunian rocks, 
 Of wail and woe tale-tellers ! — 
 Though Providence pour'd out its ocean-flood, 
 Whose broad expanse 
 Might land from land dissever, 
 Careering o'er the waters, Mam withstood 
 Jove's ordinance 
 With impious endeavour. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The human breast, with bold aspirings fraught, 
 Throbs thus una wed, 
 Untamed, and unquiescent. 
 Fire from the skies a son of Japhet brought, 
 And, fatal fraud ! 
 Made earth a guilty present. 
 Scarce was the spark snatch' d from the bright abode, 
 When round us straight 
 A ghastly phalanx thicken'd. 
 Fever and Palsy; and grim Death, who strode 
 With tardy gait 
 Far off, — his coming quicken'd ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Wafted on daring art's fictitious plume 
 The Cretan rose. 
 And waved his wizard pinions ; 
 Downwards Alcides pierced the realms of gloom, 
 Where darkly flows 
 Styx, through the dead's dominions. 
 Naught is beyond our reach, beyond our scope, 
 And heaven's high laws 
 Still fail to keep us under ; 
 How can our unreposing malice hope 
 Respite or pause 
 From Jove's avenging thunder ? 
 
 The tone of tender melancholy which pervades all his dreams of earthly hap- 
 piness—the constant recurrence of allusions to Death, which startle us in his 
 gayest and apparently most careless strains, is a very distinguishing feature of 
 the poet's state of mind. There is something here beyond what appears on the 
 surface. The skull so ostentatiously displayed at the banquets of Egypt had 
 its mystery. 
 
 ODE IV. 
 
 " Solvitur acris hyems." 
 
 I. I. 
 
 Now Winter melts beneath Solvitur acris hiems 
 
 Spring's genial breath, Grata vice 
 
 And Zephyr Veris et Favoni ; 
 
 Back to the water yields Trahuntque siccas 
 
 The stranded bark— back to the fields Machinae carinas : 
 
 The stabled heifer— Ac neque jam stabulis 
 
 And the gay rural scene Gaudet pecus 
 
 The shepherd's foot can wean, Aut arator igni ; 
 
 Forth from his homely hearth, to tread the Nee prata cams 
 
 meadows green. Albicant pruinis. 
 
Now Venus loves to group 
 Her merry troop 
 Of maidens. 
 Who. -while the moon peeps out, 
 Dance with the Graces round about 
 Their queen in cadence ; 
 While far, 'mid Are and noise, 
 Vulcan his forge employs. 
 Where Cyclops grim aloft their ponderous 
 sledges poise. 
 
 Jam Cytherea choros 
 Ducit Venus, 
 
 Imminente Luna ; 
 Junctxque Nymphis 
 
 Gratis decentes 
 Alterno terrain 
 Quatiunt pede, 
 
 Dum graves Cyclopum 
 Vulcanus ardens 
 
 Urit officinas. 
 
 III. III. 
 
 Now maids, with myrtle-bough, Nunc decet aut viridi 
 
 Garland their brow — Nitidum caput 
 
 Each forehead Impedire myrto, 
 
 Shining with fiWrets deck'd ; Aut flore, terrae 
 
 While the glad earth, by frost uncheck'd, Quern ferunt solutx. 
 
 Buds out all florid ; — Nunc et in umbrosis 
 
 Now let the knife devote, Fauno decet 
 
 In some still grove remote, Immolare lucis, 
 
 A victim-lamb to Faun ; or, should he list, Seu poscat, agnft, 
 
 a goat. Sive malit, naedo. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Death's undiscerning foot 
 Knocks at the hut ; 
 The lowly 
 As the most princely gate. 
 O favour'd friend ! on life s brief date 
 To count were folly ; 
 Soon shall, in vapours dark, 
 Quench'd be thy vital spark, 
 And thou, a silent ghost, for Pluto's land 
 embark. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Pallida mors aequo 
 Pulsat pede 
 
 Pauperum tabernas, 
 Regumque turres. 
 
 O beate Sesti, 
 Vitas summa brevis 
 Spem nos vetat 
 
 Inchoare longam. 
 Jam te premet nox, 
 
 Fabulaeque Manes, 
 
 V. V. 
 
 Where at no gay repast, Et domus exilis 
 
 By dice's cast Plutonia : 
 
 King chosen, Quo simul mearis, 
 
 Wine-laws shalt thou enforce, Nee regna vini 
 
 But weep o'er joy and love's warm source Sortiere talis ; 
 
 For ever frozen ; Nee teneram Lydiam 
 
 And tender Lydia lost, Mirabere, 
 
 Of all the town the toast, Qua calet juventus 
 
 Who then, when thou art gone, will fire all Nunc onuus, et tun 
 
 bosoms most ! Magis incalebit 
 
 In the following lines to Pyrrha we have set before us a Roman lady's boudoir, 
 sketched & la Watteau. Female fickleness was, among the Greeks, a subject 
 deemed inexhaustible. Horace has contrived to say much thereanent through- 
 out his volume ; but the matter seems to be as fresh as ever among the 
 moderns. — It has, no doubt, given great edification to Mr. Poynder to observe 
 that the practice alluded to, towards the closing verses, of hanging up what is 
 called an "ex voto" in the temples, still prevails along the shores of the 
 Mediterranean. For that matter, any Cockney, by proceeding only as far as 
 Boulogne-sur-Mer, imay find evidence of this classic heathenism in full vogue 
 among the Gallic fishermen. 
 
39° The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ODE V.— PYRRHA'S INCONSTANCY. 
 " Quis multft gracilis te puer in rosft. " 
 
 I- I- 
 
 Pyrrha, who now, mayhap, Quis multa gracilis 
 
 Pours on thy ; perfumed lap, Te puerin _ros& 
 
 With rosy wreath, fair youth, his fond addresses? Perfusus Hquidis 
 
 Beneath thy charming grot, Urget odoribus 
 
 For -whom, in gay love-knot, ,Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro t 
 
 Playfully dost thou bind thy yellow tresses? Cui flavara religas comam, 
 
 II. II. 
 
 So simple in thy neatness ! Simplex munditiis ? 
 
 Alas ! that so much sweetness Heu ! quoties fidem 
 
 Should ever prove the prelude of deception t Mutatosque Deos 
 
 Must he bewad too late Flebit, et aspera 
 
 His sadly alter'd fate, Nigris, sequora ventis 
 
 Chill'd by a bleak tempestuous reception, Emirabitur insolens, 
 
 III. III. 
 
 Who now, to fondness prone, Qui nunc te fruit ur ( 
 
 t Deeming thee all his own, Credulus aurefl ; 
 
 Revels In a long dream of future favour ; Qui semper vacuam, 
 
 So bright thy beauty glows, Semper amabilem 
 
 Still fascinating those Sperat ; nescius auras _ 
 
 Who have not learnt how apt thou art to waver. Fallacis ! Miseri, quibus 
 
 IV. IV. 
 
 I the false light forswear, Intentata nites ! 
 
 A shipwrecked mariner, Me tabula sacer 
 
 Who hangs the painted story of his suffering Votiva paries 
 
 Aloft o'er Neptune's shrine ; Indicat uvida a 
 
 There shall I hang up mine, Suspendisse potent! 
 
 And of my dripping robes the votive offering ! Vestimenta maris Deo. 
 
 The naval rencontres off Actium, Lepanto, and Trafalgar, offer in European 
 history three gigantic " landmarks," such as no three battle-plains ashore can 
 readily furnish : but the very magnitude of each maritime event has probably 
 deterred shrewd poets from grappling with what they despaired to board suc- 
 cessfully. Our Dibdin's dithyrambic, 
 
 " 'Twos in Trafalgar hay 
 We saw the Frenchman lay" &c, 
 
 as well as the Venetian carzelletta, 
 
 " Cantiam tut it allegramente? &*c* 
 
 were, no doubt, good enough for the watermen of the Thames and the gon- 
 doleers of the Gulf. But when the Roman admiral begged from Horace an 
 ode, emblazoning the defeat of the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra, 
 it required much tact and ability to eschew the perilous attempt. The following 
 effort shows how he got out of the scrape. The only parallel instance of clever 
 avoidance we remember, occurred when the great Conde* offered a thousand 
 ducats for the best poem on his campaign of Rocroi. A Gascon carried the 
 prize by this audacious outburst : 
 
 "Pour ce*lehrer tant de hauts faits, 
 Tant de combats, et tant de gloire, 
 Mille ecus ! Parbieu ! MiLLE ECUS ? 
 Ce n'est qu'un sou par victoire." 
 
 * See "Songs of Italy," apudnos t p. 938.-0. Y. 
 
ODE VI. 
 
 "ScriberisVario/'&c. 
 I. 
 
 Agrippa ! seek a loftier bard; nor ask 
 
 Horace to twine in songs 
 The double wreath, due to a victor's casque 
 From land and ocean : such Homeric task 
 
 To Varius belongs. 
 
 II. 
 
 Our lowly lyre no fitting music hath. 
 
 And in despair dismisses . . 
 The epic splendours of " Achilles' wrath," 
 Or the " dread line of pELOPS,""or the " path 
 Of billow-borne Ulysses." 
 
 in. 
 
 The record of the deeds at Actium wrought 
 
 So far transcends our talent— 
 Vain were the wish ! wild the presumptuous thought ! 
 To sing how Cesar, how Agrippa fought — 
 
 Both foremost 'mid the gallant ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 The God of War in adamantine mail ; . 
 
 Mebvon, gaunt and grim ; 
 Pallas in aid ; while Troy's battalions quail, 
 Scared by the lance of Diombd . . . must fail 
 
 To figure in our hymn. 
 
 Ours is the banquet song's light-hearted strain, 
 
 Roses our only laurel, 
 The progress of a love-suit our campaign, 
 Our only scars the gashes that remain 
 
 When romping lovers quarrel. 
 
 Deprecating the mania for foreign residences, which hurried off then (as it 
 does now) estimable citizens from a far more reputable sojourn in their native 
 country villas, the poet exhorts Plancus to give up his project of retiring 
 into Greece {from the displeasure of Augustus), to continue in the service of 
 the state, and, above all, to stick to the bottle. 
 
 ODE VII.— TO MUNATIUS PLANCUS. 
 
 " Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon.' 
 I. 
 
 Rhodes, Ephesus, or Mitvlene, 
 
 Or THBSSALY'S'fair valley. 
 Or Corinth, placed two gulfs atween, 
 Delphi, or Thebes, suggest the scene 
 
 Where some would choose to dally ; 
 Others in praise of Athens launch. 
 
 And poets lyric 
 Grace, with Minerva's olive-branch 
 Then; panegyric. 
 
392 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ii. 
 
 To Juno's city some would roam — 
 
 Argos — of steeds productive ; 
 In rich Mycenae make their home. 
 Or find Larissa pleasantsome, 
 Or Sparta deem seductive ; 
 Me Tibur's grove charms more than all 
 
 The brook's bright bosom, 
 And o'er loud Anio s waterfall 
 Fruit-trees in blossom. 
 
 III. 
 
 Flancus ! do blasts for ever sweep 
 
 Athwart the welkin rancoured? 
 Friend ! do the clouds for ever weep? — 
 Then cheer thee ! and thy sorrows deep 
 
 Drown in a flowing tankard : 
 Whether " the camp ! the field ! the sword ! " 
 
 Be still thy motto, 
 Or Tibur to thy choice afford 
 A sheltered grotto. 
 
 IV. 
 
 When Teucbr from his father's frown 
 
 For exile Darted, 
 Wreathing his brow with poplar crown. 
 In wine. he bade his comrades drown 
 
 Their woes light-hearted ; 
 And thus he cried, Whate'er betide, 
 
 Hope shall not leave me : 
 The home a father hath denied 
 Let Fortune give me ! 
 
 Who doubts or dreads if Teucbr lead t 
 
 Hath not Apollo 
 A new-found Salami's decreed, 
 Old Fatherland shall supersede? 
 
 Then fearless follow. 
 Ye who could bear ten years your share 
 
 ( Of toil and slaughter. 
 Drink ! for our sail to-morrow's gale 
 Wafts o'er the water. 
 
 The old tune of " Peas upon a trencher" has been adapted to " The time 
 I've lost in wooing," by Tom Moore, Mr. Cazales, of the Assemble NatienaU, 
 has given a French version of the immortal original. Ex. gr. : 
 
 " Garoon, apportez moi, moi, 
 
 Des pois, des petits pois, pois : 
 Ah, quel plaisir ! quand je les vois 
 Sur l'assiette de bois, bois," &c. &c 
 
 I hope there is no profanation in arranging an ode of Horace to the same 
 fascinating tune. — The diary of a Roman man of fashion can be easily made 
 up from the elements of daily occupation, supplied by the following ; 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 393 
 
 ODE VIII. 
 
 * Lydia, die per omnes," &c. 
 
 Enchanting Lydia ! prithee, 
 
 By all the gods that see thee, 
 Pray tell me this : Must Svbaris 
 
 Perish, enamour'd with thee ? 
 
 Lo ! wrapt as in a trance, he 
 
 Whose hardy youth could fancy 
 Each manly feat, dreads dust and heat, 
 
 All through thy necromancy ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Why rides he never, tell us, 
 
 Accoutred like his fellows, 
 For curb and whip, and horsemanship, 
 
 And martial bearing zealous? 
 
 Why hangs he back, demurrent 
 
 To breast the Tiber's current. 
 From wrestlers' oil, as from the coil 
 
 Of poisonous snake, abhorrent? 
 
 III. 
 
 No more with iron rigour 
 
 Rude armour-marks disfigure 
 His pliant limbs ; but languor dims 
 
 His eye and wastes his vigour. 
 
 Gone is the youth's ambition 
 
 To give the lance emission, 
 Or hurl adroit the circling quoit 
 
 In gallant competition. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And his embower 'd retreat is 
 
 Like where the Son of Thetis 
 Lurk'd undivulg'd, while he indulged 
 
 A mother's soft entreaties, 
 
 Robed as a Grecian girl, 
 
 Lest soldier-like apparel 
 Might raise a flame, and his kindling frame 
 
 Ihrough the ranks of slaughter whirl. 
 
 I. 
 Lydia, die per omnes 
 Te Deos oro, 
 Sybarim 
 Cur properas amando, 
 Perdere ? cur apricum 
 Oderit campum, 
 Patiens 
 Pulveris atque Sol is? 
 
 II. 
 Cur neque militaris 
 Inter aequales 
 Equitat? 
 Gallica nee lupatis 
 Te mperat ora fraenis ? 
 Cur timet flavum 
 
 TlBERIM 
 
 Tangere? curolivum. 
 
 III. 
 
 Sanguine viperino 
 Cautius vitat? 
 Neque jam 
 Livida gestat armis 
 Brachia, saspe disco, 
 Saepe trans finem 
 Jaculo ' 
 Nobilis expedito ? 
 
 IV 
 Quid latet, ut marinae 
 Filium dicunt 
 Thetjdis, 
 Sub lachrymosa Trojae 
 Funera, ne virilis 
 Cultus in caedem, et 
 Lycias 
 Proriperet catervas. 
 
 To relish the ninth ode, the reader must figure to himself the hunting-box 
 of a young Roman, some miles from Rome, with a distant view of the Medi- 
 terranean in front ; Mount Soracte far off on the right ; a tall cypress grove 
 on the left, backed by the ridge of Apennines. 
 
 ODE IX. 
 
 " Vides ut altft stet nive candidum 
 Soracte," &c. 
 
 YERSIO PROUTICA. 
 I. 
 
 See how the winter blanches 
 Soracte's giant brow ! 
 
 Hear how the forest branches 
 Groan for the weight of snow 
 
 While the fix'd ice impanels 
 
 Rivers within their channels. 
 
 TRADUTTA DAL CARGALLO. 
 
 Vedi tu di neve in copia 
 II Soratte omai canuto 
 
 Vedi come crollan gli alberi 
 Sotto al peso ; e 1 gelo acuto 
 
 Come ai fiumi tra le sponde 
 
 Fa indurar le liquid onde. 
 
394 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ii. 
 
 Out with the frost ! expel her t 
 Pile up the fuel-block, 
 
 And from thy hoary cellar 
 Produce a Sabine crock : 
 
 O Thaliarck ! remember 
 
 It count a fourth December. 
 
 II. 
 
 Sciogli '1 freddo con man prodiga 
 Rifomendo, O Taliarco ! 
 
 Legni al foco ; e pin del solito 
 A spillar don esser parco 
 
 Da orecchiuto orcio Sabino, 
 
 Di quattr' anni '1 pretto vino. 
 
 III. 
 
 Give to the gods the guidance 
 Of earth's arrangements. List! 
 
 The blasts at their high biddance 
 From the vex'd deep desist. 
 
 Nor 'mid the cypress riot ; 
 
 And the old elms are quiet. 
 
 lit 
 
 Sien del resto i numi gli arbitri 
 
 "C ovVavrand' Austro e di Borea 
 Abattuto it fervid impeto 
 
 Per la vasta arena equorea 
 Ne i cipressi urto nemico 
 Scuotera, ne 1' orno antico. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Enjoy, without foreboding, 
 
 Life as the moments run ; 
 Away with Care corroding, 
 
 Youth of my soul I nor shun 
 Love, for whose smile thou'rt suited ; 
 And 'mid the dancers foot it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CiS indagar fuggi sollecito 
 Che awenir doman dovra ; 
 
 Guigni a lucro il di che reduce 
 La Fortuna a te dara 
 
 Ne sprezzar ne* tuoi fresc' anni 
 
 Le carole e dolci affanni. 
 
 V. 
 
 While youth's hour lasts, beguile it ; 
 
 Follow the field, the camp. 
 Each manly sport, till twilight 
 
 Brings on the vesper-lamp ; 
 Then let thy loved one lisp her 
 Fond feelings in a whisper. 
 
 Sin che lunga da te vegeto 
 Sta canuta eta importuna 
 
 Campi e piazze ti riveggano ; 
 E fidele quando imbruna 
 
 T' abbia 1' ora che ti appella 
 
 A ronzar con la tua bella. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Or in a nook hide furtive, 
 Till by her laugh betray'd, 
 
 And drawn, with struggle sportive, 
 Forth from her ambuscade ; 
 
 Bracelet or ring th' offender 
 
 In forfeit sweet surrender ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Or e cam quel sorridere 
 Scopritor della fanciulla 
 
 Che in iln angolo internandosi 
 A celarsi si trastulla 
 
 Ed al finto suo ritegno 
 
 Trar d* armilla o anello il pegno. 
 
 The subsequent morceau is not given in the usual printed editions of our 
 
 Eoet ; even the MSS. omit it, except the " Vatican Codex," I myself have no 
 esitation as to its genuineness, though Burns has saved me the trouble of 
 translation. 
 
 ODE X. 
 
 * Virent arundines."— *' Green grow the rashes, O ! * 
 
 There's naught but care on every ban', 
 
 In every hour that passes, O 1 
 What signifies the life of man, 
 An' 'twere not for the lasses, 1 
 Green grow the rashes, O I 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 The sweetest hours that e'er I spent, 
 Were spent amang the lasses, 1 
 
 I. 
 
 Curse corrodiint Urbem, Rus, 
 
 Et sapient urn cellulas, 
 Nee vita vellem frui plus 
 Nl foret ob puellulas— 
 Virent arundines ! 
 At me teneltulas 
 Tsedet horarum nisi queis 
 Inter fui puellulas ! 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 395 
 
 n. 
 
 The warly race may riches chase, 
 
 And riches still may flee thee, O ! 
 And when at last they catch them fast, 
 Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O ! 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 The sweetest hours that e'er I spent, 
 Were spent amang the lasses, 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Divi tias avaro dem, 
 
 Insudet auri cumulo, 
 Quaerat quocumque modo rem, 
 Inops abibit tumulo. 
 
 Virent arundines ! 
 At me tenellulas 
 Tsedet horarum nisi queis 
 Inter fui puellulas ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Give me a canny hour at e'en, 
 
 My arms about my deary, 1 
 
 Then warly cares and warly men 
 
 May all gang tapsalteery, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 The sweetest hours that e'er I spent, 
 Were spent amang the lasses, O ! 
 
 ' : : ;. ivi ;.'.'. 
 
 For ye sae douce ye sneer at this, 
 
 Ye're naught but senseless asses, O ! 
 The wisest man the warld e'er saw, 
 He dearly loved the lasses, O ! . , , 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 The sweetest hours that e'er I spent, 
 Were spent amang the lasses, 1 
 
 III. 
 Cam Sol obscurat spicula, 
 Ml brachio tunc niveo, 
 Stringente, fit, amicul&, 
 Rerum dulcis oblivio ! 
 Virent arundines ! 
 At me tenellulas 
 Taedet horarum nisi queis 
 ■ Inter- fui puellulas ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 Num dices contra? canum grex ! 
 . An fuit vir sagacior 
 Quam Solomon t aut unquam rex 
 , . In virgines salacior ? 
 
 virent arundines ! 
 At me tenellulas 
 Taedet horarum nisi queis 
 Inter fui puellulas ! 
 
 Dame Nature swears the, lovely dears 
 
 Her noblest wark she classes, ! 
 
 Her prentice han' she tried on man. 
 
 And then she made the lasses, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 
 Green grow the rashes, O ! 
 The sweetest hours that e'er I spent, 
 Were spent amang; the lasses, O 1 
 
 ■ k V. 
 Quas cum de terra; vasculo 
 . Natura finxit bellulas, 
 Tentavit manum masculo 
 Formavit tunc puellulas- 
 . Virent arundines 
 At me tenellulas, 
 Txdet horarum nisi queis 
 Inter fui puellulas I 
 
XXII. 
 
 (Preiser's Magazine, August, 1836.) 
 
 [The number of Regina containing Prout's second decanting from Horace was doubly 
 remarkable. It comprised Maclise's etching of Sir John Soane, and yet more notably 
 Maginn's hideously scurrilous review of " Berkeley Castle," a historical romance in three 
 volumes, by the Hon. Grantley Berkeley, M.P. Turning to an examination of that 
 review now in cold blood, it seems almost by necessity to have involved the application 
 of a horsewhip to somebody's shoulders, even though they had been as pachydermatous 
 as those of the figurehead battered by Quito down at his wharf on the Thames. It is a 
 satisfaction at least to feel absolutely certain of this, that no organ of polite literature 
 would ever dream now-a-days of indulging in any such brutal personalities. 
 
 Decade the Second. 
 
 " Horatium in quibusdam nolim interpretari." 
 
 QuiNCTiLiAHX Instit. Or,,L 8. 
 " The lyrical part of Horace can never be perfectly translated. " 
 
 Sam. Johnson apud Boswell, vol. vii. p. 219. 
 " Horacio es de todos los poetas latinos el mas diricil de manejar." 
 
 Don Javier db Burgos, p. n. Madrid, 1820. 
 " Horace crochette et furette tout le magasin des mots." 
 
 Montaigne, Essais. 
 ''Prout's translations from Horace are too/ree and easy" 
 
 Atkenaum, gth July, 1836. 
 Tttipcuroftai \tytiv, Q ANAPE2 A6HNAI0I, det)0E<? vfiutv tovclvtov, eirci- 
 Sav iravra axovtrtiTE KptvaTt, <cai fin irpoTspov irpoXaju/SaifETc. 
 
 DEMOST., 4»(\t7T. IIpaT. 
 
 The sage Montaigne, a grave Castilian, 
 
 Old Dr. Johnson, ana Quinctilian, 
 
 Would say, a task, by no means facile, 
 
 Had fallen to him of Watergrasshill. 
 
 May he, then, claim indulgence for his 
 
 Renew'd attempt to render Horace ? . . . 
 
 As for your critic o' th' Asinaum, 
 
 We (Yorke), unrancour'd, hope to see him 
 
 Smoking yet many a pipe, an't please ye, 
 
 With us at old Prout s " free and easy." — O. Y. 
 
 It is fully admitted, at this time of day, that endurable translations, in any 
 modern idiom, of the Greek and Roman cafi d'opera, are lamentably few. But 
 
The Songs of Horace. 397 
 
 if there be a paucity of successful attempts in prose, it must not surprise us 
 that the candidates for renown in the poetical department should be still less 
 fortunate in the efforts they have made to climb the sacred hill, by catching at 
 the skirts of some classic songster. The established and canonized authors of 
 antiquity seem to view with no favourable eye these surreptitious endeavours to 
 get at the summit-level of their glorious pre-eminence, and Horace in particular 
 (as Mawworm, or Mathews, would say) has positively resolved on " wearing 
 a Spenser." To the luckless and presumptuous wight who would fain follow 
 him, in the hopes of catching at a fold of his impracticable jacket, he turns 
 round and addresses, in his own peculiar Latin, the maxim which we will con- 
 tent ourselves with giving in the French of Voltaire : 
 
 " Le nombre des elus au Parnasse est complet ! " 
 
 " The places are all taken, on the double-peaked mountain of Greek and 
 Roman poesy the mansions are all tenanted ; the classic Pegasus won't carry 
 double ; there is not the slightest chance here : go elsewhere, friend, and seek 
 out in the regions of the north a Parnassus of your own." 
 
 Whereupbn we are reminded of an anecdote of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, 
 when the German horse-auxiliaries were routed at Ballynacoppul, in the county 
 Wexford, by the bare-footed heroes of the pike and pitchfork. A victorious 
 Patlander was busily engaged in a field pulling off the boots from a dead 
 trooper, when another repealer, coming up, suggested the propriety of dividing 
 the spoil — half-a-pair being, in his opinion, a reasonable allowance for both. 
 "Why, then, neighbour," quietly observed the operator in reply, "can't you 
 be aisy, and go and kill a Hessian for yourself f" By what process of induction 
 this story occurred to us just now we cannot imagine ; dpropos des iottes, most 
 probably. 
 
 Certain it is that, to succeed, a translation must possess more or less intrinsic 
 originality. Among us, Pope's Homer is, beyond all comparison, the most 
 successful performance of its kind ; not that it textually reproduces the ' ' Iliad ' ' 
 — a task far more accurately accomplished by the maniac Cowper, in his unread- 
 able version— but because the richly endowed mind of Pope himself pours out 
 its own opulence in every line, and works the mineral ores of Greece with the 
 abundant resources of English capital. 
 
 Dryden's forcible and vigorous, but more frequently rollicking and titubant, 
 progress through the "^Eneid," may awhile arrest the attention; nay, ever and 
 anon some bold passage will excite our wonder, at the felicitous hardihood 
 of " glorious John ; " but it would be as wrong to call it Virgil, as to 
 take the slapdash plungings of a "wild-goose at play" for the graceful and 
 majestic motion of the Swan of Mantua gliding on the smooth surface of his 
 native Mincio, under a luxuriant canopy of reeds. The Tacitus of Arthur 
 Murphy is not the terse, significant, condensed, and deep-searching contemporary 
 of Pliny ; no one would feel more puzzled than the Roman to recognize his 
 own semi-oracular style in the sonorous phraseology, the ;»<m'-Gibbonian 
 period, the "long irapedimented march of oratorio pomp" with which the 
 Cork man has encumbered him. And yet Murphy tacitly passes for a fit 
 English representative of the acute annalist, the scientific analyzer of 
 imperial Rome. Our Junius alone could have done justice to the iron Latinity 
 of Tacitus. To translate the letters of old " Nominis umbra " into French or 
 Italian, would be as hopeless an experiment as to try and anglicize the 
 naif Lafontaine, or make Metastasio talk his soft nonsense through the 
 medium of our rugged gutturals. Plutarch was lucky enough to have found 
 long ago, among the French, a kindred mind in old Amyot : the only draw- 
 back to which good fortune is, that your modern Gaul requires somebody 
 to translate the translator. Abbe Delille has enriched his country with an 
 
398 The Works of Fatfier Prout. 
 
 admirable version of the " Georgics; " but the same ornamental touches which 
 he used so successfully in embellishing Virgil, have rendered, his translation 
 of our Milton a model of absurdity; 
 
 No one reads ' ' Ossian " now-a-days in England ; his poems lie neglected 
 among us — " desolate " as the very "walls of Balclutha : " yet in Italy, thanks 
 to Cesarotti, " Fingal " still brandishes his spear " like an icicle," and the stars 
 continue "dimly to twinkle through thy form, ghost of the gallant Oscar ! " 
 The affair presents, in truth, a far more ornate and elaborate specimen of the 
 bombast in the toscana fartlla than it doth in the original Macphersonic ; and 
 Buonaparte, who confessedly modelled the style of his "proclamations" on 
 the speeches of these mad Highlanders, derived all his phil-Ossianism from the 
 work of Cesarotti. Of the " Paradise Lost " there happen to be a couple of 
 excellent Italian versions (with the author of one, the exiled Guido Sorelli, 
 we now and then crack a bottle at Offley's) ; and " l'Eneide " of Annibal Caro 
 is nearly unexceptionable. Rabelais has met, in our Sir Thomas Urquhart, 
 a congenial spirit; but Don Quixote has never been enabled to cross the 
 Pyrenees, much less the ocean-boundaries of the peninsula. Nevertheless, 
 it must be admitted that Westminster has lately sent, in Evans, a rival of 
 the woful knight's chivalry to St. Sebastian. To return to the classics : when 
 we have named Dr. Gifford's "Juvenal," with the praiseworthy labours of 
 Sotheby and Chapman, we think we have exhausted the ■ subject ; for it 
 requires no conjurer to tell us that Tom Moore's " Anacreon " is sad rubbish, 
 and that, in hundreds of similar cases, the traduttore differs from a traditore 
 only by a syllable. 
 
 On the theory, as well as the practice of translation, old Prout seems to have 
 bestowed considerable attention ; though it would appear, at first, somewhat 
 strange that so eccentric and self-opinionated a genius as he evidently pos- 
 sessed could stoop to the common drudgery of merely transferring the 
 thoughts of another man from one idiom into a second or third— nay, occa- 
 sionally, a fourth (as in the case of " Les Bois de Blarney"), instead of pouring 
 out on the world his own ideas in a copious flood of original composition. 
 Why did he not indite a ' ' poem " of his own ? write a treatise on political 
 economy? figure as a natural theologian? turn history into romance for the 
 ladies? or into an old almanack for the Whigs? We believe the matter 
 has been already explained by us ; but, lest there should be any mistake, we 
 do not care how often we repeat the Father's favourite assertion/that, in these 
 latter days, "originality there can be none." The thing is not to he 
 had. Disguise thyself as thou wilt, Plagiarism 1 thou art still perceptible to 
 the eye of the true bookworm ; and the silent process of reproduction in the 
 world of ideas is not more demonstrable to the scientific inquirer than the 
 progressive metempsychosis of matter itself, through all its variform molecules. 
 As Horace has it : 
 
 " Multa renascuntur quae jam cecidere. " 
 
 Ep. ad Pison., 70. 
 
 Or, to quote the more direct evidence of honest old Chaucer, who discovered 
 the incontrovertible fact at the very peep-o'-day of modern literature : 
 
 . . . ."Out of olde feldies, as man saieth, 
 
 Comith all this ne we come from yere to yearn ; 
 
 And out of olde bolus, in good faithe, 
 Comith all this newe science that menne learn." 
 
 Scarce is an ancient writer sunk into oblivion, or his works withdrawn from 
 general perusal, when some literary Beau Tibbs starts upon town with the 
 identical cast-off intellectual wardrobe, albeit properly " refreshed " so as to 
 
The Songs of Horace. 399 
 
 puzzle any mortal eye, save that of a regularly educated Jew old-clothesman. 
 Addison has hinted, somewhat obscurely, his belief in the practice here 
 described, when (recording his judgment allegorically) he says — 
 
 " Soon as the shades of night prevail, 
 The moon takes up the wondrous tale." 
 
 Would any one wish to see this truth further developed, let him purchase a 
 book called "The WondrousTale of Alroy," by Benjamin Disraeli the Younger ; 
 of which, no doubt, a few copies remain on hand. 
 
 So long ago as the seventy-second Olympiad, an ingenious writer of Greek 
 songs had already intimated his knowledge of these goings-on in the literary 
 circles, and of the brain-sucking system generally, when he most truly (though 
 enigmatically) represents the "black earth" drinking the rain-water, the trees 
 pumping up the moisture of the soil, the sun inhaling the ocean vapours and 
 vegetable juices, the moon living equally on suction — 
 
 O A" »j\iot 6a\arra» 
 lov S'riKiov <«A»)i»i)" 
 
 and so on, through a long series of compotations and mutual hobnobbings, to 
 the end of the chapter. Most modern readers are satisfied with moonshine. 
 
 Prout had too high a sense of honesty to affect original writing ; hence he 
 openly gave himself out as a simple translator. " Non mens hie sermo " was 
 his constant avowal, and he sincerely pitied the numerous pretenders to inven- 
 tive genius with whom the times abound. Smitten with the love of antique 
 excellence, and absorbed in the contemplation of classic beauty, he turned with 
 disdain from books of minor attraction, and had no relish save for the ever- 
 enduring perfections of the Greek and Roman muse. He delighted in trans- 
 ferring these ancient thoughts to a modern vocabulary, and found solace and 
 enjoyment in the renewed repercussion of remote and bygone " old familiar" 
 sounds. 
 
 There is not, in the whole range of pagan mythology, a more graceful 
 impersonation than that of the nymph Echo— the disconsolate maiden, who 
 pined away until nothing remained but the faculty of giving back the voice of 
 her beloved. To the veteran enthusiast of Watergrasshill, little else was left 
 in the decline of his age but a corresponding tendency to translate what in his 
 youth he had admired ; though it must be added, that his echoes were some- 
 times like the one at Killarney, which, if asked, "How do yon do, Paddy 
 Blake f" will answer, ' ' Pretty well, I thank you I " 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 
 Regrnt Street, July 16th. 
 
 Watergrasshill, half-fast eleven. 
 
 In the natural progress of things, and following the strict order of succes- 
 sion, I alight on the tenth ode of book the first, whereof the title is "Ad 
 Mercurium." This personage, called by the Greeks Hermes, or the " inter- 
 preter," deserves particular notice at my hands in this place ; forasmuch as, 
 among the crowd of attributes ascribed to him by pagan divines, and the vast 
 multiplicity of occupations to which he is represented as giving his attention 
 (such as performing heavenly messages, teaching eloquence, guiding ghosts, 
 presiding over highways, patronizing commerce and robbers), he originated, 
 and may be supposed to preserve a lingering regard for, the art of translation. 
 Conveyancing is a science divisible into many departments, over all which his 
 influence, no doubt, extends : nor is it the least troublesome province of all 
 
400 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 aptly to convey the meaning of a difficult writer. With Orpheus, then, may 
 it be allowable to address him on the threshold of a task like mine — 
 
 KXvtJi fiov Epfitta, Atos ayyiXi, tc. t. A.. 
 
 Indeed, Dean Swift, in his advice to poets, seems to be fully aware of the 
 importance to be attached to the assistance of so useful and multiform an 
 agent, when he knowingly penned the following recipe for " the machinery" of 
 an epic : — 
 
 " Take of deities, male and female, as many as you can use ; separate them 
 into two equal parts, and keep Jupiter in the middle : let Juno set him in a 
 ferment and Venus mollify him. Remember, on all occasions, to make use of 
 volatile Mercury." 
 
 The quantity of business necessarily transacted by him in his innumerable 
 capacities, has furnished that profane scoffer at all established creeds, Lucian, 
 with matter of considerable merriment ; he going so far, in one of his dialogues, 
 as to hint, that, though young in appearance (according to what sculpture and 
 painting have made of his outward semblance), he must fain be as old as 
 Japhet in malice. This degenerate Greek would seem to look on the god of 
 wit, eloquence, commerce, and diplomacy, as a sort of pagan compound of 
 Figaro, Rothschild, Dick Turpin, and Talleyrand. It would be naturally 
 expected that our neighbours, the French, should have evinced, from the 
 earliest times, an instinctive partiality for so lively an impersonation of their 
 own endemic peculiarities ; and we therefore feel no surprise in finding that 
 fact recorded by a holy Father of the second century (Tcrtullian adversus 
 Gnostic, cap. vii.), the same observation occurring to Caesar in his "Commen- 
 taries," viz. " Galli deum maxime Mercurium colunt" (lib. iv.). Huet, the 
 illustrious bishop of Avranches, has brought considerable ability to the identi- 
 fication of Mercury, or Hermes Trismegistus, with the Hebrew shepherd 
 Moses ; and this, I confess, has been my own system, long ago adopted by 
 me on the perusal of Father Kircher's " CEdipus." 
 
 The twisted serpents round his magical rod are but slight indications of his 
 connection with Egypt, compared to the coincidences which might be alleged 
 were it advisable to enter on the inquiry ; and I merely allude to it here 
 because Horace himself thinks proper, in the following ode, to call his celes- 
 tial patron a " nephew of Mount Atlas :" setting thus at rest the question of 
 his African pedigree. This odd expression has been re-echoed by an Italian 
 poet of celebrity in some sonorous lines : 
 
 " Scendea talor degli inaurati scanni 
 E risaliva alle stellanti rote, 
 Araldo dagli Dei battendo i vanni 
 D'Atlante il facondissimo nipote." 
 
 We are told by Apollodorus how the god, walking one day on the banks of 
 the Nile, after the annual inundation had ceased, and the river had fallen back 
 into its accustomed channel, found a dead tortoise lying on its back, all the 
 fleshy parts of which had been dried up by the action of the sun's rays, so 
 intensely powerful in Egypt : but a few of the tougher fibres remained j upon 
 touching which, the light-fingered deity found them to emit an agreeable tone. 
 Forthwith was conceived in his inventive brain the idea of a lute. Thus, the 
 laws of gravitation are reported to have suggested themselves to Newton, while 
 pondering in his orchard of an afternoon, on seeing a ripe apple fall from its 
 parent branch. The Corinthian capital was the result of a Greek girl having 
 left her clothes-basket, covered over with a tile, on a plant of acanthus. The 
 steam-engine originated in observing the motion of the lid on a barber's 
 kettle. Whatever gracefulness and beauty may be found in the three first 
 
The Songs of Horace. 401 
 
 statements (and, surely, they are highly calculated to charm the fancy), the last, 
 I fear (though leading to far more important consequences than all the rest), 
 offers but a meagre subject for painting or poetry. 
 
 The Latin name of Mercury is derived, according to a tradition religiously 
 preserved among those hereditary guardians of primitive ignorance, the school- 
 masters, from the word merx, merchandise. I beg leave to submit (and I am 
 borne out by an old MS. in the King's Library, Paris, marked B. *.), that, 
 though the name of commercial commodities may have been aptly taken from; 
 the god supposed to preside over their prosperous interchange, he himself 
 was so called from his functions of messenger between earth and heaven, quasi 
 medius currens ; an origin of far higher import, and an allusion to far more 
 sacred doctrines, than are to be gathered from the ordinary ravings of pagan 
 theology. ' 
 
 Among the Greeks, he rejoiced in the equally significant title of Hermes, or, 
 the " expounder of hidden things." And, for all the purposes of life, it would 
 appear that he was as constantly put in requisition by his classic devotees of 
 old, as St. Antonio of Padua is at the present day among the vetturini, and 
 the vulgar generally throughout Italy. It is, however, a somewhat strange 
 contradiction in the Greek system of divinity, that the god of locomotion and 
 rapidity should also be the protector of fixtures, milestones, landmarks, 
 monumental erections, and of matters conveying the idea of permanence and 
 stability. The well-known signet of Erasmus, which gave rise to sundry 
 malicious imputations against that eminent priest, was a statue of the god in 
 the shape of a terminus, with the motto, " cedo nulli;" and every one 
 knows what odium attached itself to the youth Alcibiades, when, in a mad 
 frolic, he removed certain figures of this description, during a night of jollity, 
 in the streets of Athens. The author of the Book of Proverbs gives a caution, 
 which it were well for modern destructives were they to take to themselves, 
 entering into the spirit that dictated that most sensible admonition (Prov. xxii. 
 28, " Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set:" " JVe 
 transgrediaris terminos antiquos quos posuerunt patres tui." — Id. Vulgate. 
 
 ODE X.— HYMN TO MERCURY. 
 
 " Meecuri facunde Nepos Atlantis." 
 I. I. 
 
 Persuasive Hermes ! Afric's son ! Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis, 
 
 Who— scarce had human life begun — Qui feros cultus hominum recentum 
 
 Amid our rude forefathers shone Voce formasti catus, et decors. 
 
 With arts instructive, More palsestrse ! 
 
 And man to new refinement won 
 
 With grace seductive. 
 
 II. II. 
 
 Herald of Jove, and of his court, Te canam, magni Jovis et Deorum 
 
 The lyre's inventor and support, Nuntium, curveeque lyrae parentem 
 
 Genius I that can at will resort Callidum, quidquid placuit, jocoso 
 
 To glorious cunning ; Condere furto. 
 
 Both gods and men in furtive sport 
 
 And wit outrunning ! 
 
 . III. III. 
 
 You, when a child the woods amid, Te, boves olim nisi reddidisses 
 
 Apollo's kine drew off and hid ; Per dolum amotas, puerum minaci 
 
 And when the god with menace bid Voce dum tenet, viduus pharetra 
 
 The spoil deliver, Risit Apollo. 
 
 Forced him to smile — for, while he chid, 
 
 You stole his quiver ! 
 
402 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IV. IV. 
 
 The night old Priam sorrowing went, Quin et Atridas, duce te, superbos, 
 
 With gold, through many a Grecian tent, Ilio dives Priamus relicto, 
 
 And many a foeman's watchfire, bent Thessalosque ignes et iniqua Trojsc 
 
 To ransom Hector, Castra fefellit. 
 
 In you he found a provident 
 
 Guide and protector. 
 
 V. V. 
 
 Where bloom Elysium's groves, beyond Tu pias tetis animas reponis 
 
 Death's portals and the Stygian pond, Sedibus, virgaque levem coerces 
 
 You guide the ghosts with golden wand, Aurea turbam, superis Deorum 
 
 Whose special charm is Gratus et imis. ■ 
 
 That Jove and Pluto both are fond 
 
 Alike of Hermes ! 
 
 So much for Mercury. Turn we now to another feature in the planetary 
 system. The rage for astrological pursuits, and the belief in a secret in- 
 fluence exercised by the stars over the life and fortune of individuals, seems, 
 at certain epochs pf the world's history, to have seized on mankind like a 
 periodical epidemic ; but at no junction of human affairs was the mania so 
 prevalent as after the death of Julius Caesar. The influx of Asiatic luxury had 
 been accompanied by the arrival at Rome of a number of "wise men from the 
 east," and considerable curiosity had been excited among all classes by the 
 strange novelty of oriental traditions. Among these remnants of original 
 revelation, the announcement of a forthcoming Conqueror, to be harbingered 
 and ushered into the possession of empire by a mysterious star,* had fixed the 
 attention of political intriguers as a fit engine for working on popular credulity ; 
 and hence the partisans of young Octavius were constantly ringing the changes 
 on " Oesaris Astrum" and " Julium Sidus," until they hadactually forced 
 the populace into a strong faith in the existence of some celestial phenomenon 
 connected with the imperial house of Caesar. Those who recollect, as I do, how 
 famously " Pastorini's Prophecies " assisted the interests of Captain Rock and 
 the dynasty of Derrynane, will understand the nature of this sort of humbug, 
 and will readily imagine how the mob of Rome was tutored by the augurs into 
 a firm reliance on the interference of Heaven in the business. Buonaparte was 
 too shrewd a student of human weaknesses, and had read history too care- 
 fully to overlook the tendency of the vulgar towards this belief in supernatural 
 apparitions ; hence he got up an ignis fatuus of his own, which he called the 
 " Soleil d'Austerlitz," and out of which he took a particular shine on more 
 than one brilliant occasion. Many an old infidel grenadier was firmly persuaded 
 that, better than Joshua the Jew, their leader could command the glorious disc 
 to do his biddings; and every battle-field, consequently, became a "valley of 
 Ajalon," where they smote the sourcrout children of Germany to their hearts' 
 content. But we are wandering from the era of Augustus. By a very natural 
 process, the belief in a ruling star, in connection with the imperial family, 
 expanded itself from that narrow centre into the broad circumference of every 
 family in the empire; and each- individual began to fancy he might discover a 
 small twinkling shiner, of personal importance to himself, in the wide canopy 
 of heaven. Great, in consequence, was the profit accruing to any cunning 
 seer from the east, who might happen to set up an observatory on some one 
 of the seven hills for the purpose of allotting to each lady and gentleman their 
 own particular planet. Nostradamus, Cagliostro, Dr. Spurzheim, and St. John 
 
 * The expressions of Propertius are Very remarkable : 
 
 "Quseritis et coelo phcenicum inventa sereno 
 Quae sit Stella," &c., &c. 
 
 Lib. ii, 30, 60. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 403 
 
 Long, had long been anticipated by Roman practitioners; and in the annals 
 of roguery, as well as of literature and politics, there is nothing new under 
 the sun. 
 
 In Mr. Ainsworth's yet unpublished romance of the "Admirable Crichton" 
 (which he has had the idea of submitting to my perusal), I cannot but com- 
 mend the use he has made of the astrological practices so prevalent under the 
 reign of Henri Trois, and in the days of Catherine de Medicis ; indeed, I 
 scarcely know any of the so-called historical novels of this frivolous generation, 
 which has altogether so graphically reproduced the spirit and character of the 
 times, as this dashing and daring portraiture of the young Scotchman and his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 The mistress of Horace, it would seem, had taken it into her head to go 
 consult these soothsayers from Chaldea, as to the probable duration of the 
 poet's life and her own — of course, fancying it needless to inquire as to the 
 probability of their amours being quite commensurate with the continuance of 
 their earthly career ; a matter which circumstances, nevertheless, should render 
 somewhat problematical— whereupon her lover chides the propensity, in the 
 following strain of tender and affectionate remonstrance :— 
 
 I. 
 
 ODE XI. 
 
 AD LEUCONOEM. 
 
 Tu ne quxsieris, 
 
 Scire nefas, 
 Quern mihi, quern tibi, 
 Finem Di dederint, 
 
 LeuconoB, 
 Nee Babylonios 
 Tentaris numeros. — 
 Ut melius 
 
 II. 
 
 Quidquid erit, pati, 
 Seu piures hiemes, 
 Seu cribuit 
 
 Jupiter ultimam, 
 Qua; nunc oppositis 
 
 Debilitat 
 Pumicibus mate 
 Tyrrhenum ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Sapias. vina liques, 
 Et spatio brevi 
 
 Spem longem reseces. 
 Dum loquimur, 
 Fugerit invida 
 
 ^tas. Carpe diem, 
 Quam minimum 
 
 Credula postero. 
 
 Horace has often been, accused of plundering the Greeks, and of transferring 
 erkire odes from their language into Latin metres; The charge is perfectly 
 borne out by conclusive facts, and I shall have many an opportunity of recur- 
 ring to the evidences, as afforded in the subsequent decades of this series. 
 The opening of the following glorious dithyramb is clearly borrowed from the 
 Avaf-tipopntyyev 'T/uuoi of Pindar; but I venture to say that there is not, in 
 the whole collection of the Songs of Horace, a more truly Roman, a more 
 
 Love, mine ! seek not to grope 
 Through the dark windings of Chaldean witchery, 
 
 To learn your horoscope, 
 Or mine, from vile adepts in fraud and treachery. 
 My Leuconoe ! shun 
 Those sons of Babylon. 
 
 II. 
 
 Far better 'twere to wait, 
 Calmly resign'd, the destined hour's maturity, 
 
 Whether our life's brief date 
 This winter close, or, through a Jong futurity, 
 For us the sea still roar 
 On yon Tyrrenean shore. 
 
 III. 
 
 Let Wisdom fill the cup :— 
 Vain hopes of lengthen'd days and years felicitous 
 
 Folly may treasure up ; 
 Ours be the day that passeth— unsolicitous 
 Of what the next may bring. 
 Time flieth as we sing 1. 
 
404 The Works of FatJier Prout. 
 
 intensely national effusion, than this invocation of divine protection on the 
 head of the government. The art of lyrical progression, the ars celare ariem, 
 is nowhere practised with greater effect ; and the blending up of all the histo- 
 rical recollections most dear to the country with the prospects of the newly 
 established dynasty, the hopes of the young Marcellus, and the preservation of 
 the emperor's life, is a master-stroke of the politico-poetical tactician. The 
 very introduction of a word in honour of the republican Cato, by throwing 
 the public off its guard, and by giving an air of independent boldness to the 
 composition, admirably favours the object he has in view. A more august 
 association of ideas, a bolder selection of images, is not to be found within 
 the compass of any ode, ancient or modern — save, perhaps, in the canticle of 
 Habakkuk, or in the " Persian feast " of Dry den. 
 
 ODE XII.— A PRAYER FOR AUGUSTUS. 
 
 " Quern virum aut heroa. ** 
 
 Aria — " Sublime was the warning." 
 
 I. 
 
 Name, Clio, the man ! or the god . . . — for whose sake 
 The lyre, or the clarion, loud echoes shall wake 
 
 On thy favourite hill, or in Helicon's grove ? 
 
 Whence forests have follow'd the wizard of Thrace, 
 
 When rivers enraptured suspended their race, 
 
 When ears were vouchsafed to the obdurate oak, 
 
 And the blasts of Mount HjEmus bow'd down '" 'he voke 
 
 Of the magical minestrel, grandson of Jove. 
 
 II. 
 
 First to Him raise the song ! whose parental control 
 Men and gods feel alike ; whom the waves, as they roll — 
 
 Whom the earth, and the stars, and the seasons obey, 
 Unapproach'd in his godhead ; majestic alone, 
 Though Pallas may stand on the steps of his throne. 
 Though huntress Diana may challenge a shrine, 
 And worship be due to the god of the vine, 
 
 And to archer Apollo, bright giver of day ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Shall we next sing Alcides ? or Led a's twin-lights — 
 Him the Horseman, or him whom the Cestus delights? 
 
 Both shining aloft, by the seaman adored : 
 (For he kens that their rising the clouds can dispel, 
 Dash the foam from the rock, and the hurricane quell.)— 
 Of Romulus next shall the claim be allow'd? 
 Of Numa the peaceful? of Takquin the proud? 
 
 Of Cato, whose fall hath ennobled his sword ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Shall Scaurus, shall Regulus fruitlessly crave 
 Honour due? shall the Consul, vh> prodigal gave 
 
 His life-blood on Cannac's disatterous plain? — 
 Camillus ? or he whom a king could not tempt? 
 Stern Poverty's children, unfashion'd, unkempt. — 
 The fame of Marcellus grows yet in the shade, 
 But the meteor of Julius beams over his head, 
 
 Like the moon that outshines all the stars in her train I 
 
The Songs of Horace. 405 
 
 v. 
 
 Great Deity, guardian of men \ unto whom 
 
 We commend, in Augustus, the fortunes of Rome, 
 
 Reign for ever ! but guard his subordinate throne. 
 Be it his— of the Parthian each inroad to check ; 
 Of the Indian, in triumph, to trample the neck ; 
 To rule all the nations of earth ; — be it Jove's 
 To exterminate guilt from the god's hallow'd groves, 
 
 Be the bolt and the chariot of thunder thine own ! 
 
 Next comes an ode in imitation of Sappho. Who has not read that won- 
 drous woman's eloquent outburst of ecstatic passion? In all antiquity, no love- 
 song obtained such celebrity as that which has come down to us in the form of 
 a fragment ; but though many attempts have been made to divest it of its 
 Grecian envelope, and robe it in modem costume, I am sorry for the sake of 
 the ladies to be obliged to say, that it can never be presented in any other 
 shape than what it wears in the splendid original. This is the more to be 
 regretted, as in a recent volume of very exquisite poetry, Miss Landon has 
 devoted six glowing pages* to the development of Sappho's supposed feel- 
 ings. If kindred eloquence could be taken as a substitute, and if the delicate 
 instinct of a lively and fertile female soul may be imagined fully capable of 
 catching the very spirit of Greek inspiration, then may it be permitted to apply 
 the words of Horace occurring in another place : 
 
 " Spirat adhuc amor 
 Vivuntque commissi calores 
 Lsetitise fidibus puellse." 
 
 Lib. iv. ode ix. 
 
 But, returning to the ode before us, it is not my province to decide whether 
 the jealousy which our poet here describes was really felt, or only affected for 
 poetic purposes. From the notorious unsteadiness of his attachments, and the 
 multitudinous list of his loves, including in the catalogue Lalage, Glycera, 
 Leuconoe, Neasra, Cloris, Pyrrha, Nerine, Lyce\ Phidyte, Cynaris, &c, &c. 
 (by the way, all Greek girls), I should greatly doubt the sincerity of his ardour 
 for Lydia. It is only necessary, for the explanation of " dente labris notam," 
 terminating the third stanza, in reference to Roman ideas of proper behaviour 
 towards the ladies, to record what Flora says of her friend Pompey, in Plu- 
 tarch's life of that illustrious general : — Mvq/uovcvEii/ t»|s irpcn tod Oo/iirctov 
 ofii\ias cdv ovx V v eKeivw irvvavavuvtra/xevtjv AAHKTQ2 airtXdetv. For the 
 right understanding of that singular phrase in the fourth stanza, the " quintes- 
 sence," or "fifth part," of nectar, be it remembered that the sweetness of 
 the celestial beverage so called was supposed to be divided into ten parts, the 
 tenth or tithe whereof constituted what men call honey : To peAi, tvvaTov t>js 
 a/itpoirias /tcpoc, quoth Ibycus. From which it is as plain as Cocker, that 
 Love, being the fifth part, or £, gives a fractional sweetness of much higher 
 power and intensity. 
 
 ODE XIII.— THE POET'S JEALOUSY. 
 
 "Quum tu, Lydia, Telephi 
 ' Cervicem roseam, ' &c. 
 
 I. I. 
 
 Lydia, when you tauntingly Quum tu, Lydia, Telephi 
 
 Talk of Telephus, praising him Cervicem roseam, 
 
 For his beauty, vauntingly Cerea Telephi 
 
 Far beyond me raising him, Laudas brachia, vae ! meum 
 
 His rosy neck, and arms of alabaster, Fervens dimcili 
 
 My rage I scarce can master ! Bile tumet jecur. 
 
 * Pp. 115-121 of the " Vow of the Peacock, and other Poems, by L. E. L." i vol. 
 small 8vo. Saunders and Otley. 
 
406 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Pale and faint with dizziness, 
 
 All my features presently 
 Paint my soul's uneasiness ; 
 
 Tears, big tears, incessantly 
 Steal down my cheeks, and tell in what fierce fashion 
 
 My bosom burns with passion. 
 
 II. 
 
 Tunc nee mens mihi, neccolor 
 
 Certa sede manet ; 
 
 Humor et in genas 
 Furtim labitur, argueiu 
 
 Quam lentis penitus 
 
 Maoerer ignibus. 
 
 III. 
 
 'Sdeath ! to trace the evidence 
 
 Of your gay deceitfulness, 
 Mid the cup's improvidence, 
 
 Mid the feast's forgetfuiness, 
 To trace, where lips and ivory shoulders pay for it. 
 
 The kiss of some young favourite ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Uror, seu tibi candidos 
 Turparunt humeros 
 Immodics mero 
 
 Rixae ; sive puer furens 
 
 Impressit memorem 
 Dente labris notam. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Deem not vainly credulous 
 
 Such wild transports durable. 
 Or that, fond and sedulous, 
 
 Love is thus procurable : 
 Though Venus drench the kiss with her quintessence, 
 
 Its nectar Time soon lessens. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Non, si me satis audias, 
 
 Speres perpetuum 
 
 Dulcia barbare* 
 Laedentem oscula, quae Venus 
 
 Quinta parte sui 
 
 Nectaris imbuit. 
 
 V. 
 
 But where meet (thrice fortunate !) 
 
 Kindred hearts and suitable, 
 Strife comes ne'er importunate. 
 Love remains immutable ; 
 On to the close they glide, mid scenes Elysian, 
 Through life s delightful vision ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Felices ter, et amplius, 
 Quos irrupta tenet 
 Copula ; nee malis 
 
 Divulsus querimoniis 
 Suprema citius 
 Solvet Amor die ! 
 
 Quinctilian (lib. viii. 6) gives the following address to the vessel of the state 
 as a specimen of well-sustained allegory. It appears to have been written at 
 the outbreak of the civil war between Octavius and Marc Antony, and of 
 course, as all such compositions ought to do, explains itself. There is, how- 
 ever, a naval manoeuvre hinted at in st. ii. admirably illustrative of a passage 
 in the Acts of the Apostles {cap. xxvii. v. 17I, where the. mariners are de- 
 scribed by St. Luke as "undergirding the ship ' that carried Paul. Ropes, it 
 appears, were let down, and drawn under the keel of the vessel to keep all 
 tight: this is what Horace indicates by sine funibus carina. I recommend 
 the point to Captain Marryat, should he make St. Paul's shipwreck on the isle 
 of Malta the subject of his next nautico-historical novel. 
 
 ODE XIV— TO THE VESSEL OF THE STATE. 
 
 Ait Allegory. 
 
 I. 
 
 Kb RBMFUBLICAM. 
 
 I. 
 
 What fresh perdition urges. 
 Galley ! thy darksome track. 
 
 Once more upon the surges ? 
 Hie to the haven back ! 
 
 Doth not the lightning show thee 
 
 Thou hast got none to row thee? 
 
 O navis, referent 
 In mare te novi 
 Fluctus I O quid agis t 
 Fortiter occupa 
 Portum. Nonne vides ut 
 Nudum remigio btus 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 407 
 
 it 
 
 Is not thy mainmast shatter'd ? 
 
 Hath not the boisterous south 
 Thy yards and rigging scattered ? 
 
 In dishabille uncouth, 
 How canst thou hope to weather 
 The storms that round thee gather ? 
 
 III. 
 
 Rent are the sails that deck'd thee ; 
 
 Deaf are thy gods become, 
 Though summon 'd to protect thee, 
 
 Though sued to save thee from 
 The fate thou most abhorrest, 
 Proud daughter of the forest I 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thy vanity would vaunt us. 
 Yon richly pictured poop 
 
 Pine-timbers from the Pontus ; 
 Fear lest, in one fell swoop, 
 
 Paint, pride, and pine-trees hollow, 
 
 The scoffing whirlpool swallow 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Et malus celeri 
 Saucius Africo, 
 Antennaeque gemant, 
 Ac sine funibus 
 Vix durare carina; 
 Possint imperiosius 
 
 lit 
 
 j'Equor ? _ Non tibi sunt 
 Integra lintea, 
 Non Di quos iterum 
 Pressa voces malo ; 
 Quamvis Pontica pinus, 
 Silvae filia nobilis, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Jactes et genus et 
 Nomen inutile. 
 Nil pictis timidus 
 Navi ta puppibus 
 Fidit. Tu, nisi ventis 
 Debes ludibrium, cave. 
 
 I've watch'd thee sad and pensive, 
 
 Source of my recent cares ! 
 Oh, wisely apprehensive, 
 
 Venture not unawares 
 Where Greece spreads out her seas, 
 Begemm'd with Cvclades ! 
 
 Nuper solHcitum 
 
 Sua mini taedium, 
 unc desiderium, 
 Curaque non le vis 
 Interfusa nitentes 
 Vites squora Cycladas. 
 
 The same " intirU de cir Constance" which may have given piquancy to the 
 allegory, possibly attached itself also to the following spirited lines. Antony 
 and Cleopatra must have looked on the allusion to Paris and Helen as libellous 
 in the extreme. Considered merely in the light of a political squib, the ode is 
 capital ; but it has higher merit as a finished lyric ; and Tom Campbell 
 evidently found in it the form as well as substance of his popular and spirited 
 effusion ; 
 
 " Lochiel \ Lochiel ! beware of the day 
 When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle-array/' 
 
 ODE XV.— THE SEA-GOD'S WARNING TO PARIS. 
 
 " Pastor cum traheret," &c 
 
 As the Shepherd of Troy, wafting over the deep 
 Sad Perfidy's freightage, bore Helen along. 
 
 Old Nereus uprose, hush d the breezes to sleep, 
 And the secrets of doom thus reveal'd in his song. 
 
 II. 
 
 Ah ! homeward thou bring*st, with an omen of dread, 
 1 One whom Greece, will reclaim !— for her millions nave sworn 
 Not to rest till they tear the false bride from thy bed. 
 Or till Priam's eld throne their revenge overturn. 
 
408 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 in. 
 
 See the struggle ! how foam covers horsemen and steeds ! 
 
 See thy Ilion consign'd to the bloodiest of sieges ! 
 Mark, array'd in her helmet, Minerva, who speeds 
 
 To prepare for 1 the battle her car and her aegis ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Too fondly thou deemest that Venus will vouch 
 For a life which thou spendest in trimming thy curls, 
 
 Or in tuning, reclined on an indolent couch, 
 An effeminate lyre to an audience of girls. 
 
 V. 
 
 Though awhile in voluptuous pastime employed, 
 
 Far away from the contest, the truant of lust 
 May baffle the bowmen, and Ajax avoid, 
 
 Thy adulterous ringlets are doom'd to the dust ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Seest thou him of Ithaca, scourge of thy race? 
 
 Gallant Teocer of Salamis? Nestor the wise? 
 How. urging his car on thy cowardly trace, 
 
 Swift Sthenelus poises his lance as he flies? 
 
 VII. 
 
 Swift Sthenelus, Diomed's brave charioteer, 
 
 Accomplish'd in war like the Cretan Meryon, 
 Fierce, towering aloft, see his master appear, 
 
 Of a generous stock the illustrious scion. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Whom thou, like a fawn, when a wolf in the valley 
 
 The delicate pasture compels him to leave. 
 Wilt fly, faint and breathless— though flight may not tally 
 
 With all thy beloved heard thee boast to achieve. 
 
 IX. 
 Achilles, retired in his angry pavilion. 
 
 Shall cause a short respite to Troy and her dames ; 
 Yet a few winters more, and the turrets of Ilion 
 
 Must sink mid the roar of retributive flames ! 
 
 Horace first burst on the town as a satirist, and more than one fair dame 
 must have had cause, like Tyndaris, to fall out with him. There is a grace- 
 ful mixture of playfulness and remonstrance in the following amende honor- 
 able, in which he dwells on the unseemly appearance of resentment and anger 
 in the features of beauty. With reference to stanza v., it would appear that 
 the tragedy of "Thyestes," by Varus, was at that moment in a successful run 
 on the Roman boards. 
 
 ODE XVI.— THE SATIRIST'S RECANTATION. 
 
 PALINODIA AD TYNDARIDEM. 
 
 " O ! matre pulchrft filia pulchrior." 
 
 I. I. 
 
 Blest with a charming mother, yet, O ! matre pulchra filia pulchrior] 
 
 Thou still more fascinating daughter ! Quern crirainosis 
 
 Prithee my vile lampoons forget— Cunque voles modora 
 
 Give to the flames the libel— let Femes iambis ; sive flamma, 
 
 The satire sink in Hadria's water 1 Sive man libet Hadriano. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 409 
 
 11. 
 
 Not alt Cybblb's solemn rites. 
 Cymbals of brass and spells of magic ; 
 
 Apollo's priest, mid Delphic flights ; 
 
 Or Bacchanal, mid fierce delights, 
 Presents a scene more tragic 
 
 III. 
 
 Than Anger, when it rules the soul. 
 
 Nor fire nor sword can then surmount her. 
 Nor the vex'd elements control, 
 Though Jove himself, from pole to pole, 
 
 Thundering rush down to the encounter. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Prometheus — forced to graft, of old, 
 
 Upon our stock a foreign scion. 
 Mix d up — if we be truly told — 
 With some brute particles, our mould— 
 Anger he gathered from the lion. 
 
 V. 
 
 Anger destroy'd Thyeste's race, 
 
 O'erwhelm'd his house in ruin thorough, 
 And many a lofty city's trace 
 Caused a proud foeman to efface, 
 Ploughing the site with hostile furrow 
 
 VI. 
 
 Oh, be appeased ! 'twas rage, in sooth, 
 
 First woke my song's satiric tenor ; 
 In wild and unreflecting youth. 
 Anger inspired the deed uncouth : 
 But, pardon that foul misdemeanour. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Lady ! I swear — my recreant lays 
 
 Henceforth to rectify and alter — 
 To change my tones from blame to praise. 
 Should your rekindling: friendship raise 
 The spirits of a sad defaulter ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Non Dindymene, non adytis quatit 
 Mentem sacerdotum 
 Incola Pythius, 
 Non Liber aeque, non acuta 
 Sic geminant Corybantes sera, 
 
 III. 
 
 Tristes ut irae : quas neque Noricus 
 
 Deterret ensis, 
 
 Nee mare naufragum. 
 
 Nee saevus ignis, nee tremendo 
 
 Juppiter ipse mens tumultu. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Fertur Prometheus addere principi 
 Limo coactus 
 Particulam undique 
 Desectam, et insani leonis 
 Vim stomacho apposuisse nostra. 
 
 V. 
 
 Ira Thyesten exitio gravi 
 Stravere, et altis 
 Urbibus ultima; 
 Stetere causae cur perirent 
 Funditus, imprimeretque muris 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hostile aratrum exercitus insolens. 
 Compesce mentem ; 
 Me quoque pectoris 
 Tentavit in dula iuventft 
 Fervor, et in celeres iambos 
 
 VII. 
 
 Misit furentem : nunc ego mitibus 
 Mutare quaero tristia ; 
 Dum mini 
 Fias recantatis arnica 
 Opprobriis, animumque reddas. 
 
 Here follows a billet-doux, conveying to the same offended lady (whose 
 wrath we must suppose to have vanished on perusal of the foregoing) a 
 gallant invitation to the rural mansion of our author. To perceive the 
 difference between a bond., fide invite and a mere moonshine proposal, it is 
 only necessary to collate this with Tom Moore's 
 
 ' Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you? 
 Our bed shall be roses all spangled with dew ! ' 
 
 ODE XVII.— AN INVITATION TO HORACE'S VILLA. 
 
 I. 
 
 AD TYNDARIDEM. 
 
 I. 
 
 Oft for the hill where ranges 
 My Sabine flock, 
 
 Swift-footed Fawn exchanges 
 
 . Arcadia's rock. 
 And, tempering summer's ray, forbids 
 Untoward rain to harm my kids. 
 
 Velox amoenum 
 Saepe Lucre tilem 
 Mutat Lycaso 
 Faunus, et igneam 
 Defendit aestatem capellis 
 Usque meis pluviosque ventos. 
 Q 
 
4io 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ii. 
 
 And there, in happy vagrance. 
 
 Roams the she-goat, 
 Lured by marital fragrance. 
 Through dells remote ; 
 Of each wild herb and shrub partakes. 
 Nor fears the coil of lurking snakes. 
 
 II. 
 
 Impune tutum 
 Per nemus arbutos 
 
 § lucrum latentes 
 t thy ma devise 
 Olentis uxores mariti : 
 Nee virides me tuunt colubras, 
 
 III. 
 
 No prowling wolves alarm her; 
 
 Safe from their gripe 
 While Fawn, immortal charmer ! 
 Attunes his pipe, 
 And down the vale and o'er the hills 
 Of Ustica each echo fills. 
 
 III. 
 
 Nee martiales 
 Haedulese lupos ; 
 Utcunque dulci, 
 Tyndari, fistula 
 Valles ; et Usticae cubantis 
 Levia personuere saxa. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The gods, their bard caressing-, 
 
 With kindness treat : 
 They've fill'd my house with blessing— 
 My country-seat. 
 Where Plenty voids her loaded horn, 
 Fair Tyndakis, pray come adorn ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Dl me tuentur ; 
 Dls pietas roea 
 Et musa cordi est. 
 Hie tibi copia 
 Manabit ad plenum benigno 
 Kuris honorum opulenta cornu. 
 
 V. 
 
 From SiRiUs in the zenith, 
 From summer's glare, 
 Come, where the valley screeneth, 
 Come, warble there 
 Songs of the hero, for whose love 
 Penelope and Circe strove. 
 
 Hie in reducta 
 Valle caniculse 
 Vitabis aestus, 
 a . Et fide Telft 
 Dices laborantes in uno 
 Penelopen vitreamque Green. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Nor shall the cup be wanting, 
 
 So harmless then, 
 To grace that hour enchanting 
 In shady glen. 
 Nor shall the juice our calm disturb. 
 Nor aught our sweet emotions curb t 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hie innocentis 
 Pocula Lesbii 
 Duces sub umbra ; 
 Nee Semelelus 
 Cum Marte confundet Thyoneus 
 Proelia ; nee metues protervum 
 
 VII. 
 
 Fear not, my fair one 1 Cyrus 
 
 Shall not intrude, 
 Nor worry thee, desirous 
 Of solitude. 
 Nor rend thy innocent robe, nor tear 
 The garland from thy flowing hair. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Suspecta Cyrum 
 Ne male dispari 
 Incontinences 
 Injiciat manus, 
 Et scindat haerentem coronam 
 Crinibus, immeritamque vestem. 
 
 ODE XVIII. 
 
 This drinking song is a manifest translation from the Greek of Alcseus. 
 To the concluding words, " ptrltuidior vitro," I have ventured to attach a 
 meaning which the recent discoveries at Pompeii, of drinking utensils made 
 of a kind of silicious material, would seem fully to justify. 
 
The Songs of Horace* 411 
 
 " Nllam, Vare, sacr& vite prius sevens arborem," &c. 
 MnSw a\\o €J>vTtv(Tr}s irpOTtpov StvBpov afiireXw, k. t. X. 
 
 ALCiGUS apud Athenaeum. 
 I. 
 
 Nullam, Vare, sacre vite prius sevens arborem 
 Circa mite solum Tiburis, et mcenia Catili : 
 Siccis omnia nam dura Deus proposuit ; neque 
 Mordaces aliter diffugiunt solHcitudines. 
 
 8uis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat ? 
 uis non te potius, Bacche pater, teque, decens Venus? 
 At ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi, 
 Centaurea monet cum Lapithis rixa super mero 
 
 III. 
 
 Debellata ; monet Sithoniis non levis Evius, 
 
 Suum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum 
 iscernunt avidi. Non ego te, candide Bassareu, 
 Invitum quatiam : nee vanis obsita frondibus 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sub divum rapiam. Sasva tene cum Berecynthio 
 Cornu tympana, quas subsequitur caucus amor sui, 
 Et tollens vacuum plus nimio gloria verticem, 
 Arcanique fides prodiga, perlucidior vitro. 
 
 I. 
 
 Since at Tivou, Varus, you've fix'd upon planting 
 
 Round your villa enchanting. 
 Of all trees, O my friend ! let the Vine be the first. 
 
 II. 
 
 On no other condition will Jove lend assistance 
 
 To keep at a distance 
 Chagrin, and the cares that accompany thirst. 
 
 III. 
 
 No one talks after wine about " battles " or " famine ; " 
 
 But, if you examine. 
 The praises of love and good living are rife. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Though once the Centaurs, mid potations too ample, 
 
 Left a tragic example 
 Of a banquet dishonour'd by bloodshed and strife. 
 
 V. 
 
 Far removed be such doings from us ! Let the Thracians, 
 
 Amid their libations, 
 Confound all the limits of right and of wrong 
 
 VI. 
 
 I never will join in their orgies unholy — 
 
 I never will sully 
 The rites that to leaf-y-crown d Bacchus belong 
 
412 The Works of Father ProuL 
 
 VII. 
 
 Cybele may silence her priesthood, and calm her 
 
 Brass cymbals and clamour ; 
 Away with such outbursts, uproarious and vain ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Displays often follow'd by Insolence mulish. 
 
 And Confidence foolish, 
 To be seen through and through, like this glass that I drain ! 
 
 In the first decade of Horatian songs, it became my duty to supply in the 
 original Latin, from the Vatican Codex, a long-lost effusion of the Sabine 
 farmer, called '* Virent arundines ; " or, as the Scotch have it, "Green 
 grow the rashes, O !" I am equally happy to be enabled, owing to the 
 late Sir Humphry Davy's experiments on the calcined volumes found at 
 Herculaneum, to supply, in concluding this second essay, another lost ode of 
 Horace, which has been imitated both in French and English (unconsciously, 
 no doubt) by two modern versemongers. 
 
 
 ODE XIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 Eveline's Fall. 
 
 I. 
 Lapsus Emm^e. 
 
 I. 
 
 La Chute d'Emma. 
 
 Ah ! maudite soit lTieure, 
 Quand de 1'humble demeure 
 D'Emma, le faux seigneur 
 
 eut franchi le sueil. 
 Pauvre fille ! la lune 
 Pleura ton infortune, 
 Et couvrit son visage 
 
 en signe de deuil. 
 
 Ah t weep for the hour 
 When, to Eveline's bower, 
 The lord of the valley 
 With false vows came. 
 The moon hid her light 
 In the heavens that night, 
 A nd wept behind her clouds 
 For the maiden's shame. 
 
 Heu lachrymor horam 
 Cum fraudibus malis, 
 Dux virgine coram 
 Apparuit vallis. 
 Non tulit impune* 
 Congressum misella, . . . 
 Cor doluit Luiue 
 Pro lapsa puella ! 
 
 II. 
 
 II. 
 
 II. 
 
 Bient6t la lune e*tale 
 Sa clartc de Vestale, 
 Et de son chaste front 
 
 les nuages sen vont. — 
 Mais la tache qui reste 
 De cette nuit funeste, 
 Qui pourra l'effacer? 
 
 ou reparer 1 'affront ? 
 
 The clouds pass soon 
 From the cold chaste moon, 
 A nd the heavens smiled again 
 With her vestal flame ; 
 But who shall see the day 
 When the cloudwill pass away 
 Which that evening left 
 Upon Eveline's name t 
 
 Qua? condidit frontem 
 Sub nubium velo, 
 Mox vultum insontem 
 Explicuit ccslo. 
 Sea utinam casti, 
 Sic nominis gemma, 
 Quam tu inquinasti 
 Claresceret Emma ! 
 
 III. 
 
 III. 
 
 III. 
 
 La neige virginale 
 Couvrait tout l'intervalle 
 Du superbe manoir 
 
 au modeste re*duit ; 
 Et la blanche surface 
 Garcia plus d'une trace 
 Des pas du faux seigneur 
 
 cette fatale nuit. 
 
 The white snow lay 
 On the narrow pathway, 
 Where the lord of the manor 
 Cross* d over the moor ; 
 And many a deep print, , 
 On the white snows tint, 
 Show'd the track of his footsteps 
 To Eveline's door. 
 
 Tegebant rus nives, 
 Cum meditans crimen, 
 Pedem tulit dives 
 Ad pauperis limen. 
 Et ager est fassus, 
 Vel indice calle, 
 Qu& tulerat passus 
 In candid! valle. 
 
 IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Un rayon du soleil, 
 A son premier reveil, 
 EtTaca pour tou jours 
 
 les vestiges du parjure ; 
 Mais, Emma ! il te faut 
 Une lumiere d'en haut, 
 Qui verse un doux oubli 
 
 sur ta me*saventure ! 
 
 The first sun's ray 
 Soon melted away 
 Every trace of the passage 
 Where the false lord came; 
 
 But there's a light above, 
 Which alone can remove 
 The stain upon the snow 
 Of Eveline's fame t 
 
 Exoriens, mane* 
 
 Sol uti consuevit 
 Vestigia plane" 
 Nivemque delevit ; 
 Puella ! par lumen 
 Quod sanet remorsura, 
 Misericors Numen 
 Det tibi deorsum ! 
 
XXIII. 
 
 [r* Songs of Iforac*. 
 
 (Frasers Magazine, September, 1836.) 
 
 [Croquis' etching in the Fraser containing Mahony's third decade of the Songs of 
 Horace was a full-length profile-sketch of Sheridan Knowles, distinctly suggestive (in his 
 stooping shoulders) of the author of the " Hunchback." Any one who has ever glanced 
 at it will readily recall to mind the grotesque effect with which the dramatist's chin is 
 meditatively buried in his capacious cravat, while clearly enough, though afar off, is seen 
 Shakspere's Monument.] 
 
 Decade the Third. 
 
 " Tu Latium beas Horatf , 
 Alcxo potior lyristes ipso."— Sidon. Apollin., ep. viii. 
 
 " Le seul Horace en tous genres excelle— 
 
 De Cithare*e exalte les faveurs, 
 
 Chante les dieux, les heros, les buveurs ; 
 Des sots auteurs berne les vers ineptes, 
 Nous instruisant par gracieux preceptes, 
 
 Et par sermons, de joye antidotes. — J. B. Rousseau. 
 
 Horace, in one small volume, shows us what it is 
 
 To blend together every kind of talent ; — 
 'Tis a bazaar for all sorts of commodities, 
 
 To suit the gay, the sad, the grave, the gallant : 
 He deals in songs and ''sermons," whims and oddities, 
 
 By turns is philosophic and pot-valiant, 
 And not unfrequently with sarcasm slaughters 
 The vulgar insolence of coxcomb authors.— O. Y. 
 
 The "diffusion" of knowledge is, we suspect, somehow irreconcilable with 
 its condensation ; at least, we see no other way of explaining the notorious fact, 
 that one old standard author contains (either in the germ or in full development) 
 more ideas than a whole modern "Cyclopaedia; " furnishing more materials 
 for thought and feeling to work on than are now accumulated during a whole 
 Olympiad in the warehouses of Paternoster Row. It is for this reason that we 
 gladly revert with Prout to the small Elzevir which, towards the close of his 
 earthly career, formed the subject of his vesper meditations, and cheerfully 
 accompany him through another "decade" of his classic rosary. 
 
414 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Not that we are inattentive to the workings of the human mind, as displayed 
 in modern authorship ; not that we neglect the still more fleeting effusions of 
 contemporary "journalism :" we read everything that appears in the shape 
 of print ; we glance at every object that comes across our path or falls in our 
 way, from the broad sheet of political lightning that flashes every morning 
 from the Thunderer, to the wisdom of Lord Palmerston, made up every 
 evening in " that ball of horse-dung called the Glote."* We take an interest 
 in the daily— we are even curious to see its spirit diluted in the weakly, press ; 
 not disdaining the ephemeral baked meats that coldly furnish forth the heb- 
 domadal banquet. The "repetita Koa/itti" (or "twice-boiled cabbage") does 
 not " kill" us, as it did certain pedagogues in the days of Juvenal ; we roam 
 through this world of newspapers and publications like the famous " child at a 
 feast, " tasting of each solid, sipping of each liquid, destructive, as it may be, 
 or restorative to the constitution, from the sparkling champagne poured out by 
 Hook or Maginn, to the blue ruin of the Examiner, or the small beer of the 
 Dispatch. 
 
 Such has been our practice up to the present time, but we know not how it 
 will be with us next month. We know not whether we. shall be tempted to 
 take up a newspaper after the fatal ides of September, 1836. 
 
 The removal of the stamp-duty on the 13th bids fair to open the floodgates 
 of "diffusion," so as to swamp us altogether. Then will begin the grand 
 millennium of cheap knowledge ; from that auspicious day will be dated the 
 hegira of Hetherington. The conquest of China by the Tartars will find its 
 parallel in the simultaneous rush of writers over the great wall, which the sober 
 wisdom of former reigns had erected to restrain such-like inroads of Calmuc 
 vagrancy. The breaking down of the dykes of Holland, and the letting in of 
 the Zuyderzee, is to be rehearsed in the domains of literature. The Dutchmen 
 were drowned by a rat— we are to be inundated by Rice. Soap, it is true, will 
 continue to be as dear as ever, but the " waters of instruction " are to be plenti- 
 fully supplied to the unwashed, 
 
 " Venit vilissima rerum 
 Hicaqua."— Iter Brundis. 
 
 One cannot help imagining that a concomitant reduction on the former most 
 useful article would prove as beneficial to the Radicals as the cheapening of 
 brimstone (for example) would be to the writers and readers of the Courier; 
 but the Whigs, probably, wish to monopolize yet awhile the staple manufacture 
 of Windsor, for the exclusive purpose of blowing bubbles to delude the rabble. 
 We observe, by the bye, from a recently-discovered process, that ihe flints have 
 been found less hard-hearted than the Chancellor. 
 
 To the press, as hitherto constituted, we acknowledge ourselves exceedingly 
 indebted. On a late occasion, the unanimous expression of cordial sympathy 
 which burst from every organ of public opinion, in reprobation of a brutal 
 assault, has been to us consolatory and gratifying. We shall hazard the 
 incurring a charge of vanity, perhaps, but we cannot help replying to such 
 testimonies of fellow-feeling towards ourselves in the language of a gifted 
 Roman:— "Est mihi jucunda in malts, et grata in dolorc, vestra erga me 
 voluntas ; sed curam de me queeso deponite " (Cafilinar. iv.). The interests of 
 literature are still uppermost in our thoughts, and take precedency of any selfish 
 considerations. We will be ever found at our post, intrepidly denouncing the 
 vulgar arrogance of booby scribblers, unsparingly censuring the obtrusion into 
 literary circles of silly pretenders, ignorant horse-jockies, and brainless .bullies. 
 
 We said that nothing in the shape of a daily or weekly paper escapes our 
 perusal. Accordingly, we took up a number of the Carlton Chronicle for 
 
 • Cobbett 
 
The Songs of Horace. 41$ 
 
 last month, in which we read with some astonishment the assertion that Marc 
 Antony ' ' was justified " in causing M. T. Cicero to be waylaid and butchered 
 in cold blood, as some atonement for his " wounded feelings " on reading that 
 glorious oration called the Second Philippic. The Carlton Chronicle is con- 
 ducted by a young barrister of eminent attainments, and we therefore experi- 
 ence some surprise at the views of Roman law, or the laws of civilized society 
 (as contradistinguished from the lawsof " Lynch," the American Lycurgus), 
 put forth in this startling announcement. Our illustrious namesake, Cromwell, 
 was not very scrupulous in his respect for the • ' baubles " of legal arrangement ; 
 yet even he took alarm at the title of a pamphlet, called " Killing no 
 Murder." We are not exactly members of the Inner Temple, but we beg to 
 question the propriety of the above decision, which we cannot otherwise qualify 
 than as 
 
 " A sentiment exceedingly atrocious. 
 Not to be found (we trust) in Fuffendorf or Grotius." 
 
 We rejoice, however, at the introduction of Tully's immortal speech, and are 
 thankful of being thus reminded of a classic precedent for intrepidly exposing 
 to the scorn of all rightly thinking men those blunders and follies which force 
 themselves into public notice by their own act, and, baboon-like, exhibit their 
 shameful side by a false position of their own choosing. 
 
 Cicero had to reply to an elaborate composition of his stupid adversary, 
 published by Marc Antony himself, at his own expense, at the bookshop of the 
 Roman Bentley of the day; need we add, miserably deficient in literary value, 
 and rich only in absurdities — " hoc at colligeres homo amentissime tot dies in 
 alieml villa scriptitastif" (Philip, ii.) In that production the booby had 
 touched upon points which he should have been, of all other men, careful to 
 avoid. Mark, we pray you, gentle reader, the words of Tully : "Maxime 
 
 MIROR MENTIONEM TE HJEREDITATUM AUSUM ESSE FACERE CUM IPSE 
 HJEREDITATEM PATRIS NON ADISSES." — It. ibidem. 
 
 We need not point out the passage, of which this is the exact prototype ; 
 neither is it necessary to indicate where may be found a fac-simile for the sub- 
 sequent exclamation of the indignant orator — " O miserce mulieris/tectinditatem 
 calamiiosam I" (it. ibidem) ; nor the allusion contained in the words by which 
 he reproaches his opponent for the confirmed stupidity evinced in his literary 
 production, albeit he had enjoyed certain advantages of family wit — " aliquid 
 enim satis ab uxoke mima trahere potuisti" (it.ii.). The following picture 
 of his adversary's personal appearance, and the admission of his signal 
 accomplishments in all the graces of a prize-fighter, ought not to be forgotten : 
 
 "TO ISTIS FAUCIBUS, ISTIS LATERIBOS, ISTA GLADIATORIA TOTIUS 
 CORPORIS FIRMITATE." — //. ibidem. 
 
 We recommend the whole discourse (beyond comparison the first model of 
 classic eloquence in existence, and the most powerful expose" that folly and 
 brutality ever received) to the attentive meditation of those concerned. 
 
 " Nullo luet hoc Antonius avo ! " 
 
 In the course of Prout's youthful rambles through Italy, we find that he has 
 recorded the circumstances of a devout pilgrimage, undertaken by him, to the 
 very spot where the illustrious orator — the terror of all Roman ruffians, from 
 Clodius to Catiline, from Antony to Verres— was cowardly assassinated by the 
 hero of the Second Philippic* It is a green lane, leading off the via Appia 
 
 * Who appears to have been in his.day the "lady's man "— xot' tgoxrjK. We know 
 not, however, whether he was fool enough to talk of bringing the matrons of Rome into 
 the senate-house. 
 
416 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 down to the shores of the Mediterranean; and close by the scene of the disgrace- 
 ful event stands to the present day, on the ruins of the Formian villa which had 
 belonged to the murdered statesman, an hotel, known by the classic designa- 
 tion of " Albergo di Cicerone." The details of that visit, with sundry delect- 
 able matters appertaining thereunto, remain in our "chest" for further use, 
 when we shall have to entertain our readers with other (and collateral) subjects; 
 when from Horace we shall pass to some of his contemporaries. 
 
 To Horace we now return. In him the dunces and bullies of Rome found 
 an uncompromising foe — equally formidable to " Msevius the blockhead " and 
 to " Gorgonius the he-goat," to "the dibauchl Nomentanus" and to " Pan- 
 tolabus the buffoon." It is, however, as a lyric poet that Prout chooses to ' 
 dwell on his merits ; and in this, as in most matters, we recognize the profes- 
 sional tendency of the Father to peaceful topics and inoffensive disquisitions. 
 
 Watbrgrasshill, Ad iam iwctis vigtliam. 
 
 When first I took up the Songs of Horace, with a view to record my imagin- 
 ings thereanent (for the benefit of my parishioners), it occurred to me that some- 
 thing in the shape of methodical arrangement would not be amiss, and that 
 these miscellaneous odes would come more acceptable if an attempt were 
 made at classification. In this department, the moderns have a decided advan- 
 tage over the writers of antiquity ; the bump of "order," as it relates to section 
 and subdivision, being of comparatively late development. Pagan antiquity 
 had been content, ever since the goddess Flora enamelled the earth with so 
 many charming varieties of form and colour, to admire them for their very con- 
 fusion, and to revel in the delightful contrasts they afforded ; nor do we learn, 
 from the author of Genesis, that there was any regular system of botanical 
 science understood by Eve, in her state of horticultural innocence : it was 
 reserved for the great Dutchman, Linnaeus, to methodize the beauty and to 
 classify the fragrance of flowers. My old friend and schoolfellow, l'Abbe 
 Moutardier, who, since the French emigration, resides at Lulworth Castle, 
 Dorsetshire (where the Weld family have gathered round him a small but well- 
 regulated congregation), carries the practice of regular classification to a great 
 extent in his Anglo-Gallic addresses from the modest pulpit of the castle-chapel : 
 ex. gr„ "Myfrinds, the sermong of twoday villbe in four pints ; after vich, 
 I vill draw for you a little mor-ale," &c. In pursuance of this praiseworthy 
 system of orderly arrangement, I had set out by dividing these songs under 
 six comprehensive heads: i* political squibs; 2* convivial and bacchanalian; 
 3' love-songs ; 4° philosophical effusions ; 5' theological hymns ; and, 6' lastly, 
 certain odes addressed to Virgil, Maecenas, &c, dictated by the purest friendship, 
 and bearing, more than all the rest, the impress of earnestness and sincerity. 
 The catalogue raisonnl, made out after this fashion, took in, I found, the whole 
 range of his lyrics ; and, instead of the wild luxuriancy of uncontrolled pro- 
 ductiveness — the very wilderness of thought and sentiment which the book now 
 presents— reduced the collection to all the symmetry of a civilized parterre laid 
 out by Evelyn or Len&tre. 
 
 Much meditating, however, on the peculiar genius of the poet, and fully 
 aware that, with reference to the " series juncturague," he practised what he 
 preached, I concluded that, in publishing his four books of occasional min- 
 strelsy in their actual order of succession, totally unobservant, as he evidently 
 is, of chronological form, and clearly regardless of the date of each particu- 
 lar composition, he must have been guided by some hidden principle of 
 refined taste, applicable to the precise consecutive position assigned to every 
 song. Of himself, as well as of the father of poetry, it may be safely predicated 
 that nil molitur incptb. Hence, on maturer consideration, I shrunk from inter- 
 
The Songs of Horace. 417 
 
 rupting the present law of precedence, established by recognized authority ; 
 and I resolved to maintain it as steadfastly as if I had taken a regular oath 
 not to "weaken or disturb the line of succession" in the harmony of 
 Horace ... I have not yet got through the first book. If I recollect right, 
 a drinking bout "to Varus " (numbered ode xviii.) wound up the last paper ; 
 a love-song "to Glycera" (ode xix.) shall, therefore, usher in the essay of 
 to-night. 
 
 Horace was not very lucky in his loves. In spite of all the fervour with 
 which he exalts the fascinations and chants the merits of the fair sex — not- 
 withstanding the delicacy with which he could flatter, and the sprightly 
 ingenuity with which he could amuse, the ladies of Rome, he appears, from 
 the desponding tenor of his amatory compositions, to have made but small 
 havoc among the hearts of patrician matrons. These ditties are mostly attuned 
 to the most plaintive strain, and are generally indicative of unrequited attachment 
 and disappointed hopes. He has made Posterity the confidante of his jealousy 
 regarding "Pyrrha;" "Lydia" forsakes him for "Telephus," who was 
 probably a stupid life-guardsman, measuring five feet eleven; "Chloe" 
 runs away from his addresses, begging her mother to say she is " yet too young 
 to form an engagement; " he records the perjured conduct of " Ba,i ine" 
 towards him; laments the inconstancy of "Ne^era," the hauteur of " Lyce; " 
 makes an abject apology to "TYNDARts," whose pardon we do not find that 
 he obtains ; he invites her to his villa : we don't learn that she accepted the 
 invitation. 
 
 The fact is, he was in stature a dwarf, with a huge head, a la Quasi- 
 modo ; further endowed with an ungainly prominence of abdomen ; eyes 
 which required the constant application of unguents and collyria; was pre- 
 maturely bald, like Beranger— 
 
 "Moi, a qui la sagesse 
 A fait tomber tous les cheveux ; " 
 
 and, like him, he might break forth into that affecting outburst of naif despon- 
 dency derived from the consciousness of a deformed figure : 
 
 " Elle, est si BELLE, 
 Et moi — et moi — je suis si laid !" 
 
 By the way, to Beranger's immortal credit be it remarked, that he is the only 
 Frenchman who ever, under any circumstances of personal ugliness, made a 
 similar admission. "Mons. Mayeux" fancied himself an Adonis; so does 
 M. Thiers, though the portraits prove him to be what Theodore Hook has 
 imagined, as the exact symbol, or vera ikuv of Tom Moore : viz. "something 
 between a toad and a Cupid." 
 
 Still, nothing could keep Horace from trying his fortune among the girls. 
 " His only books were woman's looks ; " though "folly" (as in Moore's case) 
 was positively all he gathered from the perusal. Though his addresses are 
 repeatedly rejected, he still perseveres ; and, in spite of his notorious scepticism 
 in religious matters, he actually offers up a propitiatory sacrifice to Venus, 
 in the hope of forwarding, by supernatural agency, the object of his desires. 
 His case, in truth, appears one of peculiar hardship ; and so graphic is the 
 picture he draws of his hopeless passion, that Racine has found nothing more 
 powerful wherewith to represent the frenzied feelings of Phaedra, in his wonder- 
 ful tragedy of that name, than two lines borrowed from the following ode 
 
 " Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachee, 
 C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attache'e. 
 
 ll 
 
4i8 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ODE XIX. 
 
 DE GLYCBRA. 
 I. 
 
 Love's unrelenting Queen, 
 With Bacchus— Theban maid! thy -wayward 
 child 
 Whene'er I try to wean, 
 My heart, from vain amours and follies wild, 
 Is sure to intervene, 
 Kindling within my breast some passion unfore- 
 seen. 
 
 I. 
 
 Mater saeva Cupidinum, 
 Thebanaeque jubet 
 Me Semeies puer, 
 
 Et lasciva Licentia, 
 Finitis animum 
 Reddere amoribus. 
 
 II. 
 
 Glycera's dazzling glance, 
 That with voluptuous light my vision dims— 
 
 The graces that enhance 
 The Parian marble of her snow-white limbs, 
 
 Have left my heart no chance 
 Against her winning wiles and playful petulance. 
 
 II. 
 
 Urit me Glyceric nitor 
 Splendentis Pario 
 Marmore purius : 
 
 Urit grata protervitas, 
 Et vultus nimium 
 Lubricus aspicL 
 
 III. 
 
 Say not that Venus dwells 
 In distant Cyprus, for she fills my breast. 
 
 And from that shrine expels 
 All other themes : my lyre, by love possest, 
 No more with war-notes swells, 
 Nor sings of Parthian shaft, nor Scythian 
 slaughter tells. 
 
 III. 
 
 In me tota ruens Venus 
 Cyprum deseruit : 
 
 Nee patitur Scythas, 
 Et versis animosum equis 
 Parthum dicere ; nee 
 Quae nihil attinent. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Come hither, slaves ! and pile 
 An altar of green turf, and incense burn ; 
 
 Strew magic vervain, while 
 I pour libations from a golden urn : 
 These rites may reconcile 
 The goddess of fierce love, who yet may deign to 
 smile. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hie vivum mihi cespitem, hie 
 
 Verbenas, pueri, 
 
 Ponite, tnuraque, 
 Bimi cum patera men : 
 
 Mactata veniet 
 
 Lenior host ia. 
 
 How different from this melancholy love-sonnet, " made to his mistress' eye- 
 brow, " is the jovial style which he assumes when Maecenus has promised to look 
 in on his rustic dwelling, on his road to some seaport ! "A friend and pitcher" 
 seem to constitute the native and proper element of Horace. Mark how he dis- 
 ports himself in the contemplation of the prime minister of Augustus seated by 
 his cheerful hearth, and partaking of such homely fare as the Sabine farm could 
 furnish ; insinuating at the same time, without the least appearance of cajolery 
 or toadyism, one of the most ingenious compliments that ever statesman 
 received from dedicatory poet in ancient or, modern times ! Under pretext of 
 specifying the exact age of some bottled liquor, which he promises shall be 
 forthcoming, he brings up the mention of a fact most gratifying to the feelings 
 of his exalted patron. As Tasso has it, 
 
 " E quel che cresce sommo pregio all' opre 
 L' arte che tutto fa nulla si scuopre." 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 419 
 
 ODE XX.— "POT-LUCK" WITH HORACE. 
 
 AD MjECENATUM. 
 
 Since thou, M^cenas, nothing loth, 
 
 Under the bard's roof-tree, 
 Canst drink rough wine of Sabine growth, 
 
 Here stands a jar for thee !— * 
 The Grecian delf I seal'd myself, 
 
 That year the theatre broke forth. 
 
 In tribute to thy sterling worth, 
 
 II. 
 
 When Rome's glad shout the welkin tent. 
 
 Along the Tiber ran, 
 And rose again, by Echo sent, 
 
 Back from Mount Vatican ; — 
 When with delight. O Roman knight I 
 
 Etrueia heard her oldest flood 
 
 Do homage to her noblest blood. 
 
 I. 
 
 Vile potabis modicis Sabinum 
 Cantnaris, Graca quod ego ipse testa 
 Conditum levi, datus in theatro 
 Quum tibi plausus, 
 
 II. 
 
 Care Maecenas eques, ut patera i 
 Fluminis rips, simul et jocosa 
 Redderet laudes tibi Vaticani 
 Montis imago. 
 
 III. 
 
 Wines of Falernian vintage, friend, 
 
 Thy princely cellar stock ; 
 Bethink thee, shouidst thou condescend 
 
 To share a poet's crock, 
 Its modest shape, Cajeta's grape 
 
 Hath never tinged, nor Formia's hill 
 
 Deign' J with a purple flood to fill. 
 
 III. 
 
 Caecubum et prslo domitam Caleno 
 Tu bibes uvam : mea nee Falernae 
 Temperant vites, neque Formiani 
 Focula colles. 
 
 Followeth, in due consecutive order, one of those performances which, in mv 
 catalogue above alluded to, I had set down as one of the " hymns theological/' 
 Our poet, besides filling at the court of Augustus an office similar to the 
 laureateship of old Nahum Tate, of birthday-ode memory, seems to have 
 combined with that responsible situation the more sacred functions of Sternhold 
 and Hopkins. The " Carmen Sasculare" was, like Southey's " Vision of Judg- 
 ment," an official effusion of devout loyalty to church and state. This hymn, 
 recommending (very properly) the worship of Diana to the maidens of Rome, 
 while he exhorts the Roman youth to reverence Apollo, must have been com- 
 posed about the year u.c. 731, when scarcity, combined with the prospect of 
 war, threatened the country. That Persia and Great Britain should be made 
 the scapegoats on the occasion seems natural enough; the Jews had similar 
 uncharitable ideas, as may be gathered from the Psalms of David (lxxix. 6, and 
 passim). 
 
 ODE XXI.— AD PUBEM ROMANAM. 
 
 1. III. 
 
 Vos Tempb totidem tollite laudibus, 
 Natalemque, mares, Delon Apollonis, 
 Insignemque pharetra, 
 Fraternique humerum lyr&. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hie helium lachrymosum, heec miseram 
 
 famem, 
 Pestemque a populo et principe Ccsare, 
 In Persas atque Bkitannos, 
 Vestra motus aget prece. 
 
 DlANAM tenerae dicite virgines, 
 Intonsum pueri dicite Cynthium, 
 Latonamque supreme 
 Dilectam penitUs Jovi. 
 
 II. 
 
 Vos lactam fluviis et nemorum comfl, 
 Quscumque aut gelido prominet Algido, 
 Nigris aut Ervmanthi, 
 Silvis aut viridis Cragi. 
 
420 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 TO THE RISING GENERATION OF ROME. 
 I. 
 
 Worship Diana, young daughters of Italy ! 
 
 Youths ! sing Apollo— both children of Jove ; 
 Honour Laton a, their mother, who mightily 
 
 Triumph'd of old in the Thunderer's Tore. 
 
 II. 
 
 Maids ! sing the Huntress, whose haunts are the highlands, 
 
 Who treads, in a buskin of silvery sheen, 
 Each forest-crown'd summit through Greece and her islands. 
 
 From dark Erymanthus to Cracus the green. 
 
 III. 
 
 From Tempe's fair valley, by Phcebus frequented. 
 To Delos his birthplace — the light quiver hung 
 
 From his shoulders — the lyre that his brother invented — 
 Be each shrine by our youth and each attribute sung. 
 
 IV. 
 
 May your prayers to the regions of light find admittance 
 
 On Cesar's behalf ; — and the Deity urge 
 To drive from our land to the Persians and Britons, 
 
 Of Famine the curse ! of Bellona the scourge ! 
 
 That he considered himself the object of special solicitude to the gods, is 
 very perceptible in his writings ; that he actually believed in the existence of 
 these celestial personages is, nevertheless, as nice a historical problem as the 
 pedigree of Perkin Warbeck or the piety of O'Connell. Like Boniface, how- 
 ever, he " thrived on his ale." 
 
 "Di me tuentur : dis pietas mea," &c. 
 
 He kept his skin intact {bene curat& cute), kept his neighbours in good humour, 
 and the table in a roar. One day, having extended his rambles beyond the 
 boundary of his farm, humming as he went an ode "to Lalage," which we 
 have unfortunately lost (unless it be the fifth of the second book), behold ! an 
 enormous wolf suddenly stares him in the face, and as precipitately takes to 
 flight, without any apparently efficient cause. The dogs, according to Shake- 
 speare, barked at Richard ; this wolf may have been, probably, frightened by 
 the poet's ugliness ; for, according to his own description, he was a regular 
 scarecrow. Nevertheless, mark, reader, how he chooses to account for the 
 miracle. The ode, in a literary point of view, has always been (and most de- 
 servedly) admired : " Aristius fuscus " was, however, a sort of wag, as may be 
 gathered from the satire "Ham vi& sacr&," &c. &c. 
 
 ODE XXII. 
 
 AD ARISTIUM FUSCUM. 
 I. I. 
 
 Aristus ! if thou canst secure Integer vits scelerisque purus 
 
 A conscience calm, with morals pure, Non eget Mauri jaculis, ne^ue area. 
 
 Look upwards for defence ! abjure Nee venenatis gravida sagittis, 
 
 All meaner craft — Fusee, pharetra ; 
 
 The arc and quiver of the Moor, 
 
 And poison'd shaft. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 421 
 
 11. 
 
 What though thy perilous path lie traced 
 O'er burning Afric's boundless waste , . . 
 Of rugged Caucasus the guest, 
 
 Or doom'd to travel 
 Where fabulous rivers of the East 
 
 Their course unravel ! . . . 
 
 III. 
 
 Under my Sabine woodland shade, 
 Musing upon my Grecian maid, 
 Unconsciously of late I stray'd 
 
 Through glen and meadow. 
 When, lo ! a ravenous wolf, afraid, 
 
 Fled from my shadow. 
 
 IV. 
 
 No monster of such magnitude 
 Lurks in the depth of Daunia's wood, 
 Or roams through Lybia unsubdued 
 
 The land to curse — 
 Land of a fearful lion-brood 
 
 The wither 'd nurse. 
 
 V. 
 
 Waft me away to deserts wild, 
 Where vegetation never smiled, 
 Where sunshine never once beguiled 
 
 The dreary day, 
 But winters upon winters piled 
 
 For aye delay. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Place me beneath the torrid zone, 
 Where man to dwell was never known, 
 I'd cherish still one thought alone, 
 
 Maid of my choice ! 
 The smile of thy sweet lip— the tone 
 
 Of thy sweet voice ! 
 
 Here is another love ditty; and, as usual, it places on record some discomfi- 
 ture of the poet in his attempt to play I'komme & bonnes fortunes. 
 
 ODE XXIII.— A REMONSTRANCE TO CHLOE THE 
 BASHFUL. 
 I. I. 
 
 II. 
 
 Sive per Syrtes iter aestuosas, 
 Sive iacturus per inhospitalem 
 Caucasum, vel quas loca fabulosus 
 Lambit Hydaspes. 
 
 III. 
 
 Namque me sirva lupus in Sabina, 
 Dum raeam canto Lalagen, et ultra 
 Terminum curis vagor expeditis, 
 Fugit inermem : 
 
 IV. 
 Quale portentum neque militaris 
 Daunia in latis alit esculetis ; 
 Nee Jubae tellus generat, leonum 
 Arida nutrix. 
 
 Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis 
 Arbor sestiva recreatur aura, 
 Quod latus mundi nebulae mahisque 
 Jupiter urget ; 
 
 VI. 
 
 Pone sub curru nimium propinqui 
 Solis, in terra domibus negata : 
 Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, 
 Dulce loquentem. 
 
 Why wilt thou, Chlob, fly me thus? 
 
 The yearling kid 
 
 Is not more shy and timorous, 
 
 Our woods amid, 
 
 Seeking her dam o'er glen and hill, 
 
 While all her frame vain terrors thrill. 
 
 II. 
 
 Should a green lizard chance to stir 
 
 Beneath the bush — 
 Should Zephyr through the mountain-fir 
 Disporting gush — 
 With sudden fright behold her start, 
 With trembling knees and throbbing hearts 
 
 Vitas hinnuleo 
 Me similis, ChloS, 
 Quaerenti pavidam 
 Montibus aviis 
 Matrem, none sine vano 
 Aurarum et silvae metu : 
 
 II. 
 
 Nam, seu mobilibus 
 Vepns inhorruit 
 Ad ven turn foliis, 
 Seu virides rubum 
 Dimovere lacertse, 
 E t corde et genibus tremit 
 
422 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 in. hi. 
 
 And canst thou think me, maiden fair ! Atqut non ego te, 
 
 A tiger grim ? Tigris ut aspera, 
 
 A Lybian lion, bent to tear Getulusve leo, 
 
 Thee limb by limb ? Frangere persequor. 
 
 Still canst thou haunt thy mother's shade, Tandem desine matrera 
 
 Ripe for a husband, blooming maid ? Tempestiva sequi viro. 
 
 No "elegy," in all antiquity, appears to have given such general satisfaction 
 as that which followed QuiNCTlUUS to the tomb. History would have taken 
 no notice of his name, but Horace has secured him immortal celebrity. All 
 we know of him is contained in the chronicle of Eusebius, quoted by St. 
 Jerome, and merely refers to the date of his death ; nor would the holy father 
 probably have mentioned him at all, but for the eloquent requiem chanted over 
 his grave. It possesses ineffable sweetness in the original ; the tender melan- 
 choly diffused throughout the composition is still more saddened by the 
 absence of anything like hope in a future state of existence, or belief in a 
 world to come, which was totally undreamt of in the Horatian system of philo- 
 sophy. David's elegy over Saul and Jonathan is clouded by the same gloomy 
 misgivings as to the chances of a blessed futurity : yet, what can be more beau- 
 tiful than the Hebrew poet's exclamation — 
 
 " Let the dew never fall on the hills where the pride 
 Of thy warriors, O Israel ! lies slain : 
 They were lovely in life ; and, oh mark ! how the tide 
 Of their hearts' blood hath mingled again 1 " 
 
 Milton's " Lycidas ;" Burns' s splendid effusion over Captain Henderson ; Mal- 
 herbe's 
 
 " Rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses 
 L'espace d'un matin ! " 
 
 Pope's " Unfortunate Lady," and Wolfe's " Funeral of Sir John Moore," all 
 deserve to be commemorated in connection with this ode of Horace. Nor 
 should I omit to notice (honoris causi) Gray's elaborately mournful "Country 
 Churchyard," in which he has gathered into one sepulchral urn the ashes of all 
 the human race, and mingled the tears of all mankind in one grand "lachry- 
 matory." 
 
 ODE XXIV. 
 
 AD VIHGILIUM. DEFLET QUINCTIL1I MORTEM. 
 I. 
 
 Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tarn cari capitis ? Pracipe higubres 
 Cantus, Melpomene, cui Iiquidam pater vocem cum cithara dedit. 
 
 II. 
 
 Ergo Quinctilium perpetuus sopor urget ! cui Pudor, et Justhise soror, 
 Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas, quando ullum invement parem? 
 
 III. 
 Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit J nulli flebllior quam tibi, Virgili ! 
 Tu frustra pius, heu ! non ita creditum poscis Quinctilium Deos. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Suid ! si Threicio blandius Orpheo audltam moderere arboribus fidem, 
 urn vanaa redeat sanguis imagini, quant virga semel hoirida, 
 
The Songs of Horace. 423 
 
 v. 
 
 Non lenis precibus fata recludere nigro cotnpulerit Mercurius gregi? 
 Durum ! sed levius fit patientia quidquid corrigere est nefas. 
 
 TO VIRGIL.— A CONSOLATORY ADDRESS. 
 I. 
 
 Why check the full outburst of sorrow? Why blush 
 
 _ To weep for the friend we adored f 
 Raise the voice of lament ! let the swollen tear gush ! 
 Bemoan thee, Melpomene, loudly ! nor hush 
 The sound of thy lute's liquid chord ! 
 
 n. 
 
 For low lies Quinctilius, tranced in that sleep 
 
 That issue hath none, nor sequel. 
 Let Candour, with all her white sisterhood, weep — 
 Truth, Meeknesc, and Justice, his memory keep — 
 
 For when shall they find his equal ? 
 
 III. 
 
 Though the wise and the good may bewail him, yet none 
 
 O'er his clay sheds the tear more truly 
 Than you, beloved Virgil ! You deem'd him your own : 
 You mourn his companionship. — 'Twas but a loan, 
 
 Which the gods have withdrawn unduly. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet not though Eurydice's lover had left 
 
 Thee a legacy, friend, of his song ! 
 Couldst thou warm the cold image of life-blood bereft. 
 Or force Death, who robb'd thee, to render the theft, 
 
 Or bring back his shade from the throng, 
 
 V. 
 
 Which Mercury guides with imperative wand. 
 
 To the banks of the fatal ferry.— 
 'Tis hard to endure ; — but 'tis wrong to despond ; . 
 For patience may deaden the blow, though beyond 
 
 Thy power, my friend, to parry. 
 
 Flowers have, at all times, suggested hints for metaphor and allegory. Poets 
 cannot get on at all without constant reference to botanical matters ; and 
 Flora, by right, should have been one of the Muses. A crazy German writer 
 (one Ludwig Tiegg) maintains, that "the man who has no taste for posies 
 cannot have God's grace : " a sort of parody on something about music in Shake- 
 speare. Another mad sentimentalist, from the same district, defines woman 
 to be " something between a flower and an angel." In fact, the " floridstyle " 
 cannot be well got up without a due admixture of such fancies, no more than 
 a plum-pudding without plums. Ask Tom Moore, for example, how he could 
 manage, if deprived of these gay and gaudy materials for his toncetti f He 
 might, perhaps, tell you that he still would have rainbows, stars, crystals, 
 pearls, butterflies, and such other "glittering glories," but, without Covent 
 Garden Market, he must necessarily be at a loss to carry on his business ; for 
 -his original stock in trade would be very soon exhausted. Even in the flower 
 department he is obliged to borrow. Anacreon and Horace had, long ago, 
 
both hit on an idea which he has appropriated, without the slightest scruple or 
 acknowledgment, in a well-known melody, of which he has stolen the tune 
 from the " Groves of Blarney," and, I am sorry to say, spoiled it by some out- 
 landish variations of his own. 
 
 Poioc AvatcptovTOf, 
 
 ODE XXV. 
 
 MOORE S ROGUERY. 
 
 HORATII ROSARIUM. 
 
 Moiw Oepovs pooW juot 
 Tour' uoTarop y.tv awn' 
 n<urat re «<u cratpai 
 AitmAcowto* 
 
 'Tis the last rose of summer 
 Left blooming alone — 
 
 All Iter lovely companions 
 Are faded and gone I 
 
 Eheu rosarum floruit ultima ! 
 Vel mille nuper cincta sorori- 
 bus, 
 At nunc amicaruin cohort! 
 Floribus et sociis super- 
 stes! 
 
 Own 
 
 TW avyytvmv iropeori 
 Fofiwv, Oftov y o.r\vox 
 O/tov re km tptvQetv' 
 
 II. 
 
 No flower of her kindred, 
 No rosebud, is nigh, 
 
 To reflect back her blushes, 
 Or give sigh for sigh. 
 
 II. 
 
 Nee una mansit conscia qua; 
 
 prope* 
 Suspiriorum suave olentium, 
 Suspiret ultro — quse rubenti 
 Erubcat, pia from, vicis- 
 sim. 
 
 Ov Aeiifropot as XWl" 
 Eirei 6avovT0 koAoi 
 AntKBt' trvv KaXatax 
 I6ov <re xp>) KaQfv&nv' 
 
 III. 
 
 ril not leave thee, thou lone 
 one, 
 To pine on the stem ; 
 'ince the lovely art sU 
 Go sleep thou with t 
 
 Since the lovely are sleeping^ 
 \them. 
 
 III. 
 
 Non te relinquam stemmate, 
 
 _ lugubrc. 
 Quae singulari fers caput, 
 A unica ! 
 
 Iere dormutlm sodales, 
 Tu ceteris comes ho— 
 dormi! 
 
 A". 
 
 2ac ev<f>povus fftBevras 
 Kopa? «yw o-KtSa^u' 
 On-ou veKpai re koo>lov 
 Kfjiroto <rat cratpai 
 EiSoi/ai JcaAAt<puAAat. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thus kindly / scatter 
 Thy leaves o'er the bed, 
 
 Where thy mates of the 
 garden 
 Lie scentless and dead. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sparsis arnica" sic foliis manu, 
 Finire tristes pergo tibi 
 
 Stccis odoratas per hortum 
 Frondibus i superadde 
 frondes. 
 
 Ovtuc re teai otfxWev 
 Ta\vv <piAif eirco*0at 
 Oral' fiapaiv erat £v\Aa 
 
 KvkAov t' oiro ipaeipov 
 IltnTOvo'ii' 01 o>tapay5oi. 
 
 c 
 
 4tAai on wAeo*airo 
 At xapfiiai, rtf oio? 
 Tovry cnwk 0eAoiro 
 Koo-/xi|> vfluetv *pT}n<t ; 
 
 V. V. 
 
 &> JtWM way /follow Et ml sit olim sors eadem, 
 
 When friendships decay, precor ! 
 
 Andfrom love's shining circle Quando sodales, quasque mi- 
 The gems drop away. cant ia, 
 
 Ornant amicorum coronam 
 Gemmata, depereunt — 
 perire! 
 
 VI. 
 
 When true hearts lie 
 wither'd, 
 And fond ones aref!own y 
 Oh, who would inhabit 
 This bleak world alone t 
 
 VI. 
 Abrepta fato dissociabili 
 Quando tot eheu ! corda jacent 
 humi 
 Quis poscat annos ? vita 
 talis 
 Nonne foret mera soli- 
 tudo? 
 
How much more creditable and gentlemanly has been the conduct of an old 
 English song-writer, George Herbert, who, having occasion to work out the 
 same thought, scorns to copy with servile fidelity the Greek or Roman lyric ; but, 
 giving; it a new form altogether, makes it, as far as possible, his own property. 
 Here is the canzonet; and anyone, who has the slightest pretension to a taste 
 for antique simplicity, must see how far superior it is to Moore's artificial com- 
 position : 
 
 *' I made a posie while the day ran by — ' 
 Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie 
 
 My life within this band. 
 But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they 
 By noon most cunningly did steal away. 
 And wither in my hand. 
 
 Farewell, dear flowers ! sweetly your time ye spent ; 
 Fit while ye lived for smell or ornament, 
 
 And, after death, for cures. 
 I follow straight, without complaint or grief; 
 And, if my scent be good, I care not if 
 
 It be as short as yours." 
 
 The date of the subsequent ode is clearly fixed, by the allusion it contains 
 to the troubles occasioned in the northern parts of the empire by the pro- 
 ceedings of King Teridates. It is addressed to Lamia, a Roman general, 
 who had distinguished himself in the peninsular war [bdlo Cantabrico), and was 
 at that time enjoying his half-pay in or about Tivoli. 
 
 ODE XXVI.— FRIENDSHIP AND POETRY THE BEST 
 ANTIDOTES TO SORROW. 
 
 ANNO AB U.C. 730. 
 
 — " Fill the bumper fair." 
 
 Sadness— I who live 
 
 Devoted to the Muses, 
 To the wild wind give, 
 
 To waft where'er it chooses ; 
 Deigning not to care 
 
 What savage chief be chosen 
 To reign beneath "the bear," 
 
 O'er fields for ever frozen. 
 
 I. 
 
 Musis amicus 
 Tristitiam et metus 
 Tradam protervis 
 In mare Creticum 
 Portare ventis. — 
 Quis sub arcto 
 Kex gelids 
 Metuatur orae, 
 
 II. 
 
 Let Teridates rue 
 
 The march of Roman legions, 
 While I my path pursue 
 
 Through poesy's calm regions — 
 Bidding the Muse, who drinks 
 
 From fountains unpolluted, 
 To weave with flowery links 
 
 A wreath, to Friendship suited, 
 
 II. 
 
 Quid Teridatem 
 Terreat, unice* 
 Securus. O qua; 
 Fontibus in tegris 
 Gaudes, apricos 
 Necte flores, 
 Necte meo 
 Laming coronam. 
 
 III. 
 
 For gentle Lamia's brow. — 
 O Muse melodious ! sweetly 
 
 Echo his praise ; for thou 
 Alone canst praise him fitly. 
 
 III. 
 
 Pimplei dulcis. 
 
 Nil sine te mei 
 Possunt honores ; 
 Hunc fidibus novis, 
 
426 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 For him thy Lesbian shell Hunc Lesbio 
 
 With strings refurnish newly, Sacrare plectro, 
 
 And let thy sisters swell Teque tuasque 
 
 The jocund chorus duly. Decet sorores. 
 Sadness— I who live devoted, &C. Musis amicus, &c. 
 
 Next comes a lively and animated picture of Roman conviviality. The ode 
 partakes of the dramatic character, and would appear to be extemporaneously 
 poured out by Horace, in his capacity of " wine-king," or " toast-master," at a 
 jovial meeting. The evening is far advanced ; sundry debatable subjects have 
 been started ; the retort uncourteous has been more than once interchanged ; 
 the cup of boisterous hilarity has kindled in its circulation ; of a sudden the 
 guests have started from their couches, in the ardour of discussion, and, heated 
 with wine, are about to come to blows, when the poet rising obtains silence for 
 a song. The ingenuity with which he turns their attention to topics of a less 
 exciting nature, and the gracefully playful style of his address, present us with 
 a most amiable idea of the poet's disposition, and prove him to have been a 
 man of consummate tact. 
 
 ODE XXVIL— AD SODALES. 
 
 I. IV. 
 
 Natis in usum lsetitise scyphis Cessat voluntas ?— Non alia bibam 
 Pugnare, Thracum est. Tollite barbarum Mercede.— Quae te cumque domat Venus, 
 
 Morem, verecundumque Bacchum Non erubescendis adurit 
 
 Sanguineis prohibete rixis. Ignibus, ingenuoque semper 
 
 II. V. 
 
 Vino et lucemis medus acinaces ' Amore peccas t Quidquid babes, age, 
 
 Immane quantum discrepat ! ' Impium Depone tutis auribus. — Ah ! miser 
 
 Lenite clamorem, sodales. Quanta laboras in Charybdi, 
 
 Et cubito remanete presso. Digne puer meliore flamma ! 
 
 III. VI. 
 
 Vultis seven me quoque sumere Quae saga, quis te solvere Thessalis 
 
 Partem Falerni ? dicat Opuntiae Magus venenis, quis poterit Deus t 
 
 Frater Megills quo beatus V» illlgatum te triformi 
 
 Vulnere, qua pereat sagitta. Pegasus expediet Chinuera, 
 
 A BANQUET SCENE.— TOAST AND SENTIMENT. 
 I. 
 
 To make a weapon of joy's cup, my friends. 
 
 Is a vile Thraci an custom. 
 Shame on such practices ! — they mar the ends 
 Of calm and kindly Bacchus. Bloodshed tends 
 
 To sadden and disgust him. 
 
 II. 
 Here, mid the bowls, what business hath the sword 1 
 
 Come, sheathe yon Persian dagger ; 
 Let the bright lamp shine on a quiet board ; 
 Recline in peace — these hours we can't afford 
 
 For brawling, sound, and swagger. 
 
III. 
 
 Say, shall your chairman fill his cup, and drain 
 
 Of brimming bowls another? 
 Then, first, a toast his mandate shall obtain ; 
 He'll know the nymph whose -witcheries enchain ■ 
 
 The fair Megilla's brother. 
 
 IV. 
 
 What ! silent thus ? Dost fear to name aloud 
 
 The girl of thy affection? 
 Youth ! let thy choice be candidly avow'd ; 
 Thou hast a delicate taste, and art allow 'd 
 
 Some talent for selection. 
 
 V. 
 
 Yet, if the loud confession thou wilt shun, 
 
 To my safe ear discover 
 Thy cherish'd secret .... Ah, thou art undone ! 
 What ! she f How little such a heartless one 
 
 Deserves so fond a lover 1 
 
 VI. 
 
 What fiend, what Thracian witch, deaf to remorse. 
 
 Hath brew'd thy dire love-potion ! 
 Scarce could the hero of the winged horse 
 Effect thy rescue, or — to free thee — force 
 
 That dragon of the ocean ! 
 
 In the usual editions of our poet, the twenty-eighth ode presents us with a 
 rather stupid "dialogue" between one "Archytas and a Sailor." I have no 
 hesitation in substituting, from Harduin's " fivio Horatius" (folio, Amsterd. 
 1740), the proper reading ; which, on examination, will be found to preserve 
 the essence of the colloquy, while it is much more Horatian inspirit. Marcus 
 Epulo Bibax is a well-known character in the annals of Rome, as may be 
 seen in Niebuhr's admirable work. His monument (a fine old pyramidal erec- 
 tion) stands at the gate opening on the Via Ostia, and adds a solemn dignity to 
 the adjacent burial-ground of our countrymen — "il CimiUro itgli Ingltsi." 
 
 ODE XXVIII. 
 
 I. I- 
 
 When Bibo went down Cum Bibax barathro 
 
 To the regions below, Descenderat imo 
 
 Where the waters of Styx Qua loca I Styx atro 
 
 Round Eternity flow, _ Circumfluit hmo, 
 
 He awoke with a cry, Evigilans, poscit _ 
 
 That " he would be brought back ; Num forte falerni 
 
 For his soul it was dry, Vas bibere mos sit 
 
 And he wanted some sack." ' In regnis avemi. 
 
 II. "• 
 
 " You were drunk," replied Charon, Cui Charon, " Venisti 
 
 " You were drunk when you died ; Hue gravis lagena, 
 
 And you felt not the pain Sic funens tristi 
 
 That to death is allied." Immunis a poena. — 
 
 " Take me back ! " answer'd Bibo, Turn Bibax, Retrorsum 
 
 " For I mind not the pain ; Due iterum vitas, 
 
 Take me back ! take me back ! Ut funens morsum 
 
 Let me die once again ! " Expenar rite. 
 
III. 
 
 Meantime the grey ferryman 
 
 Ferried him o'er, 
 And the crazy old bark 
 
 Touch'd the Stygian shore ; 
 There old Bibo got out, 
 
 Quite unable to stand, 
 And he jostled the ghosts 
 
 As they crowded the strand. 
 
 III. 
 
 Sed interim pigr& 
 
 Transvehitur rate, 
 Quae npa mox mgsi 
 
 Sistit delicate : 
 In littore statim, 
 
 Exoritur scena ( 
 Umbras catervatim 
 
 Disturbat arena. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Have a care ! " cried out Charon ; 
 
 " Have a care ! 'tis not well : 
 For remember you're dead. 
 
 And your soul is in hell. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Cui Charon de nave : 
 
 11 Hie Orcus est, homo I 
 Ne titubes cave 
 
 PI u ton is in do mo." 
 
 Moral. 
 
 " I'm in hell," replied Bibo; 
 
 " Well I know by the sign :— 
 Twas a hell upon earth 
 
 To be wanting of wine." 
 
 L'Envoy. 
 
 "Plutonis caveraa 
 Pare bat viventi, 
 
 Si quando taberna 
 Deerat sitienti." 
 
 * "C 
 
The Songs of Horace. 429 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 t jftmgg rrf "§axm, 
 
 [Fraser's Magazine, October, 1836.) 
 
 [Prout s fourth batch of the Songs of Horace appeared in the number of Fraser other- 
 wise notable by reason of its containing Croquis' thoughtful portrait, book in hand of 
 Lord Lyndhurst, author of " Summary of the Session."] 
 
 Decade the Fourth. 
 
 " Horatii curiosa felicitas." 
 
 Pstron. Arbiter, cap. n8. 
 
 " D' un si vivace 
 Splendido colorir, d' un si fecondo 
 Sublime immaginar, d' una si ardita 
 Felicita sicura 
 Altro mortal non arrichi natura." 
 
 Abbate Metastasio, Opera, torn. xii. Firenze, 1819. 
 
 "Sublime, familier, solide, enjouye, tendre, 
 Aise, profond, naif, et fin ; 
 Vive, Horace, avant tout ! l'univers pour l'entendre 
 Aime a redevenir Latin." 1 
 
 La Motte, Pais. Leg. 
 
 " When Alba warr'd with Rome for some disputed frontier farms, 
 Three Horaces gain'd fatherland ascendency in arms ; 
 A single-handed champion now amid the lyric throng, 
 One of the name, stands forth to claim supremacy in song." 
 
 Barry Cornwall. 
 
 When the celebrated lame poet, Paddy Kelly, had the honour of being intro- 
 duced to George the Fourth, on that monarch's Mulgravizing visit to Dublin 
 (an honour extended to several other distinguished natives, such as Falvey the 
 sweep, Jack Lawless the orator, Daniel Donnelly the boxer, and another 
 Daniel, who of late years has practised a more profitable system of boxing), his 
 majesty expressed himself desirous of personally witnessing an exhibition of 
 the bard's extemporaneous talent, having heard many marvellous accounts of 
 the facility with which his genius was wont to vent itself in unpremeditated 
 verse. The Hibernian improvvisatorc forthwith launched out into a dithy- 
 
430 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ramb, of which the burden appeared to be a panegyric on Byron and Scott, 
 whose praises he sang in terms of fervid eulogy ; winding up the entire by what 
 certainly seemed to his illustrious auditor a somehow abrupt and startling con- 
 clusion, viz. : 
 
 " Twould take a Byron and a Scott, I tell ye, 
 Roll'd up in one, to make a Pat O'Kelly ! " 
 
 Doubtless such was the honest conviction of the Irish rhapsodist ; and if so, 
 he had an undeniable right to put his opinion on record, and publish it to the 
 world. Are we not, every week, favoured by some hebdomadal Longinus 
 with his peculiar and private ideas on the sublime ; of which the last new 
 tragedy, or the latest volume of verse (blank or otherwise), is pronounced the 
 finest model? What remedy can the public have against the practice of such 
 imposition? None whatever^ until some scientific manfthe Rev. Mr. Magawly, 
 for instance, of the British Association) shall achieve for literature what has 
 been done for the dairy, and invent . a critical " galactometer ; " by which the 
 exact density of milk-and-water poetry may be clearly and undeniably ascer- 
 tained. At present, indeed, so variable seems the standard of poetical merit — 
 so confused, unsettled, and contradictory the canons of criticism — that we begin 
 to believe true what Edmund Burke says of Taste among the moderns : — that 
 " its essence is of too ethereal a nature for us ever to hope it will submit to 
 bear the chains of definition." 
 
 In this vague and unsatisfactory state of things, Prout has, perhaps, adopted 
 the safest course, and " chosen the better part." He would appear to reserve 
 the question of his approval, and confine the range of his admiration within 
 the happy circle of recognized, incontestable, and transcendent excellence. 
 
 All this he has found supereminently in the canonized object of these running 
 commentaries which form the current series of his "papers." He stands not 
 alone in hailing therein Horace, prince of all lyric poets, of every age and 
 clime. In so doing, he merely bows to the general verdict of mankind ; which, 
 when fairly collected and plainly uttered, constitutes a final and irrevocable 
 award. St. Augustine applied this test to the detection of surreptitious doc- 
 trines, and the ascertaining of Catholic orthodoxy-r*" Quod semper quod 
 UBIQUE, quod ab OMN19US traditum est." Geometry and logarithms may 
 admit of being demonstrated in the abstract nakedness of their intrinsic evi- 
 dences ; but in poetry, as in religion, the experience of every day sufficiently 
 shows the proneness of individual judgment to strange and fantastic theories, 
 which can only be rectified by a reference to the universal sentiment— the sensus 
 communis of the human species. Prout always paid deference to time-honoured 
 reputations. Great was, hence, his veneration for the " venerable Bede ; ' ' and, 
 notwithstanding the absence of all tangible evidences, most vigorously did he 
 admire the " admirable Crichton." In Aristotle he persisted to recognize 
 the great master-mind of metaphysics ; he scouted the Scandinavian mysticism 
 of Kant :— sufficient for him was the cosmogony of Moses ; he laughed to 
 utter scorn the conjectures of geology. 
 
 This reminds us of the " astounding discovery" with which Dr. Buckland 
 is reported to have lately electrified the Bristolians. Ephraim Tenkinson's ghost 
 must have heard with jealousy, on the banks of the Styx, the shouts of ap- 
 plause which echoed the doctor's assertion on the banks of the Avon, that the 
 world had already lasted ' ' millions of years ! " that a " new version of Genesis " 
 would be shortly required, since a new light " had been thrown on Hebrew 
 scholarship I " The doctor's declaration is very properly described as the only 
 " original? act " elicited at the meeting. What fun, to hear a mite in the cavity 
 of a Gloucester cheese gravely reasoning on the streaks (or strata) of red and 
 yellow, and finally concluding, all things duly considered, that the invoice of 
 the farmer who made it bears a wrong date, and that the process of fabricating 
 
The Songs of Horace. 431 
 
 the cheese in question must have begun as long ago, at least, as the days of 
 the heptarchy. 
 
 There is often more strict logic, and more downright common sense, con- 
 tained in a professed poet's view of nature and her works, than in the gravest 
 and most elaborate mystifications of soi-disant philosophy. We shall, there- 
 fore, hesitate not to place in contraposition to this Bucklandish theory the 
 ideas of Chateaubriand on the subject-matter, leaving to any dispassionate 
 thinker to say on which side reason and analogy preponderate. "They tell 
 us, "quoth the noble author of "Genie du Christianisme," whose exact words we 
 cannot remember at this time of the evening, " that the earth is an old tooth- 
 less hag, bearing in every feature the traces of caducity ; and that six thousand 
 years are not enough to account for the hidden marks of age discoverable to 
 the eyes of Science : — but has it never occurred to them, that, in producing 
 this globe for the dwelling of man, it may have suited Providence to create all 
 its component parts in the stage of full maturity, just as Adam himself was 
 called into being at the full age of manhood, without passing through the pre- 
 paratory process of infancy, boyhood, or youth ? When God planted the soil of 
 Paradise, think ye that the oak of a hundred years' growth was wanting to 
 shed its mighty shadow over our first parents ? or, are we to believe that every 
 tree was a mere shrub, just emerging from the ground? Was the lion whom 
 Milton describes so graphically, as 
 
 ' Pawing to get free 
 His hinder parts,' 
 
 nothing but a new-born cub ? I do not believe it. I hold that the grove waved 
 its majestic pines, already bearing among their topmost branches the ready- 
 built nest of the rook and the young family of the dove; that the sheep browsed 
 on the green sward, with her attendant Iamb ; and that the bold rock overhung 
 the running stream, with the mantling ivy already twining through its crevices, 
 and exhibiting the marks of age on its hoary surface. Did not the Creator 
 understand the effect and the beauty of what we are agreed to call the pictu- 
 resque t or, in his Eden, did He overlook the graces of landscape ? What a 
 clumsy artificer these men would represent their Maker to be, were we to enter- 
 tain their notions of cosmogony ! What a crude and ill-assorted planet would 
 they describe as issuing from the hands of Omnipotence, so as to require the 
 operation of time and the influence of chemical agents to bring it to perfec- 
 tion. ' Non ! non ! le jour meme que 1' ocean epandit ses premieres vagues 
 sur nos rives, il baigna, n'en doutons point, des ecueils deja ronges par les flots, 
 des greves semees de debris, de coquillages, et des caps decharnes, qui sou- 
 tenaient contre les eaux les rivages croulans de la terre ; sans cette vieillesse 
 
 originaire, il n'yauraiteu ni pompe ni majesty dans l'univers.' " "The great 
 
 whales " lay 
 
 " Floating many a rood " 
 
 at the first instant of their creation, and the full-grown elephant roamed in the 
 Indian forest, among gigantic trees coeval with a world of yesterday. So 
 much for Buckland. 
 
 We feel that we have digressed from the professed object of this preamble, 
 by going so far back as the hexemeron, or six days' work of the Creator. In 
 Racine's only-begotten comedy of the " Pleaders," the judge, anxious to bring 
 an advocate who had indulged in a similar flight back to thestolencapon, 
 which formed the matter in dispute, gently interposes by the celebrated joke, 
 " Passons au dtluge." We shall take the hint and return to Horace. 
 
 This decade terminates the first book of the Odes. Prout has thus furnished 
 the world with a complete translation— so far— of the Sabine songster. Whether 
 we shall be able to fish up any further leaves of the Horatian category from the 
 
 l~ 
 
432 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 old trunk is yet a riddle. Sufficient, however, has been done to place the critic 
 of Watergrasshill on a level with the long-winded Jesuit, Father Sana don, in 
 the muster-roll of the poet's commentators. 
 
 OLIVER YORKE. 
 Recent Street, v$rd September. 
 
 Watergrasshill, alsolito. 
 
 The life of Horace, as all the world knows, has been epitomized by Sue- 
 tonius, a Roman biographer, who (so far as we may judge from the portion of 
 his works we possess) must have entertained peculiar notions as to the relative 
 attraction possessed by the individual subjects selected for his memoirs, and 
 the comparative ratio of interest which posterity would attach to their perusal. 
 In Falstaffs tavern-bill there appeared but one hap'orth of bread to counter- 
 balance several dozens of sack ; Suetonius furnishes us with a miscellaneous 
 account of celebrated characters, in which the rules of proportion are just as 
 little attended to— there is but one* poet to twelve " Casars." 
 
 In this solitary life of a single kommt de letlres, which seems to have found 
 its way, through some mistake, into the gorgeous circle of imperial biography, 
 there is one occurrence marked down by the courtly chronicler with more than 
 usual carefulness ; sparing neither circumstantial nor documentary detail in his 
 anxiety to put us in full possession of the (to him inexplicable) conduct of the 
 poet on the occasion. 
 
 One fine evening, towards the close of autumn, Flaccus was seated, alfresco, 
 under the porch of his Sabine villa, his arms crossed on his breast in a pensive 
 attitude, a tall Greek-made jar, filled with home-made wine, standing out in 
 bold relief before him, his eye apparently intent on the long shadow projected 
 by the graceful amphora as it intercepted the rays of the setting sun. 
 
 He was thinking of Virgil, who had just died at Naples, after a long and 
 painful illness, and whose loss to literature and social companionship no one 
 could appreciate more feelingly than Horace. They had but lately wept in 
 common over " Quinctilius ; " and the same reflection which had dried up the 
 tear of the mourners then (viz. that " there was no help for it"' J, w?s probably 
 the only one that presented itself to his mind to mitigate the pangs of this fresh 
 bereavement. A slave was meantime seen approaching in the distant land- 
 scape, dressed in the peculiar costume of the tabelarii, and bearing, in the 
 dust and exhaustion visible throughout his person, evidence of a hurried journey 
 from the metropolis. On reaching the spot where the poet sat, absorbed and 
 "gazing on vacancy," the arrival of one in whom he recognized a familiar ser- 
 vant of Maecenas was sufficient to draw him from his reverie ; especially when, 
 on examining the tablets handed to him by the slave, he perceived on the seal 
 that closed the silver thread with which the letter was bound up, the impres- 
 sion of a sphynx — a well-known emblem used by his patron. He broke the 
 envelope at once, and read as follows ".— 
 
 " Octavius Cesar, Augustus, Prince of the Senate, perpetual Consul, 
 Tribune for life, to C. M^CENAS, Knight, Prefect of Rome, dwell- 
 ing on the Esquiline, health. 
 
 "Hitherto 1 have been able to find time for keeping up a friendly inter- 
 course by letter with my numerous correspondents myself, but the increasing 
 press of business, and my growing infirmities, now put it out of my power. I 
 
 • Prout seems to think that the fragments relating to Lucan, Terence, and Juvenal, 
 are not to be ascribed to the biographer of Horace. Saumaise has not decided the 
 question. — 0. Y. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 433 
 
 there/ore wish to entice our friend Horace from your exclusive circle. Allow 
 him to exchange your hospitable board for a residence at the palace here, lie 
 is to act as my private secretary. Farewell, 
 "From Mount Palatine, tlie kalends of October."* 
 
 Maecenas had transmitted to his friend and guest the imperial epistle, without 
 adding a single syllable of note or comment to what was thus briefly couched 
 in the handwriting of his august correspondent. Horace was at first al a loss 
 to account for this deficiency, but, after a moment's reflection, could not but 
 bestow his approval on the delicate reserve which left him entire liberty to act 
 according to his own unbiassed judgment in a matter so wholly personal to 
 himself. ' 
 
 The slave, meantime, stood waiting in respectful silence ; the poet motioned 
 him to follow him into the atrium, where he traced a few lines for his master, 
 and despatched him back to Rome. That night, at supper, Maecenas con- 
 veyed to Augustus the result of his message to the Sabine farm ; it was a 
 refusal to accept the offer of the emperor. 
 
 The secret motives which influenced a determination so prompt and decisive 
 on the poet's part, he most probably did not communicate to Maecenas. It is 
 likely that he adopted in his reply the usual plea of " ill health," though his 
 jolly, plump, and rubicund appearance at their next meeting sufficiently gave 
 the lie to any valetudinarian pretences. Perhaps he put forward his predilec- 
 tions for a country life, and his fondness for rural solitude, of which he has so 
 often (ironically) celebrated the charms : such pretext must have amused those 
 who were best acquainted with his versatile disposition, and knew how little the 
 dull monotony of rustication was suited to his lively humour. 
 "Konur Tiburamem; ventosus Tibure Roiimm." 
 
 Ep. i. 8, 12. 
 
 Are we, then, to conjecture that sheer idleness dictated the refusal ? Are we 
 to conclude that the dolce far niente of a modern lazzarone had been practically 
 anticipated, and exemplified in the conduct of an ancient Roman ? I shall 
 have a word or two to say hereupon, ere a verdict is given dishonourable to the 
 character of Horace. I merely remark, en passant, that the duties of a pri- 
 vate secretary in the palace of Augustus were far from bearing any resemblance 
 to the tedious functions imposed by the prosy and long-winded style of cor- 
 respondence adopted in recent diplomacy : billets-doux of old were quite as 
 short as those of Lord Melbourne. + There were no foolscap sheets of protocol 
 nonsense interchanged in those days ; and the secretaryship on Mount Palatine 
 would have been, as nearly as possible, a luxurious sinecure. 
 
 But may not he, as an homme de lettres, have looked on the mere technical 
 employment of ' ' polite letter-writer " as something degrading to his genius, and 
 derogatory to the high inspirings of intellect ; as clogging the wings of fancy, 
 and impeding the lofty flights of lyrical enthusiasm ? There may be something 
 in this surmise, yet it is far from affording a satisfactory explanation of the 
 matter. The case, I apprehend, admits of reasoning drawn from analogy. 
 Pindar held some such ministerial appointment at the Sicilian court of Hiero, 
 yet he soared unshackled into the aerial regions with undiminished buoyancy, 
 fixing on the effulgent source of poetic inspiration an eagle eye that never 
 blinked, and wafted on a wing that never tired. Old John Milton was 
 1 ' Latin secretary " to the copper-nosed usurper at Whitehall, yet what spirit 
 like his could 
 
 • Verbatim from Suetonius. See Cuvillier Fleury, R. D. Paris, 1830. 
 t Ex.gr.: "How are you ? I shall call at two. 
 
 (Signed) " Melbourne." 
 
 O. Y. 
 
434 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 " Tempt, with wandering feet, 
 The dark, unfathom'd, infinite abyss ; 
 And through the palpable obscure find out 
 His uncouth way ? or waft his airy flight, 
 Upborne on indefatigable wings T 
 
 Tasso had an epistolary engagement in the household of Este, at Ferrara ; 
 VlDA did the duties of a Roman canonicate, and held a Tusculan prebend at 
 the hands of Leo X. Racine occupied the post of "historiographer" to the 
 Grand Monarque ; Addison and Prior, Chateaubriand and Petrarch, have been 
 each in his day members of the "corps diplomatique," without suffering any 
 detriment in their imaginative and poetic faculties. But of all the official 
 ministrations which have brought literary men in contact with courts and sove- 
 reigns, no two more similar positions could be instanced than those relatively 
 occupied by Voltaire at Potsdam, and (had he chosen to accept) by Horace in 
 the palace of Augustus. It is true that the witty French infidel occasionally 
 complained of being compelled to revise and retouch the poetic effusions of 
 Frederick — " Je lave le linge sale de sa majesti; " but it would appear that the 
 Roman emperor had a similar mania for trying his hand at versification, as 
 several hexameter fragments still extant seem to indicate : and no doubt he 
 intended to avail himself of our poet's facility and good nature to introduce 
 certain metrical graces into the dull routine of imperial correspondence. 
 Certain it is that (snuff, brandy, obscene jokes, and blasphemy apart) the 
 petits soupers of Potsdam might be not inaptly compared to the nodes 
 canaqua de&m enacted of old on Mount Palatine. 
 
 But I do not believe that the repugnance of Horace to the proposed 
 arrangement had its origin in any fear of stultifying his inventive powers, or 
 dimming his poetic perceptions in the apprehended drudgery of an amanu- 
 ensis. Neither, as I said before, do I concur in the supposition that down- 
 right indolence — arrant sloth — kept him in such habitual thraldom that he 
 could not muster energy sufficient for undertaking the functions of secretary. 
 To vindicate him from the charge of yielding to imbecile lethargy, of suc- 
 cumbing in utter incapability of all strenuous effort, need I recall the his- 
 torical fact of his having been selected to take command of a regiment in 
 perilous times— days of iron exertion ? 
 
 "Cittn mihi parent legio Romana tribune." 
 
 Sat. i. 6. 
 
 Need I instance the further proof of his business habits and worldly capacity, 
 afforded us by the well-authenticated circumstance of his having held, and 
 duly discharged, the important office of commissioner of the public revenue 
 (scriba qucestorius), somewhat equivalent to the attributions which, in a subse- 
 quent age of the world, were deemed the fittest to occupy the abilities of 
 Robert Burns, "poet and exciseman "—(not to speak of one Wordsworth, 
 distributor of stamps in Cumberland) ? Need I observe, in corroboration of 
 all the other evidences which prove his willingness to work, that he at one 
 time of his life went through the most wearisome and laborious of all the 
 hard tasks to which flesh is heir— the crowning drudgery of all human toils— 
 that of earning his bread by scribblement and versemongery? 
 
 " Paupertas impulit audax 
 Ut versus facerem." 
 
 The gods, when they hate a man with uncommon abhorrence, are said to 
 drive him to the profession of schoolmaster : but a pedagogue may "go further" 
 into the depths of misery, and ' ' fare worse, " should he be tempted to worry his 
 brains (tov vow) in gathering intellectual samphire— 
 
 "Dreadful trade I" 
 
The Songs of Horace. 435 
 
 This is the true reading of a fragmentary passage from Euripides, which is 
 often misquoted ,: 
 
 Otov Is Aatfiwu avSpt irpoavvti Knxa 
 
 Tou vow e£\a\fre irpwrotr. 
 
 Incertm Trag.,puil. iy Barnes. 
 
 , What our poet endured in passing through that expiatory stage of his 
 checquered existence we can only conjecture, as he barely alludes in the above 
 brief terms lo the period of his probation ; which, by the kind interference of 
 Providence, was probably abridged. He had long since arrived at the enjoy- 
 ment of a moderate competence, and if he still courted the Muses and indulged 
 "in numbers," it was (like Pope) 
 
 " Because the numbers came." 
 
 Having thus fully acquitted Horace of a propensity to idleness, it is time to 
 state my own view of the cause which operated in producing the rejection of so 
 tempting an offer as that conveyed by letter to the poet, "from the highest 
 quarter," through the instrumentality of Maecenas. Fully to understand the 
 delicacy of mind and the sensitive feelings of honour he evinced on this occa- 
 sion, it is perhaps expedient to recapitulate anterior occurrences. 
 
 Horace, by the mere circumstance of birth, could scarcely claim admittance 
 into what we call the middle class of society.* His father was a freedman of 
 Pompey's house, and, on his emancipation from service in that distinguished , 
 family, had set himself up in trade as a crier, or collector, at public auc- 
 tions : a social position, need I add, far from equalling the splendid rank 
 held in modern times by George Robins of Covent Garden. He was, how- 
 ever, an old man of considerable sagacity; and to him, much pondering on 
 the unsettled state of the political horizon, there appeared no reason why he 
 should not look out for the chances of raising up his dynasty in the midst of 
 the coming confusion. Wherefore, to the education of his only son, Flaccus — 
 rather a Smart boy for his age — he devoted all his earnings and energies, so 
 as to fit him for the very highest functions of the state, should fortune turn 
 favourable. He accordingly sent him to the tip-top school of the day— the 
 Eton or Harrow of Rome, kept by one Orbilius "for a select number of the 
 young nobility and gentry." Nor has Horace omitted gratefully to record 
 the pains and trouble which the worthy principal of this academy bestowed 
 on his studies ; though he jocosely applies to him now and then the endearing 
 epithet of " plagosus," and is supposed by the 1 German philologist, Wolff, to 
 have drawn his portrait in the well-known lines about Death : 
 
 "Nee parcit imbellis juventx 
 Poplitibus, timidove tergo." 
 
 Lib. iii. ode ii. 
 
 Having exhausted, at the age of twenty, all the stock of information 
 possessed by Ortilius, his excellent father, begrudging no expense, and securely 
 calculating on a full return for the capital invested in so hopeful a son, now 
 sent him to Athens, where Philosophy still sauntered in the shady walks of 
 Academus, and Wisdom yet held forth from the porch of Zeno. Here was 
 congregated all the young blood of Rome ; the promising scions of every noble 
 house were allowed to grow up in the genial sunshine of Greece : Athens was 
 the fashionable university. The youthful acquaintances formed hereby Horace 
 were, naturally enough, selected from the partisans and supporters of Pompey ; 
 
 * He was not ashamed- to own it : > 
 
 - "Ego pauperuin sanguis parenium." 
 ■■■ • Ode ii. so, 6V - - 
 
such as young Plancus, Messala, Varus, Bibulus, Cicero (son of the orator), 
 and all that set. What a delightful and interesting picture it were to contem- 
 plate the development, in these ardent breasts, of genius, passion, patriotism, 
 and all the workings of the Roman soul ; to note the aspirings of each 
 gallant spirit ; to watch the kindling of each generous emotion, fanned into 
 a blaze by the recollections of Grecian renown and the memorials of bygone 
 glory ! Nor were it a less curious study to observe the contrast of Roman 
 and Athenian manners in this refined and intellectual city, at once frivolous 
 and profound, servile and enthusiastic ; the parent of Pericles, Phidias, and 
 Phocion, yet nursing numerous and genuine specimens of the sycophant and 
 the sophist, to all appearance equally indigenous in the soil with the hero 
 and the sage. 
 
 Dwelling with fondness on this young colony of noble students, imagination 
 revels in the vision of their joyous and animated intercourse ; fancy follows 
 them through their pursuits of science or of pleasure, their reveries of Stoic or 
 Epicurean philosophy — (for Paul had not yet astounded the Areopagus with 
 the announcement of Revelation) — calm dreams, not unmixed with specula- 
 tions on the symptoms of important change, already but too manifest in the 
 political system of the mother-country. Of a sudden, the news of Caesar s 
 murder in the senate-house burst on the quiet leisure of these pleasant hours ; 
 and, to add to the excitement, the arrival at Athens of Brutus himself, 
 fresh glowing from the deed of antique stoicism, communicated an irresist- 
 ible impulse to the cause, and sent an electric shock through the veins of 
 each young Pompeian. Loud was the acclaim, and warm the welcome, 
 with which Horace and his circle hailed the asserter of the rights and privileges 
 of the Roman aristocracy : for this, en passant, is the true light in which the 
 hero of the ides of March should be considered by those who wish to under- 
 stand the actuating motives and political views of that period. An army 
 was to be organized in all haste ; and high must have been the opinion of 
 our poet's personal intrepidity and skill when Brutus did not hesitate to 
 place him at once at the HEAD OF A regiment : the post of ' ' military 
 tribune " being equivalent to the functions of colonel in our modern army-lists. 
 
 Here, then, we have the pupil of the " polu-flog-boyo" Orbilius, gallantly 
 accoutred, unflinchingly erect in the van of a legion, forming one of the 
 ' ' staff " in an army of 100,000 men, who were soon to meet an equal number on 
 the disastrous plains of Philippi. It was the last effort of the expiring con- 
 stitution — the last bold stand made by the confederated nobility, the Cavaliers 
 of Rome, against the odious idol of Democracy embodied in the Triumvirate. 
 Several years subsequently, in a drinking-song alluding to this battle, he charges 
 himself with the basest cowardice ; describing his conduct as that of a run- 
 away, who flung knapsack, belt, and buckler, to be foremost in the flight when 
 sauve qui pent was the cry. But we may safely look on the avowal as merely 
 one of mock-modesty, meant to be taken cum grano salis ; especially as the 
 bacchanalian song in question was addressed to one of the young Pompeys 
 (Pomp. Grosph.), before whom he would be loth to stultify or stigmatize him- 
 self by such a statement, if intended to be taken literally. We may confidently 
 assert, in the absence of every other testimony but his own, that he behaved 
 with proper courage on the occasion ; and for this reason, viz. no one likes to 
 joke on matters in which he is conscious of deficiency. Joe Hume, for instance, 
 never ventures a witticism on the Greek loan. 
 
 The results of the campaign are well known. Brutus made away with him- 
 self, with stoic consistency ; but a number of his lieutenants — Bibulus, his 
 brother-in-law, Messala, Plancus, and many others, with 14,000 of the 
 troops, capitulated, and made their submission to the triumvirs. A few years 
 after, Messala fought at Actium, under the banner of Octavius, and is reported 
 to have exclaimed in the hearing of Antony's antagonist, "It is ever my des- 
 
The Songs of Horace. 437 
 
 tiny to bear arms at the side on which justice and honour are arrayed." A 
 saying equally indicative of Messala's free-spoken intrepidity, and the tolerat- 
 ing higb-mindedness of the emperor who could listen without chiding or dis- 
 pleasure. 
 
 Horace followed the example of those whom he had known at Athens in the 
 intimacy of early youth, when attachments are strongest, and the ties of indisso- 
 luble friendship are most effectually formed. But in this tacit adhesion to the 
 new order of things, old feelings and long-cherished opinions were not readily 
 got rid of. The Jacobites could not yet divest themselves of a secret antipathy 
 to the house of Hanover. There still existed, among most of them, a sort of 
 sulky reluctance to approximate with the government, or accept its favour, or 
 incur any obligation irreconcilable with the proud susceptibility of patrician 
 independence. 
 
 It becomes obvious, from this brief expose", that for Horace to accept a situation 
 in the household of Augustus would be tantamount on his part to a complete 
 apostasy from all his old familiar friendships, and a formal renunciation of all 
 acquaintanceship among the numerous surviving partisans of Pompey. Every 
 one who recollects the abuse poured out on Burke (in his capacity of govern- 
 ment pensioner), from the foul organs of Holland House, will understand the 
 annoyance to which our poet would have subjected himself had he yielded to 
 the proposal of the emperor. Besides, he possessed a becoming share of 
 rational pride, and was unwilling to barter the free sentiments of his mind, 
 and their honest expression, for emoluments and functions which would give 
 to any support his writings might afford the established dynasty a semblance 
 of venality, stamping him as a mere mercenary character. The friendship of 
 Mecsenas had procured for him the restoration of some confiscated property 
 which his father had acquired, but which had become forfeited by the part he 
 had taken in the civil war : this was the " Sabine farm." Presents and valua- 
 ble benefactions had flowed on him from the same munificent source, but per- 
 fect equality and reciprocal esteem were the terms on which the patron and 
 poet lived towards each other. No wonder, then, that the letter of Augustus 
 failed to seduce him from the table of Mecsenas, on the Esquiline Hill, to a 
 secretary's duties, and accompanying golden shackles, on Mount Palatine. 
 
 Such is the simple explanation of an otherwise very extraordinary passage 
 in the life of Horace. Viewed in this light, his reluctance would appear per- 
 fectly justifiable, and would seem to evince sound judgment, as well as a deli- 
 cate sense of honour. I happen to have some very particular reasons, which 
 it is unnecessary to specify, for dwelling on the conduct here described ; and 
 having, I trust, put the matter in its proper light, I now return to my herme- 
 neutic labours. 
 
 We are informed by Strabo (lib. xvi.), that in the year 7jo u.c, the emperor 
 decided on sending out an army, under the command of Gallus, to conquer 
 Arabia Felix, the "land of Hus." This country, by all accounts, sacred and 
 profane (see Isaiah, cap. lx. et passim), seems to have been celebrated for its 
 treasure and renowned for its luxury, though very little traces remained a few 
 centuries after of either riches or civilization ; at the present day, it is literally 
 " as poor as Job." Such, however, were the ideas entertained at Rome of this 
 El Dorado of the East, that thousands enrolled themselves under the standard 
 of Gallus, in the hopes of making a rapid fortune from the spoils of the 
 Arabs. The expedition proved a wretched failure. One Iccius, however, was 
 among the deluded speculators, who joined it through sheer eagerness for pil- 
 lage ; he sold a capital law library, to purchase an outfit and a commission in 
 the newly raised regiments. His abandonment of professional pursuits for a 
 military engagement was the laughter of all Rome, and Horace heartily enjoyed 
 the general merriment. Such was the occasion which provoked the following 
 witty and polished remonstrance, addressed to the warlike lawyer :— 
 
43» 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 ODE XXIX.— THE SAGE TURNED SOLDIER. 
 
 I. 
 
 Air—" One bumper at parting.'' 
 
 AD ICCIUM. 
 
 The trophies of war, and die plunder, 
 
 Have fired a philosopher's breast — 
 So, Iccius, you march (mid the wonder 
 
 Of all) for Arabia the blest. 
 Full sure, when 'tis told to the Persian, 
 
 That you have abandon'd your home, 
 He'll feel the full force of coercion, 
 
 And strike to the banners of Rome ! 
 
 II. 
 
 What chief shall you vanquish and fetter? 
 
 What captive shall call you her lord? 
 How soon may the maiden forget her 
 
 Betrothed, hewn down by your sword t 
 What stripling has fancy appointed. 
 
 From all that their palaces hold. 
 To serve you with ringlets anointed, 
 
 And hand you the goblet of gold? 
 
 III. 
 
 His arts to your pastime contribute. 
 
 His foreign accomplishments show, 
 And, taught by his parent, exhibit 
 
 His dexterous use of the bow.— 
 Who doubts that the Tiber, in choler, 
 
 May, bursting all barriers and bars. 
 Flow back to its source, when a scholar 
 
 Deserts to the standard of Mars? 
 
 IV. 
 
 When you, the reserved and the prudent, 
 
 Whom Socrates hoped to engage, 
 Can merge in the soldier the student, ,. 
 
 And mar thus an embryo sage- 
 Bid the visions of science to vanish, 
 
 And barter your erudite hoard 
 Of volumes from Greece for a Spanish 
 
 Cuirass, and the pen for a sword ? 
 
 Icci, beatis nunc 
 Arabum invides 
 Gazis, et acrem 
 Militiam paras 
 
 Non ante devictis 
 
 Regibus, hor- 
 ribilique Medo 
 
 II. 
 
 Nectis catenas. 
 Qua? tibi virginum, 
 Sponso necat o, • 
 Barbara serviet ? * 
 Puer quis ex aulft 
 Capillis 
 Ad cyathum 
 Statuetur uncus, 
 
 III. 
 
 Doctus sagittas 
 Tendere Sericas 
 Arcu paterno ? 
 Quis neget arduis 
 Pronos relabi 
 Posse rivos 
 Montibus, et 
 Tiberim reverti, 
 
 IV. 
 
 8uum tu coemptos 
 ndique nobiles 
 Libros Paused, 
 Socraticam etdomum 
 Mutare loricis 
 Ibekis, 
 Pollicitus 
 Meliora, tendis? 
 
 The "Spanish" cuirass would seem to indicate that the peninsula was, so 
 far back as the Augustan age, renowned for its iron manufactures. The blades 
 of Toledo kept up, during the middle ages, the credit of Spain for industry 
 and skill in this department. Likewise, in the craft of shoe-making, the town 
 of Cordova shone pre-eminent ; nor did the hero of that ilk, Gon salve dc 
 Cordoue, confer on it greater celebrity than its leathern glories ; as the English 
 word cordwainer, and the French term cordonnier, still testify. In an old 
 MS. of the King's Library, Paris (marked Q.), a monkish scholiast has made 
 a marginal observation on this ode to Iccius, which is highly characteristic of 
 cloister criticism; — " Horatius reprehtndit quemdam qui sua clericalia 
 officta mutat fro milltaribus armis;" — a clerk who could sell his "office- 
 book " or breviary, for a suit of armour, was assuredly a fit subject for the 
 poet's animadversion. It is to be regretted that the same worthy commentator 
 did not continue his glossary throughout ; as, for instance, what might he not 
 discover in the next morceau f— 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 439 
 
 ODE XXX.— THE DEDICATION OF GLYCERA'S CHAPEL. 
 Air— "The Boyne Water." 
 
 AD VBNEREH. 
 
 O Venus, Queen of Cyprus isle, 
 
 Of Paphos and of Gnidus, 
 Hie from thy favourite haunts awhile, 
 
 And make abode amid us ; 
 For thee Glycera's altar smokes. 
 
 With frankincense sweet-smelling — 
 Thee, while the charming maid invokes, 
 
 Hie to her lovely dwelling ! 
 
 O Venus ! Regina 
 Gnidi, Paphique, 
 Sperne dilectam 
 
 Cypron, et vocantis 
 Thure te multo 
 GLYCERJB 
 
 Decoram 
 Transfer in sdem 
 
 II. II. 
 
 Let yon bright Boy, whose hand hath grasp' d Fervidus tecum 
 
 Love's blazing torch, precede thee, Puer, et solutis 
 
 While gliding on, with zone unclasp'd. Gratis zonis, 
 
 The sister Graces lead thee : Properentque 
 
 Nor be thy Nymph-attendants miss'd ; Nymphae, 
 
 Nor can it harm thy court, if Et parum comis 
 
 Hebe the youthful swell thy list, Sine te Juventas, 
 
 With Mercury the sportive. Mercunusque. 
 
 Honest Dacier says, in his own dry way: "On ne doit pas s'itonntr 
 qu' Horace mctte Mercure & la suite de Vinus,; cela s'explique aisementl" 
 
 Augustus, in the year u.c. 726, according to Dion (53. 1.), built a temple to 
 Apollo on Mount Palatine, to which he annexed a splendid library, much 
 spoken of under subsequent emperors. The ceremony of its consecration ap- 
 pears to have called forth as many "addresses" as the re-opening of Drury 
 Lane Theatre, in the heyday of Horace Smith : one only has been preserved to 
 posterity. Here is the Roman laureate's effusion, replete with dignified and 
 philosophic sentiments, expressed in the noblest language : — 
 
 ODE XXXI.-tTHE DEDICATION OF APOLLO'S TEMPLE. 
 
 ANNO AB U.C. 736. 
 
 Air—" Lesbia hath a beaming eye." 
 
 AD APOLLINEM. 
 
 I. 
 
 When the bard in worship, low 
 
 Bends before his liege Apollo, 
 While the red libations flow 
 
 From the goblet's golden hollow, 
 Can ye guess his orison ? 
 
 Can it be for "grain " he asketh— 
 Mellow grain, that in the sun, 
 
 O'er Sardinia's bosom basketh? 
 
 I. 
 
 Quid dedicatum 
 Poscit Apollinem 
 Vates? Quid oral; 
 De patera novum 
 Fundes liquorem? 
 - Non opimat, 
 Sardinia 
 Segetes feracis. 
 
 II. 
 
 No, no ! The fattest herd of kine 
 That o'er Calabeian pasture ranges-r - 
 
 The wealth of" India's richest mine— 
 The ivory of the distant Ganges? 
 
 II. 
 
 Non xstuoss 
 Grata Calabria: 
 Armenta, non aurum 
 Aut ebur Iadicum, 
 
44Q 
 
 The Works of FatJter Front, 
 
 No — these be not the poet's dream— 
 Nor acres broad to roam at large in. 
 
 Where lazy Liris, silent stream. 
 Slow undermines the meadow s margin. 
 
 Non rura, quae 
 Liris quiet* 
 
 Mordet aqua> 
 Taciturnus amnis. 
 
 III. 
 
 The landlord of a wide domain 
 
 May gather his Campanian vintage. 
 The venturous trader count his gain — 
 
 I covet not his rich per centage ; 
 When for the merchandise he sold 
 
 He gets the balance he relied on, 
 Pleased let him toast, in cups of gold, 
 
 " Free intercourse with Tyre and Sidon ! " 
 
 III. 
 
 Premant Calenam 
 Falce, quibus dedit 
 Fortuna, vitem ; 
 Dives et aureis 
 Mercator ex- 
 siccet culullis 
 Vina Syr A 
 Reparata merce, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Each year upon the watery waste, 
 
 Let him provoke the fierce Atlantic 
 Four separate times — I have no taste 
 
 For speculation so gigantic 
 The gods are kind, the gain superb ; 
 
 But, haply, I can feast in quiet 
 On salad of some homely herb, 
 
 On frugal fruit and olive diet. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Dis cams ipsis ; 
 Quippe ter et quatei 
 Anno revisens 
 JEquor Atlanticum 
 Impune. Me 
 Pascunt olivae, 
 Me cichorea 
 Levesque malvae. 
 
 V. 
 
 Oh, let Laton a's son but please 
 
 To guarantee me health's enjoyment ! 
 The goods he gave — the faculties 
 
 Of which he claims the full employment ; 
 Let me live on to good old age, 
 
 No deed of shame my pillow haunting, 
 Calm to the last, the closing stage 
 
 Of life :— nor let the lyre be wanting ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Frui paratis 
 
 Et valido mihi, 
 
 Latoe, dones ; 
 
 At, precor, Integra 
 
 Cum mente, 
 
 Nee turpem senectam 
 
 Degere nee 
 Citharft carentem. 
 
 The following stanzas would seem to form a sort of introductory flourish, or 
 preamble ; and, in the opinion of Father San adon, were intended as a musical 
 overture to the '-Carmen Saeculare." In it Horace calls the lyre a testu do ; 
 and tells us that Jupiter never dined without an accompaniment of the kind : 
 "" Dapibus supremi grata testudo Jovis." My friend, William Jerdan, thinks, 
 nevertheless, that "fine lively turtle" is of far greater acceptance, on festal 
 occasions, than a mere empty tortoise-shell. 
 
 ODE XXXII. 
 
 I. 
 
 Poscimur...Si quid vacui sub umbrft 
 Lusimus tecum, quod et hunc in annum 
 Vivat et plures, age, die Latinum, 
 Barbite, carmen, 
 
 II. 
 
 Lesbio priraum modulate civi ; 
 
 gui, ferox bello, tamen inter anna, 
 ve jactatam religarat udo 
 
 Litore navim, 
 
 III. 
 
 Liberum, et Musas, Veneremque, et illi 
 Semper hseren tem puerum canebat, 
 Et Lycam nigris oculis, nigroque 
 
 Crine decoram. 
 
 IV. 
 
 O decus Phoebi, et dapibus supremi 
 Gnu testudo Jovis ! o laborum 
 Duloe lenimen, mihi cumque salve 
 Ritevocanti! 
 
The Songs of Horace. 441 
 
 An occasional Prelude of the Poet to his Songs. 
 Air—" Dear harp of my country." 
 
 They have call'd for a hymn, which they say shall not perish, 
 
 But Echo its music through ages prolong ; 
 Then wake, Latin lyre ! Since my countrymen cherish 
 
 Thy wild native harmony, wake to my song. 
 
 II. 
 
 'Twas Alcsus, a minstrel of Greece, who first married 
 The tones of the voice to the thrill of the chord ; 
 
 O'er the waves of the sea the loved symbol he carried, 
 Nor relinquish 'd the lyre though he wielded the sword. 
 
 III. 
 
 Gay Bacchus, the Muses, with Cupid he chanted 
 — The boy who accompanies Venus the fair — 
 
 And he told o'er again how for Lvca he panted, 
 With her bonny black eyes and her dark flowing hair. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Tis the pride of Apollo— he glories to rank it, 
 
 Amid his bright attributes, foremost of all : 
 Tis the solace of life ! Even Jove to his banquet 
 
 Invites thee ! — O Lyre ! ever wake to my call. 
 
 I do not admit the next ode to be genuine. The elegiac poet, Tibullus, 
 to whom it is inscribed, died very young (twenty-six); and, besides, was 
 too great a favourite of the ladies to have such lines as these addressed to 
 him: — 
 
 ODE XXXIII. 
 
 AD ALBIUM TIBULLUM. 
 
 Albi, ne doleas. Be not astonish'd, dear Tibullus, 
 
 Plus nimio memor That fickle women jilt and gull us ! 
 
 Immitis Glycera?, Cease to write " elegies" bemoaning 
 
 Neu miserabiles Glvcera's falsehood — idly groaning 
 
 Decantes elegos. That thou in her esteem hast sunk, or 
 
 Cur tibi junior That she prefers a roaring younker. 
 Laesa prceniteat fide, &c K. r. A. 
 
 I consequently dismiss it to its appropriate place amid the Apocrypha. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, though overlooked by most historians, that the "Re- 
 formation " originated in a clap of thunder. A German student was so terrified 
 by the bolt (which killed his comrade) that he turned monk, and, having had 
 originally no vocation for that quiet craft, afterwards broke out, naturally 
 enough, into a polemical agitator. Horace was nearly converted by the same 
 electric process as Luther. Ex. gr. ; 
 
 R 
 
442 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ODE XXXIV.— THE POET'S CONVERSION. 
 
 AD SEIPSUM. 
 
 I, whom the Gods had found a client, 
 
 Rarely with pious rites compliant, 
 
 At Unbelief disposed to nibble, 
 
 And pleased with every sophist quibble — 
 
 I, who had deem'd great Jove a phantom, 
 
 Now own my errors, and recant 'cm ! 
 
 I. 
 
 Farcus Deorum 
 Cultor et infrequens, 
 
 Insanientis 
 Dum sapientiae 
 Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum 
 Vela dace, atque iterare cursus 
 
 II. 
 
 Have I not lived of late to witness, 
 Athwart a sky of passing' brightness, 
 The God, upon his car of thunder, 
 Cleave the calm elements asunder ? 
 And, through the firmament careering, 
 Level his bolts with aim unerring ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Cogor relictos. 
 Namque Diespiter, 
 
 Igni corusco 
 Nubila dividens 
 Plerumque, per purum tonantes 
 Egit equos, volucremque currum, 
 
 III. 
 
 Then trembled Earth with sudden shiver; 
 Then quaked with fear each mount and river; 
 Stunn'd at the blow, Hell reel'd a minute, 
 With all the darksome caves within it; 
 And Atlas seem'd as he would totter 
 Beneath his load of land and water ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Quo bruta tellus, 
 Et vaga flumina, 
 
 Quo Styx, et invisi 
 Horrida Taenari 
 Sedes, Atlanteusque finis 
 Concutitur. Valet ima summis 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yes ! of a God I hail the guidance ; 
 The proud are humbled at his biddance ; 
 Fortune, his handmaid, now uplifting 
 Monarchs, and now the sceptre shifting. 
 With equal proof his power evinces. 
 Whether she raise or ruin Princes. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mutare, et insignem 
 Attenuat Deus, 
 
 Obscura promens. 
 Hinc apicem rapax 
 Fort una cum stridore acuto 
 Sustulit, hie posuisse gaudet 
 
 Here is a specimen of the poet's more elevated manner — a sample of his 
 grander style of composition. He invokes the smile of Fortune on two im- 
 pending enterprises of the emperor : one an expedition to Arabia, composed of 
 new recruits (concerning which, see the first ode of this decade); and, secondly, 
 an excursion to Britain. Napoleon would call the first, " I'Armiedel Orient;" 
 and the other " I'Armfc d ' Angleterre" Both were intended rather to divert 
 public attention from politics than for real conquest. Horace, however, appears 
 quite in earnest. 
 
 ODE XXXV.— AN ADDRESS TO FORTUNE. 
 
 AD FORT U NAM. 
 
 Fortune, whose pillar'd temple crowns 
 
 Cape Antium s jutting cliff, 
 Whose smiles confer success, whose frowns 
 
 Can change our triumphs brief 
 To funerals— for life doth lie at 
 The mercy of thy sovereign fiat. 
 
 O Diva, gratum 
 
 Quae regis Antium, 
 
 Praesens vel imo 
 
 Tollere de gradu 
 
 Mortale corpus, vel superbos 
 
 Vertere funenbus triumphos, 
 
The Songs of Horace, 
 
 443 
 
 ii. 
 
 Thee, Goddess ! in his fervent prayers, 
 Fondly the frugal farmer courts ; 
 
 The manner, before he dares 
 Unmoor his bark, to thee resorts — 
 
 That thy kind favour may continue. 
 
 To bless his voyage to Bithynia. 
 
 III. 
 
 Rude Dacia's clans, wild Scythia's hordes— 
 Abroad— at home — all worship thee ! 
 
 And mothers of barbarian Lords, 
 And purpled tyrants, bend the knee 
 
 Before thy shrine, O Maid ! who seemest 
 
 To rule mankind with power supremest, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Lest thou their statue's pillar 'd pride 
 Dash to the dust with scornful foot— 
 
 Lest Tumult, bent on regicide, 
 Their ancient dynasty uproot ; 
 
 When madden'd crowds, with Fiends to lead 'em, 
 
 Wreck empires in the name of freedom I 
 
 Thee stern Necessity leads on, 
 Loaded with attributes of awe ; 
 
 And grasping, grim automaton, 
 Bronze wedges in his iron claw. 
 
 Prepared with sledge to drive the bolt in, 
 
 And seal it fast with lead that's molten. 
 
 II. 
 
 Te pauper ambit 
 Solliuta prece 
 
 Ruris co tonus ; 
 Te dominam acquoris, 
 Quicumque Bithyna lacessit 
 Carpathium pelagus carina ; 
 
 III. 
 
 Te Dacus asper, 
 Te profugi Scythae, 
 
 Urbesque, gentesque, 
 Et Latium ferox, 
 Regumque matres barbarorum, et 
 Purpurei metuunt tyranni, 
 
 IV. 
 
 ■ Injurioso 
 Ne pede proruas 
 
 Stan tern columnam ; 
 Neu populus frequens 
 Ad arma cessantes, ad arma 
 Concitet, imperiumque frangat. 
 
 V. 
 
 Te semper anteit 
 Sseva Necessitas, 
 Clavos trabales 
 Et cuneos mami 
 Gestans aena, nee severus 
 Uncus abest liquidumque plum- 
 bum. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thee Hope adores.— In snow-white vest, 
 Fidelity (though seldom found) 
 
 Clings to her liege, and loves him best, 
 When dangers threat and ills surround ; 
 
 Prizing him poor, despoil'd, imprison'dj 
 
 More than with gold and gems bedizen'd. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Te Spes, et albo 
 Rara Fides colit 
 Velatapanno, 
 Nee comitem abnegat, 
 Utcumque mutata potentes 
 Veste domos inimica linquis. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Not so the fickle crowd !— Not so 
 The purchased Beauty, sure to fly 
 
 Where all our toon companions go, 
 Soon as the cask of joy runs dry : 
 
 Round us the Spring and Summer brought em- 
 
 They leave us at the close of Autumn ! 
 
 VIII.— The Prayer. 
 
 Goddess ! defend, from dole and harm, 
 Ccsar, who speeds to Britain's camp ! 
 
 And waft, of Rome's glad youth, the swarm 
 Safe to where first Apollo's lamp 
 
 Shines in the East — the brave whose fate is 
 
 To war upon thy banks, Euphrates ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 At vulgus infidum, 
 
 Et meretrix retro 
 
 Perjura cedit ; 
 
 Diffugiunt cadis 
 
 Cum fece siccatis amici, 
 
 Ferre jugum pariter dolosi. 
 
 Vlll.—Aniistropke. 
 
 Serves itunim 
 Caesarem in ultimos 
 
 Orbis Britannos, 
 Et juvenum recens 
 Examen Eois timendum 
 Partibus, Oceanoque rubra 
 
444 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Oh 1 let our country's tears expunge 
 From history's page those years abhorr'd, 
 
 When Roman hands could reckless plunge, 
 Deep in a brother's heart, the sword ; 
 
 When Guilt stallc'd forth, with aspect hideous. 
 
 With every crime and deed perfidious ; 
 
 IX. 
 
 Eheu ! cicatricum 
 Et sceleris pudet 
 
 Fratrumque. Quid nos 
 Dura refugunus 
 iEtas ? t Quid intactum nefasti 
 Liquimus? Unde roanum ju- 
 ventus 
 
 When Sacrilege and Frenry urged 
 To violate each hallow'd fane. — 
 
 Oh ! that our falchions were reforged. 
 And purified from sin and shame ; — 
 
 Then— turn "d against th" Assyrian foeman — 
 
 Baptized in exploits truly Roman ! 
 
 X. 
 
 Mctu Dsorum 
 Cuntinuit ? Quibus 
 
 Pepercit aris ? 
 O utinam nova 
 Incude defingas retusum in 
 Massagetas Arabasque ferrum ! 
 
 The unaffected simplicity of the next song, and the kindly warmth of affec- 
 tion it bespeaks, are highly creditable to the poet's heart. The "gentle 
 Lamia" has already figured in this series,* but nothing is known of 
 " Numida." 
 
 ODE XXXVI.— A WELCOME TO NUMIDA. 
 
 AD PLOTIUM NVMIDAM. 
 
 I. 
 
 Burn frankincense ! blow fife 
 A merry note ! — and quick devote 
 A victim to the knife, 
 
 II. 
 
 To thank the guardian powers 
 Who led from Spain— home once again, 
 This gallant friend of ours. 
 
 III. 
 
 Dear to us all ; yet one 
 Can fairly boast— his friendship most : 
 Oh, him he doats upon ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 The geutle Lamia, whom, 
 Long used to share— each schoolday care, 
 He loved in boyhood's bloom. 
 
 Et thure et fidibus juvat 
 Flacare, et vituli 
 Sanguine debito 
 
 II. 
 
 Custodes Numida: Deos, 
 Qui nunc, Hesperi& 
 Sospes ab ultima, 
 
 III. 
 
 Cans multa sodalibus, 
 Nulli plura tamen 
 Dividit oscula, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Qnam dulci Lamia, memor 
 Acts non alio 
 Rege puertue, 
 
 On both one day conferr'd 
 The garb of men— this day, again. 
 Let a "white chalk " record. 
 
 V. 
 
 Mutataeque siraul tog*. 
 Cress&ne careat 
 
 Pulchra dies not4 ; 
 
 VI. 
 
 Then send the wine-jar round, 
 And blithely keep the " Saltan" step 
 With many a mirthful bound. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Neu prompts modus amphorae, 
 Neu morem in Salium 
 
 Sit requies pedum. 
 
 * See last decade. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 445 
 
 We now come to a political squib of loud iclat and dazzling brilliancy. 
 How he exults in the downfall of an anti-national confederacy ! How he revels 
 in the dastard Antony's discomfiture! The cowardice and effeminacy of the 
 latter are not positively described, but cannot fail to strike us at once (as they 
 did the contemporary public), by the forcible contrast with Cleopatras 
 intrepidity. This ill-fated queen receives due honour from the poet, who shows 
 that he can appreciate a daring spirit even in an enemy. To my own version 
 I have annexed Victor Hugo's celebrated French translation, as sung at the 
 Porte St. Martin, with rapturous applause, in his "Cleopatre, Traggdie, par 
 I'Auteur de Marie Tudor." 
 
 ODE XXXVIL— THE DEFEAT OF CLEOPATRA. 
 
 The Ballad. 
 I. 
 
 Now, comrades, drink 
 Full bumpers, undiluted ! 
 
 Now, dancers, link 
 Firm hands, and freely foot it ! 
 
 Now let the priests, 
 Mindful of Numa's ritual, 
 
 Spread victim-feasts, 
 And keep the rites habitual ! 
 
 A Joyful Ballad. 
 
 "AdSodales." 
 
 I. 
 
 Nunc est habendum. 
 Nunc pede libera 
 Pulsanda tellus, 
 Nunc Saliaribus 
 Ornare pulvinar 
 Deorum 
 Tempus erat 
 Dapibus, sodales ! 
 
 Air de " Malbrook." 
 I. 
 
 Or sits ! Imvons 
 
 Pie in verre; 
 Dan sons, /rapports 
 
 La ierre, 
 Defleurs onions, 
 
 Pour flaire 
 A ux Dieux, tons tios 
 Autels. {6ts.) 
 
 II. 
 
 Till now, 'twas wrong: 
 T" unlock th* ancestral cellar, 
 
 Where dormant long 
 Bacchus remain'd a dweller ; 
 
 While Egypt's queen 
 Vow'd to erase (fond woman !) 
 
 Rome's walls, and e'en 
 The very name of Roman ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Antehac nefas 
 Depro mere Caxu bum 
 Cellis avitis, 
 Dum Capitolio 
 
 Regina 
 Dementes ruinas 
 
 Funus et 
 Iraperio para bat, 
 
 II. 
 Sors ! libre el sans 
 
 En trove 
 Bacchus, qui dans 
 
 Ta cave 
 Languis deux ans; 
 
 Qu Octave 
 Centre Egypte est en 
 guerre {bis.) 
 
 III. 
 
 Girt with a band 
 Of craven-hearted minions. 
 
 Her march she plann'd 
 Through Cesar's broad dominions ! 
 
 With visions sweet 
 Of coming conquest flatter'd ; 
 
 When, lo ! her fleet 
 Agripfa fired and scatter 'd ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Contaminate 
 Cum grege turpium 
 Morbo virorum, 
 Quidlibet impotens 
 Sperare, fortun&quc 
 dulci 
 Ebria. Sed 
 Minuit furorem 
 
 III. 
 
 D'un vil ratnas 
 
 Que mene 
 Sajlotte, helas I 
 
 La Heine 
 N'attendait pas 
 
 Qua peine 
 Le quart lui 
 
 resterait {ois.) 
 
 IV. 
 
 While Cesar left 
 Nor time nor space to rally: 
 
 Of all bereft 
 — All, save a single galley — 
 
 Fain to escape 
 When fate and friends forsook her, 
 
 Of Egypt's grape 
 She quaff'd the maddening liquor ; 
 
 IV. 
 
 Vix una sospes 
 Navis ab ignibus, 
 Meutemque lympha- 
 tam Mareotico 
 
 Redegit in 
 Veros timores 
 
 Caesar, ab 
 Italia volantem 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sa tie/ nu vent 
 
 Se livre ; — 
 Cisar se prend 
 
 A suivre; — 
 Elte, en/uyaut 
 
 S'enivre 
 Vu vin des lords du 
 Nil. {bis.) 
 
446 
 
 The Works of Father ProuL 
 
 v. 
 
 And turn'd her back 
 On Italy's fair region ;— 
 
 When soars the hawk, 
 So flies the timid pigeon ; 
 
 So flies the hare. 
 Pursued by Scythia's hunter, 
 
 O'er fallows bare. 
 Athwart the snows of winter. 
 
 Remis adurgens, 
 Accipiter velut 
 MoIIes columbas, 
 Aut leporem citus 
 
 Venator in 
 Campis nivalis 
 
 HiGMONIiE, _ 
 
 Daret ut catenis 
 
 V. 
 
 Comme un vautour 
 
 Deploys 
 Son aile et court 
 
 Sa/raie, 
 Cisar, cejour 
 
 Dejoye 
 Sur I' ocean 
 
 voguait t {bis.) 
 
 VI. 
 
 The die was cast, 
 And chains she knew t' await her ; 
 
 Queen to the last, 
 She spurn'd the focman's fetter ; 
 
 Nor shelter sought 
 In hidden harbours meanly J— 
 
 Nor fear'd the thought 
 Of death— but met it queenly ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Fatale monstnim ; 
 Quae generosius 
 Perire quaerens 
 Nee muliebriter 
 Expavi t ensem, 
 Nee latentes 
 Classe cita 
 Reparavit oras. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Lors elle A part 
 
 Proscrite, 
 Fixe un regard 
 
 Tacite 
 Sur son poiguard, 
 
 Et quitte 
 Tout espoir d'i- 
 chopper, (bis.) 
 
 VII. 
 
 Untaught to bend, 
 Calm 'mid a tottering palace — 
 
 'Mid scenes that rend 
 Weak woman's bosom, callous — 
 
 Her arm could grasp 
 The writhing snake ; nor waver, 
 
 While of the asp 
 It drank the venom'd slaver ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ausa et jacen tern 
 Visere regiam 
 Vuitu sereno, 
 Fortis et asperas 
 Tractare serpentes, 
 Ut atrum 
 Corpore com- 
 biberet venenum, 
 
 VII. 
 
 Toit mis a bos 
 
 Son trdne, 
 Sans que le cos 
 
 L'etonne ; 
 Sans que son bras 
 
 Frisonne 
 Un serpent y 
 
 grimperl (bis.) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Grim Death unawed 
 She hail'd with secret rapture. 
 
 Glad to defraud 
 Rome's galleys of a capture ! 
 
 And, haughty dame, 
 Scorning to live, the agent 
 
 Of regal shame, 
 To grace a Roman pageant ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 UeiiDerat& 
 Morte ferocior ; 
 Saevis Libumis 
 Scilicet invidens 
 Frivata deduci 
 . Superbo 
 Non numilis 
 Mulier triumpho. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Etparsa tnort 
 
 Esquh'C 
 D'entrer an port 
 
 Captive; 
 A insi le sort 
 
 Vans prive 
 Remains! d'nn beau 
 rigall {bis.) 
 
 Directions for supper are appropriately given in the concluding ode of the 
 book; they are short and significant. I think I may now call for a fresh 
 tumbler myself. Molly! bring me the "materials/" 
 
 ODE XXXVIII. 
 Last Ode 0/ Book the First. 
 
 AD M1NISTRUM. DIRECTIONS FOR SUPPER. 
 
 I. 
 
 Slave ! for my feast, in humble grot 
 Let Persia's pomps be all forgot ; 
 With twining garlands worry not 
 
 Thy weary fingers. 
 Nor heed in what secluded spot ■ 
 
 The last rose lingers. 
 
 I. 
 
 Persicos odi, puer, apparatus : 
 Displicent nexae philyra corona : 
 Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum 
 Sera moretur. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 447 
 
 ii. ii. 
 
 Let but a modest myrtle-wreath, SimpHci myrto nihil allabores 
 
 In graceful guise, our temples sheathe — Sedulus curae ; neque te ministrum 
 
 Nor thou nor I aught else herewith Dedecet myrtus, neque me sub arcta 
 
 Can want, I'm thinking, Vite bibentem. 
 
 Cupbearer thou ;— -and I, beneath 
 
 The wine-tree drinking. 
 
448 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 * Swnjgs ai Jfjroatt. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, December, 1836.) 
 
 [Oddly associated with this concluding instalment of the Songs of Horace done into 
 English by Mahony, through the mere coincidence of their appearing in the same num- 
 ber of Regina } is Croquis' comical etching of Buckstone, the low comedian, seated by 
 his fireside, with aids to reflection as suggestive as a little cluster of glasses and decan- 
 ters. This, the last of the Prout Papers, held the place of honour in Regina's closing 
 number for 1836, standing, that is to say, at the forefront of the Magazine.] 
 
 Decade the Fifth. 
 
 " NIL ADMIRARI prope res est una Numici 
 Solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum." 
 
 Hor., Lib. I. Bpist. VI. 
 
 " ' Not to admire is all the art I knew 
 To make men happy, and te keep them so ' — 
 Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech : 
 So take it in the very words of Creech." 
 
 Pope's Epistle to Lord Mansfield. 
 
 " But, had none admired. 
 Would Pope have sung, or Horace been inspired?... 
 Gad ! I must say I ne'er could see the very 
 Great happiness of this ' NIL ADMIRARI.' " 
 
 Byron, yuan, canto v. st 100, 101. 
 
 If the sentiment sought to be conveyed by the deepest moralist, as well as the 
 sweetest songster of Rome, be correctly given " in the words of Creech," we 
 must confess our utter inability to comprehend, and our decided repugnance to 
 adopt it ; for, in the catalogue of pleasurable sensations which help to make 
 life endurable, we would rank at its very highest value that delightful and 
 exalted feeling which in psychology is termed admiration. We hold the 
 legitimate indulgence of that faculty to constitute a most refined species of in- 
 tellectual enjoyment— not the less to be prized, for that the objects which call 
 it forth happen to be scarce, and that opportunities are seldom afforded of 
 yielding up the soul to its delightful influence. Other and opposite emotions 
 
The Songs of Horace. 449 
 
 can be felt at every hand's turn. Take, for example, those of pity or con- 
 tempt. Fit objects of compassion abound : Palmerston, for instance (like the 
 poor), we have with us always; and as for the rest of the crawling set, from 
 Russell to Rice, from Melbourne to Mulgrave, they seem, day after day, but 
 to exist that the world may not lack a public exhibition of all that is truly des- 
 picable. Laughter, also, maybe enjoyed at a cheap rate. "Boz" wields 
 (and long may he flourish it !) an indefatigable pen ; Reeve is come back; and 
 our old favourite, Brougham, is busy bottling up a rich stock of buffoonery 
 qua mox depromat among the Lords. But admiration bides her time : 
 her visits, angelic fashion, are few and far between. Vet is her presence ever 
 sure to be felt while calm philosophy, pellucid reason, and patriot eloquence 
 flow from the lips of Lyndhurst. 
 
 In literature, we are accused of being over fastidious; forasmuch, perhaps, 
 as we value our admiration too highly to lavish it on every passing scribbler. 
 The North American Review is here peculiarly amusing. In its October 
 number, just received, and now lying in our waste-paper box, much comical 
 indignation is vented on Oliver Yorke for slighting a poor creature who 
 some time ago pencilled his way among us, and has been since forgotten. All 
 ■we can remember about the man was his publishing what he called a poem, 
 " edited" by " Barry Cornwall," a fictitious name, under which one Proctor, 
 a commissioner of lunacy in our courts, thought it part of his official functions 
 to usher him into notice. We did not advert to that circumstance at the time, 
 or we should have taken the hint, and adopted towards him, not the severity 
 of justly provoked criticism, but the mild indulgence suited to his case. For 
 we did not require the evidence of this "reviewer's" article to convince us 
 that rational rebuke is wasted when the mind of the recipient is unsound. We 
 are glad, however, of the opportunity afforded us, by this casual reference to 
 American matters, for placing on record our unfeigned and cordial admiration 
 of Edwin Forrest, whom night after night we have seen tread our stage 
 after a fashion which none but the disingenuous can hesitate to admire and to 
 applaud. 
 
 It was observed of Charlemain, that greatness had so mixed itself up with 
 his character, that it eventually compenetrated his very name, till magnificence 
 and Charles were blended into the sound of Carlomagne. The sentiment 
 of admiration has similarly worked itself into individual nomenclature on 
 two occasions : viz. in the case of St. Gregory, " Thaumaturge," and in that 
 of an accomplished cavalier who burst on the close of the sixteenth century 
 as " the admirable Crichton." To the story of that gallant scholar we have, 
 in another part of our current Number, taken an opportunity of alluding ; 
 and having therein, as we think, fairly plucked out the heart of the mystery, 
 we shall not here stop to notice a book which will probably be the /itya Oavpa- 
 of the season. 
 
 But returning to the "words of Creech," do they fairly give the meaning of 
 Horace? We don't believe it. The plain English of the maxim is, "Let 
 nothing take you by surprise;" and its practical effect would merely go to pre- 
 serve the equilibrium of the mind from any sudden and violent upset. The 
 translation of Creech affords one of the many instances in which to be literal is 
 to misinterpret. Old Koger Bacon attributes the subtle fooleries of scholastic 
 wrangling which arose in his day to the bad Latin versions of Aristotle. A 
 Greek term was Latinized into one apparently synonymous, and the meta- 
 physical niceties of the original vanished in the process. Vulgus studentium 
 asininat circa male translata are the words in which he of the brazen head 
 ridicules contemporary disputation. The delicate subtleties of poetical diction 
 are still more evanescent ; and of translations which render with mere verbal 
 fidelity, it may be said, when they appear side by side with the text, that, 
 though Venus may preside over the graceful original, the clumsy version 
 R * 
 
45 o The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 hobbles with all the awkwardness of Vulcan. Such was the idea of a French 
 wit, on perusing Abbe' Peregrin's translation of our poet — 
 
 " L*on devrait (soit dit entre nous) 
 
 A deux divinites offrir les deux Horaces : 
 Le latin a Venus la deese des graces, 
 Et le francois...a son epoux." 
 
 La Monnaye. 
 
 In a Venetian folio edition, published by the celebrated Denis Lambinus 
 (whose style of writing was so tedious, that " lambiner" became French for 
 " to loiter"), there are some complimentary verses addressed to him, which he 
 has taken care to print, and which are too good to be forgotten. Therein 
 Horace is represented as consulting a saga, or Roman gipsy, concerning the 
 future fate of his works; when, alluding to the ophthalmic affection under 
 which he is known to have laboured, the prophetic hag maketh the vaticina- 
 tion followingT- 
 
 Talia respondit motft vaces anus urna — 
 
 " Dura parens genuit te lippum, Flacce ; noverca 
 
 " Durior eripiec mox aetas lumen utrumque, 
 
 " Nee teipsum agnosces nee cognosccris ab ullo. 
 
 " At tibi Lambini raptum collvria lumen 
 
 " Inllta restituent : clarusque interprete tanto 
 
 " Nee lippus nee csecus eris sed et integer ore." 
 
 Whereupon Denis triumphantly exclaims that what she foretold has come to 
 pass, since, by the operation of his commentaries, such additional perspicuity 
 has been shed over the text as to have materially improved the poet's eyesight — 
 
 " Verum dixit alius, — hm sunt collvria charts ! " 
 
 The personal infirmity thus alluded to had procured for the Latin lyrist a 
 sobriquet well known among his contemporaries, viz. " the weeping Flaccus :" 
 nor can we refuse the merit of ingenuity to him who could make so unpoetical 
 an idea the groundwork of so flattering a compliment. It is singular enough 
 that these obscure lines should have suggested a celebrated epigram ; for when 
 Lefranc de Pompignan, in his " Pdesies Sacrees," versified the Lamentations of 
 Jeremiah, he received a testimonial exceedingly analogous from Voltaire — 
 
 " Scavez vous pourquoi Jeremie, Know ye why Jeremy, that holy man, ■ 
 
 A tant pleure pendant sa vie ? Spent all his days in lamentations bitter T 
 
 C'est qu'en prophete il pre voyait, Prophetic soul ! he knew that Pompignan 
 
 Qu'un jour Lefranc le traduerait. . One day would bring him out in Gallic metre. 
 
 That the labours of the father may call forth a similar congratulatory effusion 
 is more than we dare conjecture in these critical times. Yet we trust that, not- 
 withstanding the general depreciation of all sorts of scrip, with exchequer bills 
 at such an alarming discount, Prout paper may be still negotiated. 
 
 Oliver Yorke. 
 Regent Street, Nov. 20. 
 
 Watbrgsassiiill ; after Vespers. 
 A few years previous to the outbreak of civil war between Octavius and 
 Marc Antony, the poet Horace and a Greek professor of elocution (Heliodorus) 
 received an intimation from Mecoenas of his wish to enjoy their company on a 
 trip connected with some diplomatic mission (missi magnis de rebus) to the 
 port of Benevento. The proposal was readily accepted by these hommes de 
 
The Songs of Horace. 45 1 
 
 lettres, who accordingly started from Rome toward the close of autumn, anno 
 u.c. 720. Their intelligent patron had appointed to meet them at Anxur, a 
 place better known by its more musical name of Terkacina, — (two popular 
 productions contributing to its celebrity, viz. " Horatii Opera," and the opera of 
 " Fra Diavolo") — whence, having received an important accession to their party 
 by the arrival of Virgil and Varius, they proceeded by easy ages along the 
 whole line of the Via Appia, to the utmost terminus of that immortal cause- 
 way on the Adriatic. 
 
 Such excursions were frequent enough among the cockneys of Rome ; and 
 forming, as these things did, part of the ordinary occurrences of common- 
 place life, had intrinsically little to recommend them to the poet or the historian 
 as subjects for story or for song. The proverbial difficulty of raising up such 
 matters to the level of elegant composition— proprii communia dicere (Ep. ad. 
 Pison.)— was here pre-eminent. But genius is, perhaps, as frequently disp'ayed 
 in the selection of the objects on which to exercise its faculty as in the working 
 out of its once adopted conceptions ; and mediocrity would no more have first 
 chosen such a theme for its musings, than it would have afterwards treated it 
 in the manner it has been executed by Horace. 
 
 "Cose in prosa mat dette ne in rima " 
 
 formed the aspiration of Ariosto ; Milton gloried in grappling with 
 
 "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme ; " 
 
 and both exhibited originality, not only in the topics they fixed upon, but in 
 their method of handling them. The iter Brundusii was without precedent 
 in all the range of previously existing literature ; it has remained unrivalled 
 amid all the sketches of a similar kind which have been called into existence 
 by its felicitous example. 
 
 There was, doubtless, nothing very new or wondrous in the practice of keep- 
 ing a note-book while on a journey, or in registering duly each trivial incident 
 of roadside experience. But when this ex-colonel of a legion at Philippi, in 
 one of his leisure hours, at the remote outport whither he had accompanied an 
 illustrious friend, conceived the idea of embodying the contents of his pugil- 
 laria into the graceful shape which they now wear (Lib. I. Sat. V.), giving 
 them a local habitation and a permanency among his works, he did more than 
 merely delight his travelling companions, immortalize the villages along the 
 route, and electrify by his graphic touch the listless idlers of the capital ; he 
 positively founded a new sect — he propounded the Koran of a new creed — 
 he established the great school of ' ' peripatetic " writers ; furnishing the 
 precious prototype on which thousands of disciples would, in after time, sys- 
 tematically model their literary compositions. By thus showing that the 
 mere personat occurrences and anecdotes of a pleasure trip were capable of 
 being wrought into so interesting a narrative, he unconsciously, by opening 
 a new department in the theory of bookmaking, furnished a new field for 
 the industry of the pen. There is no conjecturing how far a simple hint may 
 be improved on in this quarter. Had not the African enthusiasm of St. 
 Augustin suggested to that most impassioned of the Fathers the idea of pub- 
 lishing his " Confessions," the practice of composing personal memoirs, the 
 art of autobiography, which of late years has taken such wide extension, 
 would, perhaps, have never been attempted. Peter Abelard would not have 
 mustered courage to enlighten the dark ages, as he has done, with a full and 
 true account of his doleful catastrophe ("historia calamitatum suarum"); 
 and a later age would not, in all probability, have been favoured with the con- 
 fessions of the maniac Rousseau. May it not be similarly predicated of this 
 famous Itinerary, that had it not given the first impulse, the world had wanted 
 many an idle " Tour ? " 
 
45 2 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 "Rhymes on the road," "pencillings by the way," "impressions," 
 "diaries," "ramblings," "records," "highways," "byeways," are therefore 
 but a few of the many emanations from one common source : and, in good 
 sooth, all these people should unite in some testimonial to Horace. But grati- 
 tude, I fear, is rarely manifested in cases of this description. A striking 
 instance might be given. To none, perhaps, are "the eminent modern 
 humorous writers" more indebted than to the writings of "Joe Miller;'' yet 
 that author, up to the present day, is without a monument ; his bones lying, 
 as all the world knows, in the churchyard of St. Clement, London, under the 
 back windows of Tom Wood's tavern. 'Tis true that a club was established 
 some years ago, by the exertions of the two Smiths (Horace and James), with 
 Hook and Hood, the members of which dine monthly in the back parlour 
 aforesaid, commanding a full view of the cemetery. They fully agreed to levy 
 a fine of five shillings on each detected perpetrator of a "Joe," devoting the 
 proceeds to the purchase of a gravestone. By this time a goodly mausoleum 
 might have been built ; whereas old Molitor is yet without even a modest 
 tablet to mark the spot of his repose. Who is the treasurer ? 
 
 Horace should not be similarly defrauded of his claim. A moderate per- 
 centage on the profits of each professed tourist, with a slight deodand where 
 the book falls still-born, might be appropriately devoted to erecting a terminal 
 statue of the poet in some central part of the " Row." None ought to plead 
 exemption from this "justice rent." Inglis, Basil Hall, Quin, Barrow, Ritchie, 
 PUckler Muskau, Emmerson Tennant, Professor Hoppus; Waterton, the 
 wanderer ; Nick Willis, the eavesdropper; Rae Wilson, the booby : all should 
 contribute— except, perhaps, Holman, the "blind traveller," whose under- 
 taking was perfectly original. 
 
 To return. I have just been reading over, for perhaps the hundredth time, 
 the witty Roman s gay and graceful itinerary, gathering from its perusal a 
 fresh conviction, that it comprises more humour, point, and clever writing, 
 within the brief range of its one hundred lines, than are to be found in as many 
 hundred octavo volumes of recent manufacture. But let that pass. The 
 obvious beauties which distinguish these enduring monuments of bygone genius 
 are not the passages which stand most in need of commentary; and I am just 
 now about to fix myself on a very unimportant expression occurring in the 
 simple course of the poet's narrative ; a most trivial fact in itself, but particu- 
 larly adapted to my present purpose. Swift's meditations on a broomstick 
 have long ago proved that the Imagination, like one of Teniers' witches, will 
 soar aloft on a hobby-horse of her own selection. Of late, the habit of in- 
 dulging in reveries has, I confess, grown upon me ; and I feel an increasing 
 tendency to ruminate on the veriest trifles. This arises partly, I suppose, from 
 the natural discursiveness of memory in old age ; partly, I suspect, from the 
 long familiarity of my mind with the great Cornelius a Lapide's elucidations of 
 the prophet Ezekiel. 
 
 The words on which I would ponder thus, after the most approved method 
 of the great Flemish commentator, are contained in the 48th verse, which runs 
 as follows in all the known MSS. : 
 
 " Lusum it Mecxnas ; dormitum ego Virgiliusque." 
 
 Lib. I. Sat. V. v. 48. 
 
 My approved good master, A Lapide, would hereupon, submitting each term 
 to the more than chemical analysis of his scrutiny, first point out to the admi- 
 ration of all functionaries in the diplomatic line, who happen to be charged 
 with a secret mission, the sagacious conduct of Mecjenas. The envoy of 
 Augustus is fully conscious, on his arrival at Capua, that his motions are 
 narrowly watched by the quidnuncs of that vagabond town, and that the 
 
probable object of his journey is sure to be discussed by every barber in and 
 about the market-place. How does he act ? While the mules are resting at 
 the '•caupma " (for it appears the vetturini system of travelling is of very old 
 date in the Italian peninsula), the chargi d affaires seeks out a ceriain tennis- 
 court, the most favourite place of public resort, and there mingles in a game 
 with the citizens, as if the impending destinies of the future empire of the 
 world were not a moment in his contemplation, or did not rather engross his 
 whole faculties all the while. This anecdote, I believe, has not been noticed 
 by Mr. Taylor, in his profound book called the "Statesman." It is at his 
 service. 
 
 Leaving Mecsenas to the enjoyment of his game of rackets, let us return to 
 the Capuan hostelry, and take cognizance of what may be supposed to be then 
 and there going on. Here, then, we are, say, at the sign of " Silenus and the 
 Jackass," in the " Via Nolana." In answer to our inquiries, it will appear 
 that the author of the " Georgics" (the "^Eneid" was yet unpublished) had, as 
 usual with him on the slightest emergencies, found his stomach sadly out of 
 order (crudus) ; while his fellow-traveller, the distinguished lyrist of the day, 
 has sympathetically complained of the effect produced on his tender eyelids 
 ilippus) by the clouds of incessant dust and the glare of a noonday sun. They 
 have both, therefore, previous to resuming their seats in the clumsy vehicles 
 (rhedai) which have conveyed them thus far, decided on devoting the sultry 
 meridian hour to the refreshing process of a quiet siesta. The slave within 
 whose attributions this service is comprised (decurio cabicularis) is quickly 
 summoned ; and but few minutes have elapsed before the two great ornaments 
 of the Augustan age, the master spirits of the then intellectual world, are 
 fairly deposited in their respective cells, and consigned to the care of tired 
 nature's kind restorer. Whoever has explored the existing remains of similar 
 edifices in the neighbouring town of Pompeii, will probably form a fair esti- 
 mate of the scale of comfort and style of accommodation prevalent at the 
 head inn of Capua. Entering by a smoky hall (atrium), the kitchen being on 
 one side and the servants' offices on the other, your traveller proceeded towards 
 the compluvium, or open quadrangular courtyard ; on each side of which, in 
 cloister fashion, were ranged the sleeping apartments, small dark chambers, 
 each some eight or twelve feet square, having, at the height of about six 
 feet from the mosaic ground -floor, a scanty aperture, furnished with a linen 
 blind ; a crockery lamp, a bronze tripod and basin (pelvis), a mirror of the 
 same material, forming, with a hard couch (slragula), the complete inventory 
 of the movables within. A knight templar, or Carthusian monk, would feel 
 quite at home in your antique hostelry. 
 
 Little dreamed, I ween, the attendant slave, mayhap still less the enlightened 
 caupo himself, of the high honour conferred on his establishment by an hour's 
 occupancy of its chambers on that occasion. The very tall gentleman, with 
 an ungainly figure and slight stoop in the shoulders, so awkward and bashful 
 in his address, and who had complained of such bad digestion, became, no 
 doubt, the object of a few not over respectful remarks among the atrienses of 
 the household. Nor did the short, fat, Sancho Panza-looking sort of personage, 
 forming in every respect so complete a contrast to his demure and sedate 
 companion, fail to elicit some curious comments, and some not very compli- 
 mentary conjectures, as to what might be his relative position in society. In 
 what particular capacity did they both follow the train of the rich knight, 
 Mecrenas? This was, no doubt, acutely and diligently canvassed by the gossips 
 of the inn. One thing was certain. In humour and disposition, as well as in 
 
 Personal appearance, they were the very antipodes of each other,— a musing 
 leraclitus yoked with a laughing Democritus ; aptly illustrative, the one of 
 il penseroso, the other of V allegro. Mine host, with the instinctive sagacity of 
 his tribe, at once had set down Horace as a man familiar with the metropolis, 
 
 J 
 
454 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 habituated to town life, and in every respect "fit to travel." It was equally 
 clear that the other individual belonged to the agricultural interest, his manner 
 savouring of much residence in the country ; being, in sooth, not merely rural, 
 but actually rustic. In a word, they were fair samples of the rat de vitle and 
 the rat des champs. Meantime the unconscious objects of so much keen 
 investigation "slept on;" and "little they recked" anent what was thus 
 "lightly spoken" concerning them by those who kept the sign of "Silenus 
 and the Jackass," in the high street at Capua. 
 
 " Dormitum ego Virgiliusque." 
 
 Do I purpose to disturb them in their meridian slumber?— Not I Yet may 
 the scholar's fancy be allowed to penetrate each darkened cell, and take a 
 hurried and furtive glance at the illustrious sleepers. Fancy may be permitted 
 to hover o'er each recumbent form, and contemplate in silent awe the repose 
 of genius. Fancy, after the fashion of her sister Psyche, and at the risk of 
 a similar penalty, may be suffered, on tiptoe, and lamp in hand, to explore the 
 couch of her beloved, to survey the features and figure of those from whom 
 she hath so long derived such exquisite sensations of intellectual enjoyment. 
 
 Plutarch delighted to bring two of his heroes together, and then, in a 
 laboured parallel, illustrate the peculiarities of the one by setting forth the 
 distinctive characteristics of the other. This was also done by Dr. Johnson, in 
 his grand juxtaposition of Dryden and Virgil. But could a more tempting 
 opportunity ever occur to the great Boeotian, or the great lexicographer, for a 
 display of analysis and antithesis, than the respective merits and powers of the 
 two great writers here entranced before us? 
 
 The Capuan innkeeper had gone more deeply into the subject than would be 
 at first imagined, when he classified his guests under the heads of "town" 
 and " country." The most elaborately metaphysical essay could not throw 
 greater light on the relative idiosyncrasy of their minds. 
 
 Virgil, from his earliest infancy up to the period of confirmed manhood, had 
 not left the banks of the Mincio, or the plain of Lombardy. It required the 
 confiscation of his little farm, and the transfer of his ancestral acres to a set of 
 quasi Cromwellian intruders (Octavius Caesar's military colonists), to bring 
 him up to Rome in quest of redress. Ho was then in his thirtieth year. 
 Tenderness, sensibility, a soul feelingly alive to all the sweet emotions of un- 
 viliated nature, are the natural growth of such happy seclusion from a wicked 
 world. Majestic thoughts are the offspring of solitude. Plato meditated alone 
 on the promontory of Sunium ■■ Virgil was a Platonist. 
 
 The boyhood and youth of Horace (as I think may be gathered from my 
 last paper) were spent in a totally different atmosphere ; and, therefore, no two 
 poets could be nurtured and trained in schools of poetry more essentially oppo- 
 site. The " lake" academy is not more different from the gymnasium of the 
 " silverfork." Epicurus dwelt among the busy haunts of men : Horace was 
 an Epicurean. 
 
 The latter was in every respect, as his outward appearance would seem to 
 indicate, "of the town, townly." Mirabeau used to say, whenever he left 
 Paris, that, on looking through his carriage-windows at the faces along the 
 road, he could ascertain to a fraction how far he was from the capital. The 
 men were his milestones. Even genius in the provinces wears an aspect of 
 simplicity. The Romans were perfectly sensible of this difference. Urbanum 
 sal was a well-known commodity, as easily distinguished by men of taste in 
 the metropolis, as the verbal provincialisms which pervade the decades of 
 Livy were quickly detected by the delicate sensibility of metropolitan ears. 
 
 In society, Horace must have shown to great advantage, in contrast with the 
 retiring and uncommunicative M antuan. Acute, brilliant, satirical, his ver- 
 
The Songs of Horace. 455 
 
 satile accomplishments fascinated at once. Virgil, however, inspired an interest 
 of a different description. Thoughtful and reserved, " the rapt soul sitting in 
 his eyes" gave intimation of a depth of feeling and a comprehensiveness of 
 intellect far beyond the range of all contemporary minds. Habitually silent, 
 yet when he spoke, in the solemn and exquisitely musical cadences peculiar to 
 his poetry, it was as if the "spirit of Plato" revealed itself, or the Sibylline 
 books were unfolded. 
 
 I can't understand that passage in the tenth satire (lib. i.), where the Sabine 
 humorist asserts that the Muses who patronize a country life (gaudentes rure 
 camcena), having endowed Virgil with a mild and lenient disposition, a delicate 
 sweetness of style, had also bestowed on him a talent for the facetious (molle... 
 atque facetum). ^ There is, assuredly, more fun arid legitimate drollery in a page 
 of the said "Satires," than in all the "Eclogues" and "Georgics"T)Ut together. 
 To extract a laugh out of the 'Mineid," it required the help of Scarkon. 
 
 Horace was the delight of the convivial circle. The flashes of his Baccha- 
 nalian minstrelsy brightened the blaze of the banquet ; and his love-songs were 
 the very quintessence of Roman refinement. Yet never did he achieve such a 
 triumph as is recorded of his gifted friend, when, having consented to gratify 
 the household of Augustus and the imperial circle by reading a portion of his 
 majestic poem, he selected that famous exposition of Plato's sublimest theories, 
 the 6th book of his "^Eneid." The charm of his recitation gave additional 
 dignity to that high argument, so nobly developed in harmonious verse. But 
 when the intellect had feasted its fill — when he suddenly " changed his hand," 
 and appealed to the heart — when the glowing episode of the young Marcellus 
 came by surprise on the assembled court, a fainting empress, amid the mingled 
 tears and applause of veteran warriors, confessed the sacred supremacy of 
 song. 
 
 The poetry of Horace is a pleasant thought ; that of Virgil a delightful 
 dream. The first had mingled in the world of reality; the latter dwelt in a 
 fanciful and ideal region, from which he rarely came down to the vulgarities of 
 actual life. The tranquil lake reflects heaven in its calm bosom ; the running 
 brook makes acquaintance with the thousand objects on its varied margin. 
 Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Goethe, Lamartine, belong to the dreamy 
 race of writers — they are "children of the mist "—their dwelling is in a land of 
 visions. Byron, Beranger, Bums, Scott, Shakespeare, deal with men and things 
 as they have found them, and as they really are. The latter class will ever be 
 the most papular. The actual thinker will ever be preferred to the most 
 enchanting "dreamer of dreams." 
 
 In the empire of Augustus, Virgil saw the realization of ancient oracles : he 
 viewed as from a distance the mighty structure of Roman power, and imaged 
 in his "JEneid" the vast idea of a heaven-descended monarchy. Horace took 
 up his lantern et la Diogene, and went about exploring the details of the social 
 system, the vices, the follies, the passions of Roman society. His poetry was 
 of a more matter-of-fact nature ; it came home to the bosom of his readers ; it 
 was the exact expression of contemporary joys and sorrows. 
 
 The character of each as a poet may not be inappropriately sought for in the 
 well-known allegory with which the 6th book of the "^Eneid " closes : 
 
 11 Suntgemitue somni porta quorum altera fertur t 
 Cornea qud verts facilis datur exitus umoris, 
 Altera candentiperfecta nitens elephanto, 
 Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia manes" 
 
 Or as Dryden has it — 
 
 " Two shining 'gates the house of sleep adorn ; 
 Of polish'd ivory this — thai of transparent horn," &c. 
 
I leave to my reader the evolving of this complex idea. The dreamy visions 
 of the Platonist may be placed in contrast with the practical wit and know- 
 ledge of the world possessed by the shrewd disciple of Epicurus, the "falsa 
 insomnia " with the " verts umbris." And herewith I wind up my parallel. 
 
 I now open the second book of the odes, and proceed on my task of metrical 
 exposition. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE I.— TO POLLIO ON HIS MEDITATED 
 HISTORY. 
 
 AD C ASINIUM POLLIONEM. 
 
 The story of our civil wars, 
 
 Through all the changes that befell us, 
 To chronicle thy pen prepares, 
 
 Dating the record from Metellus ;— 
 Of parties and of chiefs thy page 
 
 Will paint the leagues, the plans, the forces ; 
 Follow them through each varied stage, 
 
 And trace the warfare to its sources. 
 
 II. 
 
 And thou wilt tell of swords still wet 
 
 With unatoned-for blood :— historian, 
 Bethink thee of thy risk !...ere yet 
 
 Of Clio thou awake the clarion. 
 Think of the tact which Rome requires 
 
 In one who would such deeds unfold her ; 
 Know that thy tread is upon fires 
 
 Which still beneath the ashes smoulder. 
 
 III. 
 
 Of Tragedy the weeping Muse 
 
 Awhile in thee may mourn a truant, 
 Whom vamish'd fiction vainly woos, 
 
 Of stern realities pursuant : 
 But finish thy laborious task, 
 
 Our annals write with care and candour ; 
 Then don the buskin and the mask, 
 
 And tread through scenes of tragic grandeur! 
 
 IV. 
 Star of the stage ! to thee the Law 
 
 Looks for her mildest, best expounder— 
 Thee the rapt Senate hears with awe. 
 
 Wielding the bolts of patriot thunder— 
 Thee Glory found beneath the tent, 
 
 When, from a desert wild and horrid, 
 Dalmatia back in triumph sent 
 
 Her conqueror, with laurell'd forehead ! 
 
 V. 
 
 But^ hark ! methinks the martial horn 
 
 Gives prelude to thy coming story ; 
 In fancy s ear shrill trumpets warn 
 
 Of battle- fields, hard fought and gory : 
 Fancv hath conjured up the scene, 
 
 And phantom warriors crowd beside her — 
 The squadron dight in dazzling sheen— 
 
 The startled steed— th' affrighted rider I 
 
 I. 
 
 Motum ex Metello 
 Consule civicum, 
 Bellique causas, 
 Et vitia, et modos, 
 Ludumque Fortunae, 
 
 Gravesque 
 Principum amicitias, 
 
 Etarma 
 
 II. 
 
 Nondum expiatis 
 Uncta cruonbus, 
 Periculosae 
 Plenum opus aleae 
 
 Tractas, et 
 Incedes per ignes 
 
 Suppositos 
 Cineri doloso. 
 
 III. 
 Paulum severae 
 Musa tragoedix 
 Desit theatris ; 
 Mox, ubi publicas 
 Res ordinaris, 
 Grande munus 
 
 Cecropio 
 Repetes cothurno, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Insigne mccstis 
 Presidium reis 
 Et consulenti, 
 Pollio, Curia, 
 
 Cui laurus 
 JEt ernos honores 
 
 Dalmatico 
 Peperit triumpho. 
 
 V. 
 
 Jam nunc minaci 
 Murmure comuum 
 PerstringU aures ; 
 Jam litut strepunt ; 
 Jam fulgor armorum 
 
 Fugaces 
 Terret equos, 
 Equitumque vultus. 
 
VI. 
 
 Hark to the shouts that echo loud 
 
 From mighty chieftains, shadow'd grimly ! 
 While blood and dust each hero shroud. 
 
 Costume of slaughter — not unseemly : 
 Vainly ye struggle, vanquish 'd brave ! 
 
 Doom'd to see fortune still desert ye, 
 Till all the world lies prostrate, save 
 
 Unconquer'd Cato s savage virtue ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Juno, who loveth Afric most, 
 
 And each dread tutelary godhead. 
 Who guards her black barbaric coast, 
 
 Lybia with Roman gore have flooded : 
 While warring thus the sons of those 
 
 Whose prowess could of old subject her, 
 Glutting the grudge of ancient foes. 
 
 Fell— but to glad Jugurtha's spectre ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Where be the distant land but drank 
 
 Our Latium's noblest blood in torrents? 
 Sad sepulchres, where'er it sank. 
 
 Bear witness to each foul occurrence. 
 Rude barbarous tribes have learn'd to scoff, 
 
 Sure to exult at our undoing ; — 
 Persia hath heard with joy, far off, 
 
 The sound of Rome's gigantic ruin ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Audire magnos 
 
 iam videor duces 
 Ton indecoro 
 Pulvere sordidos, 
 Et cuncta terrarum 
 
 Subacta, 
 Prater atrocem 
 Animum Catonis. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Juno, et Deorum 
 Quisquis amicior 
 Afris, inultft 
 Cesserat impotens 
 
 Tellure, 
 Victorum nepotes 
 Rettulit inferias 
 
 JUGURTtLf. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Quis non Latino 
 Sanguine pinguior 
 Campus, sepulchris 
 Impia. praelia 
 
 Testatur, 
 Auditumque Medis 
 
 Hespenae 
 Sonitum ruinae ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Point out the gulf on ocean's verge — 
 
 The stream remote, along whose channels 
 Hath not been heard the mournful dirge 
 
 That rose throughout our murderous annals- 
 Show me the sea — without its tide 
 
 Of blood upon the surface blushing — 
 Show me the shore— with blood undyed 
 
 From Roman veins profusely gushing. 
 
 IX. 
 
 ?ui gurges, aut que 
 lumina lugubris 
 Ignara belli ? 
 "uod mare Dauniae 
 on decolor- 
 avere csedes ? 
 Que caret ora 
 Cruore nostra ? 
 
 & 
 
 But, Muse ! a truce to themes like these — 
 
 Let us strike up some jocund carol ; 
 Nor pipe with old Simonides 
 
 Dull, solemn strains, morosely moral : 
 Teach me a new, a livelier stave — 
 
 And that we may the better chaunt it, 
 Hie with me to the mystic cave, 
 
 Grotto of song ! by Bacchi-s haunted. 
 
 X. 
 
 Sed ne, relictis, 
 Musa procax, jocis, 
 Ce,e retractes 
 Munera neniae : 
 Mecum Dionceo 
 
 Sub antro 
 Quaere modos 
 
 Leviore plectro. 
 
 It is pleasant to find Adam Smith " On the Wealth of Nations " anticipated, 
 hi the following exposi of sound commercial principles; and the folly of 
 restricting the bank issues made the subject of an ode. It is addressed to 
 Sallust, nephew of the historian, who had amassed considerable wealth from 
 the plunder of Africa during his praetorship in that province ; and had laid out 
 the proceeds, after the most liberal fashion, in embellishing his most magnifi- 
 cent residence, the Horti Sallustiani, which to this day forms a splendid public 
 promenade for your modern Romans. The liberality of Proculceius Murena, 
 who, on the confiscation of his brother's property during the civil war, had 
 
458 The Works of Father Proul. 
 
 made good the loss from his own patrimony, and opened an asylum to the 
 children of his nephews, was apparently the current subject of conversation at 
 the time ; as well as the good fortune of Phraates, in recovering the crown of 
 Persia, which had been jeopardized by some rerolutionary proceedings. At 
 this distance of years, both topics appear somewhat stale ; but we must go back 
 in spirit to the days in which such matters possessed interest, and, having thus 
 made ourselves part and parcel of contemporary Roman society, admire, as 
 well as we can, the grace and freshness of the allusions. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE II.— THOUGHTS 
 
 ON BULLION AND THE 
 
 CURRENCY. 
 
 AD CRISPUM SAU.VSTIUM. 
 I. 1 
 
 My Sallust, say, in days of dearth, 
 What is the lazy ingot worth, 
 Deep in the bowels of the earth 
 
 Allow'd to settle, 
 Unless a temperate use send forth 
 
 The shining metal ? 
 
 Nullus argento 
 Color est avaris 
 
 Abdito terns, 
 Inimice lamnse 
 Crisps S allusti, 
 Nisi temperato 
 Splendeat usu. 
 
 II. 
 
 II. 
 
 Blessings on him whose bounteous hoard 
 A brother's ruin'd house restored— 
 Spreading anew the orphan's board 
 
 With care paternal : 
 Murena's fame aloft hath soar'd 
 
 On wings eternal ! 
 
 Vivct extento 
 Froculbius zvo, 
 Notus in fratres 
 
 Animi paterni. 
 Ilium aget penrul 
 Metuente solvi 
 Fama superstes. 
 
 III. 
 
 in. 
 
 Canst thou command thy lust for gold? 
 Then art thou richer, friend, fourfold. 
 Than if thy nod the marts controll'd 
 
 Where chiefest trade is — 
 The Carthages both " new " and " old," 
 
 The Nils and Cadiz. 
 
 Lat ius regiies 
 Avidum domando 
 Spiritum, quam si 
 Libyan* remotis 
 
 Gadibus jungas, 
 E t uterque Pcenus 
 Serviat unL 
 
 IV. ' 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mark yon hydropic sufferer, still 
 Indulging in the draughts that fill 
 His bloated frame, — insatiate, till 
 
 Death end the sickly ; 
 Unless the latent fount of ill 
 
 Be dried up quickly. 
 
 Crescit indulgens 
 Sibi dirus hydrops, 
 Nee sitim pellit. 
 Nisi causa raorbi 
 Fugerit venis, 
 Et aquosus albo 
 Corpore languor. 
 
 V. 
 
 V. 
 
 Heed not the vulgar tale that says, 
 —"He counts calm hours and happy days 
 Who from the throne of Cyrus sways 
 
 The Persian sceptre : " 
 Wisdom corrects the ill-used phrase — 
 
 And— stern preceptor — 
 
 Redditum Cyri, 
 Solio Phraatbm, 
 Dissidens plebi 
 Numero beatonim, 
 Eximit Virtus 
 Populumque falsls, 
 Dedocet uti 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 459 
 
 VI. 
 
 Happy alone proclaimeth them. 
 Who with undazzled eye contemn 
 The pile of gold, the glittering gem, 
 
 The bribe unholy — 
 Palm, laurel-wreath, and diadem, . 
 
 Be theirs— theirs solely ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Vocibus, regnum 
 Et diadema tutum 
 Deferens uni, 
 Propriamque laurum 
 
 8uisquis ingentes 
 culo irretorto, 
 Spectat acervos. 
 
 Sherlock's famous volume on death has been equally forestalled by our Epicu- 
 rean moralist ; who, whatever he may want in consolatory prospects of a blessed 
 futurity, compensates for this otherwise very material omission by an unrivalled 
 sweetness of versification, and imagery the most picturesque. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE III.— A HOMILY ON DEATH. 
 
 I. 
 
 Thee, whether Pain assail 
 
 Or Pleasure pamper, 
 Dellius — whiche'er prevail— 
 Keep thou thy temper ; 
 Unwed to boisterous joys, that ne'er 
 Can save thee from the sepulchre ; 
 
 AD Q. DELLIUM. 
 
 I. 
 
 iEquam memento 
 Rebus in arduis 
 
 Servare mentem, 
 Non secus in bonis 
 Ab insolent! temperatam 
 Laetitia-, moriture Belli, 
 
 II. 
 
 Death smites the slave to spleen, 
 
 Whose soul repineth, 
 And him who on the green, ' ' 
 Calm sage, reclirieth, 
 Keeping — from grief's intrusion far- 
 Blithe holiday with festal jar. 
 
 II. 
 
 Seu mcestus omni 
 Tempore vixens, 
 
 Seu te in remoto 
 Gramine per dies 
 Festos reclinatum beans 
 Interiore nota Falerni. 
 
 III. 
 
 Where giant fir, sunproof, 
 
 With poplar blende th, 
 And high o'erhead a roof 
 Of boughs extendeth ; 
 While onward runs the crooked rill, 
 Brisk fugitive, with murmur shriU. 
 
 : in. 
 
 Qua pinus ingens 
 Albaque populus 
 
 Urobram hospitalem 
 Consociare amant 
 Ramis, et obliquo laborat 
 Lympha fugax trepidare rivo, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Bring wine, here, on die grass ! 
 
 Bring perfames hither ! 
 Bring roses— which, alas 1 
 Too quickly wither — 
 Ere of our days the spring-tide ebb. 
 While the dark sisters weave our web. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hunc vtna, et unguenta, 
 Et nimium breves 
 Flores amoenos 
 Ferre jube rosa, 
 Dum res, et aetas, et sororum 
 FUa trium patiuntur atra. 
 
 V. 
 
 Soon— should the fatal shear 
 
 Cut life's frail fibre — 
 Broad lands, sweet Villa near 
 The yellow Tiber, 
 With all thy chattels rich and rare. 
 Must travel to a thankless heir. 
 
 V. 
 
 Cedes coemptis 
 
 - Saltibus, et domo, 
 
 Villaque, flavus 
 
 Quam Tiberis lavit : 
 
 Cedes, et exstructis in altum 
 
 Divitiis potietur heres. 
 
460 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Be thou the nobly bom, 
 
 Spoil'd child of Fortune — 
 Be thou the wretch forlorn. 
 Whom wants importune- 
 By sufferance thou art here at most, 
 Till Death shall claim his holocaust. 
 
 VII. 
 
 All to the same dark bourne 
 
 Plod on together — 
 Lots from the same dread urn 
 Leap forth— and, whether 
 Ours be the first or last, Hell's wave 
 Yawns for the exiles of the grave. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Divesne, prisco 
 Natus ab Inacho, 
 Nil interest, an 
 Pauper et infima 
 De gente sub dio moreris, 
 Victima nil miserantis Orci. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Omnes eodem 
 Cogimur : omnium 
 
 Versatur urn& 
 Serius ocius 
 Sors exitura, et nos in sternum 
 Exstlium unpositura cymtwe. 
 
 I, of course, cannot countenance the tendency of the succeeding morcean. 
 Its apparent purport is to vindicate what the Germans call " left-handed " alli- 
 ances between the sexes ; but its obvious drift is not such as so generally correct 
 a judge of social order and propriety would be supposed to mistake. The 
 responsibility, however, be his own. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE IV.— CLASSICAL LOVE MATCHES. 
 
 " When the Heart of a man is oppressed with care, 
 The mist is dispell 'dif a woman appear ; 
 Like the notes of a fiddle, she sweetly, sweetly. 
 Raises his spirits and charms his ear. " 
 
 Captain Machbath. 
 
 O deem not thy love for a captive maid 
 Doth, Phoceus, the heart of a Roman degrade ! 
 Like the noble Achilles, 'tis simply, simply, 
 With a " Briseis " thou sharest thy bed. 
 
 I. 
 
 Ne sit ancillae tibi amor nudori, 
 Xanthia Phoceu. Prius iosolentem 
 Scrva Briseis niveo colore 
 Movit Achillem ; 
 
 It 
 
 Ajax of Telamon did the same, 
 Felt in his bosom a Phrygian name ; 
 Taught to contemn none, King Agamemnon 
 Fond of a Trojan slave became. 
 
 II. 
 
 Movit Ajacem Telamone natum 
 Forma captivae dominum Tecmess* ; 
 Arsit Atrides medio in triumpho 
 Virgine rap ta, 
 
 III. 
 
 Such was the rule with the Greeks of old, 
 When they had conquer'd the foe's stronghold ; 
 When gallant Hector— Troy's protector- 
 Falling, the knell of Ilion toll'd. 
 
 III. 
 
 Barbara postquam cecidere turnue, 
 Thessalo victore, et ademptus Hector 
 Tradidit fessis leviora tolli 
 Pergama Graiis. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Why deem her origin vile and base T 
 Canst thou her pedigree fairly trace T 
 Yellow-hair'd Phyllis, slave tho* she be, still is 
 The last, perhaps, of a royal race. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Nescias an te generum beat! 
 Phyllidis flavas decorent parente* : 
 Regium certe genus et penates 
 Mccret iniquos. 
 
The Songs of Horace. 461 
 
 v. v. 
 
 Birth to demeanour will sure respond— Crede non illam tibi de scelesta 
 
 Phyllis is faithful, Phyllis is fond : Piebe dilectam, neque sic ndelem. 
 
 Gold cannot buy her — then why deny her Sic lucro aversam potuisse nasci 
 A rank the basely born beyond ? Matre pudenda. 
 
 VI. VI. 
 
 Phyllis hath limbs divinely wrought, Brachia et vultum teretesque suras 
 
 Features and figure without a fault... Integer laudo : fuge suspicari. 
 
 Do not feel jealous, friend, when a fellow's Cujus octavum trepidavit anas 
 Fortieth year forbids the thought ! Claudere lustrum. 
 
 In contrasting Virgil with Horace, and in noticing the opposite tendencies of 
 mind and disposition discoverable in their writings, I should have pointed out 
 the very glaring difference in their respective views of female character. The 
 mild indulgence of the Epicurean is obviously distinguishable from the severe 
 moroseness of the Platonist. The very foibles of the sex rind an apologist in 
 Horace : Virgil appears to have been hardly sensible to their highest excellen- 
 cies. The heroines of the "jEneid" are depictured in no very amiable colours : 
 his Dido is a shrew and a scold ; his Trojan women fire the fleet, and run wild 
 like witches in a Sa Hat; the " mourning fields " are crowded with ladies of 
 lost reputation; the wife of King Latinus hangs herself; Camilla dies in 
 attempting to grasp a gewgaw ; and even the fair Lavinia is so described as to 
 be hardly worth fighting for. How tolerant, on the contrary, is our songster — 
 how lenient in his sketches of female defects — how impassioned in his commen- 
 dation of female charms ! Playful irony he may occasionally employ in his 
 addresses to Roman beauty ; but, in his very invectives, nothing can be clearer 
 than his intense devotion to the whole sex.. .with the exception of " Canidia." 
 Who sht was I may take an early opportunity of explaining : it is a very long 
 story, and will make a paper. 
 
 The subject of the following ode is Campaspd, the mistress of Apeli.es. 
 This favourite artist of Alexander the Great would appear to have been, like 
 Salvator Kosa, addicted to the kindred pursuits of a poet. Of his paintings 
 nothing has come down to us ; but of his poetry I am happy to supply a frag- 
 ment from the collection of Athaeneus. The Greek is clearly the original. 
 George Herrick has supplied the English. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE V.— CUPID A GAMBLER. 
 
 I. III. 
 
 Nostra Cam paspe levis et JCupido Turn labellorum roseos honores 
 
 Alea nuper statuere ludos, Mox ebur frontis— simul hanc sub imo 
 
 Merx ut nine iliinc foret osculorum ; — Quae manu matris fuerat cavata 
 Solvit at ille. Rimula memo, 
 
 II. IV. 
 
 Pignorat sorti pharetram, sagittas, SoIvit..at postquam geminos ocellos 
 
 Par columbarum, Venerisque bigas Lusit incassum, manet inde caccus. — 
 
 Passeres ;— eheu ! puer aleator Sic eum si tu spolias, puella ! 
 
 Singula solvit. Quanta ego solvam? 
 
 Cupid and my Campaspe played 
 At cards for kisses : — Cupid paied — 
 He stakes hys quiver, bowe and arrowes, 
 Hys mothers doves and teame of span-owes : 
 Looses them too — then downe he throws 
 The coral of hys lippe, the rose 
 
4f>2 
 
 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 V ppon hys cheek (but none knows how) 
 With these the chrystal of hys browe, 
 And then the dymple on hys chinne — 
 All these did my Campaspe winne. 
 At last he settener both hys eyes ;_ 
 She wonn : and Cupid blind did rise. 
 Oh, Love I hath she done this to thee? 
 What shall, alas ! become of me? 
 
 George Herrick. 
 
 FRAGMENT OF THE PAINTER AND POET, APEIXES. 
 
 "Eptat t* E/ttj eratpij 
 Kafiiraar-rra avyicvtevov 
 0«\tjjuaT' f]V &* atd\a' 
 Auatv t* Epuv otpXtjfia' 
 To£<w, t tXij, tpaiiiTpijv, 
 Kat fAtfTEpo? irsXciac, 
 SrpouOtav %vyov TidtiKtW 
 Attw\£<tev t' airavra' 
 TLetXavv Tidnv cpci/Ooc, 
 PoSov re Twi/ irapeiwv 
 (flw? ow fttv ovtis otcUv), 
 
 KpvtrraWou ?)<$' idfjiri 
 Tov ay\aoi> /itTWirou, 
 Stypayioyia kqi yEVCiov 
 Ka/iiraffx* airavr 1 avEtXtv. 
 TcXoc dc ofifiaT* a/i<pu 
 E0IJK' tTeufar' OUT1|* 
 
 Tu<£\oc t* airwxtT* a "pot 
 Ei TauTo o*ot /K*ytffT« 
 Kok' nd" Eptos iroirjai ; 
 4>«u ! adXiuraTio ti 
 MiXXei f/ioi yivitrOat *, 
 
 Tivoli and Tarentum were the two favourite retreats of Horace, whenever 
 he could tear himself from the metropolis. The charms of both are celebrated 
 in the succeeding composition. It would appear to have been elicited at a 
 banquet, on Septimius expressing himself so devotedly attached to our poet, 
 that he would cheerfully accompany him to the utmost boundary of the Roman 
 empire. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE VI. 
 
 -THE ATTRACTIONS 
 TARENTUM. 
 
 OF TIBUR AND 
 
 I. 
 
 Septimius, pledged with me to roam 
 Far as the fierce Iberian's home, 
 Where men abide not yet o'ercome 
 
 By Roman legions, 
 And MAuritanian billows foam- 
 Barbaric regions ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Tibur !— sweet colony of Greece !— 
 There let my devious wanderings cease ;— 
 There would I wait old age in peace, 
 
 There calmly dwelling, 
 A truce to war ! — a long release 
 
 From " colonelling ! ** 
 
 III. 
 Whence to go forth should Fate ordain, 
 Galesus, gentle flood ! thy plain 
 Speckled with sheep— might yet remain 
 
 For Heaven to grant us ; 
 Land that once knew the halcyon reign 
 
 Of King Ph ALANTUS. 
 
 Septimi, Gades 
 Aditure mecum, et 
 Cantabrum indoctum 
 Juga ferre nostra, et 
 Barbaras Syrtes, 
 Ubi Maura semper 
 iEstuat unda : 
 
 II. 
 
 Tibuk, Argeo 
 Positum colono, 
 Sit mese sedes 
 Utinam senectae ! 
 Sit modus lasso 
 Maris, et viarum, 
 Militiseque ! 
 
 III. 
 Unde si Parcae 
 Prohibent iniquae, 
 Dulce pellitis 
 Ovibus Galesi 
 Flumen, et regnata 
 Petam I -acorn 
 Rura Phalanto. 
 
The Songs 
 
 _ _ 
 
 of Horace. 463 
 
 IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Spot of all earth most dear to me ! 
 Teeming with sweets ! the Attic bee, 
 O'er Mount Hymettus ranging free. 
 
 Finds not such honey— 
 Nor basks the Capuan olive-tree 
 
 In soil more sunny. 
 
 Ille ten-arum 
 "Mini prater omnes 
 Angulus ridet, 
 Ubi non Hymetto 
 Mella decedunt, 
 Viridique certat 
 Bacca Venafro ; 
 
 V. 
 
 V. 
 
 ! There lingering Spring is longest found ; 
 ; E'en Winter*s breath is mild ;— and round 
 . Delicious Aulon grapes abound, 
 
 In mellow cluster ; 
 '■ Such as Falernum's richest ground 
 
 Can rarely muster. 
 
 Ver ubi longum, 
 Tepidasque prabet 
 Jupiter brumas, 
 Et amicus Aulon 
 Fertili Baccho 
 Minimum Falernis 
 Invidet uvis. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Romantic towers ! thrice happy scene ! 
 There might our days glide on serene ; 
 Till thou bedew with tears t I ween. 
 
 Of love sincerest, 
 The dust of him who once had been 
 
 Thy friend, the Lyrist ! 
 
 Ille te mecum 
 Locus et beats 
 Postulant arces ; 
 Ibi tu calentem 
 Debita sparges 
 Lacrim& favillam 
 Vatis amici. 
 
 Extemporaneous in its essence, hearty, glowing, and glorious, here follows 
 an effusion of affectionate welcome to one of the young Pompeys, with whom 
 he had studied at Athens and fought at Philippi. The scene is at the Sabine 
 farm. The exile, it will be seen, has only just returned on the general amnesty 
 granted by Augustus. 
 
 LIB. II. ODE VII.— A FELLOW-SOLDIER WELCOMED FROM 
 
 EXILE. 
 I. T - 
 
 Friend of my soul ! with whom array'd 
 
 I stood in the ranks: of. peril, 
 When Brutus at Philippi made 
 
 That effort wild and sterile.... 
 Who hath reopen'd Rome to thee. 
 
 Her temples and her forum ; 
 Beckoning the child of Italy ( 
 
 Back to the clime that bore him ? 
 
 O saepe mecum 
 Tempus in ultimum 
 Deducte, Bruto 
 Militia duce, 
 Quis te redonavit 
 
 QUIRITEM 
 
 Dis patriis, 
 iTALoque ccelo. 
 
 II. 
 
 II. 
 
 Thou, my earliest comrade ! say, 
 
 Pohpev, was I thy teacher, 
 To baulk old Time, and drown the day 
 
 Deep in a flowing pitcher ? 
 Think of the hours we thus consumed, 
 
 While Syria's richest odours, 
 Lavish of (Vagrancy , perfumed 
 
 The locks of two marauders. 
 
 Pompei, meorum 
 Prime sodalium. 
 Cum quo morantem 
 Sxpe diem mero 
 Fregi, coronatus 
 
 Nitentes 
 Malobathro 
 
 Syrio capillos? 
 
- 'I 
 
 464 The Works of Father Prout 
 
 in. 
 
 III. 
 
 With thee I shared Philips rout f 
 
 Tecum Fhilippos 
 
 Though I, methinks, ran faster; 
 
 Et celerem f ugant 
 
 Leaving behind — 'twas wrong, no doubt— 
 
 Sensi, relicts 
 
 My shield in the disaster : 
 
 Non bene parmulft, 
 
 E'en Fortitude that day broke down ; 
 
 Quum fracta virtus. 
 
 And the rude foeman taught her 
 
 Et minaces 
 
 To hide her brow's diminish'd frown 
 
 Turpe solum 
 
 Low amid heaps of slaughter. 
 
 Tetigere mento. 
 
 IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But Mercury, who kindly watch'd 
 
 Sed me per hostes 
 
 Me mid that struggle deadly, 
 
 Mercurius celer 
 
 Stoop'd from a cloud, and quickly snatch'd 
 His client from the medley. 
 
 Denso paventem 
 
 Sustulit aere : 
 
 While thee, alas ! the ebbing flood 
 Of war relentless swallow d, 
 
 Te rursus in bellum 
 
 Resorbens 
 
 Replunging thee mid seas of blood ; 
 
 Unda fret is 
 
 And years of tempest follow'd. 
 
 Tulit aestuosis. 
 
 V. 
 Then slay to Jove the victim calf, 
 
 V. 
 
 Ergo obligatam 
 
 Due to the God ;— and weary, 
 
 Redde Jovi dapem, 
 
 Under my bower of laurels quaff 
 
 Longaque fessurn. 
 
 A wine-cup blithe and merry. 
 Here, while thy war-worn limps repose. 
 Mid peaceful scenes sojourning, 
 
 Militia latus 
 
 Depone sub 
 Laura mea, nee 
 
 Spare not the wine— 'twas kept— it flows 
 
 Farce cadis 
 
 To welcome thy returning. 
 
 Tibi destinatis. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Come ! with oblivious bowls dispel 
 
 Oblivioso 
 
 Grief, care, and disappointment ! 
 
 Le via Massico 
 
 Freely from yon capacious shell 
 Shed, shed the balmy ointment ! 
 
 Ciboria exple ; 
 
 Funde capacibus 
 
 Who for the genial banquet weaves 
 Gay garlands, gather' d newly ; 
 
 Unguenta de conchis. 
 
 Qui s udo 
 
 Fresh with the garden's greenest leaves, 
 Or twined with myrtle duly ? 
 
 Deproperare 
 
 Apio coronas 
 
 VII. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Whom shall the dice's cast " wine-king " 
 
 Curat ve myrto? 
 
 Elect, by Venus guided? 
 
 Quern Venus arbitrum 
 Dicet bibendi? 
 
 Quick, let my roof with wild mirth ring- 
 
 Blame not my joy, nor chide it 1 
 
 Non ego samus 
 
 Madly each bacchanalian feat 
 
 Bacchabor Kdonis : 
 
 I mean to-day to rival. 
 
 Recepto 
 
 For, oh ! 'tis sweet thus — thus TO greet 
 
 Dulce mihi furcre 
 
 SO DEAR A FRIEND'S ARRIVAL ! 
 
 Est amico ! 
 
 The nursery tradition respecting lies 
 
 and their consequence, mav be traced 
 
 in the opening stanza of this playful remonstrance with Barine. The image of 
 
 Cupid at a grinding-stone, sharpening 
 
 lis darts, is the subject of a fine antique 
 
 cameo in the Orleans Collection. 
 
 
The Songs of Horace. 
 
 465 
 
 LIB. 11. ode; VIII.— the rogueries of barine. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN BARINEN. 
 
 Barine ! if, for each untruth, 
 Some blemish left a mark uncouth, 
 With loss of beauty and of youth, 
 
 Or Heaven should alter 
 The whiteness of a single tooth— 
 
 O fair defaulter ! 
 
 I. 
 
 Ulla si Juris 
 Tibi peierati 
 
 Poena, Barine, 
 Nocuisset unquam ; 
 Dente si nigro 
 Fieres vet uno 
 
 ' Turpior ungui, 
 
 II. 
 
 Then might I trust thy words— but thou 
 Dost triumph o'er each broken vow ; 
 Falsehood would seem to give thy brow 
 
 Increased effulgence : 
 Men still admire— and Gods allow 
 
 Thee fresh indulgence. 
 
 II. 
 
 Crederem. Sed tti, 
 Simul obligasti 
 Perftdum votis 
 Caput, enitescis 
 Pulchior multo, 
 Juvenumque prodis 
 Publica cura. 
 
 III. III. 
 
 Swear by thy mother's funeral urn — Expedlt matris 
 
 Swear by the stars that nightly burn Cineres opertos 
 
 (Seeming in silent awe to mourn Fallere, et toto 
 
 O'er such deception)— Ta'citurna noctis 
 
 Swear by each Deity in turn, Signa cum ccelo. 
 
 From Jove to Neptune : Gelid&que Divos 
 
 Morte carentes. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Venus and all her Nymphs would yet 
 With smiles thy perjury abet— 
 Cupid would laugh— Go on ! and let 
 
 Fresh courage nerve thee ; 
 Still on his blood-stain'd wheel he'll whet 
 
 His darts to serve thee ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Ridet hoc, inquam, 
 Venus ipsa, rident 
 Simplices Nymphs, 
 Ferus et Cupido, 
 Semper ardentes 
 Acuens sagittas 
 Cote cruent&. 
 
 Fast as they grow, our youths enchain, 
 
 Fresh followers in beauty's train : 
 
 While those who loved thee first would fain, 
 
 Charming deceiver, 
 Within thy threshold still remain, 
 
 And love, for ever ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Adde quod pubes 
 Tibi crescit omnis ; 
 Servitus crescit nova ; 
 Nee priores 
 Impiae tectum 
 Dominse relinquunt, 
 Saepe minati. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Their sons from thee all mothers hide ; 
 All thought of thee stern fathers chide ; 
 Thy shadow haunts the new-made bride, 
 
 And fears dishearten her. 
 Lest thou inveigle from her side 
 
 Her life's young partner. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Te suis mat re* 
 Metuunt juvencis, 
 Te series parci, 
 Miserasque miper 
 Virgines nuptx, 
 Tua ne retardet 
 Aura maritos. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. 
 
 i. 
 
 {Frajer't Magazine, January, 1835.) 
 
 (The following appealed as " A Fragment from the Prout Papers " in the same number 
 of Rcgtita in which was published the fourth instalment of The Songs of France.] 
 
 " Glandifera Druidis corona." 
 
 Sir Wm. Jones. 
 
 The following lines would appear to form the preamble or introductory 
 stanzas to a poem of some length, of which we have already met with some 
 detached portions among the papers of the late incumbent of Watergrasshill, 
 and which, in style and verse, bear some resemblance to Coleridge's wild and 
 rambling ballad of " The Ancient Mariner," It relates the adventures of three 
 ' ' elders from the Far West, who in the reign of Augustus travel eastward in search 
 of the promised Saviour of mankind, visit Rome, Athens, and Egypt in suc- 
 cession and finally return. Where Prout found authority for this Druidical 
 avapaoit he does not mention : we have, nevertheless, some idea of a 
 manuscript preserved at St. Gall, in Switzerland, and entitled Trium Druidum 
 ab insalis Oceani feregrinato Bethlem unque." The Abbey of St. Gall is 
 known to have colonized from Ireland. Should we be enabled to give the poem 
 in a complete form we doubt not of its meeting a favourable reception. — O. Y. 
 
 I. 
 
 From the Isles of the East— from Arabia the blest. 
 From the star-loving land of Chaldee, 
 
 There came to his cradle, in long flowing vest, 
 ' Of the orient Gentiles the wisest and best, 
 
 * And crowns deck'd the brows of the three. 
 
 1 n.. - 
 
 They brought odoriferous spices and myrrh, 
 
 The growth of their own sunny soil : 
 Though a smile from her Infant, a blessing from Hbr 
 Was all that young mother and maid could confer 
 
 To requite them for travel and toil. 
 
The Epiphany. 467 
 
 in. 
 
 Yet well might they deem a long journey repaid 
 
 By the sight of that wondrous child : 
 Of that scion of awful Omnipotence laid 
 In the innocent arms of an Israelite maid, 
 
 In the folds of a breast undefiled. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And thus by the East, as the prophets foretold, 
 
 At His cradle due homage was clone 
 By its envoys, who worshiped with gifts and with gold, 
 Unloaded their camels, their treasures unroll'd, 
 
 And pledged Him the land of the Sun. 
 
 From the Isles of the West — from the clime of the Celt, 
 From the home of the Briton, where long 
 
 To the God of our fathers the Druid had knelt, 
 
 Encircled with Stonehenge's mystical belt, 
 Or the oaks of the forest among. 
 
 VI. 
 
 From the land above all that illumined had been 
 
 With the Deity's earliest smiles, 
 Of sacred tradition asylum serene, 
 Blest Erin ! from thee, ever fair, ever green, 
 
 Ever rank'd amid holiest isles. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Were sages not summon'd ? Had no one the lot 
 
 To hail the Messiah's bright mom ? 
 Went forward no pilgrim to Bethlehem's grot? 
 O think not the Wise of the West were forgot 
 
 When the Infant Redeemer was born ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Though, naught is recorded of king, or of sage, 
 
 Yet a vision have I of my own : — 
 Tis but fancy, perhaps— but the dream of old age, 
 Yet I'll trace it— 'twill live upon poetry's page 
 
 When the priest of ths upland is gone. 
 
II. 
 }* "§otth at Saint Jaratariws. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, January, 1837.) 
 
 [With these two stanzas Mahony led off the first page of the first number of Bentley's 
 Miscellany, under the heading of " Our Song of the Month." And, in giving them, I 
 would here at once offer my cordial acknowledgments to Mr. Bentley for the friendly 
 readiness with which he has permitted me to reprint anything of Prout's I pleased from 
 the earlier volumes of the miscellany. One alone of those effusions I have as carefully, 
 however, abstained from reproducing as I would shrink from allowing one of the effigies 
 from the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's to take its place in a gallery of 
 
 genuine works of art. I allude to a certain revolting gibe entitled "The Cruel Murder/' 
 urled, apparently in a moment of aberration, by Prout, like some chance missile picked 
 up in the kennel, at the comely head of one of his contemporaries who, until then.had 
 as freely and as frankly as any true gentleman could, interchanged with him the grip of 
 the right hand of friendship. As already remarked, however, in the Biographical 
 Introduction, those were times among literary belligerents for the flinging of vitriol 
 and the wielding of bludgeons.] 
 
 In the land of the citron and myrtle, we're told. 
 
 That the blood of a martyr is kept in a phial, 
 Which, though all the year round it lie torpid and cold, 
 
 Yet grasp but the crystal, 'twill warm the first trial. 
 Be it fiction or truth, with your favourite Fact, 
 
 O profound Lazzaroni I I seek not to quarrel ; 
 But indulge an old priest who would simply extract 
 
 From your legend a lay, from your martyr a moral. * 
 
 Lo ! with icicled beard Januarius comes ! 
 
 And the blood in his veins is all frozen and gelid, 
 And he beareth a bottle ; but torpor benumbs 
 
 Every limb of the saint : — would you wish to dispel it ? 
 With the hand of good-fellowship grasp the hoar sage! — 
 
 Soon his joints will relax and his pulse will beat quicker; 
 Grasp the bottle he brings — 'twill grow warm, I'll engage, 
 
 Till the frost of each heart lies dissolved in the liquor ! 
 
 P. Prout. 
 
 Probatum est, 
 Watergrasshill, Kat. Januarii. 
 
III. 
 t Satin* Jfatnwr's Smnaire. 
 
 {Bentley s Miscellany, January, 1837.) 
 
 [In a characteristic editorial foot-note, by Boz, to Prout's delightful Latin version of 
 "Judy Callaghan," as originally published in the Miscellany, the young editor 
 remarked— "Our Watergrasshill correspondent will find scattered throughout our pages 
 the other fragments of the defunct Padre which he has placed at our disposal. Every 
 chip from so brilliant an old block may be said to possess a lustre peculiarly its own : 
 hence we may not fear to disperse them up and down our Miscellany. They are gems of 
 the purest whisky." And in this way the opening leaves of the new periodical 
 refreshingly sparkled with mountain dew.] 
 
 TEDDY ODRYSCULL. SCHOOLMASTER AT WATERGRASSHILL, 
 
 TO 
 
 Mr. BENTLEY, PUBLISHER. 
 Sir, 
 I write to you concerning the late P.P. of this parish— his soul to glory ! 
 for, as Virgil says, — and devil doubt it, — 
 
 " Candidas insuelum miraiur limen Olympi, 
 Sub pedibusque vi(Utnubes et sidera pastor." 
 
 His Reliques, sir, in two volumes, have been sent down here from Dublin for 
 the use of my boys, by order of the National Education Board, with directions 
 to cram the spalpeens all at once with such a power of knowledge that they 
 may forget the hunger : which plan, between you and me (though I say it that 
 oughtn't), is all bladdtrum-skatt : for, as Juvenal maintains— -jejunus stomachus, 
 &c, &c— an empty bag won't stand. You must first fill it with praties. Give 
 us a poor-law, sir, and, trust me, you will have no more about Rock and repeal ; 
 no, nor of the rint, against which latter humbug the man of God set his face 
 outright during his honest and honourable lifetime ; for, sir, though he differed 
 with Mr. Moore about Irish round towers, and a few French roundelays, in this 
 they fully agreed. 
 
 As I understand, sir, that you are a publisher in ordinary to His Majesty, 
 I intend, from time to time, conveying through you to the ear of royalty 
 
470 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 some desiderata curiosa Hyiamia from the pen of the deceased; matters 
 which remain penis me, in seriniis, to use the style of your great namesake. 
 For the present I merely send you a few classic scraps collected by Dr. Prout 
 in some convent abroad ; and, wishing every success to your Miscellany, am 
 your humble servant, 
 
 T. O'D. 
 
 SCRAP No. I. 
 
 Watergrasshill. 
 
 There flourishes, I hear, in London a Mr. Hudson, whose reputation as a 
 comic lyrist, it would seem, has firmly taken root in the great metropolis. 
 Many are the laughter-compelling productions of his merry genius; but " Bar- 
 ney Brallaghan's Courtship " may be termed his opus magnum. It has been 
 my lot to pick a few dry leaves from the laurel wreath of Mr. Moore, who could 
 well afford the loss : I know not whether I can meddle rightly after a similar 
 fashion with Hudson's bay. Yet is there a strange coincidence of thought and 
 expression, and even metre, between the following remnant of antiquity and 
 his never-sufficiently-to-be-encored song. 
 
 The original may be seen at Bobbio in the Apennines, a Benedictine settle- 
 ment, well known as the earliest asylum opened to learning after the fall of the 
 Roman Empire. The Irish monk Columbanus had the merit of founding it, 
 and it long remained tenanted by natives of Ireland. Among them it has been 
 ascertained that Dante lived for some time and composed Latin verses ; but I 
 cannot recognize any trace of his stern phraseology in the ballad. It appears, 
 rather, the production of some rustic of the Augustan age— perhaps one of 
 Horace's ploughmen. It is addressed to a certain Julia Callapyge (KaXXiTuyij) 
 a name which (for shortness, I suppose) the rural poet contracts into Julia 
 " Callage." I have diligently compared it with the Vulgate version, as sung 
 by Fitzwilliam at the " Freemasons' Tavern; " and little doubt can remain of 
 its identity and authenticity. 
 
 P.P. 
 
 THE SABINE FARMER'S SERENADE. 
 Being a newly recovered Fragment of a Latin Opera. 
 
 I. I. 
 
 Erat turbida nox Twas on a windy night, 
 
 Hor& secunda mane - ; At two o'clock in the morning, 
 
 Quando proruit vox An Irish lad so tight. 
 
 Carmen in hoc inane ; All wind and weather scorning, 
 
 Viri miser* mens At Judy Callaghan's door, 
 
 Meditabatur hymen, Sitting upon the palings, 
 
 Hinc puellae Hens His love-tale he did pour, 
 
 Stabat obsidens limen ; And this was part of his waitings :— 
 
 Semel tantitm die Only say 
 
 Eris nostra Lalagr ; You'll be Mrs. Brattaghan ; 
 
 Ne recuses sic. Don't say nay, 
 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. Charming Judy Callaghan. 
 
 II. II. 
 
 Planctibus aurem fer, Oh ! list to what I say, 
 Venere tu formosior ; Charms you've got like Venus ; 
 
 Die, hos muros per, Own your love you may. 
 Tuo favore potior I There's but the wall between us. 
 
 Voce bcatum fac ; You lie fast asleep. 
 En, dum dormis, vigilo. Snug in bed and snoring, 
 
The Sabine Farmer's Serenade. 
 
 471 
 
 Nocte obambulans hftc 
 Domum planctu stridulo. 
 Seme I tantum die 
 
 Eris nostra Lalagk ; 
 Ne recuses sic, 
 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. 
 
 III. 
 
 Est mihi praegnans sus, 
 
 Et porcellis stabulum", 
 Villula, grex, et rus* . 
 
 Ad vaccarum pabulum ; 
 Feriis cerneres me 
 
 Splendido vestimento, 
 Tunc, heus ! quam bene te 
 
 Veherem in jumento ! t 
 1 Semel tantum die 
 Eris nostra Lal age ! 
 
 Ne recuses sic, 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Vis poma terras ? sum 
 
 Uno dives jugere ; 
 Vis lac et nulla, t cum 
 
 Bacchi succo,§ sugere? 
 Vis aquae-vita; vim?H 
 
 Plumoso somnum sacculo?** 
 Vis ut paratus sim 
 
 Vel annulo vel baculo?tt 
 
 Semel tantum dic^ 
 Eris nostra Lalage ; 
 
 Ne recuses sic, 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. 
 
 Round the house I creep, 
 Your hard heart imploring. 
 Only say 
 
 You'll have Mr. Brallagkan ; 
 Don't say nay, 
 
 Charming Judy Callaghan. 
 
 III. 
 I've got a pig and a sow, 
 
 I've got a sty to sleep 'em ; 
 A calf and a brindled cow, 
 
 And a cabin too, to keep 'em ; 
 Sunday hat and coat, 
 
 An old grey mare to ride on ; 
 Saddle and bridle to boot, 
 
 Which you may ride astride on. 
 
 Only say 
 You 'It be Mrs. Brallagkan; 
 
 Don't say nay, 
 Charming Judy Callaghan. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I've got an acre of ground, 
 
 I've got it set with praties ; 
 I've got of 'baccy a pound, 
 . I've got some tea for the ladies ; 
 I've got the ring to wed, 
 
 Some whisky to make us gaily ; 
 I've got a feather bed, 
 
 And a handsome new shilelagh- 
 . .. Only. say 
 You'll have Mr. Brallagkan ; 
 
 Don't say nay, 
 Charming Judy Callaghan. 
 
 * i° in voce rus. Nonne potius legendum jus, scilicet, ad vaccarum pabulum ? De 
 hoc jure apud Sabinos agricolas consule Scriptores de re rustled passim. Ita Bent- 
 leius. 4 
 
 Jus imo antiquissimum, at displicet vox sequivoca ; jus etenim a mess of potage ali- 
 quando audit, ex. gr. 
 
 Omne suum fratri Jacob jus vendidit Esau, 
 Et Jacob fratri jus dedit omne suum. 
 
 Itaque, pace Bentleii, stet lectio prior. —Prout. 
 
 t Veherem in jumento. Curricolo-ne ? an pone sedentem in equi dorso ? dorsaliter 
 plane. Quid emm dicit Horatius de uxore sic vecta? Nonne "Post equitem sedet atra 
 cura t " — Porson. 
 
 t Lac et mella. Metaphorice pro tea ; muliebris est compotatio Gratis non ignota, 
 teste Anacreonte, — 
 
 ©EON, Seav 6cati>T)v, 
 ©eAw Xeytiv eraipat, k. t. A. 
 Brougham. 
 
 S Bacchi succo. Duplex apud poetas antiquiores habebatur hujusce nominis numen. 
 Vineam regebat prius ; postenus cuidam herbae exotics praeerat quae tobacco audit Sue- 
 cus utrique optimus.-^tf&r«fcr. 
 
 U Aqua-vita vim, Anglo-Hybemice, " a power of -whisky / urxys, scilicet, voxper- 
 graeca, — Parr. m # . 
 
 # * Plumoso sacco. Plumarum congeries certe ad somnos invitandos satis apta ; at mihi 
 
 E:r multos annos laneus iste saccus, Ang. woolsack, fuit apprime ad dormiendum idoneus. 
 ites etiam de land, ut aiunt caprind, soporiferas per annos xxx. exercui. Quot et quam 
 przclara somnia 1 — Eldon. 
 
 tt Investitura "per atmulum et baeulum, ' satis nota. Vide P. Marca de Concord. 
 Sacerdotii et Imperii : et Hildebrandi Pont Max. bullarium. — Prout. 
 Baculo certe" dignissim. pontif.— Mag inn. 
 
472 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 v. 
 
 Litteris operam das ; 
 
 Lucido fulges oculo ; 
 Dotes insuper quas 
 
 Nummi sunt in loculo. 
 Novi quod apta sis* 
 
 Ad procreandam sobolem ! 
 Possides (nesciat quis ?) 
 
 Linguam satis mobilem-f 
 
 Semel tantum die 
 Eris nostra Lalage ; 
 
 Ne recuses sic, 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Coniux utinam tu 
 
 Fieres, lepidum cor, ml \ 
 Halitum perdimus, heu, 
 
 Te sopor urget. Dormi ! 
 Ingruit imber trux— 
 
 Jam sub tecto pelHtur 
 Is quern crastina luxt 
 
 Referet hue fideliter. 
 
 Semel tantum dic^ 
 Eris nostra Lalage ; 
 
 Ne recuses sic, 
 Dulcis Julia Callage. 
 
 V. 
 
 You've got a charming eye. 
 
 You've got some spelling and reading ; 
 You've got, and so have I, 
 
 A taste for genteel breeding ; 
 You're rich, and fair, and young, 
 
 As everybody's knowing; 
 You've got a decent tongue 
 
 Whene'er 'tis seta going. 
 
 Only say 
 You'll have Mr. Brallaghan ; 
 
 Don't say nay. 
 Charming Judy Callagkan. 
 
 VI. 
 
 For a wife till death 
 
 I am willing to take ye ! 
 But, och ! I waste my breath. 
 
 The devil himself can't wake ye. 
 Tis just beginning to rain. 
 
 So I'll get under cover ; 
 To-morrow I'll come again, 
 
 And be your constant lover. 
 
 Only say 
 You 11 be Mrs. Brallaghan i 
 
 Don't say nay, 
 Charming Judy Callagkan. 
 
 • Apta sis. Quomodo noverit? Vide Proverb. Solomonis, cap. xxx. v. 19. Nisi forsan 
 tales fuerint puellae Sabinorum quales impudens iste balatro Counelius mentitur esse 
 nostrates. — Blomfield. 
 
 t Linguam mobilem. Prius enumerat futurae conjugis bona immobilia, postea transit 
 admoeuia, Anglice", chattel property, Prxdarus orde sententiarum ! — Car. WetkeralL 
 
 X Allusio ad distichon Maronianum, 
 " Nocte pluit tota redeunt spectacula mant."— Prout. 
 
 K. T. \. 
 
 a ii 9" 
 
IV. 
 
 lot Mis ai Clifton. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, January, 1837.) 
 
 SCRAP No. II. 
 
 Watergrasshill. 
 
 The "Poems of Ossian," a Celtic bard, and the "Rhymes of Rowley," a 
 Bristol priest, burst on the public at one and the same period ; when the atten- 
 tion of literary men was for a time totally absorbed in discussing the respective 
 discoveries of Macpherson and Chatterton. " The fashion of this world pass- 
 eth away ;" and what once engaged so much notice is now sadly neglected. 
 Indeed, had not Bonaparte taken a fancy to the ravings of the mad High- 
 lander, and had not Chatterton swallowed oxalic acid, probably far more brief 
 had been the space both would have occupied in the memory of mankind. In 
 the garret of Holborn, where the latter expired, the following morceau was 
 picked up by an Irish housemaid (a native of this parish), who, in writing home 
 to a sweetheart, converted it into an envelope for her letter. It thus came into 
 my possession. 
 
 P. Prout. 
 
 TO THE HOT WELLS OF CLIFTON. 
 
 IN PRAISE OF RUM-PUNCH. 
 
 A Triglot Ode, viz.: 
 i° XltvSapov -rrepi pcu/iaroc oiotj. 
 2° Horatii in fontem Bristolii carmen. 
 3° a Eriict (unputUsiKti) of "tie unfortunate Cfiatttrton." 
 
 PINDAR. HORACE. CHATTERTON. 
 
 Tlrjyr} BpioroAias 
 MaAAov ci/ vaAw 
 Aafiirova' av8eai aw 
 NeKTapos a£nj 
 2' avrAa> 
 Pevfiari ttoAaw 
 Muryfap 
 Kat jucAito? ttoAu. 
 
 O fons Bristolii 
 Hoc magis in vitro 
 Dulci digne mero 
 Non sine noribus 
 Vas impleveris 
 TJnd& 
 
 Mel solvente 
 Caloribus. 
 
 3E ken tonr fcurcih, 
 "lot tolls" of fristol, 
 Wist babble forth 
 
 §.s dmc as ttnsial;... 
 ti piir lottr snrtq 
 I'b toish no Iwtttr 
 'QLa mix a jng 
 <8f gtim an* EKato. 
 s 
 
474 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 
 
 hvr\p Kaf tis epav 
 fiovterai 1) iiaxry 
 Sot BaK\ov Kavapov 
 Sot Siaxptovwarei 
 
 & oLfuvri vaiiti' 
 Hpo9viJ.os re 
 Tax' eco-ercw. 
 
 II. 
 
 Si quis vel venerem 
 Aut praelia cogitat, 
 Is Bacchi calidos 
 Inficiet tibi 
 Rubro sanguine 
 Rjvos, 
 
 Fiet protinus 
 Impiger ! 
 
 EE. 
 
 Both 3£obe, gonna t\ 
 ©ne'a bosom nme? 
 8Konlb ano feel 
 SUne for a scuffle? 
 %ht simplest plan 
 Es jttst to take a 
 Wiiil stiff nub can 
 ©f olb Jamaica. 
 
 h«L 
 
 Se </)Aey/i.' atflaAoev 
 Setptou aorepos 
 Apfio£ei irAwropi* 
 2v Kpuos tqBvv ev 
 
 ITotets 
 
 K' atQbontov (puAtp. 
 
 III. 
 
 Te flagrante bibax 
 OrecaaicuI& 
 
 Sugit navita : tu 
 Frigus amabilc 
 Fessis vomere 
 Mauris 
 Prsebes ac 
 Homini nigro. 
 
 EXE. 
 
 Seneaih the botu 
 <§roo, in a pail or 
 &rtm— best slant — 
 Relights the sailor. 
 %ke ran he stetlls 
 ,3-lone gibes toiaom: 
 En the ^.ntiiks 
 %a tohiic or nigger. 
 
 5 
 
 Kpijt/eus «v re KdXotff 
 Etnrccu ayAai? 
 2' CV KO t Aa> KVAOKt 
 Ei/0ep.eiT)tf ca>$ 
 
 AaAov ef ou 
 
 Soi/ fie pevjuo KadaAAerat. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Fies nobilium 
 Tu quoque fontium 
 Me aicente ; cavum 
 Bum calicem reples 
 Urnamque 
 Unde loquaces 
 Lymphs 
 Desiliunt tuas. 
 
 E*. 
 
 %h<& claims, © foant, 
 Seserbe attention : 
 aencefottoaro rortnt 
 ©n classic mention. 
 Slight pleasant staff 
 'Shine to the iip is... 
 Sar'br hao enough 
 ©f c&ganipjJe's. 
 
 Q| *C -» 
 
475 
 
 _ _V._ : _ 
 
 t #rijgmal of " Hot a gram ioas fymir." 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, January, 1837.) 
 
 SCRAP No. III. 
 
 Watergrasshill. 
 
 When single-speech Hamilton made in the Irish Commons that one memor- 
 able hit, and persevered ever after in obdurate taciturnity, folks began very 
 justly to suspect that all was not right : in fact, that the solitary egg on which 
 lie thus sat, plumed in all the glory of incubation, had been laid by another. 
 The Rev. Mr. Wolfe is supposed to be the author of a single poem, unparal- 
 leled in the English language for all the qualities of a true lyric, breathing the 
 purest spirit of the antique, and setting criticism completely at defiance — I say 
 supposed, for the gentleman himself never claimed its authorship during his 
 short and unobtrusive lifetime. He who could write the " Funeral of Sir John 
 Moore " must have eclipsed all the lyric poets of this latter age by the fervour 
 and brilliancy of his powers. Do the other writings of Mr. Wolfe bear any 
 traces of inspiration ? None. 
 
 I fear we must look elsewhere for the origin of these beautiful lines ; and I 
 think I can put the public on the right scent. In 1749 Colonel de Beaumanoir, 
 a native of Brittany, having raised a regiment in his own neighbourhood, went 
 out with it to India, in the unfortunate expedition commanded by Lally Tolen- 
 dal, the failure of which eventually lost to the French their possessions in 
 Hindostan. The Colonel was killed in defending, against the forces of Coote, 
 Pondicherry, the last stronghold of the French in that hemisphere. 
 
 He was buried that night on the north bastion of the fortress by a few faith- 
 ful followers, and the next day the fleet sailed with the remainder of the garri- 
 son for Europe. In the appendix to the Memoirs of Lally Tolendal, by his 
 son, the following lines occur, which bear some resemblance to those attributed 
 to Wolfe. Perhaps Wolfe Tone may have communicated them to his relative • 
 the clergyman on his return from France. Fides sit penes lectorem. 
 
 P. Pkout. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF "NOT A DRUM WAS HEARD." 
 
 I. 
 
 Ni le son du tambour.. .ni le marche funobre... 
 
 Ni le feu des soldats...ne marque son depart. — 
 Mais du Heave, a la hate a travers les tenebres. 
 
 Morncs...nous porunes le cadavre au rempart ! 
 
476 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 ii. 
 
 De minuit c'e*tait l'heure, et solitaire et sombre — 
 La lune a peine offrait un debile rayon : 
 
 La lanterne luisait peniblement dans 1'ombre, 
 Quand de la bayonette on creusa le gazon. 
 
 III. 
 
 D'inutile cercueil ni de drap funeraire 
 
 Nous ne daignames point entourez le H i ros ; 
 II gisait dans les plis du manteaii militaire 
 Comme un guerrier qui dort son heure de repos. 
 
 IV. 
 
 La priere qu'on fit fut de courte duree : 
 Nul ne parla de deuil, bien que le cceur fut plein ! 
 
 Mais on fixait du Mokt la figure adore"e... 
 Mais avec amertume on songeait au dcmain 
 
 Au demain ! quand ici ou sa fosse s'apprete, 
 Oil son humide lit on dresse avec sanglots, 
 
 L'ennemi orgueilleux marchera sur sa tete, 
 Et nous, ses veterans, serons loin sur les flots 
 
 VI. 
 
 lis ternirent sa gloirc.on pourra les entendre 
 
 Nommer l'illustre wort d'un ton amer...ou fol :— - 
 II les laissera dirt, — Eh ! qu'importe a sa cendre 
 Que la main d'un Breton a confide au solt 
 
 VII. 
 
 L*oeuvre durait encor, quand retentir la cloche 
 Au sommet du Befroi :— et le canon lointain 
 
 Tire par intervalle en annoncant 1'approche 
 Signalait la fierte de l'ennemi hautain. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Et dans sa fosse alors le mimes lentement... 
 
 Prfes du champ oil sa gloirea e"te consommee 
 Ne mimes a l'endroit pierre ni monument, 
 
 Le laissant a seul avec sa Renommee ! 
 
VI. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, March, 1837.) 
 
 I. 
 
 "Beware ! beware !" said the Soothsayer 
 
 To the " noblest of the Romans;" 
 And well had it been for Julius, I ween, 
 
 Had he lent an ear to the summons. 
 Calphurnia sigh'd, the screech-owl cried, 
 
 The March gale blew a barrasca. 
 Yet out he went to " meet Parliament," 
 
 And the dagger of "envious Casca." 
 
 II. 
 
 "Beware how you land ! " wrote old Talleyrand 
 
 To his Elba friend, for, heigh O ! 
 One bleak March day he would fain sail away 
 
 In a hooker from Porto Ferrajo. 
 And well had it been, in the year "fifteen" 
 
 Had he not pursued that folly on, 
 Mad as any " March hare," though told to beware; 
 
 But alas and alack for Napoleon ! 
 
 III. 
 
 "Beware, beware ! of the Black Friere," 
 
 So singeth a dame of Byron ; 
 Arouse not him ! 'tis a perilous whim, — 
 
 "Tis " meddling with cold iron." 
 E'en in crossing the ridge of Blackfriars Bridge, 
 
 When you come to the midmost arch, 
 While 'tis blowing hard,— be then on your guard. 
 Then carefully look to your hat and peruke, 
 
 And " beware of the Ides of March 1 " 
 
478 The Works of Fattier Prout. 
 
 VII. 
 
 e Sips ai iht %ainuc. 
 
 (Bentley' s Miscellany, April, 1837.) 
 
 LES.-PQISSQNS-B'.AV-RJL,~-. 
 
 Teddy O'Driscoll, Schoolmaster, etc., to the Editor. 
 
 Watergrasshill, zoi/i Marclu 
 Sir, 
 In answer to your application for further scraps of the late P.P., and in 
 reply to your just reproof of my remissness in forwarding, as agreed upon, the 
 monthly supplies to your Miscellany, I have only to plead, as my "apology," 
 the " fast of Lent," which in these parts is kept with such vigour as totally to 
 dry up the genial moisture of the brain, and desiccate the kuAo ptittpa of the 
 fancy. In justice to Ireland, I must add that, by the combined exertions of 
 patriots and landlords, we are kept at the proper starving-point all the year 
 round : a blissful state not likely to be disturbed by any provisions in the new 
 Irish "poor-law." My coiTesjondejiC£.^u^_nece^rjly_be_ji:/Hff*, like the 
 season. I send you, however, an appropriate song, which our late pastor used 
 to chant over his red herring whenever a friend from Cork would drop in to 
 partake of such Lenten entertainment as his frugal kitchen could afford. 
 
 THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC, 
 
 A Gastronomtcal Chant. 
 
 " Sunt Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Scorpio, Virg^o. 
 Libraque et Arcitenens, Gemini, Capra, Amphora, Pisces." 
 
 I- 
 
 Of a tavem the Sun every month takes ** the run/' 
 
 And a dozen each year wait his wishes ; 
 One month with old Prout he takes share of a trout. 
 
 And puts up at the sign of the Fishes X- 
 "Pis an old-fashion'd inn, but more quiet within 
 
 Than the Bull 8 or the Lion St— both boisterous ; 
 And few would fain dwell at the Scorpion II hotel, 
 
 Or the Crab 95 — but this last is an oyster-house ! 
 
The Signs of the Zodiac. 
 
 479 
 
 ii. 
 
 At the sign of the Scales =g= fuller measure prevails ; 
 
 At the Ram, T the repast may be richer ; 
 Old Goethe oft wrote at the sign of the Goat V? , 
 
 Though at times he'd drop in at the Pitcher ££, 
 And those who have stay'd at the sign of the Maid tlj 
 
 In desirable quarters have tarried ; 
 While some for their sins must put up with the Twins H, 
 
 Having had the mishap to get married. 
 
 III. 
 But the Fishes X combine in one mystical sign 
 
 A moral right apt for the banquet ; 
 And a practical hint, which I ne er saw in print. 
 
 Yet a Rochefoucauld maxim I rank it : — 
 If a secret I'll hide, or a project confide 
 
 To a comrade's good faith and devotion, 
 Oh ! the friend whom I'd wish, though he drank like a fish, 
 
 Should be mute as the tribes of the ocean. 
 
480 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 §«rns autr §erimpr. 
 
 (Bektley's Miscellany, May, 1837.) 
 
 To the Editor op "Bentley's Miscellany." 
 
 Sir,— 
 
 Under the above title I forward you two more scraps from Watergrass- 
 hill. 
 
 The first is a glee in praise of poverty, a subject on which poets of every 
 country have a common understanding. The Italian Berni indeed went a step 
 further when he sang ' ' the comforts of being in debt," — La laude del debito ; 
 but your enthusiast never knows when to stop. This MS. may suit in the 
 present state of the money market— a bill drawn by Burns and endorsed by 
 B&anger. You can rely on the Scotchman's signature, experto crede Roberto ; 
 while there can be no doubt that the French songster's financial condition fully 
 entitles him to join Burns in an attempt of this kind. Since, however, much 
 spurious paper appears to be afloat, you will use your own discretion as to 
 the foreign acceptance. 
 
 Of Scrap No. VI. I say nothing, Dr. Prout having left a note on the subject 
 prefixed to the same. 
 
 Yours, &c, 
 
 RORY O'DRYSCULL. 
 Watergrasshill, April 20. 
 
 SCRAP No. V. 
 I. I. 
 
 Is there, Quoi ! pauvre honncte 
 
 For honest poverty, Baisser la tSte? 
 
 That hangs his head, Quoi ! rough- de le sorte ? 
 
 And a' that ? Que l'ame basse 
 
 The coward slave, S'tMoigne et passe 
 
 We pass him by, Nous — soyons gueux ! n'importe 
 
 We dare be poor for a' that ! Travail obscur — 
 
 For a' that, and a' that, N'importe ! 
 
 Our toils obscure, Qu'il ne soit point 
 
 And a' that ; Maraud au coin 
 
 The rank is but D'un noble rang — qu'importe ! . 
 The guinea's stamp, 
 
 The Man's the gowd for a' that 
 
Burns and 
 
 Stranger. 481 
 
 n. 
 
 11. 
 
 What though 
 
 Quoiqu'on dftt faire 
 Bien maigre chere 
 
 On hamely fare we dine, 
 
 Wear hoddin grey, 
 
 Et vStir pauvre vetement ; 
 
 And a' that ; 
 
 Aux sots leur soie, 
 
 Gi'e fools their silks, 
 
 Leur vin, leur joie ; 
 
 And knaves their wine, 
 
 ^a fait-il 1'homme? eh, nullement ! 
 Luxe et grandeur — 
 
 A man's a man for a' that : 
 
 For a' that, and a" that, 
 
 Qu'importe ! 
 
 Their tinsel show. 
 
 Train et splendeur — 
 
 And a* that ; 
 
 Qu'importe ! 
 Cceurs vils et creux ! 
 
 The honest man, 
 
 Though e'er sae poor, 
 
 Un noble gueux 
 
 Is king o" men for a' that. 
 
 Vant toute la cohorte ! 
 
 III. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ye see 
 
 Voyez ce fat — 
 
 Yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 
 
 Un vain e"clat 
 
 What struts, and stares, 
 
 L'entour, et on l'encense ; 
 
 And a' that ; 
 
 Mais apres tout 
 
 Though hundreds worship 
 
 Ce n'est qu'un fou, — 
 
 At his word, 
 
 Un sot, quoiqu'il en pense. 
 
 He's but a coof for a* that : 
 
 Terre et maison, 
 
 For a' that, and a' that. 
 
 Qu'il pense — 
 
 His riband, star, 
 
 Titre et blazon, 
 
 And a' that ; 
 
 Qu'il pense — 
 
 The man of 
 
 Or et ducats, 
 
 Independent mind, 
 
 Non ! ne font pas 
 
 He looks and laughs at a' that. 
 
 La vraie independence. 
 
 IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A king 
 
 Un roi peut faire 
 
 Can mak' a belted knight, 
 
 Due, dignitaire, 
 
 A marquis, duke. 
 
 Comte et marquis, journellement ; 
 
 And a' that ; 
 
 Mais ce qu'on nomme 
 
 But an Honest Man's 
 
 Un HONNETE HOMME, 
 
 Aboon his might, 
 Guid faith, he maunna fa' that 1 
 
 Le peut-il faire 1 et, nullement ! 
 
 Tristes faveurs ! 
 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Reellement ; 
 
 Their dignities. 
 
 Fauvres honneurs ! 
 
 And a' that, 
 
 Reellement ; 
 
 The pith o' sense, 
 
 Le fier maintien 
 
 And pride o' worth, 
 
 Des gens de bien 
 
 Are higher ranks than a' that. 
 
 Leur manque essentiellement. 
 
 V. 
 
 V. 
 
 Then let us pray 
 
 Or faisons vceu 
 
 That come it may — 
 
 Qua tous, sous peu, 
 
 As come it will 
 
 Arrive un jour de jugement ; — 
 
 For a' that— 
 
 Amis, ce jour 
 
 That sense and worth, 
 
 Aura son tour, 
 
 O'er a' the earth, 
 
 J'en prends, j'en prends, I'engagement, 
 
 May bear the gree, and a' that ! 
 
 Espoir et en- 
 couragement, 
 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 It's coming yet 
 
 Aux pauvres gens 
 
 For a' that, 
 
 Soulagement ; 
 
 That man to man, 
 
 'Lors sur la terre 
 
 The warld o'er, 
 
 Vivrons en freres, 
 
 Shall brothers be for a' that. 
 
 Et librement, et sagement ! 
 
 
 S * 
 
482 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IX. 
 
 % obi* anb- #bfo. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, May, 1837.) 
 — — 
 
 - SCRAP No. VI. 
 
 Passerino, in \\\i " History of the Gonzagas " (fol. Mantua, 1620), tells us, at 
 page 781, that a Polish army having penetrated to the Euxine, found the ashes 
 with many MSS. under a marble monument, which they transferred in pomp 
 to Cracow, A.D. 1581. It is well known that the exiled Roman had written 
 sundry poems in barbaric metre to gratify the Scythian and Getic literati, by 
 whom he was surrounded. We have his own words for it : 
 
 " Capique poetce 
 litter kumanos nomen habere Getas." 
 
 The following is a fair specimen, procured by the kindness of the late erudite 
 Quaff-y-punchovitz, Keeper of the Archives of the Cracovian University. The 
 rhythmic termination, called by the Greeks ohoioti\cvtou is here clearly trace- 
 able to a Northern origin. It would appear that the Scandinavian poets took 
 great pride in the nicety and richness of those rhymes, by which they beguiled 
 the tediousness of their winter nights : 
 
 "Accipiunt inimicam hyemetn rimisque ; fatiscunt." 
 
 Ovid first tried thus an experiment on his native tongue, which was duly 
 followed up by the Church, not unwilling to indulge, by any reasonable con- 
 cession, her barbarous converts in the sixth century. Of Mr. Lover's transla- 
 tion it were superfluous to point out the miraculous fidelity ; delicate gallantry 
 and well-sustained humour distinguish every line of his vernacular version, 
 hardly to be surpassed by the A rs amandi of his Latin competitor. 
 
 LOVER AND OVID. 
 
 TO THE HARD-HEARTED MOLLY CAREW : AD MOLLISS1MAM TUELLAM E GETICA 
 
 THE LAMENT OF HEX IRISH LOVER. CARUARUM FAMILIA OVIDIUS NASO 
 
 LAMENTATUR. 
 
 I. I. 
 
 Och hone ! Heu ! heu ! 
 
 Oh ! what will I do? Me tsdet, me pigct ! 
 
 Sure my love is all crost, Cor mihi riget o ! 
 
 Like a bud in the frost... Ut flos sub frigido... 
 
 And there's no use at all Et nox ipsa mi turn 
 
Lover and Ovid. 483 
 
 In my going to bed ; 
 
 Cum vadq dormitum. 
 
 For 'tis dhrames, and not sleep, 
 
 Infausta, insomnis, 
 
 That comes into my head.. v 
 
 Transcurritur omnis... 
 
 And 'tis all about you. 
 
 Hoc culpa fit tuft- 
 
 My sweet Molly Carew, 
 
 Mi, mollis Carha, 
 
 And indeed 'tis a sin 
 
 Sic mihi illudens, 
 
 And a shame. — 
 
 Nee pudens. — 
 
 You're complater than nature 
 
 Prodigium tu, re 
 Es, vera, naturae. 
 
 In every feature ; 
 
 The snow can't compare 
 
 Candidior lacte ;— 
 
 To your forehead so fair ; 
 And I rather would spy 
 
 Plus fronte cum hfic te, 
 
 Cum istis ocellis, 
 
 Just one blink of your eye 
 Than the purtiest star 
 
 Plus omnibus stellis 
 
 Mehercule vellem. — 
 
 That shines out of the sky ; 
 
 Sed heu, me imbellem ! 
 
 Tho'— by this and by that ! 
 
 A me, qui sum fidus, 
 
 For the matter o' that — 
 
 Vel ultimum sidus 
 
 You're more distant by far 
 
 , Non distat te magis... 
 
 Than that same. 
 
 Quid agis ! 
 
 Och hone, wierasthrew I 
 
 Heu! heu ! nisi tu 
 
 I am alone ' 
 
 Me ames, 
 
 In this world without you ! 
 
 Pereo ! pillaleu ! 
 
 2. 
 
 Och hone ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Heu ' heu ! 
 
 But why should I speak 
 Of your forehead ana eyes, 
 
 Sed cur sequar laude 
 
 Ocellos aut frontem 
 
 When your nose it defies 
 
 Si nasi, cum fraude, 
 
 Paddy Blake the schoolmaster 
 
 Praetereo pontem ?... 
 
 To put it in rhyme?... 
 
 Ast hie ego minus 
 Quam ipse Longinus 
 
 Though there's one Burke, 
 
 He says, 
 
 In verbis exprimem 
 
 Who would call it Snu&lime — 
 
 Hunc nasum sublimem... 
 
 And then for your cheek, 
 
 De florida. genfl. 
 
 Throth, 'twould take him a week 
 
 Vulgaris camoena 
 
 Its beauties to tell 
 
 Cantaret in vanum 
 
 As he'd rather : — 
 
 Per annum. — 
 
 Then your lips, machree ! 
 
 Turn, tibi puella ! 
 
 
 - Sic tument labella 
 Ut nil plus jucundum 
 
 They a pattern might be 
 
 For the cherries to grow.— 
 
 Sit, aut rubicundum; 
 
 'Twas an apple that tempted 
 
 Si primitus homo 
 
 Our mother, we know ; 
 
 Col lapsus est porno, 
 Si dolor et luctus 
 
 For apples were scarce 
 
 I suppose long ago : 
 
 Venerunt per fructus, 
 
 But at this time o' day. 
 *Pon my conscience I ll say, 
 Such cherries might tempt 
 
 Proh ! aetas nunc serior 
 
 Ne cadat, vereor, 
 
 Icta tarn bello 
 
 A man's father ! 
 
 Labello ! 
 
 Och hone, wierasthrew ! 
 
 Heu ! heu ! nisi tu 
 
 I'm alone 
 
 Me ames, 
 
 In this world without you ! 
 
 Pereo ! pillaleu 1 
 
 3- 
 Och hone ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Heu ! heu ! 
 
 By the man in the moon ! 
 
 Per comua lunae 
 
 You teaze mc all ways 
 
 Perpetub tu ne 
 
 That a woman can plaze ; '_ 
 
 Me vexes impune ?... 
 
 For you dance twice as high 
 With that thief Pat Macghee 
 
 I nunc choro salta 
 
 (Mac-ghius nam tecum) 
 
 As when you take share 
 
 PlantS, magis alta 
 
 Of a jig, dear, with me ; 
 
 Quam sueveris mecum !.,. 
 
484 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Though the piper I bate. 
 For fear the ould chate 
 Wouldn't play you your 
 Favourite tune. 
 
 And when you're at Mass 
 My devotion you crass, 
 For 'tis thinking of you 
 I am, Molly Carew ; 
 While you wear on purpose 
 A bonnet so deep, 
 That I can't at your sweet 
 Pretty face get a peep. 
 Oh ! lave off that bonnet, 
 Or else I'll lave on it 
 The loss of my wandering 
 Sowl ! 
 
 Tibicinem quando 
 Cogo fustigando 
 Ne falsum det melos, 
 Anhelus. — 
 
 A te in sacello 
 Vix mentem revello, 
 Heu ! misere scissam 
 Te inter et Missam ; 
 Tu latitas vero 
 Tarn stricto galero 
 Ut cernere vultum 
 Desiderem multum. 
 Et dubites jam, num 
 (Ob animx damnum) 
 Sit fas hunc deberi 
 Auferri? 
 
X. 
 
 % §aptismal CJraitf. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, July, 1837.) 
 
 [This seventh " Song of the Month " m the Miscellany purported to be sung in charac- 
 ter by Father Frout in celebration of the birth of the second volume of that new and 
 already popular periodical.] 
 
 Tune— "The Groves of Blarney." 
 
 'Ille ego qui quondam/' &c., &c. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the month of Janus, 
 When Boz, tp gain us, 
 Quite " Miscellaneous," 
 
 Flash'd his wit so keen, 
 One (Prout they call him) 
 In style most solemn, 
 Led off the volume 
 
 Of his magazine. 
 
 II. 
 Though Maga 'mongst her 
 Brighr lot of youngsters 
 Had many songsters 
 
 For her opening tome : 
 Yet she would rather 
 Invite " the Father," 
 And an indulgence gather 
 
 From the Pope of Rome. 
 
 III. 
 
 And such a beauty, 
 From head to shoe-tie, 
 Without dispute we 
 
 Found her first boy, 
 That she determined 
 (There's such a charm in't) 
 The Father's varmint 
 
 She'd again employ. 
 
 ASneid. 
 
 IV. 
 While other children 
 Are quite bewilderin', 
 The joy that fill'd her in 
 
 This bantling, 'cause 
 What eye but glistens, 
 And what ear but listens, 
 When the clergy christens 
 
 A babe of Boz ? 
 
 V. 
 
 I've got a scruple 
 That this young pupil 
 Surprised its parent 
 
 Ere her time was sped ; 
 Else I'm unwary, 
 Or 'tis she's a fairy, 
 For in January 
 
 She was brought to bed. 
 
 VI. 
 
 This infant may be 
 A six-months baby, 
 But may his cradle 
 
 Be blest ! say I : 
 And luck defend him. 
 And joy attend him, 
 Since we can't mend him, 
 
 Born in July. 
 
486 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VII. 
 
 He's no abortion, 
 But born to fortune ; 
 And most opportune, 
 
 Though before his time. 
 Him Muses nourish. 
 And make him flourish 
 Quite Tommy Moore-ish 
 
 Both in prose and rhyme. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I remember also 
 
 That the month they call so 
 
 From Roman Julius, 
 
 The ' ' Caesarian " styled, 
 Who was no gosling, 
 But like this Bozling, 
 From both a dazzling 
 
 And precocious child. 
 
 God Save the Queen. 
 
487 
 
 XI. 
 
 
 ${p fiptr's frogMss. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany 
 
 July, 1837.) 
 
 — o — 
 
 
 i. 
 
 I. 
 
 When I was a boy 
 
 Pater me clauserat 
 
 In my father's mud edifice, 
 
 Domi homunculum : 
 
 Tender and bare 
 
 Grunniens sus erat 
 
 As a pig in a sty : 
 
 Comes, ut mos : 
 
 Out of the door as I 
 
 Transibat tibicen 
 
 Look'd with a steady phiz, 
 
 J uxta domunculam 
 
 Who but Thade Murphy 
 
 Quando per januam 
 
 The piper went by. 
 
 Frotulios; 
 
 Says Thady, "But few play 
 
 Ille ait impromptu 
 
 This music — can you play?" 
 
 " Hue tibia num tu, 
 
 Says I, " I can't tell, 
 
 Ut te sine sumptu 
 
 For I never did try." 
 
 Edoceam vis?" 
 
 So he told me that he had a charm 
 
 Turn pressit amiculam 
 
 To make the pipes purtily speak ; 
 
 Sub ulnfl, vesiculam 
 
 Then squeezed a bag under his arm, 
 
 Quae soniim reddidit 
 
 When sweetly they set up a squeak ! 
 
 Vocibus his ; 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo ! 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo / 
 
 Och hone ! 
 
 $EU, tpfv ! 
 
 How he handled the drone 1 
 
 Modoflens, modo flans. 
 
 And then the sweet music he blew 
 
 Magico i\i\iv 
 
 Would have melted the heart of a 
 
 Cor et aurent vel lapidi dans 1 
 
 stone/ 
 
 
 z. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Your pipe," says I, " Thady, 
 
 ■Cui ego turn "In sic, ah 1 
 
 So neatly comes o'er me. 
 
 Me rapis musidl 
 
 Naked I'll wander 
 
 Ut sequar nudulus 
 
 Wherever it blows : 
 
 Tibicen te ! 
 
 And if my poor parents 
 
 Et si pater testibus 
 
 Should try to recover me. 
 
 Quaerat me, vestibua 
 
 Sure, it won't be 
 
 Redibit aedepol ! 
 
 By describing my clothes. 
 
 Vacui re. 
 
488 The Works of Father Pront. 
 
 The music I hear now 
 
 Sic melos quod audio 
 
 Takes hold of my ear now, 
 
 Me replet gaudio 
 
 And leads me all over 
 
 Ut trahor campos et 
 
 The world by the nose." 
 
 Flumina trans : 
 
 So I follow'd his bagpipe so sweet, 
 
 Jam linquo rudibus 
 
 And I sung as I leap'd like a frog, 
 
 Hie in paludibus 
 
 ' ' Adieu to my family seat, 
 
 Patris tigurium 
 
 So pleasantly placed in a bog." 
 
 Splendide stans. 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo / 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo I 
 
 Och hone I 
 
 Dum tibicen, tu. 
 
 How we handled the drone / 
 
 Modoflens, modo flans. 
 
 And then the sweet music we blew 
 
 Iteras i\i\ev 
 
 Would have melted the heart of 
 
 Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans/ 
 
 a stone/ 
 
 
 3- 
 
 III. 
 
 Full five years I follow'd him, 
 
 Ut arle sic magica 
 
 Nothing could sunder us ; 
 
 Egi quinquennium : 
 
 Till he one morning 
 
 Magistro tragica 
 
 Had taken a sup, 
 
 Accidit res ; 
 
 And slipt from a bridge 
 
 Bacchi nam numine 
 
 In a river just under us 
 
 Pontis cacumine 
 
 Souse to tlie bottom 
 
 Dum staret flumine 
 
 Just like a blind pup. 
 
 Labitur pes ! 
 
 He roar'd and he bawl'd out ; 
 
 "E sinu fluctuum 
 
 And I also call'd out, 
 
 O puer, due luum 
 
 " Now Thady, my friend. 
 
 (Clamat) didascalum 
 
 Don't you mean to come up ? " 
 
 Fer opem nans ! "... 
 
 He was dead as a nail in a door — 
 
 Ast ego renuo : 
 
 Poor Thady was laid on the shelf. 
 
 Et sumens denud 
 
 So I took up his pipes on the shore, 
 
 Littore tibias 
 
 And now I've set up for myself. 
 
 Sustuli fans. 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo ! 
 
 Fa-ra-la-la-ra-la-loo / 
 
 Och hone ! 
 
 $EU, tf>tv ! 
 
 Don't I handle the drone ! 
 
 Modoflens, modo flans. 
 
 And play such sweet music? I, too. 
 
 Magico eAeXeu 
 
 Can't I soften the heart of a 
 
 Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans I 
 
 stone ! 
 
 
439 
 
 XII. 
 
 ®{re §anhk gjtttol. 
 
 [Bcnlley's Miscellany, September, 1837.) 
 
 [This ninth " Song of the Month" in Bentley, like the first and the seventh, was from 
 the hand of Father Prout.] 
 
 " Duo quisque Alpina coruscat 
 Gaesa maim. " — j&neid, lib. 8. 
 
 Tlav irpayna oWff ex ZL Actios.— Epictetus. 
 
 September the first on the moorland hath burst, 
 
 And already with jocund carol 
 Each Nimrod of Nouse hurries off to the grouse, 
 
 And has shoulder' d his Double Barrel : 
 For well doth he ken, as he hies through the glen, 
 That scanty will be his laurel 
 Who hath not 
 On the spot 
 (Should he miss a first shot) 
 Some resource in a Double Barrel. 
 
 'Twas the Goddess of Sport, in her woodland court, 
 
 Diana, first taught this moral, 
 Which the Goddess of Love soon adopted, and strove 
 
 T' improve on the " double barrel." 
 Hence her Cupid, we know, put two strings to his bow, 
 And she laughs when two lovers quarrel. 
 At the lot 
 Of the sot 
 Who, to soothe him, han't got 
 The resource of a Double Barrel. 
 
 Nay, the hint was too good to lie hid in the wood, 
 1 Or to lurk in two lips of coral ; 
 
 Hence the God of the Grape (who his betters would ape) 
 
 Knows the use of a Double Barrel. 
 His escutcheon he decks with a double XX, 
 And his blithe October carol 
 Follows up 
 With the sup 
 Of a flowing ale cup 
 September's Double Barrel. 
 
 Watergrasshill, Kal. vii LlM 
 
49° The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 f odiral ©jjTstle farm Jfat^r front to §o§. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, January, 1838.) 
 
 [It was from Genoa the Superb, under date the 14th of December, 1837, that Mahony 
 despatched to Charles Dickens, then in his twenty-sixth year, this genial apostrophe.] 
 
 I. 
 
 A Rhyme ! a rhyme ! 
 
 From a distant clime — 
 From the Gulf of the Genoese : 
 
 O'er the rugged scalps 
 
 Of the Julian Alps, 
 Dear Boz, I send you these. 
 
 To light the ' Wick ' 
 
 Your candlestick 
 Holds up, or, should you list. 
 
 To usher in 
 
 The yarn you spin 
 Concerning Oliver Twist. 
 
 II. 
 
 Immense applause 
 
 You've gained, O Boz ! 
 Through Continental Europe ; 
 
 You've made Pickwick 
 
 CEcumenick ; 
 Of fame you have a sure hope : 
 
 For here your books 
 
 Are thought, gadzooks ! 
 A greater luxe than any 
 
 That have issued yet, 
 
 Hot press'd or wet, 
 From the types of Galignani. 
 
Poetical Epistle from Father Prout to Boz. 491 
 
 in. 
 
 But neither when 
 You sport your pen, 
 
 potent mirth-compeller 1 
 Winning our hearts 
 
 " In monthly parts," 
 Can Pickwick or Sam Weller 
 
 Cause us to weep 
 
 With pathos deep. 
 Or shake with laugh spasmodical, 
 
 As when you drain 
 
 Your copious vein 
 For Bentley's periodical. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Folks all enjoy 
 
 Your ' ' Parish Boy," 
 So truly you depict him ; 
 
 But I, alack ! 
 
 While thus you track 
 Your English poor-laws victim, 
 
 Think of the poor 
 
 On t'other shore ; 
 Poor who, unheeded, perish ; 
 
 By squires despoil'd, 
 
 By "patriots " guild — 
 
 1 mean the starving Irish. 
 
 V. 
 
 Yet there's no dearth 
 
 Of Irish mirth, 
 Which, to a mind of feeling, 
 
 Seemeth to be 
 
 The Helot's glee 
 Before the Spartan reeling : 
 
 Such gloomy thought 
 
 O'ercometh not 
 The glow of England's humour. 
 
 Thrice happy isle ! 
 
 Long may the smile 
 Of genuine joy illume her ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Write on, young sage 1 
 
 Still o'er the page 
 Pour forth the flood of fancy ; 
 
 Divinely droll ! 
 
 Wave o'er the soul 
 Wit's wand of necromancy. 
 
 Behold ! e'en now 
 
 Around your brow 
 Th' undying laurel thickens ! 
 
 For Swift or Sterne 
 
 Might live— and learn 
 A thing or two from DICKENS. 
 
492 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 %\t Pisileto*. 
 
 (Bentley's Miscellany, yanuary, 1842.) 
 
 A Prophet sat in the Temple gate, 
 
 And he spoke each passer-by, 
 In thrilling tones — with words of weight, 
 And fire in his rolling eye ! 
 " Pause thee, believing Jew / 
 Ncr make one step beyond 
 Until thy heart hath conn'd 
 The mystery of this wand" 
 And a rod from his robe he drew ; — 
 'Twas a withered bough 
 Torn long ago 
 From the trunk on which it grew. 
 But the branch long torn 
 Show'd a bud new bom, 
 That had blossom'd there anew. 
 That wand was " Jesse's rod," 
 Symbol, 'tis said, 
 Of Her, the Maid- 
 Yet Mother of our God! 
 
 II. 
 
 A Priest of Egypt sat meanwhile 
 
 Beneath his palm-tree hid, 
 On the sacred brink of the flowing Nile, 
 
 And there saw mirror'd, 'mid 
 Tall obelisk and shadowy pile 
 
 Of ponderous pyramid, 
 One lowly, lovely Lotus plant, 
 
 Pale orphan of the flood ; 
 And long did that aged hierophant 
 
 Gaze on that beauteous bud ; 
 
The Mistletoe. 493 
 
 For well he thought as he saw it float 
 
 O'er the waste of waters wild, 
 On the long-remember'd cradle-boat 
 Of the wondrous Hebrew child : — 
 Xor was that lowly lotus dumb 
 Of a mightier Infant still, to come, 
 If mystic skiff 
 And hieroglyph 
 Speak aught in Luxor's catacomb. 
 
 III. 
 
 A Greek sat on Colonna's cape, 
 
 In his lofty thoughts alone, 
 And a volume lay on Plato's lap, 
 For he was that lonely one ; 
 And oft as the sage 
 Gazed o'er the page 
 His forehead radiant grew ; 
 For in Wisdom's womb, 
 Of the world to come 
 A vision blest his view. 
 He broach'd that theme in the Academe 
 
 Of the teachful olive grove — 
 And a chosen few that secret knew 
 In the Porch's dim alcove. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A Sybil sat in Cumse's cave 
 
 In the hour of infant Rome, 
 And her vigil kept and her warning gave 
 
 Of the Holy One to come. 
 'Twas she who cull'd the hallow'd branch. 
 
 And silent took the helm, 
 When he, the Founder-Sire, would launch 
 
 His bark o'er Hades' realm : 
 But chief she pour'd her vestal soul 
 Through many a bright illumined scroll. 
 By priest and sage, 
 Of an after-age, 
 Conn'd in the lofty Capitol. 
 
 A Druid stood in the dark oak wood 
 
 Of a distant northern land, 
 And he seem'd to hold a sickle of gold 
 
 In the grasp of his wither' d hand; 
 And he moved him slowly round the girth 
 
 Of an aged oak to see 
 If an orphan plant of wondrous birth 
 
 Had clung to the old oak-tree. 
 And anon he knelt, and from his belt 
 
 Unloosen'd his golden blade, 
 Then rose and cull'd the Mistletoe 
 
 Under the woodland shade. 
 
494 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 VI. 
 
 O blessed bough, meet emblem thou 
 
 Of all dark Egypt knew, 
 Of all foretold to the wise of old. 
 
 To Roman, Greek, and Jew. 
 And long, God grant, time-honour' d plant, 
 
 Live we to see thee hung 
 In cottage small, as in baron's hall, 
 
 Banner and shield among 1 
 Thus fitly rule the mirth of Yule 
 
 Aloft in thy place of pride, 
 Still usher forth, in each land of the North, 
 
 The solemn Christmas Tide! 
 
XV. 
 
 te T&ttiibxtKut of ^quilania. 
 
 (Bentiey's Miscellany, February, 1842.) 
 
 When Harrison Ainsworth, then a young writer of promise, took up James 
 Crichton in place of Dick Turpin, a noble field lay before him. I sketched 
 the plan, and pointed out to him that the story, in all biographies, of Crichton's 
 having been killed in a drunken brawl at Mantua, by Duke Gonzaga, on the 
 3rd July, 1583, was manifestly untrue, as there was, to my knowledge, at Paris, 
 in the " Bibliotheque du Roi," a printed broadsheet of verses by him, on the 
 death of St. Carlo Borromeo. who died on the 4th November, 1584 (a fact he 
 was able to verify by getting another copy from Milan). From other sources I 
 showed that there were secret reasons for his reported death, that he lay con- 
 cealed at Venice as corrector of the press for Aldus Manutius,* up to 1585, 
 was made private secretary at Rome to Pope Peretti when "Sixtus Quintus" 
 became monarch in central Italy, and that he was the life and soul of that great 
 man's short reign ; I had proof that he was at Lisbon in 1587, and that, in 
 1588, he sailed thence with his friend Lope de Vega on board the Invincible 
 Armada, to avenge the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. That his galleon, 
 driven up the German Sea and rounding Scotland, was wrecked in the winter 
 of that year on the coast of Ayrshire. 
 
 That, disgusted with the triumphant reign of Elizabeth, the revolt of the Low 
 Countries from Spain, the edict of Nantes granted to the Huguenots by Henri 
 Quatre, and the general aspect of Europe, he gave up continental affairs, settled 
 down as a tranquil farmer, married a Highland lassie, and lived to a good old 
 age, as evinced by his well-authenticated song of "John Anderson my jo." 
 
 This startling narrative of what was in some sort the posthumous history of 
 his hero, Ainsworth did not grapple with, but stopped at Paris, making him a 
 kind of fencing-master, rope-dancer, and court dandy, marrying him to some 
 incredible princess of the blood, and so forth. 
 
 * The presses of Aldus, and Crichton's share in their efficiency, suggest to me the 
 propriety of acknowledging the debt due by the defunct Prout to the keen and accurate 
 supervision of Mr. Bonn while these sheets were in progress. Quick perception, and 
 intimate acquaintance with the several languages used by Prout, rectified many errors, 
 and happy tact restored his text in many passages. 
 
496 The Works of Father Proiit. 
 
 That Crichton, during his long life in Ayrshire, under an humbler name, was 
 author of most of the popular songs and tunes that have enriched the Land o' 
 Cakes is known to a few only ; but Robert Burns was in the secret, as the reader 
 has already discovered. 
 
 In 1841, on returning from Hungary and Asia Minor by the south of France, 
 I learnt that Ainsworth had left the tale of Crichton half told, and had taken up 
 with Blueskin and Jack Sheppard, Flitches of Bacon and Lancashire Witches, 
 and thought such things were " literature." Hence this ballad, in which I have 
 endeavoured to express what I know would have been the sentiments of old 
 Prout, in language as near his own as I can command. 
 
 F. M. 
 
 Paris, Nov. i, 1859. 
 
 THE REDBREAST OF AQUITANIA. 
 
 AN HUMBLE BALLAD. 
 
 "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? yet not one of them shall fall to the 
 ground without your father.' '—St. Matthew, x. 29. 
 
 " Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen. " 
 
 Julius Ggsar. 
 
 " Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " Genius, left to shiver 
 On the bank, 'tis said. 
 Died of that cold river." 
 
 Tom Moore. 
 
 River trip from Oh, 'twas bitter cold 
 Thoulouse to As our steamboat roll'd 
 
 ?k ™;„ „ Down th e pathway old 
 
 Thermometer at « f ., £ „ ' 
 
 •o. Snow 1 foot . Of the deep Garonne,— 
 and a half deep. And the peasant lank, 
 Use of wooden While his sabot sank 
 shoes. In the snow-clad bank, 
 
 Saw it roll on, on. 
 
 Ye Gascon far- And he hied him home 
 mer hieth to his To his toit de chaume ; 
 XiSSfc^iL And for those who roam 
 BoiSe g " On the broad bleak flood 
 
 Cared he ? — Not a thought ; 
 
 For his beldame brought 
 
 His wine-flask fraught 
 With the grape's red blood. 
 
 He wanneth his And the wood-block blaze 
 cold shins at a Faj his vacant gaze 
 
 Good'bve^o M we trod the maze 
 1 hhn. Of the river down. 
 
 Soon we left behind 
 I On the frozen wind 
 
 t All farther mind 
 
 Of that vacant clown. 
 
Tke Redbreast of Aquitania. 497 
 
 Ye Father meet- But there came anon, 
 ethastrayac- As we joumey'd on 
 aS'" Down ihe deep Garonne, 
 An acquaintancy, 
 Which we deem'd, I count, 
 Of more high amount. 
 For it oped the fount 
 Of sweet sympathy. 
 
 Not ye famous 'Twas a stranger drest 
 albatrossofthat In a downy vest, 
 aincient mariner "t.. «- r» ji. « 
 
 olde Coleridge, T "f a wee ^ dbreas , t ,! 
 butapoore (Not an 'Albatross, ) 
 
 robin. But a wanderer, meek, 
 
 Who fain would seek 
 O'er the bosom bleak 
 Of that flood to cross. 
 
 Ye sparrow And we watch'd him oft 
 crossing ye river As he soar ' d aloft 
 
 SEES*!* 0n P his pinions *?*■ 
 
 fire-ship. Poor wee weak thing, 
 
 And we soon could mark 
 That he sought our bark, 
 As a resting ark 
 For his weary wing. 
 
 Delusive hope. But the bark, fire-fed, 
 Ye fire-ship On her pathway sped, 
 runneth IO knots And sh £ far ^ 
 an hour : tis no ^ r , u .. ,- , 
 go for ye spar- . °j 'he tiny bird, 
 row. And quicker in the van 
 
 Her swift wheels ran, 
 As the quickening fan 
 Of his winglets stirr'd. 
 
 Ye byrde is lee 
 
 Vain, vain pursuit ! 
 
 a wilde goose 
 
 Toil without fruit ! 
 
 chaceadownye For his forked foot 
 
 river. 
 
 Shall not anchor there. 
 
 
 Tho' the boat meanwhile 
 
 
 Down the stream beguile 
 
 
 For a bootless mile 
 
 
 The poor child of air ! 
 
 Symptomes of 
 
 And 'twas plain at last 
 
 fatigue. Tis 
 
 He was flagging fast, 
 
 melancholic to 
 fall between 2 
 stools* 
 
 That his hour had past 
 In that effort vain ; 
 
 
 Far from either bank, 
 
 
 Sans a saving plank, 
 
 
 Slow, slow he sank, j 
 
 
 Nor uprose again. i 
 
498 
 
 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 Mort of ye 
 birde. 
 
 And the cheerless wave 
 Just one ripple gave 
 As it oped him a grave 
 
 In its bosom cold, 
 And he sank alone, 
 With a feeble moan. 
 In that deep Garonne, 
 
 And then all was told. 
 
 Ye old man at ye But our pilot grey 
 helm weepeth Wiped a tear away ; 
 In the broad Biscaye 
 
 He had lost his boy ! 
 That sight brought back 
 On its furrow'd track 
 The remember'd wreck 
 Of long perish'd joy ! 
 
 for a sonne lost 
 in ye bay of Bis 
 caye. 
 
 Condoleance of And the tear half hid 
 ye ladies ; eke of T n so f t Beauty's lid 
 i chasseur d in- Stole for , h unbid 
 fanteru llgire. For ^ redbreast bM . 
 
 And the feeling crept, — 
 For a Warrior wept ; 
 And the silence kept 
 Found no fitting word. 
 
 Olde Father But / mused alone, 
 Proline sadly For I thought of one 
 moralizethanent whom I well had known 
 ye mrae. In my earUer ^^ 
 
 Of a gentle mind, 
 Of a soul refined, 
 Of deserts design'd 
 For the Palm of Praise. 
 
 promise. 
 
 Ye Streame of And well would it seem 
 Lyfe. Ayounge That o'er Life's dark stream, 
 man of fayre Easy , ask for him 
 
 In his flight of Fame, 
 Was the Skyward Path 
 O'er the billow's wrath, 
 That for Genius hath 
 
 Ever been the same. 
 
 Hysearlieflyght And I saw him soar 
 across ye From the morning shore, 
 
 streame. y^^ hjs fresh wings bore 
 
 Him athwart the tide, 
 Soon with powers unspent 
 As he forward went. 
 His wings he had bent 
 
 On the sought-for side. 
 
The Redbreast of Aquitania, 
 
 499 
 
 A newe object 
 calleth his eye 
 from ye maine 
 chaunce. 
 
 But while thus he flew, 
 Lo ! a vision new 
 Caught his wayward view 
 
 With a semblance fair, 
 And that new-found wooer 
 Could, alas ! allure 
 From his pathway sure 
 
 The bright child of air. 
 
 Instabilitie of For he turn'd aside, 
 purpose a fatall And adown the tide 
 evyll in lyfe. For a brief hour plied 
 
 His yet unspent force. 
 And to gain that goal 
 Gave the powers of soul 
 Which, unwasted, whole, 
 
 Had achieved his course. 
 
 Thisisyemorall A bright Spirit, young, 
 of FatherProut's Unwept, unsung, 
 humble ballade, Sank ( has ^^ 
 
 The drifts of the stream ; 
 Not a record left, — 
 Of renown bereft, 
 By thy cruel theft, 
 
 O DELUSIVE DREAM. 
 
 L'ENVOY TO W. H. AINSWORTH, ESQ. 
 
 WHILOME AUTHOR OP THE "ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, 
 CHRONICLER OP "JACK SHEPPARD." 
 
 which he wrotte Thus sadly I thought 
 by waxlight in As that bird unsought 
 
 The remembrance brought 
 
 Of thy bright day ; 
 
 And I penn'd full soon 
 
 This Dirge, while the moon 
 
 On the broad Garonne 
 
 Shed a wintry ray. 
 
 F.M. 
 
 SUBSEQUENT 
 
 the hostel de 
 Gascoigne at 
 Bourdeaux, 6 
 Jan. 1841. 
 
500 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Inanpral @ot to % %ni\ax at " Sanity $m." 
 
 (The Cornhill Magazine, January, i860.) 
 
 [I am indebted to the courtesy of the Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. for the privilege of 
 including among the works of Father Prout this cordial tribute to his old friend and inti- 
 mate, Thackeray, for whose genius he entertained the highest admiration.] 
 
 I. 
 
 Ours is a faster, quicker age : 
 Yet erst in Goldsmith's homely Wakefield Vicarage, 
 While Lady Blarney, from the West End, glozes 
 
 'Mid the Primroses, 
 
 Fudge ! cries Squire Thornhill, 
 Much to the wonder of young greenhorn Moses. 
 
 Such word of scorn ill 
 Matches the " Wisdom Fair " thy whim proposes 
 
 To hold on Cornhill. 
 
 II. 
 
 With Fudge, or Blarney, or the "Thames on Fire 1" 
 
 Treat not thy buyer ; 
 
 But proffer good material — 
 
 A genuine Cereal, 
 Value for twelvepence, and not dear at twenty. 
 Such wit replenishes thy Horn of Plenty I 
 
 III. 
 Nor wit alone dispense, 
 
 But sense ; 
 And with thy sparkling Xerez 
 
 Let us have Ceres. 
 Of loaf thou hast no lack, 
 Nor set, like Shakespeare's zany, fort 
 
 With lots of sack, 
 Of bread one pennyworth. 
 
Inaugural Ode to the Author of " Vanity Fair." 501 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sprightly, and yet sagacious. 
 Funny, yet farinaceous, 
 Dashing, and yet methodical — 
 So may thy periodical, 
 On this auspicious morn, 
 
 Exalt its horn, 
 Throned on the Hill of Corn ! 
 
 V. 
 
 Of aught that smacks of sect surplice, or synod, 
 
 Be thy grain winnow'd ! 
 Nor deign to win one laugh 
 
 With empty chaff. 
 Shun aught o'er which dullard or bigot gloats i 
 
 Nor seek our siller 
 With meal from Titus Oates 
 
 Or flour of Joseph Miller. 
 
 VI. 
 
 There's corn in Egypt still 
 (Pilgrim from Cairo to Cornhill !), 
 
 Give each his fill. 
 
 But, all comers among 
 
 Treat best the young ; 
 Fill the big brothers' knapsacks from thy bins, 
 But slip the Cup of Love in Benjamin's. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Next as to those 
 
 Who bring their lumbering verse or ponderous prose 
 To where good Smith and Elder 
 Have so long held their 
 
 Well-gamish'd Cornhill storehouse- 
 Bid them not bore us. 
 Tell them instead 
 
 To take their load next street, the Hall of Lead ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Only one word besides. 
 
 As he who tanneth hides 
 Stocketh with proper implements his tannery : 
 
 So thou, Friend ! do not fail 
 
 To store a stout com-flail, 
 Ready for use, within thy Cornhill granary. 
 
 Of old thou walk'd abroad, 
 Prompt to right wrongs, Caliph Haroun al Rashid : 
 
 Deal thus with Fraud, 
 Or Job or Humbug— thrash it ! 
 
502 The Works of Father Prout. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Courage, old Friend ! long found 
 Firm at thy task, nor in fixt purpose fickle : 
 
 Up ! choose thy ground. 
 Put forth thy shining sickle ;— 
 
 Shun the dense underwood 
 
 Of Dunce or Dunderhood ; 
 But reap North, South, East, Far West, 
 
 The world-wide Harvest ! 
 
 LONDON AND COUNTY PRIMING. WORKS, BAZAAR BUILDINGS, LONDON, W.C. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4972.M33 1881 
 
 The works of Father Prout; (the Rev. Fran 
 
 3 1924 013 521 004