histories of two men, who, however they genius, offer a painful coincidence in their may have differed in the amplitude of their sufferings and their fall: JOHNSON ON SAVAGE. "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who languish under any part of his sufferings shall be enabled to fortify their patience by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which the abilities of Savage did not exempt him; or if those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence; and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible." KEBLE ON BURNS. "Verum in hac re, sicut in omni vita, plurimum ei norint insanus quidam ac plane temerarius ad voluptatem ardor. Hinc iræ, metus, ægritudines; hinc mens mali sibi conscia, nec satis cuiquam aut hominum, aut rerum benigna; hinc de republica cæca murmura, indignatio liberrima, si qui beatiores quam pro meritis suis viderentur. Contra, Homerus, cum fuerit, ut in ethnico scriptore, maxime pudibundus, consentaneum erat ut rebus præsentibus semper se hilarem et æquum præstaret. Non enim frustra dictum est, quærendum esse, 'quid pure tranquillet;' ut intelligamus, qui velit quieto esse animo, illi ante omnia vivendum esse caste ac pure." Mr. Keble examines the question, which was written before and the second after the has been so frequently agitated, whether the blindness of the author. And this hypothesis writer of the Homeric poems was deprived is countenanced by the internal evidence of of his sight during the period of their com- the poems themselves. In the Iliad every position. The natural and immediate reply thing moves and every thing lives; the cloud to the question would be a refutation of this drives before the gale; the billows whiten supposition. The richness, the accuracy, at their edges; the branches of the trees the abundance of his pictures, might seem wave and toss; still and animated life are to demand, not only the full possession, but exhibited in action. But in the Odyssey the constant employment of the faculty of the prevailing characteristic is a calm and vision. But a little reflection will change beautiful repose; instead of the cloud drithe aspect of the argument. After all, Me- ven before the gale, we have the mist melting mory is the truest muse of the painter; and before the morning sun; for the agitated we think that it will be admitted by every boughs of trees, we have there the quiet reader that the season when a landscape reflection on the grass; the cool and flɔwcomes out with the greatest freshness and ery valley replaces the savage mountaindistinctness of reality is not the period of pass. The descriptions are general not parits being visited; it is rather in the solitude, ticular, and give the outline, not the feathe repose of the evening, when the mind tures, of the landscape. And such a differrecollects the scattered impressions of the ence would be quite in harmony with the day, that the natural scene is usually found hypothesis of the possession of sight at one to revive in all its original colors. It was, period, and the loss of it at another. The probably, when bending over the dying descriptions in the Iliad would be commuembers in his garden-house, that Milton nicated by the eye, those in the Odyssey by beheld unclosing to his feet the leafy shades the recollection. And the reader of Milton of Vallombrosa. The parting twilight is will scarcely fail to observe the same abthe most congenial atmosphere for memory sence of minute delineation of natural obto paint in, and we imagine that if the fa- jects, which has been noticed in the last miliar history of genius could be written, it poem of Homer. And while we express would be found that some of the most glow- our conviction that Mr. Keble has most ing sketches of summer and autumn, ver- pleasingly established his argument respectdure and fruitfulness, have been composed ing the disposition and the blindness of the when the snow froze to the windows, and Greek poet, we cannot refrain from presentthe redbreast exhibited all the intrepidity ing our readers with his translation of Milof his soul in raking the garden-path for ton's sonnet upon his blindness, bringing crumbs. We consider the distinction him, as it does, so touchingly into comparwhich Mr. Keble intimates between the ison with that "blind Mæonides," whom Iliad and Odyssey to be both ingenious and he proposed to himself as his august model: just. He would suggest that the first poem MILTON IN HIS BLINDNESS. "When I consider how my light is spent To serve therewith my Maker, and present best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; MILTON TRANSLATED. όταν μ' υπελθη φωτος ιμέρος, μεσον world, who, from the examination of an ancient work of art, could turn aside with the exulting hope upon his lip, "Good!-But what will you say when you shall behold this dome of my building. suspended in the open firmament of heaven?" In the warrior and the artist, the sleepless eye and the kindling lip were only the throes of an eager emulation, excited by the great originals who had preceded them. But there is yet another result which might be justly expected to arise out of the the presence of a finished production of genius. Its examination awakes a taste unfelt before; it opens new scenes hitherto unnoticed in the still landscape of thought; it makes readers of poetry, and so leads them from the dark and tumultuous purgatory of rude and sensual occupation into the paradise of imagination and grace. Mr. Keble dwells at some 'length and with much ingenuity upon the influence which the genius of Homer exercised upon the literature of Greece. It was the sap, which, circulating through every branch of the tree of knowledge, communicated verdure and bloom to the remotest leaf. He was not only than all dramatists more dramatic, but he was the original of the drama itself; all the gentler shapes and aspects of imagination, as developed in the lyrical poems of Greece, were only so many violets growing round his massive trunk, and sheltered from the wind and storm by the majesty of his shade. Nor in poetry alone is his presence recognised and felt in the clear and wide-flowing stream of Plato's philosophy you discover the boughs of the Homeric imagination sending down into the transparent depths of the water the reflected shadows of their beauty and rich- Pindar gives to the graver poets of his ness; and even in the tone and melody of time a title which indicates their descent the historic narrative the ear catches the from Homer; and we have already observed same delicious cadence and musical motion that of all the dramatists he was the most of the leaves. It is not difficult to conceive dramatic. The Greek drama, accordingly, how mighty and lasting may be the emo- was only the Greek epic recast; narrative tions which the contemplation of so magni- was narrowed into dialogue; the poet disficent a growth of intellectual beauty awak- appeared in the chorus. Poetry, however, ens. The rushing wind of inspiration, de- lost some of its splendor in the transfor scending from these high places of thought, mation. The action of the stage was quickens many a stream into a rapid and less vivid and truth-like than the action noble current. And of all the appearances of the epic; and Paris burnishing his of genius we love most to gaze upon it when armor, and Venus arrayed by the Graces, it has just descended from some sacred and spoke to the eye with a livelier force than inspiring communion with a higher Intel- any scene in the Agamemnon or the Orestes. ligence than itself, upon the mountain-top To Homer we owe Eschylus. Keble sugof learning or fancy. And we thus con- gests some points of difference between the template with no common interest the eyes two. Their style was essentially unlike. of Themistocles kept awake and flashing In Homer every word is simple, natural, by the trophies of Miltiades; and we listen and clear; through the atmosphere of his with no common earnestness to the illustri- language his fancy glides with an easy ous architect of the noblest church in the and a noiseless motion; like the dove of Virgil, when floating through the unruffled thread of comedy with the dark web of a air, "Tradit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas." tragic history. Of this manner examples Keble appears to deprecate the modern French custom of omitting entirely all intermixture of comic action. In Eschylus, on the contrary, every word is big, tumultuous, and swelling; the comic poet happily struck at this peculiarity of his manner by applying to it the epithet лνушσας. He piles tower upon tower; and to read him after Homer is to turn from Tasso to Dante. We cannot follow the professor A digression to the Chorus of the tragedy into his minute and ingenious analysis of introduces an accidental allusion to the the tragedies of Eschylus, in which we are nightingale, and the manner in which poets occasionally reminded of the acute conjec- have spoken of her; and it is interesting tures and pleasing illustrations of some of to observe how infinitely happy and true our English tragedies by Coleridge. We beyond the description of any other poet, is may refer, however, to a comparison which the brief character given by Homer of the Keble makes between Eschylus and Shak- music of this bird. Virgil omits to mark speare in one feature of their poetical char- altogether the distinctive peculiarities of its acter: we allude to the introduction of habits and its song, while Homer gives them ironical or jocose passages into the centre all with a charm of reality which is wonof a serious action-an intermingling of a derful. The reader will compare the two: The picture of Virgil bears nothing to the nightingale to conceal itself, when it individualize it; it might be any bird of the sings, among the thickest leaves and branchwood warbling in the poplar shade; the es of the tree, which is expressed in the only feature of the description that pos- πεταλοισιν πυκινοισιν ; while the many chansesses any peculiar felicity of adaptation is ges and inflections of its voice are positively the allusion to the clear and continued gush echoed in the olʊnza. In the midst of of melody that fills the neighborhood with this interesting disquisition we come to a its sound. But in Homer the habits and pause. We must postpone the considerathe music of the nightingale are indicated tion of one of the most delightful portions with the accuracy of the naturalist and the of these volumes-the Lectures on Virgil grace of the poet. It is the peculiarity of and the Latin poets-to our next number. MUMMY WHEAT.-The Derry Journal, quoted by the Northern Whig, gives an account of the growth of a crop of grain from seed found in the folds of a mummy unrolled in 1840, and planted in the grounds of Mr. Reid, nurseryman at Derry. It is thus described :-The specimens of the Egyptian bear a much larger and weightier ear than our common wheats, and have a proportionable stronger stem or stalk. The ear itself is full six inches long, and is provided with long awns or beards, like barley; its breadth, taken diagonally, measures in one direction more than an inch, and in the other about half an inch; it has, therefore, a somewhat quadrangular appearance from the base, till within one third of its whole length from the top, from which, till its termination, it resembles the ear of barley. But, in our opinion, its distinguishing peculiarity (which accounts for its great breadth) consists in the disposition of the greatest portion of the grain in earlets, or small ears, which lie so compactly and close to the main ear, that their existence as separate ears, is detected only by manipulation. The grain, in size, form, consistency, and color, is similar to the produce of this country; and, from its being very prolific, its cultivation will merit the attention of our best agriculturists.—Lit. Gaz. THE ROBERTSES ON THEIR TRAVELS. BY MRS, TROLLOPE, From the New Monthly Magazine. ing the most affectionate inclination to embrace her, did time and place adhere. This part of" friendship's holy rite" was now wanting, which was a great deal the more provoking because the responding caress to which it gave birth was never performed by Maria without peculiar satisfaction, first because she felt certain that she did it with very peculiar grace; and, secondly, because at that time she knew of nothing else which she could do which would be likely to give her an air decidedly French. UNFORTUNATELY for the Roberts family, the brilliant weekly ball of Madame de Soissonac recurred on the evening following the important day on which the "undaunted Edward" had thought proper to peril his hopes by uttering the energetic and very decisive exclamation of "Que tu es belle!" as related in the last chapter. Madame de Soissonac, though the rents As to the young man himself, who had which supplied the funds for her splendid been sufficiently puzzled by the fair lady's hospitalities were furnished, not by the manner of receiving the first impassioned plough, but by the loom, was much too words he had ventured to utter, to feel that well-bred a person to make a fuss and a he had rather enter her saloon accompascene about any thing. She would as soon nied by his mother, father, and sisters, than have thought of stirring up the dust alone,-as for the still aspiring, but a little and sand which lay unseen in sediment frightened Edward, he was only more elabat the bottom of the marble reservoir, orately elegant in his dress than on any whence sprang the sparkling fountain former occasion, and he had not been five which refreshed the blossom-scented air of minutes in the room, which his knowledge her fourth drawing-room, as have clouded of the world convinced him was long enough her fair brow with a frown when she saw to prove that there was no immediate intenthe accustomed group of Robertses make tion of kicking him out of it, before he their appearance. That the offending completely recovered his equanimity, and youth himself was to "live a man forbid," failed not speedily to address Madame de was, of course, a matter decided upon; but Soissonac in an accent which none of the Madame de Soissonac understood the busi-acute bystanders could mistake either for ness before her a great deal too well to set indifference or timidity, with "Nous allons about it by drawing all eyes upon her, by danser ensemble ! N'est pas ?" marked rudeness to his family. No, she received them with the same bland smile as heretofore, and even the wide awake Mrs. Roberts herself would have found it difficult to specify any point in the conduct of their very graceful entertainer that indicated any alteration in her manner of receiving them. True it is, indeed, that before the end of the evening the sensitive Maria remarked that Madame de Soissonac, whom she chose to consider as her own very particular friend, had not once given her the wished-for opportunity of practising that recently acquired caressing little manœuvre by which ladies gracefully proclaim across the largest theatre, or the most crowded ball-room, their tender affection for each other. On former occasions it is certain that this very distinguished specimen of the Boursier aristocracy had once, twice, thrice, in the course of a single evening, been seen to flutter the taper tips of her close-fitting, snow-white, inimitable gants de Paris, &c. within half an inch of her pretty mouth, But nevertheless and notwithstanding all with her smiling eyes fixed the while on the this fair-seeming continuation of the most delighted Maria Roberts, in token of feel-important acquaintance they had made, it Had Madame de Soissonac answered at all to this amiable invitation, it is probable that her manner would have so far responded to his as to have been at least equally free from indifference and timidity; but she knew better. Of course she did not hear him, either on that occasion or any other throughout the whole evening, on which he thought proper to address her. But as this deafness produced no change in the charming expression of her pretty face, the youth attributed his disappointment wholly to the density of the brilliant crowd which filled the rooms. And so far all was well, and led to no deeper expression of mortification than was exhaled in the ear of one of his new friends, whom he was so fortunate as to meet there, by a few such phrases as "It is difficult, I promise you, to make love in a mob. I got on a devilish deal better in a snug little tête-à-tête that I contrived to manage with her yesterday," "Politics, child?" replied Mrs. Roberts, with a good deal of alarm, for Mr. Roberts was a very violent tory; "politics? Who can have been such a fool as to go talking politics at the house of a Frenchman? I hope and trust, Mr. Roberts, that you haven't been such an idiot-have ye? Tell me at once, if you please, sir. It is absolutely necessary I should know." was unfortunate for the Robertses that this | know and feel, beyond a shadow of doubt, soirée dansante followed so closely upon the that she has conceived an affection for me matinee galante of the day before; for, had quite out of the common way. It is vastly the fair Parisian been left to meditate upon likely, to be sure, that she should mean to the subject for another day, it is highly insult us personally, isn't it?" probable that the comedy of the adventure "I do not know what to think of it, mamwould have become more obvious in her ma," replied Agatha, solemnly, as soon as eyes, and its insignificant offence less so; her more volatile sister had ceased speakand thus, upon the whole, it might have ing; "but I own I cannot help suspecting appeared rather a treasure than an insult, that politics may have something to do with for many might have been the hours ren-it." dered gay by the ris folâtre which her descriptions of the young Englishman's tender passion would have been sure to produce amidst the members of her own petite comité But the anger which the poor youth had inspired was too recent, as yet, to be wholly lost sight of in a laugh, and therefore before the Roberts family, who always staid in every ball-room to the last, took their departure, she told them, with the "I am safe this time, my dear, at any very sweetest smile in the world, that unex-rate," replied this admirable pattern of conpected circumstances obliged her to make jugal gentleness, "for how could I speak an alteration in her manner of receiving, about politics, or any thing else, when I and therefore that she was constrained, with don't know a single word of their language? infinite regret, to inform them that it was Except indeed just enough to say at dinnernot in her power to solicit the honor and time pang si vous play,' and that, you happiness of their company for the follow- know, I am obliged to say, because that ing Tuesday. stupid fellow positively won't learn English, As the lady gracefully bowed herself though 'tis as easy as breathing." back into an inner room as she uttered the "Nonsense, Mr. Roberts, nobody suslast words of this most disagreeable an-pected you of speaking French," returned nouncement, the startled family had no op- his lady. "If you had not had a wife a litportunity of expressing any feeling what-tle quicker than yourself who could have ever upon the occasion; and, indeed, it appeared that just at that time they had none of them any great inclination to speak, for they put on their cloaks and shawls in perfect silence, which remained unbroken for at least a minute after they had driven from the door. And then it was Mrs. Roberts, who spoke first, a precedence which she might not perhaps have enjoyed had not the hearts of her daughters been at the moment too full for utterance. "What on earth does she mean, Agatha, by circonstances imprévues?' said she, drawing up the glass of the carriage with a jerk which plainly proved she suspected something. Do you suppose she said the same to every body? If she did not, you know it is quite plain that there must be a screw loose somewhere." spoken for you, it is likely enough that you might not have been quite so far behindhand as you are. But though you can't talk French, we all know well enough that you can talk politics, and I do beg that you will answer me plainly and honestly. Did you say any thing in English that might have been translated to either Mr. or Madame de Soissonac about the right of Charles Dix to reign over them? Did you, Mr. Roberts, or did you not?" "No, then, upon my life and soul, I never did any such thing, Mrs. Roberts," replied the good man, with considerable animation. "I know that I am not so clever as you are, and I never pretended to be, but I'm not such a dolt either as to run my head against a stone wall; and it would be something very like it, I think, if I were to "Of course she did, mamma," replied set about preaching rebellion against King Maria, before her elder sister could find Philip in a Paris ball-room. I never did breath to speak. "How can you possibly any such thing, Mrs. Roberts, and I am suppose that she meant to exclude us per-ready to take my oath of it if you choose it." sonally? I, for one, should be the most "You did not understand me, mamma," ungrateful creature in existence if I did not said Agatha, tartly. "Nothing that papa |