And with my years my soul began to pant I found the thing I sought-and that was thee; VII. I loved all solitude-but little thought VIII. Yet do I feel at times my mind decline, (2) (1) In the MS. corrupted (2) "Nor do 1 lament," wrote Tasso, shortly after his confinement, "that my heart is deluged with almost constant misery, that my head is always heavy and often painful, that my sight and hearing are much impaired, and that all my frame is become spare and meagre; but passing all this with a short sigh, what I would bewail is the infirmity of my mind. My mind sleeps, not thinks; my fancy is chill, and forms no pictures; my negligent senses will no longer furnish the images of things; my hand is sluggish in writing, and my pen seems as if it shrunk from the office. I feel as if I were chained in all my operations, and as if I were overcome by an unwonted numbness and oppressive stupor."-Opere, t. viii. p. 258.-L. E. Why in this furnace is my spirit proved IX. I once was quick in feeling-that is o'er;- And woo Compassion to a blighted name, And battlements which guard his joyous hours Or left untended in a dull repose, But thou-when all that Birth and Beauty throws can, and, after a short struggle, or rather suspense, Ferrara passed away for ever from the dominion of the house of Este." Hobhouse.-L. E. (5) In July, 1586, after a confinement of more than seven years, Tasso was released from his dungeon. In the hope of receiving his mother's dowry, and of again beholding his sister Cornelia, he shortly after visited Naples, where his presence was welcomed with every demonstration of esteem and admiration. Being on a visit at Mola di Gaeta, he received the following remarkable tribute of respect. Marco di Sciarra, the notorious captain of a numerous troop of banditti, hearing where the great poet was, sent to compli ment him, and offered him not only a free passage, but protection by the way, and assured him that he and his followers would be proud to execute his orders. See Manso, Vita del Tasso, p. 219. Mr. Rogers thus introduces the incident into his description of the life, "fearful and full of change," of the mountain-robber : "Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest; No power in death can tear our names apart, (1) In the MS. "As none in life could wring wrench rend thee from my heart."-L. E. (2) "The 'pleasures of imagination' have been explained and justified by Addison in prose, and by Akenside in verse, but there are moments of real life when its miseries and its necessities seem to overpower and destroy them. The history of mankind, however, furnishes proofs, that no bodily suffering, no adverse circumstances, operating on our material nature, will extinguish the spirit of imagination. Perhaps there is no instance of this so very affecting and so very sublime as the case of Tasso. They who have seen the dark, horror-striking dungeon-hole at Ferrara, in which he was confined seven years under the imputation of mad Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate To be entwined for ever-but too late! (2) ness, will have had this truth impressed upon their hearts in a manner never to be erased. In this vault, of which the sight makes the hardest heart shudder, the poet employed himself in finishing and correcting his immortal epic poem. Lord Byron's Lament on this subject is as sublime and profound a lesson in morality, and in the pictures of the recesses of the human soul, as it is a production most eloquent, most pathetic, most vigorous, and most elevating among the gifts of the Muse. The bosom which is not touched with it-the fancy which is not warmed,- the understanding which is not enlightened and exalted by it, is not fit for human intercourse. If Lord Byron had written nothing but this, to deny him the praise of a grand poet would have been flagrant injustice or gross stupidity." Sir E. Brydges.-L. E. Beppo; A VENETIAN STORY. (1) ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity; and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or 1 will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola.-As You Like It, Act IV. Sc. 1. Annotation of the Commentators. That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now-the seat of all dissoluteness. S. A. (I) I. "Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout However high their rank, or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing, And other things which may be had for asking. (1) Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's tutor, says, in his Schoolmaster-"Although I was only nine days at Venice, I saw, in that little time, more liberty to sin, than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years." He Beppo was written at Venice, in October 1817, and acquired great popularity immediately on its publication in the May of the following year. Lord Byron's letters show that he attached very little importance to it at the time. was not aware that he had opened a new vein, in which his genius was destined to work out some of its brightest triumphs. "I have written," he says to Mr. Murray, "a poem humorous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, and founded on a Venetian anecdote which amused me. It is called Beppo-the short name for Giuseppo, that is, the Joe of the Italian Joseph. It has politics and ferocity." Again-"Whistlecraft is my immediate model, but Berni is the father of that kind of writing; which, I think, suits our language, too, very well. We shall see by this experiment. It will, at any rate, show that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism." He wished Mr. Murray to accept of Beppo as a free gift, or, as he chose to express it," as part of the contract for Canto Fourth of Childe Harold," adding, however,-"if it pleases, you shall have more in the same mood; for I know the Italian way of life, and, as for the verse and the passions, I have them still in tolerable vigour." The Right Honourable John Hookham Frere has, then,¦ "He one day received by the mail a copy of Whistlecraft's prospectus and specimen of an intended national work, and, moved by its playfulness, immediately after receiving it began Beppo, which he finished at a sitting." Galt.-P. E. II. The moment night with dusky mantle covers The skies (and the more duskily the better), The time less liked by husbands than by lovers Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter; And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers, Giggling with all the gallants who beset her; And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming, Guitars, and every other sort of strumming. by Lord Byron's confession, the merit of having first intro. duced the Bernesque style into our language; but his performance, entitled "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table," though it delighted all elegant and learned readers, obtained at the time little notice from the public at large, and is already almost forgotten. For the causes of this failure, about which Mr. Rose and others have written at some length, it appears needless to look further than the last sentence we have been quoting from the letters of the author of the more successful Beppo. Whistlecraft had the verse; it had also the humour, the wit, and even the poetry of the Italian model; but it wanted the life of actual manners, and the strength of stirring passions. Mr. Frere had forgot, or was, with all bis genius, unfit to profit by remembering, that the poets, whose style he was adopting, always made their style appear a secondary matter. They never failed to embroider their merriment on the texture of a really interesting story. Lord Byron perceived this; and avoiding his immediate master's one fatal error, and at least equalling him in the excellences which he did display, engaged at once the sympathy of readers of every class, and became substantially the founder of a new species of English poetry. In justice to Mr. Frere, however, whose "Specimen" has long been out of print, we must take this opportunity of showing how completely, as to style and versification, he bad anticipated Beppo and Don Juan. In the introductions to his cantos, and in various detached passages of mere III. And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical, All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,Therefore take heed, ye freethinkers! I charge ye. description, he had produced precisely the sort of effect at which Lord Byron aimed in what we may call the secondary, or merely ornamental, parts of his Comic Epic. For example, this is the beginning of Whistlecraft's first canto:"I've often wish'd that I could write a book, Such as all English people might peruse; I never should regret the pains it took, That's just the sort of fame that I should choose: To sail about the world like Captain Cook, I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse, And we'd take verses out to Demarara, They raise the nation's spirit when victorious, To erect one board for verse and one for prose. "Princes protecting sciences and art I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; And therefore I conclude there's nothing in 't : I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; "From princes I descend to the nobility: In former times all persons of high stations, The patrons lived to future generations, "Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; Now, we must starve unless the times should mend: To their own wife, or child, or private friend, Dear people! if you think my verses clever, And then these lines of mine may last for ever; (Whether they go to meeting or to church) "Madoc and Marmion, and many more. Are out in print, and most of them have sold: But there were lords and princes long before, That had behaved themselves like warriors bold: The following description of King Arthur's Christmas at Carlisle is equally meritorious: "The Great King Arthur made a sumptuous feast, And held his royal Christmas at Carlisle, And thither came the vassals, most and least, IV. You'd better walk about begirt with briars, Although you swore it only was in fun; "The bill of fare (as you may well suppose) Was suited to those plentiful old times, Before our modern luxuries arose, With truffles and ragouts, and various crimes; I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes: Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine; All pilfering and scrambling in their calling. And then at random breaking heads and bawling. An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fairs; All sorts of characters, all sorts of dresses; Vintners and victuallers with cans and messes; The vulgar unenlighten'd conversation Of all the curses, oaths, and cuts, and stabs, "We must take care in our poetic cruise, And never hold a single tack too long; Which to genteeler company belong, "And certainly, they say, for fine behaving King Arthur's court has never had its match; Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick, Their accents firm and loud in conversation, Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick, At first a general likeness struck your eye, V. But, saving this, you may put on whate'er With prettier names in softer accents spoke, No place that's call'd "Piazza" in Great Britain. (1) VI. This feast is named the carnival, (2) which, being The little snatches of critical quizzing introduced in Whistlecraft are perfect in their way. Take, for example, this good-humoured parody on one of the most magnificent passages in Wordsworth: "In castles and in courts Ambition dwells, But not in castles or in courts alone; She breathed a wish, throughout those sared cells, Giants abominate the sound of bells, And soon the fierce antipathy was shown, "Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate! Unhappy monks! you see no danger nigh; Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly; They scarce knew what to think, or what to say; "Yet) Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne Mr. Rose has a very elegant essay on Whistlecraft, in his Thoughts and Recollections by One of the last Century, which thus concludes: "Beppo, which had a story, and which pointed but one way, met with signal and universal success; while The Monks and the Giants have been little appreciated by the majority of readers. Yet those who will only laugh upon a sufficient warrant may, on analysing this bravura-poem, find legitimate matter for their mirth. The want of meaning cannot certainly be objected to it, with reason; for it contains a deep substratum of sense, and does not exhibit a character which has not, or might not have, its parallel in nature. I remember at the time this poem was published, (which was, when the French monarchy seemed endangered by the vacillating conduct of Louis XVIII. who, under the guidance of successive ministers, was trimming between the loyalists and the liberals, apparently thinking that civility and conciliation was a remedy for all evils,) a friend dared me to prove my assertion; and, by way of a text, referred me to the character of the crippled abbot, under whose direction, The convent was all going to the devil, "The obvious application of this was made by me to Louis XVIII. ; and if it was not the intention of the author to designate him in par ticular, the applicability of the passage to the then state of France, and her ruler, shows, at least, the intrinsic truth of the description. VII. And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, Because they have no sauces to their stews, To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy; VIII. And therefore humbly I would recommend "The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend, Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross (Or if set out beforehand, these may send By any means least liable to loss) Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye; Take, in the same way, the character of Sir Tristram, and we shall find its elements, if not in one, in different living persons. 'Songs, music, languages, and many a lay His ready wit, and rambling education, With the congenial influence of his stars, Had taught him all the arts of conversation, All games of skill, and stratagems of wars; His birth, it seems, by Merlin's calculation, Was under Venus, Mercury, and Mars: His mind with all their attributes was mix'd, And, like those planets, wand'ring and unfix'd.' "Who can read this description, without recognising in It the portraits (flattering portraits, perhaps) of two military characters well known in society?" The reader will find a copious criticism on Whistlecraft, from the pen of Ugo Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxi.-L. E. (2) "The carnival," says Mr. Rose, "though it is gayer or duller, according to the genius of the nations which celebrate it, is, in its general character, nearly the same all over the peninsula. The beginning is like any other season; towards the middle you begin to meet masques and mum. mers in sunshine: in the last fifteen days the plot thickens; and during the three last all is hurly-burly. But to paint these, which may be almost considered as a separate festi val, I must avail myself of the words of Messrs. William and Thomas Whistlecraft, in whose Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work' I find the description ready made to my hand, observing that, besides the ordinary dramatis personæ, Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy, The shops are shut, all business is at a stand, and the drunken cries heard at night afford a clear proof of the pleasures to which these days of leisure are dedicated. These holidays may surely be reckoned amongst the se condary causes which contribute to the indolence of the Italian, since they reconcile this to his conscience, as being of religious institution. Now there is, perhaps, no offence which is so unproportionably punished by conscience as that of indolence. With the wicked man, it is an intermittent disease; with the idle man, it is a chronic one." Letters from the North of Italy, vol. ii. p. 171.—L. E. IX. That is to say, if your religion's Roman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragout- X. Of all the places where the carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball, And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more Than I have time to tell now, or at all, Venice the bell from every city bore,-And at the moment when I fix my story, That sea-born city was in all her glory. XI. They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, (The best's at Florence (1)-see it, if ye will), XII. Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best; And when you to Maufrini's palace go, (3) That picture (howsoever fine the rest) Is loveliest to my mind of all the show; It may perhaps be also to your zest, And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so : 'Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self; but such a woman! love in life! (4) XIII. Love in full life and length, not love ideal, But something better still, so very real, That the sweet model must have been the same, (1) "At Florence 1 remained but a day, having a hurry for Rome. However, I went to the two galleries, from which one returns drunk with beauty; but there are sculpture and painting, which, for the first time, gave me an idea of what people mean by their cant, about those two most artificial of the arts. What struck me most were,-the mistress of Raphael, a portrait; the mistress of Titian, a portrait; a Venus of Titian, in the Medici gallery-the Venus; Canova's Venus, also in the other gallery," etc. B. Letters, 1817. -L. E. (2) "I know nothing of pictures myself, and care almost as little; but to me there are none like the Venetianabove all, Giorgione. I remember well his Judgment of Solomon, in the Mariscalchi gallery in Bologna. The real mother is beautiful, exquisitely beautiful." B. Letters, 1820. -L. E. (3) The following is Lord Byron's account of his visit to this palace, in April, 1817:-" To-day, I have been over the Manfrini palace, famous for its pictures. Amongst them, there is a portrait of Ariosto, by Titian, surpassing all my anticipation of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom; it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live Apostles, for which Bonaparte offered in A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal, XIV. One of those forms which flit by us, when we In momentary gliding, the soft grace, XV. I said that like a picture by Giorgione (For beauty's sometimes best set off afar), And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni, They peep from out the blind, or o'er the bar; And, truth to say, they're mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more's the pity! XVI. For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs, Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter, Which flies on wings of light-heel'd Mercuries, Who do such things because they know no better; And then, God knows, what mischief may arise, When love links two young people in one fetter, Vile assignations, and adulterous beds, Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads. XVII. Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona Such matters may be probably the same, Except that since those times was never known a Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame To suffocate a wife no more than twenty, Because she had a "cavalier servente." vain five thousand louis; and of which, though it is a capo d'opera of Titian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch has not only the dress, but the features and air of an old woman; and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty one. What struck me most in the general collection, was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians. The Queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer. You must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting, and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see."—L. E. (4) This appears to be an incorrect description of the picture; as, according to Vasari and others, Giorgione never was married, and died young.-L. E. (5) "Que septem dici sex tamen esse solent."-Ovid. In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks |