Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore: No fire when Tiber freezes; no air in day-star heat; And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free-born feet.1 Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate; Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold, That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame, Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair, And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare.3 LORD LYTTON. LORD LYTTON, one of the most elegant novelists of the time, is also a dramatic poet and satirist. His plays are the "Lady of Lyons," the "Duchess de la Valliere," and " Richelieu." The lyrical pieces scattered over his novels are remarkable for their pure and classic gracefulness. His most elaborate poetical work is a romantic legendary poem entitled "King Arthur." Few authors have been at once so industrious and so versatile. He has tried all subjects and styles, his chief success being in the department of prose fiction, in which he has been steadily advancing in purity of taste and moral power, as well as in popularity. Born in 1805, Edward Lytton Bulwer Lytton was created a baronet in 1838, and raised to the peerage as Lord Lytton in 1866. 1 The insignia of Consular authority were the Fasces (bundles of rods with axes stuck among them), denoting the punishments of scourging and decapitation; holes, the stocks (nervus, Lat.-podokakke, Gr.) See Potter and Adam. 2 The ancient mirrors were of metal: the aes Corinthium was celebrated for its excellence.-Capua, "the luxurious capital" of Campania. The mines of Spain supplied gold to the neighbouring countries. For specimens of the Roman "radical" orations, on which the passage is founded, see Livy. ii. 23, 55; iii. 9, 10, 15, 39, 52; and in later times, iv. 3-5, 35, 44; v. 2, etc. 4 The mistress of Louis XIV. FROM THE DUCHESS DE LA VALLIERE. 509 FROM THE DUCHESS DE LA VALLIERE. Act IV. Scene 4. BRAGELONE TO THE KING. ALAS! the Church! 'Tis true, this garb of serge Had priests that gave their Saviour to the cross! That Truth may teach humanity to Power, Glide through the dungeon, pierce the arméd throng, And, startling souls that slumber on a throne, Bow kings before that priest of priests-THE CONSCIENCE! This makes us sacred. The profane are they Honouring the herald while they scorn the mission. Who bows before the monitor, and yet Will ne'er forego the sin, may sink, when age Great though thou art, awake thee from the dream Dark warnings have gone forth; along the air The crowd-the axe-the headsman-and the victim! If the same fate await not thy descendant ! If some meek son of thine imperial line May make no brother to yon headless spectre ! 1 Shakespeare; 2 Henry VI., Act i. Sc. 3. Comp. Hor. odes, i. 3, 9. 2 The Greek cities of the south coast of ancient Italy were infamous and proverbial for their luxury and effeminacy: one of the most splendid and powerful of them was Sybaris on the Tarentine Gulf. Juvenal, vi. 295. Ælian, i. 19, etc. 3 Of England. 4 Louis XVI.; the French nation have of late had too much contempt for their deposed kings, or too much magnanimity to execute them. And when the sage who saddens o'er the end Tracks back the causes, tremble, lest he finds Grew to the tree from which men shaped the scaffold,- FROM THE LADY OF LYONS. Act II.-Scene 1. MELNOTTE TO PAULINE. [Their home was to be] A palace lifting to eternal summer Whose songs should syllable thy name! At noon And when night came, amidst the breathless heavens I' the midst of roses! Dost thou like the picture? FROM KING ARTHUR.-Book IV. INVOCATION TO LOVE. Hail thou, the ever young, albeit of night Thou, at whose birth broke forth the Founts of Light, 1 Many of the seeds of the first French Revolution were sown, by the "causes" mentioned, in the reigns of Louis XIV. and of his contemptible successor Louis XV. Society was corrupted by false philosophy and bad government; the national taxation was unequal and oppressive: and when a financial crisis came, all the ties that bind civilised men together seemed broken up in the terrible struggle. FROM KING ARTHUR. Life, in thy life, suffused the conscious whole; Hail, Love the Death-defyer! age to age Linking, with flowers, in the still heart of man! Glory and mystery since the world began. Ghost-like amidst the unfamiliar Past, Dim shadows flit along the streams of Time; Unknown of ages! Like the wizard's rhyme Voiceless and wan, we question them in vain ; Arch power, of every power most dread, most sweet, Yet Terror flies with Joy before thy feet, And, with the Graces, glide unseen the Fates; Mild, like all Strength, sits crownéd Liberty, And round her group the Cymrian's2 changeless race, 511 Their hero line ;-sweet flower of age-long growth; 1 Venus is sometimes a morning (Eos) sometimes an evening star (Hesperus). Some of the beauties of this invocation are drawn from the Orphic and Hesiodic mythology. 2 Cymri, Cumbri, the ancient Britons, of whom Arthur was king; hence Cambria, Wales: Cumberland, and the Cumbrae isles, on the coast of the "British" kingdom of Strathclyde. For the Welsh Cymri, see Scott's "Betrothed."-Cerdic, the Saxon founder of the Heptarch kingdom of Wessex, Arthur's antagonist.-White plume, see Spenser's description of Arthur, p. 60. The single blossom on the twofold stem; Behold the close of thirteen hundred years; And in the heavens one rainbow cloud alone THOMAS NOON TALFOURD. MR. JUSTICE TALFOURD was the author of three tragedies, "The Athenian Captive," "Ion," and "The Massacre of Glencoe." The two former are constructed on the classical model, the incidents and catastrophe of each piece being independent of the character of the hero, and urged on under the law of an uncontrollable destiny. Both tragedies are extremely interesting in the conduct of the story, rich in imagery, and pure and elegant in language. The poet produced a number of small occasional pieces; and he was twice the biographer of his beloved friend Charles Lamb. Talfourd was a native of Reading in Berkshire. FROM THE ATHENIAN CAPTIVE. MOTHER AND SON-THE REVELATION.1 SCENE-The hall of Statues in the Palace (at Argos). Thoas. [Alone.] Again I stand within this awful hall; Of vision; for a foul and clinging mist, Break sudden on the walls! The fretted roof Enter Ismene, richly dressed. Ismene. Noble soldier, I bid thee welcome, with the rapturous heart Of one, for whom thy patriot arm hath wrought 1 Thoas, an Athenian warrior, captured in battle by the Corinthians, and reduced to slavery by Creon the Corinthian king, is urged by the queen Ismene, originally an Athenian lady, to murder Creon in revenge for the injuries she had suffered from the king. Thoas performs her will, and escapes in remorse to the approaching Athenian army; the city surrenders, and Ismene reveals herself as the mother of Thoas. |