And dry antiquities, and moral essays,
On which my busy pen is ever running.
"Accursed scribbler!" cries the wretch, whose false
Concoctions, like th'enchanter's forceful spear,
My plume goes forth to pierce, and open lay
His snares of dread destruction to the sun!
"Scribendi cacoethes! odious passion!
"Be fire to its relentless energies,
"And light upon it quickly, and consume it!"
Not yet thou grand destroyer! O not yet
Will be thy wish accomplish'd! I have slept
At times, 'tis true, amid 'this morning's task,
As if my strength was failing, and that weakness.
Aud age, not fire and violence, would consume me!
There are, on whose enormous wickedness
When I am call'd to meditate, the' emotion
Exhausts my spirits more than other labour
By day and night continued! My torn nerves
Long tremble and distort, ere they subside
Again, the calm idea to permit!
I am the being but of impulses,
And when my heart cannot direct, and light,
My head is barren, and my hand is weak.
I have no abstract intellect, and cannot
Act by what cold dry reason calls a duty;—
The worse for me! for I am told 'tis this
Which only virtue constitutes! and feeling
And grand emotion, though 'tis on the side
Of virtuous sympathies, and love of beauty,
And admiration of heroic conduct,
Is but an impulse of involuntary
Unconscience-sprung, and therefore valueless, passion!
As for myself, I cannot comment thus
In my severest and most self-condemning
Moments! For impulses, if they are good,
Must spring from virtue's fountains: a bad heart
Can never pour forth pure and blessed waters!
It may produce them mingled: but the taste,
The scent, the penetrating eye, th’effect,
After a moment's pause upon the bosom,
Will the infusion of the ill discover :-
The false bursts, murmurs, flashes, sparkles, dies!
If such are these effusions, if the vapour
Of false emotion swells them, if the thoughts
Come not direct and unsophisticate
From the undrug'd and uninfected bosom,
If the heart's fiat be not on their utterance,
Then sweep them to the pit where they may perish, And never bubble, murmur, sparkle more!
may I be obedient to the doom
That I shall then deserve, and hide my head
In just obscurity, and linger out
The little remnant of my days in silence,
And sink into the grave, unwept, unknown!
OVER thine Eastern head, O Lake, how grand
Lausanne her ancient holy spires erects!
I need not trace her history: but Britons
Ever associate it with GIBBON's name!
-A name now universal!-I can trace it
With selfish fondness from its private source
On the white cliffs, where Dover's frowning towers
O'erlook the ocean of the straits, that separate us
From rival Gaul. There, having climb'd the heights,
That from the town wash'd by the waves ascend,
With panting labour;-leaving on our right
The tower, the draw-bridge, and gigantic walls
Of the stupendous Castle, ever noted
In all the pages of old England's annals,
On a light chalky soil we journey northward,
A little inward from the fearful edge
Of those tremendous cliffs, which Shakespeare's pen Forever has immortalised :-a scatter'd
Hamlet and humble church,-where from the rim
That overlooks the dashing billows, slopes,
From the cliff westerly, the sheepwalk,-stands :
And close adjoining the obscure remains
Of the old manor-house. How little now
Are these to outward sight! But the creative
Mind beholds in them a most noble spot;
The source, the cradle of a mighty genius;
Nor will it doubt, that when the rural lords
Were wandering o'er these ocean-misted fields,
In days of the Tudorian Princess, or
Under the feeble but tyrannic rod
Of Scotish Stuart's race, to vulgar eyes
Only like rival squires of plough-tail memory,
That in their brains the fruitful seeds were working
Of future European eminence!
How have I trac'd them in the parish records
With a fond microscopic industry,
Which fools and half-philosophers call dull!
There the great grandsire of the younger stock
Whence sprung th' Historian, planted his young offset From an old root, as antiquaries tell us,
Of credit in cotemporary days,
(For thus, old Philipot, hast thou recorded!)—
It was a fief bought from th'impoverish'd fortune
Of a most gallant Peer, whom wise Elizabeth
Plac'd on green Erin's barbarous habitants
To rule rebellion by a fearless sword!
The tasteless recklessness of times gone by
May unacquainted be with Borough's name!
But 'twas of primal ancientry, and sprung
From Cantium's Earl in the heroic times
Of the first royalty of proud Plantagenet:
And in its source e'en higher than that name
Of glorious feudal splendor! For the searcher
Of genealogical sagacity
Will trace it as a lineal male descendant
Of the first race of Merovingian kings!
And hence Jerusalem in the first Crusades
Drew its third Monarch.-O thou beautiful,
Illumin'd Spirit-who with piercing eyes
And rapturous gaze the misty veil withdrawest,
With which Time covers Truth! is it then possible
That thou the stigma shouldst incur of dryness,-
Of barren curiosity—of trifling
Research and labour? O most odious envy!
O most mean, vulgar, ignorant conceit!
O most accurs'd mistaker of dull darkness
For light! Thou hast no pleasure but to blast
The seeds of glory, and nip in the bud
The blossoms and the fruit of all that's grand!
So thus with thee, old Lord of these high lands,
Wash'd by the Ocean's spray! thy sword was all,
Or nearly all th'inheritance thou hadst
In worldly goods; and therefore was the glory
Of thy most princely origin forgotten!
And now Necessity, that ever gripes
Magnanimous merit, forc'd from thy possession
This humble but belov'd manorial heritage;
And the small purchase fell to GIBBON's lot!
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