noxious to a' the rest, would be lyin' battered to bits, stane-dead. So much sir, for birds o' a feather flocking thegither-when thae birds happened to be poets. NORTH. Whereas, by the economy of nature, "poets and all other men of the higher order of genius" are sprinkled over society, and all their ongoings intermingled with those of the children of the common clay. And thus "poets and men of the higher order of genius" are made to submit or to conform to the usages of this world, and its ordinary laws, or, if they doos not, they soon are made to feel that they are ridiculous, and that genius is never less respected than when it chooses to wear a cap and bells. : Anither skreed. SHEPHERD. NORTH. 71 Mr Moore, towards the close of his disquisition, says, "that if the portrait he has attempted of those gifted with high genius, be allowed to bear, in any of its features, a resemblance to the originals, it can no longer be matter of question whether a class, so set apart from the track of ordinary life, so removed, by their very elevation, out of the influences of our common atmosphere, are at all likely to furnish tractable subjects for that most trying of all social experiments-matrimony." SHEPHERD. I dinna like the soun' o' that sentence. NORTH. Nor I, James. In the first place, the portrait may bear, " in some of its features, a resemblance to the originals," and yet the question started by Mr Moore, by no means be put to sleep. His logic's oot at the elbows. SHEPHERD. NORTH. Secondly, Mr Moore has utterly failed in shewing, that the class he speaks of, are set apart from the track of ordinary life, and removed, by their very elevation, out of the influences of our common atmosphere. SHEPHERD. And you, sir, have utterly succeeded in pruvin' the very contrar. NORTH. Thirdly, there is a Cockneyish and Bagman-like vulgarity in the would-be fashionable slang-whangishness of the terms, " at all likely to furnish subjects for that most trying of all social experiments-matrimony." SHEPHERD. Hoo the deevil, Mr Muir, can ye, wi' ony semblance o' sense ava, man, ca' that the maist tryin' o' a' " social experiments," which is, has been, and will be, performing by all men and women in the "varsal world," with the exception of a few fools or unfortunates, called bachelors and old maids, frae the beginning till the end o' time-frae Milton's First Man, to Campbell's Last? NORTH. Why, really, James, Mr Moore here speaks of matrimony in the style of a sentimental farce-writer for the Cobourg Theatre. Observe what a silly look the word "matrimony" wears, and how like ninnies the " men of the higher order of genius" kythe on being brought forward by Hymen, in a string, and kicking and flinging out unlike " tractable subjects." H SHEPHERD. The haill discussion grows ludicrous on reflection, and an air o' insincerity, almost o' banter, Mr Muir, at last plays owre your features, as if you were bammin' the public; but the public's no sae easy bammed, sir, and imperiously demands " a wise and learned spirit" in him who takes it upon him to pruve that the holiest o' a' God and Natur's ordinances, is no suited to men o' the higher order o' genius, wha sou'd be a' monks and celibates, sae fastidious necessarily are they alike in freenship and love! Ony mair havers? A few. NORTH. SHEPHERD. Say awa', for ony thing's better nor politiks-and I'm gratefu' to you for keepin' aff them the nicht. NORTH. Politics! I had forgotten there was such a thing in all the wide world. But here is a bit of poetical politics, by a young friend of mine, Jamesa promising youth, of the right kidney-and who, I doubt not, will one day or other do honour to an honourable name. My young friend informs me that the lines are written by one, who, without positively condemning the late French Revolution, cannot bestow upon it that unqualified approbation which many wish it to receive, much less can justify those in our own country, who, while they profess themselves friendly to the constitution, take advantage of the late transactions in France for the purpose of inflaming the minds of an ignorant populace, and actually wear the Tri-color -the acknowledged badge of revolution. THE TRI-COLOR. Again o'er the vine-cover'd regions of France, 'Tis the banner whose glory Napoleon bore To the uttermost ends of the world. The Red is the flush on the cheek of the brave, For unnurtured by blood, and unwater'd by tears, But though freshly and fairly the laurel may bloom And the voice of her martyrs proclaim from the tomb, Nor know, that, when brought from the land of its birth, For the Red is Rebellion's appropriate hue, And the White is pale Terror, that trembles to do The deeds the base heart can contain; But the red rose of England, and Scotland's brown heath, Capital-sir-capital! SHEPHERD. NORTH. In looking back through the lives of the most illustrious, we shall find, says Mr Moore, "that with scarcely one exception, from Homer down to Lord Byron, they have been, in their several degrees, restless and solitary spirits" That's a lee. SHEPHERD. ? : NORTH. -" with minds," he continues, " wrapped up like silkworms in their own tasks" SHEPHERD. Oh! Mister Muir, but that's a desperate bad eemage, Homer and Byron -twa silkworms! But wull ye answer me this, sir, dinna silkworms marry? Linnæus says they do and James Wulson shewed me a box o' them a' enjoyin' their hinney-moon. If sae, why soudna poets marry too, as weel's thae bit restless and solitary spirits" the silkworms, wham they, in their ither warks, it seems, sae nearly resemble? NORTH. Mr Moore may know more of Homer's life than I do, James; but I for one will never believe that he was a restless and solitary spirit SHEPHERD, Wrapped up like a silkworm, Nor me. NORTH. "A stranger and rebel," Mr Moore insanely adds, " to domestic ties, and bearing about with him a deposit for posterity in his soul, to the jealous watching and enriching of which almost all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed." SHEPHERD. Says he that o' the ever-rejoicing Homer, wha was equally at hame on the battle-field, the plain o' ocean, the tent-palace o' the king o' men, the sky-dwelling o' the immortal gods? NORTH. Mr Henry Nelson Coleridge says well, in his Introduction to the Study of the Classics, Part First, "that "that Homer always seems to write in good spirits, and he rarely fails to put his readers in good spirits also. To do this is a prerogative of genius in all times; but it is especially so of the genius of primitive or heroic poetry. In Homer, head and heart speak, and are spoken to together. Morbid peculiarities of thought and temper have no place in him. He is as wide and general as the air we breathe, and the earth upon which we tread; and his vivacious spirit animates, like a Proteus, a thousand different forms of intellectual production-the life-preserving principle in them all. He is as the mighty strength of his own deep-flowing ocean, Whence all the rivers, all the seas have birth, SHEPHERD. Oh, sir, what a wonnerfu' memory is yours! You're the only man I ever kent that can repeat aff by heart great screeds o' prose composition on a' manner o' soobjects, just as if they were extemporawneous effusions o' his ain, thrown aff in the heat o' discoorse. Mr Henry Nelson Coleridge maun be a clever fallow. NORTH. A scholar and a gentleman-though I intend taking him to task for a few trifles one of these days. What's Hartley about? SHEPHERD. NORTH. Dreaming in the leafless woods! Many an article he promises to send me -but I ask, "Where are they?" and echo answers, "Where are they?" SHEPHERD. Send him to boord wi' me in the Forest. NORTH. But to return to Mr Moore-he picks out the names of some great philosophers who died bachelors, and having observed that they all "silently admit. ted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy" SHEPHERD, Hoot, toot. That's nae reasonin' NORTH, he observes, that the fate of poets in matrimony has but justified the caution of the philosophers. "While the latter," he says, "have given warning to genius by keeping free of the yoke, the others have still more effectually done so by their misery under it, the annals of this sensitive race having, at all times, abounded with proofs, that genius ranks but low among the elements of social happiness-that, in general, the brighter the gift, the more disturbing its influence-and that, in the married life particularly, its effects have been too often like that of the 'wormwood star,' whose light filled the waters on which it fell with bitterness," SHEPHERD, Screeds o' prose-composition again, I declare! Oh! what'n a storehouse! NORTH. And then he boldly avers at once, that " on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes, are the four illustrious names of Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, and Dryden-to which we must now add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed beside the greatest of them -Lord Byron," SHEPHERD, I never read a word o' Dante's Comedy o' Hell, sae I sall say nae mair anent it, than that the soobjeck seems better adapted for tragedy-and as for Dryden, I'm no sae familiar 's I sou'd be wi' " Glorious John" -sae Byron may be equal, inferior, or superior to baith them twa-But I hae read Shakspeare and Milton mony thousan' times, and, Maister Muir, ye had nae richt, sir, by your ipse-dixe, to place Byron by the side o' them twa, the greatest o' a' the children o' man-he maun sit, in a' his glory, far doon aneath their feet. NORTH. He must. But Mr Moore had no right to place Shakspeare and Milton on the list of miserable married men. Milton's character and conduct as a husband appear to have been noble and sublime. Of Shakspeare's married life we know nothing-or rather, less than nothing-a few dim and contradictory-seeming expressions, almost unintelligible, on the strength of which Mr Moore has not scrupled to place him as a partner in destiny along with Byron, the most miserable of the miserable, and at last a profligate. The destiny of Dante lay not in his marriage, however unhappy it might have been, and 'tis a sorry way of dealing with the truth to slur and slobber over all its principal features. of all the Philosophers and Poets and men of the higher order of genius-whom Mr Moore adduces as examples of unfitness for marriage, were different, through all the possible degrees of difference-and yet he seeks to subject them all to one general law of life! SHEPHERD. Maist illogical, and maist unphilosophic. I was just gaun to sae-maist irrational-but that micht be ower strang a word. He was bound to hae taken them ane by ane, and to hae analeezed their specific characters, and to hae illustrated their fortunes and their fates, and their position in the times and places they flourished in, and then to hae applied the upshot hot o' the haill enquiry to the pint in haun-Were they, or were they not-and why and wherefore likely or unlikely to hae been wicked or meeserable married men? Having failed to do a' that, and twice as muckle's a' that, why, Mister Muir, let me tell you to your face, ma canty chiel, that you hae dune naething ava', and that your argument's aboot as strang's a spider's wab, that keeps flaffin' in the wind beside a broken lozen, feckless even to catch fleas -for by comes a great bummer, like Mr North or me, and carries it aff on his doup intil the open sunshine. NORTH. The subject of Mr Moore's elaborate failure, James, deserves discus sion Sparks struck out by your steel and ma flint, which hae only to fa' intil the gunpoother o' the thochtfu' reader's mind, in order to set the heaven o his imagination in a bleeze, and shew him a' the Life-region illuminated far and wide roun' the haill horizon. NORTH. Heaven and earth, my dear Shepherd, what a libel on the Living Illustrious of our own land! Great men are now among us SHEPHERD. Ay, Great Poets-born for a' time, sir-and a' married-a' wi' wives and weans-that is, the maist feck o' them-an' first-rate husbands and fathers, croose as ggem-cocks on their walks, wi' fierce een, sharp nebs, lang claws, and rainbow tails, crawin' till the welkin rings wi' their shrill clarions, and then doon wi' ane o' their wings NORTH. Stop, James. I suspect Mr Moore, with all his palaver, has been fishing for a compliment SHEPHERD. And he shall catch ane-or rather I'll fasten ane on his hyeuck-and he may whup it owre his head. A better husband and a better father than Mister Muir-excepp, aiblins, it be masell-canna be pictur'd; and yet, whatever may be the fate o' Lalla Rookh, his sangs'll last to a' eternity-that is, as lang's the Eerish nation-and afore it be extinguished, there'll be bluidy wark, for they're deevils for fechtin', and whaever prevails owre them to their utter extermination, wull hae little to brag on-but the twa nations'll be fund lyin' stane-dead by ane anither's sides, and the dead'll hae to bury the dead. NORTH. One word more, James, and I have done. SHEPHERD. Where's Mister Muir? This moment he was sittin' at my elbow-and lo and behold he has vanished! NORTH. A phantom of your imagination, James-Would it were a reality, for Mr Moore is a delightful person, and his genius glances in conversation bright as the diamond-ring on his little finger. SHEPHERD. Weel, I coud hae ta'en ma Bible-oath that he was sittin' in this chair, nod, noddin', noo at me, and then at you, wi' a sort o' slicht sardonic smile about the silent but expressive mouth o' him, amaist as much as to say that "what is writ is writ," and maun e'en remain in secula seculorum, NORTH. I hope better things. But if the passages now gently criticised be retained in the octavo edition, I shall tackle to Mr Moore in a different trim, and, nathless my admiration of his genius, his character, and himself, his sconce shall feel the crutch. SHEPHERD. What gin he pu't out o' your haun, and gie ye a clour on the side o' the head wi' your ain weapon? Grasp it furm, sir. |