NOTE ON THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

THOUGH Shelley's first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist openly the oppressions existent during "the good old times " had faded with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He was a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance, was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing The Cenci, when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion. The great truth that the many, if accordant and resolute, could control the few, as was shown some years after, made him long to teach his injured countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the Masque of Anarchy, which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.

"I did not insert it," Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and interesting preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, because I thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and. kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse." Days of outrage have passed away, and with them the exasperation that would cause such an appeal to the many to be injurious. Without being aware of them, they at one time acted on his suggestions, and gained the day. But they rose when human life was respected by the Minister in power; such was not the case during the Administration which excited Shelley's abhorrence.

The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those beginning

"My Father Time is old and grey,"

before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it might make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed against his humbler fellow-creatures.

CEDIPUS TYRANNUS;

OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.

A TRAGEDY, IN TWO ACTS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.

-Choose Reform or Civil War,

When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THIS tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three plays (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their dramatic representations), elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes of the Swellfoot dynasty. It was evidently written by some learned Theban; and, from its characteristic dullness, apparently before the duties on the importation of Attic salt had been repealed by the Boeotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the Pigs proves him to have been a sus Bœotiæ, possibly Epicuri de grege porcus; for, as the poet observes—

"A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind."

No liberty has been taken with the translation of this remarkable piece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last act. The word Hoydipouse (or more properly Edipus) has been rendered literally Swellfoot, without its having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly indicated.

Should the remaining portions of this tragedy be found, entitled Swellfoot in Angaria and Charité, the translator might be tempted to give them to the reading public.

SCENE I-A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death'sheads, and tiled with scalps. Over the altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars, Sows, and Sucking Pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the altar of the Temple.

Enter SWELLFOOT, in his royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs.
Swellfoot. Thou supreme Goddess, by whose power divine
These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array

[He contemplates himself with satisfaction.
Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
And these most sacred nether promontories
Lie satisfied with layers of fat, and these
Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid
(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),
Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!
Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup and brandy-devils,
Offer their secret vows! thou plenteous Ceres
Of their Eleusis, hail!

The Swine. Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!
Swellfoot.

Ha! what are ye,

Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,

Cling round this sacred shrine?

Swine. Aigh! aigh! aigh!

Swellfoot.

What! ye that are

The very beasts that, offered at her altar

With blood and groans, salt-cake and fat and inwards,
Ever propitiate her reluctant will

When taxes are withheld?

Swine. Ugh! ugh! ugh!
Swellfoot.

What! ye who grub

With filthy snouts my red potatoes up

In Allen's rushy Bog? who eat the oats
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?

Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?

THE SWINE.-SEMICHORUS I.
The same, alas! the same;
Though only now the name
Of Pig remains to me.

SEMICHORUS II.

If 'twere your kingly will

Us wretched Swine to kill,

What should we yield to thee?

Swellfoot. Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for

mortar.

CHORUS OF SWINE.

I have heard your Laureate sing
That pity was a royal thing.

Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
Were blest as nightingales on myrtle-sprigs,
Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too
But now our sties are fallen-in, we catch

The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
Hog-wash, or grains, or ruta-baga, none
Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

FIRST SOW.

My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug !

SECOND SOW.

I could almost eat my litter!