their pockets, was brought to the scaffold. Some days before he was executed, the following verses appeared in one of the Parisian papers, and excited great attention, as they were rumoured to have been written by the criminal himself, who had once been a sort of homme de lettres. They were in reality the production of a young Parisian barrister, M. A. Lemarquier, but they had the temporary effect of making many credulous people believe that Lacenaire would be reprieved, on account of his being a " Bel Esprit!" They are full of allusion to the old ceremonial of the Place de la Grève, and we annex to them a literal translation :—

L'Insomnie du Condamné.

Elle est longue la nuit quand le criminel veille;
S'il s'endort, il maudit le bruit qui le réveille :
Libre et non criminel dans un songe il vivait.
Que voit il maintenant aux lueurs des étoiles?
L'alcove où l'araignée a suspendu ses toiles,
Et la paille de son chevet.

C'est un bien! c'est alors que vient à sonner l'heure
Où, seul et sans temoins, l'assassin prie et pleure;
Son orgueil se fait humble et sa fierté mollit;
Son cœur est poignardé par des remords intimes:
Les fantômes sanglans de toutes ses victimes
Se dressent au pied de son lit.

Il a beau fermer l'œil, un bras glacé le touche;
Un cadavre tout nu vient partager sa couche;
Il livre son oreille à d'infernales voix :
Il entend sur les quais une pesante roue:
Il entend le bourreau, le gibet que l'on cloue,
Le chant lugubre des convois !

Alors le criminel s'amende: alors il pense
A celui qui punit et qui nous récompense,
Celui qu'on nomme Dieu dans le langage humain ;
Qui, sur son trône, attend que le criminel meure,
Et le conduit, absous, à la sainte demeure

Dont seul il connaît le chemin.

On peut mourir athée, alors que le délire
Dans le livre des cieux nous empêche de lire;
Quand le lit est déjà le funèbre caveau;
Quand le sang suspendu dans la veine glacée
Au malade expirant ne laisse de pensée
Dans le cœur ni dans le cerveau ;

Mais lorsqu'on va mourir dans sa jeunesse verte,
A l'âge où nôtre vie à peine s'est ouverte,

Avant que son printemps ait fait place à l'hiver,
Et que Clamart est lá, le hideux cimetière !
Demandant notre chair, notre chair tout entière,
Pour servir de pâture au ver;

Alors, croyez le bien, une agonie immense
Vous rend votre raison et chasse la démence;
Avant de dire au monde un éternel adieu,
L'homme veut eviter le céleste anathême,
Et court à l'echafaud, comme au sanglant baptême
Qui réconcilie avec Dieu.

Slow wanes the long night, when the criminal wakes :
And he curses the noise that his slumber breaks;
For he dream'd of other days,

When his soul was free from the stain of crime,
And he lived in a better and happier time.
But now, by the star's pale rays,
And the doubtful light they shed,

What sees he but only the dim alcove,
Where the spider hath spun her toils, above,
And, below, his straw strewn bed!

To him 'tis a good! for the bell's solemn tone
Sounds the hour, when, unwitness'd and all alone,
The assassin prays and weeps:

The pride of his heart is brought full low,
And his savage temper is soften'd now,
And Remorse her dagger steeps
In his heart-core's secret blood.
Around him his victims, a ghastly band
Of bleeding shades, vindictive stand
By his bed in angry mood.

His eyes he may close-but the cold icy touch
Of a frozen hand, and a corpse on his couch
Still come to wither his soul.

He listens! 't is only to fill his ears

With voices from hell, and unholy fears:

He hears the waggon's roll,

And on the quays a heavy tread,*

And the headsman's voice, and hammer'd blows
Of nails that the jointed gibbet close,

And the solemn chant of the dead!

*All this could be well heard in the stillness of the night from the towers of the Conciergerie. See Victor Hugo's description in the Dernier Jour, &c.

It is then that the criminal tries to amend,
And he thinks of Him who alone can send
Reward or punishment:

Of the Being, for whom the human mind
The name of God hath essay'd to find,
In adoration bent.

For still on his awful throne

The Deity waits, till the Sinner shall come,
Then leads him absolv'd to a holy home

We

By a path He knows alone.

may die without God in the world, when the skies'
Mysterious volume is hid from our eyes,

And clos'd is its wondrous page:
When the bed that once refreshment gave
Is loath'd as a foretaste of the grave
From sickness or old age.

When that, which was wont to dart
Through all the veins, is slow and cold,
And the dying man's sensations hold
No more in his head and heart.

But when death is our doom in the greenness of life,
When the flow'r of existence with strength is rife,
And as yet but hardly blown;
Before its hopeful spring-time hath fled,
And wintery age his hoary head
To frighten us hath shewn;

When, Clamart!* thy hideous form
Sepulchral, is come to demand its prey,
Where our body, all, shall moulder away
As food for the gnawing worm;

Oh! doubt not! 't is then that the soul in its woe
Brings reason back and bids madness go:

E'en then, or ere he die,

To the world, as for ever it fades from his view,
Man gives his one long last adieu;

He wishes then to fly

From Heaven's chastising rod :

And the scaffold's steps he hastes to mount,

And there, in a blood-baptizing fount,

Is reconcil'd to God!

H. L. J.

*The cemetery of Clamart is an enclosed spot near the Jardin des Plantes in the south-eastern part of Paris, appropriated to the sepulture of criminals.

ART. II.-John Davies the Epigrammatist.

The Scourge of Folly. Consisting of Satyricall Epigramms and others in honor of many noble and worthy Persons of our Land. Together with a pleasant (though discordant) Descant upon most English Proverbes and others. At London, Printed by E. A. for Richard Redmer. Sould at his shop at ye West Gate of Paules. [Small 8vo, no date; but about 1611.]

THIS

HIS is a little book of considerable rarity; we believe that a copy has sold for as much as ten pounds, and that it is now considered as worth not less than five. Its author was a man of literary reputation in his day, and his pen, such as it is, was not unproductive, but his name is now almost forgotten, and we know very little of his personal history. He has taken care to inform us that he was a native of Hereford; his profession was that of a writing-master, in which quality he was appointed one of the instructors of the young Prince Henry, in the court of James I. He was famous in his time as a calligraphist, and appears to have been very proud of his skill in the art; but he also had pretensions as a poet, and his writings, of which there are a tolerable number, seem to have enjoyed a certain degree of popularity. As a writer, John Davies, of Hereford, figures especially among the English epigrammatists of the reign of the first James.

The epigram was a species of literary composition which at this time was of recent growth in England, and which was modelled upon the well known epigrammata of Martial. It was an age in which there was a great taste for personal satire and abuse,—and, unfortunately, these English epigrammatists imitated the malice of Martial without possessing any of his wit. They are distinguished especially by their scurrility, and although expressed in feigned names, the immediate object at which they were levelled was probably sufficiently obvious at the time of their publication. For this reason, although it was their professed design to expose and correct the vices of the age, they were regarded with hostility by the stricter moralists, and we find that, in 1599, the epigrams of our author's namesake, Sir John Davies, the juge, with those of other writers, and a number of satires and other books, were proscribed by Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Bancroft, and ordered to be burnt. A considerable portion of the little book before us consists of such pointless and often scurrilous attacks on private vices, and if it had

existed at the date just mentioned, they would doubtless have brought it under the censure of the prelates. The press, indeed, at that time was often in want of a check; and John Davies has thought it necessary to make his excuses in sundry introductory epigrams, to which he gives the quaint title of " Passages before the Booke." In one of these he states his reasons for concealing the names of the individuals whose failings are the objects of his satire :—

"At stacioners shops are lyes oft vendible,

Because such shops oft lye for gaines untrue :
But truth doth lye there oft contemptible;
Unsold, sith old; but lyes are often new.
Then should my booke sell well, sith full of lyes,
Ah, would they were: Nay, sure they leazings bee
In saying such and such do villanies;

When none so nam'd commit such villany.

But I use namelesse names, because their shame
Should light on no-body, that beares the blame."

The style of the Herefordshire epigrammist is by no means polished; his versification, indeed, very commonly hardly rises above doggrel. The wit the epigrams display is of no high character, and in many of them the point is scarcely perceptible. Perhaps the most pointed epigram in the book—we were going to say, the only epigram in it-is that

"Against Mustolphus his lying.

"Where now lies Mustolphus? Everie where. Why?
Wheresoever he goes, he doth nothing but lye."

As a sample of the far-fetched and laboured conceits which are found in some of these epigrams, and which appear to have been taken by many at that time for refined wit, we may point out the following display of ingenuity :

:

"The Author loving these homely meates specially, viz. Creame, Pan-cakes, Butterd Pippin-pyes (laugh good people), and Tobacco; writ to that worthy and vertuous gentlewoman, whom he calls Mistrisse, as followeth :

"If there were (O!) an Helespont of creame
Between us (milk-white mistris), I would swim
To you, to shew to both my love's extreame,
(Leander like), yea, dyve from brymm to brymm.
But, mett I with a butter'd pippin-pie
Floating upon 't; that would I make my boate
To whaft mee to you, without jeoberdy;
Though sea-sick I might bee while it did floate.