OSMYN (Solemnly.) Upon the ashes of my buried hoart— I was a Christian Prince-I loved and wedded, O God! the babe that from its mother's breast * * * For I was restless in my blessedness. I've wept i'the rich and breathless luxury It could in bursting shed its richness round her. (A pause.) One evening late within my lady's bower I sat, and wondered at my happiness. A shout-another; and that other bore MANFRED, the terror of the neighbouring states; Manfred the base, the bloody, and the ruthless Burst with his band of ruffians on my peace. * * * * They seized me when I could no longer strive, One did, in cruel mercy, bring me bread, And I, in famine's maddening pangs, devoured it. * * I cannot tell my dungeon agonies * Nor time nor space was there, nor day nor midnight. * * * I knew not that I lived, but felt I suffered. SYNDARAC. Dids thou not live for vengeance? Years past away o'er the fair world above; I knew no time-its lapse was unto me Like dark waves booming o'er a sunken wreck- There was a tempest in the upper world; To me it was a rough, but friendly hand, Shaking my bolts, till its strong grasp dissolved them; A lightning brand, like warrior's javelin, Pierced through the vault-its light was liberty The walls were rent. * Through crashing vaults, burst grates, and sulphurous damps, The pale enquiring stranger gazed around; None knew him. * One day the city swarmed, It was a high and glorious festival; Soldiers and burghers thronged the public way, And midst them there was borne in princely pride A form that once I clasped. It was Matilda, then the wife of Manfred. Guiscard, yet an infant, was in her arms. Osmyn continues his harrowing story. He fled from the city. "On the last shore of Italy I kissed A cross my mother bound about my neck, I grasped the crescent." On Asia's coast We are compelled to pass unnoticed much sweet, and some very characteristic dialogue. Osmyn is now apprised that the Christian embassy awaits him. His informant is the insidious and inveterate Bentaleb, whose language is happily selected to awaken the slumbering bitterness of his general: -- "The son of Manfred Waits at the tent of Osmyn." The scene changes to Osmyn's pavilion; and previous to the introduction of the Christians, the following striking passages occur. Osmyn addresses himself to Bentaleb : OSMYN. Come hither. Nearer-I would speak with thee: Thou knowest these slaves are summoned to our presence. How would'st thou deal with them, wert thou as I am? And thou hast wondrous reason. Mighty cause- Thou art a fool in vengeance-a blunt fool, Who knows what weight the fleshly frame can bear, But fram'st no exquisite engine for the soul- To writhe in tortures body never felt. * If thou wouldst make man wretched, make him vile : Sir Walter Scott, when in Ireland, (1825) promised to edit these literary relics for the family of the dead poet, but unfortunately, to surmount his own troubles soon required all his attention, and every energy of his great, true heart; and so to this day, Maturin's unpublished works are forgotten and unknown. Reader, we have now placed before you a sketch of one, who, as the world goes, may not have been so prudent as we could desire. We have little doubt that some will be of opinion that his life is not an instructive one. He never played *We are indebted for this extract to "The University Review" for May, 1834, p. 12. the parasite to a bishop, he cultivated no patronage at the expense of a gentleman's honour, or a scholar's dignity. Other men, with minds less brilliant, but smiles more ready, entered with Maturin upon the road of life, and as time rolled on, they rose in dignity and in wealth, and so it came to pass, that mediocrity looked out of its carriage window at the toiling world, whilst genius and industry trudged by, blessed only with God's gift of intellect. He was but forty-four years old at his death, and though the great deeds of the beacon minds of the world, have been, in general, achieved before this age, though, in his short span of existence, Maturin may not have done much, and if his vanities and coxcomb airs, poor tinsel figments, disfiguring our man of genius, as they years ago disfigured Oliver Goldsmith, have caused a smile, remember, that all men are not philosophers in early manhood; do not forget that, as Byron wrote, "Poor fellow, to be sure he had a long seasoning of adversity, which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing." Let us not frown upon the poor curate's memory, because he was not ever mindful of Sir Thomas Browne's thought, "Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of men. Recalling the brave struggles of his true heart against the cold, hard, "iron realities" of the world, let us hope, that when we stand at that great Bar, where the life deeds of the Bishop and the Curate, of the Monarch and the Beggar, shall be examined, you and we may bring before the Omniscient Judge, a life not more guilty than that of the poet priest.† * Urn Burial. †The following is a list of Maturin's works with the dates of their publications. Montorio, or the Fatal Revenge, 4 vols, 1804. The Wild Irish Boy, 3 vols., 1808. The Milesian Chief, 3 vols., 1812. Waterloo, a Prize Poem, 1815. Bertram, or the Castle of Aldobrand, a tragedy, 1816. Manuel, a tragedy, 1817. Woman, or Pour et Contre, 3 vols., 1818. Fredolpho, 3 vols., 1819. Melmoth, the Wanderer, 3 vols., 1820. The Universe, a poem in blank verse, 1821. The Albigenses, 4 vols., 1824. Six Controversial Sermons, 1824. ART. V.-TRAITS OF AMERICAN HUMOUR. Traits of American Humour, By native Authors. Edited and adapted by the Author of "Sam Slick." 3 vols. London, Colburn & Co. THERE are two classes of readers from whom the work before us has a small chance of welcome. Those, who, confiding in the strength of their mental digestion, prefer taking their "utile" unmixed, and who hold in utter contempt, minds weak enough to relish the addition of the " dulce," probably consider, that Judge Haliburton has retrograded sadly in giving to the world a series of mere humorous sketches. According to their views, he for the first time, "really promised something great" in his "English in America,"* and no doubt had his present work been of a similar cast, instead of being so lamentably mirthful, they might have been inclined to forgive and forget in the sober political historian, the trivial varieties of Sam Slick. But fortunately for Judge Haliburton, and indeed it may be for society at large, the possessors of intellects so far exalted, are decidedly in the minority. The public appetite is in general pleased with variety, and evinces a repugnance to intellectual dyspepsia, which must be very discouraging to those lofty-minded beings, who, forgetful of the days when James's powder was rendered grateful to their juvenile palates, by the addition of raspberry jam, deny the utility of humour, as a vehicle for wholesome truth. The opposition of the class of enemies to humourous writing, is founded on the belief, that vulgarity and wit are synonymous, and that mirth is incompatible with "gentility." To all of this dreary creed, the very title "Traits of American Humour," is of course conclusive; it satisfies them at once that the book must be "dreadfully low," and consequently it is returned unread to the highly genteel circulating library, with a request, that the 'Lily and the Bee," and the last work on Crochet collars, may be sent up the moment they come in. There is one reflection however which canuot fail to infuse comfort into the soul of Judge Haliburton, and cheer him in his banishment from the reading tables of these worthy people-Shakspeare is undergoing a similar sentence in company with a distinguished circle of malefactors, convicted of vulgarity at the bar of ultra-refine * Reviewed in the Irish Quarterly, vol. 1, p. 523. |