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APPENDIX.

POMPEII.

A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL AT THE CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT

JULY, 1819.

OH! land to Memory and to Freedom dear, Land of the melting lyre and conquering spear, Land of the vine-clad hill, the fragrant grove, Of arts and arms, of Genius and of Love, Hear, fairest Italy. Though now no more The glittering eagles awe the Atlantic shore, Nor at thy feet the gorgeous Orient flings The blood-bought treasures of her tawny Kings, Though vanished all that formed thine old renown, The laurel garland, and the jewelled crown, The avenging poniard, the victorious sword, Which reared thine empire, or thy rights restored, Yet still the constant Muses haunt thy shore, And love to linger where they dwelt of yore. If e'er of old they deigned, with favouring smile, To tread the sea-girt shores of Albion's isle, To smooth with classic arts our rugged tongue, And warm with classic glow the British song, Oh! bid them snatch their silent harps which wave On the lone oak that shades thy Maro's grave, And sweep with magic hand the slumbering strings, To fire the poet.-For thy clime he sings, Thy scenes of gay delight and wild despair, Thy varied forms of awful and of fair.

*

How rich that climate's sweets, how wild its

storms,

What charms array it, and what rage deforms,
Well have they mouldering walls, Pompeii, known,
Decked in those charms, and by that rage o'er-
thrown.

Sad City, gayly dawned thy latest day,
And poured its radiance on a scene as gay.
The leaves scarce rustled in the sighing breeze;
In azure dimples curled the sparkling seas,
And as the golden tide of light they quaffed,
Campania's sunny meads and vineyards laughed,
While gleamed each lichened oak and giant pine
On the far sides of swarthy Apennine.

Then mirth and music through Pompeii rung;
Then verdant wreaths on all her portals hung;
Her sons with solemn rite and jocund lay,
Hailed the glad splendours of that festal day.
With fillets bound the hoary priests advance,
And rosy virgins braid the choral dance.
The rugged warrior here unbends awhile
His iron front, and deigns a transient smile;
There, frantic with delight, the ruddy boy
Scarce treads on earth, and bounds and laughs with
joy.

From every crowded altar perfumes rise
In billowy clouds of fragrance to the skies.
The milk-white monarch of the herd they lead,
With gilded horns, at yonder shrine to bleed;
And while the victim crops the broidered plain,
And frisks and gambols towards the destined fane,
They little deem that like himself they stray
To death, unconscious, o'er a flowery way;

Heedless, like him, the impending stroke await, And sport and wanton on the brink of fate.

What 'vails it that where yonder heights aspire
With ashes piled, and scathed with rills of fire,
Gigantic phantoms dimly seem to glide,*
In misty files, along the mountain's side,
To view with threatening scowl your fated lands,
And toward your city point their shadowy hands?
In vain celestial omens prompted fear,
And nature's signal spoke the ruin near.
In vain through many a night ye viewed from far
The meteor flag of elemental war

Unroll its blazing folds from yonder height,
In fearful sign of earth's intestine fight.
In vain Vesuvius groaned with wrath supprest,
And muttered thunder in his burning breast.
Long since the Eagle from that flaming peak
Hath soared with screams a safer nest to seek.
Awed by the infernal beacon's fitful glare,
The howling fox hath left his wonted lair;
Nor dares the browsing goat in venturous leap
To spring, as erst, from dizzy steep to steep.-
Man only mocks the peril. Man alone
Defies the sulphurous flame, the warning groan.
While instinct, humbler guardian, wakes and saves,
Proud reason sleeps, nor knows the doom it braves
But see the opening theatre invites
The fated myriads to its gay delights.
In, in, they swarm, tumultuous as the roar
Of foaming breakers on a rocky shore.
The enraptured throng in breathless transport views
The gorgeous temple of the Tragic Muse.
There, while her wand in shadowy pomp arrays
Ideal scenes, and forms of other days,
Fair as the hopes of youth, a radiant band,
The sister arts around her footstool stand,
To deck their Queen, and lend a milder grace
To the stern beauty of that awful face.
Far, far, around the ravished eye surveys
The sculptured forms of Gods and heroes blaze.
Above the echoing roofs the peal prolong
Of lofty converse, or melodious song,
While, as the tones of passion sink or swell,
Admiring thousands own the moral spell,
Melt with the melting strains of fancied wo,
With terror sieken, or with transport glow.

Oh! for a voice like that which pealed of old
Through Salem's cedar courts and shrines of gold,
And in wild accents round the trembling dome
Proclaimed the havoc of avenging Rome;
While every palmy arch and sculptured tower
Shook with the footsteps of the parting power.
Such voice might check your tears, which idly streama
For the vain phantoms of the poet's dream.

* Dio Cassius relates that figures of gigantic size appeared for some time previous to the destruction of Pompeii, on tl e summits of Vesuvius. This appearance was *See Eustace's description of the Tomb of Virgil, on probably occasioned by the fantastic forms which the the Neapolitan coast. smoke from tle crater of the volcano assumed. 3 B 2 569

VOL. IV.-72

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Might bid those terrors rise, those sorrows flow;
For other perils, and for nearer wo.
The hour is come. Even now the sulphurous
Involves the city in its funeral shroud,
And far along Campania's azure sky
Expands its dark and boundless canopy. [height,
The Sun, though throned on heaven's meridian
Burns red and rayless through that sickly night.
Each bosom felt at once the shuddering thrill,
At once the music stopped. The song was still.
None in that cloud's portentous shade might trace
The fearful changes of another's face.
But through that horrid stillness each could hear
His neighbour's throbbing heart beat high with fear.
A moment's pause succeeds. Then wildly rise
Grief's sobbing plaints and terror's frantic cries.
The gates recoil; and towards the narrow pass
In wild confusion rolls the living mass.
Death-when thy shadowy sceptre waves away
From his sad couch the prisoner of decay,
Though friendship view the close with glistening eye,
And love's fond lips imbibe the parting sigh,
By torture racked, by kindness soothed in vain,
The soul still clings to being and to pain.
But when have wilder terrors clothed thy brow,
Or keener torments edged thy dart than now,
When with thy regal horrors vainly strove
The law of Nature and the power of Love?
On mothers, babes in vain for mercy call,
Beneath the feet of brothers, brothers fall.
Behold the dying wretch in vain upraise
Towards yonder well-known face the accusing gaze;
See trampled to the earth the expiring naid
Clings round her lover's feet, and shrieks for aid.
Vain is the imploring glance, the frenzied cry;
All, all is fear;-to succour is to die.

Saw ye how wild, how red, how broad a light
Burst on the darkness of that mid-day night,
As fierce Vesuvius scattered o'er the vale
Her drifted flames and sheets of burning hail,
Shook hell's wan lightnings from his blazing cone,
And gilded heaven with meteors not its own?

The morn all blushing rose; but sought in vain
The snowy villas and the flowery plain,
The purpled hills with marshalled vineyards gay,
The domes that sparkled in the sunny ray.
Where art or nature late hath deck'd the scene
With blazing marble or with spangled green,
There, streaked by many a fiery torrent's bed,
A boundless waste of hoary ashes spread.

Along that dreary waste where lately rung The festal lay which smiling virgins sung, Where rapture echoed from the warbling lute, And the gay dance resounded, all is mute.Mute-Is it Fancy shapes that wailing sound Which faintly murmurs from the blasted ground, Or live there still, who, breathing in the tomb, Curse the dark refuge which delays their doom, In massive vaults, on which the incumbent plain And ruined city heap their weight in vain?

Oh! who may sing that hour of mortal strife, When Nature calls on Death, yet clings to life? Who paint the wretch that draws sepulchral breath, A living prisoner in the house of Death? Pale as the corpse which loads the funeral pile, With face convulsed that writhes a ghastly smile, Behold him speechless move with hurried pace, Incessant, round his dungeon's caverned space, Now shrink in terror, and now groan in pain, Gnaw his white lips and strike his burning brain, Till Fear o'erstrained in stupor dies away, And Madness wrests her victim from dismay. His arms sink down; his wild and stony eye Glares without sight on blackest vacancy. He feels not, sees not: wrapped in senseless trance His soul is still and listless as his glance. One cheerless blank, one rayless mist is there, Thoughts, senses, passions, live not with despair. Haste, Famine, haste, to urge the destined close, And lull the horrid scene to stern repose.

Yet ere, dire Fiend, thy lingering tortures cease, And all be hushed in still sepulchral peace, Those caves shall wilder, darker deeds behold Than e'er the voice of song or fable told, Whate'er dismay may prompt, or madness dare, Feasts of the grave, and banquets of despair.Hide, hide the scene; and o'er the blasting sight Fling the dark veil of ages and of night.

Go, seek Pompeii now:-with pensive tread Roam through the silent city of the dead. Explore each spot, where still, in ruin grand, Her shapeless piles and tottering columns stand, Where the pale ivy's clasping wreaths o'ershade The rained temple's moss-clad colonnade, Or violets on the hearth's cold marble wave, And muse in silence on a people's grave.

Fear not. No sign of death thine eyes shall

scare,

No, all is beauty, verdure, fragrance there.
A gentle slope includes the fatal ground
With odorous shrubs and tufted myrtles crowned;
Beneath, o'ergrown with grass, or wreathed with
flowers,

Lie tombs and temples, columns, baths, and towers.
As if, in mockery, Nature seems to dress.
In all her charms the beauteous wilderness,
And bids her gayest flowerets twine and bloom
In sweet profusion o'er a city's tomb.
With roses here she decks the untrodden path,
With lilies fringes there the stately bath;
The acanthus'* spreading foliage here she weaves
Round the gay capital which mocks its leaves;
There hangs the sides of every mouldering room
With tapestry from her own fantastic loom,
Wallflowers and weeds, whose glowing hues supply
With simple grace the purple's Tyrian dye.
The ruined city sleeps in fragrant shade,
Like the pale corpse of some Athenian maid,t
Whose marble arms, cold brows, and snowy neck
The fairest flowers of fairest climates deck,
Meet types of her whose form their wreaths array,
Of radiant beauty, and of swift decay.

Advance, and wander on through crumbling halls, Through prostrate gates and ivied pedestals, Arches, whose echoes now no chariots rouse, Tombs, on whose summits goats undaunted browse. See where yon ruined wall on earth reclines, Through weeds and moss the half-seen painting shines,

Still vivid midst the dewy cowslips glows,
Or blends its colours with the blushing rose.
Thou lovely, ghastly scene of fair decay,
In beauty awful, and midst horrors gay,
Renown more wide, more bright shall gild thy name,
Than thy wild charms or fearful doom could claim.
Immortal spirits, in whose deathless song
Latium and Athens yet their reign prolong,
And from their thrones of fame and empire hurled,
Still sway the sceptre of the mental world,
You in whose breasts the flames of Pindus beamed,
Whose copious lips with rich persuasion streamed,
Whose minds unravelled nature's mystic plan,
Or traced the mazy labyrinth of man:
Bend, glorious spirits, from your blissful bowers,
And broidered couches of unfading flowers,
While round your locks the Elysian garlands blow,
With sweeter odours, and with brighter glow.
Once more, immortal shades, atoning Fame
Repairs the honours of each glorious name.
Behold Pompeii's opening vaults restore
The long-lost treasures of your ancient lore,
The vestal radiance of poetic fire,
The stately buskin and the tuneful lyre,

• The capital of the Corinthian pillar is carved, as in well known, in imitation of the acanthus. Mons, de Chateaubriand, as I have found since this Poem was written, has employed the same image in his Travels. + It is the custom of the modern Greeks to adora corpses profusely with flowers

The wand of eloquence, whose magic sway
The sceptres and the swords of earth obey,
And every mighty spell, whose strong control
Could nerve or melt, could fire or soothe the soul.
And thou, sad city, raise thy drooping head,
And share the honours of the glorious dead.
Had Fate reprieved thee till the frozen North
Poured in wild swarms its hoarded millions forth,
Till blazing cities marked where Albion trod,
Or Europe quaked beneath the scourge of God,*
No lasting wreath had graced thy funeral pall,
No fame redeemed the horrors of thy fall.

Now shall thy deathless memory five entwined
With all that conquers, rules, or charms the
mind,

Each lofty thought of Poet or of Sage,
Each grace of Virgil's lyre or Tully's page.
Like theirs whose Genius consecrates thy tomb,
Thy fame shall snatch from time a greener bloom.
Shall spread where'er the Muse has rear'd her
throne,

And live renowned in accents yet unknown;
Earth's utmost bounds shall join the glad acclaim,
And distant Camus bless Pompeii's name.

THE BATTLE OF IVRY.

[KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE, 1824.]

(HENRY the Fourth, on his accession to the French crown, was opposed by a large part of his subjects, under the Duke of Mayenne, with the assistance of Spain and Savoy. In March, 1590, he gained a decisive victory over that party at Ivry. Before the battle, he addressed his troops, "My children, if you lose sight of your colours, rally to my white plume-you will always find it in the path to honour and glory." His conduct was answerable to his promise. Nothing could resist his impetuous valour, and the leaguers underwent a total and bloody defeat. In the midst of the rout, Henry followed, crying, “Save the French!" and his clemency added a number of the enemies to his own army. Aikin's Biographical Dictionary.]

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and the dance,

Through thy cornfields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France
And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war;
Hurrah! hurrah. for Ivry and King Henry of Navarre.

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land!
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for his own holy name and Henry of Navarre.

The king is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest:
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, in deafening shout, "God save our lord, the King.'
"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may-

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme, to-day, the helmet of Navarre.”

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin!
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint Andre's plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
Charge for the golden lilies now, upon them with the lance!
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

• The well-known name of Attila

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Now God be praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned his rein
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter-the Flemish Count is slain,
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail;
And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van,
"Remember St. Bartholomew," was passed from man to man ;
But out spake gentle Henry then, "No Frenchman is my foe;
Down, down with every foreigner; but let your brethren go.
Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre!

Ho! maidens of Vienna! Ho! matrons of Lucerne !
Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return:
Ho! Philip, send for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls'
Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright!
Ho! burghers of St. Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night!
For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
And mocked the counsel of the wise and the valour of the brave.
Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are ;
4nd glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre.

MADAME D'ARBLAY.*

[Edinburgh Review, January, 1843.]

THOUGH the world saw and heard little of Madame D'Arblày during the last forty years of her life, and though that little did not add to her fame, there were thousands, we believe, who felt a singular emotion when they learned that she was no longer among us. The news of her death carried the minds of men back at one leap, clear over two generations, to the time when her first literary triumphs were won. All those whom we had been accustomed to revere as intellectual patriarchs, seemed children when compared with her; for Burke had sat up all night to read her writings, and Johnson had pronounced her superior to Fielding when Rogers was still a schoolboy, and Southey still in petticoats. Yet more strange did it seem that we should just have lost one whose name had been widely celebrated before anybody had heard of some illustrious men who, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, were, after a long and splendid career, borne with honour to the grave. Yet so it was. Frances Burney was at the height of fame and popularity before Cowper had published his first volume, before Porson had gone up to college, before Pitt had taken his seat in the House of Commons, before the voice of Erskine had been once heard in Westminster Hall. Since the appearance of her first work, sixty-two years had passed; and this interval had been crowded, not only with political, but also with intellectual revolutions. Thousands of reputations had, during that period, sprung up, bloomed, withered, and disappeared. New kinds of composition had come into fashion, had gone out of fashion, had been derided, had been forgotten. The fooleries of Della Crusca, and the fooleries of Kotzebue, had for a time bewitched the multitude, who had left no trace behind them; nor had misdirected genius been able to save from decay the once flourishing schools of Godwin, of Darwin, and of Radcliffe. Many books, written for temporary effect, had run through six or seven editions, and had then been gathered to the novels of Afra Behn, and the epic poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. Yet the early works of Madame D'Arblay, in spite of the lapse of years, in spite of Le change of manners, in spite of the popularity deservedly obtained by some of her rivals, continued to hold a high place in the public esteem. She lived to be a classic. Time set on her fame, before she went hence, that seal which is seldom set except on the fame of the departed. Like Sir Condy Rackrent in the tale, she survived her own wake, and overheard the judgment of posterity.

Having always felt a warm and sincere, though not a blind admiration for her talents, we rejoiced to learn that her Diary was about

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to be made public. Our hopes, it is true, were not unmixed with fears. We could not forget the fate of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, which were published ten years ago. That unfortunate book contained much that was curious and interesting. Yet it was received with a cry of disgust, and was speedily consigned to oblivion. The truth is, that it deserved its doom. It was written in Madame D'Arblay's later style-the worst style that has ever been known among men. No genius, no information, could save from proscription a book so written. We, therefore, opened the Diary with no small anxiety, trembling lest we should light upon some of that particular rhetoric which deforms almost every page of the Memoirs, and which it is impossible to read without a sensation made up of mirth, shame and loathing. We soon, however, discovered to our great delight, that this Diary was kept before Madame D'Arblay became eloquent. It is, for the most part, written in her earliest and best manner; in true woman's English, clear, natural, and lively. The two works are lying side by side before us, and we never turn from the Memoirs to the Diary without a sense of relief. The difference is as great as the difference between the atmosphere of a perfumer's shop, fetid with lavender water and jasmine soap, and the air of a heath on a fine morning in May. Both works ought to be consulted by every person who wishes to be well acquainted with the history of our literature and our manners. But to read the Diary is a pleasure; to read the Memoirs will always be a task.

We may, perhaps, afford some harmless amusement to our readers if we attempt, with the help of these two books, to give them an account of the most important years of Madame D'Arblay's life.

She was descended from a family which bore the name of Macburney, and which, though probably of Irish origin, had been long settled in Shropshire, and was possessed of consider able estates in that county. Unhappily, many years bere her birth, the Macburneys began, as if of set purpose and in a spirit of deter mined rivalry, to expose and ruin themselves. The heir-apparent, Mr. James Macburney, offended his father by making a runaway match with an actress from Goodman's Fields, The old gentleman could devise no more judicious mode of wreaking vengeance on lis undutiful boy than by marrying the cook. The cook gave birth to a son named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. The favorite son, however, was so extravagant, that he soon became as poor as his disin herited brother. Both were forced to earn their bread by their labour. Joseph turned dancing-master, and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the Mac from the beginning of he

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