The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 25

"Master Abram is dead, gone, your Wors.h.i.+p, dead! Master Abram! Oh! good, your Wors.h.i.+p, a's gone. A' never throve, since a' came from Windsor--'twas his death. I called him rebel, your Wors.h.i.+p--but a' was all subject--a' was subject to any babe, as much as a king--a' turned, _like as it were the latter end of a lover's lute_--a' was all peace and resignment--a' took delight in nothing but his Book of Songs and Sonnets--a' would go to the Stroud side under the large beech tree, and sing, 'till 'twas quite pity of our lives to mark him; for his chin grew as long as a muscle.--Oh! a' sung his soul and body quite away--a' was lank as any greyhound, and had such a scent! I hid his love-songs among your Wors.h.i.+p's law-books; for I thought, if a' could not get at them, it might be to his quiet; but a' snuffed them out in a moment. Good, your Wors.h.i.+p, have the wise woman of Brentford secured--Master Abram may have been conjured--Peter Simple says, a' never looked up after a' sent for the wise woman.--Marry, a' was always given to look down afore his elders; a' might do it, a' was given to it--your Wors.h.i.+p knows it; but then 'twas peak and pert with him, marry, in the turn of his heel.--A'

died, your Wors.h.i.+p, just about one, at the crow of the c.o.c.k.--I thought how it was with him; for a' talked as quick, ay, marry, as glib as your Wors.h.i.+p; and a' smiled, and looked at his own nose, and called 'Sweet Ann Page.' I asked him if a' would eat--so a' bad us commend him to his cousin Robert (a' never called your Wors.h.i.+p so before) and bad us get hot meat, for a' would not say 'nay' to Ann again.[37] But a' never lived to touch it--a' began all in a moment to sing 'Lovers all, a Madrigall.' 'Twas the only song Master Abram ever learnt out of book, and clean by heart, your Wors.h.i.+p--and so a' sung, and smiled, and looked askew at his own nose, and sung, and sung on, till his breath waxed shorter, and shorter, and shorter, and a' fell into a struggle and died. Alice Shortcake craves, she may make his shroud...."

[37] Vide, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, latter part of 1st scene, 1st act.

Should these specimens fail to rouse your curiosity to see the whole, it may be to your loss, gentle reader, but it will give small pain to the spirit of him that wrote this little book; my fine-tempered friend, J.

W.--for not in authors.h.i.+p, or the spirit of authors.h.i.+p, but from the fullness of a young soul, newly kindling at the Shakspearian flame, and bursting to be delivered of a rich exuberance of conceits,--I had almost said _kindred with those of the full Shakspearian genius itself_,--were these letters dictated. We remember when the inspiration came upon him; when the plays of Henry the Fourth were first put into his hands. We think at our recommendation he read them, rather late in life, though still he was but a youth. He may have forgotten, but we cannot, the pleasant evenings which ensued at the Boar's Head (as we called our tavern, though in reality the sign was not that, nor the street Eastcheap, for that honoured place of resort has long since pa.s.sed away) when over our pottle of Sherris he would talk you nothing but pure _Falstaff_ the long evenings through. Like his, the wit of J. W. was deep, recondite, imaginative, full of goodly figures and fancies. Those evenings have long since pa.s.sed away, and nothing comparable to them has come in their stead, or can come. "We have heard the chimes at midnight."

II.--CHARLES LLOYD'S POEMS

(1819)

NUGae CANORae. POEMS BY CHARLES LLOYD

The reader who shall take up these poems in the mere expectation of deriving amus.e.m.e.nt for an idle hour, will have been grievously misled by the t.i.tle. _Nugae_ they certainly are not, but full of weight; earnest, pa.s.sionate communings of the spirit with itself. He that reads them must come to them in a serious mood; he should be one that has descended into his own bosom; that has probed his own nature even to s.h.i.+vering; that has indulged the deepest yearnings of affection, and has had them strangely flung back upon him; that has built to himself a fortress out of conscious weakness; that has cleaved to the rock of his early religion, and through hope in it hath walked upon the uneasy waters.

We should be sorry to convey a false notion. Mr. Lloyd's religion has little of pretence or sanctimoniousness about it; it is worn as an armour of self-defence, not as a weapon of outward annoyance: the believing may be drawn by it, and the unbelieving need not be deterred.

The Religionist of Nature may find some things to venerate in its mild Christianity, when he shall discover in a volume, generally hostile to new experiments in philosophy and morals, some of its tenderest pages dedicated to the virtues of _Mary Wolstonecraft G.o.dwin_.

Mr. Lloyd's poetry has not much in it that is narrative or dramatic. It is richer in natural description; but the _imagery_ is for the most part embodied with, and made subservient to, the _sentiment_, as in many of the sonnets, &c. His genius is metaphysical and profound; his verses are made up of deep feeling, accompanied with the perpetual running commentary of his own deeper self-reflection. His affections seem to run kindliest in domestic channels; and there some strains, commemorative of a dead relative, which, while they do honour to the heart of the writer, are of too sacred a nature, we think, almost to have been committed to print at all; much less would they bear exposal among the miscellaneous matter indispensable to a public journal. We prefer therefore giving an extract from the fine blank verse poem, ent.i.tled _Christmas_. It is richly embued with the meditative, introspective cast of mind, so peculiar to this author:--

There is a time When first sensation paints the burning cheek, Fills the moist eye, and quickens the keen pulse, That mystic meanings half conceiv'd invest The simplest forms, and all doth speak, all lives To the eager heart! At such a time to me Thou cam'st, dear holiday! Thy twilight glooms Mysterious thoughts awaken'd, and I mus'd As if possest, yea felt as I had known The dawn of inspiration. Then the days Were sanctified by feeling, all around Of an indwelling presence darkly spake.

Silence had borrow'd sounds to cheat the soul!

And, to the toys of life, the teeming brain, Impregning them with its own character, Gave preternatural import; the dull face Was eloquent, and e'en the idle air Most potent shapes, varying and yet the same, Substantially express'd.

But soon my heart, Unsatisfied with blissful shadows, felt Achings of vacancy, and own'd the throb Of undefin'd desire, while lays of love Firstling and wild stole to my trem'lous tongue.

To me thy rites were mock'ry then, thy glee Of little worth. More pleas'd I trod the waste Sear'd with the sleety wind, and drank its blast; Deeming thy dreary shapes most strangely sweet, Mist-shrouded winter! in mute loneliness I wore away the day which others hail'd So cheerily, still usher'd in with chaunt Of carol, and the merry ringers' peal, Most musical to the good man that wakes And praises G.o.d in gladness.

But soon fled The dreams of love fantastic! Still the Friend, The Friend, the wild roam o'er the drifted snows Remain unsung! then when the wintry view Objectless, mist-hidden, or in uncouth forms Prank'd by the arrowy flake might aptly yield New stores to shaping fantasy, I rov'd With him my lov'd companion! Oh, 'twas sweet; Ye who have known the swell that heaves the breast Pregnant with loftiest poesy, declare Is aught more soothing to the charmed soul Than friends.h.i.+p's glow, the independent dream Gathering when all the frivolous shews are fled Of artificial life; when the wild step Boundeth on wide existence, unbeheld, Uncheck'd, and the heart fas.h.i.+oneth its hope In Nature's school, while Nature bursts around, Nor Man her spoiler meddles in the scene!

Farewell, dear day, much hath it sooth'd my heart To chaunt thy frail memorial.

Now advance The darkening years, and I do sojourn, home!

From thee afar. Where the broad-bosom'd hills, Swept by perpetual clouds, of Scotland, rise, Me fate compels to tarry.

Ditty quaint or custom'd carol, there my vacant ear Ne'er blest! I thought of home and happier days!

And as I thought, my vexed spirit blam'd That austere race, who, mindless of the glee Of good old festival, coldly forbade Th' observance which of mortal life relieves The languid sameness, seeming too to bring Sanction from h.o.a.r antiquity and years Long past!

III.--BARRON FIELD'S POEMS

(1820)

"FIRST FRUITS OF AUSTRALIAN POETRY"

Sydney, New South Wales. Printed for Private Distribution

I first adventure; follow me who list; And be the second Austral Harmonist.

Whoever thou art that hast transplanted the British wood-notes to the far-off forest which the Kangaroo haunts--whether thou art some involuntary exile that solaces his sad estrangement with recurrence to his native notes, with more wisdom than those captive Hebrews of old refused to sing their Sion songs in a strange land--or whether, as we rather suspect, thou art that valued friend of ours, who, in thy young time of life, together with thy faithful bride, thy newly "wedded flower," didst, in obedience to the stern voice of duty, quit thy friends, thy family, thy pleasing avocations, the Muses with which thou wert as deeply smitten as any, we believe, in our age and country, to go and administer tedious justice in inauspicious unliterary THIEFLAND[38]--we reclaim thee for our own, and gladly would transport thee back to thy native "fields," and studies congenial to thy habits.

[38] An elegant periphrasis for _the Bay_. Mr. Coleridge led us the way--"CLOUDLAND, gorgeous land."

We know a merry Captain, and co-navigator with Cook, who prides himself upon having planted the first pun in Otaheite. It was in their own language, and the islanders first looked at him, then stared at one another, and all at once burst out into a genial laugh. It was a stranger, and as a stranger they gave it welcome. Many a quibble of their own growth, we doubt not, has since sprung from that well-timed exotic. Where puns flourish, there must be no inconsiderable advance in civilization. The same good results we are willing to augur from this dawn of refinement at Sydney. They were beginning to have something like a theatrical establishment there, which we are sorry to hear has been suppressed; for we are of opinion with those who think that a taste for such kind of entertainments is one remove at least from profligacy, and that Shakspeare and Gay may be as safe teachers of morality as the ordinary treatises which a.s.sume to instil that science. We have seen one of their play bills (while the thing was permitted to last) and were affected by it in no ordinary degree; particularly in the omission of the t.i.tles of honour, which in this country are condescendingly conceded to the players. In their Dramatis Personae _Jobson_ was played by Smith; _Lady Loverule_, Jones; _Nell_, Wilkinson: Gentlemen and Lady Performers alike curtailed of their fair proportions. With a little patronage, we prophesy, that in a very few years the histrionic establishment of Sydney would have risen in respectability; and the humble performers would, by tacit leave, or open permission, have been allowed to use the same encouraging affixes to their names, which dignify their prouder brethren and sisters in the mother country. What a moral advancement, what a lift in the scale, to a Braham or a Stephens of New South Wales, to write themselves _Mr._ and _Miss_! The King here has it not in his power to do so much for a Commoner, no, not though he dub him a Duke.

"The First Fruits" consist of two poems. The first celebrates the plant _epacris grandiflora_; but we are no botanists, and perhaps there is too much matter mixed up in it from the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, to please some readers. The thefts are indeed so open and palpable, that we almost recur to our first surmise, that the author must be some unfortunate wight, sent on his travels for plagiarisms of a more serious complexion.

But the old matter and the new blend kindly together; and must, we hope, have proved right acceptable to more than one

----Among the Fair Of that young land of Shakspeare's tongue.

We select for our readers the second poem; and are mistaken, if it does not relish of the graceful hyperboles of our elder writers. We can conceive it to have been written by Andrew Marvel, supposing him to have been banished to Botany Bay, as he did, we believe, once meditate a voluntary exile to Bermuda. See his fine poem, "Where the remote Bermudas ride."

"THE KANGAROO"

"----mixtumque genus, prolesque biformis."--VIRG., _aen._, vi.

Kangaroo, Kangaroo!

Thou spirit of Australia, That redeems from utter failure, From perfect desolation, And warrants the creation Of this fifth part of the earth, Which would seem an after-birth, Not conceiv'd in the beginning (For G.o.d bless'd his work at first, And saw that it was good), But emerg'd at the first sinning, When the ground was therefore curst;-- And hence this barren wood!

Kangaroo, Kangaroo!

Tho' at first sight we should say, In thy nature that there may Contradiction be involv'd, Yet, like discord well resolv'd, It is quickly harmoniz'd.

Sphynx or mermaid realiz'd, Or centaur unfabulous, Would scarce be more prodigious, [Or labyrinthine minotaur With which great Theseus did war,]

Or Pegasus poetical, Or hippogriff--chimeras all!

But, what Nature would compile, Nature knows to reconcile; And Wisdom, ever at her side, Of all her children's justified.

She had made the squirrel fragile; She had made the bounding hart; But a third so strong and agile Was beyond ev'n Nature's art.

So she join'd the former two In thee, Kangaroo!

To describe thee, it is hard: Converse of the camelopard, Which beginneth camel-wise, But endeth of the panther size, Thy fore half, it would appear, Had belong'd to "some small deer,"

Such as liveth in a tree; By thy hinder, thou should'st be A large animal of chase, Bounding o'er the forest's s.p.a.ce;-- Join'd by some divine mistake, None but Nature's hand can make-- Nature, in her wisdom's play, On Creation's holiday.

For howso'er anomalous, Thou yet art not incongruous, Repugnant or preposterous.

Better-proportion'd animal, More graceful or ethereal, Was never follow'd by the hound, With fifty steps to thy one bound.

Thou canst not be amended: no; Be as thou art; thou best art so.

When sooty swans are once more rare, And duck-moles[39] the museum's care, Be still the glory of this land, Happiest work of finest hand!

[39] The _cygnus niger_ of Juvenal is no _rara avis_ in Australia; and time has here given ample proof of the _ornithorynchus paradoxus_. [Barron Field's note.]