400 Nuga Literaria-No. IV. just as if Richard had regarded the stabbing of a benefactor, and sending him to hell, as a matter of perfect indifference. We may remark, by the way, that the sudden changes of voice just alluded to, have generally the desired effect; and indeed, when they are introduced with skill, the sensations they create are most wonderful. However, in this instance, we have seen Mr. Kean fall far short of our expectations. He is so fond of an innovation, which is exclusively and confessedly his own, that he brings it forward too often, and too indiscriminately; so much so, that the very peculiarity which, in some parts, we regard as a perfection, becomes, in others, mere tiresome monotony. Richard, so long as success goes with him, and no reverse nor threatening of fortune gives occasion to the operations of conscience, triumphs in his own aggrandizement, and in the success of those precautionary measures by which he thought himself out of the reach of harm or molestation. And here we think that Kean presents a highly-finished portrait of the exulting tyrant. The most stupid observer is struck with the terrific joy that all at once kindles his scowling fea tures Act IV. Scene 4.- I have it-I'll have them sure-get me a coffin Full of holes and let them both be cramm'd into it," &c. When he suddenly conceives a plan of disposing of the bodies of the murdered young princes, we can compare it to nothing but what we may imagine to be the horrid gladness of an evil spirit on his first clutching a condemned soul into his possession. But when the business of the scene increases, when apprehensions begin to multiply, and conscience to operate, Kean is the veriest Richard we can well conceive. In the awful tent scene (where every performer tries to be great) he exhibits to us a soul tormented by the passions of a demon so effectually, as to distance every cotemporary actor. He starts from his dream of horror, with the exclamation of a mind in agony, and pushes his sword against the flitting images of his disordered brain, with a countenance so expressive of terror, despair, and conscious guilt, as to overpower the most inert imagination. The combat with Richmond, which finishes the tyrant's career, terminates by far too easily and too soon. It is not consistent with the usurper's character [Dec. 1, of fierceness and bravery, to resign his life and his idol-the crown, lengthened and inveterate struggle; and without a this is an oversight which we do not the highly wrought scene of his death, think is by any means compensated by appalling and frightful as it is. many striking beauties in this play, Mr. Kean, however, has developed which the genius of Garrick, Cooke, and Kemble had slighted; in passages, tentive readers and discerning critics too, the beauties of which the most athave hitherto overlooked. Much has been said respecting Mr. K.'s person, voice, and pronunciation. Certainly we once could have wished they are; but we are not now disposed that they had been more perfect than to quarrel with them; because we are convinced of a circumstance, concerning which we had formerly been extremely sceptical, namely, that a young man without the advantages of a good voice, of a good figure, or of a graceful utterance, can, by the mere strength of his own conceptions of character, become the best performer on the British stage. R. A. A. NUGE LITERARIÆ. THE SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF TASSO'S is a quarto manuscript poem of nearly thirty thousand verses, entitled "GodeIN the public library at Lyons there froi de Bouillon," written in the year 1440. From what I saw of the work I afforded matter for, and suggested the cannot divest my mind of the idea that it plan of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," as it is a succinct narrative of the first Crusade. Bulloign, as Fairfax calls him, is curious, The following anecdote of Godfrey de and, I believe, not generally known. When this great champion of the Crusades was inaugurated king of Jerusalem, he was offered a crown, which he meekly declined, saying, that he would where his Saviour had worn a crown of never wear a crown of gold in the place thorns. COINCIDENCES BETWEEN LORD BYRON from Vida's Art of Poetry, to justify the 1818.] Nuge Literariæ—No. IV. Aptemus; verum accipimus nunc clara reperta; Nunc seriem atque animum verborum quoque ipsa, Nec pudet interdum alterius nos ore locutos. St. Jerome relates that his preceptor, Donatus, explaining that sensible passage of Terence-"Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius,"-railed severely, at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts-" Pereant qui ante nos, nostra dixerunt.". The following coincidences of Lord Byron are not noticed with any invidious intention, but merely as curious and accidental resemblances, which to the literary reader may not prove unamusing. In his exquisite stanzas to Thyrza, Lord Byron has the following thought: In vain my lyre would lightly breathe The smile that sorrow fain would wear, But mocks the woe that lurks beneath. Lake roses o'er a sepulchre. Poem xiv. s. 3. In some verses by Mrs. Opie, the same idea occurs, though it is expressed with much less spirit and pathos:- A face of smiles, a heart of tears! Thus in the church-yard realm of death The turf increasing verdure wears, While all is pale, and dead beneath. Opie's Poems, v. 1. p. 38. Some stanzas for music, also, by Lord Byron, introduce a modification of the same thought; for instance "Tis but as ivy leaves around the ruined turret wreath, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath. Stanzas for Music. But these, however, are in precisely the same train of thought as the following: And oft we see gay ivy's wreath The tree with brilliant bloom o'erspread, When, part its leaves and gaze beneath, We find the hidden tree is dead. Opie's Poems, v. 2, p. 144, The delightful stanza next quoted, is, perhaps, the most truly poetical passage of all his lordship's productions. It is in the very loftiest tone of enthusiasm and tenderness. And could oblivion set my soul From all its troubled visions free, I'd dash to earth the sweetest bowl That drown'd a single thought of thee! Poem xxii. s. 3. "Lines written in Autumn," by Lo gan, contain a similar allusion: Nor will I court Lethean streams My sorrowing sense to steep, NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 59, Nor drink oblivion to the themes O'er which I love to weep. 401 Mr. Montgomery concludes his beau tiful description of his hero, in «The World before the Flood," in a similar manner. By-the bye, the personal character of Lord Byron, to those who are really acquainted with him, and who have not ormed their notions of him from mere hearsay, will appear strongly to resemble that of Javan. He only, like the ocean-weed uptorn, save. World before the Flood, p. 24. In a beautiful song commencing with "Maid of Athens ere we part," which was addressed to Miss Macrea, the daughter of the late British Consul at Athens, Lord Byron says Tho' I fly to Istambol Athens holds my heart and soul. Dodsley has the same thought, with-out a similar delicacy in his embellishments of it. Though my body must remove, The following coincidences have the Campbell. That excessive diffidence, that insurmountable shyness, which is so apt to freeze the current of conversation in England, has been very correctly accounted for by Cowper, who says, "Our sensibilities are so acute, The fear of being silent makes us mute." MEMORY. It is singular that the Latin Fathers resident at Jerusalem pretend, with the utmost assurance and precision, to point out to travellers the tower of David, his sepulchre, the sepulchre of our Saviour, the houses of Zebedee, St. Mark, St. Memory is an inestimable gift: "TanThomas, and Caiaphas; although Patum ingenii quantum memoriæ," says lestine has several times changed its Quintilian. I have nevertheless heard masters, and so frequently been wasted because Helvetius has observed, somepersons boast of having bad memories, and destroyed. It is recorded of Titus, where in his Essay on Man, that a tenathat according to Christ's express precious memory, by forcing too many ideas diction, he ordered his soldiers entirely to demolish its structures, fortifications, palaces, towers, walls, and ornaments. So eager were they in executing his commands, that they left nothing which could even serve to indicate that the ground had once been inhabited, except a part of the western wall, the three towers of Hippicos, Phasael, and Mariamne; which the conqueror left standing the former to serve as a rampart to his twelfth legion which he left there, and the three latter, to denote to future ages the strength of the whole city, and the valour and skill of him who overthrew it. The Jewish traditions report that Titus caused the plough to be driven qver it, a strong presumption that its destruction was every way complete.Under such circumstances then, it is not easy to believe the statements of the Fathers, as to the holy places before alluded to; for though the scite of them may in some measure be imagined, yet it is extravagant to suppose that the fabrics themselves are still in existence. THE PASSIONS. Tacitus calls the Passions " tortures," because under their influence the words that a man utters are for the most part sincere. Persius in his 5th Satire, says, "Intus et in jecore ægro Nascuntur domini." upon the imagination, prevents it from COWPER'S TRANSLATION. Though Cowper in his translation of Homer has been too literal, and inattentive to the melody of his versification, he has infused much more of the simple majesty of the divine Bard than his predecessor Pope, who appears to have wielded the sword of Alexander throughout, and to have cul, rather than unravelled the GORDIAN knots to be met with in his original. HOPE. Though Hope is a flatterer, she is the most uninterested of all parasites, for she visits the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior. NOTE TO GRAY'S ELEGY IN A COUNTRY It is probable that the following fine delineation of domestic affection may have suggested to Gray a passage in his Our Passions play the tyrant in our breasts. Elegy. CONVIVIALITY. It was said by the ancients, that to enjoy the "feast of reason, and the flow of soul," the party should never be more At jam non domus accipiet te læta, neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati 1818.] Curious Information concerning Prince Charles Stuart. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Nor busy housewife ply her evening care, No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Gray's Elegy. So COLLINS in his ODE on the "SuPERSTITIONS of the HIGHLANDS." "For him in vain his anxious wife shall wait, Or wander forth to meet him on his way; For him in vain at to-fall of the day, His babes shall linger at the unclosing gate, Ah! ne'er shall he return." A similar passage occurs in Thomson's Winter, describing the traveller lost in the snow; "In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children peeping out Nor friends, nor sacred home! POPE. Would not the following couplet from Pope's Essay on Criticism, make a valuable addition to a collection of English Bulls? When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work to outlast immortal Rome designed. MADAME D'ARBLAY. Madame D'Arblay's productions have, there is little doubt, been considerably over-rated. That they contain many beauties no one will pretend to deny, and to the erroneous idea which she appears to entertain of human nature, must we alone ascribe the numerous vulgarisms which pervade them. It is no less remarkable than true, that a piece full of marked characters will always be void of nature. The error into which Madame D'Arblay has fallen is that of dedicating too much of her time to making all her personages always talk in character; whereas in the present refined or depraved state of society, most people endeavour to conceal their defects rather than to display them. BATHOS. It is somewhat singular that Pope, who wrote the following humorous bombast as a specimen of what deserved to be universally ridiculed, should have fallen into precisely the same error himself, in a more serious strain. 403 THE data of the historian are the facts derived, either from the writings of his precursors, the tradition of the country, official documents, the communication of credible witnesses, or, what is seldom the case, from his own personal knowledge. But his predecessors, though they lived nearer the time recorded, however anxious they might have been to detail nothing but truth, could not be supposed, in all cases, to know the whole truth: tradition is often loaded with fable, and interwoven with the misconceptions of illiterate verbal chronicles: official documents are generally ex-parte; and after the closest examination of living evidence, and the most faithful report of what he himself hath seen, though all these sources of information are valuable as far as they go, the historian may at last find himself in the same predicament as Sir Walter Raleigh, who discovered the impossibility of attaining absolute correctness in historical detail, by the difficulty he experienced when he inquired into the grounds, and occasion, and particulars of the result of a quarrel which he observed from the window of the Tower, to take place in the yard beneath him, during his first confinement in that prison; for though he had the evidence of several persons who had been eye and ear-witnesses of the whole progress of the affray, and though he had himself observed the actions of the persons concerned in it, he was constrained to abandon the inquiry, without having his curiosity satisfied. The difficulties which prevent the discovery of the whole truth, make the pages of history resemble trials for murder, which, in nineteen cases out of twenty, are determined by circumstantial and not positive evidence. The public prosecutor is obliged to follow the ac 404 Curious Information concerning Prince Charles Stuart. [Dec. 1, cused from some given time and place, to that, when and where the crime imputed to him was committed. If a link in the chain is lost by which it is endeavoured to trace time, though eloquence may supply it with what is possible, and labour to make possibility probable, fatal errors must often arise from the ignorance of some apparently trivial and valueless circumstance, which, no longer insulated and unconnected, would give continuance and consistence to what was deficient an entire new feature to the rest of the facts, and enforce very different results. In like manner, the evidences of history are often in want of a connecting link, which cannot, as it is sometimes in a court of justice, be supplied by truths elicited in a cross-exaamination. The deficient evidence can only be furnished by additional witnesses, or newly discovered documents. Viewing the subject in this light, I am induced to detail a circumstance little known, and never noticed in any previous publication, though it is materially connected with an important period in the annals of Great Britain, and the history of the House of Brunswick. exact in the recital of the same anecdotes which the garrulity of age, or the excited curiosity of her friends, induced her to repeat. When she was a girl, her father kept the then head inn in Manchester. It was the same house which is now (much enlarged) the Swan, in Market street, and at that time was the only inn where a post-chaise was kept, or a London newspaper regularly received by the three times a week post. In the summer of the year before the rebellion, or, as she used to say, "before the Highlanders arrived from Scotland," a handsome young gentleman came every post day, for several weeks, from Ancoat's Hall, the seat of Sir Oswald Mosley, (where he was on a visit), to her father's house, to read the newspapers. She said she saw him many times, but particularly recollected one circumstance-viz.: that one morning, the last time he came to the Swan, he asked for a bason of water and a towel, in order to wash his hands; that she herself took them; and that, after washing, he gave her half-a-crown. This circumstance was sure to make an impression on a girl of 13 (her age at It is a fact well understood, that the time), to whom such a sum was imsome years after the Rebellion, in 1745, portant. In the following year, (1745,) Prince Charles Stuart, better known when the rebel army marched through by the appellation of the Pretender, was Manchester, in order to make the vain a resident incog. for several weeks, in attempt to penetrate to London, as she London, and that ministers were fully stood with her father at his door, she aware of it, yet humanely, and, in the exclaimed, when she saw the Prince opinion of some of the best friends to marching, on foot, at the head of his government, wisely forebore to give troops, "Father, father, that is the genany hostile indication of their knowledge. tleman who gave me the half-crown." But it has never been hinted by any Her father immediately drove her back public writer, that in the course of the into the house, and, with severe threats, year before the breaking out of the Re- charged her not to mention that circumbellion, the Prince was in England, exa-stance again-a charge which he many mining in person the grounds of hope for its probable success, and sounding the inclinations of the adherents of his family, for the design he meditated, and which, in the year following, deluded by his hopes, doubtless engendered by hollow promises, he attempted. The testimony on which this fact rests is respectable. I will relate it. In the year 1815 a very worthy and intelligent woman died in this town at the advanced age of 84 years. She had outlived all her relatives a considerable time, excepting only her nephew, who had been long a resident in America. But though she had survived her family, she retained her faculties, including her memory, which, in the course of upwards of thirty years acquaintance, I always found tenaciously faithful, and minutely times afterwards took occasion to repeat with still stricter injunctions, after the retreat of the rebel army into Scotland. The old lady was positive that the "Prince," (for she was too well-grounded a Jacobite to call him any thing else,) was the person who had given her the money: and she always expressed herself fully persuaded, that her father, who was a zealous partisan of the House of Stuart, was well aware of the identity; though prudential reasons prevented him from avowing his knowledge of a previous visit, till many years afterwards, when the fear of being charged with high treason had subsided; for when a lapse of time had erected his confidence, she said, he acknowledged that the handsome young gentleman and the Prince were one and the same. |