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same before either of them. In his lines on
the death of Kirke White, Lord Byron has
employed a very long-descended simile-about
the dying eagle,—

""Twas thine own genius gave the final blow;
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more thro' rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feathers on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel

He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel."

Two other lines finish the simile; from which it would appear the young poet made the most of his plagiarism, and treated his bird somewhat in the manner of the English M. P., who, speaking grandly and at length of the phoenix, gave, as Sheridan said, "a poulterer's description of it." Waller made use of this simile before Byron, and Eschylus before Waller. We cannot lay our pen on the places where they use it. Moore, in his poem of "Corruption," has been at the eagle too, and employing the selfsame simile, but in a single judicious couplet:

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"Me nec femina, nec puer,

Jam nec spes animi credula mutui,
Nec certare juvat mero."

The dreamy Dane says:

"Man delights not me, nor woman neither," &c.

And Tommy Moore seems to have caught an idea from the Ode to Melpomene:—

"Totum muneris hoc tui est,

Quod monstror digito prætereuntium
Romæ fidicen lyræ.

Quod spiro et placeo (si placeo) tuum est."

In the song, Dear Harp of my Country, Moore sings:—

"If the songs of the patriot soldier or lover

Have throbbed at our lay, 'twas thy glory alone;
I was but as the wind passing carelessly over,
And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own."

The Irish poet, with that fanciful and figura-
tive genius of his, has raised the thought into
an image, in a manner at once very true and
very beautiful. In another of his songs he
has the thought of a man, with his eyes fixed
on heaven, tumbling into a brook. This he
took from the Clerk of Oxenford's Tale in the
Canterbury Pilgrims; and Chaucer himself
borrowed it from the ancients, for the story is
told of the Greek philosopher, Thales.
Byron, in his description of the Shipwreck,
speaks of one

"Who begged Pedrillo for an absolution,

Who bid him go, be damned-in his confusion!"

This piece of comedy is taken from Rabelaiswhere Panurge, in the consternation aboard ship, makes the very same reply to somebody. Rabelais has been a very convenient storehouse for those who came after him. He is such a dirty author that people thought themselves safe from the detection of the general eye when they took from him, and took the more on that account. A great many of our current witticisms, proverbs, and sayings, can be found in that old literary olla podrida. The phrase sinews of war," meaning money, belongs to Rabelais. We discovered it in Fuller once, and thought we had the fons et origo of the saying; but we soon found that the quaint old fellow stole it. The lines in Don Juan, about Donna Inez,—

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"Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
And saw his agonies with such sublimity,
That all the world exclaimed, what magnanimity!"

contain Swift's sentiment,

"When we are lashed, they kiss the rod,
Resigning to the will of God."

"Eripuit cælo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis,”—

was adapted by Turgot, Minister of Finance to Louis XVI., from the following line in the

Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal Polignac,

"Eripuit cœlo fulmen Phoeboque sagittas."

It is generally known, that the line dedi- | sea-engagements, the famous old deicplus of the cated to the double renown of our Benjamin Greeks-the "breaking of the line," and lapFranklin,ping part of the hostile array in a double fire. This was the very movement which distintinguished the warfare of Napoleon-the victor on another element. The latter practised the plan of directing wedge-like columns against the enemy; and in this lay the secret of his greatest victories. But though Napoleon was too much of an original to be a plagiarist in war, except in the sense of fas est ab hoste doceri, he would adopt a great many sayings and doings of others, to produce the finer effect on occasion. One instance of this was as follows. Being crowned King of Italy, at Milan, he took the Iron Crown of Charlemagne in his own hands, and lifting it to his head, said, "Dieu me l'a donnée; gare a qui la touche!" This epic saying was plagiarised from a hero who

But the expression had a farther transmigration-an anterior source. It was first used, with a difference, by Marcus Manilius, thus:

"Eripuit Jove fulmen, viresque Tonanti."

This comprehensive legend, which so well becomes Franklin's scutcheon, was of slow growth. Its application was a felicitous effort of Turgot's erudite memory. To a similar effort on the part of another mere statesman, Lord Nelson was indebted for his motto, Palmam qui meruit ferat. Lord Shelburne remembered the following lines of one of Jortin's naval odes,

"Concurrant paribus cum ratibus rates;
Spectent Numina ponti, et
Palmam qui meruit ferat,"

and pitched on the last. This was a tame sort
of blazon for so original a hero. In fact, his
true motto is not on the coronet, but on the
poops of all battle-ships, "England expects
every man will do his duty." Nelson was fa-
mous for reviving in the strategy of modern

"Rolled, blazed, destroyed, and was no more," before the Corsican's time-to wit, Charles XII. of Sweden. The impetuous young Swede wrote under a map of the city of Riga, the words, "Dieu me l'a donnée, le diable ne me l'oterai pas!" The last is by far the more emphatic saying. The antithesis of it is so hearty, so irreverently vigorous, that Napoleon's paraphrase sounds feeble in comparison. Charles traced the lines directly from his feelings; Napoleon used the words for the dramatic effect, which he cultivated so much in most things. Cetera desunt.

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NORTHERN LOVES AND LEGENDS.

No. I.

BY FREDRIKA BREMER.

"WONDERS are no more, and magicians have | now no power," is a common saying in our days. Still there is a wonder, which at least once comes to almost every human heart, with transforming, with enchanting power. Whenever it comes, it comes as a golden Aurora, with morning dews in her hair, resplendent with promises of a sunlit day. To the heart where it comes, all things become new. It is a Proteus, and takes at times all shapes, but has only one object. It is a fierce tyrant, and a meek lamb; it is unreasonable and yet full of wisdom; it is playful and wilful, yet full of earnest will; it gives beauty, grace, eloquence to objects else devoid thereof; it is a little child, but makes strong minds bend and bow; it comes as a baby, but rises at once into a giant; it is the core and life of every written romance, and the great romance of human life would be dull without it. It is, in fact, its innermost life and flower, as well as it is the flower of nature's life. That wonder and magician we know by the name of Love.

When earth covers itself with leaves and flowers, and its breath is all softness and fragrance, when the ocean glistens with fire, then the wonder works in them; when the flowers are in their highest beauty, when the corn and the grass put forth their silk, and their tassels smoke in the breeze, then the wonder works in them; when the birds array themselves in their gayest plumage and begin their songs, when the bear and the lion moan as doves, and the tiger roars in wild tenderness, then they feel the touch of the magician. When man and woman have drawn to one another with indescribable charm, then the charmer is working in them. When mankind did sing (as it did once), that the supreme spirit was come to the soul of humanity, as a bridegroom to the bride, to wed her, to impart unto her a new life, then it sung of the wonder of wonders, of the great romance of human life—(in which romance all other romances are as chapters and episodes) once accomplished in humanity, and for ever to be renewed in every human soul.

But the ancients were wise when they, in human loves, distinguished loves of several kinds, and gave another dignity to Eros than to Cupido; and again another to several little Amours, often very wicked little good-for-nothings, flying about, laughing and lying, send

VOL. VIII.

ing out their arrows at random, without wisdom or purpose, always on the wing, as the humming-birds, dipping their bills in the calyces of the flowers, just to drink their honey and decamp. There is a great difference between these mischievous fellows and the child we have spoken of, who at once grows up into a strong man, and often even transforms itself into the celestial Eros, who makes men godlike, and the finite infinite. Every time and every clime has erected altars to that Eros as to a god, indeed; and has recorded in songs and tales the wonders he wrought. Flowers have grown in his footsteps on the broadway of history, marking the lonely path of mortal lovers with immortal radiance.

Do we not all know of the loves of Abelard and Heloisa? Are they not ashes long ago, these hearts, these loves? Yet, when we read again their letters, we feel the ashes burning on our throbbing hearts. By their glow, they glow anew. And Laura and Petrarca, Dante and Beatrice-do we not all treasure the memories of these pure and constant loves, transforming men into angels, and this mortal life into a poem of immortal beauty? And if we look farther up, on our globe, towards that cold Scandinavia, where the aurora borealis dances round the snow-clad earth, we will hear among the old songs most precious to the people, the loves of Sigurd and Brunhilda, of Hagbard and Signe, and we will see the flames of the funeral piles which consumed these true lovers, reflected in the hearts of the Northmen, as fire of their fire, life of their life. These passion-flowers, these grandifloras of the human heart, float down the stream of time, from age to age, ever young, ever fresh, commanding our respect, our tears, making our hearts bleed and beat anew for hearts and sorrows bleeding even centuries ago.

But there is in that old North, so rich in love and legends, a love story, an old tradition, which seems to me even more powerful than those glowing tragic songs. It is written in prose, and in few words. It is as follows:

"When Nanna (the wife of Baldar the good) saw her deceased husband on the burning ship which was to be his funeral pile, her heart burst."*

* Snorro Sturleson's Edda.

49

And with that simple story, we have drawn nearer to the love-stories of our times. Love is now no more, as in former ages, clad in armour, in fiery passion maddened by impediments, pursuing its course with sword and flames. A gentler spirit has breathed over earth, breathes in human breasts. Gentler, yes; but not less true, not less strong and tender. What in former ages was most vital, most deep in love, exists now as then, yea, may be said to be the chief love of our days. And to-day, as in the days of Hagbard and Signe, the lover not overcome by twenty strong men, will be bound by a single hair of his mistress's head; to-day, as in the days of Baldar and Nanna, the heart of the loving wife will not complain, but burst when her true love and husband is taken from her by evil powers.

We think, in fact, that love in our times has deepened, become more spiritualised and pure. Passion becomes affection, tenderness, and flowers in the domestic affections, converting homes into earthly paradises, and making man's mind more and more fit for the paradise of heaven.

It may be said that the development of love within married life is the chief romance of our days, as well as it unquestionably is one of the highest problems of human life. Then the crown of love is not perfect without the gem of constancy.

There is in Sweden a flower generally called "old love." Its flowers are white and elegant, its leaves and whole structure of the most refined delicacy and grace; it is of long life, and keeps fresh even under the snow. And we have seen there, as well as here, old couples where the love, symbolized in the plant, was all real, where the grace and charm of love flowered as fresh and charming as ever between mate and mate, in a thousand instances, and gave reality to the fable of that beautiful old couple, to whom the gods came as guests, and who, on their prayer not to survive one another, received the gift of immortal union.

It was such loves that the great English bard had in view when he sang:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.*

Shakespeare's Sonnets.

It was such a marriage which the Swedish seer (Swedenborg) saw in one of his visions, and describes so:

"I saw a chariot driving in the upper sky, through the pure morning air. It seemed to me at first that but one individual, radiant and beautiful, was sitting in it; but as the vision drew nearer, I saw that they were two, man and woman, sitting side by side. They seemed full of happiness, and so beautiful that it seemed to me they hardly could become more so. But when they turned to one another, they began to radiate, as if covered all over with jewels, and became so resplendent and beautiful that I could hardly bear their sight, and again the two seemed to mingle into one, and to be one single individual, all shining with light."

There are minds who are born, as it were, married, born double; there are also minds born single and to a single life, (so it seems to me, and so I believe,) as well as there is in the firmament above us double stars always | revolving round one another, and single stars revolving about their own axes and the great central sun, who leads and inspires all, both double and single stars. And if they are not inspired by that central sun, life, Eros, call it how you will, they are nothing, and are lost in the abyss of space.

It is charming to think that in every vale, in every village of this our earth, we may find loves and lives corresponding with the pictures of the poet and the seer, and that every one of the little homes we see on the banks of our rivers and lakes, or in the shelter of our forests, may harbour the god we have spoken of, the immortal Eros.

I love to hear love stories, and I love to tell them. Then, apart from the interest they have for the human heart, they have always something new, something fresh and original about them, which puts to shame the old saying of Solomon, that there is nothing new under the With every new love some new incidents, some new combinations come up. There is a fresh breeze over the waters of the Dead Sea; in the desert a fountain gushes forth; and under the snow of the Arctic circle the Norna Borealis is born.*

sun.

We should more look to these everyday wonders. And I believe that if everybody, (who is anybody, that is, a true human mind,) would fairly and truly tell us his own lovestory, (be it that of earthly or heavenly love,) we would have a great deal more good and truly original novels than now are to be found in the world.

A little beautiful and rare flower, of the family of the Cyprepedias.

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