The former, she said, was showy and spacious, and nations. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage-nothing superfluous. No flushes-that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up :-that anyone should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them: but what should we say of a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled-never to take the field?-She even wished that whist were more simple than it is; and, in my mind, would have stript it of some appendages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even comShe saw no reason for the mendably allowed of. deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps?-Why two colours, when the marks of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them without it?— delicately-turned ivory markers (work of Chinese "But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings-but confess to me whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of the court cards?the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession-the gay triumph-assuring scarletsthe contrasting deadly-killing sables-the majesty of spades'-Pam in all his glory!—— hoary The old lady, with a smile confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence-this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds came to me at her death. “All these might be dispensed with; and, with their naked names upon the drab paste-board, the game might go on very well pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, a drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and tourneys in! Exchange those The former bequest (which I do not least value) Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two stances. and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times successively, without a prize? -Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots who were taken with a lucky hit, under such circumGames of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit,-his memory, or combination-faculty rather-against another's; like a mock engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of castles and knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case justly), were intirely misplaced and senseless. Their hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil and dry slate, she used to say, were the proper arena for such combatants. not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and No inducement could ever prevail upon her to To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other :--that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at cards: that cards are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play, without esteeming them to be such. With great deference to the old lady's judgment on these matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget-Bridget Elia. I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ancle,—when you are subdued and humble,-you are glad to put up with an inferior spring of action. There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick whist.— I grant it is not the highest style of man-I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle--she lives not, alas! to whom I should apologise. At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her)-(dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?) -I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play: I would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over: and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS TO ONE ANOTHER. Widely separated as they may be, there is no case where the influence possessed by any individual, however mean, over any other individual, however mighty, is really null, and unworthy of all regard. The mouse in the fable, releasing the lion from bondage, is an exemplification of the possible dependence of the strong upon the weak.-Bentham's Deon tology. THE WEEK. PERSONAL PORTRAITS OF EMINENT MEN. DANTE. [FROM 'Lives of Eminent Italians. This summary account of the great Italian is one of the best fitted to give a popular and true idea of him, that we have seen.] DANTE's poem is certainly neither the greatest nor the best in the world; but it is, perhaps, the most extraordinary one which resolute intellect ever planned, or persevering talents successfully executed. It stands alone; and must be read and judged ac cording to rules and immunities adapted to its peculiar structure, plot, and purpose, formed upon principles affording scope to the exercise of the highest powers, with little regard to precedent. If these principles, then, have intrinsic excellence, and the work be found uniformly consistent with them, fulfilling to the utmost the aims of the author, the Divina Commedia ' must be allowed to stand among the proudest trophies of original genius, challenging, encountering, and overcoming unparalleled difficulties. Though the fields of action, or rather of vision, are nominally Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise,--the Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell of Dante, with all their terrors, and splendours, and preternatural fictions, are but representations of scenes transacted on earth, and characters that lived antecedently or contemporaneously with himself. Though altogether out of the world, the whole is of the world. Men and women seem fixed in eternal torments, passing through purifying flames, or exalted to celestial beatitude; yet in all these situations they are what they were; and it is their former history, more than their present happiness, hope, or despair, which constitutes, through a hundred cantos, the interest awakened and kept up by the successive exhibition of more than a thousand individuals, actors and sufferers. Of every one of these something terrible or touching is intimated or told briefly at the utmost, but frequently by mere hints of narrative, or gleams of allusion, which excite curiosity in the breast of the reader, who is surprised at the poet's forbearance, when, in the notes of commentators, he finds complex, strange and fearful circumstances, on which a modern versifier or novelist would extend pages, treated here as ordinary events on which it would be impertinent to dwell. These, in the author's own age, were gener ally understood; the bulk of the materials being gathered up during a period of restlessness and confusion among the republican states of Italy. Hence, though the first appearance of the 'Divina Commedia,' in any intelligible edition, is repulsive from the multitude of notes, and the text is not seldom difficult and dark with the oracular words, yet will the toil and patience of any reader be well repaid, who perseveringly proceeds but a little way, quietly referring, as occasion may require, from the obscurity of the original to the illustrations below; for when he returns from the latter to the former (as though his own eye had been refreshed with new light, the darkness having been in it, and not in the verse), what was colourless as a cloud is radiant with beauty, and what before was undefined in form, becomes exquisitely precise and symmetrical from comprehending in so small a compass so vast a variety of thought, feeling, or fact. Dante, in this respect, must be studied as an author in a dead language by a learner, or rather as one who employs a living language on forgotten themes; then will his style grow easier and clearer as the reader grows more and more acquainted with his subject, his manner, and his materials. For whatever be the corruption of the text (which, perhaps, has never been sufficiently collated) the remoteness of the allusions, of our countrymen's want of that previous knowledge of almost everything treated upon which best prepares the mind for the perception and highest enjoyment of poetical beauty and poetical pleasure, Dante will be found, in reality, one of the most clear, minute, and accurate writers in sentiment, as he is one of the most perfectly natural and graphic painters to the life of persons, characters, and actions. His draughts have the freedom of etchings, and the sharpness of - Boccaccio, the earliest of his biographers, though themselves with their own fancies. Towards the opening of the Purgatorio' there is an allusion to "High Morn had triumph'd o'er the glimmering Which fled before her, so that I discern'd I turn'd to him my tearful countenance, In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his 'Purgatorio' is the inter view between himself and his friend Casella, an eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune which had befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of their respective countries (Dante and Milton), from whose pages his name cannot soon perish. Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as * L'alba vinceva l' ora mattutina There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the Vita Nuova':-"On the day that completed the year after this lady (Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty, as well as inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poems, especially in Canto ix of the 'Inferno,' and Cantos ii, viii, xii, xv, xviii, xxiv of the Purgatorio. Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the inimitable original must consume the unequal version : "A noi venia la creatura bella, Bianco vestita, e ne la faccia quale DELL' PURGATORIO, Canto XII. "That being came, all beautiful, to meet us, And cried, Come on, the steps are near at hand, Leonardo Aretino, who had seen Dante's handwriting, mentions, with no small commendation, that the letters were long, slender, and exceedingly distinct, the characteristics of what is called in ornamental writing a fine Italian hand. The circumstance may seem small, but it is not insignificant as a finishing stroke in the portraiture of one who, though he was the first poet unquestionably, and not the least philosopher, was also one of the most accomplished gentlemen of his age. CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. NO. XII. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. THIS is one of the most loose and desultory of our author's plays: it rambles on just at it happens, but it overtakes, together with some indifferent matter, a prodigious number of fine things in its way. Troilus himself is no character: he is merely a common lover: but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth. By the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host, Nestor, Ulysses, Agamemnon, Achilles, Shakspeare seems to have known them as well as if he had been a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp-to say nothing of their being very lofty examples of didactic eloquence. The following is a very stately and spirited declamation :— "ULYSSES. Troy, yet upon her basis, had been And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master, The specialty of rule hath been neglected. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, ༣ {Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutinies! The enterprize is sick! How could communities, Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And the rude son would strike his father dead : And this neglection of degree it is, It cannot be said of Shakspeare, as was said of some one, that he was "without o'erflowing full." He was full even to o'erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger "of losing distinction in his thoughts" (to borrow his own expression) "As doth a battle when they charge on heaps The enemy flying." There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, showing him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. It is long, but worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an intire extract from the unacted plays of our author may with one class of readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage; and may serve to convince another class of critics, that the poet's genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means: "ULYSSES. back, And leave you hindmost ; practised jilt, who falls in love with Troilus, as she Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, present, Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit, One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they sometimes jostle against one another, they everywhere raise and carry on the feeling, which is metaphysically true and profound. The debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus enters well into the philosophy of war when he says in answer to something that falls from Hector, "Why there you touch'd the life of our design : Were it not glory that we more affected, Than the performance of our heaving spleens, I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,' She is a theme of honour and renown, A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds." The character of Hector, in the few slight indications which appear of it, is made very amiable. His death is sublime, and shows in a striking light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of Achilles are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with them : "Come here about me, you my Myrmidons, Mark what I say.-Attend me where I wheel: Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath; And when I have the bloody Hector found, Empale him with your weapons round about: In fellest manner execute your arms. Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye." He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he had been hunting down a wild beast. There is something revolting as well as terrific in the ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey: nor does the splendour of the achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means. The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very amusing and instructive. The disinterested willingness of Pandarus to serve his friend in an affair which lies next his heart is immediately brought Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his forward. "Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion; A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes : Which are devour'd as fast as they are made, I a sister were a grace, or a daughter were a goddess, In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; sparrow." Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, and won to anything, and from anything, at a moment's warning: the other knows very well what she would be at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial reasons than by caprice or vanity. Pandarus again, in Chaucer's story, is a friendly sort of go-between, tolerably busy, officious, and forward in bringing matters to bear: but in Shakspeare he has "a stamp exclusive and professional:" he wears the badge of his trade; he is a regular knight of the game. The difference of the manner in which the subject is treated arises perhaps less from intention, than from the different genius of the two poets. There is no double entendre in the characters of Chaucer: they are either quite serious or quite comic. In Shakspeare the ludicrous and ironical are constantly blended with the stately and the impassioned. We see Chaucer's characters as they saw themselves, not as they appeared to others or might have appeared to the poet. He is as deeply implicated in the affairs of his personages as they could be themselves. He had to go a long journey with each of them, and became a kind of necessary confidant. There is little relief, or light and shade in his pictures. The conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow of grief or impatience. Everything with him is intense and impatinuous-a working out of what went before.Shakspeare never committed himself to his characters. He trifled, laughed, or wept with them as he chose. He has no prejudices for or against them; and it seems a matter of perfect indifference whether he shall be in jest or earnest. According to him "the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." His genius was dramatic, as Chaucer's was historical. He saw both sides of a question, the different views taken of it according to the different interests of the parties concerned, and he was at once an actor and spectator in the scene. thing, he is too various and flexible; too full of transitions, of glancing lights, of salient points. If Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakspeare was too volatile and heedless. The Muse's wing too often lifted him off his feet. He made infinite excursions to the right and left. "He hath done Mad and fantastic execution, With such a careless force and forceless care, If any Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural, that is, to the involuntary and inevitable impressions on the mind in given circumstances: Shakspeare exhibited also the possible and the fantastical,-not only what things are in themselves, but whatever they might seem to be, their different reflections, their endless combinations. He lent his fancy, wit, invention, to others, and borrowed their feelings in return. Chaucer excelled in the force of habitual sentiment; Shakspeare added to it every variety of passion, every suggestion of thought or accident. Chaucer described external objects with the eye of a painter, or he might be said to have embodied them with the hand of a sculptor, every part is so thoroughly made out, and tangible :-Shakspeare's imagination threw over them a lustre "Prouder than when blue Iris bends." Everything in Chaucer has a downright reality. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon evidence. In Shakspeare the commonest matter-offact has a romantic grace about it; or seems to float with the breath of imagination in a freer element. No one could have more depth of feeling or observation than Chaucer, but he wanted resources of invention to lay open the stores of nature or the human heart with the same radiant light, that Shakspeare has done. However fine or profound the thought, we know what was coming, whereas the effect of reading Shakspeare is "like the eye of vassalage encountering majesty." Chaucer's mind was con He secutive, rather than discursive. He arrived at truth We must conclude this criticism; and we will do herd. Cattermole's Death of Llewellyn' is spirited; it with a quotation or two. One of the most beau- "And as the new abashed nightingale, but not very carefully drawn. Poems, with Illustrations, by Louisa Anne Twamley. MISS TWAMLEY urges that the illustrations to her poems are her first attempt at etching on copper; she need scarcely have done so, for they are executed with much feeling and talent, and bear no signs of incapacity or immaturity. They consist of landscapes and flower-pieces. Of the landscapes, we prefer Tintern Abbey, which we never saw look better on paper; more venerable or picturesque; and a friend, who has visited the veritable edifice, praises it for its fidelity. The flower-piece immediately following it is still better in point of execution; it is drawn with great freedom and feeling, and the blending and variety of the tints is very happily Compare this with the following speech of Troilus caught. Something will be said of the poetry in to Cressida in the play. See also the two next stanzas, and particularly that divine one beginning "Her armes small, her back both straight and soft," &c. "O, that I thought it could be in a woman; And if it can, I will presume in you, To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love, I am as true as Truth's simplicity, These passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though we think they are so. We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles, "Rouse yourself; and the weak_wanton Cupid Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of the morning that parts him from Cressida, says with much scorn,— "What! proffer'st thou thy light here for to sell? Go, sell it them that smallé selés grave." If nobody but Shakspeare could have written the former, nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter. Chaucer was the most literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose-writers. We have much pleasure in inserting the following literary notice which has been sent us. In the press, Corn Law Rhymes.' The third volume of the works of Ebenezer Elliott will appear in the ensuing month. Amongst its contents will be found some of the earliest productions of this talented writer, without any political allusions,-productions which were almost unheeded at the time of their publicationSouthey alone addressing him to this effect: "There is power in the least serious of these tales, but the higher you pitch your tone the better you succeed. Thirty years ago they would have made your reputation; thirty years hence the world will wonder that they did not do so." another number. TO F. M. W. too great length. He reminds us of the letterwriter, who said, "Excuse my being so long, but I have not time to be shorter." Is this our friend's case? At present he wants concentration; and must also study his versification a little more. He is in such haste to live in his pleasant bowers, that he must needs inhabit them, before they are built! The writer of a letter in pencil, who notices the doctrine of Berkeley, is, we take it, not the same Correspondent who made the quotation alluded to. We have two Readers who seem to have objections to pen and ink. With regard to Berkeley's argu ments we would recommend him to read them for himself in the philosopher's works. He would find them very amusing at least, and, we suspect, very startling. And we should be glad to hear from him afterwards on the subject, for our own acquaintance with them was both partial and hasty. AN OLD ENGLISH Gentleman will probably have seen the announcement of Captain Sword and Captain Pen' before this answer appears. At all events, it will be speedily published by Mr Knight. His other query we cannot notice, because it would trench upon the forbidden ground of advertisement. We are much flattered by his idea of the " Series " he speaks of. Agreeably to our wish to avoid all possible themes of controversy, we are sorry that the mention of the Clergyman" in 'Sunday in the Suburbs' was not omitted. F., who takes such a kindly interest in our pages, is informed that the article was written some time back, and the passage, on a hasty review of it, overlooked. What S. J. says upon Love and Matrimony' is very true, and does him honour; but we fear to open our columns to all that may be said on this subject. We agree with all the opinions expressed in the WITH A QUARTO EDITION OF LADY RACHEL RUSSELL'S letter of X; but has he not made his 'Gipsy's Song' LETTERS. On more than Russell in thy fortitude, Nursed the charms thy friends so doat upon, TO CORRESPONDENTS. T. F. T. THE enlarged copy of Mr Landor's ode will appear We shall be glad to hear again from H. F. The MS. sent us by Mr J. will be attended to at We are much mistaken if we have not inserted some article written by J. M. C. Will he favour us with copy or copies of some later communications, in case they have been mislaid? Our friend G. H. L. seems to be full of good feeling, and fancy too; but he is in too great a hurry both with his verse and prose, and therefore writes at somewhat too intimate with the language and luxuries of high living? Thanks to GODFREY GRAFTON; who will hear further from us. The printed articles on Mr Lamb reached us unfortunately too late to be made use of in our present number. Due attention shall be paid to them in our next. Meantime we must observe that the writer is under a great mistake respecting the absence of some of Mr Hazlitt's friends, when his funeral took place. We will not do venerable JOHN PACEY the injustice of publishing the lines sent us by the gentleman who gives us the following account of him, because the homeliness of their attire may not allow everybody to pay honour enough to their spirit; but no one will misunderstand the reverend and living piece of poetry here presented us in the person of a cheerful old man of eighty, rendered superior to his adversity by a good conscience and a mind willing to look around it for sources of comfort:— "The author of the accompanying trifles, John Pacey, now eighty years of age, was born in the village of Charlton-Kings, Gloucestershire, of honest and industrious parents. He was apprenticed at an early age to a laborious trade, which he has, however, with commendable industry, pursued until within these last few years, when age and infirmities prevented his further exertions, and drove him to tion of a little vegetable-garden. His wants are few seek refuge from penury and distress in the cultivaand easily supplied; a life of industry has rendered him frugal and abstinent, while honesty and goodfeeling have preserved him in the paths of sobriety and rectitude. He married at the early age o twenty-one, and has decently brought up seven children. His eldest son is an object of great compassion, being alike infirm in body and imbecile in mind; he is dependant upon the kindness of his parents, not only for the necessities of life, but also for his actual support, he is helpless. Notwithstanding this unusual clog, poor old Pacey bears up under the burdens of existence, is cheerful and contented, and even bestows his leisure hours to the cultivation of an humble and amusing taste for poetry." LONDON: Published by H. HOOPER, Pall Mall East, and supplied to Country Agents by C. KNIGHT, Ludgate-street. From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street. LONDON JOURNAL. TO ASSIST THE ENQUIRING, ANIMATE THE STRUGGLING, AND SYMPATHIZE WITH ALL. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1835. THE SATYR OF MYTHOLOGY AND THE POETS, We intended this week to present our poetry-loving Readers with a new and greatly improved edition of Mr Landor's Ode to a Friend,' published in one of our December Numbers last year; but as we have just received some contributions from other friends, which will harmonize with it, and expect one or two more, we delay introducing it till our next. Meanwhile, we lay before them the portrait, if not of an eminent man, of a very eminent half or four-fifths man, an old friend of the poets, particularly of the sequestered and descriptive order, and constantly alluded to in all modern as well as ancient quarters poetical. He is alive, not only in Virgil, and Theocritus, and Spenser, but in Wordsworth, in Keats, and Shelley, and in the pages of Blackwood' and the LONDON JOURNAL. We keep the public in mind, from time to time, that one of the objects of the LONDON JOURNAL is to bring uneducated readers of taste and capacity acquainted with the pleasures of those who are educated; and we write articles of this description accordingly, in a spirit intended to be not unacceptable to either. Enter, therefore, the Satyr,-as in one of the Prologues to an old play. By-and-by, we shall give a Triton, a Nymph, &c. &c. and so on through all the gentle populace of fiction, the plebe degli dei, as Tasso calls them,-the "common people of the gods." Such, we hope, in future times, or worthy rather of such appellation,-will be all the people of the earth, their poetry in common, their education in common, knowledge and its divine pleasures being as cheap as daisies in the mead. The Satyr (not always, but generally) is a goat below the waist, and a man above, with a head in which the two beings are united. He has horns, pointed ears, and a beard; and there is just enough humanity in his face to make the look of the inferior being more observable. The expression is drawn up to the height of the salient and wilful. He is a merry brute of a demigod; and when not sleeping in the grass, is for ever in motion, dancing after his quaint fashion, and butting when he fights. He goes in herds, though he is often found straying. His haunt is in the woods, where he makes love to the Dryads and other nymphs, not always with their good will. When he gets old, he takes to drinking, grows fat, and is called a Silenus, after the most eminent gor. belly of his race: and then he becomes oracular in his drink, and disburses the material philosophy which his way of life has taught him. He is not immortal, but has a long life as well as a merry; some say a thousand years; others, many thousand. A thousand years, according to Aristotle, is the duration both of the Satyr and the Nymph. The Faun, though often confounded with the Satyr, and supposed by some to be nothing but a Latin version of him, is generally taken by the moderns for a Satyr mitigated and more human. Goat's feet are not necessary to him. He can be content with a tail, and two little budding horns, like a kid. "How the Satyrs originated," quoth the "serious" but not very "sage" Natalis Comes, "or of what parents they were begotten, or where, or when they began to exist, or for what reason they were held to From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street.] No. 54. be gods by antiquity, neither have I happed upon any creditable ancient who can inform me, nor can I make it out myself." He says he takes no heed of the opinion of those who suppose them to have been the children of Saturn or Faunus. Pliny, he tells us, speaks of Satyrs, as certain animals in the Indian mountains, of great swiftness, going on all fours, but with a human aspect, and running upright. Furthermore, Pausanias mentions one Euphemus of Caria, who coming upon a cluster of "desert" islands, in the extreme parts of the sea, and being forced by a tempest to alight on one of them called Satyras, found it inhabited by people of a red colour, with tails not much inferior to those of horses. These ance, gentlemen invaded the ships of their new acquaintand without saying a word, began helping themselves to what they liked. Finally, Pomponius Mela speaks of certain islands beyond Mount Atlas, in which lights were seen at night, and a great sound was heard of drums, and cymbals, and pipes, though nobody was to be seen by day; and these islands were said to be inhabited by Satyrs. To which beareth testimony the famous Hanno the Carthaginian. Boccaccio, in his treatise De Montibus,' appears to have transferred these islands to Mount Atlas itself; of which he says (dwelling upon the subject with his usual romantic fondness) that, "such a depth of silence is reported to prevail there by day, that none approach it without a certain horror, and a feelheaven, it is lit up with many lights, and resounds ing of some divine presence; but at night-time, like with the songs and cymbals, the pipes and whistling reeds, of Ægipans and Satyrs."t 66 The same writer, speaking of the opinion that Satyrs were goat-footed homunciones, or little men, tells the story of St Anthony: 'who, searching through the deserts of the Thebais for the most holy eremite Paul, did behold one of them, and question him: the which made answer, that he was mortal; and that he was one of the people, bordering thereabouts, whom the Gentiles, led away by a vain error, did worship as Fauns and Satyrs." Other authors, he says, "esteemed them to be men of the woods, and called them Incubi, or Ficarii (Fig-eaters)." We here see who had the merit of it when figs were stolen. Chaucer takes the Satyr for an Incubus, probably from this passage of his favourite author. Speaking of the friar, whose office it was to go about blessing people's grounds and houses (which was the reason, he says, why there were no longer any fairies) he adds, in his pleasant manner, "Women may now go safely up and down:In every bush, and under every tree, There is none other Incubus but he." Wife of Bath's Tale. But the most "particular fellow" on this subject is Philostratus; who, among the wild stories which he relates with such gravity of Apollonius the Tyanæan, has this, the wildest of them all, and, in his opinion, the most weighty. As the account is amusing, we will extract nearly the whole of it :"After visiting," says he, "the cataracts (of the Nile), Apollonius and his companions stopped in a : • See all these authorities in Natalis Comes. Mytholo gia,' p. 304. PRICE THREE HALFPEnce. small village in Ethiopia, where, whilst they were at supper, they amused themselves with a variety of conversation, both grave and gay. On a sudden was heard a confused uproar, as if from the women of the village exhorting one another to seize and pursue. They called to the men for assistance, who immediately sallied forth, snatching up sticks and stones, with whatever other weapons they chanced to find. * All this hubbub arose from a Satyr having made his appearance, who for ten months past had infested the village. The moment Apollonius perceived his friends were alarmed at this, he said, 'Don't be terrified. * ** There is but lence, and is what Midas had recourse to. one remedy to be used in cases of such kind of insoHe was himself of the race of the Satyrs, as appeared plainly by his ears. A Satyr once invited himself to his house, on the ground of consanguinity, and whilst he was his guest, libelled his ears in a copy of verses, which he set to music, and played on his harp. Midas, who was instructed, I think, by his mother, learnt from her, that if a Satyr was made drunk with wine, and fell asleep, he recovered his senses, and became quite a new creature. A fountain happening to be near his palace, he mixed it with wine, to which he sent the Satyr, who drank it till he was quite overcome with it. Now to show you that this is not all mere fable, let us go to the governor of the village, and if the inhabitants have any wine, let us make the Satyr drink, and I will be answerable for what happened in the case of the Satyr of Midas.' All were willing to try the experiment; and immediately four Egyptian amphoras of wine were poured into the pond, in which the cattle of the village were accustomed to drink. Apollonius invited the Satyr to drink, and added, along with the invitation, some private menaces, in case of refusal. The Satyr did not appear; nevertheless the wine sank as if it was drank. When the pond was emptied, Apollonius said, 'Let us offer libations to the Satyr, who is now fast asleep.' After saying this, he carried the men of the village to the cave of the Nymphs, which was not more than the distance of a plethron from the hamlet, where, after showing them the Satyr asleep, he ordered them to give him no ill-usage, either by beating or abusing him: For,' said he, I will answer for his good behaviour for the time to come.' ter, I consider as what gave greatest lustre to his -This is the action of Apollonius, which, by Jupitravels, and which was, in truth, their greatest feat. Anyone who has perused the letter which he wrote to a dissipated young man, wherein he tells him he had tamed a Satyr in Ethiopia, must call to mind this story. Consequently, no doubt can now remain of the existence of Satyrs. • When I was myself in Lemnos, I remember one of my contemporaries, whose mother, they said, was visited by a Satyr, formed according to the traditional accounts we have of that race of beings. He wore a deer-skin on his shoulders, which exactly fitted him, the fore-feet of which, encircling his neck, were fastened to his breast. But of this I shall say no more, as I am sensible credit is due to experience, as well as to me.”* It is clear, from all these authorities, that various circumstances might have given rise to the idea of Satyrs. The Great Ape species alone, which like Life of Apollonius of Tyana,' translated from the Greek of Philostratus, by the Rev. Edward Berwick, p. 348. |