When my understanding was awak- quit that happy life which we led ened by dint of years, nature impelled together? Why did my eager imme to seek a companion: you refined portunities thrust you from us? You the ardour of my desires by the soli- were delighted with your work. I dity of reason; the strength of your saw it: I felt it: I was sure of it.arguments alone taught me to subdue You appeared happy when I was; t. I loved Sophia even before I the tender caresses of Sophia seemed knew it: this love sheltered me from to flatter your paternal heart. You the snares of vice; it inspired me loved us, you were pleased with us, with a desire for things which were and you quitted us! But for your abvirtuous; it imprinted on my imagi- sence I should yet have been happy ; nation the sacred laws of virtue.- my son would now live perhaps, or When, at length, I beheld this inef- at least would not have closed his fable object of my adoration, when I existence in the midst of strangers. felt the empire of her charms, all that His dear and virtuous mother too could penetrate a soul, soft, rayish- would yet live in the arms of her husing, penetrated mine with a sensation band. Wretched retreat, which un50 exquisite that words can but poorly ceasingly exposes me to all the horexpress. Blissful days of my first affections! Days, whose remembrance is cherished in my heart. Why cannot ye return, and never cease again? Henceforth actuate my whole existence! Oh God, I would not with another eternity. and rors of my fate. No! never beneath thy eyes would these misfortunes have approached my family; in abandoning me you incurred greater ills upon me than you had ever done me good during my life. Soon did Heaven cease to bless the At Vain regrets! useless desires! all house in which you no longer resided. is gone! vanished never to return!- Misfortunes and afflictions succeeded When, after so much languishing, without intermission. In a few such ardent sighs I obtained the prize, months we lost the father and mother all my vows were repaid. Husband, of Sophia, and lastly her daughter, yet a lover, I found in the tran- her charming girl whom she so quil possession a happiness of another much doated on, whom she idolized, nature, but not less than that of de- whom she would have followed. sire. Oh my master, you thought this last blow her firmness was stag you had known this enchanting girl. gered, and it left her. Till this period How much you was deceived! You she had lived content and peaceable knew my mistress, my wife; but you in solitude, she had been ignorant of never knew Sophia. Her charms, of the bitterness of life, she had not every nature, were inexhaustless; armed her soul against misfortunes of every moment seemed to renew them, this kind; it was sensible and easily and the last day of her life disclosed affected. She felt these losses as we to me some which I had never known naturally feel our first; and they were before. indeed the commencement of ours. Already father of two children, I Nothing could exhaust her tears; the divided my time between an adored death of her daughter made her feel wife and the pledges of our mutual more keenly that of her mother; unlove. You enabled me to lay down ceasing she called on one or the other a plan of education, similar to mine, with sighs; she made those places refor my son; and my daughter, be- sound with their names where she neath the eyes of her mother, had had once received their innocent calearnt to resemble her. All my em- resses; every object which recalled ployment was the care of Sophia's them augmented her grief; Iresolved patrimony; mine I had neglected to to take her away from these causes of enjoy my felicity. Deceitful happi- painful remembrance. I had, in the ness! Trebly have I felt thy incon- capital, what they call business, but stancy Thy bound is but a point, which had never been so to me till and when we arrive at its height we this period. I proposed to her to must quickly fall. And was it your follow thither a female friend, (an place, inhuman father, to cause this acquaintance which she had contractdecline? By what fatality did you ed in the neighbourhood), and whe had been under the necessity of ac- that was not her. I sought her no companying her husband. She con- longer; I possessed her, and her sented to prevent being separated charms embellished those objects from me, and not penetrating my now as much as they had disfigured motive. Her affliction was too great them in my youth. But quickly to attempt to alleviate it. To parti- these very objects weakened my decipate in it, and to weep with her, sire as I partook of them. Initiated, were the only consolations which by degrees, into all those frivolous could be given. amusements my heart insensibly lost As we approached the capital, I its primal energy, and became incafelt myself shook with certain fore- pable of action or animation. Restbodings which I had never before less, I wandered from pleasure to experienced; sad presentiments arose pleasure; I sought every thing, and within my breast; all that I had seen, with every thing I became wearied: ali that I heard from you, respecting I was pleased only with what I did great cities, made me tremble at the not possess, and existed in confusion idea of our residing in this one. I instead of amusement. I felt a revodreaded to expose so sure a union to lution, of which I desire not convic the many dangers which there might tion. I forbore to look into myself, dis urb it. I shuddered as I beheld fearful of finding nothing. All my the afflicted Sophia, in reflecting that attachments were thus weakened, ali I thus myself voluntarily dragged so my affections were thus cooled; I had many incomparable virtues and charms substituted, for reality, a jargon of to that gulph of prejudices and vices, sentiment and morality. I was a galwhere every vestige of innocence and lant without tenderness, a stoic withhappiness became annihilated. out virtue, and a sage occupied with However secure in her and thyself, follies; there was nothing left of I despised this prudent advice, which your Emilius but the name and some I regarded as a vain prognostic; maxims. My frankness, my liberty, suffering it to torment me, I still my pleasures, my duties, you, my treated it as a chimera. Alas! little son, Sophia herself, all which once did I expect to see it so quickly and animated me, which exalted my mind so cruelly realized. I little suspected to the full plenitude of my existence, that I did not go to search misfortune now, in detaching themselves by dein the capital, but that it followed me. grees, seemed to detach me from myHow shall I describe to you the self, and to leave, in my oppressed two years which we passed in this soul, an overpowering sentiment of fatal city; how shall I disclose the vacuity and annihilation. But, the fatal effect which it had on my soul, flame which was apparently extin and on my fate. Too well do you guished, slumbered only beneath know those sad events, whose remem- the ashes too quickly to burst forth brance, effaced in our days of happi- with redoubled fury. ness, now came with redoubled force, and exaggerate my woes in leading me to their source. What an alteration did my courtesy towards two amiable connections which habit had ripened into friendship produce in me! How much did example and imitation, against whose influence you had so well fortified my heart, insensibly inspire me with a desire for those frivolous things which, when younger, I had sense to despise.How different it is to view things, diverted by other objects, and to be solely occupied with those which strike us. It was no longer the time when my heated imagination sought nothing but Sophia, and rejected all [To be continued.] OBSERVATIONS upon CowPER. has happened to Cowper, as it has happened to other writers, to be remembered by a single production, while other parts of their writings, though probably inferior to one particular work, are yet well worthy of notice. It is thus that they Liberty and Britannia of Thomson are scarcely known by name to many who read his Seasons with rapture: yet, can it be denied that both Liberty and Britannia have many fine pas sages in them? Thus also with Cowper, rough lines, to no meaning in musical whose Task has so completely occu- ones. There is, in this same poem, pied the vantage ground of his fame four lines which are truly characteris that his other poems, written in heroic tical of the ardent mind of Cowper: couplets, are almost forgotten. But an attentive reader may observe in Place me where winter breathes his keenest these last the same cast of thought, And I will sing if liberty be there: air, the same glow of fancy, and the And I will sing at liberty's dear feet same energy of language, as prevail In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest in his blank verse. The peculiar heat. vigour of Cowper's thoughts could not indeed accommodate itself to a weak or flimsy style: and his notions of versification led him to adopt rather the strong and manly verse of Dryden, than the polished and harmonious couplets of Pope. A few instances from his Table Talk, for example, will prove this. Take the following character of a French The manly sentiments which these In him, Demosthenes was heard again, law. CRITICISM. "Nulli negabimus, nulli differemus justitiam." Z TALES OF ROMANCE, with other lish Poetry. The fictions are, some POEMS; including Selections from of them, wild and improbable, yet Propertius. By C. A. ELTON. interesting: while others are both pleasing and natural. They are twelve 1 vol. 8vo. 1810. HESE Tales of Romance are, as in number, and are narrated in almost THESE Tales of Bonance, derivs as many sorts of mette. He has some ed from the Gesta Romanorum, a book times adopted that of the old English which Warton has mentioned with ballad, in imitation of Walter Scott, commendation, in his History of Eng and with equal success, Mr. Elton UNIVERSAL MAG. VOL. XIV. Q cave, may perhaps value this commendation, The columns of stone, that encircled the as he seems, from his prefatory lines, to entertain a sufficiently high opinion of that author's writings. "Shall in vain seek the light of the skies." A mountain was hollow'd, a cavern delv'd wide With arches and pillars of stone; A fire, that with cedars blaz'd fragrant, defied The damps that arose from the salt oceantide, And with far-streaming radiancy shone. The ivory couches with purple were dight, The walls hung with arras around; There hawks, hounds, and horses, were pictur'd to sight, And woods waving green, and clear streams purling bright, [sound. And huntsmen their horns seem'd to Beaten gold all the ceiling's arch'd surface o'erlaid; Birds warbled in cages of gold; And as if by some minstrel's invisible aid, With musical echo soft instruments play'd As the passing waves outwardly roll'd. Were fraught with philosophy's lore; In letters of gold did a sage there engrave The words of the wise, and the deeds of the brave, The feats and the virtues of yore. He whispers confus'd in the governor's ear, "They touch me with joy, yet they thrill His age-silver'd head then Ydronicus shook, "Which already thy gaze with its venom let are drest, "Lest the poison sink deep in thy breast. "They with jewels are deck'd, and in scar[vine: "And their ringlets are wreath'd like the "Their shape is the fir-tree's; the swan's is their breast, "Full many a wretch have their eyes robb'd of rest, "Oh let not that folly be thine! "But, listen, my prince! I will tell thee their name, "And thy pulse will beat fearfully then ; "Thyself shalt my wisdom and caution proclaim; gale; And pines their branches stoop'd with crashing sound; Drear clos'd the darkness on the lightning pale; When through the forest-breaks a light from high Shone distant, as it seem'd, a watch-tower in the sky. With livelier cheer the traveller wound the glade, Till climbing slow the dark hill's hang- Th' illuminated turrets he survey'd "Oh! shun as the plague, as the sword, as Beneath a stately castle's walls he stood, the flame, We are tempted, also, notwithstanding its length, to gratify our readers with the perusal of the Duke's Feast; in which, we think, Mr. Elton has shewn considerable powers of descrip. tion, and some good versification. "The Duke's Feast. THE moon had sunk in clouds; a storm was nigh, That, flank'd with lofty towers, c'ertopp'd th' inferior wood. Beside the gate was hung a brazen horn ; The pediment was grav'd with golden scroll, "Here food and shelter wait the wretch forlorn, "Who owns the treasure of a grateful soul." The merchant to his lips that horn applied, The hollow mountain-glens re-echoed far and wide. Straight quivering streaks illume the granite walls, From many a gliding torch reflected Shrill ring the gates; expand the tapestried bright; [right; halls, And blooming pages guide his steps aWith busy hands disrobe the way-worn guest, moon; The figur'd arras waves, and on his sight Sudden a presence-room bursts in a blaze of light. And eddy leaves came scattering on the His foot on cushion rais'd of cloth of gold, blast; One sate beneath a purple canopy: |