'Twas then-like tiger close beset I saw him ere the bloody fight began SOUTHEY. It has been Mr. Southey's general practice to indicate his classical imitations in his notes the few which follow are either fancies of ours or omissions of his. -Within that house of death The shrouded warrior shook his mailed C. iii. 4. Sudden through every fibre a deep fear Che ancor fuggendo mostra il cor gentile Ceu sævum turba leonem, &c. minds The thousand palaces were seen How silent and how beautiful they stand, We will give the account of the gardens which had been ages ago overwhelmed by the ocean, as the strangest specimen of fanciful description we ever read ;—though we have nothing to compare with it except in one particular. .. It was a garden still beyond all price, And grots of madrepores, As e'er was mossy bed hours. There was a sight of wonder and delight, Sic fatur: quanquam plebeio tectus amictu The name of Glendoveers, Mr. Indocilis privata loqui. Lucan. v. 538. * This is the very mournful ballad on the siege and conquest of Alhama," which Lord Byron translated with much spirit certainly, but from a very imperfect copy of the original, and with an obviously imperfect knowledge of the language, in proof of which I refer the Spanish reader to his translation of verses 13 and 17. The circumstance related in the last lines quoted above, so characteristic of the times and the country, and so affecting to the individual, is omitted in Lord Byron's copy; and so much more is omitted, that the whole drift of the poem must be misapprehended. The true history of it is this. The Moorish king receives the news of the loss of Alhama, and, convoking his people, imparts it to them. An old Moor speaks up, and upbraids him for his ill deeds, whereby he has deserved this misfortune; (Lord Byron's copy makes this the person afterwards beheaded, but in fact) the ballad here breaks off, as usual with such compositions, and passes to the arrest by the king's officer of the Alcayde of Alhama, who had been absent from his post when it was lost; and his energetic de fence is partly omitted by Lord Byron, and partly made unintelligible by being put into the mouth of the contumacious Moor. doom, and the reason of it, which we translate in Lord Byron's metre (freely, of course, The officer, in arresting him, announces his having to make a verse out of two lines). In all the land no fairer town, pues perdiste la tenencia And then the speech which follows his arrest is intelligible and affecting, though Lord Byron is determined to make the worst of it, and omits the two first verses, which form the Alcayde's defence of himself: they run thus: At my sister's spousals I Was absent, I will not deny; (On her spousals, and on all Who bade me to them, Hell-fire fall!) But I had license ere I went Woe is me, Alhama! Yo me estaba en Antequera ay de mi Alhama ! El rey mi dio la licencia Lord Byron includes the captivity of the Moor's daughter : I lost a damsel in that hour, Of all the land the loveliest flower; ay de mi Alhama! But he omits the peculiar circumstance we mentioned before-the maiden's apostacy from her father's faith. A hundred doblas down I told, And they spurn'd the proffered gold, I them besought for Fatima, And they made answer-thus said they. The damsel whom thou com'st to claim, Purged from Islam's foul offence By holy water-get thee hence. Woe is me, Alhama! So much for Lord Byron's version from the Spanish ; cien doblas le doi por ella, y por nombre la avian puesto "Translating tongues he knows not e'en by letter,* ay de mi Alhama! "O nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futuræ!" Thus it is that our day goes down, the chickens come home to roost, (καταραι, ως καὶ τα αλεκτρυονονεόττα, οικον αεί, οψε κεν Tarnav exadiσoμeval.) and we become the objects of our own satires! * See his mistake of ñ for n. For while thine absence they deplore, "Tis for themselves they weep, Though they behold thy face no more, In peace thine ashes sleep. IA. Minor Poems. Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well. Childe Har. c. 4. Probably a hundred might be quoted to the same purpose; the earliest, simplest, and therefore most beautiful expression of the sentiment which we know, is in a funeral song by one of the Jewish Rabbis, and quoted in Mr. Lyndsay's notes to his very solemn and beautiful compositions, the Dramas of the Ancient World. It stands thus: "Mourn for the mourners, and not for the dead; for he is at rest, and we in tears." There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan, Love, friendship, and conjugal bliss, Demands of the spoiler his share of the prey. Ocean. The direful shark.... From the partners of that cruel trade Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her sons, Demands his share of prey. Thomson. Summer. Ocean. By all means, it is to be procured that the trunk of Nebuchadnezzar's tree of monarchy be great enough to bear the branches and the boughs; that is, that the natural subjects of the crown or state bear a sufficient proportion to the stranger subjects that they govern....The Spartans were a nice people in point of naturalization; whereby, while they kept their compass, they stood firm; but when they did spread, and their boughs were become too great for their stem, they became a windfall upon the sudden. Bacon. True Greatness of Kingdoms. force of that last metaphor which the Observe the peculiar Baconian poet has not compassed. Deep in the gloom of Fate afar Schiller An Emma. It shines a lustre now in night!-Schiller. Verses to Emma. CRABBE, GRAĦAME, MILLMAN. Is it not strange that man should health destroy For joys which come when he is dead to joy? Crabbe. 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy. Pope. How still the morning of the hallowed day! Et grave suspenso vomere cessit opus ; pable of originality as Metastasio. "In bona cur quisquam tertius ista venit?" Let us observe Bacon working out the metaphor. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed (he uses the word in an obsolete sense-igne coactum) or crushed.—Essays. The compassionate mind is like that noble tree that is itself wounded when it gives the balm.-Ditto. Mr. Bettenham said that virtuous men were like some herbs and spices that give not out their sweet smell till they be broken and crushed-Apothegms. Solvite vincla jugis. Tibullus, 1. ii. 1. That easy trust, that prompt belief How thy dove-like bosom trembleth, A moist and tremulous glitter leave Fall of Jerusalem. Came o'er that eye of blue, Hebrew Melodies. Ebu Alrumi tr. by Carlyle. In what the warm heart wishes true, That faith in words, when kindly said, By which the whole fond sex is led, Loves of the Angels.. Facili feminarum credulitate ad gaudia. Tacitus. Still worse the illusions that betray Through the bleak world, to bend and But as to the unbelievers, their works |