CHARLES WOLFE. [CHARLES WOLFE was born in Dublin, Dec. 14, 1791. He was educated at the University of Dublin, was ordained in 1817, became Curate of Donoughmore in Downshire, and died at the Cove of Cork, Feb. 21, 1823. He printed no book during his life-time, but his slender remains in prose and verse were collected some years after his death by Archdeacon Russell.] The famous ode on The Burial of Sir John Moore was first printed in The Newry Telegraph, an Ulster newspaper, in 1817, with the initials C. W. It was copied into the English papers, and won an instant popularity, but the slight evidence of authorship seems to have dropped out of sight at once. Byron's friends charged him with its composition, but he regretfully disowned it, reading it meanwhile to all his friends with enthusiasm, among others to Shelley, who remarked, 'I should have taken the whole for a rough sketch of Campbell's.' Almost immediately it took its place among the four or five best martial poems in our language, preeminent for simplicity, patriotic fervour, and manly pathos. It was presently discovered that this poem had been written some years before it was printed, by a young Irishman of much promise who died of a decline in his thirty-second year1. When this fact became known, public curiosity was attracted to his name, and an attempt was made by one of his early friends to collect what he had written. Only twelve short pieces, besides the ode, could be discovered; they were mostly songs of love and friendship, full of ardour, and not uninfluenced by the popular Irish manner of Moore. We give one of these, as a favourable specimen of Wolfe's ordinary style. EDMUND W. Gosse It has been usually said that Wolfe paraphrased very closely the report of the death of Sir John Moore in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1808. A reference to the report in question relegates this statement to the province of fable; the newspaper account is quite bald and commonplace, and the poet has supplied all the salient points out of his own imagination. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOCRE AT CORUNNA. Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him, Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we stedfastly gazed on the face that was dead, We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that gone, But half of our weary task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stoneBut we left him alone with his glory. SONG. O say not that my heart is cold No more has power to charm it; For those who made it dearer still, Still oft those solemn scenes I view Stern Duty rose, and frowning flung He muttered as he bound me: 'The mountain breeze, the boundless hea en, Unfit for toil the creature; These for the free alone were given, But what have slaves with Nature?' CHARLES LAMB. [Born in the Temple, London, February 10, 1775; was educated at Christ's Hospital, with Coleridge for a school-fellow; became clerk in the India House, 1792; retired on a pension, 1825; died December 27, 1834. His poetry is as follows:-Poems by S. T. Coleridre, second edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, 1797. Blank Verse, by Charle Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798. Poetry for Children, entirely original; by the Author of Mrs. Leicester's School, 1809. Poems in The Works of Charles Lamb, 1818. Album Verses, with a few others, by Charles Lamb, 1830.] Charles Lamb's nosegay of verse may be held by the small hand of a maiden, and there is not in it one flaunting, gallant flower; it is, however, fragrant with the charities of home, like blossoms gathered in some old cottage croft. To know his varying subtleties, his play of intellect, his lambent humour, one must turn to his prose writings; but the gentle heart, the unworldly temper, the fine courtesy, betray themselves in every utterance of Lamb. It was in early manhood and in snatches of time that his first verses were written; he speaks of them as creatures of the fancy and the feeling in life's more vacant hours, as derivatives from the poetry of Coleridge. And certainly there is less in them of Lamb's own favourite, Burns, than of Bowles, whom Coleridge at one time idolised. In Coleridge's volume they modestly made their appearance. 'My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle under cover of the greater Ajax.' The larger number of his poems are occasional; a few are interesting a records of a love in idleness that gave unusual charm to the memory of some months in Lamb's prime of youth. From the India House desk it was pleasant to wander in fancy along some forest-glade by the side of fair-haired Anna. But after all, his dear sister, even his good and pious grandame, was closer to Lamb than any beloved 'mild-eye! maid.' And did there not remain to console him that life-long comrade, his pipe, the parting from which for a season he celebrates in a piece of mirthful fantasy that would readily run from verse into the quaint prose of Elia? For less pensive companionship he had now and again little Hartley Coleridge, or Thorntor Hunt, a guileless traitor enduring imprisonment with his father when Lamb addressed him in verse. Nor in those innocent days of albums was Elia unacquainted with maiden-petitioners - Edith Southey, Dora Wordsworth, Lucy Barton-bashful yet intent to acquire the autograph. Lamb's deeper and sadder heart lay for the most part in quiet concealment; but once at least, in the mournful music of his Old Familiar Faces, its monody is heard. EDWARD DOWDEN. |