Oth. Ah, no! I see thy sire in every line.— How did my prince escape the murderer's hand? Selim. I wrench'd the dagger from him, and gave back That death he meant to bring. The ruffian wore The tyrant's signet:-"Take this ring," he cried, "The sole return my dying hand can make thee For its accursed attempt: this pledge restored, Will prove thee slain! Safe may'st thou see Algiers, Unknown to all." This said, the assassin died. Oth. But how to gain admittance thus unknown? Selim. Disguised as Selim's murderer I come: The accomplice of the deed: the ring restored, Gain'd credence to my words. Oth. Yet ere thou camest, thy death was rumour'd here. Selim. I spread the flattering tale, and sent it hither, That babbling rumour, like a lying dream, Oth. Still in vain the tyrant Tempts her to marriage, though with impious threats Enter OTHMAN and SADI friend to OTHMAN. Selim. Honour'd friends! How goes the night? Sadi. 'Tis well-nigh midnight. Selim. But tears of joy: for I have seen Zaphira, Sadi. All, all is ready. Our confederate friends Burn with impatience, till the hour arrive. Selim. What is the signal of the appointed hour? Selim. But is the city quiet? * Sadi. All, all is hush'd. Throughout the empty streets, Nor voice, nor sound. As if the inhabitants, Oth. There is a solemn horror in the night, too, That pleases me: a general pause through nature: The winds are hush'd Sadi. And as I pass'd the beach, The lazy billow scarce could lash the shore: Come, Othman, we are call'd: the passing minutes We soon shall meet again. But, oh, remember, Not to destroy, but save! nor let blind zeal, Oth. So may we prosper, As mercy shall direct us! Selim. Farewell, friends! Sadi. Intrepid prince, farewell! [Exeunt ОTH. and SADI. SELIM'S SOLILOQUY BEFORE THE INSURRECTION Selim. Now sleep and silence Brood o'er the city.-The devoted sentinel And firm resolve! that, in the approaching hour Of blood and horror, I may stand unmoved; Yet-as foul lust and murder, though on thrones MICHAEL BRUCE. [Born, 1746. Died, 1767.] MICHAEL BRUCE was born in the parish of Kinneswood, in Kinross-shire, Scotland. His father was by trade a weaver, who out of his scanty earnings had the merit of affording his son an education at the grammar-school of Kinross, and at the university of Edinburgh. Michael was delicate from his childhood, but showed an early disposition for study, and a turn for poetry, which was encouraged by some of his neighbours lending him a few of the most popular English poets. The humblest individuals who have befriended genius deserve to be gratefully mentioned. The first encouragers to whom Bruce showed his poetical productions were a Mr. Arnot, a farmer on the banks of Lochleven, and one David Pearson, whose occupation is not deccribed. In his sixteenth year he went to the university of Edinburgh, where, after the usual course of attendance, he entered on the study of divinity, intending, probably, to be a preacher in the Burgher sect of dissenters, to whom his parents belonged. Between the latter sessions, which he attended at college, he taught a small school at Gairney bridge, in the neighbourhood of his native place, and afterward at Forest-Hill, near Allan, in Clackmannanshire. This is nearly the whole of his sad and short history. At the latter place he was seized with a deep consump-ing relic of his amiable feelings and fortitude. tion, the progress of which in his constitution had always inclined him to melancholy. Under the toils of a day and evening school, and without the comforts that might have mitigated disease, he mentions his situation to a friend in a touching but resigned manner-"I had expected," he says, "to be happy here; but my sanguine hopes are the reason of my disappointment." He had cherished sanguine hopes of happiness, poor youth! in his little village-school; but he seems to have been ill encouraged by his employers, and complains that he had no company, but what was worse than solitude. "I believe," he adds, "if I had not a lively imagination I should fall into a state of stupidity or delirium." He was now composing his poem on Lochleven, in which he describes himself, "Amid unfertile wilds, recording thus, During the winter he quitted his school, and, returning to his father's house, lingered on for a few months till he expired, in his twenty-first year. During the spring he wrote an elegy on the prospect of his own dissolution, a most interest FROM THE ELEGY ON SPRING. Now spring returns: but not to me returns Meagre and pale, the ghost of what I was, And count the silent moments as they pass: The winged moments, whose unstaying speed No art can stop, or in their course arrest; Whose flight shall shortly count me with the dead, And lay me down in peace with them that rest. Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate; And morning dreams, as poets tell, are true. Led by pale ghosts, I enter death's dark gate, And bid the realms of light and life adieu. I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe; There let me wander at the close of eve, When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes; The world and all its busy follies leave, And talk with wisdom where my Daphnis lies. There let me sleep forgotten in the clay, When death shall shut these weary aching eyes, Rest in the hopes of an eternal day, Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise. FROM "LOCHLEVEN." Now sober Industry, illustrious power! Hath raised the peaceful cottage, calm abode Of innocence and joy; now, sweating, glides The shining ploughshare; tames the stubborn soil; Leads the long drain along th' unfertile marsh; Bids the bleak hill with vernal verdure bloom, The haunt of flocks; and clothes the barren heath With waving harvests, and the golden grain. Fair from his hand, behold the village rise, In rural pride, 'mong intermingled trees! Above whose aged tops, the joyful swains At even-tide, descending from the hill, With eye enamour'd, mark the many wreaths Of pillar'd smoke, high-curling to the clouds. The street resounds with labour's various voice, Who whistles at his work. Gay on the green, Young blooming boys, and girls with golden hair, Trip nimble-footed, wanton in their play, The village hope. All in a rev'rend row, Their gray-hair'd grandsires, sitting in the sun, Before the gate, and leaning on the staff, The well-remember'd stories of their youth Recount, and shake their aged locks with joy. How fair a prospect rises to the eye, And backward, through the gloom of ages past, JAMES GRAINGER. [Born, 1721. Died, 1766.] DR. JAMES GRAINGER, the translator of Tibullus, was for some time a surgeon in the army; he afterward attempted, without success, to obtain practice as a physician in London, and finally settled in St. Kitt's, where he married the governor's daughter. The novelty of West Indian ODE TO SOLITUDE. O SOLITUDE, romantic maid! Whether by nodding towers you tread, Or haunt the desert's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb, Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide, Or starting from your half-year's sleep From Hecla view the thawing deep, Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadmor's marble wastes survey,‡ [See Prior's Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 237.] It If Grainger has invoked the Muse to sing of rats, and metamorphosed, in Arcadian phrase, negro slaves into swains, the fault is in the writer not in the topic. The arguments which he has prefixed are indeed ludicrously flat and formal.-SOUTHEY, Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 489. Dr. Grainger's Sugar-cane is capable of being rendered a good poem.-SHENSTONE, Works, vol. iii. p. 343.] [Johnson praised Grainger's Ode to Solitude, and repeated with great energy the exordium, observing, "This, sir, is very noble."-CROKER'S Boswell, vol. iv. p. 50. What makes the poetry in the image of the marble waste of Tadmor, in Grainger's "Ode to Solitude," so much admired by Johnson? Is it the marble or the waste, the scenery inspired him with the unpromising subject of the Sugar-cane, in which he very poetically dignifies the poor negroes with the name of "Swains." He died on the same island, a victim to the West Indian fever. You, recluse, again I woo, Plumed Conceit himself surveying, artificial or the natural object? The waste is like all other wastes; but the marble of Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the place.-LORD BYRON, Works, vol. vi. p. 359. This was said by Byron in the great controversy these Specimens gave rise to between Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles the poet, the Art and Nature squabble. Surely the poe try of the passage does not depend upon a single word: 'Tis not a lip or eye, we beauty call. "In this fine Ode," says Percy, "are assembled some of the sublimest images in nature."-Reliques, vol. ii. p. 352.] Restraint's stiff neck, Grimace's leer, Sage Reflection, bent with years, Halcyon Peace on moss reclined, Health that snuffs the morning air, You with the tragic muse retired, With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you stray'd, Where as you pensive pace along, Till the tuneful bird of night JOHN GILBERT COOPER, [Born, 1723. Died, 1769.] WAS of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, and possessed the estate of Thurgarton Priory, where he exercised the active and useful duties of a magistrate. He resided, however, occasionally in London, and was a great promoter of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manu factures. He died at his house in May-Fair, after a long and excruciating illness, occasioned by the stone. He was a zealous pupil of the Shaftesbury school; and published, besides his Poems, a Life of Socrates, Letters on Taste, and Epistles to the Great from Aristippus in retirement. SONG.* AWAY! let nought to love displeasing, What though no grants of royal donors Our name while virtue thus we tender, What though, from Fortune's lavish bounty, And that's the only life to live. Through youth and age, in love excelling, We'll hand in hand together tread; Sweet-smiling peace shall crown our dwelling, And babes, sweet-smiling babes, our bed. How should I love the pretty creatures, While round my knees they fondly clung! JAMES MERRICK. [Born, 1720. Died, 1769.] JAMES MERRICK was a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, where Lord North was one of his pupils. He entered into holy orders, but never could engage in parochial duty, from being subject to excessive pains in his head. He was an eminent Grecian, and translated Tryphiodorus at the age of twenty. Bishop Lowth characterized him as one of the best men, and most eminent of scholars. His most important poetical work is his version of the Psalms; besides which he published poems on sacred subjects. THE WISH. How short is life's uncertain space! Alas! how quickly done! How swift the wild precarious chase! And yet how difficult the race! How very hard to run! Youth stops at first its wilful ears To wisdom's prudent voice; Till now arrived to riper years, Repents its earlier choice. [This beautiful address to conjugal love," says Dr. Percy, a subject too much neglected by the libertine Muses, was, I believe, first printed in a volume of miscel Janeous poems, by several hands, published by D. Lewis, 1720, Svo. It is there said, how truly I know not, to be a translation from the ancient British language." That it was printed in 1726 is certain, which as Cooper What though its prospects now appear So pleasing and refined? Yet groundless hope, and anxious fear, By turns the busy moments share, And prey upon the mind. Since then false joys our fancy cheat With hopes of real bliss; Ye guardian powers that rule my fate, The only wish that I create Is all comprised in this : was then only three years old, is fatal to his right. Aikin blames Percy for inserting it among his Reliques, "for the title," he says, "was only a poetic fiction, or rather a stroke of satire." Cooper printed the poem in his Letters on Taste (1755) but did not print his claim, as Aikin and others havo ignorantly done.] |