The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 569, October 6, 1832

BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQO poets, poets, dream at home,If you would still have visions haunt you;Trust me, if once abroad you roam,That mar-all, Truth, will disenchant you.Still think of VENICE, as in dreamsYou've seen her, by her ocean-streams;—Fancy the calm and cool delightsOf gondolas on summer nights:Of sailing o'er the bright Lagoon,And listening, as you glide along,To lays from TASSO, by that moonWhose beams, alas! he felt too strong,And of whose mad'ning philters all,Who feel the Muse's genuine call,Are doom'd, at times, to drink as deep,As did Endymion in his sleep!Still by your fire-sides sit, and thinkOf palaces, along the brinkOf ocean-floods,—whose shadows thereLook like the ruins, grand and fair,Of some lost ATALANTIS, seenBeneath the wave, when heaven's serene.People those palaces with formsLovely as TITIAN ever drew—Bright creatures, whom the sunbeam warmsWith that ethereal gas, all through.Which finds a vent at lips and eyes,And lights up in a lover's sighs.Fancy these young Venetian maidsListening, at night, to serenadesFrom amorous lutes, where Music, suchAs southern skies alone afford,Echoes to every burning touch,And thrills in each impassion'd chord.All this imagine, and still more,—For whither may not Fancy soar,If Truth do not, alas! too soon,Puncture her brilliant air-balloon—But go not to the spot, I pray;O do not, do not, some fine day.Order, like STERNE, your travelling breeches;—All's lost, if once upon your way,The passport of Lord –Is death to Fancy—like his speeches.If you would save some dreams of youthFrom the torpedo touch of Truth,Go not to VENICE—do not blightYour early fancies with the sightOf her true, real, dismal state—Her mansions, foul and desolate,—Her close canals, exhaling wideSuch fetid airs as—with those domesOf silent grandeur, by their side,Where step of life ne'er goes or comes,And those black barges plying roundWith melancholy, plashing sound,—Seem like a city, where the PestIs holding her last visitation,And all, ere long, will be at rest,The dead, sure rest of desolation.So look'd, at night-fall, oft to meThat ruin'd City of the Sea;And, as the gloomy fancy grewStill darker with night's darkening hue,All round me seem'd by Death o'ercast,—Each footstep in those halls the last;And the dim boats, as slow they pass'd,All burial-barks, with each its loadOf livid corpses, feebly row'dBy fading hands, to find a bedIn waters less choked up with dead.—Metropolitan.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

By the Author of "Eugene Aram."

The blow is struck—the lyre is shattered—the music is hushed at length. The greatest—the most various—the most commanding genius of modern times has left us to seek for that successor to his renown which, in all probability, a remote generation alone will furnish forth. It is true that we have been long prepared for the event—it does not fall upon us suddenly—leaf after leaf was stripped from that noble tree before it was felled to the earth at last;—our sympathy in his decay has softened us to the sorrow for his death. It is not now our intention to trace the character or to enumerate the works of the great man whose career is run;—to every eye that reads—every ear that hears—every heart that remembers, this much at least, of his character is already known,—that he had all the exuberance of genius and none of its excesses; that he was at once equitable and generous—that his heart was ever open to charity—that his life has probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices—that its light must be meteoric—and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,—we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination may aspire to the wildest flights without wandering into error. Of whom else among our great list of names—the heir-looms of our nation—can we say that he has left us everything to admire, and nothing to forgive?

It is in four different paths of intellectual eminence that Sir Walter Scott has won his fame; as a poet, a biographer, an historian, and a novellist. It is not now a time (with the great man's clay scarce cold) to enter into the niceties of critical discussion. We cannot now weigh, and sift, and compare. We feel too deeply at this moment to reason well–but we ourselves would incline to consider him greatest as a poet. Never, indeed, has there been a poet so thoroughly Homeric as Scott—the battle—the feast—the council—the guard-room at Stirling—the dying warrior at Flodden—the fierce Bertram speeding up the aisle—all are Homeric;—all live—move—breathe and burn—alike poetry, but alike life! There is this difference, too, marked and prominent—between his verse and his prose;—the first is emphatically the verse of Scott—the latter (we mean in its style) may be the prose of any one—the striking originality, the daring boldness, the astonishing vigour of the style, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, are lost in The Antiquary and Guy Mannering.

Scott may be said, in prose, to have no style. There are those, we know, who call this very absence of style a merit—we will not dispute it: if it be so, Scott is the first great prose writer from Bacon to Gibbon,—nay, from Herodotus, in Greek, to Paul Courier, in French—who has laid claim to it. For our own part, we think him great, in spite of the want of style, and not because of it. As a biographer, he has been unfortunate in his subjects; the two most important of the various lives he has either delineated or sketched—that of Dryden and that of Swift—are men, to whose inexpiable baseness genius could neither give the dignity of virtue nor the interest of error.

As an historian, we confess that we prize him more highly than as a biographer: it is true that the same faults are apparent in both, but there is in the grand History of Napoleon more scope for redeeming beauties. His great, his unrivalled, excellence in description is here brought into full and ample display: his battles are vivid, with colours which no other historian ever could command. And all the errors of the history still leave scenes and touches of unrivalled majesty to the book.

As a novelist, Scott has been blamed for not imparting a more useful moral to his fictions, and for dwelling with too inconsiderate an interest on the chivalric illusions of the past. To charges of this nature all writers are liable. Mankind are divided into two classes; and he who belongs to the one will ever incur the reproach of not seeing through the medium of the other. Certain it is, that we, with utterly different notions on political truths from the great writer who is no more, might feel some regret—some natural pain—that that cause which we believe the best, was not honoured by his advocacy; but when we reflect on the real influence of his works, we are satisfied they have been directed to the noblest ends, and have embraced the largest circle of human interests. We do not speak of the delight he has poured forth over the earth—of the lonely hours he has charmed—of the sad hearts he has beguiled—of the beauty and the music which he has summoned to a world where all travail and none repose; this, indeed, is something—this, indeed, is a moral—this, indeed, has been a benefit to mankind. And this is a new corroborant of one among the noblest of intellectual truths, viz. that the books which please, are always books that, in one sense, benefit; and that the work which is largely and permanently popular—which sways, moulds, and softens the universal heart—cannot appeal to vulgar and unworthy passions (such appeals are never widely or long triumphant!); the delight it occasions is a proof of the moral it inspires.

But this power to charm and to beguile is not that moral excellence to which we refer. Scott has been the first great genius—Fielding alone excepted—who invited our thorough and uncondescending sympathy to the wide mass of the human family—who has stricken (for in this artificial world it requires an effort) into our hearts a love and a respect for those chosen from the people. Shakspeare has not done this—Shakspeare paints the follies of the mob with a strong and unfriendly hand. Where, in Skakspeare, is there a Jeanie Deans? Take up which you will of those numerous works which have appeared, from Waverley to the Chronicles of the Canongate,—open where you please, you will find portraits from the people—and your interest keeping watch beside the poor man's hearth. Not, in Scott, as they were in the dramatists of our language, are the peasant, the artificer, the farmer, dragged on the stage merely to be laughed at for their brogue, and made to seem ridiculous because they are useful.

He paints them, it is true, in their natural language, but the language is subservient to the character; he does not bow the man to the phrase, but the phrase to the man. Neither does he flatter on the one hand, as he does not slight on the other. Unlike the maudlin pastoralists of France he contents himself with the simple truth—he contrasts the dark shadows of Meg Merrilies, or of Edie Ochiltree, with the holy and pure lights that redeem and sanctify them—he gives us the poor, even to the gipsey and the beggar, as they really are—contented, if our interest is excited, and knowing that nature is sufficient to excite it. From the palaces of kings—from the tents of warriors, he comes—equally at home with man in all aspects—to the cotter's hearth:—he bids us turn from the pomp of the Plantagenets to bow the knee to the poor Jew's daughter—he makes us sicken at the hollowness of the royal Rothsay, to sympathize with the honest love of Hugh the smith. No never was there one—not even Burns himself—who forced us more intimately to acknowledge, or more deeply to feel, that

"The rank is but the guinea stamp,The man's the gowd, for a' that."

Scott, is not, we apprehend, justly liable to the charge of wanting a sound moral—even a great political moral—(and political morals are the greatest of all)—in the general tenor of works which have compelled the highest classes to examine and respect the lowest. In this, with far less learning, far less abstract philosophy, than Fielding, he is only exceeded by him in one character—(and that, indeed, the most admirable in English fiction)—the character of Parson Adams. Jeanie Deans is worth a thousand such as Fanny Andrews. Fielding, Le Sage, and Cervantes are the only three writers, since the world began, with whom, as a novelist, he can be compared. And perhaps he excels them, as Voltaire excelled all the writers of his nation, not by the superior merits of one work, but by the brilliant aggregate of many. Tom Jones, Gil Blas, Don Quixote, are, without doubt, greater, much greater, productions than Waverley; but the authors of Tom Jones, Gil Blas, and even of Don Quixote, have not manifested the same fertile and mighty genius as author of the Waverley Novels.

And that genius—seemingly so inexhaustible—is quenched at length! We can be charmed no more—the eloquent tongue is mute—the master's wand is broken up—the right hand hath forgot its cunning-the cord that is loosened was indeed of silver—and the bowl that is broken at the dark well was of gold beyond all price.

When a great man dies, he leaves a chasm which eternity cannot fill. Others succeed to his fame—but never to the exact place which he held in the world's eye;—they may be greater than the one we have lost—but they are not he. Shakspeare built not his throne on the same site as Homer—nor Scott on that whence Shakspeare looked down upon the universe. The gap which Scott leaves in the world is the token of the space he filled in the homage of his times. A hundred ages hence our posterity will still see that wide interval untenanted—a vast and mighty era in the intellectual world, which will prove how spacious were "the city and the temple, whose summit has reached to Heaven."

New Monthly Magazine.

TO A ROSE

THE THOUGHT FROM THE ITALIANQueen of Flora's emerald bowers,Imperial Rose, thou flower of flowers,Wave thy moss-enwreathen stem,Wave thy dewy diadem;Thy crimson luxury unfold,And drink the sunny blaze of gold.O'er the Zephyr, sportive minion,Spreads the blue, aurelian pinion.Now in love's low whispers winging,Now in giddy fondness clinging,With all a lover's warmth he wooes thee,With all a lover's wiles pursues thee.And thou wilt yield, and thou wilt giveThe sigh that none can breathe and live.Like lovelier things, deluded flower,Thy date is short; the very hourThat sees thee flourish, sees thee fade;Thy blush, thy being, all a shade.Yet, flower, I'll lay thee on a shrine,That makes thy very death divine.Couch'd on a bed of living snows,Then breathe thy last, too happy rose!Sweet Queen, thou'lt die upon a throne,Where even thy sweetness is outdone;Young weeper, thou shalt close thine eyesBeside the gates of Paradise.On my Idalia's bosom, thou,Beneath the lustres of her brow,Like pilgrims, all their sorrows past,On Heaven their dying glances cast,Thy crimson beauty shalt recline,Oh, that thy rapturous fate were mine!Blackwood's Magazine.

NEW BOOKS

LIVES OF SCOTTISH WORTHIES, VOL. II., [Or the 34th volume of the Family Library, is rife with interesting details of the proudest areas of Scottish history; but more especially of the chivalric courses of Robert Bruce and James the First. We quote half-a-dozen vividly written pages, from the former, describing the memorable Siege of Berwick, in 1319.]

Considering the importance of Berwick, and the care and expense with which it had been fortified by the king, it was natural that any attempt against it should be viewed with much interest; and when it was known that the son-in-law of Bruce,—a young warrior, whose high rank was rendered more conspicuous by the services he had already rendered to the country,—had been selected as its governor, and that the whole army of England, headed by king Edward, and under the command of the flower of the nobility, had invested it by sea and land, the intense interest with which the siege was watched by both countries may be easily imagined. It concluded, however, in the complete triumph of the steward, and the repulse of the English army; yet not before every device then known in the rude engineering of the times had been essayed by the besiegers, and effectually baffled by the ingenuity and persevering courage of the enemy. After their earthen mounds had been completed, the English, on St. Mary's eve, made a simultaneous assault both by land and by sea. Whilst their force, led by the bravest of their captains, and carrying with them, besides their usual offensive arms, the ladders, crows, pick-axes, and other assistances for an escalade, rushed onwards to the walls with the sound of their trumpets, and the display of innumerable banners, a large vessel, prepared for the purpose, was towed towards the town from the mouth of the river. She was filled with armed soldiers, a party of whom were placed in her boat drawn up mid-mast high; whilst to the bow of the boat was fixed a species of drawbridge, which it was intended to drop upon the wall, and thus afford a passage from the vessel into the town. Yet these complicated preparations failed of success, although seconded by the greatest gallantry; and the English, after being baffled in every attempt to fix their ladders and maintain themselves upon the walls, were compelled to retire, leaving their vessel to be burnt by the Scots, who slew many of her crew, and made prisoner the engineer who superintended and directed the attack.

This unsuccessful attack was, after five days' active preparation, followed by another still more desperate, in which the besiegers made use of a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, instead of a single vessel, as on the former occasion, a squadron of ships, with their top castles manned by picked bodies of archers, and their armed boats slung mast high, were ready to sail in with the tide, and anchor beneath the walls. Aware of these great preparations, the Scots, under the encouragement and direction of their governor, laboured incessantly to be in a situation to render them unavailing. By Crab, the Flemish engineer, machines similar to the Roman catapult, moving on wheels, and of enormous strength and dimensions, were constructed and placed on the walls at the spot where it was expected the sow would make its approach. In addition to this, they fixed a crane upon the rampart, armed with iron chains and grappling hooks, and large masses of combustibles and fire-faggots, shaped like tuns, and composed of pitch and flax, bound strongly together with tar ropes, were piled up in readiness for the attack. At different intervals on the walls were fixed the espringalds for the discharge of their heavy darts, which carried on their barbed points little bundles of flaming tow dipped in oil or sulphur; the ramparts were lined by the archers, spearmen, and crossbows; and to each leader was assigned a certain station, to which he could repair on a moment's warning.

Having inspected his whole works, the steward cheerfully and confidently awaited the attack; to which the English moved forward in great strength, and led by the king in person, on the 13th of September. Irritated by their late repulse, and animated by the presence of their nobility, the different squadrons rushed forward with an impetuosity which at first defied all efforts to repel them; so that the ladders were fixed, the ditch filled up by fascines, and the ramparts attacked with an impetuous valour which promised to carry all before it. But the Scots, who knew their own strength, allowed this ebullition of gallantry to expend itself; and, after a short interval advanced with levelled spears in close array, and with a weight and resolution which effectually checked the enemy. Considerable ground, however, had been gained in the first assault; and the battle was maintained, from sunrise till noon, with excessive obstinacy on both sides; but it at last concluded in favour of the resolution and endurance of the Scots, who repulsed the enemy on every quarter, and cleared their ramparts of their assailants. At this moment, by Edward's orders, the sow began its advance towards the walls; and the cran, or catapult, armed with a mass of rock, was seen straining its timbers, and taking its aim against the approaching monster. On the first discharge the stone flew far beyond; and, as its conductors hurried forward the immense machine, the second missile fell short of it. A third block of granite was now got ready, and an English engineer who had been taken prisoner was commanded, on pain of death, to direct the aim; whilst the sow was moving forward with a rapidity which in a few seconds must have brought it to the foot of the walls. All gazed on for an instant in breathless suspense,—but only for an instant. The catapult was discharged,—a loud booming noise in the air accompanied the progress of its deadly projectile,—and, in a moment afterwards, a tremendous crash, mingled with the shrieks of the victims and the shouts of the soldiers from the walls, declared the destruction of the huge machine. It had been hit so truly, that the stone passed through the roofs, shivering its timbers into a thousand pieces; and crushing and mangling in a frightful manner the unhappy soldiers who manned its different platforms. As those amongst them who escaped rushed out from its broken fragments, the Scottish soldiers, imitating the witticism of black Agnis at the siege of Dunbar, shouted out that the English sow had farrowed. Crab now cast his chains and grappling-hooks over the ruins of the machine, and, dragging it nearer the walls, poured down his combustibles in such quantity, that it was soon consumed to ashes. The complete failure in this land attack seems to have cast a damp over the naval operations; and, although the ships attempted to move on to the walls at flood-tide, they were driven back without difficulty; whilst a last effort to enter the city by burning the gate of St. Mary's was repulsed by the steward in person. It was now near night-fall; and, foiled on every side, the English entirely withdrew from the assault.

NUMISMATICS

[Addison, in commenting on the Usefulness of Ancient Medals, says, "A series of an Emperor's Coins is his life digested into Annals." Who shall, therefore, gainsay the the utility of A Numismatic Manual, or Guide to the Study of Coins. The author, Mr. John Y. Akerman, does not intend his volume exclusively for the use of the experienced medallist, so that much popular interest may be expected in its pages. The title bespeaks its contents, but we quote a few brief extracts relating to rare English coins.]

Ecclesiastic Money.—This money was coined by prelates prior to the Norman Conquest. Of these there are pennies of Jænbearht, archbishop of Canterbury, with the reverse of Offa, king of Mercia, Aethileard, Wulfred, Ceolnoth, Plegmund, and Ethered. They are all extremely rare, excepting those of Ceolnoth, which are not so rare as the others. Besides these there are pennies of St. Martin, coined at Lincoln, and St. Peter's pennies, struck at York, which are supposed to be as old as the time of the Heptarchy. Those of St. Edmund, coined at Bury, are prior to the Norman Conquest. The pennies of St. Paul are, it would seem, by the cross and pellets on the reverse, not older than the reign of Henry III.

All Stephen's money is very scarce, and one or two types are exceedingly rare. At a sale in London, in 1827, the penny of Stephen with the horseman's mace, brought thirteen pounds. His coins are generally very rude and illegible. This king coined pennies only.

The groat of Edward I. is of the first rarity.10 The pennies of Hadleigh, Chester, and Kingston, are scarce; the other pennies are extremely common, and scarcely a year passes without a discovery of new hoards. The half-pennies and farthings are somewhat scarce. From this time to the reign of Henry VII., the English coins bear a great resemblance to each other.

Edward IV.—The groats common, except those of Norwich and Coventry, spelled "Norwic" and "Covetre." The half-groat and halfpenny scarce, the penny and farthing rare. The Bristol penny is extremely rare.

Richard III.—All this king's coins are very rare, except the groat, which is less rare than the others, some groats having lately been discovered. The Canterbury-penny of Richard III. CIVITAS CANTOR, supposed unique, sold at a public sale a short time since, for seven pounds ten shillings. The Durham penny of the same king brought four guineas.

Henry VII.—Folkes, in his Table of English Silver Coins, after describing the various pieces coined by Henry VII., says, "We may further in this place take notice of a very uncommon and singular coin, charged with the royal arms, but without a name. The arms are surmounted with an arched crown, and placed between a fleur-de-lis and a rose, legend DOMINE-SALVVM. FAC. REGEM; on the other side is fleur-de-lis and a lion of England, and an arched crown between them above, and a rose below, with this inscription, MANA. TECKEL. PHARES. 1494. An English lion also for a mint mark. It is, by the make and size, a French gross, and is supposed to have been coined by the Duchess of Burgundy, for Perkin Warbeck, when he set out to invade England." There are also half-groats of this coinage, with the same date, one of which brought twenty guineas at a sale in London in 1827.

Milled Money.—The artist first employed on the milled money of England was a Frenchman, named Philip Mestrelle, who was executed at Tyburn, on the 27th of January, 1569, having been found guilty of making counterfeit money.

Charles I.—The obsidional, or siege pieces, struck by the partizans of this monarch during the civil wars, are extremely interesting, and, with the exception of those coined at Newark, are all rare. They may be known by their shape from every other English coin, as well as by their legends. Those of Newark are of a diamond or lozenge form, some are octangular, and others of a shape that would puzzle a geometrician. Some have the rude representation of a castle; others, a crown; and many have the initials, C.R., and the legend DVM. SPIRO. SPERO.