NIGHT. I. WELCOME Once more, pale evening's sombre host, That Nature's Architect hath raised o'er Nature's home; Majestic fabric! to my wond'ring eye A marvel, endless, infinite, unknown. I love thee, night, and yet I know not why, For in thy quiet I was wont to moan The sorrows of my youth, and sigh alone Where no corroding care disturbs the soul's repast. That silver wreath of heavenly asphodel! The Almighty's throne with choral songs invest; IV. E'en from my boyhood, when I deemed the stars And when as yet a stripling, and I rode The green sea billows undulating lave, And, like the storm toss'd bark no helm to guide, Thus oft I mused and gazed upon the sky, All worldly feeling from my anxious heart. The hypocritic wile, the sneer of art, The threat, the frown of power, and smile beneath the smart. VII. And I have well deceived th' ill-judging world, That weeps without a tear; whose lip is curled For suffering; as a mark for dire misfortune's dart. The child of disappointment I have been, Time's harsh bereavements; though I ne'er complain To cover with a smile a fevered brain, And unconcerned appear enduring inward pain. IX. Thus set my young ambition, as I found I know not why I love thee thus, oh! night, My confidant; and, unreserved and free, Have told my plaintive tales of woe to thee; And thou hast seemed to listen till I thought, In youth's enthusiastic reverie, The gentle moon's pale features kindly wrought With looks of sympathy; and this was what I sought. XI. Mild arbitress of night! ordained to mix In low commmunion with a world like this; To whom alike the sight of thee is bliss: Fair traveller in yon infinite abyss, Making the wise man mad, the mad man wise; To thee, through many a long and lovely night, That such must be my home, yet long to die; To leave this load, these troubles to disperse; To be an atom of eternity, Where thought no more shall earth's sad scenes rehearse; To form a part of thee, and this great universe. J. R. W. THE YOUTH AND THE LONDON PHILOSOPHER, A PARODY. A London youth, of talents rare, Would often boast his matchless skill, At length quite vain, he needs would shew To Lombard Street's most gloomy shade: Howe'er, the youth with raptuous air He thought his genius now had earned "No praise, no pence, from me, (and sighed!) "The breeches patched, with many a flaw; "Thy skill and judgment thrown away; "Thy time, profusely squandered there "On verse, forsooth, beneath thy care, "If well employed, at less expense, "Had gained thee, shillings, pounds, and pence; Eur. Mag. Vol. 81. April 1822. S s D. E. W. MY GODMOTHER'S LEGACY; OR, THE ART OF CONSOLING. SECTION IV.-WITS OUT OF PLACE. One THIS branch of my theory is purely speculative, for it must be confessed, that I never found any wits out of place thoroughly consoled; yet it seems to me, that in their circumstances, as in many others, some comfort may be found by remembering how many great men have wanted it. There is no use in looking back to the histories, which vex schoolboys; though they abound in instructive examples of clever men, who had every thing but good luck---or in other words, good sense, which is most useful in securing the owner's proper place. might reckon, since the date of the modern world, at least twenty-five great poets and scholars, who have been lamentably out of place; though wicked jesters say, Tasso in a mad-house, and Cervantes in gaol, were only in the common places of wits. But modern wits choose to be comforted by the examples of gay and fashionable fops like themselves, who have lived in the sunshine of a court, and in the parterre of high life; for the inner circle of the politest society may be called in more significations than one, the parterre or pit of the theatre. We have the Buckinghams, the Wilmots, and the Chesterfields of our own land, to shew how wit goes out of employ and fashion, even in its owner's life-time. Poor Villiers "in the worst inn's worst room" confessed his brilliant humours had been miserably out of place; and the most joyous of all facetious favourites, Lord Rochester, died woefully repenting his best jests. Lord Lyttleton tried some pleasant jokes to very little purpose in his last hour; and Chesterfield, the prince of polished wits, was so tired of himself, that he even forgot his most valued part, his exquisite politeness, and said to a lady of quality, "I am growing no better than an old gossip." I thought, my lord," she replied, you were growing a much worse thing -an old-fashioned wit." 66 We can hardly turn over the leaves of any memoirs of present or past times, without meeting such comical and frequent instances of great wits out of employ or out of season; that all lesser wits may be well consoled, especially if domestic misplacing be taken into account. For Hugo Grotius, who was in the good ancient acceptation of the word, a wit of the first order, that is, a man of most rare and subtle intellect, was considered at court "a simple smattering fellow, full of word;" and there are some strange stories abroad of his wife's hiding his last papers in a barrel. Sir Thomas More and Sir Walter Raleigh shewed their wit in a place, which nobody would desire to equal them in, except scaffolds should become fashionable. And Sir Thomas More's joke on his wife's babblement is a strong proof, that his wit was often needed at home to parry her silliness. The wits of Oliver Cromwell's time were generally royalists, and consequently out of place; and in King Charles's, they were found among night-brawlers and bacchanals, therefore out of place and worse. Queen Ann's tribe had all the advantages of good company and public favour, yet every one thought himself ill used; and both Pope and Swift seemed to have written letters for no purpose but to tell, how much they wished themselves in better places. Addison held a paltry office, and was held by a termagant wife; Sir Richard Steel by his creditors; and Gay by a handsome duchess, who could not spell. There is scarcely a French wit left on our shelves, who was not in his life-time ill employed or out of humour, or both. Rousseau was a thing made of bristles, which pricked and scratched all about him; but when his arguments were pulled out one by one, they were no stronger than single horse-hairs, though formidable and fine in a cluster, like a hussar helmet. Voltaire was as lean and mischievous as his own pet-eagle; and so conscious of the resemblance, that he threw his valet down stairs for hinting it. How far their successors are wellplaced, in their own histories of court intrigues and courtezans, will be known by posterity, if their histories ever reach it. It is some secondary comfort for the wits of our times, who have traded too long in the small wares of scandal and bagatelle, or lost a patron by an unlucky joke, to remember similar cases and illustrious precedents in more important matters. Our wittiest prime minister lost his influence by saying, "Vain men are the best spies, for they need no wages but flattery; besides, people talk before foolish hearers, forgetting that parrots, children, and fools can repeat." They who compared papacy to a shuttlecock kept up between two parties, and puritanism to a blast of wind between two doors, making a noise between both, found the shuttlecock and the blast of wind too strong for them. Perhaps Bishop Latimer's fate was as much provoked by the wit of his sermons, as by the firmness of his heresy; and the Catholic prelates of those days would have allowed him to serve Satan, as they said, if he had not made him one of themselves. "Now I would ask a strange question, which is the most diligent bishop in all England? Methinks I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him---I will tell you, it is Satan! he is the most skilful preacher of all other---he is never out of his diocese--never out of his cure---he is ever in his parish, --he keepeth watch at all times. Ye shall never find him out of the way--call when ye will, he is ever at home. But some will say to me, 'What, sir, are ye so privy of his counsel that ye know all this to be true? Truly, I know him too well, and have obeyed him a little too much; but I know by St. Paul, who saith of him, circuit, he goeth about in every corner of his diocese-sicut leo, that is, strongly, boldly, and proudly-rugiens, roaring, for he letteth no occasion slip to speak or roar out-quærens, seeking, and not sleeping, as our bishops do. So that he shall go for my money, for he minds his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, if ye will not learn. of good men, for shame learn of . . . a long time for nothing."--As merrily and as unseasonably his favourite wrote on his door, "Here lies the mutton-eating king, Whose word no man relies on, Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one." riest and best king of France gave great Every body remembers how the meroffence, when a provincial magistrate and his brethren made him a complimentary speech, while two or three asses began to bray --- "Gentlemen," said Henry, one at a time, if you please."† When our first George came to the throne, Sheridan's wit did not preserve him from the hideous mistake of choosing a wrong text, when employed to preach before the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin. Through mere absence of mind he chose these words for a sermon on the anniversary of the Hanoverian succession" Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,"--and Swift's tirades, against human nature in general, made him fewer enemies than the text of his sermon before the Merchant Taylors--"A remnant shall be saved." We have seen, near our own times, a comical instance of misplaced wit in the pulpit on an occasion, which might have produced the preacher more substantial benefit than the notoriety gained by his text: when the younger William Pitt made his first appearance at Cambridge as Premier-"There is a young lad with two loaves and five small fishes, but what are they among so many?" It would be hard to recollect any joke more out of place, or likely to prevent the maker from being in one; except that of a poor chaplain, who was asked to write a sermon in verse on the text chosen by his patroness--" There was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour:" "There was silence in heaven half an hour and no more Some ladies, perhaps, waited outside the door; They were not let in as may plainly be Preached in St. Paul's, January 17th, 1548. † A certain Chief Justice applied this joke to the late Counsellor Curran, who revenged. himself, by saying, when an Ass brayed during the Chief Justice's charge, "Does not your lordship hear a remarkable echo in the Court?' |