pleinement à l'image et à l'idée qu'on est tenté de se faire de ces deux individus, et l'impression qu'a faite généralement la suite des tableaux de cet épisode délicat et intéressant est loin de s'effacer de notre souvenir."

In this grand Fête, it appears, originated the translation of Lalla Rookh into German verse, by the Baron de la Motte Fouqué; and the circumstances which led him to undertake the task are described by himself, in a Dedicatory Poem to the Empress of Russia, which he has prefixed to his translation. As soon as the performance, he tells us, had ended, Lalla Rookh (the Empress herself) exclaimed, with a sigh, “Is it, then, all over? are we now at the close of all that has given us so much delight? and lives there no poet who will impart to others, and to future times, some notion of the happiness we have enjoyed this evening?" On hearing this appeal, a Knight of Cashmere (who is no other than the poetical Baron himself) comes forward and promises to attempt to present to the world "the Poem itself in the measure of the original:"-whereupon Lalla Rookh, it is added, approvingly smiled. The success, far exceeding my hopes and deserts, with which Lalla Rookh was immediately crowned, relieved me at once from the anxious feeling of responsibility under which, as my readers have seen, that enterprise had been commenced, and which continued for some time to haunt me amidst all the enchantments of my task. I was therefore in the true holyday mood, when a dear friend, with whose name is associated some of the brightest and pleasantest hours of my past life, kindly offered me a seat in his carriage for a short visit to Paris. This proposal I, of course, gladly accepted; and, in the autumn of the year 1817, found myself, for the first time, in that gay capital.

political consideration. It would be difficult, indeed, to convey to those who had not themselves seen the Paris of that period, any clear notion of the anomalous aspect, both social and political, which it then represented. It was as if, in the days succeeding the Deluge, a small coterie of antediluvians had been suddenly evoked from out of the deep to take the command of a new and freshly-starting world.

To me, the abundant amusement and interest which such a scene could not but afford, was a good deal heightened by my having, in my youthful days, been made acquainted with some of those personages who were now most interested in the future success of the Legitimate cause. The Comte D'Artois, or Monsieur, I had met in the year 1802-3, at Donington Park, the seat of the Earl of Moira, under whose princely roof I used often and long, in those days, to find a most hospitable home. A small party of distinguished French emigrants were already staying on a visit in the house when Monsieur and his suite arrived; and among those were the present King of France and his two brothers, the Duc de Montpensier, and the Comte de Beaujolais.

Some doubt and uneasiness had, I remember, been felt by the two latter brothers, as to the reception they were likely to encounter from the new guest; and as, in those times, a cropped and unpowdered head was regarded generally as a symbol of Jacobinism, the Comte Beaujolais, who, like many other young men, wore his hair in this fashion, thought it, on the present occasion, most prudent, in order to avoid all risk of offence, not only to put pow der in his hair, but also to provide himself with an artificial queue. This measure of precaution, however, led to a slight incident after dinner, which, though not very royal or dignified, was at least creditable to the social goodhumor of the future Charles X. On the de

had hardly seated ourselves in the old-fashioned style, round the fire, when Monsieur, who had happened to place himself next to Beaujolais, caught a glimpse of the ascititious tail,—which, having been rather carelessly put on, had a good deal straggled out of its place. With a sort of scream of jocular pleasure, as if de

lighted at the discovery, Monsieur seized the stray appendage, and, bringing it round into full view, to the great amusement of the whole company, popped it into poor grinning Beaujolais' mouth.

On one of the evenings of this short visit of Monsieur, I remember Curran arriving unexpectedly, on his way to London; and, having come too late for dinner, he joined our party in the evening. As the foreign portion of the company was then quite new to him, I was able to be useful, by informing him of the names, rank, and other particulars of the party he found assembled, from Monsieur himself, down to the old Duc de Lorge and the Baron de Rolle. When I had gone through the whole list, "Ah, poor fellows!" he exclaimed, with a mixture of fun and pathos in his look, truly Irish, "Poor fellows, all dismounted cavalry!"

On the last evening of Monsieur's stay, I was made to sing for him, among other songs, "Farewell Bessy!" one of my earliest attempts at musical composition. As soon as I had finished, he paid me the compliment of reading aloud the words as written under the music; and most royal havoc did he make, as to this day I well remember, of whatever little sense or metre they could boast.

Among my earlier poetic writings, more than one grateful memorial may be found of the happy days I passed in this hospitable mansion,-52

Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights
On Donington's green lawns and breezy heights.

But neither verse nor prose could do any justice to the sort of impression I still retain of those long-vanished days. The library at Donington was extensive and valuable; and through the privilege kindly granted to me of retiring thither for study, even when the family were absent, I frequently passed whole weeks alone in that fine library, indulging in all the first airy castle-building of authorship. The various projects, indeed, of future works that used then to pass in fruitless succession through my mind, can be compared only to the waves as described by the poet,

"And one no sooner touch'd the shore, and died,
Than a new follower row."

With that library is also connected another of my earliest poems,-the verses addressed to the Duke of Montpensier on his portrait of the Lady Adelaide Forbes; for it was there that this truly noble lady, then in the first dawn of her beauty, used to sit for that picture; while, in another part of the library, the Duke of Orleans,-engaged generally at that time with a volume of Clarendon,-was by such studies unconsciously preparing himself for the high and arduous destiny, which not only the Good Genius of France, but his own sagacious and intrepid spirit, had early marked out for him.

I need hardly say how totally different were all the circumstances under which Monsieur himself and some of his followers were again seen by me in the year 1817;—the same actors, indeed, but with an entirely new change of scenery and decorations. Among the variety of aspects presented by this change, the ridic ulous certainly predominated; nor could a satirist who, like Philoctetes, was smitten with a fancy for shooting at geese," ask any better supply of such game than the high places, in France, at that period, both lay and ecclesiastical, afforded. Not being versed, however, sufficiently in French politics to venture to meddle with them, even in sport, I found a more ready conductor of laughterfor which I was then much in the mood-in those groups of ridiculous English who were at that time swarming in all directions throughout Paris, and of all whose various forms of cockneyism and nonsense I endeavored, in the personages of the Fudge Family, to collect the concentrated essence. The result, as usual, fell very far short of what I had myself preconceived and intended. But, making its appearance at such a crisis, the work brought with it that best seasoning of all such jeuxd'esprit, the à-propos of the moment; and, accordingly, in the race of successive editions, Lalla Rookh was, for some time, kept pace with by Miss Biddy Fudge.

The series of trifles contained in this volume, entitled "Rhymes on the Road," were written partly as their title implies, and partly at a subsequent period from memorandums made on the spot. This will account for se many of those pieces being little better, I fear, than

"prose fringed with rhyme." The journey to a part of which those Rhymes owed their existence, was commenced in company with Lord John Russell in the autumn of the year 1819. After a week or two passed at Paris, to enable Lord John to refer to Barillon's Letters for a new edition of his Life of Lord Russell then preparing, we set out together for the Simplon. At Milan, the agreeable society of the late Lord Kinnaird detained us for a few days; and then my companion took the route to Genoa, while I proceeded on a visit to Lord Byron at Venice.

It was during the journey, thus briefly described, I addressed the well-known Remonstrance to my noble friend," which has of late been frequently coupled with my prophetic verses on the Duke of Wellington," from the prescient spirit with which it so confidently looked forward to all that Lord John has since become in the eyes of the world.

Of my visit to Lord Byron,-an event to me so memorable,-I have already detailed all the most interesting particulars in my published Life of the poet; and shall here only cite, from that work, one passage, as having some reference to a picture mentioned in the following pages. "As we were conversing after dinner about the various collections of paintings I had seen that morning, on my saying that, fearful as I was of ever praising any picture, lest I should draw on myself the connoisseur's sneer, for my pains, I would yet, to him, venture to own that I had seen a picture at Milan, which- 'The Hagar!' he exclaimed, eagerly interrupting me; and it was, in fact, that very picture I was about to mention to him as having awakened in me, by the truth of its expression, more real emotion than any I had yet seen among the chefsd'œuvre of Venice."

In the society I chiefly lived with, while at Rome, I considered myself singularly fortunate; though but a blind and uninitiated worshipper of those powers of Art of which my companions were all high-priests. Canova himself, Chantrey, Lawrence, Jackson, Turner, Eastlake, such were the men of whose presence and guidance I enjoyed the advantage in visiting all that unrivalled Rome can boast of

beautiful and grand. That I derived from this source of tuition any thing more than a very humbling consciousness of my own ignorance and want of taste, in matters of art, I will not be so dishonest as to pretend. But, to the stranger in Rome every step forms an epoch; and, in addition to all its own countless appeals to memory and imagination, the agreeable auspices under which I first visited all its memorable places could not but render every impression I received more vivid and permanent. Thus, with my recollection of the Sepulchre of St. Peter, and its ever-burning lamps, for which splendid spot Canova was then meditating a statue," there is always connected in my mind the exclamation which I heard break from Chantrey after gazing, for a few moments, in silence, upon that glorious site, "What a place to work for!"

ume,

In one of the poems contained in this vol60 allusion is made to an evening not easily forgotten, when Chantrey and myself were taken by Canova to the Borghese Palace, for the purpose of showing us, by the light of a taper-his favorite mode of exhibiting that work-his beautiful statue of the Princess Borghese, called the Venere Vincitrice. Chantrey's eagerness to point out some grace or effect that peculiarly struck him, he snatched the light out of Canova's hand, and to this circumstance the following passage of the poem referred to was meant to allude :—

When he, thy peer in art and fame,
Hung o'er the marble with delight;61
And, while his ling'ring hand would steal
O'er every grace the taper's rays,
Gave thee, with all the gen'rous zeal,
Such master-spirits only feel,

The best of fame-a rival's praise.

In

One of the days that still linger most pleas antly in my memory, and which, I trust, neither Lady Calcott nor Mr. Eastlake have quite forgotten, was that of our visit together to the Palatine Mount, when, as we sauntered about that picturesque spot, enjoying the varied views of Rome which it commands, they made me, for the first time, acquainted with Guidi's spirited Ode on the Arcadians, in which there is poetry enough to make amends for all the nonsense of his rhyming brethren. Truly and grandly does he exclaim,

Son piene di splendor le sue ruine,

E il gran cenere suo si mostra eterno."

With Canova, while sitting to Jackson for a portrait ordered by Chantrey, I had more than once some interesting conversation—or, rather, listened while he spoke-respecting the political state of Europe at that period, and those "bricconi," as he styled them, the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance; and, before I left Rome, he kindly presented to me a set of engravings from some of his finest statues, together with a copy of the beautifully printed collection of Poems, which a Roman Poet, named Missirini, had written in praise of his different "Marmi."

When Lord John Russell and myself parted, at Milan, it was agreed between us, that after a short visit to Rome, and (if practicable within the allowed time) to Naples, I was to rejoin him at Genoa, and from thence accompany him to England. But the early period for which Parliament was summoned, that year, owing to the violent proceedings at Manchester, rendered it necessary for Lord John to hasten his return to England. I was, therefore, most fortunate, under such circumstances, in being permitted by my friends Chantrey and Jackson to join in their journey homeward; through which lucky arrangement, the same precious privilege I had enjoyed, at Rome, of hearing the opinions of such practised judges, on all the great works of art I saw in their company, was continued afterwards to me through the various collections we visited together, at Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, Milan, and Turin.

To some of those pictures and statues that most took my fancy, during my tour, allusions will be found in a few of the poems contained in this volume. But the great pleasure I derived from these and many other such works arose far more from the poetical nature of their subjects than from any judgment I had learned to form of their real merit as works of art, a line of lore in which, notwithstanding my course of schooling, I remained, I fear, unenlightened to the last. For all that was lost upon me, however, in the halls of Art, I was more than consoled in the cheap picture

gallery of Nature; and a glorious sunset I witnessed in ascending the Simplon is still remembered by me with a depth and freshness of feeling which no one work of art I saw in the galleries of Italy has left behind.

I have now a few words to devote to a somewhat kindred subject, with which a poem or two contained in the following pages are closely connected." I have already briefly noticed the taste for Private Theatrical Performances which prevailed during the latter half of the last century among the higher ranks in Ireland. This taste continued for nearly twenty years to survive the epoch of the Union, and in the performances of the Private Theatre of Kil kenny gave forth its last, as well as perhaps, brightest flashes. The life and soul of this in stitution was our manager, the late Mr. Richard Power, a gentleman who could boast a larger circle of attached friends, and through a life more free from shadow or alloy, than any individual it has ever been my lot to know. No livelier proof, indeed, could be required of the sort of feeling entertained towards him than was once shown in the reception given to the two following homely lines which occurred in a Prologue I wrote to be spoken by Mr. Cory in the character of Vapid.

Tis said our worthy manager intends

To help my night, and he, you know, has friende.

These few simple words I wrote with the as sured conviction that they would produce more effect, from the homefelt truism they contained, than could be effected by the most labored burst of eloquence; and the result was just what I had anticipated, for the house rung, for a considerable time, with the heartiest plaudits.

The chief comic, or rather farcical, force of the company lay in my friend Mr. Corry, and "longo intervallo," myself; and though, as usual with low comedians, we were much looked down upon by the lofty lords of the buskin, many was the sly joke we used to indulge together at the expense of our heroic brethren. Some waggish critic, indeed, is said to have declared that of all the personages of our theatre he most admired the prompter,"because he was least seen and best heard."