NOTES

ΤΟ

GADDO.

Note 1, page 113, stanza 9.

Stanza the ninth alludes to the Prospectus
And specimen of an intended national
Poem,' the Messieurs Whistlecraft project us;

And all must own, their poetry is rational,

Not like to Pye's or Blackmore's-Heaven protect us!—
Nor should their pens remain much longer stational :

For Arthur may regain his crown in Britain.

In consequence of what those bards have written.

[But now the general reader should, perhaps,

Be told that the production here in question

Was written, not by those mechanic chaps,

But by a man who could have played the best tune

On Phoebus' lyre. The Muses might pull caps

For such. His name, which still amongst the best shone,

Was the Right Honorable J. H. Frere,

And Whistlecraft was but a nom de guerre.]

Note 2, page 148, stanza LXXVIII.

"Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

"So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, (You'll find I quote correctly, not by guess)

"Drew Priam's curtain at the dead-" (just one O'clock)" of night, and would have told him" (Press

A rhyme in) "half his Troy was burned," (Have done With it; just add et cetera, and write

SHAKSPEARE, Hen. IV. Part II. Scene I. All's right.)

Note 3, page 178, stanza CXXXIX.

Just look at Moore's attempts in "Lalla Rookh;"--
His heroes so heroic that Old Nicholas,
That grand reviewer, could not, in the book,

Find one of them not perfectly ridiculous,

In their perfection;—at his villains look,

So villainous, that his sweet verse can't tickle us To reperuse their stories: so they're failures; That's my opinion. Now do you retail yours.

GERBINO THE BEAUTIFUL:

A TALE,

VERSIFIED FROM THE DECAMERONE OF BOCCACCIO.

-Lovirs ben the folke that ben on lyve
That moste disese have, and moste unthrive,
And moste endurin sorowe woe and care,

And that the leste felin of welfare;

What nedith it ayenist trouth to stryve?

CHAUCER: The Cuckowe and the Nightingale.

GERBINO THE BEAUTIFUL.

Oh, turn we to a famed, a moving story;
Weave we a garland 'neath the cypress tree,

And with wan flowers bedeck an ancient grave
Of those who died for love. Though dim the glory
Of grief, to deeper life awaken we

In some unjoyful vision, from the cave

Of true enchantments called,-the sanctuary
Wherein the treasure-tomes of sweet sad thought
Dire scenes of the departed world unfold.
These in the hush of midnight conning o'er,

I found a legend of love's holy martyrs,—

One of fond Memory's unbroken charters,
A fair sepulchral relic of rich lore,

From the remembered dead not vainly brought,
To waft you
backward into sorrows old.

It is a tale which that heart-learned clerk

Of Florence rescued from the voiceless dark,