Chatterton, including the supposititious poems of Rowley, in two volumes 8vo, with a new life by Dr. Gregory, the author of that in the late edition of the Biographia Britannica. He has likewise just published a volume of original miscellany poems, by himself and others, under the title of The Annual Anthology for 1799, which he means to continue." Extracts have already been given from Ritson's letters to Sir Walter Scott. Another letter to this distinguished man must, however, be quoted, for the sake of Ritson's criticisms on his rhymes, which is amusing. "Gray's Inn, July 2, 1803. "My dear and honoured Sir,-I attended the literary meeting' of Longman and Rees for the first time on Saturday last. Here I received your highly acceptable letter, inclosing your delightful version of Herbert Kennedy's Praelium Gillicrankanum. You may be assured, if it be ever printed by me, there shall be no blank in the first stanza; but with respect to the eighth, I know not what to say without applying to yourself, with great humility, for another line, if the present rime cannot be rendered more analagous, To course like stags the lowland whigs.' This, my dear sir, cannot remain for your own sake; all the rest being conceived in your usual fluency, which I have ever regarded with pleasure and admiration. "At the same time, I had put into my hands a large paper copy of the new edition of The Minstrelsy of the Scotish Border, in three volumes, for which I beg your reception of my most respectful and sincerest thanks, though having an utter aversion to a large-paper book. I must beseech you to permit Longman and Rees to present me with a smallpaper copy, which I shall preserve with due respect and attachment as long as I live: it shall be elegantly bound, and fortunately, with the admirable ornament of Hermitage Castle,' which they readily gave me at Cadell and Davieses on receipt of the former edition. Your booksellers promised to send the work, along with Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, but it is not yet arrived. "I have put into Mr. Longman's hands, at his own request, for the opinion of some critic he is used to consult, my Life of King Arthur; but whether the partners to whom I was recommended by our worthy friend Dr. Leyden, will undertake the publication, I much doubt, as Mr. Longman thinks my orthography unfavourable to its sale, and Mr. Rees was apprehensive I should treat the Welshmen with too much familiarity,— an apprehension, I confess [which] will turn out to be well founded." Ritson seems not to have rightly apprehended the licenses of Scotch verse in objecting to the line above quoted. James Montgomery makes some very good remarks on this subject in his Lectures on Poetry. The dialect itself he describes as an arbitrary system of terms, only remotely akin, the force and elegance of which depend principally on the skill with which each particular author combines its constituent parts to make a common chord of its triple tones. It gives, according to the lecturer, a prodigious advantage over their" southron" brethren, to the minstrels of north-country song, who are confined to sheer English, and dare not touch a provincial accent with the tip of their tongue, on pain of excommunication from classic society. The boundless resources enjoyed by these poets to select and link together words and phrases at will, high or low, antique or new-fangled, polished or barbarian, not only prepossess the reader in favour of every real beauty struck out by such grotesque combinations, and make him equally relish it, but they likewise (unconsciously to himself) influence his judgment, to make large allowance for frequent defects and excesses, as necessary and not offensive ingredients in a style released from all obligations to law and precedent. Hence the latitudinarianism of the Scotch dialect in rhyming, jingling, or merely alliterative vowel-sounds, and in dissonant words at the end of lines. Thus fondly and kindly, dearly and Mary, could never be (as Montgomery justly remarks, and as Ritson's above objection proves) endured on this side of the Tweed; yet, in the following extract, the slight sprinkling of Scottish in the context, with the overpowering tenderness of the sentiments themselves, render these discords tolerable, or rather compel them to be forgotten in such association : "O pale, pale now, those rosy lips I aft hae kissed sae fondly, And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwelt on me sae kindly. That heart that lo'ed me dearly; Shall live my Highland Mary!" Our next and concluding extract contains a cluster of names,- Richard "To ROBERT SURTEES, Esq. Gray's Inn, July 5, 1803. "Dear Sir, I wish much to have a translation of this singular epigram of Bishop Aldhelm, as literal as possible. I sent a copy to Richard Heber; but if in town I have heard nothing from him. The two versions I have got are by Mr. Henley and William Godwin (who, by the way, had no right to meddle with it, as he was only entrusted to shew it to George Dyer), though I am satisfied with neither; but with these, such as they are, and the help of Ainsworth's Dictionary, I have endeavoured to make a sort of translation, line for line, as well as I could. Mr. Henley says, that Arthures or King Arthur's Wain, is a title familiar to his memory (meaning as a constellation like Charleses, a corruption of the Saxon ceonler, or churls,) wain (Auriga, the waggoner upon the horns of Taurus), though I have never met_with Arthur's wain in any book or map. Lyd gate, indeed, mentions 'Arthures plough ;' Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, 'Arthure's hufe;' and William Owen, the Welshman, Arthures Harp (Lyra); all three constellations, though I know not where to look for them. Now, my dear sir, I should esteem it a very great favour and obligation, if you will condescend to take the trouble to make this literal version more accurate and palatable, either by yourself, or by applying to some Oxonian who may have made these obscure and obsolete words a study; as, for instance, your friend Reginald Heber; who, as Mr. Brisco informed me, you think will be superior to his brother Richard. I got, by your favour, and Mr. Brisco's attention, what I wanted out of the old manuscript of Robert of Brunne, in the Inner Temple library, and have Mr. Norris, the librarian's, permission, to go at any time to make what other extracts I may want; so that I am exceedingly obliged to all three. "I remain, dear sir, with great gratitude and respect, your ever faithful friend and obedient humble servant, J. RITSON. 66 DE ARTURO. Sydereis stipor turmis in vertice mundi, S. Aldhelmi Poetica Nonnulla. Moguntia, 1601. 12mo. P.63. [Obiit hic sanctus 25o Maii, anno 907.] OF ARTHUR. "With starry troops I am environed, in the pole of the world, Pursuits such as these might have made Ritson happy, but for the unhappy composition of his mind and temper, of which himself was partly the architect. Sir Harris Nicolas pleads for the subject of his biography as becomes him; but allowing, as we readily do," his eminent literary services, his unsullied integrity, and his numerous other virtues, to atone for mere defects of temper and constitutional irritability," we cannot at the same time look upon the facts that 66 one of his books even cannot be reprinted without a repetition of calumnies, and rooting up, from his very tomb, the remembrance of all his errors," as new examples of the injustice and inhumanity of the world, and of the effect of a man daring to think for himself, to declare his opinions, and to speak THE TRUTH, in the simple and unsophisticated language in which TRUTH ought to be spoken." TRUTH, as we have proved, in the highest sense of the word, Ritson never knew or never loved; as a mere fact-hunter he has great merit, and had a genius for the pursuit. It was not, however, because he was successful and daring in his revelations of this kind, that his memory has been pursued with epithets, but that he accompanied the utterance of his discoveries with sentiments and expressions quite beside his commission. These sentiments, these expressions, ostentatiously and out of place obtruded on the reluctant reader, justified his contemporaries, and will justify posterity, in attaching to his name the characters of "misanthrope," " atheist," "jacobite," " ascetic cynic," and "snarling critic." Much, however, was owing to Ritson's literal character of mind, an amusing instance of which is thus given by Sir Walter Scott. "He made me a visit of two days at my cottage near Laswade; in the course of conversation we talked of the Roman wall, and I was surprised to find that he had adopted, on the authority of some person at Hexham, a strong persuasion that its remains where no where visible, or at least not above a foot or two in height. I hastily assured him that this was so far from being true, that I had myself seen a portion of it standing high enough for the fall to break a man's neck. Of this he took a formal memorandum, and having visited the place (Glenwhelt, near Gilsland) he wrote to me, or, I think, rather to John Leyden, to say, that he really thought that a fall from it would break a man's neck, at least it was so high as to render the experiment dangerous. I immediately saw what a risk I had been in; for you may believe I had no idea of being taken quite so literally.” THE FRASER PAPERS FOR MAY. MAY CAROL-SUN-FALL-BERNARD'S "ROSE' THE KING OF BRENTFORD-CAPTAIN JOHN ELEGIAC STANZAS THE PRIZE-INSCRIPTION AT THERMOPYLE JAMES SMITH'S HORSE AND RIDER — DRYDEN'S WHIG STATESMEN NEW TOUCHED UPAN ODE TO HARRIET MARTINEAU ANECDOTES OF OLD OWENSON, LADY MORGAN'S FATHER ROBBERY PERPETRATED ON TOM MOORE, BY LADY SCOTT-GERMAN TRANSLATION OF "BEAUTY BRIGHT -MARCH OF THE TRADES' UNIONS, WITH A MORAL. MAY-DAY has come, and one of our poets has been so good as to send a chanson to usher it in. MAY-SONG. Hail to lovely May! The sweetest month of all the year- Whilst the village maidens listen To burning words, with eyes that glisten, That never, never comes too soon Dearer far than hotter June- The month of flowers! how happy ye Crowned with garlands, and a queen, While some, in pairs, still slip away. The still-recurring vernal prime; The merry, merry month of May. As this ditty has tuned us to the melting mood, we subjoin another lovestave; though we rather think it is too early in the year for all the fine sunny imagery of our poet. We have been so hailed and snowed this April, that we began to fear Winter had come to us in good earnest: he had forgotten us at Christmas, but seemed to have got second wind — and very cold wind it was— at Easter. SUN-FALL. Look you, my love! our summer-sun Nears in his course the rosy west; While, round us, all he smiles upon See, these brown oaks have pitched their shade Far o'er yon brimming rivulet; And now the sinking orb has made Their shadows faint and fainter yet! Feel you, now sultry noon is o'er, The clear sharp air through yonder trees? Let's on to yonder sunny hill, That lifts its brow so graceful there; We'll bid the parting day farewell, And breathe the fresh and evening air! F. Again to it. Here are the posies once more, and now transplanted out of the "gentle Bernard." We recommend such of our contributors as are less frosty-headed than ourselves, to look over that said gentleman's verses, and they will be sure to find some pretty things. We think our correspondent has done justice to his Rose. 66 LA ROSE."-BERNARD. Child of the weeping dawn, fair flow'r! Fond wish! ah, yet awhile withhold As fair a flower, with rival light, Tamira seems to shine; Like hers, sweet Rose, thy course is bright, Come from thy thorny stem, that she The flow'r that fairest boasts to be Go! on Tamira's breast expire- To win that soft asylum strive, One sigh will make thy leaves revive — Love will instruct thee in what guise Oh! should some rival indiscreet Invade thy refuge there, His hand with all my vengeance meet, And keep a thorn to spare. But we must leave off making beaux yeur; and yet we need not quit French song-writing, for here's an imitation of Béranger's first song, the Roi d'Yvetot. A glorious chant it is, and, we presume, utterly untranslatable; but "the King of Brentford" is by no means to be despised. It is said that Buonaparte, who was about to tumble when the Roi d'Yvetot made its appearance, did not like it by any means. He thought it too strongly impressed, very much to the disadvantage of himself, on the minds of the French people, then beginning to be getting tired of wars, no longer successful, and of harassing conscriptions every day becoming more and more galling, the picture of a quiet, easy, do-nothing sort of king, who would keep the peace of the world. Whatever else might be said of Napoleon, nobody could ever accuse him of being a Roi d'Yvetot. But we are detaining our readers from "the King of Brentford." "Il était un Roi d'Yvetot."-BERANGER. There was a king in Brentford, Of whom no legends tell, But who without his glory His Polly's cotton night-cap, VOL. IX. NO. LIII. All in a fine straw castle SS |