[Weeps and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds.] Sweet kerchief, checked with heavenly blue, Alas, Matilda then was true! At least I thought so at the U niversity of Gottingen, niversity of Gottingen. At the repetition of this line, Rogero clanks his chains in cadence.] Her neat post-wagon trotting in! niversity of Gottingen, This faded form! this pallid hue! niversity of Gottingen, There first for thee my passion grew, niversity of Gottingen, Sun, moon, and thou vain world, adieu, That kings and priests are plotting in: Here doomed to starve on water gru el, never shall I see the U niversity of Gottingen, niversity of Gottingen. [During the last stanza, Rogero dashes his head repeatedly against the walls of his prison; and finally so hard as to produce a visible contusion. He then throws himself on the floor in an agony. The curtain drops, the music still continuing to play till it is wholly fallen.) There is a Memoir prefixed to Canning's Speeches edited by Therry (6 vols. 1828); A. Stapelton's Political Life of Canning (1831) and George Canning and his Times (1859) are perhaps too eulogistic; there is a masterly sketch in Lord Dalling's Historical Characters (1867). See also the short Life by Frank H. Hill (1887), and his Official Correspondence, edited by E. J. Stapleton (2 vols. 1887). The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was separately published in 1801; and, with explanatory notes, by Charles Edmonds in 1852 (3rd ed. 1890). John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) was born in London of a good old East Anglian family, was the son of an accomplished antiquary, and was educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge. He next entered the Foreign Office, and from 1796 to 1802 was member for the ́ Cornish pocket-borough of West Looe. Along with his old schoolfellow Canning, he gave steady support to Pitt's Government, and contributed to the Anti-Jacobin (1797-98), whose editor was Gifford, and many of whose best pieces were the conjoint work of Canning and Frere, sometimes also of Ellis. Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1799), Frere was appointed envoy to Portugal (1800), and then twice Minister to Spain (1802-4; 1808-9), where he was much blamed for his conduct to Sir John Moore. He was recalled after the retreat to Corunna, and renounced public life, twice refusing the offer of a peerage. By his father's death in 1807 he succeeded to the Roydon property near Diss; in 1816 he married the Dowager-Countess of Erroll; and in 1818, for her health's sake, they settled at Malta. She died there in 1831 (ten months before Scott's well-known meeting with Frere); and Frere himself fifteen years later. In 1817 Mr Murray. published a small poetical volume under the eccentric title of Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers. Intended to comprise the most Interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table. The world was surprised to find, under this odd disguise, a happy effort further to naturalise in English the gay ottava rima of Berni, Casti, and their imitators in Italian. The brothers Whistlecraft formed, it was quickly seen, but the mask of some scholarly wit belonging to the higher circles of society. To two cantos published in 1817 a third and fourth were added the following year. The description of Arthur and his knights at Carlisle shows the characteristic vein : They looked a manly generous generation ; Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick, Their accents firm and loud in conversation, Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick, Shewed them prepared, on proper provocation, They were so very courteous and well-bred. In a wild valley near Carlisle, poetically described, lived a race of giants. The giants having attacked and carried off some ladies on their journey to court, the knights deem it their duty to set out in pursuit; and having overcome the oppressors, they relieve the captives from durance: The ladies? They were tolerably well, At least as well as could have been expected : Near the valley of the giants was an abbey, containing fifty friars, 'fat and good,' long on good terms with their neighbours. The giants, naturally fond of music, would sometimes approach the sacred pile : And oft that wild untutored race would draw, But chiefly, when the shadowy moon had shed Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded Yet-Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne These giant mountains inwardly were moved, Not so the mountain giants (as behoved A more alert and locomotive race); Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell. Meanwhile a monk, Brother John by name, who had opposed the introduction of the bells, has gone, in a fit of disgust with his brethren, to amuse himself with the rod at a neighbouring stream: A mighty current, unconfined and free, Each flower and herb, and every cloud of heaven; The painted kingfisher, the branch above her, So rest and motion in a narrow range, Brother John becomes aware of the approach of the giants in time to run home and give the alarm ; and after stout resistance by the monks, the giants at length withdraw from the scene of action. It finally appears that the pagans have retired in order to make the attack upon the ladies, which had formerly been described. The ottava rima had already been used by the Scottish poet Tennant in his Anster Fair; but it was Whistlecraft's clever combination of absurdity and sense, burlesque and real poetry in the measure, that showed Byron what an admirable instrument it was. He wrote Beppo in imitation of Frere's work, and imitated much more than the verse; and Don Juan was a still more masterly development of the same method and measure. His friends credit him with writing the greater part of The Loves of the Triangles in the AntiJacobin (see page 673), and with a share in The Knife-grinder as well as in The Rovers. His translation of The Battle of Brunanburh (1801) for Ellis's Specimens was a foretaste of his wonderful skill in this way. But Frere's most serious and permanent contribution to English literature was made in his masterly translations of the 'Frogs,' 'Acharnians,' 'Knights,' and 'Birds' of Aristophanes, privately printed at Malta in 1839, but first made known through an article by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847. It is universally admitted that these renderings-free versions rather than strict translations -are masterpieces of a difficult art, and in a specially difficult department-the transfusion into modern English verse, somewhat of the original type, of ancient Greek wit, humour, satire, racy phraseology, ringing rhythms, and verbal felicities innumerable. Scene from the 'Acharnians.' Enter a MEGARIAN with his two little girls. List to my words; and let them sink impress'd Both. Let us be sold, papa!-Let us be sold. Meg. I say so too; but who do ye think will purchase Such useless mischievous commodities? However, I have a notion of my own, Dic. No truly, it does not seem so. Meg. Did you ever hear the like? Such an unacSuspicious fellow! it is not a pig, he says! [countable But I'll be judged; I'll bet ye a bushel of salt, It's what we call a natural proper pig. Dic. Perhaps it may, but it's a human pig. Meg. Human! I'm human; and they're mine, that's all. Whose should they be, do ye think? so far they're human. But come, will you hear 'em squeak? Dic. With all my heart. Meg. Remember what I Ay, yes, by Jove, Come now, pig! now's the time : told ye-squeak directly! Squeak, can't ye? Curse ye, what's the matter with ye? Dic. What a squeak was there! they're Go somebody, fetch out a parcel of figs For the little pigs! Heh, what, they 'll eat, I warrant. Lawk there, look at 'em racketing and bustling! How they do munch and crunch! in the name of heaven, Why, sure they can't have eaten 'em already! Meg. [sneakingly]. Not all, there's this one here, I took myself. O blessed Mercury, if I could but manage The Works of Frere in Verse and Prose were published, with a Memoir by his nephew, Sir Bartle Frere, in 1871. George Ellis (1753-1815), the son of a West Indian planter, was already writing mock-heroics about Bath society in 1777, and next year published Poetical Tales by Sir Gregory Gander, which delighted Scott and the world, and are referred to in the fifth canto of Marmion, dedicated to Ellis. The young wit, having Whig connections, was one of the most effective members of the Rolliad group, and is believed to have written the attack on Pitt, quoted at page 671; but he afterwards changed sides and was a constant contributor to the AntiJacobin. Attached to a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands, he wrote a history of the Dutch revolution in 1785-87, travelled in Germany in 1791, and after 1796 sat in Parliament for Seaford. His labours as the first scholarly editor of Specimens of the Early English Poets have been already commemorated in this work (Vol. I. p. 30). The first edition (1790) was greatly extended in 1801, and 1851 saw a fifth edition. His Specimens of Early English Romances (1805; 2nd ed. 1811) conferred a further favour on students of literature; and he edited Way's translations of select Fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (1796; 3rd ed. 1815). He was a cherished friend of Sir Walter Scott's and a faithful correspondent. Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), a wealthy Herefordshire squire, virtuoso, and collector of ancient coins, marbles, and bronzes, was recognised at home and abroad as a high authority on ancient art, and wrote on Greek epigraphy, the symbolism of art, and the like. For a book on the worship of Priapus he was severely handled by Mathias in The Pursuits of Literature; his didactic poem on The Progress of Civil Society gave occasion to one of the cleverest burlesques in the Anti-Jacobin; and his other tedious poem, The Landscape, came also in for much uncomplimentary criticism. He made over his collections to the British Museum. Thomas James Mathias (1754?-1835), author of The Pursuits of Literature, was the son of a minor functionary in the queen's household, seems to have been at Eton, and was certainly educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was distinguished as Latinist and verse writer. From the university he passed in 1782 into the queen's service, becoming her treasurer. But in broken health he went to Italy in 1815, and there (mainly about Naples) remained till his death. He was the best Italian scholar England had produced, edited Italian authors, published collections of Italian poems, translated English verse into Italian, and himself wrote Italian poems. He also wrote and published much Latin verse, and he ruined himself by a magnificent edition of Gray's works (1814). From 1780 he made himself known as a satirist in English prose and verse, mainly on the Tory side, and against Whigs in Church and State. But it was by the Pursuits of Literature, in four verse dialogues, published anonymously between 1794 and 1797 (16th ed. 1812), that he brought himself to bear on his time by audacious satire of literary personages such as Joseph Warton, Parr, Godwin, Payne Knight, and Monk Lewis-several of them victimised also by the Anti-Jacobin. Like Gifford's Baviad and Mæviad, the text was overlaid with elaborate notes; and the poem, in spite of occasional piquant and telling lines or short passages, was ere long voted unconscionable and indiscriminate in its censures and tedious on the whole, and is now little read. Henry Grattan (1746–1820), born in Dublin, at seventeen entered Trinity College, and embraced the reforming principles of Henry Flood with such ardour that his father, the Recorder of Dublin, disinherited him. At the Middle Temple in London he neglected law for the debates in the House of Commons. In 1772 he was called to the Irish Bar, and in 1775 entered the Irish Parliament as member for Charlemont. Flood had lost his popularity by accepting office under Government, and Grattan leapt at a bound into his place, strove to secure the removal of the restrictions upon Irish trade, and next plunged into a struggle for legislative independence. When in 1782, after the great Convention at Dungannon, the Rockingham Ministry surrendered, the Irish Parliament in gratitude voted Grattan £50,000. But it proved impossible for 'Grattan's Parliament,' so little representative and so much subject to corruption, to rise to real statesmanship. Grattan devoted himself mainly to advocating, in vain, the reform of special abuses. The corruption of the Castle government, the persistent repression of the agitation for Catholic relief (which Grattan, himself a Protestant, warmly supported), and the spirit of discontent generated by the French Revolution fomented the movement of the United Irishmen. Hopeless of his policy and broken by ill-health, Grattan retired on the eve of the rebellion, but returned to take his seat for Wicklow, and bravely to combat the Bill for the Union. Four years after the Union was carried out, he was elected to Westminster as member for Malton in Yorkshire, and for Dublin in the following year. The remaining energies of his life were devoted to the cause of Catholic emancipation. In December 1819 his health began to give way; in the following May he crossed from Dublin, a dying man, to speak once more for the cause; and, dying five days after his arrival, was buried in Westminster Abbey. In April 1782, a month before the English Parliament formally recognised the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan began thus one of his most famous speeches : Irish Parliamentary Independence. I am now to address a free people: ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what Heaven-directed steps you have proceeded until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of her own deliverance. I found Ireland on her knees; I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux ! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation! in that new character I hail her and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua! She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression; nor is she now a squabbling, fretful sectary, perplexing her little wits and firing her furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabilities, and death, to transmit to posterity insignificance and war. Look to the rest of Europe, and contemplate yourself, and be satisfied. Holland lives on the memory of past achievements; Sweden has lost liberty; England has sullied her great name by an attempt to enslave her colonies. You are the only people-you, of the nations in Europe, are now the only people who excite admiration, and in your present conduct you not only exceed the present generation, but you equal the past. I am not afraid to turn back and look antiquity in the face: the revolution—that great event, whether you call it ancient or modern I know not, was tarnished with bigotry: the great deliverer (for such I must ever call the Prince of Nassau) was blemished with oppression; he assented to, he was forced to assent to, acts which deprived the Catholics of religious, and all the Irish of civil and commercial rights, though the Irish were the only subjects in these islands who had fought in his defence. But you have sought liberty on her own principle: see the Presbyterians of Bangor petition for the freedom of the Catholics of Munster. You, with difficulties innumerable, with dangers not a few, have done what your ancestors wished but could not accomplish, and what your posterity may preserve but will never equal; you have moulded the jarring elements of your country into a nation, and have rivalled those great and ancient commonwealths whom you were taught to admire and among whom you are now to be recorded: in this proceeding you had not the advantages which were common to other great countries; no monuments, no trophies, none of those outward and visible signs of greatness such as inspire mankind and connect the ambition of the age which is coming on with the example of that going off, and form the descent and concatenation of glory: no, you have not had any great act recorded among all your misfortunes, nor have you one public tomb to assemble the crowd, and speak to the living the language of integrity and freedom. From the Philippic against Flood (1783). With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy decided and unreserved; that he voted against her liberty; and voted, moreover, for an address to send 4000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans; that he called these butchers armed negotiators,' and stood with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. Thus defective in every relationship, whether to constitution, commerce, toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honour on a level with his oath. He loves to deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him, and say: Sir, you are much mistaken if you think that your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible; you began your parliamentary career with an acrimony and personality which could have been justified only by a supposition of virtue: after a rank and clamorous opposition you became on a sudden silent; you were silent for seven years you were silent on the greatest questions, and you were silent for money! In 1773, when a negotiation was pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded from your duty in parliament, you forsook your law of Poynings, you forsook the questions of economy, and abandoned all the old themes of your former declamation; you were not at that period to be found in the House; you were seen like a guilty spirit haunting the lobby of the House of Commons, watching the moment in which the question should be put, that you might vanish; you were descried with a criminal anxiety retiring from the scenes of your past glory; or you were perceived coasting the upper benches of this House like a bird of prey, with an evil aspect and a sepulchral note, meditating to pounce on its quarry. These ways-they were not the ways of honour-you practised pending a negotiation which was to end either in your sale or your sedition: the former taking place, you supported the rankest measures that ever came before Parliament, the embargo of 1776, for instance. O fatal embargo, that breach of law and ruin of commerce!' You supported the unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry-the address to support the American war-the other address to send 4000 men, whom you had yourself declared to be neces sary for the defence of Ireland, to fight against the liberties of America, to which you had declared yourself a friend;-you, Sir, who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to America ;-you, Sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr Eden for his anti-American principles ;-you, Sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden;-you, Sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America ;-and you, Sir, voted 4000 Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, liberty; but you found at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning) that the King had only dishonoured you; the Court had bought but would not trust you; and having voted for the worst measures, you remained for seven years the creature of salary, without the confidence of Government. Mortified at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity; you try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary; you give no honest support either to the Government or the people; you, at the most critical period of their existence, take no part, you sign no non-consumption agreement, you are no volunteer, you oppose no perpetual mutiny bill, no altered sugar bill; you declare that you lament that the declaration of right should have been brought forward; and observing with regard to prince and people the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereign by betraying the Government, as you had sold the people: until at last, by this hollow conduct and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person |