Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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"The return of the Vicar to his home in flames," a pitiable sight; but
here is the triumph of love over misery, and the subject is good. "Now,"
cried I, holding up my children, "now let the flames burn on, and all my
possessions perish." The scene is well told, and not the worse for a
justifiable theft from Correggio in the fainting figure--it is the
_mother_ in the Ecce Homo in the National Gallery. The failing of the
hands at the moment of action, is true to the original and to nature. We
rejoice that Mr Mulready did not take the return of Olivia as his
subject. We should not like to see Mrs Primrose in that odious light;
and though admirable in the tale, she is no favourite already. The
parent had called his child, "woman--young woman"--the coldness passed
away, and the word was changed for "darling." The word was again to be
resumed, and how applied!--to the unforgiving--That even the Vicar's
anger, we must rather say indignation, should be virtuous. "Ah, madam!"
cried her mother, "this is but a poor place you have come to after so
much finery. My daughter Sophy and I can afford but little entertainment
to persons who have kept company only with people of distinction. Yes,
Miss Livy, your poor father and I have suffered very much of late; but I
hope Heaven will forgive you." Not a word of her own forgiving, not a
word of endearment; and we suspect the word madam had, when written,
more blame in it than it now retains--and how do the words "my daughter
Sophy and I" cut off the forlorn one from the family!--and the plural
"persons" avoiding the individuality, the personality of her daughter
was another deep cut into the very flesh of the lost one's heart. Now
then comes the reproof, and the good man shines in the glory of goodness
and greatness, indignation for love's sake. "During this reception the
unhappy victim stood pale and trembling, unable to weep or to reply; but
I could not continue a silent spectator of her distress; wherefore,
assuming a degree of severity in my voice and manner, which was ever
followed with instant submission, 'I entreat, woman, that my words may
be now marked once for all: I have brought you back a poor deluded
wanderer: her return to duty demands the revival of our tenderness. The
real hardships of life are now coming fast upon us; let us not therefore
increase them by dissensions among each other." The words to the
conclusion of the chapter should be written in letters of gold, were not
the better place for them out of sight, upon the hearts of all; for none
of us have too much charity, though some may have an excess of love.

No. 22 is an affecting scene. The Vicar with his wounded arm is on his
bed, with his distressed family about him. Olivia has fainted on hearing
the news of her betrayer's intended marriage, and the mother is
attending her. "My compassion for my poor daughter, overpowered by this
new disaster, interrupted what I had further to observe. I bade her
mother support her, and after a short time she recovered." The
countenance of the Vicar in this scene is the best among the
illustrations--of that good man enduring affliction, that sight worthy
the gods to look at, as said the Stoic. But we that have human
sympathies, would willingly turn away from such a sight; and where shall
we find refuge? for sorrow is coming on--sorrow upon sorrow--an
accumulation of miseries no Stoic would have borne; for he, with all his
boasted indifference, would have borne them no longer, but ended them
and life together, if he might so end them, as he thought. And now,
happily, "_our_ Moses" comes to our relief, not with extracts from
chapters on stoicism, or any other false philosophy, but holding up to
us what he is pleased to call his "dogrel." So, between him and Bill the
Songster, we will have a duet. But as we have no Bill present, we will
take his part ourselves, and, like other acting substitutes, go through
the part, reading. "Now we hope," addressing our Moses, "you have not
lengthened out your Latin to four lines for the four short English in
each stanza. If you have, to the flames with them!"

_Our Moses_.--

"CARMINA ELEGIACA IN MORTEM CUJUSDAM CANIS ISLINGTONIENSIS."

(_We_.--Not in such a hurry--"An Elegy on the death of a mad dog;" and
what made you put in Islingtoniensis? Well, I suppose you call that a
Ciceronic flourish! Now, I will read the English--you the Latin.)

_We_.--Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song,
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

_Our Moses_.--Quotlibet huc, ubicunque hominum, auscultate canenti,
Si breve vos teneam;--non ego longus ero.

_We_.--In Islington there was a man
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran
Whene'er he went to pray.

_Our Moses_.--Quidam Islingtoniensis erat, quem donec adibat
Templa pius, sacra diximus ire via.

_We_.--A kind and gentle heart he had
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
When he put on his clothes.

_Our Moses_.--Suavis amico, inimico, ita mitis, nudum ut amictu,
Quum se vestibat, cotidie indueret.

_We_.--And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.

_Our Moses_.--Et canis oppido eodem erat huic, ubi plurimus, et grex
Et faex, cum catulis plebs numerosa canum.

_We_.--This dog and man at first were friends,
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad and bit the man.

_Our Moses_.--Grandis amicitia, at Canis, ut sibi gratificetur
Fit rabidus, rabido dente hominemque petit.

_We_.--Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

_Our Moses_.--Concurrunt cives, O illum Cerberun, at aiunt,
Qualem amens rabido dense momordet herum.

_We_.--The wound it seem'd both sore and sad
To every Christian eye,
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

_Our Moses_.--O saevum vulnus, clamant lachrymosius omnes,
En rabidus canis, et mox moriturus homo.

_We_.--But soon a wonder came to light,
That show'd the rogues they lied;
The man recover'd of the bite,
The dog it was that died.

_Our Moses_.--Mendaces cives monstrat res prodigiosa,
Sanus homo subito fit--moriturque canis.

"A very good boy, Bill, upon my word," said the Vicar, "and an Elegy
that may truly be called tragical." So we present our Moses a sovereign
for his verse--"A sovereign for a verse, my boy." "I will never," quoth
he, "be averse to a sovereign. We have heard of a monarch who gave a
crown for a song." A little refreshed, let us turn to the book. Here is

No. 23.--Very well, Mr Mulready, artistically performed; but we fear we
shall not relish too many of these distressing subjects. We know, from
distress to distress, you will take us into prison. Artists and writers
of the present day delight in prison scenes; we are not of that class,
but endure it. We would on no account sit down with that
rascally-looking fellow that is driving and taking an inventory of the
Vicar's stock. It is winter too. "The consequence of my incapacity was
his driving my cattle that evening, and their being appraised and sold
the next day for less than half their value."

No. 24--Is the attempt at a rescue. The Vicar represses and reproves the
violence of his enraged parishioners. The drawing is good; but it is not
a subject we delight to look at; and we begin to fear that further on we
shall fare worse. Why did not Mr Mulready give us the interview between
the Vicar and his old acquaintance, Mr Jenkinson? Artists of skill like
to show it in grouping, and prefer that to giving character. "The
consequences might have been fatal, had I not immediately interposed,
and with some difficulty rescued the officers from the hands of the
enraged multitude."

"The Prison." We have little wish to stay there long, and look at the
odious villains that surround the good man "paying his footing." "I was
apprised of the usual perquisite required upon these occasions, and
immediately complied with the demand, though the little money I had was
nearly exhausted." The next illustration, too, takes us into equally bad
company.

The Vicar's attempt to reform the jail. The mockery, and roguery, and
Vicar's perseverance, while a practised hand is picking his pocket--are
admirably represented. "I therefore read them a portion of the service,
with a loud unaffected voice, and found my audience perfectly merry upon
the occasion."

The penitent scene. "My design succeeded, and in less than six days some
were penitent, and all attentive." We now began to say, what a happy
thing it was that Dr Primrose was sent to jail. Doubtless Goldsmith
intended to show how good comes out of evil. There are some good figures
in this illustration.

The seizure of poor Sophia--and very good it is--not that we
congratulate Mr Mulready on his Sophia here; she is rather a vulgar
dowdy figure, the others are very good, and the incident well told. "A
post-chaise and pair drove up to them, and instantly stopped. Upon which
a well-dressed man, but not Mr Thornhill, stepping out, clasped my
daughter round the waist, and, forcing her in, bid the postilion drive
on, so that they were out of sight in a moment." Now, Mr Mulready, in
the next edition, you must positively illustrate the rescue by Mr
Burchell.

"The Vicar delivering his sermon"--Charmingly grouped are the attentive
and subdued audience. Mrs Primrose is surely too young a figure. If we
could get over our early impression of the Vicar's countenance, his
figure here would probably please. "The prisoners assembled themselves
according to my directions, for they loved to hear my counsel--my son
and his mother supported me on either side."

The return of dear Sophia, with her true but singular lover and
deliverer--Perhaps the vicar takes it more coolly than the text
justifies. "Just as he delivered this news, my dearest girl entered, and
with looks almost wild with pleasure, ran to kiss me in a transport of
action." There should have been an illustration of the scene where Mr
Burchell is discovered to be Sir William Thornhill; and above all, where
he proposes Jenkinson to Sophia.

The complete detection of the squire's villainies, and his great
disappointment. "And to convince you that I speak nothing but truth,
here is the license by which you were married together." All here is
good but the figure of the Squire. In appearance we are to presume that
Squire Thornhill was a gentleman, or Miss Wilmot could not have endured
his addresses, nor indeed would Olivia have been deceived by him. In
this illustration he has neither the appearance, dress, nor attitude of
one in that condition.

The last illustration, or "All's Well that End's Well." It is, however,
near ending badly, both as to the incident and the illustration--in the
latter all is good, excepting only Arabella Wilmot; perhaps there is a
defect in the printing, which gives her an odd look--but altogether she
is not a good figure. She should have been elegance personified.
Burchell looks the sturdy runner that could overtake the chaise, and
rescue manfully his Sophia, to win and wear a favour, though he seems
here in little hurry; but that is in character. "But as I stood all this
time with my book ready, I was at last quite tired of the contest, and
shutting it, 'I perceive,' cried I, 'that none of you have a mind to be
married.'" We should like to have seen the dinner-party, and the two
Miss Flamboroughs ready to die with laughing. "One jest I particularly
remember: old Mr Wilmot drinking to Moses, whose head was turned another
way, my son replied, 'Madam, I thank you.' Upon which the old gentleman,
winking upon the rest of the company, observed that he was thinking of
his mistress; at which jest I thought the two Miss Flamboroughs would
have died with laughing." We should like to have seen their faces by Mr
Mulready's hand, because we are sure that the two Miss Flamboroughs were
thinking of themselves, in conjunction with Moses and the jest.

We have noticed every illustration. We hope there will be another
edition, and then we may have a few more plates. We have therefore, as
we have gone on, ventured to suggest some subjects--but, above all, we
would recommend Mr Mulready to supply a few portraits, heads only, such
as that of the "Schoolmaster in the Deserted Village," by the Etching
Club.

* * * * *

THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK IN THE MONK'S HOOD.

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy--
The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride."

Had the "resolution and independence" which dignify the lowly, and
strengthen the unhappy, when no visible eye befriends them, been among
the rich endowments of Chatterton's wonderful mind--had he possessed and
cherished the courage that bears up against obloquy and neglect--had he
pursued the rough tenour of his way undaunted, in spite of "solitude,
pain of heart, distress, and poverty," how different must have been the
fate of the inspired boy of Bristol! He might be alive yet; he would be
ninety years old, graced with honour, love, obedience, troops of
friends, and all that should accompany old age. He might have achieved
some great epic, or some gorgeous historical dramas,--have finished the
Fairy Queen, or given us a Fairy King of his own creation.

Among the lighter honours of social distinction, we can fancy his
reception as a London "lion," by the fair and noble in proud places.
Still pleasanter is the vision of his less public hours of idleness
spent among congenial spirits. We can fancy him, the patriarch of living
poets, seated as a guest at the breakfast-table of Samuel Rogers, who is
about twelve years his junior, and those fine lads, Lisle Bowles, James
Montgomery, and William Wordsworth, and those promising children, Tom
Moore and Tom Campbell, and that braw chiel John Wilson--(_palmam qui
meruit ferat_)--the youngest of the party something, perhaps, but not
much, under seventy, except the bard of the Isle of Palms, who is no
chicken; and unless the master of the feast have summoned those pretty
babes from the Wood, the two Tennysons. But alas for Chatterton! the
vision will not hold: he disappears from his chair at the feast, like
Banquo--"and, when all's done, you look but on a stool." The ghost of
the slayer of himself, after long haunting Strawberry Hill, to rebuke
the senile complacency of the chronicler of royal and noble authors,
repaired, after the death of that prosperous man of wit and fashion, to
his native town, to prowl in Redcliff church, and about the graves of
his fathers in its churchyard, and the graves which they had
successively dug there during a century and a half. His bones were left
to moulder among those of other pauper strangers in the burial-ground of
Shoelane workhouse. We attach no credit to the story of the exhumation
of his body, and its mysterious reinterment in Redcliff. His fathers
were sextons; and he, too, was in some sort a sexton also--but
spiritually and transcendantly. He buried his genius in the visionary
grave of Rowley, "an old chest in an upper room over the chapel on the
north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he
evoked its spirit in the shape of fragments of law-parchment, quaintly
inscribed with spells of verse and armorial hieroglyphics, to puzzle
antiquaries and make fools of scholiasts. Puzzle them he did; and they
could not forgive a clever stripling, whom hunger had tempted to don an
ancient mask, and impose himself on their spectacled eyes as a reverend
elder. Rogue!--vagabond! Profligate impostor! The slim, sleek,
embroidered juggler of the Castle of Otranto had not a kind word for
this ragged orphan of his own craft. He, whose ambition was to shine
among writers who have given intellectual grace to their noble
lineage--among whom assuredly he does and will shine--but whose acute
consciousness of something meretricious in his metal, made him doubt if
the public would accept coinage from his mint; and so caused him to wear
tentative disguises, whether he elaborated a romance or a keen and
playful witticism--and who really did injustice to his own powers,--not
from modesty but meanness,--even he, the son of a prime minister and
heir to a peerage--a man who was himself always something of a
trickster, now mystifying a blind old woman at Paris; now sending open
letters, privately nullified, recommending the bearers to his friend the
envoy at Florence; now, with the mechanic aid of village carpenters and
bricklayers, rearing a frail edifice bristling with false points, and
persuading the world that it was all pure Gothic, perhaps chuckling at
his assurance--even this shrewd mummer gravely shook his head at
Chatterton, and frowned on him as a cheat! True; they were both cheats;
Horace Walpole from apprehensive vanity; Chatterton from proud oblique
humility. The Bristol boy knew his worth; but, doubting the equity as
well as the sagacity of his judges, he did not venture to produce it as
his own. He supposed that an obscure and penniless youth, such as he,
could have little chance of attention or fair play in the world if he
appeared in his proper character; so he painfully assumed another, of a
nature that could not long have been supported even had he been a
various linguist deeply versed in etymologies, and especially proficient
in our extinct idioms, and their several dates of usage, instead of
wanting even Latin enough to understand the easiest parts of Skinner's
Etymology of the English tongue, one of the books that he consulted and
guessed at.

Of all modern suicides this youth was the most interesting; of all
literary impostors the least unpardonable, though his ways were,
unhappily for himself, of indefensible crookedness. He neither ascribed
his fictions to a great name as Ireland did, nor did he, like
Macpherson, steal the heart out of national ballads and traditions, to
stuff a Bombastes Penseroso of his own making.

Any competent, yet moderately indulgent reader, who should for the first
time take up Chatterton's works, and beginning at the beginning, in
Tyrwhitt's first edition, for example, peruse no more than sixty or
seventy pages, would probably lay down the volume somewhat disappointed
not to have found the very extraordinary merit he had expected. The
compositions that this partial examination would take in are
three--Eclogues, Elinour and Juga, Verses to Lydgate, with Song to Ella,
Lydgate's Answer, and the Tournament.

The first Eclogue is a conversation between two fugitive shepherds, who
bewail the wretched condition to which the barons' wars have reduced
them. It contains some pleasing lines.

As the rustics discuss their grievances in a valley under cover of

"... Eve's mantle gray,
The rustling leaves do their white hearts affray.
They regret the pleasures of their forsaken home,
... the kingcup decked mees,
The spreading flocks of sheep of lily white,
The tender applings and embodied trees,
The parker's grange, far spreading to the sight,
The gentle kine, the bullocks strong in fight,
The garden whiten'd with the comfrey plant,
The flowers Saint Mary shooting with the light--
...
The far-seen groves around the hermit's cell,
The merry fiddle dinning up the dell,
The joyous dancing in the hostry court--
But now,
high song and every joy farewell,
Farewell the very shade of fair disport."

In the second Eclogue, a good son invokes blessings on his father, who
is gone with the crusaders to Palestine. He describes with much
animation the voyage, the landing in Syria, the warring Saracens, King
Richard of lion's heart, and anticipates victory and the return to
England.

"Thus Nigel said, when from the azure sea
The swollen sail did dance before his eyne.
Swift as the wish he to the beach did fly,
And found his father stepping from the brine.
Sprites of the blest, the pious Nigel said,
Pour out your pleasance on my father's head!"

The third Eclogue, if divested of certain exuberances--for Chatterton
was precocious in every thing, and many of his fancies want the Bowdler
pruning-knife--might be seasonably transferred to some of the penny
publications for the benefit of Mr Frost's disciples. A poor man and
woman, on their way to the parson's hayfield, complain to each other of
their hard lot in being obliged to earn their bread by the sweat of
their brows. "Why," asks the woman, "should I be more obligated to work
than the fine Dame Agnes? What is she more than me? The man, unable to
solve so knotty a point, says he doesn't see how he himself is not as
good as a lord's son, but he will ask Sir Roger the parson, whom he
consults accordingly.

"_Man_.--By your priestship now say unto me,
Sir Godfrey the knight, who liveth hard by,
Why should he than me
Be more great
In honour, knighthood, and estate?

"_Sir Roger_.--If thou hast ease, the shadow of content,
Believe the truth, none happier is than thee.
Thou workest well; can that a trouble be?
Sloth more would jade thee than the roughest day.
Could'st thou the secret minds of others see,
Thou would'st full soon see truth in what I say.
But let me hear thy way of life, and then
Hear thou from me the lives of richer men.

"_Man_.--I rise with the sun,
Like him to drive the wain,
And, ere my work is done,
I sing a song or twain.
I follow the plough-tail
With a bottle of ale.
On every saint's day
With the minstrel I'm seen,
All footing away
With the maids on the green.
But oh, I wish to be more great,
In honour, station, and estate!

"_Sir Roger_.--Hast thou not seen a tree upon a hill,
Whose ample boughs stretch wide around to sight?
When angry tempests do the heavens fill,
It shaketh drear, in dole and much affright:
While the small flower in lowly graces deck'd
Standeth unhurt, untroubled by the storm.
The picture such of life. The man of might
Is tempest-chafed, his woe great as his form;
Thyself, a floweret of small account,
Would harder feel the wind as higher thou didst mount."

Sir Roger's moral is trite enough, yet it seems to have escaped the
consideration of our Chartists and Socialists.

Elinour the nut-brown, and Juga the fair, are two pining maidens, who,
seated on the banks of the Redbourne, a river near St Alban's, are each
bemoaning their lovers, gone to fight in that neighbourhood for the Rose
of York. Presently, racked with suspense, they hasten nearer to the
scene of action.

"_Like twain of clouds that hold the stormy rain,
They moved gently o'er the dewy meads_
To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain.
There did they find that both their knights were slain.
Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side,
Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in the waves, and died."

The verses to Lydgate consist of ten lines of no merit at all, and
supposed to be sent to him by Rowley, with the Ode to Ella, which has a
movement that recalls Collins, a lyrical artist perhaps unexcelled in
our language, and in whose manner Chatterton so obviously and frequently
composes, that the fact alone might have settled the Rowley question,
though we are not aware that it was ever particularly insisted on in the
controversy.

"Oh Thou, or what remains of Thee,
Ella! the darling of futurity,
Let this my song bold as thy courage be,
As everlasting to posterity--

"When Dacia's sons, with hair of blood-red hue,
Like kingcups glittering with the morning dew,
Arranged in drear array,
Upon the fatal day,
Spread far and wide on Watchet's shore,
Then didst thou furious stand,
And by thy valiant hand
Besprinkle all the meads with gore.

"Driven by thy broadsword fell,
Down to the depths of hell,
Thousands of Dacians went.

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