Pursue thy course!an honest fame is thine
And Granta still shall bless the day,
Granta that ever lov'd a Brunswick's name,
The honoured day, that saw her thus consign
To thee the Ensigns of her Sway,
Thee, Guardian of her Laws, her Rights, her Fame,
Son of her matron Lore, Prince of her Monarch's line.
From EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND ELEVEN.
By Mrs. BARBauld.
HERE walks a Spirit o'er the peopled earth,
Secret his progress is, unknown his birth;
Moody and viewless as the changing wind,
No force arrests his foot, no chains can bind;
Where'er he turns, the human brute awakes,
And, roused to better life, his sordid hut forsakes:
He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires,
Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires :
Obedient Nature follows where he leads;
The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads;
The beasts retire from man's asserted reign,
And
prove his kingdom was not given in vain.
Then from its bed is drawn the ponderous ore,
Then Commerce pours her gifts on every shore,
Then Babel's towers and terrassed gardens rise,
And pointed obelisks invade the skies;
The prince commands, in Tyrian purple drest,
And Egypt's virgins weave the linen vest.
Then spans the graceful arch the roaring tide,
And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide.
Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart,
Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art;
Saints, Heroes, Sages, who the land adorn,
Seem rather to descend than to be born;
Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame,
With pen of adamant inscribes their name.
The Genius now forsakes the favoured shore,
And hates, capricious, what he loved before;
Then empires fall to dust, then arts decay,
And wasted realms enfeebled despots sway;
Even Nature's changed; without his fostering smile
Ophir no gold, no plenty yields the Nile ;
The thirsty sand absorbs the useless rill,
And spotted plagues from putrid fens distil,
In desert solitudes then Tadmor sleeps,
Stern Marius then o'er fallen Carthage weeps;
Then with enthusiast love the pilgrim roves
To seek his footsteps in forsaken groves,
Explores the fractured arch, the ruined tower,
Those limbs disjointed of gigantic power;
Still at each step he dreads the adder's sting,
The Arab's javelin, or the tiger's spring;
With doubtful caution treads the echoing ground,
And asks where Troy or Babylon is found.
And now the vagrant Power no more detains
The vale of Tempe, or Ausonian plains;
Northward he throws the animating ray,
O'er Celtic nations bursts the mental day:
And, as some playful child the mirror turns,
Now here now there the moving lustre burns;
Now o'er his changeful fancy more prevail
Batavia's dykes than Arno's purple vale,
And stinted suns, and rivers bound with frost,
Than Enna's plains or Baia's viny coast;
Venice the Adriatic weds in vain,
And Death sits brooding o'er Campania's plain;
O'er Baltic shores and through Hercynian groves,
Stirring the soul, the mighty impulse moves;
Art plies his tools, and Commerce spreads her sail,
And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale.
The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms,
And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes;
Loud minstrel Bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse
The Runic rhyme, and "build the lofty verse:"
The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell
To the soft breathings of the' Æolian shell,
Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone,
And scarce believes the altered voice her own.
And now, where Cæsar saw with proud disdain
The wattled hut and skin of azure stain,
Corinthian columns rear their graceful forms,
And light virandas brave the wintry storms,
While British tongues the fading fame prolong
Of Tully's eloquence and Maro's song.
Where once Bonduca whirled the scythed car,
And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war,
Light forms beneath transparent muslins float,
And tutor'd voices swell the artful note.
Light-leaved acacias and the shady plane
And spreading cedar grace the woodland reign;
While crystal walls the tenderer plants confine,
The fragrant orange and the nectared pine;
The Syrian grape there hangs her rich festoons,
Nor ask for purer air, or brighter noons :
Science and Art urge on the useful toil,
New mould a climate and create the soil,
Subdue the rigour of the northern Bear,
O'er polar climes shed aromatic air,
On yielding Nature urge their new demands,
And ask not gifts but tribute at her hands.
London exults:-on London Art bestows
Her summer ices and her winter rose ;
Gems of the East her mural crown adorn,
And Plenty at her feet pours forth her horn;
While even the exiles her just laws disclaim,
People a continent, and build a name :
August she sits, and with extended hands
Holds forth the book of life to distant lands.
But fairest flowers expand but to decay;
The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away;
Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they bring;
Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring.
Crime walks thy streets, Fraud earns her unblest bread,
O'er want and woe thy gorgeous robe is spread,
And angel charities in vain oppose :
With grandeur's growth the mass of misery grows.
For see, to other climes the Genius soars,
He turns from Europe's desolated shores ;
And lo, even now, midst mountains wrapt in storm,
On Andes' heights he shrouds his awful form;
On Chimborazo's summits treads sublime,
Measuring in lofty thought the march of Time;
Sudden he calls:-"'Tis now the hour!" he cries,
Spreads his broad hand, and bids the nations rise.
La Plata hears amidst her torrents' roar,
Potosi hears it, as she digs the ore:
Ardent the Genius fans the noble strife,
And pours through feeble souls a higher life,
Shouts to the mingled tribes from sea to sea,
And swears-Thy world, Columbus, shall be free.
JOHNSON AND BURKE COMPARED.
From RETROSPECTION. By Mr. CUMBERLAND.
H thou, my Muse !(if yet I have a Muse),
Come, tho' on crutches, to thy vot'ry's aid,
And teach me by what answer to appease
This friend, who importunes me to decide,
If Burke or Johnson were the greater man.
He knew not either, and he knows not me,
Or surely he had sought an abler judge
To solve that question-
Pow'rs, that in some respects may be compared,
For both were Orators-and could we now
Canvass the social circles where they mix'd,
The palm for eloquence by general vote
Would rest with him, whose thunder never shook
The senate or the bar. When Burke harangu'd
The nation's representatives, methought
The fine machinery, that his fancy wrought,
Rich but fantastic, sometimes would obscure
That symmetry, which ever should uphold
The dignity and order of debate :
'Gainst orator like this had Johnson rose,
So clear was his perception of the truth,
So grave his judgment, and so high the swell
Of his full period, I must think his speech
Had charm'd as many, and enlighten'd more.
Yet that the sword of Burke could be as sharp
As it was shining, Hastings can attest,
Who thro' a siege of ten long years withstood
"Its huge two-handed sway," that stript him bare
Of fortune, and had cut him deeper still,
Had innocence not arm'd him with that shield,
Which turn'd the stroke aside, and sent him home
To seek repose in his paternal farm.
Johnson, if right I judge, in classic lore
Was more diffuse than deep: he did not dig
So many fathoms down as Bentley dug
In Grecian soil, but far enough to find
Truth ever at the bottom of his shaft.
Burke, borne by genius on a lighter wing,
Skim'd o'er the flow'ry plains of Greece and Rome,
And, like the bee returning to its hive,
Brought nothing home but sweets: Johnson would dash
Thro' sophist or grammarian ankle-deep,
And rummage in their mud to trace a date,
Or hunt a dogma down, that gave offence
To his philosophy-
For contradiction, but in mode unlike :
Johnson at once would doggedly pronounce
Opinions false, and after prove them such:
Burke, not less critical, but more polite,
With ceaseless volubility of tongue
Play'd round and round his subject, till at length
Content to find you willing to admire,
He ceas'd to urge, or win you, to assent.
Burke of a rival's eminence would speak
With candour always, often with applause:
Johnson, tho' prone to pity, rarely prais'd.
The pun, which Burke encourag'd, Johnson spurn'd:
Yet none with louder glee would cheer the laugh,
That well-tim'd wit or cleanly humour rais'd;
And when no cloud obscur'd his mental sphere,
And all was sunshine in his friendly breast,
He would hold up a mirror to our eyes,
In which the human follies might be seen
In characters so comic, yet so true,
Description from his lips was like a charm,
That fix'd the hearers motionless and mute.
Burke by his senatorial pow'rs obtain'd
Ten times as much as Johnson by his pen ;
But (thanks to Thurlow) I rejoice to own,
That learning and morality at last
Could earn a pittance, humble as it was.
Splendor of style, fertility of thought,
And the bold use of metaphor in both,
Strike us with rival beauty: Burke display'd
A copious period, that, with curious skill'
And ornamental epithet drawn out,
Was, like the singer's cadence, sometimes apt,
Although melodious, to fatigue the ear:
Johnson, with terms unnaturalized and rude,
And Latinisms forced into his line,
Like raw undrill'd recruits, would load his text
High-sounding and uncouth; yet if you cull
His happier pages, you will find a style
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