and the dark closet, and the thumbed and dog-eared spelling-book, (or whatever else more refined, torments their tender years in the shape of education,) was, after all, the ground-work and secret of their fascination over men! What a process it is to arrive at love! D-o-g, dog,-c-a-t, cat! If you had not learned this, bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain Augustus Fitz-Somerset would never have sat, as I saw him last night, cutting your initials with a diamond ring on the purple claret-glass which had just poured a bumper to your beauty!" "You are not far wrong," said Job, after a long pause, during which I had delivered myself, unheard, of the above practical apostrophe; you are not far wrong, quoad the women of New England. They would be considerable bores if they had not learned, in their days of bread-and-butter, to read, write, and reason. But, for the woman of the softer South and East, I am by no means clear that education would not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take yourself back to Italy, for example, where, for two mortal years, you philandered up and down between Venice and Amalfi, never out of the sunshine or away from the feet of women, and, in all that precious episode of your youth, never guilty, I will venture to presume, of either suggesting or expressing a new thought. And the reason is, not that the imagination is dull, but that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these latitudes. It would be violent and inapt to the spirit of the hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence, of body and mind, (the latter at the same time lying broad awake in its chamber, and alive to every pleasurable image that passes uncalled before its windows,) is the genius, the only genius, of the night and day. What would be so discordant as an argument by moonlight in the Coliseum? What so ill-bred and atrocious as the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun theory by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili? To live is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to live in ours is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a rock with a vulture at our vitals. Even in the most passionate intercourse of love in your northern clime, you read to your mistress, or she sings to you, or you think it necessary to drive or ride; but I know nothing that would more have astonished your Venetian bionda than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola that you might see her beauty on the lagune in the starless night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and read even a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is why I could be more content to be a pipe-bearer in Asia than a schoolmaster in Vermont, or, sooner than a judge's ermine in England, to wear a scrivener's rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, writing love-letters for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of republics,-your only land of equality is that in which to breathe is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws open his window for the air that comes to him past the brow of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician's lip intoxicates less than the water from the fountain that is free to all, though it gush from the marble bosom of a nymph. If I were to make a world, I would have the climate of Greece, and no knowledge that did not come by intuition. Men and women should grow wise enough, as the flowers grow fair enough, with sunshine and air, and they should follow their instincts like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as little reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misdemeanor, and desire of action, if it were not too monstrous to require legislation, should be treason to the state." "Long live King Job!" (To be continued.) SLINGSBY. WEEDS AND FLOWERS.-NO. I. 1.-How To THRIVE AT COURT. Manuel. Look at yon rascal heliotropes! The sun Brings forth rank weeds to-day. Behold, where climbs Friend. Scorn catch the villain! Manuel. He has no truth. Friend. He has no wit. Such fellows Spur their dull, stumbling tongues, until come forth I love a huge, strong, firm, unblushing lie, Manuel. I understand. Friend. One that's improbable-impossible Where none can see the end, or prove it false. Manuel. What, Old Mohammed (when the pigeon pick'd The peas from out his ears) did please you better, Than if he had minced his fables into bits, Below the cunning of a conjuror? Friend. I do confess it; and I counsel you, Give your imagination wing to-day. You have a present for the favourite: Deck it in splendid words. A homely gift (Though Phidias-carved) will lend your suit no help. Manuel. I'll try what I can do. (COUNT enters, dictating to a Clerk.) Count. So, put it down at length-nothing omit. 'Tis of much moment, Sir: A dinner spoil'd Is so much time made mournful,-this, at the least ;- As ceremonious and particular Nay, Sir, much more so-than if we did feed The shrine o' the church with incense. See it done. Friend. Now is the time, Sir. Offer him your present. Well, Sir? How is your sister, fair Valeria? Manuel. My lord, I have been free with you. Hearing that you did feast the king to-day, [Clerk exit. I have sent you an Indian bird, stuck full of spices, And caught as seldom as the Phoenix was. And issue edicts, that whoe'er shall taste 't, Count. A million thanks, excellent Manuel! It is the very wonder I would have. And edicts 'gainst it? "Twill be doubly sweet. Manuel. I thank your Lordship. Yes: some other time,- Count. It is done, good Manuel. Sleep soundly it is granted. Fare you well! Friend. Now where's your parchment list of services? [Exit. Your wounds? your losses? Pshaw !-prop up thy merit 2. SONG. Whilst April lasts, I'll love thee, dear, And when May comes loud laughing here, Rejoice, and through the warm May noon Till Summer leads in dazzling June, And thus, from spring to summer morn, When Autumn blows her sullen horn, No autumn shall the soul decline, But Love, the planet, still shall shine, 3. THE PLEASURES OF AN HEIR. [Juan, a Soldier of Fortune, becomes possessed of great wealth and rank, on the death of his brother.] Pedro. Welcome, my Lord. Juan. (To himself.) I look around, in vain. Pedro. Dull Memory cannot find the ancient track Are gone!-and whither? Juan. Is't Pedro? no? Welcome to Burgos, Sir. Yes, your old servant, Sir. Juan. Take all the thanks I have: as yet, I am Pedro. But rich in sorrow. What a mournful calm All must die at last. Juan. That's certain: yet, Death's a strange spirit, and hath Pedro. The phantom grim, and laugh. The grave was then Not so, Sir. Your eye looks sparkling still, and free from dread. Juan. Then it belies my heart; for that is sad. 'Tis true I once could well have laid me down- 4. INSCRIPTION. (For two Sister Trees.) These Trees, now growing here in freshest earth, The slips from which they sprang, and still spring free, And so each twain are sisters. We, who now Inscribe this tablet-stone, have breathed a vow, That should our children die, these trees shall fall. Pray therefore, from your hearts, sweet strangers all,- May never come and cut the green twins' life; But that, through all the seasons, sun and breeze Till each (its century of summers past) May sigh to drop its leaves, and rest at last. THE CONFESSIONS OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. MR. PAYNE COLLIER's publication of some "New Facts regarding the Life of Shakspeare" has called back my attention to a subject, from which other circumstances had unwillingly withdrawn me. I shall prefix to the following chapters of the Confessions of Shakspeare, a few remarks on these discoveries, in the hope of more immediately interesting the reader in the great subject they refer to. The "facts" are unquestionably of importance, if only as a proof that such earnest and laudable zeal as Mr. Collier's, if well directed, may get its reward. It is a pity that it has come so late. But it is with this as with other things. We waste our opportunities till they cannot be recalled, and fix our desires most intently on what it is too late to attain. Four folio editions of the works of Shakspeare were published to satisfy the demands of his admirers in the century which followed his death; but no one asked for, and no one furnished unasked, a single explanatory note, or the annexation of a particle of biographical anecdote. This was because so many of his relatives still survived, that the information was to be had for asking! During the greater part of this period nothing could exceed the popularity of Shakspeare*. His plays were the only delight of playgoers, the only salvation of the property of managers, the closet companions of the studies of monarchs. Leonard Digges protests that the audiences E'en the Fox' and 'Alchemist,' at a friend's desire And door-keepers; when let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room; All is so pester'd. Let but Beatrice And Benedick be seen, and in a trice The cock-pit, galleries, boxes, all are full—” -yet of him, by whose wonderful influence all men, whether in grief or gladness, were thus made better and happier, no one knew anything, nor cared to know! Shakspeare's sister, Joan Hart, lived till 1646; Mrs. Hall, his favourite daughter, lived till 1649; his second daughter, Judith, was living at Stratford in 1662; and Lady Bernard, his granddaughter, did not die till 1670. A few words from Mrs. Hall would have greater value now than the hundred volumes of ponderous feebleness amassed by "commentators." So infinite has been the labour, and so trifling the reward! Mr. Collier's discoveries relate chiefly to the pecuniary circumstances of Shakspeare. It will be recollected that I gave a statement in the first paper of this series by which it appeared that, in a list of the sharers and actors of the Blackfriars theatre, in 1596, Shakspeare's name stood * Such was the popularity of Shakspeare in 1627, that, in the April of that year, the King's Company, then playing at Blackfriars, purchased the interference of the Master of the Revels to prevent the players of the Red Bull theatre from performing any of his productions. |