Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

which, in times of great family distress, he had not been known to do, and left his work for the day. His faithful friend Johnson felt the blow deeply. On the stairs leading to his chamber, sat the old and infirm, mourning their loss; many poor women sobbing bitterly for their generous friend. After his coffin was closed, it was reopened, and a lock of hair taken for a lady, who wished to preserve it as a remembrance. It was his old friend, the beautiful Jessamy Bride, who desired this token.

He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey, and his friends at first intended to honor his memory in that way. A public funeral was planned, Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick, among the bearers; but when they discovered that he died very deeply in debt, owing more than two thousand pounds, such a display seemed inappropriate. Five days after his death, at twilight on Saturday evening, the 9th of April, 1774, he was quietly interred in the burying ground of Temple Church.

A fine bust of the poet was soon after placed in the abbey, by the club of which he had been a member, and Johnson wrote a Latin epitaph, which was inscribed on a white marble tablet underneath. He wrote of Goldsmith as "a poet, naturalist, and historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn." He also spoke of his power to move us to smiles or tears, and this is as true of his life as his writings.

Irving says that "he seemed from infancy to have. been compounded of two natures, one bright, the other blundering." Shy, awkward, sensitive, eager for praise, fond of display, always doing or saying the most ridiculous things, we cannot help laughing at his absurdities; but he was so generous, so noble in his impulses, so forgiving and gentle, so sad-hearted and restless beneath all his merriment and foolish display, that a sigh of tender

ness and pity involuntarily follows the smile. His very faults and foibles rather attract than repel, and I doubt if there is a writer in the whole range of English literature who is regarded with more sympathy and affection than-"Poor Goldy."

[graphic][merged small]
[graphic][merged small]

"And now what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story; How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory.

And how, when one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted."

WILLIAM COWPER, whom his best biographer, Southey, speaks of as "the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers," was the son of Dr. John Cowper, a royal chaplain, rector of Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. He could boast of his ancestry on both sides, as his father was the son of a judge, and nephew of a lord chancellor, and his mother was descended by four different lines from Henry III. of England. He was born at the parsonage, on the 15th of November, 1731. His early days were made bright and happy by the tender. love of his mother. "Her hand it was that wrapped his

little scarlet cloak around him, and filled his little bag with biscuits every morning, before he went to his first school. By her knee was his happiest place, where he often amused himself by marking out the flowered pattern of her dress on paper with a pin, taking a child's delight in this simple skill. He was only six years old when this fond mother died; thus early upon the childish head a pitiless storm began to beat."

The delicate, diffident boy was old enough to know his great loss, and has recorded his feelings at that sad time in one of his most beautiful poems, on the receipt of her picture more than fifty years after:

ON THE RECEIPT OF HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE.

"O that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
'Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!'
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim

To quench it!) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

O welcome guest, though unexpected here!
Who bidd'st me honor with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.

I will obey, not willingly alone,

But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief;
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie,

A momentary dream, that thou art she.

My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?

Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss-
Ah, that maternal smile! it answers-Yes.
I heard the bell tolled on thy burial-day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!
But was it such ?-It was.-Where thou art gone,
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more!
Thy maidens grieved themselves at my concern,
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
What ardently I wished, I long believed,
And, disappointed still, was still deceived.
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of to-morrow, even from a child.
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,

I learned at last submission to my lot,

But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot."

He said, when quite an old man, in speaking of her: "Not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her; such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short.”

He was at once taken from the nursery, and sent from home to a boarding-school, where the timid, homesick child suffered much from loneliness and the cruelty of a boy many years older, practised so secretly that no one suspected it for a long time, but it was at last found out, and the tyrant expelled.

Cowper retained through life a painful recollection of the terror with which this boy inspired him. He says: "His savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid. to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoebuckles than by any other

« AnteriorContinuar »