III.

We find each mortal bliss alloyed,

Each smile foretels a tear,

But still the breast would soon be cloyed

That never felt a fear;—

The beauty of the brightest beam

Is deepened by the shade-
Fairest the stars in darkness gleam-

The broad red sun of even-tide

Assumes a more imposing pride,

In floating clouds arrayed.

IV.

Perfection hath not reigned on earth,

Nor ruled the human mind;
We pant not for diviner worth,
Nor raptures more refined;
A mortal weakness makes us cling
To mortal forms alone.

We feel we cannot coldly fling
On Lethe's dark insatiate stream
The charms of Life's familiar dream,
And turn to scenes unknown.

V.

"Tis this that fills the final hour

With mournfulness and dread;

Love's tender ties and friendship's power

Avail not with the dead!

And though we meet to part no more,

We may not meet the same;

The things that linked our hearts of yore Are chains that Death's cold hand divides,

For nought in holier realms abides

Of this terrestrial frame.

VI.

Thy radiant fields, Eternity!

The dreamer's breast alarm,

They echo not a human sigh,
Nor own a human charm!
Thy skies the dazzled soul appal,
And too severely glow;

Their hues no mortal days recall;
And in thy bright and boundless space,
Where only spirits dwell, we trace
No features loved below!

NIGHT.

WHEN gentle Twilight floateth o'er the scene
On cloudy car, and with the glare of day
The busy mind's bright chaos melts away,

What tender images and thoughts serene

Steal forth like stars! And when Night's darker screen
Divides us from the world, our mortal clay
Off-drops at Fancy's touch ;-earth-freed we stray
To realms more wild than haunted forests green
Where fairies love to wander. But the time,
Though hallowed with alternate light and shade
Of vision fair or solemn trance sublime,

Or memories sweet by distance dream-like made,
Is brief as precious;-at the rousing chime.
Of morning birds, all these enchantments fade.

97]

ON THE ITALIAN OPERA.

"As for operas, they are essentially too absurd and extravagant to mention. Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and ears." Chester field.

WHEN the Italian Opera was first introduced into England, about the latter end of the seventeenth century, its dramatic absurdities were perpetually ridiculed by men of taste. Addison devoted several numbers of the Spectator to the subject, and remarked, that the success of the opera had caused it to be laid down as a general rule, "that nothing that is not nonsense is capable of being well set to music." Lord Chesterfield subsequently observed that Metastasio attempted a very dangerous innovation. "He tried," said the noble critic, gently to throw some sense into his operas; but it did not take." If Italian operas are more popular at this day in London than the plays of Shakespeare, it is not on account of their dramatic merits, but their exquisite music, the accompanying glittering dresses and gorgeous decorations, and the wanton ballet with which the entertainments are concluded. These attractions, combined with the charm which John Bull invariably discovers in every thing foreign and expensive in the arts, has secured them a degree of success which works of far higher pretension, and addressed more to the mind than to the senses, have often failed to obtain.

One of the admirers of the Italian Opera, in the course of his defence of this species of amusement, makes the following observation :

"People, it is said, do not murder each other in duett, nor do they swoon in cadenza; it is therefore absurd to make so preposterous an

VOL. II.

application of an art which professes to imitate nature! In this objection the distinction betweeen physical and artificial imitation is lost sight of. The same objection might with equal justice be offered to the poetry of Homer, the landscapes of Claude, or the Venus de Medicis, none of which are to be found in nature."

I consider this objection, as far as the Opera alone is concerned, to be extremely well founded. When a man, supposed to be worked up, like Shakespeare's Moor, for example, into a terrible tempest of jealousy and rage, turns towards the audience, and modulates the whirlwind of his passion into a series of melodious quavers, he presents such an abrupt contrast between the sublime and the ridiculous, that a severer shock to reason and common sense cannot easily be conceived. The dramatic illusion is at once destroyed. It is impossible for the imagination to support it. The ear may continue to be gratified, but not the mind. In Shakespeare's dramas, on the other hand, an actor may represent nature to the life. If he is told of some hideous calamity, he is either struck mute with horror, or he gives vent to his agony in some brief and passionate exclamation. But in the Italian Opera he would be as musical as a dying swan. Regarding the Opera only as a species of drama, its absurdities are so monstrous that it seems idle to explain them. What should we think of poor old Lear lifting his dim, discrowned head against the pitiless storm, less unkind than his daughters, and singing an elaborate composition of Rossini's, accompanied by a crowded orchestra? We are to recollect also how rarely the sense, when there happens to be any, is scrupulously attended to by the musical composer. The pleasantry of Addison on this subject may be applied, to most of the operas of the present day. "I have known," says he, "the word and' pursued through the whole gamut, have been entertained with many a melodious the,' and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon 'then,' 'for,' and 'from,' to the eternal honour of our English particles."

The remark that the objection to the Opera, of a want of nature, may be offered with equal justice to "the poetry of Homer, the landscapes of Claude, or the Venus de Medicis," is not correct. They are specimens of perfect art; and the perfection of art is nature. The supposition that objects of high art are not in nature, is a great mistake. It is absurd to suppose that the characters of a drama or an heroic poem are out of nature, merely because we have no historical evidence of their existence, or because we may happen to have met with no persons in real life who are in all respects their perfect counterparts. The great artist, whether in poetry, or painting, or sculpture, copies general and not individual nature. The portrait of Othello is not that of an individual; it is the representation of human nature under the influence of a powerful passion. We do not ask whether Claude's pictures literally represent some particular landscapes, but whether they illustrate or correspond with that general idea which external nature leaves upon the mind. So it is with the Medicean Venus. It would be ridiculous to conclude that it is impossible such a work could be true to nature, because it was not copied from an individual model. As the whole civilized world is enchanted with that matchless statue, it may be taken as a proof that its consistency with our notions of perfect female beauty is the cause of such universal admiration; and that these notions are in some way or other derived from nature, will hardly be disputed.

We arrive at truth through the medium of the imagination. If a painter were to represent things as they really are, he would represent them falsely. This is no paradox; though it may sound like one. He would throw aside, for instance, the illusions of perspective, and bring out distant objects as largely and distinctly as the nearest. All objects are represented by the imitative arts, not by rule and measurement-not as they really are-not even as they appear to the ignorant and the dull, but as