Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

other he had just the air, the manner, the appearance, I had prepared myself to look for in him, and there was an evident, a striking superiority in his demeanor, his eye, his motions, that announced him no

common man.

"I could not get at Miss Palmer, to satisfy my doubts, and we were soon called down stairs to dinner. Sir Joshua and the unknown stopped to speak with one another upon the stairs; and, when they followed us, Sir Joshua, in taking his place at the table, asked me to sit next to him; I willingly complied. And then,' he added, 'Mr. Burke shall sit on the other side of you.'

Oh, no, indeed!' cried Miss Georgiana, who had also placed herself next Sir Joshua; I won't consent to that; Mr. Burke must sit next me; I won't agree to part with him. Pray, come and sit down quiet, Mr. Burke."

"Mr. Burke,-for him it was,-smiled and obeyed.

"I only meant,' said Sir Joshua, to have made my peace with Mr. Burke, by giving him that place, because he has been scolding me for not introducing him to Miss Burney. However, I must do it Mr. Burke-Miss Burney!' "We both half rose, and Mr. Burke said,-

now;

"I have been complaining to Sir Joshua that he left me wholly to my own sagacity; however, it did not here deceive me.' "Oh dear, then,' said Miss Georgiana, looking a little consternated, perhaps you won't thank me for calling you to this place?'

"Nothing was said, and so we all began dinner, young Burke making himself my next neighbor.

"Captain Phillips knows Mr. Burke. Has he or has he not told you how delightful a creature he is? If he has not, pray, in my name, abuse him without mercy; if he has, pray ask if he will subscribe to my account of him, which herewith shall follow.

"He is tall, his figure is noble, his air commanding, his address graceful; his voice is clear, penetrating, sonorous, and powerful; his language is copious, various, and eloquent; his manners are attractive, his conversation is delightful.

"What says Captain Phillips? Have I chanced to see him in his happiest hour? or is he all this in common? Since we lost Garrick, I have seen nobody so enchanting.

"I can give you, however, very little of what was said, for the conversation was not suivie, Mr. Burke darting from subject to subject with as much rapidity as entertainment. Neither is the charm of his

discourse more in the matter than the manner; all, therefore, that is related from him loses half its effect in not being related by him."

And the following letter among Madame d'Arblay's papers must be an autograph worth preserving to her family:

"From the Right Hon. Edmund Burke to Miss F. Burney.

[ocr errors]

"Madam,-I should feel exceedingly to blame if I could refuse to myself the natural satisfaction, and to you the just but poor return, of my best thanks for the very great instruction and entertainment I have received from the new present you have bestowed on the public. There are few -I believe I may say fairly there are none at all-that will not find themselves better informed concerning human nature, and their stock of observation enriched, by reading your Cecilia.' They certainly will, let their experience in life and manners be what it may. The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth. You have crowded into a few small volumes an incredible variety of characters; most of them well planned, well supported, and well contrasted with each other. If there be any fault in this respect, it is one in which you are in no great danger of being imitated. Justly as your characters are drawn, perhaps they are too numerous. But I beg pardon; I fear it is quite in vain to preach economy to those who are come young to excessive and sudden opulence.

"I might trespass on your delicacy if I should fill my letter to you with what I fill my conversation to others. I should be troublesome to you alone if I should tell you all I feel and think on the natural vein of humor, the tender pathetic, the comprehensive and noble moral, and the sagacious observation that appear quite throughout that extraordinary performance.

"In an age distinguished by producing extraordinary women, I hardly dare to tell you where my opinion would place you amongst them. I respect your modesty, that will not endure the commendations which your merit forces from everybody.

"I have the honor to be, with great gratitude, respect, and esteem, Madam, "Your most obedient and most humble Servant,

"EDM. BURKE,

"Whitehall, July 29, 1782.

"My best compliments and congratula

tions to Dr. Burney on the great honor Walpole, to whom she evidently did acquired to his family." not "cotton very closely :

At a party at a Miss Monckton's, the whole of which is sketched off with great vivacity, Mrs. Siddons is introduced:

"I was extremely happy to have my dear father with me at Miss Monckton's. We found Mrs. Siddons, the actress, there. She is a woman of excellent character, and, therefore, I am very glad she is thus patronised, since Mrs. Abington, and so many frail fair ones, have been thus noticed by the great. She behaved with great propriety; very calm, modest, quiet, and unaffected. She has a very fine countenance, and her eyes look both intelligent and soft. She has, however, a steadiness in her manner and deportment by no means engaging. Mrs. Thrale, who was there, said, Why, this is a leaden goddess we are all worshipping! however, we shall soon gild it." "

She does not seem to have been a great favorite with Dr. Johnson, who thus makes, however, a very pretty speech to Miss Burney herself :-

"Mr. Burke then went to some other party, and Mr. Swinerton took his place, with whom I had a dawdling conversation upon dawdling subjects; and I was not a little enlivened, upon his quitting the chair, to have it filled by Mr. Metcalf, who, with much satire, but much entertainment, kept chattering with me till Dr. Johnson found me out, and brought a chair opposite to me.

"Do you laugh, my Susan, or cry at your F. B.'s honors ?

666

"So,' said he to Mr. Metcalf, it is you, is it, that are engrossing her thus ? "He's jealous,' said Mr. Metcalf, drily.

"How these people talk of Mrs. Siddons!' said the Doctor. 'I came hither in full expectation of hearing no name but the name I love and pant to hear,-when from one corner to another they are talking of that jade Mrs. Siddons! till, at last wearied out, I went yonder into a corner, and repeated to myself, Burney! Burney! Burney! Burney!'

"Ay, sir,' said Mr. Metcalf, 'you should have carved it upon the trees.' "Sir, had there been any trees, so I should; but being none, I was content to carve it upon my heart.'

[ocr errors]

"I went to Mrs. Vesey's in the evening, for I had promised to meet at her house Mrs. Garrick, who came to town that day from Hampton. I found her and Miss More, and Lady Claremont, and Horace Walpole, Mr. Pepys and Miss G.; no one else.

"Mrs. Garrick was very kind to me, and invited me much to Hampton. Mrs. Vesey would make me sit by Horace Walpole: he was very entertaining. I never heard him talk much before; but I was seized with a panic upon finding he had an inclination to talk with me, and as soon as I could I changed my place. He was too well-bred to force himself upon me, and finding I shied, he left me alone. I was very sociable, however, with Mrs. Garrick."

And on another occasion she thus hits him off with fine and just point:

"In the evening, indeed, came in Mr. Walpole, gay, though caustic; polite, though sneering; and entertainingly epigrammatical. I like and admire, but I could not love, nor trust him."

Miss Burney gives a great deal of detail of the life and talk of the King and Queen-a very kind, good-natured, and worthy old couple, no doubt. The former's opinion about Shakspeare is as much, however, as our readers will

care to see :

"Was there ever,' cried he, 'such stuff as great part of Shakspeare? only one must not say so! But what think you ?What ?-Is there not sad stuff?—What? -what?'

"Yes, indeed, I think so, sir, though mixed with such excellences, that'

"O!' cried he, laughing good-humoredly, I know it is not to be said! but it's true. Only it's Shakspeare, and nobody dare abuse him.'

"Then he enumerated many of the characters and parts of plays that he objected to; and when he had run them over, finished with again laughing, and exclaiming,

"But one should be stoned for saying

[ocr errors]

We will make but one more extract -for the sake of this saucy Mr. Turbulent, who certainly wrote no mis

She does not say much of Horace nomer when he signed his name, and

who was one of the King's equerries. Occurring as it does in the midst of her life at court, where all is usually a most tiresome monotony of homage and reverence toward all the members of the royal family, it is quite refreshing. It was certainly, under the circumstances, a flight of impudence approaching the sublime:

"With all the various humors in which I had already seen Mr. Turbulent, he gave me this evening a surprise, by his behavior to one of the princesses, nearly the same that I had experienced from him myself. The Princess Augusta came, during coffee, for a knotting shuttle of the Queen's. While she was speaking to me, he stood behind and exclaimed, à demi voix, as if to himself, Comme elle est jolie ce soir, son Allesse Royale! And then, seeing her blush extremely, he clasped his hands, in high pretended confusion, and hiding his head, called out, "Que ferai-je ? The

Princess has heard me !'

"Pray, Mr. Turbulent,' cried she hastily, what play are you to read tonight?'

"You shall choose, ma'am; either La Coquette Corrigée or- [he named another I have forgotten.]

"O no!' cried she, that last is shocking! don't let me hear that!'

"I understand you, ma'am. You fix, then, upon La Coquette ? La Coquette is your Royal Highness's taste?'

"No, indeed, I am sure I did not say

that.'

"Yes, ma'am, by implication. And, certainly, therefore, I will read it, to please your Royal Highness!'

"No, pray don't; for I like none of them!'

"None of them, ma'am?' "No, none;-no French plays at all !'

"And away she was running, with a droll air, that acknowledged she had said something to provoke him.

"This is a declaration, ma'am, I must beg you to explain!' cried he, gliding adroitly between the Princess and the door, and shutting it with his back.

666

No, no, I can't explain it ; so pray, Mr. Turbulent, do open the door.' "Not for the world, ma'am, with such a stain uncleared upon your Royal Highness's taste and feeling !

"She told him she positively could not stay, and begged him to let her pass instantly.

"But he would hear her no more than he has heard me, protesting he was too much shocked for her to suffer her to depart without clearing her own credit!

"He conquered at last, and thus forced to speak, she turned round to us and said, Well-if I must then, I will appeal to these ladies, who understand such things far better than I do, and ask them if it is not true about these French plays, that they are all so like one to another, that to hear them in this manner every night is enough to tire one?'

"Pray, then, madam,' cried he, if French plays have the misfortune to displease you, what National plays have the honor of your preference ?

"I saw he meant something that she understood better than me, for she blushed again, and called out Pray, open the door at once! I can stay no longer; do let me go, Mr. Turbulent.'

"Not till you have answered that question, ma'am! what Country has plays to your Royal Highness's taste ?'

"Miss Burney,' cried she impatiently, yet laughing, 'pray do you take him away! Pull him!'

"He bowed to me very invitingly for the office; but I frankly answered her, 'Indeed, ma'am, I dare not undertake him! I cannot manage him at all!'

"The Country! the Country! Princess Augusta! name the happy Country! was all she could gain.

"Order him away, Miss Burney,' cried she 'tis your room: order him away from the door."

"Name it, ma'am, name it!' exclaimed he; name but the chosen nation !

"And then, fixing her with the most

provoking eyes, Est-ce la Danemarc ?'

he cried.

·

"She colored violently, and quite angry with him, called out, Mr.Turbulent, how can you be such a fool ?'

"And now I found .... the Prince Royal of Denmark was in his meaning, and in her understanding!

"He bowed to the ground in gratitude for the term fool, but added with pretended submission to her will, Very well, ma'am, s'il ne faut lire que les comédies Danoises."

[ocr errors]

"Do let me go!' cried she, seriously ;— and then he made way, with a profound bow as she passed, saying, Very well, ma'am, La Coquette, then? your Royal Highness chooses La Coquette Corrigée ?'

"Corrigée? That never was done!' cried she, with all her sweet good-humor, the moment she got out, and off she ran, like lightning, to the Queen's apartments.

"What say you to Mr. Turbulent now? "For my part I was greatly surprised. I had not imagined any man, but the King or Prince of Wales, had ever ventured at a badinage of this sort with any of the Princesses; nor do I suppose any other man ever did. Mr. Turbulent is so great

a favorite with all the Royal Family, that he safely ventures upon whatever he pleases, and doubtless they find, in his courage and his rhodomontading, a novelty extremely amusing to them, or they would not fail to bring about a change."

We must here take our leave of the very entertaining gossip who has led us into the midst of so much distinguished and agreeable company. She herself appears throughout in a very amiable light-exhibiting so much ingenuousness, modesty, playfulness, delicacy, and dignity-so much free dom from vanity and egotism at the very time when diarizing about her own adventures and in the first person singular-and so much warmth of feeling and sweet familiar fondness toward her own family and friends, combined with rectitude of principle, and prudence and propriety of conduct-the whole exhibited on the face of these records of herself with the most innocent unconsciousness, and absence of all desire or thought of effect-that you cannot help liking herself best of all the persons on her pages, and feeling anxious to welcome the appearance of

the promised continuation of her Diary. Few of her readers will wonder that old Johnson could not bear to let her go a moment out of his sight when in her vicinity, and none, we think, refuse to ratify and adopt his favorite mode of speaking of her, as "dear little Burney." In one of his admirable letters to her, her old friend Mr. Crisp, before mentioned, after reproaching her for a long lapse of time without the receipt of one of her journalizing letters-thus prophesies, what no doubt proved true to herself, as we fully vouch for the truth of the concluding words as applicable to us:-"If you answer me you have not continued it, you are unpardonable, and I advise you to set about it immediately, as well as you can, while any traces of it rest in your memory. It will one day be the delight of your old age-it will call back your youth, your spirits, your friends, whom you formerly loved, and who loved you, (at that time, also, probably, long gone off the stage,) and lastly, when your own scene is closed, remain a valuable treasure to those that come after you."

THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA.*

MR. GRISWOLD has "done the state some service" in the preparation of this elegant volume; and there is probably no other man who could have done the same. In no other repository, we believe, than on his shelves, is to be found so complete a collection of all the printed records of American verse, from its earliest quaint rhymings to its latest strains whose echoes may be yet lingering on the ear. In no other repository than in the faithful memory where an enthusiastic industry has stored it, is to be found such a fund of knowledge, at once extensive and minute, respecting its authors, great and small, their histories, works, and personal and poetical characters. It is well, too, that Mr. Griswold, thus pos

sessed of so rich an accumulation of materials, and well qualified in point of cultivated literary taste to digest and use them, should have performed this task,-for it may well be questioned whether any other individual than our insatiate helluo would ever have dared to venture upon, would ever have been able to persevere through it. Let the reader expand his imagination to a full conception of its extent and nature. In the body of the book there are between ninety and a hundred of the "Poets of America" from whose writings he has made selections, in some cases pretty copious, and upon whom he passes successively his sentence of critical judgment, implying a careful familiarity with all they have

The Poets and Poetry of America. By Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Philadelphia: Royal 8vo. pp. 468. Carey & Hart: 1842.

[blocks in formation]

written! God forbid that we should be competent, as an appellate court of review, in all these cases to revise his decrees and criticise his criticisms!since the possession of the proper degree of acquaintance with his subjects would imply the devotion of so large a part of the brief span of human life to their study, as must needs have left but slender opportunity for the cultivation of any other. We therefore make the confession without shame-nay, with satisfaction—that, with respect to not a few of them, till we saw them here arrayed in regimental line, we were innocent as the unborn child, not only of their "Poetry," but of the fame, yea, even of the very names, of the "Poets" now for the first time introduced to us. The more, then, the praise to Mr. Griswold, whose antiquarian ardor, and spirit of avaricious accumulation in the way of poetical treasure--disdaining not to gather coppers to add to the store already rich with ingots-have stimulated and sustained him through so tedious a toil-"Multa tulit, fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit !"

In justice to our indefatigable collector, we will give the muster-roll of this regimental array he has thus recruited, and which it is ours to review. Omitting all the ante-revolutionary names which he enumerates in the Historical Introduction prefixed to the work, we take from Mr. Griswold's table of contents the following list of those whom he admits to rank under the designation attached to the vol

ume:

Philip Freneau, John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, Richard Alsop, St. John Honeywood, William Cliffton, Robert Treat Paine, Washington Allston, James Kirke Paulding, Levi Frisbie, John Pierpont, Andrews Norton, Richard H. Dana, Richard Henry Wilde, James A. Hillhouse, Charles Sprague, Hannah F. Gould, Carlos Wilcox, Henry Ware, Jr., William Cullen Bryant, John Neil, Joseph Rodman Drake, Maria Brooks, James Gates Percival, Fitz-Greene Halleck, John G. C. Brainard, Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Isaac Clason, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, George Washington Doane, William B. O. Peabody, Robert C. Sands, Grenville Mellen, George Hill, James G. Brooks, Albert G. Greene, William Leggett, Edward C. Pinckney, Ralph

Waldo Emerson, Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, Rufus Dawes, Edmund D. Griffin, J. H. Bright, George D. Prentice, William Croswell, Walter Colton, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Mrs. Seba Smith, N. P. Willis, Edward Sanford, J. O. Rockwell, Thomas Ward, John H. Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Gilmore Simms, George Lunt, Jonathan Lawrence, Elizabeth Hall, Emma C. Embury, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Albert Pike, Park Benjamin, Willis Gaylord Clark, William D. Gallagher, James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth F. Ellett, James Aldrich, Anna Peyre Dinnies, Edgar A. Poe, Isaac M'Lellan, Jr., Jones Very, Alfred B. Street, William H. Burleigh, William Jewett Pabodie, Louis Legrand Noble, C. P. Cranch, Henry Theodore Tuckerman, Epes Sargeant, Lucy Hooper, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, James Russell Lowell, Amelia B. Welby, Lucretia and Margaret Davidson-ninety-two, all told!

He then spreads a sort of second table for the servants, as it were-bundling up together a considerable number of fugitive productions, under the general title of "Poems by Various Authors,"

luminaries of a lesser brilliancy, yet not wholly unworthy of the privilege of giving a single modest twinkle or two in an Appendix. We must confess that in the descending scale of our measurement of poetic genius, as we behold it become "fine by degrees and beautifully less," we do not find it easy to discern the rule or principle of discrimination by which Mr. Griswold has been guided, in distributing the several names on the one side or the other of this broad line of distinction. There are certainly several among the more "common sort," of the Appendix, who would be justly entitled to contest the right of some of the others to the seats above the dais which Mr. Griswold, in the omnipotence of editorial discretion, has seen fit to assign them. Were we constituted the judges of such a new election case, we frankly confess that we should be sorely puzzled in some instances how to decide-though we fear we should have to take refuge under the example of some of the late election committees in Parliament, who were compelled to oust the sitting members-but at the same time to declare the claimants equally unworthy of the seats. The following is the list

« AnteriorContinuar »