Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Rural Sketches, with twenty-three illustrations, was published in London by Van Voorst in 1839. We wish that we had room

recollect the times you have so often seen me come up from the valley; raise your eyes to the churchyard which contains my grave; and by the light of the departing sun, see how the evening breeze waves over the high grass which grows over me! I was calm when I began my letter; but the recollection of these scenes makes me weep like a child."

A word or two about another translation. Leigh Hunt in the Indicator, in some remarks on Lazarillo de Tormes, observes that the English version of the work is done with great tact and spirit, he knows not by whom, but that it is worthy of De Foe. Lazarillo serves a blind beggar, who, to keep his mug of common Spanish wine safe from the inroads of Lazarillo, holds it in his own hands; but this avails him nothing, for the cunning Lazarillo contrives to suck out some with a reed; the beggar then, to prevent this, places his hand over it. Upon this his antagonist makes a hole near the bottom of the mug, and fills it up with wax, and then taps it gently when he feels thirsty. Lazarillo tells his adventures himself.

ENGLISH VERSION.

"You won't accuse me any more I hope (cried I) of drinking your wine, after all the fine precautions you have taken to prevent it. To that he said not a word; but feeling all about the pot, he at last unluckily discovered the hole, which cunningly dissembling at the time, he let me alone till next day at dinner, not dreaming, God knows, of the old man's malicious intention, but getting in between his legs, according to my wonted custom, receiving into my mouth the distilling dew, and pleasing myself with the success of my own ingenuity, my eyes upward, but half shut, the furious tyrant taking up the hard but sweet pot with both his hands flung it down again with all his force upon my face; by the violence of which blow, imagining the house had fallen upon my head, I lay sprawling without any sentiment or judgment, my forehead, nose and mouth gushing out with blood, and the latter full of broken teeth and broken pieces of the can."

We think that the above translation is from the French. We have an old translation with the title page as follows: "Lazarillo de Tormes. Traduction Nouvelle. A Paris, chez Claude Barbin au Palais, sur le Perron de la sainte Chapelle. M.D.C.L.XXVIII. Avec Privilege due Roy." "Vous ne m'accuserés pas maintenant de vous avoir bû vostre vin, lui desois-je. Vous y avés mis bon ordre, Dieu merci. Il ne me dit mot, mais il tourna tant le pot de tous côtés il le tastonna si bien par tout, qu'il trouva malheureusement le trou. Il n'en fit pas semblant sur l'heure: mais le lendemain sans le porter plus loin, comme j'eus ainsté

mon pot, ne pensant à rien moins qu'à ce que le malicieux aveugle me gardoit, ie me mis entre ses jambes comme j'avois accoustumé. Tandis que ie beuvois, le visage en haut, et les yeux à demi fermés, l'aveugle enragé prit son tems pour se vanger de moi, et levant à deux mains ce doux et cruel pot de terre, il me le déchargea sur le visage de toute sa force. En vérité le pauvre Lazare, qui ne s'y attendoit pas, et que le plaisir de boire tenoit comme ravi, s'imagina dans ce moment que le plancher lui tomboit sur le tête. Le coup de pot fut si bien

assené, que j'en perdis connoissance: le pot se mit en mille pièces; il m'en entra quelquesunes bien avant dans le visage, qui me le balafrèrent en plusieurs endroits, et me cassèrent les dents, qui me manquent encore auiourd'hui."

to make several extracts, but must content ourselves with one. In commenting on Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, in a most genial manner, he makes use of the following remarks, which form a just criticism on his own writings:

"There is a green look about his pages; he carries with him the true aroma of the green forests; his lines are mottled with rich mosses, and there is a gnarled ruggedness upon the stems of his trees. His waters have a fresh look and a flashing sound about them, and you feel the fresh air play around you while you read. His birds are the free denizens of the fields, and they send their songs so life-like through the covert that their music rings upon the ear, and you are carried away with their sweet pipings. He heard the sky-lark sing in the blue dome of heaven before he transferred its warblings to his pages, and inhaled the perfume of the flowers he described; the roaring of the trees was to him an old familiar sound; his soul was a rich storehouse for all that is beautiful in Nature."

We find a pleasantly written account of Miller in a late English work, and transcribe it for the gratification of the reader :—

"I had read with considerable interest a work entitled, 'A Day in the Woods,' by Thomas Miller, 'basket-maker,' and felt not a little delighted with his vivid and graphic descriptions of rural and forest scenery. Nothing so natural and fresh had appeared in our literature. Even Bloomfield failed to convey so happy an idea of country life as Miller. One morning I inquired his address, and determined to call on Mr. Miller, trusting to the frankness and amiability which pervaded every page of his book, for his excuse of my introducing myself to him. I had a long walk down St. George's road, Southwark, on a dismal, drizzling November day--and that was no joke, as any one familiar with a foggy day, at that time of the year, in London, can testify. After much inquiry I found out Elliot's Row, to which place I had been directed, and when I had ascertained the of houses in one of group which the poet resided, I had great difficulty in finding out the exact dwelling. The very people who lived next door to Miller did not know of such a person-although half of literary London was ringing with his praises, and crying him up as a newly found genius. Such is fame in the mighty metropolis!

"At length, on inquiring at an humble, but neat looking domicile, I was told by an interesting looking little girl, that her father (the poet) resided there. I entered, asked to see him, and presently he came down stairs. I introduced myself, told him I had read his works, which had delighted me by their truthfulness, and much desired to see him before I left town. He very kindly shook me by the hand, and after some agreeable chat, we made an appointment to dine with each other, at a chop house in the Strand, the next day. The story of his life which he told me on the latter occasion was to the following effect:

|

found him out after much labor, and asked him to write a poem for the forthcoming volume of the Offering. Miller told me that he was so poor then that he had not pen, ink or paper; so he got some whitey brown paper, in which sugar had been wrapped, mixed up some soot with water for his ink, and then sat down-the back of a bellows serving for a desk-and wrote his well-known lines on an "Old Fountain." These beautiful verses being completed, he sealed his letter with some moistened bread for a wafer and forwarded them, with many hopes and fears, to the editor. They were immediately accepted, and Mr. Harrison forwarded the poet two guineas for them. I never had been so rich before in my life,' said the basket-maker to me. 'I fancied some one might hear of my fortune and try to rob me of it; so, at night, I barred the door and went to bed, but did not sleep all night from delight and fear.' Miller still, to his honor, continued the certain occupation of basket-making, but he was noticed by many-among others, by Lady Blessington, who sent for him, recommended his book, and did him substantial service. Often,' said Miller, have I been sitting in Lady Blessington's splendid drawing-room in the morning, talking and laughing as familiarly as in the old house at home, and, on the same even

"He was born on the borders of Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood and his merry men flourished in times of old. From childhood (he was then about five or six and twenty) he had loved to wander in the green woods and lanes, and unconsciously his poetic sensibilities were thus fostered. His station in life was very humble, and at an early age he learned basketmaking, by which occupation he earned a bare subsistence. He married early, and the increasing wants of a family led him to try the experiment of publishing some poems and sketches, but owing to want of patronage, no benefit resulted to him. He at last determined to go to Londonthat fancied paradise of young authors-ing, I might have been seen standing on that great reservoir of talent-too often the grave of genius. Thither he went, leaving for the present his family behind, and, alighting from the stage-coach, found himself in the Strand-a stranger among thousands, with just seven shillings and sixpence in his pocket. He soon made the melancholy discovery that a stranger Jordan took him by the hand, and in London, however great may be his tal- he contributed a good deal to the Literary ents, stands but a poor chance of getting Gazette. He is, at the time I write, himon without the assistance of some helping self a publisher in Newgate street, London. hand; so, to keep body and soul together, Miller is rather below the middle height, he set to work making baskets. In this his face is round and rosy looking, and he occupation he continued some time, occa- wears a profusion of light hair. He has a sionally sending some little contribution to strong Nottinghamshire dialect, and posthe periodicals. At length, fortune smiled sesses little or none of the awkwardness of on her patient wooer. One day, while he a countryman." was engaged in bending osiers, he was surprised by a visit from Mr. W. H. Harrison, Editor of the Friendship's Offering, an English Annual. That gentleman had seen one or two pieces of Miller's, and had been much struck with their originality. He

Westminster bridge, between an applevender and a baked-potato merchant, vending my baskets.' Miller now tried his hand at a novel, Royston Gower, which succecded well, and then another, Fair Rosamond. He read diligently at the British Museum, and was perseveringly industri

ous.

In a future number we shall have something to say of Royston Gower, Henry II., Godfrey Malvern, Jane Grey, etc.--Reader, we have endeavored to give thee some idea (however faint) of the genius of Thomas Miller. We think that no one has written

better on rural life and customs, and it was | They cause us to love the lasting and true,

not till lately, with but few exceptions, that
this class of writings has been much culti
vated. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, and
Walton's Angler, had much of the spirit of
the green fields and woods. Then we had
Thomson, Cowper, Burns, and Words-
worth, and Keats. Leigh Hunt in all his
books, especially "The Months," Miss
Mitford's "Our Village," and "Belford
Regis," come over the mind like summer
air filled with perfume, and the sweet
music of country sounds gladdening to
the heart and filled with a cordial and
cheerful spirit. One can scarcely judge
of the influence authors like these exercise
with their healthy, sweet, and innocent
strains. They see "religious meanings
in the forms of nature,"

"Or in verse and music dress
Tales of rustic happiness."

COLERIDGE.

in preference to that which is fleeting and
false. They walk the fields musing praise,
and find food for gratitude and admiration,
from "the cedar to the hyssop on the
wall." Their love is sincere. "This green
flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the
mountains, rivers, many surrounding seas;
that great, deep sea of azure that swims
overhead, the winds sweeping through it
-the black cloud fashioning itself togeth-
er-now pouring out fire, now hail and
rain," have from boyhood been viewed by
Thomas Miller with wonder and delight,
and deeply has he studied them. Many
of the oppressions of the English law he
has attacked with "a free and wholesome
sharpness," and his bold and independent
nature shines brightly through all his
writings. He is a noble instructor

"In the great church of Nature
Where God himself is Priest."

DE BENEFICIIS.

SCIENCE of a generous mind,
Precious use in thee I find:
Use, to show what honor feels,
And to hide what love conceals;
Use, to show the charm of living
And the joy of boundless giving,
Leaving givers doubly blest,
And receivers unoppressed;
Opening fountains in the heart,
Healing anger's jealous smart.
Let me, though in humble speech,
Thy refined maxims teach.

Honor's every gift should be
Proof of Love's equality.-
Haughty givers most oppress

When they most intend to bless,——

Vested gifts are made in vain,

They reap a curse who give to gain.—

Spirits grave and bosoms kind

Greatest joy in giving find,

When the gift is heart, or mind.

These thy founded maxims be,
Test of Love's equality.

G. F. D.

COLONEL SETH POMEROY.

THE Scenes and actors in the war of our Revolution have been familiar to us from boyhood. Bunker Hill, Lexington, Saratoga, and Valley Forge, are names which convey distinct ideas to us of the heroic achievements of our immediate ancestors; while Gates, Schuyler, Putnam, Greene, and a host of others no less patriotic, are well known to us as household friends. We have been acquainted with them long; we have seen the stage upon which they acted their parts nobly; we ourselves, in the sense that they lived for posterity, have witnessed the characters which they assumed, and have pronounced our verdict upon them. Though much is still to be written, and doubtless well written, of the war of our Revolution, and of those who achieved our independence, the day will never come in which we or our children will better know those great souls, or more truly honor their imperishable renown.

But there are other pages of our history with which we are less acquainted. Back of those days when we first emerged into the world of nations, while we were but "in the gristle of our youth," and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood, we, of the present age, seldom look. Content that we achieved all that we demanded when the days of our majority came, and that not even the strength or discipline of our natural mother could hold us in dishonorable tutelage, we forget the early culture which fitted us for mature action, and the occasions which opened to us in our minority the secret of our strength. We honor those who made us freemen, but forget those who taught us to be men. Like the Olympian victor, we count our years from the first crown we won, overlooking those which witnessed the frequent defeats, the constant struggles, the undismayed reverses, and the unmitigated toil, which prepared us for the conflict, and finally gave us the victory.

The history of New England, in the mind of the great mass of the present generation, dates little farther back than

the days of the opposition to the Stamp Act; and yet, for long years prior to that, the character of her population was developing, under the wise but severe dispensation of an overruling Providence, to that very point when it would successfully resist that tyrannous enactment. The threeand-thirty years which preceded the outbreak of 1774, were occupied by a generation worthy to be the fathers of those who achieved our independence. They were the years of toil, of suffering, of undismayed effort, of manly counsel, and fervent prayer, which made the men of the Revolution what they were. Patiently, but with a firm resolution, ever planting itself deeper in the soul, "the fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth were set on edge." And it was not the Stamp Act, nor the Boston Port Bill, nor the levies of foreign troops, nor the haughty bearing of colonial governors, but the long and steady purpose of the British Parliament, manifested in the oppressive measures of forty years, which gave strength to the arm and indomitable purpose to the effort, which contended for and won our independence.

From among these fathers of the Revolution, the names of a few have descended to our own day, while those of others, no less true-hearted, earnest and patriotic, have been well nigh lost in the crowded current of subsequeut events. Of these latter, Col. Seth Pomeroy, whose name stands at the head of this article, was no mean representative. Fortuitously gaining possession of his manuscript writings, a very small portion of which have ever seen the light, it has appeared to us not undesirable to select a few of such as elucidate contemporaneous and doubtful events, and introducing them by a slight notice of the writer, and the scenes which they chronicle, to usher them in this way before the public.

Col. Pomeroy was a native and a resident of Northampton, in Massachusetts Bay. He was descended from one of the

oldest families in the colony, being of the fourth generation from Eltweed Pomeroy, the grand progenitor of all the Pomeroys in the United States, who, emigrating to this country from Devonshire in the year 1633, first settled in Dorchester, near Boston, and afterwards removed to the banks of Connecticut river. This Eltweed is represented to have been a man of good family, tracing his pedigree back to Sir Ralph de Pomeroy, a favorite knight of William of Normandy, whom he accompanied into England, acting a conspicuous part in the battle of Hastings, and afterwards building a castle called Berry Pomeroy, still in preservation, upon the grants which he received from the crown. Disgusted with the tyranny of the Stuarts and Archbishop Laud, and being a man of liberal and independent mind, Eltweed Pomeroy, accompanied by a large number of emigrants, mostly men of good circumstances and in respectable standing, determined to remove to America. Like most of the Dissenters of that age, he was a mechanic, having for many years carried on the business of making guns to a large extent, and with much reputation. Upon sailing for America, he closed his business, and selling the greater portion of his stock in trade, brought with him only his tools. After a residence of several years in Windsor, Ct., the province of Massachusetts Bay offered him a grant of one thousand acres of land on the Connecticut, on the condition of his establishing his business as a gunsmith within the bounds of the province.

He did so; and it is a curious fact, that, among the seven generations which have succeeded him, there has been lacking at no time, in the direct male branch of descent, a follower of the original trade. The only article of the tools of the old progenitor of the family, which he brought from England, known to be still in existence, is the original anvil, now in the possession of Lemuel Pomeroy, Esq., of Pittsfield, himself, for more than thirty years, a large contractor with the United States for government arms.

Upon the banks of the beautiful Connecticut, in the midst of those broad intervales which, sweeping from the base of Mount Holyoke, spread themselves towards the north and the south in green esplanades, surrounded by a pure, unmixed,

and rigid, puritanic population, whose faith knew no relaxation from the most literal injunctions of the Mosaic law, was the birthplace and home of Col. Seth Pomeroy. From the time of his birth, on the 20th of May, A. D. 1706, until his death, on the 19th of February in 1777, his family was known and respected throughout the colony; and, during a full half of that eighteenth century, no man stood higher in the love, and honor, and esteem of the hardy population of western Massachusetts than he did.

His boyhood and youth, with the intervals of a few weeks of schooling, in the phrase of the day, every winter, without which the laws of the Puritans allowed no boy to grow to manhood, were spent in learning the trade of his fathers. He afterwards became so thorough a workman in the making of guns, that the Indians of the Five Nations and of the Canadas sent deputations with their furs, annually, for many years to Northampton to exchange them for his rifles. Indeed, he himself was unexcelled as a certain shot, and in his younger days was known to return from his farm, near the foot of Mount Tom, some five or six miles from Northampton, with a deer, a bear, and a wolf, as the result of a single day's sporting. He continued the manufacture of guns, notwithstanding his frequent and long absences from home in the service of th province, for many years, employing many hands, and meeting most of the home demand for muskets from his own works.

Col. Pomeroy was married to Mary Hunt of Northampton, on the 14th December, 1732. From this time, or soon after this, he was largely employed in the public service. At that early day, while the western section of Massachusetts was

infested by tribes of roving Indians, and the axe of the pioneer had not yet been heard in the upper valley of the Housatonic, no small portion of the public money, and of the forces at its command, were employed in opening roads through the western frontier to Albany, and in erecting forts on the north-western line of the province. Probably no man in New England was better fitted to superintend duties like these, and no man of that day certainly had more to do with them. To his sagacity, prudence and foresight, accompanied with

« AnteriorContinuar »