Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett Part 25

25 Haply some h.o.a.ry-headed swain may say, 'Oft have we seen him, at the peep of dawn, Brus.h.i.+ng with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

26 'There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic root so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

27 'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

28 'One morn I miss'd him on the accustom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came, nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:

29 'The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway-path we saw him borne: Approach, and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn:'[2]

THE EPITAPH.

30 Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown: Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

31 Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery all he had--a tear; He gain'd from Heaven--'twas all he wish'd--a friend.

32 No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his G.o.d.

[Footnote 1: This part of the elegy differs from the first copy. The following stanza was excluded with the other alterations:--

Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around, Bids every fierce tumultuous pa.s.sion cease, In still small accents whispering from the ground A grateful earnest of eternal peace. ]

[Footnote 2: In early editions, the following stanza occurred:--

There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground. ]

EPITAPH ON MRS JANE CLARKE.[1]

Lo! where this silent marble weeps, A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps; A heart, within whose sacred cell The peaceful Virtues loved to dwell: Affection warm, and faith sincere, And soft humanity were there.

In agony, in death resign'd, She felt the wound she left behind.

Her infant image here below Sits smiling on a father's woe: Whom what awaits while yet he strays Along the lonely vale of days?

A pang, to secret sorrow dear, A sigh, an unavailing tear, Till time shall every grief remove With life, with memory, and with love.

[Footnote 1: 'Mrs Jane Clarke' this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.]

STANZAS,

SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF THE SEAT AND RUINS AT KINGSGATE, IN KENT, 1766.

1 Old, and abandon'd by each venal friend, Here Holland took the pious resolution, To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A broken character and const.i.tution.

2 On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice; Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand; Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice, And mariners, though s.h.i.+pwreck'd, fear to land.

3 Here reign the bl.u.s.tering North, and blasting East, No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing; Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, Art he invokes new terrors still to bring.

4 Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise, Turrets and arches nodding to their fall, Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes, And mimic desolation covers all.

5 'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true, Nor C--'s, nor B--d's promises been vain, Far other scenes than this had graced our view, And realised the horrors which we feign.

6 'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, Then had we seen proud London's hated walls: Owls should have hooted in St Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and litter'd in St Paul's.'

TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.

Third in the labours of the disc came on, With st.u.r.dy step and slow, Hippomedon; Artful and strong he poised the well-known weight, By Phlegyas warn'd, and fired by Mnestheus' fate, That to avoid and this to emulate.

His vigorous arm he tried before he flung, Braced all his nerves, and every sinew strung, Then with a tempest's whirl and wary eye Pursued his cast, and hurl'd the orb on high; The orb on high, tenacious of its course, 10 True to the mighty arm that gave it force, Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see Its ancient lord secure of victory: The theatre's green height and woody wall Tremble ere it precipitates its fall; The ponderous ma.s.s sinks in the cleaving ground, While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound.

As when, from Aetna's smoking summit broke, The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy rock, Where Ocean frets beneath the das.h.i.+ng oar, 20 And parting surges round the vessel roar; 'Twas there he aim'd the meditated harm, And scarce Ulysses 'scaped his giant arm.

A tiger's pride the victor bore away, With native spots and artful labour gay, A s.h.i.+ning border round the margin roll'd, And calm'd the terrors of his claws in gold.

CAMBRIDGE, _May_ 8, 1736.

GRAY ON HIMSELF.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, He had not the method of making a fortune; Could love and could hate, so was thought something odd; No very great wit, he believed in a G.o.d; A post or a pension he did not desire, But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

END OF GRAY'S POEMS.

THE POETICAL WORKS

OF

TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

THE

LIFE OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

The combination of a great writer and a small poet, in one and the same person, is not uncommon. With not a few, while other, and severer branches of study are the laborious task of the day, poetry is the slipshod amus.e.m.e.nt of the evening. Dr Parr calls Johnson _probabilis poeta_--words which seem to convey the notion that the author of "The Rambler," who was great on other fields, was in that of poetry only respectable. This term is more applicable to Smollett, whose poems discover only in part those keen, vigorous, and original powers which enabled him to indite "Roderick Random" and "Humphrey Clinker." Yet the author of "Independence," and "The Tears of Scotland," must not be excluded from the list of British poets--an honour to which much even of his prose has richly ent.i.tled him.

The incidents in Smollett's history are not very numerous, and some of them are narrated, under faint disguises, with inimitable vivacity and _vraisemblance_ in his own fictions. Tobias George Smollett was born in Dalquhurn House, near the village of Renton, Dumbartons.h.i.+re, in 1721. His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, having died early, the education of the poet devolved on his grandfather. The scenery of his native place was well calculated to inspire his early genius. It is one of the most beautiful regions in Scotland. A fine hollow vale, pervaded by the river Leven, and surrounded by rich woodlands and bold hills, stretches up from Dumbarton, with its double peaks and ancient castle, to the magnificent Loch Lomond; and in one of the loops of this winding vale was the great novelist born and bred. He called his native region, in "Humphrey Clinker," the "Arcadia of Scotland," and has sung the Leven in one of his small poems. He was sent to the Grammar School of Dumbarton, and thence to Glasgow College. He was subsequently placed apprentice to one M. Gordon, a medical pract.i.tioner in Glasgow; and from thence, according to some of his biographers, he proceeded to study medicine in Edinburgh. When he was about nineteen years of age, his grandfather expired, without having made any provision for him; and he was compelled, in 1739, to repair to London, carrying with him a tragedy ent.i.tled "The Regicide,"--the subject being the a.s.sa.s.sination of James the First of Scotland,--which he had written the year before, and which he in vain sought to get presented at the theatres. He had letters of introduction to some eminent literary characters, who, however, either could not or would not do anything for him; and he found no better situation than that of surgeon's mate in an eighty-gun s.h.i.+p. He continued in the navy for six or seven years, and was present at the disastrous siege of Carthagena, in 1741, which he has described in a Compendium of Voyages he compiled in 1756, and with still more vigour in "Roderick Random." His long acquaintance with the sea furnished ample materials for his genius, although it did not improve his opinion of human nature. Disgusted with the service, he quitted it in the West Indies, and lived for some time in Jamaica.