Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 97

These works divine, which, on his death-bed laid, To thee, O Craggs! the expiring sage conveyed, Great, but ill-omened, monument of fame, Nor he survived to give, nor thou to claim.

Swift after him thy social spirit flies, And close to his, how soon! thy coffin lies.

Blest pair! whose union future bards shall tell In future tongues: each other's boast! farewell!

Farewell! whom, joined in fame, in friends.h.i.+p tried, No chance could sever, nor the grave divide.

JAMES HAMMOND.

This elegiast was the second son of Anthony Hammond, a brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole, and a man of some note in his day. He was born in 1710; educated at Westminster school; became equerry to the Prince of Wales; fell in love with a lady named Dashwood, who rejected him, and drove him to temporary derangement, and then to elegy-writing; entered parliament for Truro, in Cornwall, in 1741; and died the next year. His elegies were published after his death, and, although abounding in pedantic allusions and frigid conceits, became very popular.

ELEGY XIII.

He imagines himself married to Delia, and that, content with each other, they are retired into the country.

1 Let others boast their heaps of s.h.i.+ning gold, And view their fields, with waving plenty crowned, Whom neighbouring foes in constant terror hold, And trumpets break their slumbers, never sound:

2 While calmly poor I trifle life away, Enjoy sweet leisure by my cheerful fire, No wanton hope my quiet shall betray, But, cheaply blessed, I'll scorn each vain desire.

3 With timely care I'll sow my little field, And plant my orchard with its master's hand, Nor blush to spread the hay, the hook to wield, Or range my sheaves along the sunny land.

4 If late at dusk, while carelessly I roam, I meet a strolling kid, or bleating lamb, Under my arm I'll bring the wanderer home, And not a little chide its thoughtless dam.

5 What joy to hear the tempest howl in vain, And clasp a fearful mistress to my breast!

Or, lulled to slumber by the beating rain, Secure and happy, sink at last to rest!

6 Or, if the sun in flaming Leo ride, By shady rivers indolently stray, And with my Delia, walking side by side, Hear how they murmur as they glide away!

7 What joy to wind along the cool retreat, To stop and gaze on Delia as I go!

To mingle sweet discourse with kisses sweet, And teach my lovely scholar all I know!

8 Thus pleased at heart, and not with fancy's dream, In silent happiness I rest unknown; Content with what I am, not what I seem, I live for Delia and myself alone.

9 Hers be the care of all my little train, While I with tender indolence am blest, The favourite subject of her gentle reign, By love alone distinguished from the rest.

10 For her I'll yoke my oxen to the plough, In gloomy forests tend my lonely flock; For her, a goat-herd, climb the mountain's brow, And sleep extended on the naked rock:

11 Ah, what avails to press the stately bed, And far from her 'midst tasteless grandeur weep, By marble fountains lay the pensive head, And, while they murmur, strive in vain to sleep!

12 Delia alone can please, and never tire, Exceed the paint of thought in true delight; With her, enjoyment wakens new desire, And equal rapture glows through every night:

13 Beauty and worth in her alike contend, To charm the fancy, and to fix the mind; In her, my wife, my mistress, and my friend, I taste the joys of sense and reason joined.

14 On her I'll gaze, when others' loves are o'er, And dying press her with my clay-cold hand-- Thou weep'st already, as I were no more, Nor can that gentle breast the thought withstand.

15 Oh, when I die, my latest moments spare, Nor let thy grief with sharper torments kill, Wound not thy cheeks, nor hurt that flowing hair, Though I am dead, my soul shall love thee still:

16 Oh, quit the room, oh, quit the deathful bed, Or thou wilt die, so tender is thy heart; Oh, leave me, Delia, ere thou see me dead, These weeping friends will do thy mournful part:

17 Let them, extended on the decent bier, Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, While pitying maids our wondrous loves relate.

We may here mention Dr George Sewell, author of a Life of Sir Walter Haleigh, a few papers in the _Spectator_, and some rather affecting verses written on consumption, where he says, in reference to his garden--

'Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green, (For vanity's in little seen,) All must be left when death appears, In spite of wishes, groans, and tears; Not one of all thy plants that grow, But rosemary, will with thee go;'--

Sir John Vanbrugh, best known as an architect, but who also wrote poetry;--Edward Ward (more commonly called Ned Ward), a poetical publican, who wrote ten thick volumes, chiefly in Hudibrastic verse, displaying a good deal of coa.r.s.e cleverness;--Barton Booth, the famous actor, author of a song which closes thus--

'Love, and his sister fair, the Soul, Twin-born, from heaven together came; Love will the universe control, When dying seasons lose their name.

Divine abodes shall own his power, When time and death shall be no more;'--

Oldmixon, one of the heroes of the 'Dunciad,' famous in his day as a party historian;--Richard West, a youth of high promise, the friend of Gray, and who died in his twenty-sixth year;--James Eyre Weekes, an Irishman, author of a clever copy of love verses, called 'The Five Traitors;'--Bramston, an Oxford man, who wrote a poem called 'The Man of Taste;'--and William Meston, an Aberdonian, author of a set of burlesque poems ent.i.tled 'Mother Grim's Tales.'

RICHARD SAVAGE.

The extreme excellence, fulness, and popularity of Johnson's Life of Savage must excuse our doing more than mentioning the leading dates of his history. He was the son of the Earl of Rivers and the Countess of Macclesfield, and was born in London, 1698. His mother, who had begot him in adultery after having openly avowed her criminality, in order to obtain a divorce from her husband, placed the boy under the care of a poor woman, who brought him up as her son. His maternal grandmother, Lady Mason, however, took an interest him and placed him at a grammar school at St Alban's. He was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. On the death of his nurse, he found some letters which led to the discovery of his real parent. He applied to her, accordingly, to be acknowledged as her son; but she repulsed his every advance, and persecuted him with unrelenting barbarity. He found, however, some influential friends, such as Steele, Fielding, Aaron Hill, Pope, and Lord Tyrconnell. He was, however, his own worst enemy, and contracted habits of the most irregular description. In a tavern brawl he killed one James Sinclair, and was condemned to die; but, notwithstanding his mother's interference to prevent the exercise of the royal clemency, he was pardoned by the queen, who afterwards gave him a pension of 50 a-year. He supported himself in a precarious way by writing poetical pieces. Lord Tyrconnell took him for a while into his house, and allowed him 200 a-year, but he soon quarrelled with him, and left. When the queen died he lost his pension, but his friends made it up by an annuity to the same amount. He went away to reside at Swansea, but on occasion of a visit he made to Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and in the prison he sickened, and died on the 1st of August 1743. He was only forty-five years of age.

After all, Savage, in Johnson's Life, is just a dung-fly preserved in amber. His 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' indeed, displays considerable powers, stung by a consciousness of wrong into convulsive action; but his other works are nearly worthless, and his life was that of a proud, pa.s.sionate, selfish, and infatuated fool, unredeemed by scarcely one trait of genuine excellence in character. We love and admire, even while we deeply blame, such men as Burns; but for Savage our feeling is a curious compost of sympathy with his misfortunes, contempt for his folly, and abhorrence for the ingrat.i.tude, licentiousness, and other coa.r.s.e and savage sins which characterised and prematurely destroyed him.

THE b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

INSCRIBED, WITH ALL DUE REVERENCE, TO MRS BRETT, ONCE COUNTESS OF MACCLESFIELD.

In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran, The Muse exulting, thus her lay began: 'Blest be the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's birth! through wondrous ways, He s.h.i.+nes eccentric like a comet's blaze!

No sickly fruit of faint compliance he!

He! stamped in nature's mint of ecstasy!

He lives to build, not boast a generous race: No tenth transmitter of a foolish face: His daring hope no sire's example bounds; His first-born lights no prejudice confounds.

He, kindling from within, requires no flame; He glories in a b.a.s.t.a.r.d's glowing name.

'Born to himself, by no possession led, In freedom fostered, and by fortune fed; Nor guides, nor rules his sovereign choice control, His body independent as his soul; Loosed to the world's wide range, enjoined no aim, Prescribed no duty, and a.s.signed no name: Nature's unbounded son, he stands alone, His heart unbiased, and his mind his own.

'O mother, yet no mother! 'tis to you My thanks for such distinguished claims are due; You, unenslaved to Nature's narrow laws, Warm championess for freedom's sacred cause, From all the dry devoirs of blood and line, From ties maternal, moral, and divine, Discharged my grasping soul; pushed me from sh.o.r.e, And launched me into life without an oar.

'What had I lost, if, conjugally kind, By nature hating, yet by vows confined, Untaught the matrimonial bonds to slight, And coldly conscious of a husband's right, You had faint-drawn me with a form alone, A lawful lump of life by force your own!

Then, while your backward will retrenched desire, And unconcurring spirits lent no fire, I had been born your dull, domestic heir, Load of your life, and motive of your care; Perhaps been poorly rich, and meanly great, The slave of pomp, a cipher in the state; Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown, And slumbering in a seat by chance my own.