The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 6, May, 1836

6. Lastly, whenever a horse is put to keep, the agreement naturally runs thus: The keeper says I will feed your horse six months on good hay and oats, if at the end of that time you will pay me three pounds. The owner says, if you will feed my horse six months on good hay and oats, I will pay you three pounds at the end of that time. Now we may plainly see, the keeper's performance of his part of the agreement must be antecedent to that of the owner; and the agreement being wholly conditional, the owner's part is not in force till the keeper has performed his. _You then not having fed my horse six months, as you agreed to do, there lies no obligation on me to pay for so much feeding._

Thus we have heard what can be said on both sides. Upon the whole, I am of opinion that no deduction should be allowed for the keeping of the horse after the time of his straying.

I am yours, &c. THE CASUIST.

TO A COQUETTE.

The Lady was playing the _Penserosa_, and the Bard rallied her. She suddenly assumed the _Allegra_, and rallied him in turn. Whereupon he sung as follows:

Heave no more that breast of snow, With sighs of simulated wo, While Conquest triumphs on thy brow, And Hope, gay laughing in thine eye, Cheers the moments gliding by, Welcomes Joy's voluptuous train, Welcomes Pleasure's jocund reign, And whispers thee of transports yet in store, When fraught with Love's ecstatic pain, Shooting keen through every vein, Thy heart shall thrill with bliss unknown before.

But smile not so divinely bright; Nor sport before my dazzled sight, That "prodigality of charms," That winning air, that wanton grace, That pliant form, that beauteous face, Zephyr's step, Aurora's smile; Nor thus in mimic fondness twine, About my neck thy snowy arms; Nor press this faded cheek of mine, Nor seek, by every witching wile, My hopes to raise, my heart to gain, Then laugh my love to scorn, and triumph in my pain.

I love thee, Julia! Though the flush Of sprightly youth is flown-- Though the bright glance, and rose's blush From eye and cheek and lip are gone-- Though Fancy's frolic dreams are fled, Dispelled by sullen care-- And Time's gray wing its frost has shed Upon my raven hair-- Yet warm within my bosom glows, A heart that recks not winter's snows, But throbs with hope, and heaves with sighs For ruby lips and sparkling eyes; And still--the slave of amorous care-- Would make that breast, that couch of Love, its lair.

* * * * *

TO THE SAME.

Shade! O shade those looks of light; The thrilling sense can bear no more! Veil those beauties from my sight, Which to see is to adore.

That dimpled cheek, whose spotless white, The rays of Love's first dawning light, Tinge with Morning's rosy blush, And cast a warm and glowing flush, Even on thy breast of snow, And in thy bright eyes sparkling dance, And through the waving tresses glance That shade thy polished brow Who can behold, nor own thy power? Who can behold, and not adore?

But like the wretch, who, doomed to endless pain, Raises to realms of bliss his aching eyes, To Heaven uplifts his longing arms in vain While in his tortured breast new pangs arise-- Thus while at thy feet I languish, Stung with Love's voluptuous anguish, The smile that would my hopes revive, The witching glance that bids me live Shed on my heart one fleeting ray, One gleam of treacherous Hope display; But soon again in deep Despair I pine: The dreadful truth returns: "Thou never wilt be mine."

Then shade! O shade those looks of light; The thrilling sense can bear no more! Veil those beauties from my sight, Which to see is to adore.

But stay! O yet awhile refrain! Forbear! And let me gaze again! Still at thy feet impassioned let me lie, Tranced by the magic of thy thrilling eye; Thy soft melodious voice still let me hear, Pouring its melting music on my ear; And, while my eager lip, with transport bold, Presumptuous seeks thy yielded hand to press, Still on thy charms enraptured let me gaze, Basking ecstatic in thy beauty's blaze, Such charms 'twere more than Heaven to possess: 'Tis Heaven only to behold.

LIONEL GRANBY.

CHAPTER X.

He scanned with curious and prophetic eye Whate'er of lore tradition could supply From Gothic tale, or song or fable old-- Roused him still keen to listen and to pry. _The Minstrel_.

You judge the English character with too much favor Lionel, said Col. R----. The Englishman is not free! Though vain, arrogant, and imperious, there is not a more abject slave on earth. His boasting spirit, his full-mouthed independence and his lordly step quail to rank, {353} and he is ever crawling amid the purlieus or over the threshold of that fantastic temple of fashion called "Society." It is an endless contest between those who are initiated into its mysteries and those who crowd its avenues. Wealth batters down the door--assumes a proud niche in the chilling fane, and uniting itself to that silent yet powerful aristocracy which wields the oracles of the god, its breath can create you an _exclusive_, or its frown can degrade you to the vulgar herd. Rank, which is the idol of an Englishman's sleepless devotion, wealth because it is curiously akin to the former, and some indistinct conception of the difference between a people and the mob, render him, in his own conceit, a gentleman and a politician. His first thought if cast on a desert island would be his rank, and if he had companions in misfortune, he would ere night arrange the dignity and etiquette of intercourse. Literature seeks the same degrading arena, and alas! how few are there who do not deck the golden calf with the laurels won in the conflicts of genius, and who, stimulated solely by lucre, shed their momentary light athwart the horizon, even as the meteor whose radiance is exhaled from the corruption of a fœtid marsh. But there is a class who, ennobled by letters, are always independent; and though they be of the race of authors whom Sir Horace Walpole calls "a troublesome, conceited set of fellows," you will find them too proud and too honest to palter away the prerogatives of their station.

But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one of his simple and unaffected suppers!

I cheerfully assented to this invitation, and following my conductor up a flight of crooked and dark steps, we entered into a room, over a brazier's shop. A dull light trembled through the small and narrow apartment where, shrouded in a close volume of tobacco smoke, sat in pensive gentility--the kind--the generous--the infant-hearted Charles Lamb; the man whose elastic genius dwelled among the mouldering ruins of by-gone days, until it became steeped in beauty and expanded with philosophy--the wit--the poet--the lingering halo of the sunshine of antiquity--the phœnix of the mighty past. He was of delicate and attenuated stature, and as fragilely moulded as a winter's flower, with a quick and volatile eye, a mind-worn forehead and a countenance eloquent with thought. Around a small table well covered with glasses and a capacious bowl, were gathered a laughing group, eyeing the battalia of the coming supper. Godwin's heavy form and intellectual face, with the swimming eye of (ες τε σε S. T. C. How quaint was his fancy!) Coleridge, flanked the margin of the mirth-inspiring bowl.

Col. R----'s introduction made me at home, and ere my hand had dropped from the friendly grasp of our host, he exclaimed--And you are truly from the land of the _great plant_? You have seen the sole cosmopolite spring from the earth. It is the denizen of the whole world, the tireless friend of the wretched, the bliss of the happy. You need no record of the empire of the red man. He has written his fadeless history on a tobacco leaf.

At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters, stately porticoes, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled away his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He was an author belonging to his own exclusive school--a school of simplicity, grace and beauty. He neither skewered his pen into precise paragraphs, nor rioted in the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the rare and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of Elizabeth and Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian of Euphues (Lilly) "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to sink deeper in the sea of oblivion.

Lamb possessed in an eminent degree, what Dryden called a beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, and the easy swell of cadence and harmony which characterised his brief writings declared the generosity of his heart, and the fertility of his genius. He could sympathise with childhood's frolic, and his heart was full of boyish dreams, when he gazed on the play-ground of Eton, and exclaimed "what a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will be changed into frivolous members of parliament!" He had the rough magnanimity of the old English vein, mellowed into tenderness and dashed with a flexible and spinous humor. He was contented to worship poesy in its classic and antique drapery. With him the fountain of Hypocrene still gushed up its inspiring wave; and Apollo, attended by the Muses, the daughters of Memory, and escorted by the Graces, still haunted the mountains of Helicon, lingered among the hills of Phocis, or, mounted upon Pegasus, winged his radiant flight to the abode itself of heaven-born Poesy. These were the fixed principles of his taste, and he credulously smiled (for contempt found no place in his bosom) upon the sickly illustrations and naked imagery of modern song. His learning retained a hue of softness from the gentleness of his character, for he had gathered the blossoms untouched by the bitterness of the sciential apple. He extracted like the bee his honied stores from the wild and neglected flowers which bloomed among forgotten ruins, yet he was no plagiarist, no imitator, for he had invaded and lingered amid the dim sepulchres of the shadowy past, until he became its friend and cotemporary!

How has he obtained those curiously bound books, I whispered to Coleridge, as my eye fell on a column of shelves groaning under a mass of tattered volumes which would have fairly crazed my poor uncle?

Tell him Lamb! said Coleridge repeating my inquiry, give him the rank and file of your ragged regiment.

Slowly, and painfully as a neophyte, did I build the pile, replied Lamb. Its corner stone was that fine old folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, for a long year had peeped out from a bookseller's stall directly in my {354} daily path to the India House. It bore the great price of sixteen shillings, and to me, who had no unsunned heap of silver, I gazed on it until I had almost violated the decalogue. Poetry made me an economist, and at the end of two months my garnered mites amounted to the requisite sum. Vain as a girl with her first lover, I bore it home in triumph, and that night my sister Bridget read "The Laws of Candy" while I listened with rapture to that deep and gurgling torrent of old English, which dashed its music from this broken cistern. To her is the honor due, her taste has called all these obsolete wits to my library, for she keenly relished their fantasies, and smiled at their gauderies. In early life she had been tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it, but I can answer for it that (if the worst comes to the worst) it makes most incomparable old maids.

But there are some fearful gaps in my shelves, Mr. Granby! See! there a stately and reverend folio, like a huge eye-tooth, was rudely knocked out by a bold _borrower of books_, one of your smiling pirates, mutilator of collections, a spoiler of the symmetry of shelves, and a creator of odd volumes.

The conversation now became general, and many a little skiff was launched on the great ocean of commonplace. Lamb most cordially hated politics which he called "a splutter of hot rhetoric;" and he only remembered its battles and revolutions when connected with letters. He had heard of Pharsalia, but it was Lucan's and not Cæsar's; the battle of Lepanto was cornered in his memory because Cervantes had there lost an arm. The glorious days of the "Commonwealth" were hallowed by Milton and Waller, and he always turned with much address from the angry debates about the execution of Charles I. to the simple inquiry whether he or Doctor Ganden wrote the "Icon Basilike."

Godwin in vain essayed to introduce the "conduct of the ministry," and being repeatedly baffled, he said pettishly to Lamb, And what benefit is your freehold, if you do not feel interested in government?

Ah! I had a freehold it is true, the gift of my generous and solemn god-father, the oil-man in Holborn; I went down and took possession of my testamentary allotment of three quarters of an acre, and strode over it with the feeling of an English freeholder, that all betwixt sky and earth was my own. Alas! it has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it!

The bowl now danced from hand to hand, and I did not observe its operation until Lamb and Coleridge commenced an affectionate talk about Christ's Hospital, the blue coat boys, and all the treasured anecdotes of school-day friendship. This is the first and happiest stage of incipient intoxication, and the "willie-draughts" which are pledged to the memory of boyhood, ever inspire brighter and nobler sympathies, than are found in the raciest toasts to beauty, or the deepest libations to our country.

Do you not remember, said Lamb, poor Allan! whose beautiful countenance disarmed the wrath of a town-damsel whom he had secretly pinched, and whose half-formed execration was exchanged, when she, tigress-like turned round and gave the terrible _bl----_ for a gentler meaning, _bless thy handsome face!_ And do you not remember when you used to tug over Homer, discourse Metaphysics, chaunt Anacreon, and play at foils with the sharp-edged wit of Sir Thomas Browne, how your eye glistened when you doffed the grotesque blue coat, and the inspired charity boy (this was uttered in an under tone) walked forth humanized by a christian garment. Spenser knew the nobility of heart which a new coat gives when he dressed his butterfly.

The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie The silken down with which his back is dight His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes.

Col. R. now motioned to me to retire, and I bid a reluctant goodnight to the joyous scene, the exclamation "do you not remember!" from Coleridge, and the cheerful laugh ringing through the whole house and its dying echo following us to the street.

Gentle reader! the critics have called Lamb a trifler, the scholars have called him a twaddler! Read _Elia_, and let your heart answer for him.

THE PRAIRIE.

This word is pronounced by the common people _pa-ra-re_. I was in the peninsula of Michigan, and had been for a day or two traversing the most dreary country imaginable, when I saw for the first time a salt or wet prairie, which is only a swampy meadow, grown up in a rank, coarse, sedgy grass.

Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies. These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear prairie--a broad unvaried expanse--presents rather a monotonous appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. They answered my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation.

In these charming woodlands are a number of small lakes, the most picturesque and delightful sheets of water imaginable. The prairies in the summer are covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass, and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun pours his light upon the water and streams through the sloping glades. To a traveller unaccustomed to such scenes, they are pictures of a mimic paradise. Sometimes they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voluptuous as the warm billows of a southern sea.

In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers. Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf. Thus they pursue the deer with a cry {355} not unlike that of hounds, and have been known to rush by a farm-house in hot pursuit. The officers of the army stationed at the posts on the Prairies amuse themselves hunting these little wolves which in some parts are very numerous.

C. C.

RANDOM THOUGHTS.

_The Age_.--Its leading fault, to which we of America are especially obnoxious, is this: in Poetry, in Legislation, in Eloquence, the best, the divinest even of all the arts, seems to be laid aside more and more, just in proportion as it every day grows of greater necessity. It is still, as in Swift's time, who complains as follows: "To say the truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands, than that of discerning _when to have done_."

_Dancing_.--The following are sufficiently amusing illustrations of the fine lines in Byron's Ode,

"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet; Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"

The French translation of St. John (de Creve-cœur's) _American Farmer's Letters_--a book once very popular--was adorned with engravings, to fit it to the European imagination of the Arcadian state of things in America. The frontispiece presents an allegorical picture, in which a goddess of those robuster proportions which designate Wisdom, or Philosophy, leads by the hand an urchin--the type, no doubt, of this country--with ne'er a shirt upon his back. More delightfully still, however, in the back ground, is seen, hand in hand, with knee-breeches and strait-collared coats, a band of Pennsylvania quaker men, dancing, by themselves, a true old fashioned six-handed Virginia reel.