court of the Emperor, where he had thrown down defiance to "Christian, Turk, Jew, Saracen, or Cannibal," to dispute in arms the peerless charms of his mistress whom he had celebrated in his exquisite love verses, he consulted the celebrated Cornelius Agrippa, the professor of natural magic, for the purpose of ascertaining what Geraldine was engaged in at that moment; and, as the narrative runs, the sorcerer showed him in a mirror the image of the beloved one reclining ill upon a couch, and reading, by the twinkling light of a taper, one of his most impassioned sonnets. This fact, if it be one, is not so well authenticated as the devotion of Anna Boleyn to the sonnets of Wyatt; and a late critical biographer of Surrey, who was a hunter of dates, and a sedulous explorer of all the evidence he could find to prove the weakness of the poetical creed in relation to such matters, has almost established, beyond a doubt, that such a circumstance could not very well have occurred, since Surrey, agreeably to his discoveries, had never been abroad in his life. We wish such commentators would not meddle with poets. It is a part of the pleasure one derives from their works to mingle them credulously with incidents that would be difficult, or impossible, of belief in reference to other men; for, after all, their clay is so essentially different from that of the vulgar, clock-regulated, day-plodding world, so much more subtle, and at the same time frail, that we can easily credit wonderful things of a poet which no effort over the will could induce us to attach to the common herd of mankind. Pope's Rape of the Lock (sarcasm set to music,) and his Essay on Woman (a bitter confession of faith), would lose half their charms if we did not know that he made a declaration of love to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and that, upon his own admission, she was so surprised, astonished, and thrown off her guard by a declaration from so dwarfed and fragile a creature, that she laughed outright in his face! Pope, who was trained in the school of Balzac and Voiture, never forgave the proud and triumphing beauty; but, from that hour forth, sacrificed her to his wit and his searing revenge in his implacable and immortal satires. It is necessary to have some faith in improbabilities, and some occasion to exercise it, if we would truly, and with proper intensity, enter into the depths of the spirit of poetry. But Lady Mary, despite her brilliant talents, was not a loveable person in the end. Before marriage, she calculated the consequences so accurately, that it might easily be seen she did not look to her new state for any of those fairy dreams of the heart which more trustful, and generous, and womanly natures are so prompt to conjure up. Her coach, and her townhouse, and her circle of wits, Prior and Congreve, bandying repartee with her, and Pope shrinking into a corner to smother his spite and vexation, were carefully drawn in her mind before she married; and it would almost appear that she took a husband to give a sanction to her boldness, rather than to create her own happiness, or to acquire an excuse for creating his. And Wortley was not the man to appreciate her tenderness, if she had any. Cold, formal, and regular, he could neither value her affections, which appear to have been very limited; nor her wit, which was to the full as salient, and as licentious as the age admitted. They were thoroughly assimilated in these points, on which it would have been well for their felicity they had been contrasted; and, unfortunately, widely opposed on other points, on which they ought to have sympathized. The result was exactly what such circumstances would lead any discerning person to anticipate. Expatriation for her ladyship during long years of complete seclusion from society, a dull and monotonous existence in the country for her husband, a daughter petted by the mother and alienated from the father, and a son alienated from both. Courtly marriages are not conducted now as they used to be. There is more nature and a truer sense of domestic life in them. Even so late as the time of Queen Elizabeth, it was the custom amongst the families of the nobility to strengthen their alliances and interests by contracting their children to each other at an early age. The object of this practice was to consolidate the higher classes against the inroads and encroachments of the lower. The times were unsettled, and the aristocracy felt the necessity of cementing their order into a compact body by intermarriages. Thus, the unhappy Earl of Surrey was betrothed at the age of sixteen, to Lady Frances Vere, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford; and Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the natural, and, it is recorded, favourite child of Henry VIII, was betrothed to his sister. Both pledges terminated in sorrow. Fitzroy died at the early age of seventeen, before he had reached his prime, or fulfilled his troth; and Howard-the brave, the devoted chevalier and minstrel, was married at nineteen years of age, and beheaded at thirty-one! Had Surrey lived in the succeeding reign, he would have been caressed at Court, and faction would have been abashed in the glory of his presence; but the savage temper of Henry, who asked no higher pretext for hunting him to the death, than the flimsy accusation that he had worn the arms of Edward the Confessor, which all his family, with the licence of heraldry, had done before him, was inflamed by his reputation, his honourable qualities, his impatience of restraint, his contempt for hypocrisy, and his out-spoken worship of purity. When Sydney, during the revolution of Poland, was proposed as a candidate for the throne of that disturbed realm, Queen Elizabeth at once discountenanced the proposal. She refused to sanction it, says history, lest she should lose the jewel of her times! How she would have nurtured Surrey!—perhaps, endeavoured to corrupt him! But where have we wandered from our text?-or had we a text to wander from? Bright-eyed May! it is thy dawn that bursts upon the green hills, and reveals the cheerful world just emancipated from the last breath of Spring, and brightening into summer; if, indeed, Spring or Summer are ever to come again into these ocean-girt lands. 'Tis nature, full of spirits, waked and springing: They tell us that Love and Time, when they were both young and unskilled in their vocations, were once playing in a glade together-such a glade as Boccaccio would have dropped his company of gallants into, for a long summer's day of song and legend; and that in a frolic they exchanged toys, Time taking the bow and quiver, and Love snatching the hour-glass. But the experiment had a strange effect. Time shot the arrows so slowly that, it is said, the process of the passion became so full of weariness, that all the lovers fell asleep in the very height of the enchant ment; while Love, spilling out the sands with his usual precipitation, hurried people out of the world, at about the same rate of velocity that he is wont to hurry them into a frenzy. The apologue is in point. The seasons appear to have exchanged offices, and there has Winter, for seven or eight long months, been doing duty for himself as well as for the gay, laughing Spring, who, we suppose, has all this time been disporting herself in the Elysian fields, or in some other vagrant quarter of the universe, instead of attending to her proper business, for the due performance of which she enjoys a proportionate amount of privileges in the sweep of the Zodiac. Perhaps she has some factious design upon the year, and entertains a hope that she may be permitted to enjoy a sinecure; but she can hardly have been apprised of the measures that have of late been taken to abolish all idle offices, pensions, and hangers-on. If she do not bestir herself, the supplies will be stopped, and there will be an end at once to her functions— for the time being. But May will come in to the relief, as she has often done, and disturbing the primroses from their trance, suddenly call them up into the startling sunlight. Shame upon Southwell for casting a reproach upon this month, with her sweet forehead braided with flowers, and her breath aromatic with honeysuckle. May never was the month of love, Had not Southwell been a Jesuit, and, therefore, incompetent to form any opinion in the matter, and a martyr to his faith withal, we should take rare pleasure in affixing to this madrigal such a criticism as, good saints protect us! would make him repeat the seven penitential psalms in his coffin. Old Ben's Invocation to a Dream may be better applied to May, and will act as an antidote to Southwell's quotation Yet let it like an odour rise, To all the senses here; Or music in their ear! We have strained an image, or, more properly, banished Sleep that Beauty might take its place, in order to adapt the stanza; but this alteration, to suit a purpose, like all such forcible wresting of the elder poets to immediate uses, spoils the exquisite dance of the measure, and the still more exquisite fitness of the expression. Yet it first emblazoned in our banners, have been is exquisite notwithstanding! for ever perpetuated in our lordly shields -we have reproduced in our costly series. The offering, were it an hundred fold more costly, would be unworthy of the high purpose it is designed to promote; the attachment of the affections of all classes to those who exercise a presiding and pervading influence in the country-not political, for that is not within our estimate, but a social, enlightening, and refining influence. We will prosecute this pleasant and wellrewarded purpose until its results become more palpable and complete; until the association of Power and ennobling Utility shall have been rendered more visible; and until the present poetry of a chivalrous race shall be felt by the contemporary age, that age feels and recognises the poetry of its ancient state. as May is over the woods like morning; over the woods and "bosky dells," the leaping streams and hill-paths, the dark green lanes and cornfields, churches mantled with ivy that have outlived many generations, and baronial halls that have witnessed ancestral pageants sweeping, age after age, through their noble portals. And here, gentle reader, permit us to interpolate. Not only have we given you to gaze upon the lustrous beauty of these islands-the Princesses of our Blood-the Forms and Faces of the highest-born amongst us, whose innate dignity and pride of nature transcend the pomp of Lineage and Station, -but we have brought before you, as in a mirror such as that of the magicians of the East, in which they show each particular of the scene that appertains to the action they describe, the very places where that beauty sprang to life, the groined windows through which it first gazed upon the glorious skies, the colonnades through which it gamboled in its hours of sportthe ancient chambers where former races, its progenitors, dwelt in the authority of their estate the towers, and parapets, and terraces teeming with feudal legends-the storied ruins of neglected neighbourhoods, which the pious hands of heirs have left unmolested—the lawns, and copses, gardens, Now the bright Morning-star, Day's harbinger, fountains, statues, rivers, and forests, even to the timid deer, stealing through the trees the sequestered hermitage, and the hoary well, mantled over with moss. These scenes, purely British, belonging to our annals as well as to our landscapes, mixed up with the grandest deeds of the past, and recalling heroic achievements that, The first of May warns us that our "perch of time" waits our coming. But we must have our "Song of the Month." Where shall we find one? Shall we rack and torture rhyme to manufacture one, and risk a thousand aches in the pursuit of conceits? Never, as the valiant man says in the melodrama. Here is our ditty ready at our hands, such as none of our poetasters can emulate-for it is Milton's. SONG ON MAY MORNING. Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire Thus we salute thee with our early song, DRINKING SONG. COME, lads, fill your glasses, no stint in the measure,- Let fools range the world in their search after pleasure, CHORUS. With the flagon well fill'd, to the bottom we'll probe her; We are happy at being able to state that his Majesty continues in uninterrupted good health. We regret that we cannot make the same report of the Queen, who has been suffering from a severe cough and oppression of the chest; it gives us, how ever, much pleasure to state that, although her Majesty was not sufficiently well to hold a Drawing-room on the occasion of her Birthday, on the 27th, her Majesty's health is rapidly improving. His Majesty held a Levee on the 5th, 12th, and 26th. The Levee ordered for the 12th, and the Drawing-room for the 12th, were both postponed on account of the melancholy demise of Lady de Lisle. His Majesty held the first Drawing-room for the season on the 20th. H. R. H. the Priness Augusta represented her Majesty. The following Ladies were presented to the King and afterwards to the Princess Augusta :Bateman, Lady, on her elevation to the Peerage, by Lady Katharine Stewart. Beckett, Miss M., by Lady Anne Beckett. Brand, Mrs., on her marriage, by Lady Catherine Cavendish. Brecknock, the Countess of, on her marriage, by the Countess of Kinnoul. Browne, Lady Louisa, by the Countess of Wicklow. Browne, Lady Elizabeth, by the Countess of Wicklow. Campbell, Mrs., of Islay, on her marriage, by Lady Charlotte Bury. Cartwright, Lady, by Lady Wheatley. Erskine, Miss Caroline, by her mother, Mrs. Erskine, Miss Selina, by her mother, Mrs. Erskine. Parke, Miss, by Lady Parke. Percy, Miss Louisa, by Countess Amherst. Plymouth, the Countess of, on coming to the title, by Mrs. General Vansittart. Pollen, Miss Laura, by her mother, Mrs. Pollen. Powell, Miss, by her mother, Mrs. Weyland Powell. Powerscourt, Viscountess, on her marriage, by Lady Howden. Richardson, Lady Stewart, by the Countess of Kin noul. Riddell, Mrs., by Vicountess Howick. Colville, the Hon. Lady, by Lady Elizabeth Smythe, Hon. Miss, by the Duchess of Northum berland. Somerset, the Duchess of, on her marriage, by the Countess of Albemarle. Stanhope, Lady Wilhelmina, by Countess Stanhope. Stopford, Miss Henrietta, by her mother, Lady Thesiger, Mrs., by Lady Yarde Buller. Waller, Mrs., on her marriage, by Lady Wheatley. REVIEW OF NEW WORKS. The Star of Seville. A Drama. In Five Acts. By Mrs. Butler, (late Miss Kemble). London, 1837. Too much praise seems to have spoiled Miss Kemble, whom we like to call by her old name, as that by which she is best known amongst us, and under which she won whatever laurels she wears. There are some people who love praise so well, that they are incapable of discriminating whether their flatterers are in earnest or in ridicule; and who, when they happen to be praised, as is sometimes the case, for merits which they really do not possess, implicitly act upon the immediate suggestions of their vanity. We believe Miss Kemble to be affected by this feeling to a very remarkable degree; and we believe, also, that it exercises so complete an influence over her that she is perfectly unconscious of it, which is always one of the peculiarities of fallacious tendencies indulged to excess. Indeed, she appears to be so little aware of her erroneous estimate of herself, and her readiness to be deceived by adulation, that she even professes to despise opinion, and permits no opportunity to escape in which she can exhibit her contempt for criticism. We do not allude to her foolish affectation of aversion towards persons connected with the public press, for she must be conscious that it is but affectation; and there might be some reasonable apology for such aversion in an individual of a lofty and commanding intellect which Miss Kemble assuredly is not:-but to the general tone of her writings, her flippant outrages of propriety, her scoffs and taunts upon the quiet and respectable points of ordinary decorum, her vapid levities, and ribald imitations of the pruriencies of past ages. We are entirely satisfied that these follies do not lie below the surface with Miss Kemble, that she really does not fully comprehend the extravagances she commits, and that, in fact, while her faults are, in appearance, very reprehensible, they are nothing more than the lip-indiscretions of a buoyant, self-willed, and thoughtless girl. But it is time that this heedlessness should be abandoned. The world will not continue to give Miss Kemble credit for her faults on the side of youth and inexperience. She has grown into a woman since she was last in England—she has seen much of the world, and its passions, and conflicting interests, and sturdy prejudices in the interval; and it is expected that as she advances some tokens of improvement in her mode of thinking will become visible. Should it, however, be found that increase of years has brought no increase of judgment, and that she betrays in her maturity the same reckless indifference to the good estimation VOL. X.-NO. V.-MAY, 1837. of society which she exhibited in her girlhood, even those who are the most tender of her fame will cease to make allowances for her literary transgressions, and if they can no longer excuse will, at all events, cease to panegyrise her. Thus, from the topmost height of applause, she will drop into oblivion, unless it be that her fall will be attended with out-spoken condemnation. We are tempted to say so much-sparing much more that might be said-because we perceive in this drama, the last production of her muse, so many violations of good taste, and such allusions to things with which it is not pleasant to suppose a lady to be acquainted, that we are still compelled to observe in how small a measure Miss Kemble's notions of poetical propriety have been purified by experience. We might forgive, as one forgives the frowardness and random faults of a child, Miss Kemble's minute catalogue of all the petty events that happened to her at sea, what she eat and drank, what the gentlemen said and did, how much she hated them, and their vulgar ways, what sensations set her pulpitating, and what things made her sick; these, and a thousand such trifles, might be forgiven in the diary of a young and ardent and spoiled actress going out to a strange country, after having received honours at home that might well have intoxicated her imagination. But since that time Miss Kemble has married, has mixed largely with society in a republic where false pretensions are speedily reduced to their true level, where there are no ovations for meretricious display, and where all matters, moral and personal, are fixed by a swift and insensible process at their actual valuepriced and labelled at once by the operation of public opinion. It was to be expected, therefore, that Miss Kemble would have come out of this rough ordeal a little wiser than she went into it; that she would have profited more or less, by the observations which it must have forced upon her mind; and that, at least, she would have corrected, or lost that exuberance of temperament which plunged her into such witless extravagance. We do not find in this play, and we notice the fact with regret, that any such change has been wrought upon her. So far as a play can testify to the condition of an indidual, the Star of Seville suggests even a more direct tendency to reprehensible excesses of expression than Miss Kemble has hitherto indulged. We still, however, attribute this error to mis-judgment, and to the want of some authorative mind to lead her talents into a proper direction. We are unwilling to believe that she may not yet devote herself to literature in a healthier and worthier spirit. The faults to which we allude are to be found in the comic portions of the drama—the greater part of which is tarnished with a species of masked I I |