But when the morn was past, and noon-day came, Would he not rise when he beheld the sun, "Twas strange,-they knew not what his sufferings were,- XII. Declines the sun from his meridian hour, Might LAUSUS of those heavens regardless be, Whose holiest admiration still confest The blood-felt charms of nature in the breast? And who those lovers, who with rapture view, Thou wilt not question then who, this sunset, Or who the youth who strung these pearls of poesy. 1. 'Tis sweet to be bosom'd with Nature and Love, When the soul sees but Beauty, hears Music the best; As pure as the blue's stainless bosom above, As the song of the sphere everlastingly blest! 2. 'Twere sweet, for a while on her beauty to gaze, But sweeter, eternally sweet, 'tis to prove, In the blood, and the heart, and the soul, that we feel; And, oh, sweeter! in eloquent numbers to love, The feelings of Virtue and Love to reveal! 3. O, sweeter, eternally sweet, 'tis to sing, That Beauty, that's scatter'd o'er earth, sea, and sky,— The glory of Summer-the grace of the Spring In thy form are embodied, enthroned in thine eye! "Tis rapture to know that my IPHIGEN hears, The song of a harp she is sure to approve, That her smiles will reward me, and sometimes her tears, While Fancy is bathed in the visions of Love! XIII. The Spring, the Summer, Autumn, Winter drear, But when his mind increased with strengthening time, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, saw with joy Smit with her beauties, her he ever woo'd, Felt through his veins, and in his heart's best blood. Burning intensely, gloriously bright, That makes e'en nature's fiercest wrath delight. By dulcet sounds, to fascinate the heart. Lost in a wild and melancholy fit; And through the sunshine and the shower, descry Each mild and rugged charm to him was dear, Wreathed the old roots with blossom, leaf, and bell, Each nymph glad hailed her woods, and, with a song, And, from each sedgy brook, and pebbled spring, To aërial measures, with light fairy tread, As he addressed, with wild and awful strain, XIV. Could love be absent from that kindling breast, It could not be ;-and late the Muse hath told And added unto Nature fresh desire: More verdant made the fields, the flowers more gay, More pleasant, as it purls beneath the shadowy hill, At evening, or at morning-tide, when all is calm and still. * The author is indebted to Warton's 5th Ode for some of the ideas and imagery, in the preceding description of the poetical character of Lausus. The reader may discover the extent of his obligations, by reference to the Ode itself. Most nations are fond of aspiring to the ideal honour of early origin; and, in the maintenance of their claims, too frequently display little else but vanity. In the absence of moral and intellectual worth, it is with nations as with individuals; they pride themselves in ancestry, or any other adventitious good. Our estimation of character should be re gulated by what a man is, and not by what he was: the same remark will apply to men in a congregated state. What availed it that the modern Greeks, so long the vassals of Turkish tyranny, descended from the most intellectual race that ever peopled the world? May the hopes which their recent exertions have excited be abundantly realized! What can it profit the Italians, that the Romans were the dread or envy of their contemporaries? We, as a nation, were we ever so inclined, cannot boast of very early origin; happily, however, if the present, rather than the past, be the period for the estimation of national excellence, we have every thing to hope, and nothing to fear, from the comparison. The state of a language must naturally correspond with the mental condition of the people who speak it. National language is a collection of verbal signs, which, when arranged, become the indexes of a particular people's ideas; and, in proportion as these become enlarged, enriched, and refined, the language they speak will become free, copious, and harmonious; the reverse must follow, should the mental progress of any country unhappily retrograde: when ideas cease to occupy the mind, the terms by which they were expressed must become obsolete. The origin of the English Language is confessedly Saxon. This is demonstrable, from a review of the great majority of words which compose it, as well as from an examination of its structure; and it is abundantly corroborated by historical fact. Mr. Turner, in his excellent history of the Anglo-Saxons, has observed, that not more than one-fifth of the original language has become obsolete, or, in other words, that fourfifths constitute our present language; and this he has proved, by taking a variety of passages from some of our most celebrated authors, and marking the Saxon words in italics. The passages alluded to are borrowed from Shakspeare, Milton, Cowley, the Translators of the Sacred Scriptures, Thomson, Addison, Spencer, Locke, Pope, Young, Swift, Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, and Johnson. We subjoin an example or two, as illustrative of his general principle: "SHAKSPEARE. "To be, or not to be,—that is the question; |