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The young man, who had done a graceful action but had not thought of its containing so many kindly things, received the praises of the Nymph with a due mixture of surprise and homage. He did not want courage, however; and emboldened by her tone and manner, and still more by a beauty which had all the buxom bloom of humanity in it, with a preternatural gracefulness besides, he requested that she would receive him as a lover. There was a look in her face at this request answering to modesty, but something still finer; having no guilt, she seemed to have none of the common infirmities either of shame or impudence. In fine, she consented to reward Rhæcus as he wished; and said she would send a bee to inform him of the hour of their meeting.

Who now was so delighted as Rhæcus! for he was a great admirer of the fair sex, and not a little proud of their admiring him in return; and no human beauty, whom he had known, could compare with the Hamadryad. It must be owned, at the same time, that his taste for love and beauty was not of quite so exalted a description as he took it for. If he was fond of the fair sex, he was pretty nearly as fond of dice, and feasting and any other excitement which came in his way; and, unluckily, he was throwing the dice that very noon when the bee came to summon him.

Rhæcus was at an interesting part of the game so much so, that he did not at first recognise the object of the bee's humming. "Confound this bee!" said he, "it seems plaguily fond of me." He brushed it away two or three times, but the busy messenger returned, and only hummed the louder. At last he bethought him of the Nymph; but his impatience seemed to increase with his pride, and he gave the poor insect such a brush, as sent him away crippled in both his thighs.

The bee returned to his mistress as well as he could, and shortly after was followed by his joyous assailant, who came triumphing in the success of his dice and his gallantry. "I am here," said the Hamadryad. Rhæcus looked among the trees, but could see nobody. "I am here," said a grave sweet voice, "right before you." Rhæcus saw nothing. "Alas!" said she, "Rhæcus, you cannot see me, nor will you see me more. I had thought better of your discernment and your kindness; but you were but gifted with a momentary sight of me. You will see nothing in future but common things, and those sadly. You are struck blind to everything else. The hand that could strike iny bee with a lingering death, and prefer the embracing of the dice-box to that of affectionate beauty, is not worthy of love and the green trees."

The wind sighed off to a distance, and Rhæcus felt that he was alone.

LIII.-THE NURTURE OF TRIPTOLEMUS.

TRIPTOLEMUS was the son of Celeus, king of Attica, by his wife Polymnia. During his youth he felt such an ardour for knowledge, and such a desire to impart it to his fellowcreatures, that, having but a slight frame for so vigorous a soul, and meeting with a great deal of jealousy and envy from those who were interested in being thought wiser, he fell into a wasting illness. His flesh left his bones; his thin hands trembled when he touched the harp; his fine warm eyes looked staringly out of their sockets, like stars that had slipped out of their places in heaven.

At this period, an extraordinary and awful sensation struck, one night, through the streets of Eleusis. It was felt both by those who slept and those who were awake. The former dreamed great dreams; the latter, especially the revellers and hypocrites who were pursuing their profane orgies, looked at one another, and thought of Triptolemus. As to Triptolemus himself, he shook in his bed with exceeding agitation; but it was with a pleasure that overcame him like pain. He knew not how to account for it; but he begged his father to go out and meet whatever was coming. He felt that some extraordinary good was approaching, both for himself and his fellow-creatures; but revenge was never farther from his thoughts. What was he to revenge? Mistake and unhappiness? He was too wise, too kind, and too suffering. "Alas!" thought he, "an unknown joy shakes me like a palpable sorrow; and their minds are but as weak as my body. They cannot bear a touch they are not accustomed to."

The king, his wife, and his daughters went out, trembling, though not so much as Triptolemus, nor with the same feeling. There was a great light in the air, which moved gradually towards them, and seemed to be struck upwards from something in the street. Presently, two gigantic torches appeared round the corner; and underneath them, sitting in a car, and looking earnestly about, was a mighty female, of more than ordinary size and beauty. Her large black eyes, with her gigantic brows bent over them, and surmounted with a white forehead and a profusion of hair, looked here and there with an intentness and a depth of yearning indescribable. "Chaire, Demeter !" exclaimed the king in a loud voice :-"Hail, creative mother!" He raised the cry common at festivals, when they imagined a deity manifesting itself; and the priests poured out of their dwellings, with vestment and with incense, which they held tremblingly aloft, turning down their pale faces from the gaze of the passing goddess.

It was Ceres, looking for her lost daughter Proserpina. The eye of the deity seemed to have a greater severity in its earnestness, as

she passed by the priests; but at sight of a chorus of youths and damsels, who dared to lift up their eyes as well as voices, she gave such a beautiful smile as none but gods in sorrow can give; and emboldened with this, the king and his family prayed her to accept their hospitality.

She did so. A temple in the king's palace was her chamber, where she lay on the golden bed usually assigned to her image. The most precious fruits and perfumes burned constantly at the door; and at first, no hymns were sung, but those of homage and condolence. But these the goddess commanded to be changed for happier songs. Word was also given to the city, that it should remit its fears and its cares, and show all the happiness of which it was capable before she arrived. "For," said she, "the voice of happiness arising from earth is a god's best incense. A deity lives better on the pleasure of what it has created, than in a return of a part of its gifts."

only speak to the goddess, that my passage to the grave might be a little easier!"

The father doubted whether he should speak to the goddess. He loved his son warmly, though he did not well understand him; and the mother, in spite of the deity's kindness, was afraid, lest in telling her of a child whom they were about to lose, they should remind her too forcibly of her own. Yet the mother, in an agony of alarm one day, at a fainting-fit of her son's, was the first to resolve to speak to her, and the king and she went and prostrated themselves at her feet. "What is this, kind hosts?" said Ceres, "have ye, too, lost a daughter?" "No; but we shall lose a son," answered the parents, "but for the help of heaven." "A son!" replied Ceres, "why did you not tell me your son was living? I had heard of him, and wished to see him; but finding him not among ye, I fancied that he was no more, and I would not trouble you with such a memory. But why did you fear mine, when I could do good? Did your son fear it?"

"No, indeed," said the parents; "he urged us to tell thee."-" He is the being I took him for," returned the goddess: "lead me to where he lies."

They came to his chamber, and found him kneeling upon the bed, his face and joined hands bending towards the door. He had felt the approach of the deity; and though he shook in every limb, it was a transport beyond fear that made him rise-it was love and gratitude. The goddess saw it, and bent on him a look that put composure into his feelings. "What wantest thou," said she, "struggler with great thoughts?" "Nothing," answered Triptolemus, "if thou thinkest good, but a shorter and easier death."

Such were the maxims which Ceres delighted to utter during her abode at Eleusis, and which afterwards formed the essence of her renowned mysteries at that place. But the bigots, who adopted and injured them, heard them with dismay; for they were similar to what young Triptolemus had uttered in the aspirations of his virtue. The rest of the inhabitants gave themselves up to the joy, from which the divinity would only extract consolation. They danced, they wedded, they loved; they praised her in hymns as cheerful as her natural temper; they did great and glorious things for one another : never was Attica so full of delight and heroism: the young men sought every den and fearful place in the territory, to see if Proserpina was there; and the damsels vied who should give them most kisses for their reward. Dearest and Divinest Mother!" sang the Eleusinians, as they surrounded the king's palace at night with their evening hymn,-" Oh greatest and best goddess! who, not above sorrow thyself, art yet above all wish to inflicting in the midst of joy, and yet not have it, we know by this thou art indeed divine. Would that we might restore thee thy beloved daughter, thy daughter Proserpina, the dark, the beautiful, the mother-loving; whom some god less generous than thyself would keep for his own jealous doating. Would we might see her in thine arms! We would willingly die for the sight; would willingly die with the only pleasure which thou hast left wanting to us."

"Oh

The goddess would weep at these twilight hymns, consoling herself for the absence of Proserpina by thinking how many daughters she had made happy. Triptolemus shed weaker tears at them in his secret bed, but they were happier ones than before. "I shall die," thought he, "merely from the bitter-sweet joy of seeing the growth of a happiness which I must never taste; but the days I longed for have arrived. Would that my father would

"What! before thy task is done?" "Fate," he replied, "seems to tell me that I was not fitted for my task, and it is more than done, since thou art here. I pray thee, let me die; that I may not see every one around me weep

strength enough left in my hands to wipe away their tears." "Not so, my child," said the goddess, and her grand harmonious voice had tears in it as she spoke; "not so, Triptólemus; for my task is thy task; and gods work with instruments. Thou hast not gone through all thy trials yet; but thou shalt have a better covering to bear them, yet still by degrees. Gradual sorrow, gradual joy."

So saying, she put her hand to his heart and pressed it, and the agitation of his spirit was further allayed, though he returned to his reclining posture for weakness. From that time the bed of Triptolemus was removed into the temple, and Ceres became his second mother; but nobody knew how she nourished him. It was said that she summoned milk into her bosom, and nourished him at her immortal heart; but he did not grow taller in stature,

as men expected. His health was restored, his joints were knit again, and stronger than ever; but he continued the same small, though graceful youth, only the sicklier particles which he had received from his parents withdrew their influence.

At last, however, his very figure began to grow and expand. Up to this moment he had only been an interesting mortal, in whom the stoutest and best-made of his father's subjects recognised something mentally superior. Now, he began to look in person, as well as in mind, a demigod. The curiosity of the parents was roused at this appearance; and it was heightened by the report of a domestic, who said, that in passing the door of the temple one night, she heard a sound as of a mighty fire. 'But their parental feelings were also excited by the behaviour of Triptolemus, who while he seemed to rise with double cheerfulness in the morning, always began to look melancholy towards night. For some hours before heretired to rest he grew silent, and looked more and more thoughtful, though nothing could be kinder in his manners to everybody, and the hour no sooner approached for his retiring, than he went instantly and even cheerfully.

His parents resolved to watch; they knew not what they were about, or they would have abstained, for Ceres was every night at her enchantments, to render their son immortal in essence as well as in fame, and interruption would be fatal. At midnight they listened at the temple door.

The first thing they heard was the roaring noise of fire, as had been reported. It was deep and fierce. They were about to retire for fear; but curiosity and parental feeling prevailed. They listened again; but for some time heard nothing but the fire. At last a voice resembling their child's, gave a deep groan. "It was a strong trial, my son," said another voice, in which they recognised the melancholy sweetness of the goddess. "The grandeur and exceeding novelty of these visions," said the fainter voice, "press upon me, as though they would bear down my brain." "But they do not," returned the deity, "and they have not. I will summon the next." "Nay, not yet," rejoined the mortal; "yet be it as thou wilt. I know what thou tellest me, great and kind mother."-"Thou dost know," said the goddess, "and thou knowest in the very heart of thy knowledge, which is in the sympathy of it and the love. Thou seest that difference is not difference, and yet it is so; that the same is not the same, and yet must be; that what is, is but what we see, and as we see it; and yet that all which we see, is. Thou shalt prove it finally; and this is the last trial but one. Vision, come forth.” A noise here took place, as of the entrance of something exceedingly hurried and agonised, but which remained fixed with equal stillness.

A brief pause took place, at the end of which the listeners heard their son speak, but in a voice of exceeding toil and loathing, and as if he had turned away his head :-"It is," said he, gasping for breath, "utmost deformity,”"Only to thine habitual eyes, and when alone," said the goddess in a soothing manner; "look again." "O my heart!" said the same voice, gasping, as if with transport," they are perfect beauty and humanity." "They are only two of the same," said the goddess, "each going out of itself. Deformity to the eyes of habit is nothing but analysis; in essence it is nothing but one-ness, if such a thing there be. The touch and the result is everything. See what a goddess knows, and see nevertheless what she feels in this only greater than mortals, that she lives for ever to do good. Now comes the last and greatest trial; now shalt thou see the real worlds as they are; now shalt thou behold them lapsing in reflected splendour about the blackness of space; now shalt thou dip thine ears into the mighty ocean of their harmonies, and be able to be touched with the concentrated love of the universe. Roar heavier, fire; endure, endure, thou immortalising frame." "Yes, now, now," said the other voice, in a superhuman tone, which the listeners knew not whether to think joy or anguish ; but they were seized with such alarm and curiosity, that they opened a place from which the priestess used to speak at the lintel, and looked in. The mother beheld her son, stretched, with a face of bright agony, upon burning coals. She shrieked, and pitch darkness fell upon the temple. "A little while," said the mournful voice of the goddess," and heaven had had another life. O Fear! what dost thou not do! O! my all but divine boy!" continued she, "now plunged again into physical darkness, thou canst not do good so long as thou wouldst have done; but thou shalt have a life almost as long as the commonest sons of men, and a thousand times more useful and glorious. Thou must change away the rest of thy particles, as others do; and in the process of time they may meet again under some nature worthy of thee, and give thee another chance for yearning into immortality; but at present the pain is done, the pleasure must not arrive."

The fright they had undergone slew the weak parents. Triptolemus, strong in body, cheerful to all in show, cheerful to himself in many things, retained, nevertheless, a certain melancholy from his recollections, but it did not hinder him from sowing joy wherever he went. It incited him but the more to do so. The success of others stood him instead of his own. gave him the first seeds of the corn that makes bread, and sent him in her chariot round the world, to teach men how to use it. "I am not immortal myself," said he, "but let the good I do be so, and I shall yet die happy."

Ceres

LIV. ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. Ir the faculties of the writer of these papers are any thing at all, they are social; and we have always been most pleased when we have received the approbation of those friends, whom we are most in the habit of thinking of when we write. There are multitudes of readers whose society we can fancy ourselves enjoying, though we have never seen them; but we are more particularly apt to imagine ourselves in such and such company, according to the nature of our articles. We are accustomed to say to ourselves, if we happen to strike off any thing that pleases us,-K. will like that:-There's something for M. or R.:-C. will snap his finger and slap his knee at this:-Here's a crow to pick for H.-Here N. will shake his shoulders: -There B., his head :-Here S. will shriek with satisfaction :-L. will see the philosophy of this joke, if nobody else does.-As to our fair friends, we find it difficult to think of them and our subject together. We fancy their countenances looking so frank and kind over our disquisitions, that we long to have them turned towards ourselves instead of the paper.

Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. We knew him directly, in spite of his stars. His hand as well as heart betrayed him.

TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR. Your easy Essays indicate a flow, Dear Friend, of brain, which we may elsewhere seek; And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe, That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. Such observation, wit, and sense, are shown, We think the days of Bickerstaff return'd; And that a portion of that oil you own, In his undying midnight lamp which burn'd. I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head, Or wrong the rules of grammar understood; But, with the leave of Priscian be it said, The Indicative is your Potential Mood. Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translatoryour best title yet is INDICATOR.

H

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The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the good-natured countenance which men of genius, in all ages, have for the most part shown to contemporary writers; and thence by a natural transition, of the generous friendship they have manifested for each other. Authors, like other men, may praise as well as blame for various reasons; for interest, for vanity, for fear: and for the same reasons they may be silent. But generosity is natural to the humanity and the strength of genius. Where it is obscured, it is usually from something that has rendered it misanthropical. Where it is glaringly deficient, the genius is deficient in proportion. And the defaulter feels as much,

though he does not know it. He feels, that the least addition to another's fame threatens to block up the view of his own.

At the same time, praise by no means implies a sense of superiority. It may imply that we think it worth having; but this may arise from a consciousness of our sincerity, and from a certain instinct we have, that to relish anything exceedingly gives us a certain ability to judge, as well as a right to express our admiration, of it.

On all these accounts, we were startled to hear the other day that Shakspeare had never praised a contemporary author. We had mechanically given him credit for the manifestation of every generosity under the sun; and we found the surprise affect us, not as authors (which would have been a vanity not even warranted by our having the title in common with him), but as men. What baulked us in Shakspeare seemed to baulk our faith in humanity. But we recovered as speedily. Shakspeare had none of the ordinary inducements, which make men niggardly of their commendation. He had no reason either to be jealous or afraid. He was the reverse of unpopular. His own claims were allowed. He was neither one who need be silent about a friend, lest he should be hurt by his enemy; nor one who nursed a style or a theory by himself, and so was obliged to take upon him a monopoly of admiration in self-defence; nor was he one who should gaze himself blind to every thing else, in the complacency of his shallowness. If it should be argued, that he who saw through human nature was not likely to praise it, we answer, that he who saw through it as Shakspeare did was the likeliest man in the world to be kind to it. Even Swift refreshed the bitterness of his misanthropy in his love for Tom, Dick, and Harry; and what Swift did from impatience at not finding men better, Shakspeare would do out of patience in finding them so good. We instanced the sonnet in the collection called the Passionate Pilgrim, beginning

If music and sweet poetry agree,

in which Spenser is praised so highly. It was replied, that minute inquirers considered that collection as apocryphal. This set us upon looking again at the biographers who have criticised it; and we see no reason, for the present, to doubt its authenticity. For some parts of it we would answer upon internal evidence, especially, for instance, the Lover's Com plaint. There are two lines in this poem which would alone announce him. They have the very trick of his eye :

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!

But inquirers would have to do much more than disprove the authenticity of these poems, before they made out Shakspeare to be a grudg

ing author. They would have to undo the modesty and kindliness of his other writings. They would have to undo his universal character for "gentleness," at a time when gentle meant all that was noble as well as mild. They would have to deform and to untune all that round, harmonious mind, which a great contemporary described as the very "sphere of humanity;" to deprive him of the epithet given him in the school of Milton, "unvulgar;"* to render the universality of wisdom liable to the same drawbacks as the mere universality of science; to take the child's heart out of the true man's body; to un-Shakspeare Shakspeare. If Shakspeare had never mentioned a contemporary in his life, nor given so many evidences of a cordial and admiring sense of those about him, we would sooner believe that sheer modesty had restrained his tongue, than the least approach to a petty feeling. We can believe it possible that he may have thought his panegyrics not wanted; but unless he degraded himself wilfully, in order to be no better than any of his fellow-creatures, we cannot believe it possible, that he would have thought his panegyrics desired, and yet withheld them.

It is remarkable that one of the most regular contributors of Commendatory Verses in the time of Shakspeare, was a man whose bluntness of criticism and feverish surliness of manners have rendered the most suspected of a jealous grudgingness;-Ben Jonson. We mean not to detract from the good-heartedness which we believe this eminent person to have possessed at bottom, when we say, that as an excess of modest confidence in his own generous instincts

might possibly have accounted for the sparingness of panegyric in our great dramatist, so a noble distrust of himself, and a fear lest jealousy should get the better of his instincts, might possibly account for Ben Jonson's tendency to distribute his praises around him. If so, it shows how useful such a distrust is to one's ordinary share of humanity; and how much safer it will be for us, on these as well as all other occasions, to venture upon likening ourselves to Ben Jonson than to Shakspeare. It is to be recollected at the same time, that Ben Jonson, in his old age, was the more prominent person of the two, as a critical bestower of applause; that he occupied the town-chair of wit and scholarship; and was in the habit of sanctioning the pretensions of new authors by a sort of literary adoption, calling them his "sons," and "sealing them of the tribe of Ben." There was more in him of the aristocracy and heraldry of letters, than in Shakspeare, who, after all, seems to have been careless of fame himself, and to have written nothing during the chief part of his life but plays which he did not print. Ben Jonson, among other panegy

• By Milton's nephew Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum. It is an epithet given in all the spirit which it attributes.

rics, wrote high and affectionate ones upon Drayton, William Browne, Fletcher and Beaumont. His verses to the memory of Shakspeare are a noble monument to both of them. The lines to Beaumont in answer for some of which we have formerly quoted, we must repeat. They are delightful for a certain involuntary but manly fondness, and for the candour with which he confesses the joy he received from such commendation.

How do I love thee, Beaumont, and thy Muse
That unto me dost such religion use!
How do I fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st:
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st!
What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves?
What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?
When even there, where most thou praisest me,
For writing better, I must envy thee.

word "religion
Observe the good effect which the use of the
" has here, though somewhat
ultra-classical and pedantic. A certain pedan-
try, in the best sense of the term, was natural
to the author, and throws a grace on his most
natural moments.

Jonson's lines to Fletcher, on the ill-success of There is great zeal and sincerity in Ben his Faithful Shepherdess; but we have not room

for them.

Beaumont's are still finer; and indeed furnish a complete specimen of his wit and sense, as well as his sympathy with his friend. His inand contemptuous. His uppermost feeling is dignation against the critics is more composed confidence in his friend's greatness. The reader may here see what has always been thought by men of genius, of people who take the ipse dixits irrepressible thirst of writing in a poet, he says. of the critics. After giving a fine sense of the

Yet wish I those whom I for friends have known,
To sing their thoughts to no ears but their own.
Why should the man, whose wit ne'er had a stain,
Upon the public stage present his vein,
And make a thousand men in judgment sit,
To call in question his undoubted wit,
Scarce two of which can understand the laws
Which they should judge by, nor the party's cause?
Among the rout there is not one that hath
In his own censure an explicit faith.
One company, knowing they judgment lack,
Ground their belief on the next man in black;
Others, on him that makes signs, and is mute;
Some like as he does in the fairest suit;
He as his mistress doth, and she by chance:
Nor want there those, who as the boy doth dance
Between the acts, will censure the whole play;
Some if the wax-lights be not new that day:
But multitudes there are whose judgment goes
Headlong according to the actor's clothes.
For this, these public things and I, agree
So ill, that but to do a right for thee,
I had not been persuaded to have hurl'd
These few, ill-spoken lines, into the world,
Both to be read, and censured of, by those,
Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose.

One of the finest pieces of commendatory verse is Sir Walter Raleigh's upon the great

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