As the Being who made him, Till the rose in his cheek Be his long flowing hair, And wave o'er his brows, As thou wavest in air! Let his heart be this marble I tear from the rock! But his voice as the warble Of birds on yon oak! Let his flesh be the purest Of mould, in which grew The lily-root surest, a And drank the best dew! Be mingled and stirred, This earth's animation! His stand in Creation! (ARNOLD falls senseless; his soul passes into the shape of Achilles, which rises from the ground; while the Phantom has disappeared, part by part, as the figure was formed from the earth. (P. 28.) smiles not, Cæsar sings. To horse! to horse! my coal-black steed Paws the ground and snuffs the air! There's not a foal of Arab's breed More knows whom he must bear ! On the hill he will not tire, Swifter as it waxes higher; In the marsh he will not slacken, On the plain be overtaken; In the wave he will not sink, Nor pause at the brook's side to drink. In the race he will not pant, In the combat he'll not faint; On the stones he will not stumble, Time nor toil shall make him humble In the stall he will not stiffen, But be winged as a Griffin, Only flying with his feet: And will not such a voyage be sweet? From the Alps to the Caucasus, ride we, or fly! For we'll leave them behind in the glance of an eye. (They mount their horses, and disappear. (P. 38.) cr The The next scene (which concludes the first Part) is a the walls of Rome," where there is camp before nothing done, though a good deal is said, by Arnold, Cæsar, Bourbon, and Philibert his lieutenant. noble writer has, as is pretty well known, a great turn for the diabolical; and in the person of Cæsar, who is a kind of humourist devil, or infernal snap-dragon, he has a noble opportunity for giving vent to much Satanic wit and hellish jocularity: To you. You'll find there are such shortly, By its rich harvests, new disease, and gold; From one half of the world named a whole new one, Because you know no better than the dull But looks as serious though serene as Night, Arnold. I'll trust them. (P. 37.) And the holy quartett being thus appointed with cavalry and travelling And that is better than the bitter truth. Or Saintly, still the walls of Romulus "Twas their turn-now 'tis ours; and let That we will fight as well, and rule much Cæsar. No doubt, the camp's the school What would you make of Rome ? Bourbon. Cæsar. In Alaric's time? Whose name you bear like other curs. Cæsar. And kings. 'Tis a great name for bloodhounds. Bourbon. There's a demon In that fierce rattle-snake thy tongue. Wilt never Be serious? Those walls have girded in great ages, And sent forth mighty spirits. The past earth And present Phantom of imperious Rome Is peopled with those warriors; and methinks They flit along the eternal city's rampart, And stretch their glorious, gory, shadowy hands, And beckon me away! Philibert. So let them! Wilt thou Turn back from shadowy menaces of shadows? Bourbon. They do not menace me, I could have faced, Methinks, a Sylla's menace but they clasp, And raise, and wring their dim and deathlike hands, And with their thin aspen faces and fixed eyes Fascinate mine. Look there! (P. 49.) Part the Second begins with a very fine Chorus, before the Walls of Rome, at the moment of the assault. ⚫ we quote one or two stanzas: "Tis the morn, but dim and dark. Hearken to the steady stamp! On they march, though to self-slaughter, Whose high waves o'ersweep the border (P. 58.) (P. 54.) "Regular as rolling water!”What a line! How musical, how expressive, how grand in idea, and how just in metaphor ! The fifth stanza also is eloquent and powerful. Onward sweep the varied nations! Matched with Bourbon's black banditti ! Rouse thee, thou eternal City! Rouse thee! Rather give the torch With thy own hand to thy porch, Than behold such hosts pollute Your worst dwelling with their foot. (P. 60.) In the second scene, Bourbon is killed just as he is mounting the wall; while he is expiring, Cæsar sardonically asks him,' Casar. Would not your Highness choose to kiss the cross? We have no priest here, but the hilt of sword May serve instead:-it did the same for Bayard. Bourbon. Thou bitter slave! to name him at this time! In the third and last scene of this Part, the Pope is preserved from the fury of a Lutheran soldier, by the interposition of his Holiness's very good friend and patron-saint (as we protestants have it)-the Devil. The Old Lady of Babylon escapes through a private door of the Sanctuary, where ber infallibility was put to such a dangerous test; but her place is supplied by Olimpia, a young lady of beauty and fashion, who, being pursued by certain soldiers for some maiden treasure which she was suspected of concealing,-leaps like a feathered Mercury upon the altar, exhibiting her agility, if not her delicacy, to the white-eyed mortals beneath, and knocks down a soldier with a massy crucifix, the first time, we conjecture, that this implement was devoted to such active service. In the moment of danger, Arnold comes to the lady's rescue, but she scouts his proffered assistance, precipitates herself from the canonical Tarpeian, splits her excellent white skull on the Mosaic, and is carried off half-dead by the Devil and the Deformed Transformed into the Colonna Palace: " Cæsar. Come then! raise her up! Arnold. Softly! Cæsar. As softly as they bear the dead, Perhaps because they cannot feel the jolt-' ing. (P. 83.) The present publication (as is said in a short preface) contains the two first parts only of the entire drama, and the opening Chorus of the third the rest is to appear (" perhaps") hereafter. From the Chorus, which is laid amidst the Apennines, we beg leave to select the following beauti ful-lament for the violet: The spring is come; the violet's gone, And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue Chorus. The Hound bayeth loudly, She sits like a crest, With birds from their nest. Dim image of war! Her hero no star, Of empire and chace, In the pride of his might, The versification of the poem, as is usual with our author's later works, is shamefully incorrect; if it be regulated by any principle, which we very much doubt, the principle is a false one,—at least the practice of ending heroic lines in the midst of an uninterruptible flow of words, whereby all metrical distinction between verse and prose is annihilated, can never be successful in the English, whatever it may be in the Italian, school of poetry. Will it be believed that the harmonious soul which poured forth the eloquent numbers above, could be guilty of such metre less measure as this: Cæsar. I tell thee, be not rash; a golden Is for a flying enemy. I gave thee A writer in the LONDON MAGAZINE stigmatizes this new species of versification, under the name of “prose-poetry," and we certainly are much inclined to aid him in preventing, as far as we can, the dissemination of such an erroneous method of composition, which we perceive has been of late years ardently cultivated, even by our best writers. We cannot but say that this hobbling uneasy measure, half verse half prose, is as far from the Miltonian standard, as it is from that of true melody, and that it merits the utmost discouragement and reprobation from the critics and the public in general. As may appear from the preceding observations, the Deformed Transformed is, for what we have seen, a work, in our opinion, totally unworthy of the illustrious author; monstrous in design, flimsy in composition, meagre in imagery, wretched in versification, a hasty, crude, and But no one extravagant thing. can read it, without acknowledging that it is the effusion of a great and extraordinary mind, an audacious fancy, and a splendid genius. Lord Byron may write below himself, but he never can write below us. Alas! that he does not write a page, where he writes a poem ! VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. OUR foreign summary for this month is very meagre indeed. From Spain we learn little, and even that little is not interesting. The Beloved has gone on ever since his restoration promising an amnesty, and pretending to deliberate on its extent. In the mean time, however, he is punishing as fast as possible (sparing neither age nor sex) every person whose conduct in the recent contest has in any way exasperated him. He has hit latterly on an ingenious device for raising money, namely, punishing with severity the wives and daughters of the wealthy Constitutionalists, but adding a saving clause to the sentence, by which their imprisonment may be remitted in consideration of a stipulated fine. One of his decrees upon this subject is a curiosity, and as such we record it: it will afford to future ages a precious specimen of the humanity and gallantry of a Spanish Legitimate of the nineteenth century. After the surrender of Pampeluna a number of illustrious females were arrested under pretence of Constitutionalism, and the following are some of the sentences passed upon them by Ferdinand since his restoration;-one would think his embroidery passion might have created some feeling in favour of the The mother of the preceding, a lady of very advanced age, fined 20 ounces of gold. Donna Josepha Deudariena, two years imprisonment in the royal gaol; but on payment of ten ounces of gold annually she is set at liberty. Donna Eloya Harrequin, four years imprisonment in the royal gaol; but free on an annual payment of 100 dollars. Donna Martina de Yriarte, four years imprisonment; or to pay 20 ounces of gold annually. Donna Joaquima Ecbarri, to be exiled from the kingdom of Navarre for six years, and not allowed to go near the royal residence; sentence redeemable for five hundred dollars. La Senora de Echeverria (63 years old) exiled from Navarre for four years: remitted for 20 ounces of gold. Our readers must see from the mere perusal of these sentences, that they are in fact nothing more than so many devices for extorting money; every lady named, with one exception, is a lady of title, and of course Ferdinand knows very well, that the sentence will be "remitted," or, in other words, that the cash will be remitted; it is a coarse and cowardly expedient. The sister of the gallant Mina, accused of no crime but the glory of her consanguinity to him, was in prison, in daily expectation of a nominal trial, and her anticipated sentence was, confinement in the hulks at Malaga! This unfortunate lady had already lost her husband at one of the recent sieges. The prisons, at Pampeluna particularly, were crowded with females of rank. These are things which need only to be stated; a comment would enfeeble their effect. The next decree put forth by Spain is almost ludicrous when contrasted with the cruelty and avarice of that which we have just recorded. Will our readers believe, that this extortioner from women-this galley-condemning embroiderer, has actually had the audacity to put forth a manifesto, affecting to open the trade of South America to the European States, and to resign his own royal monopoly ! The Holy Allies have now, it seems, Ferdinand's permission to trade with Mexico, Columbia, Buenos Ayres, and Peru! The countries with whom the United States have made common cause, and to whom England, with all her caution, and all her not very creditable temporising on this subject, has sent commercial consuls! He might just as well issue a proclamation permitting the sun of heaven to shine, or its dew to fall upon their plains. Whatever profit may have been acquired by her frauds and murders in South America-Spain has received already; it has been enjoyed and squanderedthe crime remains, and perhaps the retribution. Another decree has been issued by the cabinet of Madrid, and which has reached us through the French papers; this creates a caissé d'amortissement, as a means of redeemtry. Its provisions are too minute ing the shattered credit of the counfor us to weary our readers with their details; their sum and substance is, that an annual sum of eighty millions of reals shall be assigned to the sinking fund to be created. This assignment is to answer for the payment of any new obligations, which the treasury may think it necessary to contract, in order to meet the current wants of the government. The object of this is too plain to be for a moment misunderstood; it is in other words a bait held out to capitalists to lend their money on a newly created security, by which the payment of the Constitutional loans may be evaded. We do not think the capitalists, in this country at least, are quite gullible enough to bite-the waters are too troubled and the gilding of the bait is mere tinsel. So far from having an overplus to create a sinking fund, Spain cannot at present levy one half of her current expenditure; besides, capitalists know too well how to appreciate the faith of Ferdinand's guarantees-the Constitutional loans equally guaranteed, have been already erased by a dash of his pen; and the man who once contracts the habit of denying a debt is very apt to grow perfect in the science-it is much easier to borrow than to pay. France indeed, thanks to her army of occupation, has contrived to reimburse herself; but she knows Ferdinand too well to rest |