George Cruikshank's Omnibus. George Cruikshank
of purest ray serene,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,
Like angels' visits, few and far between,
Deck the long vista of departed years.
Man never is, but always to be bless'd;
The tenth transmitter of a foolish face,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest,
And makes a sunshine in the shady place.
For man the hermit sigh'd, till woman smiled,
To waft a feather or to drown a fly,
(In wit a man, simplicity a child,)
With silent finger pointing to the sky.
But fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
Far out amid the melancholy main;
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Dies of a rose in aromatic pain.
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
Look on her face, and you'll forget them all;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.
My way of life is fall'n into the sere;
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear,
Who sees through all things with his half-shut eyes.
Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness!
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less,
And die ere man can say 'Long live the Queen.'
If in the above any reader should be reminded of the "long resounding march and energy divine" of poets past or present, it can only be because our illustrious and profusely-gifted bard has clustered together more remarkable, and we trust they will long prove memorable, lines, than any one of his predecessors has in the same space given an example of. That poem can be of no inferior order of merit, in which Milton would have been proud to have written one line, Pope would have been equally vain of the authorship of a second, Byron have rejoiced in a third, Campbell gloried in a fourth, Gray in a fifth, Cowper in a sixth, and so on to the end of the Ode; which thus realises the poetical wealth of that well-known line of Sir Fretful's,
"Infinite riches in a little room."
But we must not, by prosaic comment, detain the impatient reader from other specimens of the striking originality of this writer's powers. Among some fragments thrown loose in his desk, we find the following:—
When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not if I could be gay.
Again:
There's a beauty for ever unchangingly bright,
For coming events cast their shadows before;
Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
Like ocean-weeds cast on the surf-beaten shore.
We have pronounced these two stanzas to be original; and they are: but with reference to the first of them we admit that a distinguished living critic, to whom it was shown, remarked that it did remind him a little of something in some other author—and he rather thought it was Goldsmith; a second critic, equally eminent, was forcibly reminded by it of something which he was convinced had been written by Rogers. So much for criticism! To such treatment is original genius ever subjected. Its traducers cannot even agree as to the derivation of the stolen property; they cannot name the author robbed. One cries, Spenser; another, Butler; a third, Collins. We repeat, it is the fate of Originality.
"Garth did not write his own Dispensary,"
says Pope jeeringly; Campbell has had his Exile of Erin vehemently claimed by a desperate wrestler for renown; and at this very time a schoolmaster in Scotland is ready to swear that the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore" never wrote a line of it. But we now pass to another piece by Sir Fretful; and this, whether its sentiments be of a high or a low order, its imagery appropriate or incongruous, is entirely his own:—
Lives there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
"Shoot folly as it flies?"
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
Are in that word farewell, farewell!
'Tis folly to be wise.
And what is friendship but a name,
That boils on Etna's breast of flame?
Thus runs the world away:
Sweet is the ship that's under sail
To where yon taper cheers the vale,
With hospitable ray!
Drink to me only with thine eyes
Through cloudless climes and starry skies!
My native land, good night!
Adieu, adieu, my native shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more—
Whatever is is right!
We have thought it expedient to point out briefly the peculiar beauty of some of our author's lines; but it cannot be necessary to point out the one peculiar and exclusive quality of his writings—his perspicacity—his connectedness. His verse "flows due on to the Propontic, nor knows retiring ebb." You are never at a loss to know what he means. In his sublimest passages he is intelligible. This is his great beauty. No poet perhaps is so essentially logical. We close our specimens with another short poem; it is entitled,
"ON LIFE, ET CETERA."
Know then this truth, enough for man to know:
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.
Retreating lightly with a lovely fear
From grave to gay, from lively to severe,
To err is human, to forgive divine,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
* * * * * *
We ne'er shall look upon his like again,
For panting time toils after him in vain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain;
Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay!
Leaving this great poet's samples of the mighty line, or, as it is sometimes called, the lofty rhyme, to "speak for themselves," we conclude with a word or two on a subject to which one of his effusions here printed has (thanks to what are called the critics) unexpectedly led—we mean the subject of Literary Loans, or, as they are more familiarly and perhaps felicitously designated, Literary Thefts. A critic of high repute has said, "A man had better steal anything on earth, than the thoughts of another;" agreed, unless when he steals the thought, he steal the words with it. The economising trader in Joe Miller who stole his brooms ready made, carried on a prosperous business.