allowance of L. 18,000 a-year (with other matters, amounting to L.21,000), leaves only the small sum of L.20,800 to meet the troubles of this world. A sensible, and by no means an uncourteous letter, on this subject has appeared, utterly denying that the expenses of the Presidentship could be a burden to any one with a tenth or a hundredth of the unhappy Royal Duke's income. It says, "I have been thirty years a Fellow of the Society, and have frequently had the honour of being elected of the Council. I have attended the evening parties of Sir J. Banks, Sir H. Davy, and Mr Gilbert. I have also attended, I believe, all the 'soirees' at your Royal Highness's residence to which I was honoured with an invitation, and I think I may say that these have not amounted to four altogether, and that, except your Royal Highness's frank and gracious reception of your guests, there was nothing to distinguish them from the evening parties so frequent in London, in which a private gentleman gives tea, coffee, and conversation to his literary friends." It continues in the same quiet, but perfectly intelligible style" I can only say that the meetings which I attended, though perhaps too few in number, were conducted with plain, if not frugal, good taste; and that, in the simplicity of their style, there was nothing to contrast offensively with the ordinary habits of the guests; nor, I should have thought, to increase in any sensible degree the expenses of your establishment." All this will be extremely well relished by the country, though we shall not answer for the Royal Duke's equa nimity on the occasion. The truth is, that all men are extremely glad when pretexts and pretences exhibit themselves the things they are. Paying all due respect to rank and royalty, we have seen nothing in the conduct of this man, whether young or old, to justify any kind of regret on the oceasion. A Whig prince, in the modern sense of Whiggism, is an anomaly and an absurdity. If Radicalism were triumphant for a week, it would strip every prince in the land of title, pension, honours, and coat and breeches, and send them roving the earth like the unfortunate French nobility. But we warn the country that the experiment on the parliamentary viscera is to be repeated. The "Date obolum Belisario" will not altogether answer in the instance of a petitioner who " of the division of a battle knows no more than a spinster." We recom mend the following: Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, And humbly take his twenty thousand more. A talking, trifling, brain-bewildered thing, Whose name in vain in History's page you'll seek ; What were a palace by the public given, For forty years, just thirty times he dined Per month, where Charity supplied the meal, In vain the presidential glories rose, Sir Joseph's three-cocked hat, Sir Isaac's chair, Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling legs have borne him to your door, And humbly take his twenty thousand more. PEEL CLUB, GLASGOW. J. B. & A. B. TUPPER'S GERALDINE. COLERIDGE'S Christabel is the most exquisite of all his inspirations; and, incomplete as it is, affects the imagination more magically than any other poem concerning the preternatural. We are all the while in our own real and living world, and in the heart of its best and most delightful affections. Yet trouble is brought among them from some region lying beyond our ken, and we are alarmed by the shadows of some strange calamity overhanging a life of beauty, piety, and peace. We resign all our thoughts and feelings to the power of the mystery-seek to enjoy rather than to solve it and desire that it may be not lengthened but prolonged, so strong is the hold that superstitious Fear has of the human heart, entering it in the light of a startling beauty, while Evil shows itself in a shape of heaven; and in the shadows that Genius throws over it, we know not whether we be looking at Sin or Innocence, Guilt or Grief. Coleridge could not complete Christabel. The idea of the poem, no doubt, dwelt always in his imagination-but the poet knew that power was not given him to robe it in words. The Written rose up between him and the Unwritten; and seeing that it was "beautiful exceedingly," his soul was satisfied, and shunned the labourthough a labour of love-of a new creation. Therefore 'tis but a Fragmentand for the sake of all that is most wild and beautiful, let it remain so for ever. But we are forgetting ourselves; as many people as choose may publish what they call continuations and sequels of Christabel - but not one of them all will be suffered to live. If beyond a month any one of them is observed struggling to protract its ricketty existence, it will assuredly be strangled, as we are about to strangle Mr Tupper's Geraldine. Mr Tupper is a man of talent, and in his Preface writes, on the whole, judiciously of Christabel. "Every word tells-every line is a picture: simple, beautiful, and imaginative, it retains its hold upon the mind by so many delicate feelers and touching points, that to outline harshly the main bran ches of the tree, would seem to be doing the injustice of neglect to the elegance of its foliage, and the microscopic perfection of every single leaf. Those who now read it for the first time, will scarcely be disposed to assent to so much praise; but the man to whom it is familiar will remember how it has grown to his own liking-how much of melody, depth, nature, and invention, he has found from time to time hiding in some simple phrase or unobtrusive epithet." În no poem can "every line be a picture;' and there is little or no meaning in what Mr Tupper says above about the tree; but our wonder is, how, with his feeling of the beauty of Christabel, he could have so blurred and marred it in his unfortunate sequel. "My excuse," he says, "for continuing the fragment at all, will be found in Coleridge's own words to the preface of the 1816 pamphlet edition, where he says, I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course of the present year'-a half-promise which, I need scarcely observe, has never been redeemed." Mr Tupper continues:-" In the following attempt I may be censured for rashness, or commended for courage; of course, I am fully aware, that to take up the pen where COLERIDGE has laid it down, and that in the wildest and most original of his poems, is a most difficult, nay, dangerous proceeding; but upon these very characteristics of difficulty and danger I humbly rely; trusting that, in all proper consideration for the boldness of the experiment, if I be adjudged to fail, the fall of Icarus may be broken; if I be accounted to succeed, the flight of Dædalus may apologize for his presumption." "Finally," he says, "I deem it due to myself to add, what I trust will not be turned against me, viz. that, if not written literally cur rente calamo, GERALDINE has been the pleasant labour of but a very few days. Mr Tupper does not seem to know that Christabel "was continued" many years ago, in a style that perplexed the public and pleased even Coleridge. The ingenious writer meant it for a mere jeu de sprit but "Geraldine" These few words signify some unimaginable horror-and never did genius, not even Shakspeare's, so give to one of its creations, by dim revelation mysteriously diffused, a fearful being that all at once is present "beyond the reaches of our souls"-something fiendish in what is most fair, and blasting in what is most beautiful. Powerful as Prospero was Coleridge; but what kind of a wand is waved by Mr Tupper? "Thickly curls a poisonous smoke, And terrible shapes with evil names Are leaping around in a circle of flames, And the tost air whirls, storm-driven, And the rent earth quakes, charm-riven,— And-art thou not afraid?" is dead serious, and her father hopes an immortal fame. We neither" censure him for rashness nor commend him for courage," but are surprised at his impertinence, and pained by his stupidity-and the more for that he possesses powers that, within their own proper province, may gain him reputation. We like him, and hope to praise him some day-nay, purpose to praise him this very day-therefore we shall punish him at present but with forty stripes. He need not fear a fall like that of Icarus, for his artificial wings have not lifted his body fairly off the ground-and so far from soaring through the sky like a Dædalus, he labours along the sod after the fashion of a Dodo. In the summer of 1797, Coleridge wrote the first part of Christabel-in 1800, the secondand published them in 1816-so perfected, that his genius, in its happiest hours, feared to look its own poem in the face, and left it for many long And aroused the deep bay of the mastiff years, and at last, without an altered or an added word, to the delight of all ages. Mr Tupper's "GERALDINE has been the pleasant labour of a very few days!" (Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh !) Mr Tupper in the Third Canto shows us the Lady Geraldine beneath the oak the scene of the Witch's first meeting with Christabel. You remember the lines in Coleridge-and more vividly these "There she sees a damsel bright, And you remember how Christabel, "Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness, On her elbow did recline To look at the Lady Geraldine." And how, when the Witch unbound "Her silken robe and inner vest O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!" Previous to these apparitions, the wolf has been hunting, the raven croaking, the owl screeching, the clock of course tolling twelve, "And to her cauldron hath hurried the witch, bitch ;" The "Fair truant-like an angel of light, "All dauntless stands the maid In mystical robe array'd, And still with flashing eyes Hath shown-O dread! that face so fair "Muttering wildly through her set teeth, She seeketh and stirreth the demons beneath." Why were not already "terrible shapes with evil names leaping around a circle of flames?" But "Now one nearer than others is heard Of her or him we hear no more- "Her mouth grows wide, and her face falls in, And her beautiful brow becomes flat and thin, And sulphurous flashes blear and singe That sweetest of eyes with its delicate fringe, Till, all its loveliness blasted and dead, For raven locks flowing loose and long Her shrunken breasts, and lengthening The white round arms are sunk in her sides, As when in chrysalis canoe A may-fly down the river glides, Struggling for life and liberty too,-- You remember the dream of Bracy the Bard in Christabel-told by himself to Sir Leoline? "In my sleep I saw that dove, That gentle bird, whom thou dost love, the old Tree. And in my dream methought I went I stooped, methought, the dove to take, seems to live upon my eye! And thence I vowed this self-same day, The How full of meaning the dream! Mr Tupper does not know it was a dream of love in fear; and interpreting it literally, transforms Geraldine into a "bright green snake!" and such a snake! The "dragon-maid" coils herself Fair faint Geraldine lies on the ground, And forth from the oak In a whirl of thick smoke Leaps with a hideous howl at a bound by whom the deponent saith not Ryxa the hag is the Witch's mother and undertakes to clothe her with all beauty-in the shape of Geraldinethat she may win the love of the Lady Christabel's betrothed knight, and enjoy his embraces-only that "Still thy bosom and half thy side First Canto by Coleridge. But how the Dragon Maid was so beautiful be. fore her mother endowed her with the borrowed mein of Geraldine, we do not know; nor are we let into the secret of the cause of her hatred of Christabel in particular, more than of any other lovely Christian lady with a Christian lover, of whom there must have been many at that day among the Lakes. The Canto seems to us throughout to the last degree absurd. It pleased Coleridge to give to each of his two Cantos a conclusion-in a separate set of verses-and Mr Tupper does the same-but oh! my eye, what verses! He speaketh of hatred --or jealousy-or some infernal passion or another, which, among other evil works, "Floodeth the bosom with bitterest gall, It drowneth the young virtues all, And the sweet milk of the heart's own fountain, Choked and crushed by a heavy mountain, All curdled, and harden'd, and blacken'd, doth shrink Into the Sepia's stone-bound ink !!" &c. Think of these lines as Coleridge's, "The creature of the God-like forehead!" Part Fourth beginneth thus "The eye of day hath opened grey, And the gallant sun Hath trick'd his beams by Rydal's streams, From Langdale Pikes his glory strikes, From heath and giant hill, From many a tairn, and stone-built cairn, And many a mountain rill: Helvellyn bares his forehead black, And Eagle-crag, and Saddleback, And Skiddaw hails the dawning day, And rolls his robe of clouds away." Mr Tupper knows nothing of the localities and should have consulted. Green's Guide before sitting down to "continue" Christabel. Coniston has no connexion with Rydal's streams, nor have they any connexion with Sir Leoline's Castle in Langdale-much less has Helvellyn-and least of all have Saddleback and Skiddaw. No doubt the "eye of day" saw them all, and many a place beside; but this slobbering sort of work is neither poetry nor painting-mere words. A stranger knight with a noble retinue arrives at the Castle gate, and "leaps the moat," an unusual feat. And who is he? Amador, "a foundling youth," who having been exposed in infancy "beneath the tottering Bowther-stone," and picked up by Sir Leoline, in due course of time fell in love with Christabel, and, on discovery of their mutual affection, had been ordered by the wrathful Baron away to the Holy Land, not to return "Till name and fame and fortune are his." The progress of the loves of the "handsome (!) youth and the beauteous maid” is described circumstantially-and we are told that, when climbing the mountains together, they did not 66 guess that the strange joy they feel The rapture making their hearts reel, Springs from aught else than sweet Grassmere, Or hill and valley far and near, Or Derwent's banks, and glassy tide, Lowdore and hawthorn'd Ambleside." Such simplicity is rare, even now-adays, in young people on whom "life's noon is blazing bright and fair." But so it was, Mr Tupper assures us in lines that will bear comparison with any thing of the kind in any language. "Thus they grew up in each other, Till to ripened youth They had grown up for each other; Yet, to say but sooth, She had not lov'd him, as other Than a sister doth, And he to her was but a brother, With a brother's troth: But selfish craft, that slept so long, Read the strange truth, Condemned them both, That they, who only for each other Gladly drew their daily breath, Through all life, love strong as death; While the dear hope they just have learnt to prize, And fondly cherish, The hope that in their hearts deep-rooted lies, Must pine and perish : For the slow prudence of the worldly wise In cruel coldness still denies The foundling youth to woo and win Be rent asunder by strength of arm;" |