THE STORM.
A FRAGMENT.
It is dark, and a silent gloom pervades the face of Heaven and of Earth, that makes my soul expand to such a magnitude, as if it would burst the very bosom which contains it.—All is silent!—fear takes possession of my mind; when, from an angry cloud, the liquid flames flash forth with terrible sublimity; darting from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, with such repeated swiftness, blazing expansive through the heaven’s high vaults, then on a sudden vanishing! On rolls the distant thunder solemnly sublime, and with the pelting rain and howling wind, approaches nearer: between each peal out flashes the sulphureous flame, illumining the rushing cataract with its light; succeeded by a crash most horrible, which shakes the very earth to its centre! Once more a sombre gloom spreads over the face of nature—again, all is terror and confusion!—
Dudley.
WISDOM.
Lessons of Wisdom have never such power over us as when they were wrought into the heart through the ground work of a story which engages the passions. Is it that we are like iron and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon? or is the heart so in love with deceit, that where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a fable, in order to come at truth?
LEVITY.
A Devonshire droll has thus burlesqued the lullababy pastoral of Shenstone. “My banks they are furnish’d with bees, &c.”
My beds are all furnish’d with fleas,
Whose bitings invite me to scratch;
Well stock’d are my orchards with jays,
And my pig sties white over with thatch.
I seldom a pimple have met,
Such health does magnecia bestow:
My horsepond is border’d with wet,
Where burdock and marsh-mallows grow.
ANECDOTES.
A gentleman, reading in one of the public prints, that Mr. Monday, of Oxford, was dead, exclaimed,—“Alas! my friends, we now have reason to lament, like Aurelius, that we have lost a day!”
A gentleman, reading in one of the daily prints that thirteen hundred of the French had been drowned, said, “Thus should the courage of all our enemies be damped.”
THE FARRAGO.
Nº. VIII.
Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire that he were made a Prelate.
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You’d say it had been all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle, rendered you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The gordian knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter; when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still;
And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.
Shakespeare.
No character of antiquity is more brilliant and captivating, than that of Alchibiades, the versatile Athenian. Cornelius Nepos, the Roman biographer, has on this occasion, become the very Rubens of character painters, and has happily sketched every flexile feature.—Nature, says he, appears to have exerted her strongest energies in moulding Alchibiades. In the hour of business he was a statesman, a general and an orator. In the hour of revel, the rakes retired from that bagnio at twelve, which the accommodating Alcibiades gladdened at two. Inhabiting a city, studious of magnificence, he surpassed in equipage, the most ostentatious grandees; and, when an exile among the hardy Thebans, he carried heavier burdens than the broadest shouldered porter in Bœtia. At Lacedemon his palate relished the black broth of Sparta; among the dissolute Thracians, those sensual swine of Epicurus’s stye, the greyest veteran of Venus made one sacrifice, less than he; and in all the taverns of Thrace, Bacchus could not recognize a more thirsty toper.
If we deduct from Alchibiades his compliance with vicious customs, no model of conduct, can be mere worthy imitation and praise. Since the æra of Chesterfield, a dissembling nobleman, who possibly pushed the praise of flexibility of manners too far, accommodation has been acrimoniously censured; and the narrow Knox, in his dogmatizing essays has asserted, that the meanest selfishness is the parent of versatility. But, though the Tunbridge teacher, ostentatiously vaunts of his intimacy with the Bible, he forgot that Paul of Tarsus, whose knowledge of the world was as indubitable as his piety, exhorts to “become all things to all men, if by any means we may gain some.” Paul was no less a gentleman than saint; and his knowledge of the world taught him the propriety of varying his means to secure the end, and to become a most accommodating apostle. Hence his compliment to Agrippa, for his skill in the jurisprudence of Judea. Hence his adroitness in persuading the superstitious men of Athens, that the Being they, and he worshipped, were the same. Hence he could charm both the courtly Felix, and the camp-bred centurion.
If the art of pleasing be worth practice in society, then will the praises of versatility be fully justified. He who in conversation, adheres to topics peculiar to himself, or to a profession, is deservedly dubbed pedant; and all unite in frowning upon him, by whom all are equally neglected. Minds of the first energy, may sometimes effect the unyielding quality of the oak, rather than the suppleness of the ozier. A cardinal Ximenes, a chancellor Thurlow, and a secretary Pitt, may be “original and unaccommodating.” But he, whom every circle courts, is that Proteus in demeanour, who can with the same ease that he shifts his shoe, mutilate, or increase his bows, accordingly, as he associates with the cit, or the courrier. The object of our fondest admiration is the man of letters and the man of the world blended, who can sublimely speculate with science in the morning, and agreeably trifle with ladies at night. Of this class is Charles Cameleon. The “omnis homo” of Horace, the “all accomplished” of Pope Charles, when at school, was equally the darling of the scholars, on the first form, and the truants on the lower. He could repeat the five declensions with promptitude, and then drive hoop, or toss balls alertly. With the same facility, could he make correct latin, and high flying kites. Unaided by the “ladder to Parnassus,” he would now ascend to the summit of Virgilian verse, and now grovel in the mire, to win marbles of every sportive schoolfellow. At the university he heard morning prayers with the saddened sedateness of a Pharisee, argued with tutors on personal identity, as if inspired by the very spirit of Locke—and, on syllogistic ground, vanquished every Aristotelean adversary. At noon you might see him sauntering with loungers, and kindling a smile even in vacancy’s face. The declining sun left him deploring, that twilight should snap speculation’s thread; or compel him to leave unfinished the song to Myra; and when the college bell tolled twelve, his convivial club chose Charles president, and the room would echo with,
“Since we’ve tarried all day to drink down the Sun,
“Let’s tarry, and drink down the Stars.”
Educated for the bar, Cameleon is now an eloquent and employed advocate. But year-books and entries, cannot preclude the system of Sydenham, and Saurin’s sermons. An apothecary, hearing him harrangue upon the superiority of Brown to Boerhave, mistakes him for a regular bred physician, and asks, when he received a medical degree from Edinburgh. Charles is intimately conversant with all the fathers of the church, repeats whole pages from Justin Martyr, and quotes St. Gregory on good works with more readiness than the parson. As he converses with the grave, or the gay, he is alternately a believer, and a sceptic: and one Sunday, after acknowledging to a devout deacon, that the internal evidence of christianity was its chief corner stone; when afternoon service was over, he agreed, to please a disciple of Voltaire, that the clashing testimony of four evangelists, completely corroded the root of our religion. Among the ladies, he holds most gracefully “’twixt his finger and thumb, a pouncet box,” and chatters on Canterbury-gowns and French millinery, like a fop of France. To a lover of the fine arts, quotes Hogarth’s “analysis of beauty,” and viewing Trumbull’s celebrated painting of the sortie from Gibralter, the artist acknowledged that he talked of lights and shades more rapidly and correctly than himself. In a club of wits, he declaims Shakespeare, in a style of Garrick, he repeats original poems, the very gems of fancy, and sets the “table on a roar” with merry tales, and ludicrous combination. The eye of every reveller brightens at his approach, and when he retires, Milton’s invocation to Mirth is unanimously applied:
“Haste thee Charles and bring with thee
Joy and youthful jollily,
Sport that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter holding both his sides.”