FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sylvanus Spenser, the eldest son of the Poet Spenser, married Ellen Nagle, eldest daughter of David Nagle, Esq., ancestor of the lady, who was mother to Edmund Burke.
[2] This as a picture is outlined with so delicate a pencil, and colored with such mingled purity and richness of tone, that we transcribe a few passages, as much in honor of the man who could write, as the woman who could inspire such praise:—
"The character of ——
"She is handsome, but it is beauty not arising from features, from complexion, or from shape. She has all three in a high degree, but it is not by these she touches a heart; it is all that sweetness of temper, benevolence, innocence, and sensibility, which a face can express, that forms her beauty. She has a face that just raises your attention at first sight; it grows on you every moment, and you wonder it did no more than raise your attention at first.
"Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they command like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue.
"Her stature is not tall, she is not made to be the admiration of every body, but the happiness of one.
"She has all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy—she has all the softness that does not imply weakness. * *
"Her voice is a soft, low, music, not formed to rule in public assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a crowd: it has this advantage—you must come close to her to hear it.
"To describe her body, describes her mind; one is the transcript of the other; her understanding is not shown in the variety of matters it exerts itself on, but in the goodness of the choice she makes.
"She does not display it so much in saying or doing striking things, as in avoiding such as she ought not to say or do."
"No persons of so few years can know the world better; no person was ever less corrupted by the knowledge.
"Her politeness flows rather from a natural disposition to oblige, than from any rules on that subject, and therefore never fails to strike those who understand good breeding, and those who do not."
"She has a steady and firm mind, which takes no more from the solidity of the female character, than the solidity of marble does from its polish and lustre. She has such virtues as make us value the truly great of our own sex. She has all the winning graces that make us love even the faults we see in the weak and beautiful in hers."
[3] Our cut exhibits all that now remains of Gregories—a few walls and a portion of the old stables. Mrs. Burke, before her death, sold the mansion to her neighbor, Mr. John Du Pré, of Wilton Park. It was destroyed by fire soon afterwards.
[4] During Barry's five years' residence abroad he earned nothing for himself, and received no supplies save from Edmund and Richard Burke.
[5] Mr. Prior says in his admirable Life of Burke—"How the money to effect this purchase was procured has given rise to many surmises and reports; a considerable portion was his own, the bequest of his father and elder brother. The Marquis of Rockingham offered the loan of the amount required to complete the purchase; the Marquis was under obligations to him publicly, and privately for some attention paid to the business of his large estates in Ireland. Less disinterested men would have settled the matter otherwise—the one by quartering his friend, the other, by being quartered, on the public purse. To the honor of both, a different course was pursued."
[6] Waller was a resident in this vicinity, in which his landed property chiefly lay. He lived in the family mansion named Well's Court, a property still in the possession of his descendants. His tomb is a table monument of white marble, upon which rises a pyramid, resting on skulls with bat's wings; it is a peculiar but picturesque addition to the churchyard, and, from its situation close to the walk, attracts much attention.
[7] Our engraving exhibits his simple tablet, as seen from the central aisle of the church, immediately in front of the pew in which Burke and his family always sat.
POEMS BY S. G. GOODRICH[8]
For the last twenty years the name of Mr. Goodrich has been very constantly associated with American literature. He commenced as a publisher, in Boston, and was among the first to encourage by liberal copyrights, and to make attractive by elegant editions, the works of American authors. One of his earliest undertakings was a collection of the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, with a memoir of that author, by his widow, with whom he shared the profits. In 1828 he began "The Token," an annual literary souvenir, which he edited and published fourteen years. In this appeared the first fruits of the genius of Cheney, who has long been acknowledged the master of American engravers; and the first poems and prose writings of Longfellow, Willis, Mellen, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Sigourney, and other eminent authors. In "The Token" also were printed his own earlier lyrical pieces. The work was of the first rank in its class, and in England as well as in this country it was uniformly praised.
In 1831 an anonymous romance was published by Marsh & Capen, of Boston. It was attributed by some to Willis, and by others to Mrs. Child, then Miss Francis. It illustrated a fine and peculiar genius, but was soon forgotten. Mr. Goodrich appreciated its merits, and applied to the publishers for the name of the author, that he might engage him as a contributor to "The Token." They declined to disclose his secret, but offered to forward a letter to him. Mr. Goodrich wrote one, and received an answer signed by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many of whose best productions, as "Sights from a Steeple," "Sketches under an Umbrella," "The Prophetic Pictures," "Canterbury Pilgrims," &c., appeared in this annual. In 1839, Mr. Goodrich suggested to Mr. Hawthorne the publication of a collection of his tales, surrendering his copyrights to several of them for this purpose; but so little were the extraordinary qualities of this admirable author then understood, that the publishers would not venture upon such an experiment without an assurance against loss, which Mr. Goodrich, as his friend, therefore gave. The public judgment will be entitled to little respect, if the copyright of the works of Hawthorne be not hereafter a most ample fortune.
Mr. Goodrich soon abandoned the business of publishing, and, though still editing "The Token," devoted his attention chiefly to the writing of that series of educational works, known as Peter Parley's, which has spread his fame over the world. The whole number of these volumes is about sixty. Among them are treatises upon a great variety of subjects, and they are remarkable for simplicity of style and felicity of illustration. Mr. Goodrich has accomplished a complete and important revolution in juvenile reading, substituting truth and nature for grotesque fiction in the materials and processes of instruction, and his method has been largely imitated, at home and abroad. In England many authors and publishers have disgraced the literary profession by works under the name of "Parley," with which he has had nothing to do, and which have none of his wise and genial spirit.
Besides his writings under this pseudonym, Mr. Goodrich has produced several works of a more ambitious character, which have been eminently popular. Among them is a series entitled "The Cabinet Library," embracing histories, biographies, and essays in science; "Universal Geography," in an octavo volume of one thousand pages; and a "History of all Nations," in two large octavos, in which he has displayed such research, analysis, and generalization, as should insure for him an honorable rank among historians. We cannot better illustrate his popularity than by stating the fact, that more than four hundred thousand volumes of his various productions are now annually sold in this country and Europe. No living writer is, therefore, as much read, and in the United States hardly a citizen now makes his first appearance at the polls, or a bride at the altar, to whose education he has not in a large degree contributed. For twenty years he has preserved the confidence of parents and teachers of every variety of condition and opinion, by the indefectible morality and strong practical sense, which are universally understood and approved.
Like many other eminent persons, Mr. Goodrich lets sought occasional relaxation from the main pursuits of his life in poetry, and the volume before us contains some forty illustrations of his abilities, as a worshipper of the muse whose temples are most thronged, but who is most coy and most chary of her inspiration. They have for the most part been previously printed in "The Token," or in literary journals, but a few are now published the first time. In typographical and pictorial elegance the book is unique. It is an exhibition of the success of the first attempt to rival the London and Paris publishers in woodcut embellishment and general beauty of execution.
That Mr. Goodrich possesses the poetical faculty in an eminent degree, no one has doubted who has read his fine lines "To Lake Superior:"
Father of Lakes! thy waters bend,
Beyond the eagle's utmost view,
When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send
Back to the sky its world of blue.
Boundless and deep the forests weave
Their twilight shade thy borders o'er,
And threatening cliffs, like giants, heave
Their rugged forms along thy shore.
Nor can the light canoes, that glide
Across thy breast like things of air,
Chase from thy lone and level tide,
The spell of stillness deepening there.
Yet round this waste of wood and wave,
Unheard, unseen, a spirit lives,
That, breathing o'er each rock and cave,
To all, a wild, strange aspect gives.
The thunder-riven oak, that flings
Its grisly arms athwart the sky,
A sudden, startling image brings
To the lone traveller's kindled eye.
The gnarled and braided boughs that show
Their dim forms in the forest shade,
Like wrestling serpents seem, and throw
Fantastic horrors through the glade.
The very echoes round this shore,
Have caught a strange and gibbering tone,
For they have told the war-whoop o'er,
Till the wild chorus is their own.
Wave of the wilderness, adieu—
Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds, ye woods!
Roll on, thou Element of blue,
And fill these awful solitudes!
Thou hast no tale to tell of man.
God is thy theme. Ye sounding caves,
Whisper of Him, whose mighty plan,
Deems as a bubble all your waves!
The "Birth Night of the Humming Birds" has been declared by the London Athenæum equal to Dr. Drake's "Culprit Fay," and it may be regarded as in its way the best specimen of Mr. Goodrich's talents. It is too long to be quoted in these paragraphs. In descriptions of nature he is uniformly successful, presenting his picture with force and distractness.
There are many examples of this in one of his longest poems, "The Mississippi," in which the traditions that cluster around the Father of Waters, and the advances of civility along his borders, are graphically presented. The river is described as rising.
"Far in the west, where snow-capt mountain's rise,
Like marble shafts beneath heaven's stooping dome,
And sunset's charming curtain drapes the skies
As if Enchantment there would build her home.
The bard laments that
"though these scenes are fair
As fabled Arcady, the sylph and fay,
And all their gentle kindred, shun the air,
Where car and steamer make their stormy way;"
Yet trusts that in a future time,
"Perchance some Cooper's magic art may wake
The sleeping legends of this mighty vale,
And twine fond memories round the lawn and lake,
Where Warrior fought or Lover told his tale.
In the volume are several allegorical pieces of much merit, of which the most noticeable are the "Two Windmills," "The Bubble Chase," and "The Rainbow Bridge." Several smaller poems are distinguished for a quaint simplicity, reminding us of the old masters of English verse; and others, for refined sentiment, as the "Old Oak," of which the key-note is in the lines,
Here is the grassy knoll I used to seek
At summer noon, beneath the spreading shade,
And watch the flowers that stooped, with glowing cheek,
To meet the romping ripples as they played.
The longest of Mr. Goodrich's poems is "The Outcast." It was first published many years ago, and it appears now with the improvements suggested by reflection and criticism. Its fault is, a certain intensity, but it has noble passages, betraying a careful study and profound appreciation of the subtler operations of the mind, particularly, when, in its most excited action, it is influenced by the observation of nature.
The volume will take its place in the cabinets of our choice literature, and will be prized the more for the fact that by selecting American themes for his most elaborate compositions, Mr. Goodrich has made literature subservient to the purposes of patriotism.