"WIND OF SUMMER, MURMUR LOW."
Wind of summer, murmur low,
Where the charméd waters flow,
While the songs of day are dying,
And the bees are homeward flying,
As the breezes come and go.
Come and go, hum and blow,
Winds of summer, sweet and low,
Ere my lover sinks to rest,
While he lies upon my breast,
Kiss his forehead, pale and fair,
Kiss the ringlets of his hair,
Kiss his heavy-lidded eyes,
Where the mist of slumber lies;
Kiss his throat, his cheek, his brow,
And his red, red lips, as I do now,
While he sleeps so sound and slow,
On the heart that loves him so,
Dreaming of the sad, and olden,
And the loving, and the golden
Wind of summers long ago!
THE LATE ELIOT WARBURTON.
The melancholy fate of the author of The Crescent and the Cross, Canada, Darien, &c., has been stated in these pages. In Great Britain, where he was well known and highly esteemed by literary men, there have been many feeling and apparently just tributes to his memory, one of the most interesting of which is a memoir in the Dublin University Magazine, from which we transcribe the following paragraphs:
"It was during an extended tour in the Mediterranean about ten years ago, that Mr. Warburton sent some sheets of manuscript notes to Mr. Lever, at that time Editor of the Dublin University Magazine. These at once caught that gentleman's attention, and he gladly gave them publicity, under the title of "Episodes of Eastern Travel," in successive numbers of the magazine, where they were universally admired for the grace and liveliness of their style. Mr. Lever, however, soon saw that though for the purposes of his periodical these papers were extremely valuable, the author was not consulting his own best interests by continuing to give his travels to the world in that form; and, with generous disinterestedness, advised him to collect what he had already published, and the remainder of his notes, and make a book of the whole. Mr. Warburton followed his advice, entered into terms with Mr. Colburn, and published his travels under the title of 'The Crescent and the Cross.'
"Of this book it is needless for us to speak. In spite of the formidable rivalry of an 'Eothen,' which appeared about the same time, it sprang at once into public favor, and is one of the very few books of modern travels of which the sale has continued uninterrupted through successive editions to the present time. Were we to pronounce upon the secret of its success, we should lay it to its perfect right-mindedness. A changeful truth, a versatile propriety of feeling initiates the author, as it were, into the heart of each successive subject; and we find him as profoundly impressed with the genius of the Holy Land, as he is steeped, in the proper place, in the slumberous influences of the dreamy Nile, upon whose bosom he rocks his readers into a trance, to be awakened only by the gladsome originality of these melodies which come mirthfully on their ears from either bank. And, we may observe in passing, it is precisely the want of this, which prevents the indisputable power and grace of 'Eothen' from having their full effect with the public.
"Passages of beauty, almost of sublimity, stand isolated from our sympathies by the interposed cynicism of a few caustic remarks; and scenes of the world's most ancient reverence and worship become needlessly disenchanted under the spell of some skeptical sneer.
"But we must not turn aside to criticise. Since the publication of the 'Crescent and the Cross,' Mr. Warburton has written, or edited, a number of works, some historical, others of fiction, of which his last romance, 'Darien,' only appeared as he was on the eve of departing on the fatal voyage. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance, that in this tale has prefigured his own fate. A burning ship is described in terms which would have served as a picture of the frightful reality he was himself doomed to witness. The coincidence, casual as it is, has imparted a melancholy interest to that story, which will long be wept over as the parting and presaging legacy of a gifted spirit, prematurely snatched away.
"These lighter effusions most probably grew out of the craving of the publishers for the prestige of his name, already found to be valuable even on title-pages; and the ready market they commanded could not but prove an excitement to continue and multiply them. This might be considered in an ulterior sense unfortunate; for we are inclined to think that the true bent of Mr. Warburton's mind, if not of his talents, was towards graver and less imaginative studies; and we know that this propensity was growing upon him with maturer years and soberer reflections.
"It is not exclusively from the bearing of his researches and the general drift of his correspondence that we infer this; though both set latterly in that direction. He had for some time been actually at work with definite objects in view. One subject which he took up warmly was a British History of Ireland; that is, a history intended to deal impartial justice between the Irish people on the one side, and the British empire on the other; reviewing the politics of successive periods, neither from the Irish nor the English side of the question, but with reference to the general interests of the whole.
"The task, would have proved an arduous one, under any circumstances—perhaps an invidious one; but what was worse, even when accomplished, the book might have turned out a dull affair. So, with a view to lightening the reading, he had proposed to embody with it memoirs of the Viceroys, thus keeping the British connection prominent, while enlivening the pages with biographical touches.
"Acting on these ideas, he had actually begun a 'History of the Viceroys' in conjunction with a literary friend, and was only deterred from prosecuting it by the apathy, or rather discouragement, of the London publishers, who felt no inclination to venture upon an Irish historical speculation. Unfortunately, neither he nor his friend could afford to pursue the task gratuitously, and it was accordingly abandoned.
"Still later, he employed himself in collecting materials for a History of the Poor—a vast theme; perhaps too vast for a single intellect to grasp. To him, however, it was a labor of love; and he had succeeded in getting together a considerable mass of curious and valuable material pour servir. His last visit to his native country had researches of this nature for one of its objects; and we are sure many persons connected with the charitable institutions of Dublin, will recollect the persevering zeal with which he visited the haunts of poverty, as well as the asylums for its relief, noting down every thing which might prove afterwards serviceable on that suggestive topic.
"With an upwelling of philanthropy so pure and perennial as this, the preliminary investigations could have been only a delight to him. Other men might be forced to them as a revolting duty; he chose the inquiry, with very dubious hopes of bettering himself by prosecuting it, because his heart was full of compassion, and he thought he might do good. We repeat, what we can state from personal knowledge, that the bent of Mr. Warburton's mind was latterly towards works of general utility; and it is with great satisfaction we learn, what we had not been aware of until the public papers announced it, that his projected visit to the New World was a mission, in which the interests of humanity were to have in him an advocate and champion.
"Into his private life we feel that, under present circumstances, it would be indelicate, as well as out of place, to enter. Surrounded as he was with all the blessings which the domestic relations can bestow, beloved by his intimates, caressed by the gifted and the good, Eliot Warburton lived the centre of a radiating circle of happiness. His personal qualities were of no common order. His society was eagerly sought after. With a fastidious lassitude of air, and an apparent disinclination to exertion, he possessed remarkable force of thought and fluency of diction; and it was no uncommon thing to see him, when he had begun to relate passages from his experience in foreign countries, or adventures in his own, the centre of a gradually increasing audience, amidst which he sat, improvisating a sort of romantic recitation, until he was completely carried away on the current of his own eloquence, and lost every sense of where he was or what he was doing, in the enthusiasm he had fanned up and saw reflected around him. This power was a peculiar gift; and he loved to exercise it. In this form many of his happiest effusions have been given utterance to; and every body who has heard him at such inspired moments has felt regret that the brilliant bursts which so delighted him, should have been stamped upon no more retentive tablets than the ears of ordinary listeners.
"Of this amiable, refined and gifted individual, we are afraid to speak as warmly as our heart would dictate. Before us lie the few hasty lines—but not too hurried to be the channel of a parting kindness—scrawled to us on the first day of this year—the last day the writer was ever to pass in England. They are, perhaps, amongst the latest words he ever wrote. 'I am off,' they run 'for the West Indies to-morrow. But I have accomplished your affair.' Oh, vanity of human purpose! Man proposes—God disposes. We were next to hear of him, standing on the deck of the burning vessel in the Atlantic, alone with the captain, after every other soul had disappeared, surveying—we feel convinced, with a courage of a lion—the awful twofold death close before him, and which he had in probability deliberately preferred to an early relinquishment of his companions to their fate. It is a fine picture—one that shall every hang framed with his image in our memory; helping us to believe that
"'——Lycidas our sorrow is not dead.
Sunk though he be beneath the watery flood,'—
But that he hath mounted to a higher sphere—
"'Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.'"
AUTHOR OF "THE FOOL OF QUALITY."
Of the interesting papers in the February Dublin University Magazine, we have read none with more satisfaction than the biographical sketch and portrait of one of the most distinguished Irishmen of his own or any age, the gifted and pure minded author of Gustavus Vasa and The Fool of Quality, Henry Brooke. Of his literary fate it might be said that the most unfortunate thing he did was to assert the patriotism of Dean Swift; and the most unfortunate thing was to be left out of Doctor Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." Trials had he to undergo, although not absolutely driven to the wall, like many children of "the fatal dowry," and those of Irish complexion, in particular; but he bravely bore up against them. Those who deem that relatives may live more happily apart, and that friendship is best preserved in full dress, may look at the picture of Henry Brooke, the poet and politician, and Robert Brooke, the painter, with their wives and children, not less than twenty, living together in perfect peace and amity at Daisy Park, in the flattest part of Kildare, where, in those dull seats and distant times, a family breeze might now and then have been looked on in the Irish sense as a "convenience and a comfort." "While Henry wrote," says the biographer, "Robert painted, and sold his pictures; and thus these two loving brothers, having lost their property, made a right and manful use of their intellectual gifts, and supported their large families by the sweat of their brows."
"In his politics, Brooke was of the old whig school; and, had he lived in 1829, he would probably have been an emancipator. He was a right-minded, ardent Irishman in his love for fatherland; hated oppression; idolized liberty; wrote most keenly against Poyning's infamous laws; mourned over the misrule and misgovernment of his country, under the tyranny and rapacity of the Stuart dynasty; admired King William, and was an exulting Protestant; yet greatly loved his Roman Catholic neighbors, and would preserve to them their properties, though he disliked their principles, and deprecated their ascendency."
Dr. Johnson's feelings respecting Brooke are accounted for, not improbably, as follows:
"It may be asked why did Dr. Johnson exclude Brooke from his 'Lives of the Poets,' where so many names of little note are to be found? In 1739, Johnson had written in Brooke's praise in his 'Complete Vindication,' and twenty years afterwards, when the learned Dr. Campbell showed a spirited 'Prospectus of a History of Ireland' written by him, to the great moralist, he read it with much pleasure and praise, saying that 'every line breathed the true fire of genius.' It is recorded that, on this occasion, Johnson lamented that 'the vanity of Irishmen, even if their patriotism were extinct, did not enable Brooke to carry his design into execution.' In Johnson's letter to Charles O'Connor we have his mind on the subject. To Brooke he appears never to have written; there had been an ancient quarrel between them. They had argued and disagreed; and the traditionary story in Brooke's family bears so heavily on the manner of the philosopher, and is so flattering to the courtesy of the poet, that we should prefer not to write it down. Brooke was at all times strangely careless of fame; independent to a fault, and more proud than vain; and though much urged by his friends to humble himself, yet he could not be induced to 'bow down' to the cap of this literary Gesler, much as he regarded his learning and noble intellect. This dislike of the Doctor continued during his life; and Boswell narrates that on the occasion of a play being read to him (it was Brooke's Gustavus Vasa) and a circle of friends, on coming to the line—
"Who rules o'er free men should himself be free!'
the company applauded, but Johnson said it might as well be said—
"'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat—'
a stupid and inapt verbal sophism, and unworthy of his great and good mind; but such was often his way. In this fashion one might string endless parodies on the line, and equally inapplicable; for example:—
"'Who keeps a madhouse should himself be mad!'
"Mr. Brooke's elegant and honest mind probably had in view that word of Scripture which saith, 'he that ruleth his own spirit is better than he who taketh a city'—(Prov. xvi. 32.)
"By this unhappy difference Brooke lost his Johnsonian niche in the temple of biographical fame. Yet we must remember that a better fate was his,—'his record is on high,'—and his spirit with that Saviour who loved him and made him what he was. Faults and inconsistency were in him, no doubt, but still we know not of any of whom it could be so well and suitably said—
"'His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, 'This was a man.'"