"'Qu'est ce que c'est que le Genie?'
"Brillant est cet esprit privé de sentiment;
Mais ce n'est qu'un soleil trop vif et trop constant,
Tendre est ce sentiment qu' aucun esprit n'anime,
Mais ce n'est qu'un jour doux, que trop de pluie abime!
Quand un brillant esprit de ses rares couleurs,
Orne du sentiment les aimables douleurs,
Un Phenomêne en nait, le plus beau de la vie!
C'est alors que les ris en se mélant aux pleurs,
Font ces Iris de l'ame, appellê le Genie!"
"C'y gist un povre menestrel,
Occis par maint enmiict cruel—
Ne plains pas trop sa destinée—
N'est icy que son corps mortel:
Son ame est toujours à Gillwell,
Et n'est ce pas là l'Elyséé?"
We think that Mr. Spencer's Italian rhymes are better finished than his French; and indeed the facility of composing in that most poetical of all languages must be obvious: but, as a composer in Italian, he and all other Englishmen are much inferior to Mr. Mathias. It is very perceptible in many of Mr. S.'s smaller pieces that he has suffered his English versification to be vitiated with Italian
concetti
; and we should have been better pleased with his compositions in a foreign language, had they not induced him to corrupt his mother-tongue. Still we would by no means utterly proscribe these excursions into other languages; though they remind us occasionally of that aspiring Frenchman who placed in his grounds the following inscription in honour of Shenstone and the Leasowes:
"See this stone
For William Shenstone—
Who planted groves rural,
And wrote verse natural!"
The above lines were displayed by the worthy proprietor, in the pride of his heart, to all English travellers, as a tribute of respect for the resemblance of his paternal chateau to the Leasowes, and a striking coincidence between Shenstone's versification and his own.—We do not mean to insinuate that Mr. Spencer's French verses ("
Cy gist un povre menestrel,"
with an Urn inscribed W. R. S. at the top) are
precisely
a return in kind for the quatrain above quoted: but we place it as a beacon to all young gentlemen of poetical propensities on the French Parnassus. Few would proceed better on the Gallic Pegasus, than the Anglo-troubadour on ours.