Reprinted in the Pall Mall Gazette of May 29th.
The Hebrews will not pronounce the sacred tetragrammaton יהוה. They substitute Adonai in reading the ineffable name. Jahwé (with the J pronounced as Y) is the correct pronunciation of the unspeakable name. Yet the learned hold that the true mirific name is lost, the word “Jehovah” dating only from the Masoretic innovation. See a discussion of the whole matter in Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky), vol. ii. p. 398,—a work which contains a good deal of real learning mixed with infinite rubbish.
Napoleon III. See [Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau].
Nationality in Drinks. Under this title we have three poems, originally published separately—namely, Claret, Tokay, and Beer. The first and second were published in Hood’s Magazine, in June 1844. In 1863 the poems were brought under their present title in the Poetical Works. In Claret the fancy of the poet sees in his claret-flask, as it drops into a black-faced pond, a resemblance to a gay French lady, with her arms held beside her and her feet stretched out, dropping from life into death’s silent ocean. In Tokay the bottle suggests a pygmy castle-warder, dwarfish, but able and determined, strutting about with his huge brass spurs and daring anybody to interfere with him. Beer is in memory of the beverage drunk to Nelson’s memory off Cape Trafalgar: it includes an authentic anecdote given to the poet by the captain of the vessel. He said they show a coat of Nelson’s at Greenwich with tar still on the shoulder, due to the habit he had of leaning one shoulder up against the mizzen-rigging.
Natural Magic. (Pacchiarotto and other Poems, 1876.) Hindū conjurors are exceedingly clever, and will produce a tree from apparently nothing at all, in all stages of growth. In the case described the narrator locks a nautch girl in an empty room and takes his stand at the door; in a short time the conjuror is embowered in a mass of verdure, fruit and flowers. In the same way, by the magic of a charming personality, the singer’s life has been transformed from coldness and gloom to warmth and beauty. The poem illustrates the supreme power which spirit exerts over matter. The power of the ideal world, the all-absorbing influence of faith in the unseen to the Christian, is always being exerted to produce such effects in the souls of men and women whose lives are spent in the most squalid and unlovely surroundings.
“Nay, but you who do not love her.” (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, 1845; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The first line of a song in praise of some tresses of a lady’s hair. Even those who do not love her must admit she is pure gold. As for him, he cannot praise her, he loves her so much: he will leave the praise for those who do not.
Ned Bratts. (Published in Dramatic Idyls, first series, 1879; written at Splügen.) The story is taken from The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, by John Bunyan, the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, and published in London 1680. “At a Summer Assizes holden at Hartfort, while the Judge was sitting upon the Bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, cloathed in a green suit, with a Leathern Girdle in his hand, his bosom open and all in a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and being come in, he spake aloud as follows: ‘My Lord,’ said he, ‘Here is the veriest rogue that breathes upon the face of the earth. I have been a thief from a child; when I was but a little one I gave myself to rob orchards, and to do other such-like wicked things, and I have continued a thief ever since. My Lord, there has not been a robbery committed these many years, so many miles of this place, but I have either been at it, or privy to it.’ The Judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference with some of the Justices, they agreed to indict him; and so they did, of several felonious actions, to all which he heartily confessed Guilty, and so was hanged with his wife at the same time.” In the poem, Ned Bratts, the scene is laid at Bedford. The assizes are held on a broiling day in June; the court-house is crammed; horse stealers, rogues, puritans and preachers are being tried and sentenced, when through the barriers there burst Publican Ned Bratts and Tabitha his wife, loudly confessing they were the “worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged,” and detailing the various high crimes and misdemeanours of which they had long been guilty. He tells of the laces they had bought of the Tinker in the Bedford cage, and of
“His girl,—the blind young chit who hawks about his wares”;
tells of the Book which the girl gave him, the Book her father wrote in prison, which told of “Christmas” [he meant “Christian”]. “Christmas was meant for me,” he says,—he must get rid of his burden and hurry from “Destruction,” which to him is Bedford town. So fearful are the converted couple that they will fall again into their old sins, and so miss Heaven’s gate, they beg the judges to