Tall and erect, unmeaning, mute, and pale,
O’er his blank face no gleams of thought prevail;
Wan as the man in classic story fam’d,
Who told old PRIAM that his Ilion flam’d;
Yet soon the time will come when speak he hall,
And at his voice another Ilion fall!
The excellence of this description consists as that of a portrait always must, in a most scrupulous and inveterate attention to likeness.—Those who know the original, will not question the accuracy of resemblance on this occasion. The idea conveyed in the last line,
And at his voice another Ilion fall,
is a spirited imitation of the fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, of Virgil, and a most statesmanlike anticipation of the future fate of England.
The author now takes an opportunity of shewing the profundity of his learning in British history. He goes on to say,
CÆSAR, we know, with anxious effort try’d
To swell, with Britain’s name, his triumph’s pride:
Oft he essay’d, but still essay’d in vain;
Great in herself, she mock’d the menac’d chain.
But fruitless all—for what was CÆSAR’s sword
To thy all-conquering speeches, mighty ORDE!!!
Our author cannot so far resist his classical propensity in this place, as to refrain from the following allusion; which, however, must be confessed at least, to be applied with justice.
AMPHION’s lyre, they say, could raise a town;
ORDE’s elocution pulls a Nation down.
He proceeds with equal spirit and erudition to another circumstance in the earlier periods of English history,
The lab’ring bosom of the teeming North
Long pour’d, in vain, her valiant offspring forth;
For GOTH or VANDAL, once on British shore,
Relax’d his nerve, and conquer’d states no more.
Not so the VANDAL of the modern time,
This latter offspring of the Northern clime;
He, with a breath, gives Britain’s wealth away,
And smiles, triumphant, o’er her setting ray.