A thousand eyes were quench’d in endless night,
To form that magic globe.—XI. p. 117.
A similar invention occurs in Dr. Beaumont’s Psyche, one of the most extraordinary poems in our language. I am far from claiming any merit for such inventions, which no man can value more cheaply,—but such as it is, I am not beholden for it to this forgotten writer, whose strange, long, but by no means uninteresting work I had never read till after two editions of Kehama were printed.
A stately mirror’s all-enamell’d case The second was; no crystal ever yet Smil’d with such pureness: never ladies’ glass Its owner flattered with so smooth a cheat. Nor could Narcissus’ fount with such delight Into his fair destruction him invite.
For He in that and self-love being drown’d, Agenor from him pluck’d his doting eyes: And, shuffled in her fragments, having found Old Jezabels, he stole the dog’s due prize. Goliah’s staring bacins too he got, Which he with Pharaoh’s all together put.
But not content with these, from Phaeton, From Joab, Icarus, Nebuchadnezzar, From Philip and his world-devouring son, From Sylla, Cataline, Tully, Pompey, Cæsar, From Herod, Cleopatra, and Sejanus, From Agrippina and Domitianus,
And many surly stoics, theirs he pull’d; Whose proudest humours having drained out, He blended in a large and polish’d mould; Which up he fill’d with what from Heaven he brought, In extract of those looks of Lucifer, In which against his God he breathed war.
Then to the North, that glassy kingdom, where Establish’d frost and ice for ever reign, He sped his course, and meeting Boreas there, Pray’d him this liquid mixture to restrain. When lo! as Boreas oped his mouth and blew For his command, the slime all solid grew.
Thus was the mirror forged, and contain’d The vigour of those self-admiring eyes Agenor’s witchcraft into it had strain’d; A dangerous juncture of proud fallacies; Whose fair looks so inamour’d him, that he Thrice having kiss’d it, nam’d it Philanty.
Inchanted Psyche ravish’d was to see The Glass herself upon herself reflect With trebled majesty. The sun, when he Is by Aurora’s roseat fingers deckt,
Views not his repercussed self so fair Upon the eastern main, as she did here.
Be true unto yourselves.—XII. p. 127.
The passage in which Menu exhorts a witness to speak the truth is one of the few sublime ones in his Institutes. “The soul itself is its own witness; the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of men! . . The sinful have said in their hearts, none see us. Yes, the gods distinctly see them, and so does the spirit within their breasts . . The guardian deities of the firmament, of the earth, of the waters, of the human heart, of the moon, of the sun, and of fire, of punishment after death, of the winds, of night, of both twilights, and of justice, perfectly know the state of all spirits clothed with bodies. . . O friend to virtue! that supreme Spirit, which thou believest one and the same with thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness or of thy wickedness. If thou beest not at variance, by speaking falsely, with Yama, the subduer of all, with Vaivaswata the punisher, with that great Divinity who dwells in thy breast,—go not on a pilgrimage to the river Ganga, nor to the plains of Curu, for thou hast no need of expiation.—Ch. viii. p. 84, 85, 86, 91, 92.
The Aunnay Birds.—XII. p. 128.
The Aunnays act a considerable part in the history of the Nellah Rajah, an amusing romance, for a translation of which we are indebted to Mr. Kindersley. They are milk-white, and remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk.
END OF VOLUME FIRST.