If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art—”
he dropped into the arms of Moody, who personated Claudio, and never spoke more!—Ed.]
[“One other noted character we visited—the one who, according to William Taylor of Norwich, was the greatest of all. This was August von Kotzebue, the very popular dramatist, whose singular fate it was to live at variance with the great poets of his country, while he was the idol of the mob. He was at one time (about this time (1801) and a little later) a favourite in all Europe. One of his plays, The Stranger, I have seen acted in German, English, Spanish, French, and, I believe, also Italian. He was the pensioner of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The odium produced by this circumstance, and the imputation of being a spy, are assigned as the cause of his assassination by [C. L. Sand] a student of Jena, a few years after our visit [March 3, 1819]. He was living, like Goethe, in a large house and in style. I drank tea with him, and found him a lively little man, with small black eyes. He had the manners of a petit-maître.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary (1801), i. 115.—Ed.]
No. XXII.
April 9, 1798.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.
Sir,—I saw, with strong approbation, your specimen of ancient Sapphic measure in English, which I think far surpasses all that Abraham Fraunce, Richard Stanyhurst, or Sir Philip Sidney himself, have produced in that style—I mean, of course, your sublime and beautiful Knife-Grinder, of which it is not too high an encomium to say, that it even rivals the efforts of the fine-eared democratic poet, Mr. Southey. But you seem not to be aware, that we have a genuine Sapphic measure belonging to our own language, of which I now send you a short specimen.