"Oh, better she were stolen before my face
Than have her vanquished in this desperate race!"
One secret sign his mare was taught to heed,
Whenever she must try her utmost speed.
He to the robber screamed, "Quick, pinch her ear!"
The sign she felt with answering love and fear.
As like a level thunderbolt she flew,
All chase was vain, the vexed pursuers knew.
Before this self-betrayal blank surprise
Fills Achmed's comrades, and their wondering cries
Demand, "How shall thy foolish act be named?"—
"My mare is lost, her glory is not shamed."
He says: "I knew, that, if her ear he nipped,
The darling prize could never be outstripped."
CHARLES LAMB AND SYDNEY SMITH.
There were in Great Britain, soon after the commencement of the present century, three remarkable groups of young men. Distinct schools of thought, like the philosophic schools of Greece, each of the groups was marked by peculiar ideas, tastes, and sympathies. The French Revolution, with its menace of fundamental changes, clashing with sentiments and convictions which ages had rendered habitual and dear, called for an inquiry into great principles and the grounds of things. The Napoleonic age had the terrific formlessness of chaos. Did it premonish the passing away of old things, and herald the birth of a new order and a new social state? or did the trouble spring from innate madness in the "younger strengths" which were trying to overthrow the world's kingdoms? Should venerable Royalty, after howling in the wilderness and storm, be again enthroned? or should men attempt to realize the fair ideals which the word Republic suggested? Should religion be supplanted? should Protestantism be confirmed? or should, perchance, the crosier of the Old Church be again waved over Europe? These were the questions that were mooted, and they aroused unwonted activity and vigor of thought as well in literature as in politics.
The old century left in England few celebrated names to take part in the literature of the new. The men who made the poems, romances, dramas, reviews, and criticisms for the first quarter of our century had almost all been in youth contemporaries of the Reign of Terror, and had been tried in that unparalleled period as by a fiery furnace, while their opinions were in a formative state. Crabbe and Rogers were traditions of the time of Goldsmith and Johnson; Gilford wrote with a virulence and ability which he might have learned in boyhood from Junius; but with these exceptions, English literature fifty years ago was represented by young men.