Each city, wandering stream, and wildering wood,
Where late in joy secure he journeyed blythe,
Nor met the phantom of a single fear,
Where every cloud illumined by the sun,
Hung lovely, and each zephyr fragrance breathed.
[Cætera desunt.
The obstacle, however, could not be removed, and it was deemed expedient and prudential that the connection should be dissolved. It was so, but our friend never got the better of the shock, which his sensibility sustained. He absented himself from his friends, and when he again appeared among them, he introduced a wife; but such a wife!—no more like her by whom he had been rejected, than he himself to Hercules. Who she was, where he found her, why he married her, are matters which, if known at all, can only be so to a very few. But the vessel was too much shaken, and battered, and crazy, to weather many of the gales of life. There was deadly and corrosive poison lurking within. It was deemed adviseable that he should try the air of Lisbon. He prepared to do so, and in his progress thither, before he embarked, he visited him who now pays this tribute to his memory. But oh how altered! He was also alone; he who wanted, he who merited every care, every attention of the tenderest sympathy, had, when approaching almost to the last stage of pulmonary decay, no friend, no companion, no kindness to soothe his sufferings, or cheer him on his way. Shame! shame! shame! She whose duty, if not affection, should have prompted her to undertake the benevolent office, remained behind; and if not foully slandered, went to the theatre with a paramour, within an hour after parting with her husband, with every probability of seeing him no more. She married this same fellow afterwards; but both are dead, and may God forgive them.
But as we were saying, he proceeded to Lisbon, where he would have died a victim to the want of proper attention and attendance, but that the incidental recommendation of a friend, procured for him hospitality of no ordinary kind or extent. All was, however, unavailing, and he returned without benefit. He did not survive a great while afterwards, but to the last, retained his native sweetness of temper, unruffled by sufferings, and his elegance of taste and powers of intellect, unclouded and undiminished. Peace to his ashes. A purer spirit has not heaven. He died at the early age of twenty-four; yet in that short interval, he directed the national taste to the investigation of natural and simple beauties, which had long lurked unnoticed and unknown, in the productions of our earlier bards; and had he lived, would, beyond all doubt, have pursued the course of his studious propensities, and have brought to maturity somewhat of still greater importance to the literature of his country.
A few specimens of this young man’s taste and talents will be found in the Appendix, but the following Song, which is not printed with his works, seems to merit insertion here.
SONG.