THE

LONDON MAGAZINE.

.

SEPTEMBER, 1824.

CONTENTS.

The Lion's head.

REVIEW:

Burchell's Travels in Surrey's Reply, &c. 223 Southern Africa. .....

.. 277 Sonnet

224

FACETIÆ BIBLIOGRAPHICÆ, or the

Old English Jesters. No. VIII. BLAKESMOOR IN H- -SHIRE.

Royston.

285 By ELIA

225
Vauxhall Meminiscences.

289 Song

228

REVIEW: GOETHE'S WILHELM REVIEW:-SOUTH AMERICA, Cap

MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP.. 291 tain Basil Hall's Journal, written

308 on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and

Hearts' Ease.
Mexico, in 1820, 1821, 1822 229 CONTRASTED SCENES..

308 THE LAWYER .... 238 Sonnet...

311 A Dream of Orpheus ...

241 THE DRAMA — The Alcaid - The NARRATIVE of a VOYAGE from Reign of Twelve Hours..... NEW SOUTH WALES... 251 REPORT of Music....

........ 312

THE LION'S HEAD.

Mr. Lion,

Quem non ille ducem potuit terrere tumultus !
Fata sed in præceps solitus committere CÆSAR,
Fortunamque suam per summa pericula gaudens
Exercere, venit.

:

Let me have just one “ push and parry” with the Consuls Julius and Cæsar, if you love me. Julius asks, “ what does he mean by quoting Sappho’s els eraipav to prove her power of imagination?” and he adds, “it proves not this at all; but her intensity of feeling.” Again he says, that “ The Simple Story is, even by Surrey's own account of it, rather the product of intense feeling than of fine imagination.” He says also, “intense feeling is not always a source of the sublime ;” and that “ feeling never takes this direction, unless when prompted by a totally different agent-towering genius." Now here he admits that intense feeling is sometimes the source of sublimity: the admission being included in the phrase not always : it may be so then in the instance of Sappho's ode: if he affirm that this is not an instance of feeling “prompted by towering genius," he merely begs the question. It is still sub lite.

Will Julius permit me to answer his question by asking him one in turn? “ How can things or characters be represented, brought into bold relief, or, as we say, created, by intense feeling only, apart from the imaginative power or shaping faculty?” As I think they cannot, I hold myself free to consider Sappho's pathological rhapsody as sublime, and The Simple Story as a work of imagination. Not, of course, in the vulgar or popular sense affixed to the word; of something of diablerie or fairyism. Not having the fear of Pope before my eyes, I must own it to be my opinion, that men and women, and not sylphs, are the subjects which task a writer's imagination. He thinks the epithet masculine, applied in common parlance to such productions of women as partake of extraordinary energy, concedes the point in dispute. I think just the contrary. Namely, that it proves that for which alone I contended: that there have been and are such productions: works of masculine genius and power by female pens.

With regard to the sublimity of Sappho’s fragment, the proposition belongs to Longinus, and to Longinus I refer him. Παντα μεν τοιαυτα γινεται περι τους ερωντας: η ληψις δ', ως εφην, των ακρων, και η εις ταυτο συναιρεσις απειργάσατο ΤΗΝ ΕΞΟΧΗΝ.*

SURREY. These symptoms severally occur in persons under the influence of love: it is, as I have before said, the seizure of the most prominent and the condensation of them, that has STRUCK OUT THE SUBLIME.

Mr. Lion,-An Horatian sop for your kingly maw.

BoB SHORT,

Imprunsus.
PERSICOS ODI._;. 38.
Boy! your Persian courses like me not :

Away with the linden-tied coronet :
Spare the search for that only spot

Where the late rose of summer lingers yet.
Prank not, prithee, the myrtle bough

Busily sorting flower with flower ;
Base myrtle, boy! shall not shaine our brow,

As thou fill’st and I quaff in the vine-tree bower.

We have much pleasure in finding room for the following Sonnet, which ought to have been inserted some time ago.

SONNET.
The cold rude blast of winter hath past by,

And earth will wake again in loveliness ;

She will be young again-again will bless
The sight, when glowing in the summer sky:
Winter again will scathe her, and the eye

Of man may mark her desolate distress

But let him weep himself, whose hope is less,
And for his own past seasons breathe the sigh.

Earth will arise in light when he is sleeping !
When worms are feasting in his midnight tomb,

Her vines will blush, her harvests will be reaping :
For him, one season only is his doom ;

One youth-one spring—but one-one summer's glow;
One fatal winter-two he ne'er shall know. J. BOUNDEN.

We cannot give Tantalus a favourable answer to his question, and shall therefore be silent on that score, and spare at once his poetry and his feelings.

The answer which was given last month to N. G. S. must, we are sorry to say, suffice likewise for the present.

There is so much that is really clever in Q.'s communication, that we give it up with regret, but we really cannot find room for so long a paper, on such a subject.

We are under the necessity of refusing R. L. D.-Sonnets to Ingratitude and Miss -,-M.'s Sonnet,—A. 2.—Hero and Leander.

BLAKESMOOR IN H

us

I do not know a pleasure more less as the marble effigies that kneel affecting than to range at will over and weep around thee. the deserted apartments of some fine Journeying northward lately, I old family mansion. The traces of could not resist going some few miles extinct grandeur admit of a better out of my road, to look upon the passion than envy; and contempla- remains of an old great house with tions on the great and good, whom which I had been impressed in this we fancy in succession to have way in infancy. I was apprized that been its inhabitants, weave for us the owner of it had lately pulled it illusions, incompatible with the bustle down; still I had a vague notion of modern occupancy, and vanities that it could not all have perished, of foolish present aristocracy. The that so much solidity with magnifisame difference of feeling, I think, cence could not have been crushed attends between entering an all at once into the mere dust and empty and

crowded church. In rubbish which I found it. the latter it is chance but some pre

The work of ruin had proceeded sent human frailty-an act of inate with a swift hand indeed, and the tention on the part of some of the demolition of a few weeks had reauditory-or a trait of affectation, duced it to-an antiquity. or worse, vain-glory, on that of the I was astonished at the indistincpreacher — puts us by our best tion of every thing. Where had thoughts, disharmonising the place stood the great gates? What bounded and the occasion. But wouldst thou the court-yard ? Whereabout did the know the beauty of holiness ?-go out-houses commence? a few bricks alone on some week-day, borrowing only lay as representatives of that the keys of good Master Sexton, which was so stately and so spatraverse the cool aisles of some cious. country church-think of the piety Death does not shrink up his huthat has kneeled there-the congre- man victim at this rate. The burnt gations, old and young, that have ashes of a man weigh more in their found consolation there the meek proportion. pastor—the docile parishioner-with Had I seen these brick-and-mortar no disturbing emotions, no cross con- knaves at their process of destrucflicting comparisons — drink in the tion, at the plucking of every pannel tranquillity of the place, till thou I should have felt the varlets at my thyself become as fixed and motion- heart. I should have cried out to SEPT. 1821.

Q