The tenet may fairly belong to the story;

But here we perceive that 'tis preach'd con amore.
This volatile heart Grecian Myrrha could fix,

Though he laughs at her creed about Pluto and Styx.

His love she returns when his virtues she conn'd over,

And was true, e'en to death, when she found him so fond of her
But the sot whom his subjects had rated at zero,

Bravely fights, and then dies in a blaze like a hero!

You can next (for stage magic you're ne'er at a loss) carry
Your friends back to Venice, and show them the Foscari.
To these luckless isles we're transported again!

Lo! a youth harshly judged by the Council of Ten,

Most wilfully rushes on horrible tortures,

Lest in some foreign clime he should take up his quarters!

His hatred invincible tow'rds all the men is,

But he doats with strange love on the mere mud of Venice.
For the Doge-there is no known example will suit us;
His phlegm patriotic out-Brutuses Brutus.

In his chair, whilst the rack's wrenching torments are done,
He watches the pangs of his innocent son.

His nerves such a spectacle tolerate well;

Yet he dies by the shock, when the sound of a bell,
On a sudden, to Venice announces the doom,

That another mock-sovereign reigns in his room.

Now last, though not least, let us glance at the fable
Your Lordship has raised on the murther of Abel..
But chiefly that wonderful flight let us trace,
Which Lucifer wings through the regions of space;
Where with speed swift as thought with his pupil he runs,
Threading all the bright maze of the planets and suns;
And lectures the while all these objects they're viewing,
Like a tutor abroad, who leads out a young Bruin.
Thus, Satan exhibits pre-Adamite spectres,
And lays down his maxims there free from objectors.
How we turn with disgust, as we listen'd with pain,
From the vile metaphysics he whispers to Cain !*

* The demon's insinuations, tending directly to an object the reverse of that which Pope aims at in his Essay on Man, the present being evidently designed to make man doubt the benevolence and goodness of his Maker, might justify harsher terms than are here employed. Instead of vile metaphysics, they might have been termed horrible blasphemies. Let not the noble author shelter himself under the example of Milton. The author of Paradise Lost dis plays want of taste in making the Almighty argue like "a school divine," as the artists of the Roman Catholic Church have done in representing him under the form of an old man with a long beard; but neither the poet nor the painter

Fit talk for the fiend and the fratricide felon,

But this is a subject too hateful to dwell on ;

A lash light as mine, grave offences can trounce ill-
Then here let me end with a short word of counsel:-
'Twould be wrong, noble Bard, Oh! permit me to tell ye,
To establish a league with Leigh Hunt and Bysshe Shelley;*
Already your readers have swallow'd too much,

Like Amboyna's swollen victims when drench'd by the Dutch.t
The world cries, in chorus, 'tis certainly time

To close up your flood-gates of blank verse and rhyme.
Hold! Hold!- By the public thus sated and crammid,
Lest your lays, like yourself, stand a chance to be d-d!

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intended to commit an irreverend insult. Milton's devils talk and act sufflciently in character, but they are kept within decent bounds. Belial himself, however qualified to make the worse appear the better reason," is not suffered by the poet to practise his arts on the readers of his divine epic.—M. OD. * This alludes to a rumour in the newspapers of an intended triple alliance between these three personages, for the amusement and edification of mankind.-M. OD. [The result was The Liberal."-M.]

66

+ The Island of Amboyna, one of the Moluccas, was formerly occupied jointly by the English and Dutch. In the year 1622, the Hollanders feeling the superiority of their numbers, which was about three to two in their favour, conceived the design of making themselves masters of the whole island. For this purpose they pretended to have discovered a plot contrived by the English for their expulsion. Many of the English settlers were accordingly arrested and exposed to torture, in order to enforce a confession. Amongst the methods employed, was the extraordinary one here alluded to. The accused was fastened to a seat, in an upright posture, with a piece of canvass fixed round his neck, extended above the head in the form of a cup. Water being repeatedly poured into this receptacle, it was necessary to swallow the liquid to avoid suffocation. Under this infliction, the bodies of the sufferers were said to be distended to double their ordinary size.-M. OD.

10*

Modern English Ballads.*

*** The Ensign was evidently much affected on the defeat of his countryman. It was remarked, that some days after the event, he went to bed bare-footed, and rose fasting. But on the occasion of Spring's triumphant entry, he was peculiarly dejected, and refused to look at it, which called forth the following ballad. It will be often imitated by modern poets, both in Spain and Germany.

Pon te a tancard de brounstout, dexa la suipa de strongsuig
Melancholico Odorti, veras al galopin Tomspring, &c.

It bears a great resemblance to the bridal of Andalla, in Lockhart's Spanish Ballads; and the succeeding one on poor Thurtell may more remotely, remind the sentimental reader of his "Lament for Celin."]

No. 1.-SPRING'S RETURN.

RISE up, rise up, my Morgan, lay the foaming tankard down,

Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town.

From gay shin-bone and cleaver hard the marrowy notes are flowing,

And the Jew's-harp's twang sings out slap-bang, 'twixt the cow-horn's lordly blowing;

And greasy caps from butchers' heads are tossing everywhere,

And the bunch of fives of England's knight wags proudly in the air.

Rise up, rise up, my Morgan, lay the foaming tankard down,

Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town.

Arise, arise, my Morgan, I see Tom Winter's mug,

He bends him to the Fancy coves with a nod so smart and smug;
Through all the land of great Cockaigne, or Thames's lordly river,
Shook champion's fist more stout than his, more knock-me-downish never.
Yon Belcher twisted round his neck of azure, mix'd with white,

I guess was tied upon the stakes the morning of the fight.

* These National Ballads appeared in Blackwood for January, 1824.Spring's victory over Langan, celebrated in this parody on one of Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, very suitably may follow the Idyll on his battle with Neat of Bristol. Jack Langan, an Irishman, eventually became a publican in Liverpool, realized a fortune there, distinguished himself by subscribing to the O'Connell Rent, and died, some twelve years ago, in a Lunatic Asylum.-M.

Rise up, rise up, my Morgan, lay the foaming tankard down,
Rise up, come to the window, and gaze with all the town.

What aileth thee, my Morgan? what makes thine eyes look down?
Why stay you from the window far, nor gaze with all the town?
I've heard thee swear in hexameter, and sure you swore the truth,
That Thomas Spring was quite the king of the first-beshaking youth.
Now with a Peer he rideth here, and Lord Deerhurst's horses go*
Beneath old England's champion, to the tune of Yo, heave ho!
Then rise, oh rise, my Morgan, lay the foaming tankard down,
You may here through the window-sash come gaze with all the town.
The Irish Ensign rose not up, nor laid his tankard down,
Nor came he to the window to gaze with all the town;
But though his lip dwelt on the pot, in vain his gullet tried,
He could not, at a single draught, empty the tankard wide.
About a pint and a half he drank before the noise grew nigh,
When the last half-pint received a tear slow dropping from his eye.
No, no, he sighs, bid me not rise, nor lay my tankard down,
To gaze on Thomas Winter with all the gazing town.

Why rise ye not, my Morgan, nor lay your tankard down?
Why gaze ye not, my Morgan, with all the gazing town?

Hear, hear the cheering, how it swells, and how the people cry,

He stops at Cribb's, the ex-champion's shop;- -why sit you still, oh! why?
"At Cribb's good shop let Tom Spring stop, in him shall I discover
The black-eyed youth that beat the lad who cross'd the water over?

I will not rise with weary eyes, nor lay my tankard down,
To gaze on Langan's conqueror, with all the gazing town."

A LOUD Lament is heard in town-a voice of sad complaining—
The sorrow Whig is high and big, and there is no restraining.
The great Lord Mayor, in civic chair, weeps thick as skeins of cotton,
And wipes his eyes with huckaback, sold by his own begotten.
Alas, says he, thy thread of life is snapt by sheers of Clothor

And a winding sheet, a yard-yard-wide, enwraps thee, O, my brother!

*

The late Earl of Coventry, (the Lord Deerhurst of 1823,) had the honor of driving Spring, in his four-in-hand, to the battle-field. He backed him heavily and won on him largely.-M.

Thurtell, son of an Alderman of Norwich, executed for the murder, in the winter of 1823, of William Weare, a gambler, near Gill's Lane Cottage, Hertfordshire. He was an unmitigated ruffian, with heart and nerves of iron. — M.

Howl, buff and blue! of that doar crew, whose brows the patriot myrtle
Shades for Harmodius Thistlewood! Howl, howl for Whig Jack Thurtell!

The doves and rooks who meet at Brooks',* sob loudly, fast, and faster,
And shake in skin as rattlingly as they ere shook the castor.
O, by the box of Charley Fox, and by his unpaid wagers,
Shame 'tis, they swear, for hangman cocks to hang our truest stagers;
What if he cut the fellow's throat in fashion debonnaire, sir,

'Tis only like our own Whig case, a bit the worse for wear, sir;
What if, after swallowing brains and blood, he ate pork chops like turtle,
Sure, don't we swallow anything? Alas! for Whig Jack Thurtell!

Lord Byron, gentleman is he, who writes for good Don Juan,
Huzzaed when my Lord Castlereagh achieved his life's undoing.t
No Tory bard, that we have heard, so savage was or silly,

As to crow o'er cut-throat Whitbread Sam, or cut-throat Sam Romilly.‡
We laugh at them-they sighs with us-we hate them sow and farrow-
Yet now their groans will fly from them as thick as flights of arrow,
Which Mr. Gray, in ode would say, through the dark air do hurtle,
Moaning in concert with ourselves-Alas! for Whig Jack Thurtell!

* Brooks' is a Club in London which used to be peculiarly Whig, when there were only two political parties (Whig and Tory) in England.—M.

† In "The Liberal," (the quarterly periodical established, at Pisa, in 1822, by Lord Byron, in conjunction with Leigh Hunt,) appeared three epigrams, totally unworthy of the Author of Childe Harold, whether as a poet or a man. The Marquis of Londonderry, (better known as the Lord Castlereagh who virtually carried the parchment Union between Ireland and Great Britain,) was Foreign Secretary of England from 1812 until 1822, when he committed suicide. On this person, and his fate, it pleased Lord Byron to be facetious. The last, and least offensive of his epigrams on this suicide ran thus:

"So He has cut his throat at last!-He! Who?
The man who cut his country's long ago."

The rhyme, reason, and delicate feeling of such a couplet are on a par. - M. Samuel Whitbread, for many years a member of Parliament and head of the great porter brewery in Chiswell-Street, London, was a leading member of the Whig party, and, as such conducted the impeachment of Lord Melville in 1805. He died by his own hand in 1815.-Sir Samuel Romilly, who for many years was the leading Chancery lawyer in England, was Solicitor General during the brief administration of Mr. Fox, in 1806, and eminently distinguished himself by his constant efforts to revise and mitigate the criminal code. He was a Whig in politics. In 1818, he perished by suicide. — It is true, as Maginn states, that neither the Tory press nor the Tory party exhibited any joy on the death of Whitbread or Romilly. On the contrary, they expressed, and no doubt felt, great sorrow at their untimely death. — M.