The Press. — London, England, 1855-11-24 00:00:00

1124 " Thyrza " have rending pathos, and are in spired by the divine gloom of poetry. There is a wail in their cadence that recals some old Highland air, and there is an agony of spirit discernible in their tuneful and most musical wretchedness. They arc the elegiacs of a lover, and have nothing maundering or un manly in their effusions of poetical misery. The masculine utterance of grief is not often truly seen in literature, but in these " Occa sional Pieces " Byron exhibits it in full power. We have read these miscellaneous poems with even increased admiration of Byron's genius. They bear a critical reperusal, and some of them can never pass from the memory of a reader of any feeling. The lines for music, " There's not a joy the world can give," could have been written by no one else. In vain have his swarm of imitators tried to play upon the chord struck with so much power in those stanzas : Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess : The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again. Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down ; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own ; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears. Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest ; 'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreath, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath. The most mournful verses to " Thyrza " are preceded by the following note, in which the able editor summarily disposes of tho fallacy of Moore : Mr. Moore considers " Thyrza," to be a creature of the poet's brain. "It was," he says, " about the time when be was thus bitterly feeling the blight which his heart had suffered from a real object of affection, that his poems on the death of an imaginary one were written ;—nor is it any wonler when we consider the peculiar circumstances under which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that, of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touch. ing and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs;—a confluence of sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and warmed in their passage through his fancy, and forming thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling." It is a pity to disturb a sentiment thus beautifully expressed ; but Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Dallas, bearing the exact date of these lines, viz., Oct. 11, 1811, writes as follows: ' I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but ' I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and supped full of horrors,' till I have become callous ; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed my head to the earth." Several years after the poems on Thyrza were written, Lord Byron, on being asked to whom they re• ferred, by a person in whose tenderness he never ceased to confide, refused to answer, with marks of agitation, such as rendered recurrence to the subject impossible. Moore was one of the worst biographers that ever wrote. He wanted a sense of sober reality, and looked at life through the prismatic hues of fancy. His supposing that "Thyrza" was not a real personate exhibits that want of faith in true passion which detracts so much from the brightness of Moore's genius. No thing but a living soul could have inspired the strains to " Thyrza." We do not know which of these poems most to admire; but whoever has lost in early life some gentle and beloved being, whose memory remains in the worship of the heart, must be thrilled to the cure on reading those affecting strains : 'Tis silent all l—but on niy ear Thu well remember'd echoes thrill; 1 hear a voice I would not hear, A voice that now might well be still: Yet oft my doubting soul 'twill shake; Even slumber owns its gentle time, Till consciousness will vainly wake To listen, though the dream be flown. Sweet Thyme! waking as in sleep, Thou art but now a lovely dream ; A star that trembled o'er the deep, Then turn'd from earth its tender beam. But he who through life's dreary way Must pass, when heaven is veiled in wrath, Will long lament the vanish'd ray That scatter'd gladness o'er his path. And again it,} another poem the same chord touched:— THE PRESS. My Thyrza's pledge in better days, When love and life alike were new ! How different now thou meet'st my gaze ! How tinged by time with sorrow's hue! The heart that gave itself with thee Is silent—ah, were mine as still! Though cold as e'en the dead can be, It feels, it sickens with the chill. Thou bitter pledge ! thou mournful token ! Though painful, welcome to my breast ! Still, still, preserve that love unbroken, Or break the heart to which thou'rt press'd. Time tempers love, but not removes, More hallow'd when its hope is fled: Oh! what are thousand living loves To that which cannot quit the dead ? We have lingered over these poems with increased wonder at the mind of Bymn. There is much to be said on his exact place amongst the poets of the world; and now that thirty years have passed since his death, an opportunity presents itself for a calm estimate of his genius. At a more advanced part of this edition w•e shall critically discuss the value of the more permanent portions of his works. The Life of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. By Martha Walker Freer. London : Hurst and Blackett. JUST now, and for some years past, there is and has boen a rage for biography. Those who can write nothing else, seem to think they can at least write this ; and the consequence is that more literary failures have issued from the press within the last ten years than we care to enumerate. Not but what there is some show of reason, after all, in the choice of these laborious compilers ; for the very worst biography that ever was written will always have about it something to interest us. But it is taking an unfair advantage of human curiosity to inveigle us into the perusal of volume after volume which are in reality nothing but annals, and contain so small a fraction of what is personal or peculiar, that to call them biography is a fraud. Authors of this class should never forget what constitutes the distinctive charm of this species of litera ture. It is the record of a man's little actions, as history is the record of his great ones—the portraiture of those elements which make him one of ourselves, not of those which make him an exception. Biography, therefore, becomes interesting in proportion to the fidelity with which this object is accomplished ; and the writer will be successful in proportion to the judgment with which he has selected a subject with a capacity of such illustration. We can not but think that Miss Freer has chosen an unfortunate theme for the exercise of her peculiar talents ; and the more so because we believe the latter to be very considerable. The mother of Henry IV is a most important and interesting public personage, but she did not possess those traits which lend attraction to the history of private life. She was a strong and stately woman, who ruled her husband, her children, and her subjects in an equally exemplary and respectable manner ; but she is too far removed from us for her daily ordinary life to be either interesting or accessible; while the beauty and the gallantries, the crimes and the intrigues, of her two contempo raries, Marie Stuart and Catherine de Medtei, were totally alien to the severe and simple cha racter of Jeanne d'Albret. The most interesting portions of the work are those which relate to the days of her own youth and those of her son, the young Prince Henry. When Jeanne was comparatively a child she was in the habit of administering corporal punishment to her young companions : Sometimes Jeanne's vivacity of disposition surpassed her courtesy to her gentle cousin ; and iu their childish pastimes Francoise used often to receive severe chastise ment from the hand of the princess, for her want of self command and energy. When the Queen of Navarre returned into Bearn, she generally visited Plessis to take leave of the princess. On one of these occasions, before Marguerite's departure, a poetical epistle of farewell was composed to present to the princess, each lady of the Queen's suite writing a verse. Mademoiselle de Rohan, who was to return with the Queen, also contributed her share ; she there alludes to her cousin's propensity for administering wholesome castigation. But for the youth of " la petite Francoise," her lines might be considered as written with satirical point. She _says in het address to the princess : SATURDAY, Plus j'ay de toy souvent este battue, Plus mon amour s'esforee et s'evertue De regreter caste main, qul me bat: Car ce mall 3 m'estoit plaisant esbat. Or adieu done la main, dont la riguer, Je preferois a tout bien et honneur Sho was soon after threatened with the same ludicrous sort of castigation herself, when she refused to be affianced to the Duke of Cleves; and in the secret protest which she drew up against this proceeding she avers that— All I may say and do hereafter, by which it may be at- tempted to prove that I have given my consent, will be forcibly extorted against my wish and desire from my dread of the King, of the King my father, and of the Queen my mother, who has threatened to have me whipped by the baillive of Caen, my governess. - - - - - - The young prince, who derived from his mother his courage, generosity, and talents for government, and from his father kthoso gayer qualities which . have rendered him scarcely less famous, very early betrayea his propensities to profitaion and love-making : The object of Henry's chivalrous gallantry at this season was the beautiful Corisandre d'Andoins, the youthful bride of the Count De Guiche, who had followed in Queen Jeanne's train to La Rochelle. The ardour of the Prince's court, and the manner in which his overtures were re ceived by the Countess, occasioned much disquietude to Jeanne d'Albret, as it greatly offended the Count De Grammont, her old and attached servant, to reward whose fidelity she had bestowed the heiress of d'Andoins on his son. As an instance of the influence exercised by the versatile gifts of Henry over the minds of his friends, the following anecdote is recorded. The young Prince was addicted to habits of great profusion. As he never pre sumed to apply for pecuniary aid from his mother, who, having assigned the Prince a sufficient revenue, reserved her treasures for higher purposes than to defray the cost of his dissipation, Henry several times resorted to the extra• ordinary expedient of addressing a letter, signed by him self, to the principal nobles and ladies of Guyentie and Beam, in which he requested the loan of a certain sum, specified therein, in consideration of which the lender was at liberty to keep the billet; if, on the contrary, the loan were refused, the Prince desired that the letter might be returned. " Such was the affection borne towards the Prince," says the historian Le Grain, " that no one ever thought of re fusing his demand ; for there was not a house that felt it not an honour to possess among its records the writing and autograph of this noble prince." It would be doing the Queen of Navarre great injury to suppose that this clever ruse on the part of the Prince of Hearn was countenanced by herself. Jeanne would have regarded her son's extravagant expenditure with indigna tion, so frugal and seltdenying were her own habits. Henry was at this time only in his sixteenth year, but Miss Freer informs us that in less than two years afterwards " the beautiful "Corisandre became the avowed mistress of " the King of Navarre." In love and in war the young prince was equally precocious, though not by any means equally satisfactory to the moral eye of his mother. We believe we have presented to our readers the most attractive aspect of Miss Freer's volumes. They are rather, we must repeat, history than biography ; and we certainly think it a pity that the boundary line between the two has not been more carefully preserved than has lately been the custom. The Fur Hunters of the Far West. By Alexander Ross. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. _ _ THERE is undeniably a peculiar and powerful charm in the free life of the bush, which com pletely destroys all respect or care for the restraints of artificial society. Let a man once take heartily to the bush, or once become a wanderer, and he can never again thoroughly submit to be cribbed, cabined, or confined within the limits of a town. The excitement of fresh adventures, the constant supply of sport, the perpetual change of scene, the novelty of the life, the variety of incident, and the frequent perils and dangers to bo encountered have possessed at all times a powerful attrac tion for adventurous minds; and although Dr. Johnson once likened the man who preferred a free life to a bull in a meadow—a bad simile at the best—yet few men who for fresh air and freedom have ever thrown over civilisation and conventionality, care much to return to them, in spite of the simile of the groat lexicographer. But the learned doctor was one of those men who looked upon fresh air and flowers as an amiable delusion, and, like Syndey Smith in later times, would much rather see the valleys paved and crowded with passengers, than lying in sweet re pose under the shadows of their own moun tains. Yet the palefaced inhabitants of towns.