The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-25 00:00:00

Out-roll the words like bell-strokes, Sirs,
Qminous strokes and strong,
Such as belfries roll,
Or tocsins toll,
When a people groans in wrong:—
Like sounds of seas,
Or forests a-roar,
On the broad-winged breeze
Resistance pour:—
Round the land let speed the terrible shout,
Like the vestal fire that goeth not out:—
Let it spread as the flames through fields of flax
" DOWN WITH THE INCOME TAX."

IL
Brothers ! shall we—the self-same Men,
Who scouted this Tax—this slave-badge—when
The great Duke came from his battles bold
And England's brows in his war-wreaths rolled
Shallfre—who then like Gods elate,
Had smiled to grant each need of State,
So well were fears in victories calmed
And hearts high-pulsed and triumph-charmed,
Shall we—who then indignant sprung
And forth our just repugnance flung—
Who deemed this tax a wrong and crime
In that so glorious—golden time—
Now bend to it, like pliant wax ?
Now fawu to it with bows and kneeling ?
No—roll the words like bell-strokes pealing—
" DOWN WITH THE INCOME TAX !"

LITERATURE.
GISIPPUS. A Play. Maxwell, London, 1842.
At the period when this play was written, Mr. Ge-
rald Griffin, the, author, had not completed his twen-
tieth year, which will account for those high-flown
views of human nature in which he too often deals.
Gisippus indeed, is little more than a rhapsody on
Friendship—such a rhapsody as a youthful, fervid,
and ingenuous mind would be most likely to indulge in.
Pity that the progress of time and experience, instead
of confirming, should only shove the utter fallacy of
a young man's exalted notions of humanity ; and that
the lofty and disinterested friendship which he once—
judging by his own heart—believed to exist in the
world, he should afterwards discover to be a mere
phantom, conjured up by the imagination, and fading
away before the strengthening daylight of reason !
Nevertheless, strained and improbable as are Mr.
Griffin's ideas of the disinterestedness of human
nature, as exemplified in the character and for-
tunes of his hero, Gisippus, we read his play
with interest and even emotion, for there is no
questioning the strong earnestness and sincerity that
breathes through it. While cold, distrustful reason
is compelled to enter her protest against the improba-
bility of the earlier scenes, wherein the young
Gisippus is exhibited as a prodigy of disinterested
and magnanimous friendship, the heart is still willing
to be duped into the belief that they are true to life,
for the delusion is at least a sunny and a cheering
one. But while, we object to the principal character,
and some of the incidents of our author's play, we
have no fault to find with his language, which is uni-
formly nervous and unaffected, colloquial without
being homely, and though in places a little too exu-
berant, perhaps, yet never wholly losing sight of good
taste. We may add, that it is thickly bestrewed with
the rich lights of a glowing, poetic fancy, and that if
it has been studiously elaborated, Mr. Griffin has had
the rare art in a great degree to conceal his art. Here,
for instance, is a passage on the common-place theme
of Love, which is handled, apparently, with great
ease, though, we doubt not, it was wrought up with
considerable care
Aye—passion hath its change of seasons, sir.
And 'twere as vain to hope eternal Summer,
As an eternal faith.—This is with you
The Spring of courtship—which calls up the flowers
. The fairest lowers of Love—your blooming fancies--
Your fragrant love thoughts, murmuring vows—and prayers
But even as nature's spring—love's too must roll
Away—and then comes your adored honeymoon
Loves Summer of enjoyment—next his autumn
Of lukewarm liking, verging to indifference. .
The time of shrugs, and yawns, end absent thoughts. .
And then his winter eomes—frosty and dry,
Sharp, biting, bitter—cunning in cold tstunts—
'Making the evening hearth, so late a piradise,
A place of harsh uneomfort.—Then, 0 Love
How suddenly thy changeful votaries
Find thy Elysium void I—from the pale poet,
Who wooed the groves in song-lorn melancholy,
To him the blustering terror of the field,
Who sighed like Boreas and made love like war—,
All, weary grown of the ignoble bondage,
Look back with scorn upon the yoke they've spurned,
And wonder how the silly toy had power
To make them sin so palpably 'gainst wisdom."
An ordinary sentiment, as regards female beauty
is thus eloquently expressed
Your eagle spirits are too grand for me ;
Such forms may grace a painter's canvass well,
• Grouped in a legend of the commonwealth,
But by an evening fire are cold eompanions
Woman was made for lore, and not for wonder ;
Give me the pliant, soft, and human fair,
But Heaven defend me from your soaring beauties !"
As might be expected from the age at which Mr
Griffin wrote his play, there are numerous impassioned
allusions to woman, and the beneficent influence
which it is ever in her power to exert over the ruder
sex. We subjoin one or two of these passages
Oh woman, what an empty boaster man is,
When he would strive against your empire ! How,
When he would soar at lonely excellence,
Ye cling upon him with your potent weakness !
And when he is content to creep beside ye,
In the (lull circle of material happiness,
Ye fire him with a longing after greatness :
He hath the strength of the huge ocean-wave,
But you—you are the planet by whose influence
It mounts or falls."

The expression " potent weakness " in the above
passage is very felicitous, conveying the exact idea
that the author desired to convey, and in the aptest
terms. A tamer and more methodical fancy would
have shrunk from it, startled at the seeming paradox
it implied ; but to weigh, and hesitate, and doubt, is
not the way to succeed in poetry, any more than in
love. "Faint heart," says the old adage, "never won
fair lady ;" neither did it ever yet win the laurel
crown. The sentiment expressed in the subjoined
extract will remind the reader of a fine apostrophe to
wedded loVe in one of the plays of Middleton :
" How pure, how holy is the sacrifice
That waits on virtuous Love! How sacred is
The very levity we wake to honour it !
The fiery zeal that Passion knows, is there
Tempered by mild esteem and holiest reverence
Into a still, unwasting vestal flame
That wanders nor decays. All soft affections,
Calm hopes, and quiet blessings hover round,
And soft Peace sheds her virtuous dews upon it."
There is much force and vigour in the following de-
scription of a dull, heartless, tame, and lethargic nature,
such a one as Voltaire has hit off so admirably in his
sketch of Signor Pococurante, who fancied himself
a philosopher, simply because he was limited of un-
derstanding, and callous of heart :
" Gods! There are men upon this earth who seem
So mixed and moulded with that earth—se like
Mere dull, material engines—that for all
The purposes for which man looks to man,
It were as well a piece of curious mechanism
WWrealthkredow in
humanity's
together a few
and wore its semblance I"
insulated lines that have
pleased us, either by their sentiment, or by the grace
and spirit of the expression :
" As the mad promise of the wildest hope
That ever killed content."
" The gratitude that must be roused from slumber,
Is never worth the waking."

" Oh God !

The joy of hunting after Death, when life,
Grown hopeless, goads us to the chase ! the rapture,
Amid the roar of fight that shuts out thought,
Of rushing to his blood red arms !"
True, he had wronged me, and my pride was stung by it
Alas, you know not, friend, how quietly
And silently that same tall fabric, Pride,
Is sapped and scattered by Adversity,
E'en while we deem it still unmoved, unshaken !"

preoadetiecralwcihllarbaee
From the passages which we have here given, the
which exhibits a atebrl e
otfo
Gfoi
sriipnpau
sN:ery fair estimate of the
pro-
mise not often witnessed in the productions of an au-
thor, not yet out of his teens. Mr. Griffin, we need
scarcely add, was cut off in the very spring of his
career, before the powers of his mind were fully deve-
loped, or he himself was aware of their extent. Had
he lived, and not belied the promise of his boyhood,
we might reasonably have expected from him some
sterling work of imagination, such as the world
would not willingly let die.

PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS OF EMI-
NENT REFORMERS. Part 1.
Collins, London, 1842.
A periodical work similar to the present was
brought out some few years ago, but after
several Numbers had appeared, was abruptly
discontinued—we conclude, because it did not
answer the expectations of its projectors. We
trust the one before us will not share the same
fate, for—judging from the present Part at
least—it bids fair to be got up with
great care and attention to details, so
far as the biographical notices are concerned, ,

DOWNtIVITH THE INCOME TAX.

" Piers, I have not been idle,
I never ate the bread of indolence ;
Could Alice be more thrifty than her mother?
Yet, with but one child—and that one how good
Thou knowest—l scarcely can provide the wants
Of nature ; look at these wolves of the law,
They come to drain me of my hard-earned wages.
I have already paid the heavy tax
Laid on the wool that clothes me—on my leather,
And all the needful articles of life !
And now three groats (and I worked hard to earn
them)
The Parliament demands—and I must pay them,
Forsooth, for liberty to wear my head."
SOUTHEY'B Wat Tyler.
Sir Robert Peel, by his imposition of the income tax,
adopts the same regulations as were adopted in 1806,
with some slight modifications, and which were found so
intolerable in 1816, that the Government of the Torie,
then crowned with glory by the victories of Wellingtob,
and when the nation was intoxicated by success, was coc#-
pelled by the remonstrances of an indignant people to give
up the tax.—Daily Paper.