Novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottoes, and, in the situation of the theatrical mechanist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the shower oy snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that failed, eked it out with invention. I believe that, in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In some cases, I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible."-Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.
I knew Anselmo. He was shrewd and prudent,
Wisdom and cunning had their shares of him;
But he was shrewish as a wayward child,
And pleased again by toys which childhood please;
As-book of fables graced with print of wood,
Or else the jingling of a rusty medal,
Or the rare melody of some old ditty,
Would part with half their states, to have the plan
That first was sung to please King Pepin's cradle. And credit to beg in the first style.—
Who is he?-One that for the lack of land
Shall fight upon the water-he hath challenged
Formerly the grand whale; and by his titles
Of Leviathan, Behemoth, and so forth.
He tilted with a sword-fish-Marry, sir,
Th' aquatic had the best-the argument
Still galls our champion's breech.
Tell me not of it, friend-when the young weep, Their tears are lukewarm brine;-from our old eyes
Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North,
Chilling the furrows of our wither'd cheeks,
Cold as our hopes, and harden'd as our feeling-
Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless—ours recoil,
Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.
Old Play.
Remorse she ne'er forsakes us !-
A bloodhound stanch-she tracks our rapid step
Through the wild labyrinth of youthful parensy,
Unheard, perchance, until old age hath tamed us;
Then in our lair, when Time hath chill'd our joints,
And maim'd our hope of combat, or of flight
Let those go see who will-I like it not-
For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp,
And all the nothings he is now divorced from
By the hard doom of stern necessity;
Yet is it sad to mark his alter'd brow,
Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil
O'er the deep wrinkles of repentant Anguish.
old Play.
Fortune, you say, flies from us-She but circles,
Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff,-
Lost in the mist one moment, and the next
Brushing the white sail with her whiter wing,
As if to court the aim.-Experience watches,
And has her on the wheel-
Old Play.
Nay, if she love me not, I care not for her.
Shall I look pale because the maiden blooms?
Or sigh because she smiles-and smiles on others!
Not I, by Heaven!--I hold my peace too dear,
To let it, like the plume upon her cap,
Shake at each nod that her caprice shall dictate.
Old Play.
["It may be worth noting, that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of The Antiquary that Scott first took to equipping his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. 'Hang it, Johnnie,' cried Scott, 'I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.' He did so accordingly; and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of 'old play' or 'old ballad,' to which we owe some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen."-Life, vol. v. p. 145.]
THE bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath Feels, in its barrenness, some touch of spring And, in the April dew, or beam of May,
In the far eastern clime, no great while since,
Lived Sultaun Solimaun, a mighty prince,
Whose eyes, as oft as they perform'd their round,
Beheld all others fix'd upon the ground;
Whose ears received the same unvaried phrase,
"Sultaun! thy vassal hears, and he obeys!"
All have their tastes-this may the fancy strike
Of such grave folks as pomp and grandeur like;
For me, I love the honest heart and warm
Of Monarch who can amble round his farm,
Or, when the toil of state no more annoys,
In chimney corner seek domestic joys-
I love & prince will bid the bottle pass,
Exchanging with his subjects glance and glass;
Ir fitting time, can, gayest of the gay,
Keep up the jest, and mingle in the lay-
Such Monarchs best our free-born humors suit,
But Despots must be stately, stern, and mute.
1 First published in "The Sale Room, No. V.," February 1, 1817.
2 The hint of the ollowing tale is taken from La Camiscia Magica, a novel of Giam Battista Casti.
This Solimaun, Serendib had in sway-
And where's Serendib? may some critic say.-
Good lack, mine honest friend, consult the chart,
Scare not my Pegasus before I start!
If Rennell has it not, you'll find, mayhap,
The isle laid down in Captain Sindbad's map,- -
Famed mariner! whose merciless narrations
Drove every friend and kinsman out of patierre,
Till, fain to find a guest who thought them shortel
He deign'd to tell them over to a porter-
The last edition see, by Long. and Co.,
Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers in the Row
Serendib found, deem not my tale a fiction—
This Sultaun, whether lacking contradiction-
(A sort of stimulant which hath its uses,
To raise the spirits and reform the juices
-Sovereign specific for all sorts of cures
In my wife's practice, and perhaps in yours),
The Sultaun lacking this same wholesome bitter
Or cordial smooth for prince's palate fitter-
Or if some Mollah had hag-rid his dreams
With Degial, Ginnistan, and such wild themes
Belonging to the Mollah's subtle craft,
I wot not-but the Sultaun never laugh'd,
Scarce ate or drank, and took a melancholy
That scorn'd all remedy-profane or holy;
In his long list of melancholies, mad,
Or mazed, or dumb, hath Burton none so bad.
Physicians soon arrived, sage, ware, and tried,
As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room; With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed,
Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside
And then in solemn accent spoke their doom,
"His majesty is very far from well."
Then each to work with his specific fell:
The Hakim Ibrahim instanter brought
His unguent Mahazzim al Zerdukkaut,
While Roompot, a practitioner more wily,
Relied on his Munaskif al fillfily."
More and yet more in deep array appear,
And some the front assail, and some the rear;
Their remedies to reinforce and vary,
Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary;
Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown
chary,
Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor,
Some hint about a bowstring or a sabre.
See the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
4 See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
For these hard words see D'Herbelot, or the learned edito
of the Recipes of Avicenna.
|