vehement love, with a love coëval with life, what do I say, but love innocence; love virtue; love purity of conduct; love that which, if you are rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortune; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you,—which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain, that may be your lot in the outer world, that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud ! 9. Therefore, if any young man here have embarked his life in pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world, comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all the offices of life. "What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time, Be but to sleep and feed? -a beast, no more! Looking before and after, gave us not To rust in us, unused!" CXIX. - LINES ON THE ENTRY OF THE AUSTRIANS INTO NAPLES. MOORE. These spirited lines were called forth by the tame conduct of the NeapolItan troops in 1821, when the Austrians entered Naples to suppress a popular insurrection which had promised to give liberty to the country. Lord CASTLEREAGH (pronounced kas'l-rā), to whom allusion is made, was a member of the British ministry, and was popularly charged with connivance at the aims of the European despots. Among these the emperor of RUSSIA can no longer be justly classed, as he has nobly liberated all the serfs in his domin ions. Pronounce FILICAJA, fe-le-kä'yä, PETRARCH, pe'trark, EUROPE, yooʻrop. See in Index, forge, sword, Moore. Delivery. The prevailing sentiment of these lines is one of vivid indignation; requiring, for its adequate expression, a very bold and animated delivery. At the end of the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas, the falling slide may be given, but the eighth should terminate with the rising slide. An occasional aspirate quality of voice will be appropriate; and the pauses should be carefully studied. I. Ar, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, II. On, on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales, Fill, fill up their wide sunny waters, ye sails, From each slave-mart of Europe, and shadow their shore ! III. Let their fate be a mock-word; let men of all lands Laugh out, with a scorn that shall ring to the poles, When each sword that the cowards let fall from their hands Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls! IV. And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven, Base slaves! let the whet of their agony be, To think as the doomed often think of that heaven They had once within reach. that they might have been free! V. Oh shame! when there was not a bosom whose heat VI. When the world stood in hope, — when a spirit, that breathed VII. When around you the shades of your mighty in fame, Filicajas and Petrarchs, seemed bursting to view, And their words and their warnings, like tongues of bright flame Over Freedom's apostles, fell kindling on you! VIII. Oh shame! that in such a proud moment of life, One bolt at your tyrant invader, that strife Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the world, That then IX. O disgrace upon manhood! even then You should falter, should cling to your pitiful breath, Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men, And prefer the slave's life of prostration to death! It is strange, it is dreadful; X. shout, Tyranny! shout Through your dungeons and palaces, "Freedom is o'er!" If there lingers one spark of her light, tread it out, And return to your empire of darkness once more! XI. For if such are the braggarts that claim to be free, CXX. CHARACTER OF ADDISON. DR. JOHNSON. The style of Dr. Johnson was ponderous and formal and very different from that of Addison, which he here generously commends. Goldsmith once wittily remarked to Johnson, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, Doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." Johnson had a partiality for words borrowed from the Latin and Greek languages; and his antithetical forms of expression are so obviously artificial that they become wearisome, as all that is affected and unnatural must. Still Johnson was a great man, and though the reputation of his writings is yearly diminishing, his character, as presented by his biographer, Boswell, continues to be one of the most marked and familiar in literary history. See in Index, GROVELING or GROVELLING, SKEPTICAL or SCEPTICAL, TRANSITION, ADDISON, JOHNSON. 1. As a describer of life and manners he must be allowed to stand perhaps the first of the first rank. His humor, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestic scenes and daily occurrences. He never "oversteps the modesty of nature," nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. 2. His figures neither divert by distortion nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so much fidelity that he can hardly be said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination. As a teacher of wisdom he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious; he appears neither weakly credulous nor wanton ly skeptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax nor impracticably rigid. 3. All the enchantment of fancy and all the cogency of argument are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shown sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes appears half-veiled in allegory; sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy; and sometimes steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand dresses, and in all is pleasing. 4. His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not groveling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendor. 5. It was apparently his principal endeavor to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he attempted he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. 6. His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor affected brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. |