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Such is the immortality of poetic at in 1809. Mrs. Piozzi, as is well known, tachments

Forever wilt thou love and she be fair.

That the poet was shortly afterwards "married to another" is sufficient to explain the cessation of the correspondence, from which Gifford argues that the interview resulted in aversion. And he might further have reflected that when a poet is reduced to talk of "petrifying suns" his correspondence has been known to cease for lack of ideas.

The satirized poets did their best to retaliate on Gifford by abusive sonnets in the newspapers; and Mr. Jerningham wrote a feebly vituperative poem on Gif ford and Mathias. The Della Cruscans had, undeniably, the worst of the battle. The efficacy of Gifford's satire in putting an end to the school is, however, more than doubtful. It is true that it afterwards came to be considered, naturally enough, that he had given the Della Cruscans their death-blow. Scott, for instance, writing in 1827, observes that "The Baviad" "squabashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough;" but that is not the evidence of contemporary witnesses. Seven years after the publication of "The Baviad," Mathias, in the preface to "The Pursuits of Literature," remarks that "even the Bavian drops from Mr. Gifford's pen have fallen off like oils from the plumage of the Florence and Cruscan geese. I am told that Mr. Greathead and Mr. Merry yet write and speak, and Mr. Jerningham (poor man!) still continues sillier than his sheep.'"

This statement is in far better accordance both with the facts and the probabilities of the case. Satire, even first-rate satire, does not kill follies. They gradually die of inanition, or are crowded out by newer fashions. Laura Matilda's dirge in the "Rejected Addresses" is a standing monument of the vitality of Della Cruscanism more than twenty years after its supposed death-blow.

The career as stage-writers of Merry, Greathead, and Jerningham, their bad tragedies and bad farces, do not belong to my present subject. Of the subsequent history of one or two of them a word may, however, be said. Jerningham lived to publish, as late as 1812, two editions of a flaccid poem, called "The Old Bard's Farewell," after which he disappears from life and literature. Mrs. Cowley, perhaps the most interesting of the group, died in rural and religious retirement at Tiverton,

outlived all her contemporaries, and wit nessed the popularity of a modern litera. ture of which she had no very high opinion.

As for Della Crusca, he married, in 1791, Miss Brunton, an actress, whose sister became Countess of Craven, and who had played the heroine in his tragedy of "Lorenzo." His reply to the remonstrances of his aunt on the mésalliance shall be quoted, to show that he had his lucid intervals. "She ought," he said, "to be proud that he had brought a woman of such virtue and talents into the family. Her virtue his marrying her proved; and her talents would all be thrown away by taking her off the stage." Nevertheless, he afterwards weakly yielded to his relations, and withdrew her from the stage against her own inclination, thereby depriving himself of a source of income with which, as a gambler and bon vivant, he could ill afford to dispense. He accordingly quitted England, and must have betaken himself to France, an adventure which befel him in Paris, in September, 1792, being thus amusingly given by Horace Walpole :

In the midst of the massacre of Monday last, Mr. Merry, immortalized, not by his verses, but by those of the Baviad, was mistaken for the Abbé Maury, and was going to be hoisted to the lanterne. He cried out that he was Merry, the poet the ruffians, who probably had never read the scene in Shakespeare, yet replied, "Then we will hang you for your bad verses; "but he escaped better than Cinna, I don't know how, and his fright cost him but a few "gossamery tears," and I suppose he will shed dolorous nonsense in rhyme over the woes be happy to re-cross the "silky ocean," and of this happy country.

But England was not to see much more of Merry. English society was probably not so kind to the Radical husband of an actress as it had been to the bachelor of fashion. He withdrew, with his wife, to America, in 1796, and died, three years afterwards, of apoplexy, in his garden at Baltimore.

Merry did not fail to find in his own day apologists of some pretensions_to taste. I find in the notes to George Dy. er's poem, “The Poet's Fate," published in 1797 - which contains early and interesting laudations not only of his schoolfellows Lamb and Coleridge, but also of Wordsworth and Southey the follow. ing reference to Merry: But, after all, though the hero of the Baviad betrayed glitter and negligence, though he misled

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became as a red rag to the Giffords who played the part of the bull in the china shop. But it is not with this clumsy rage that posterity will regard our follies; nor is it useful, or desirable, that we should now so regard them. It is with a smile of amused anticipation, it is with a bland and philosophic interest, that the antiquarian of the future will turn to the pages of Punch or the libretto of "Patience," to

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lighted to apparel themselves in what Bramston called "shape-disguising sacks -the Della Cruscas who took Postlethwaite for a great poet.

ARMINE T. KENT.

WHITBY.

From Good Words.

the taste of some, too much inclined to admire and imitate defects, yet Merry's writings possess poetical merits; and the spirit of liberty and benevolence which breathes through them is ardent and sincere." The criticism may be incorrect, but it is worth noting, because it is the criticism of a contemporary. Had it not been for Coleridge's fervently expressed admiration for Bowles's sonnets, which so perplexes critics who do not judge litera-read of the Anna Matildas who lately deture from a historical point of view, the world would have continued to sneer at him, with Byron, as "simple Bowles," and to know him only by Byron's line. The fact is, literary history will never be intelligently written, till it is studied in the spirit of the naturalist, to whom the tares are as interesting as the wheat. We may, perhaps, give the Della Cruscans, with their desperate strainings after poetic fire and poetic diction, the credit of having done something to shake the THE quaint and ancient sea-town of supremacy of versified prose; of having Whitby is probably one of the most picforwarded, however feebly, the poetic turesque towns in England, and its picemancipation which Wordsworth and Cole- turesqueness is by no means its solitary ridge were to consummate. The false attraction. Not only the artist, but the extravagance of Della Crusca may have antiquary, the geologist, the historian, one cleared the way for the truthful extrava- and all find interest in the neighborhood of gance of Keats. It is, I am aware, customary to attribute the regeneration of English poetry to the French Revolution, which "shook up the sources of thought all over Europe," but the critics who use these glib catchwords are in no hurry to point out a concrete chain of logical connection between Paris mobs and seques tered poets. Plain judges will ever consider it a far cry from "The Rights of Man" to "Christabel." At all events, Dyer was right in deprecating the save agery of Gifford's satire. The question

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? will apply to other schools and fashions besides that of the "elegant Cesario's," whom Leigh Hunt designated par excellence as "the plague of the Butterflies." And here, I think, we touch upon the moral which I promised at the outset.

It is not very long since the country, to which Della Crusca ultimately betook himself, received to her shores the reputed prophet of æstheticism, whose career, in other respects, presented remarkable parallels with that of Robert Merry. Each made his poetical appearance in the columns of a newspaper called the World; each professed republican opinions; each wrote poems not remarkable for truth to nature or sobriety of diction; each represented a school; and the name of each

High Whitby's cloister'd pile,

from whence St. Hilda's abbess and "her five fair nuns" set sail for the holy island on that errand known to the readers of "Marmion." Sir Walter Scott, with his usual keen appreciation of legendary lore, has hardly left untouched one of the more important of the legends of Whitby. The abbey stands on the top of a cliff, which is approached from the town by two hundred stone steps. The ruin is magnifi. cent, and can be seen not only from the wide waters of the northern sea, but from almost every part of the country round about. The architecture is Gothic, of various dates, perhaps the earliest being 1140, and the latest 1400. Originally the building was cruciform, and extended in length from east to west three hundred feet, in breadth from north to south one hundred and fifty feet. The south aisle of the choir and the south transept have disappeared; indeed, strange to say, the south side has altogether suffered more than the north. The tower, which was supported by four immense pillars, each with sixteen clustered columns, fell so lately as 1830. The parish church, dedicated to St. Mary, stands on the same cliff top, and is surrounded on all sides by the last resting places of the ancient townsfolk. The four ancient gates of

ways

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- Floregate, Baxtergate, Hakelsou- | tiently and silently. One sees rather than gate, Kirkgate, keep their names with but hears how it is with the pale, sad-looking, slight modification. Kirkgate, it need ill-clad men who wander about by the hardly be said, is Church Street. A curi lanes and on the cliffs by twos and threes, ous feature of the old town is the wooden few of them being able to turn their hand galleries which lead to the upper tene to any other trade. The making of jet ments of houses, which are let in flats. ornaments is an ancient craft. Charlton, Sometimes you may see three or four of in his quaint "History of Whitby," says: these galleries, one above another, each "I myself have lately viewed the earring approached by a flight of wooden steps. of a lady who had most certainly been As we have said, the houses are built in buried in one of these houes [houses] long the cliff side, and the difficulties of such before the time of the Danes' arrival in an arrangement are obvious. The yards Britain; it is of jet, more than two inches of Whitby rejoice in such names as Cock- long, and about a quarter of an inch thick, pit yard, Elbow yard, Loggerhead yard, made in the form of a heart, with a hole Vipond's Lane, and others equally sug- to its upper end, by which it has been gestive and euphonious. You may hear suspended to the ear. It lay, when found, the sound of whirring wheels as you pass in contact with the jaw bone, and if any up and down the narrow ways, and if you credit be due to antiquity, must assuredly do not mind running the risk of being have belonged to some British lady who half choked by jet-dust, rouge, lampblack, lived at or before the time the Romans etc., you will generally find yourself wel were in Britain, when ornaments of this come to enter and watch the various proc sort were universally worn." The history esses through which the coal-like mineral of jet from before "the Danes' arrival" passes before it becomes an artistic orna- to the present day would make a long ment. So far as I am aware, the ques- article of itself, so I must hasten on. Untion, "What is jet?" has never been quite doubtedly the manufacture of jet ornasatisfactorily answered. At one time over ments has been one of the industries of twenty jet mines were being worked, need- this industrious town for several centuing the labor of from two hundred to ries; as the name of John Carlill, jetthree hundred men; but owing to various worker, 1598, occurs in an old title-deed causes, notably the introduction of Span- of a house near the bridge. About 1814 ish jet, there is a falling off in the quan- a Frenchman named Bingent, or Bingant, tity of jet extracted from the cliffs and came over from France, and settled in hills of the Whitby district. The Spanish Whitby as a manufacturer of jet, and jet in the rough state, of course - is helped in developing the local trade. And brought to Whitby and sold in large or considerable impetus was given to it by small quantities, to suit the purchaser. the late Lady Normanby, who introduced Of late years fortune or fashion has caused jet at the court of Queen Victoria. Subconsiderable fluctuation in the trade, and sequently, for many years, a period of the distress amongst the poorer jet-work- court mourning meant a period of prosers has often been very great. But it is perity for the town of Whitby. patiently borne for the most part pa-l

INDIAN FISH-EGG FOOD. The Scientific American, in acknowledging the receipt of a specimen of the fish-egg food prepared by the native Indians of British Columbia, says: "The specimen received consists of a small branch of cedar, the leaves of which are thickly coated with dried fish eggs. Our correspon dent says the eggs of the specimen sent are from a small fish that abounds in the waters of Vancouver's Sound, and are collected by making a mattress of cedar twigs and sinking them in shallow places until the fish have deposited their spawn, when the twigs are raised and the spawn allowed to dry. When used they are simply soaked and eaten. In this

connection we will give the following item from a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, who says: During the spring of 1881 the writer was in Sitka, and was a witness to one of the most wonderful sights in the bay of Sitka. For more than a week the water of the bay was as white as milk with fish-spawn extending as far as the eye could see. The herring were so numerous that people were gathering them from the water along the beach with their hands and filling baskets with them. The Indians placed spruce boughs in the water, and when these were taken out not a particle of the original green but what was covered with a thick coating of eggs.""

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For EIGHT DOLlars, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

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GAINSBOROUGH GHOSTS. (IN THE GROsvenor gallery.) THEY smile upon the western wall, The lips that laughed an age agone, The fops, the dukes, the beauties all, Le Brun that sang, and Carr that shone. We gaze with idle eyes; we con

The faces of an elder timeAlas! and ours is flitting on;

Oh, moral for an empty rhyme !

Think, when the tumult and the crowd
Have left the solemn rooms and chill,
When dilettanti are not loud,

When lady critics are not shrill
Ah, think how strange upon the still
Dim air may sound these voices faint;
Once more may Johnson talk his fill,
And fair Dalrymple charm the saint!

Of us they speak as we of them,

Like us, perchance, they criticise: Our wit, they vote, is Brummagem;

Our beauty, dim to Devon's eyes!
Their silks and lace our cloth despise,
Their pumps, our boots that pad the mud.
What modern Fop with Walpole vies?
With St. Leger what modern Blood?

Ah, true, we lack the charm, the wit,
Our very greatest, sure, are small;

Or here, when night was shorn of moon or And Mr. Gladstone is not Pitt,

star,

A dark-eyed poet, born to lisp Honey-sweet melodies, pursued afar The mad Will-o'-the-wisp,

And as he hastened, lo! his footstep trips, And ruining from the marge headlong, He sank to darkness, bearing on his lips Foam and an unhewn song.

Such fancies take the dreamer on thy brink,
Mute pool, who hold'st thy secrets fast,

And art an uninterpretable link
'Twixt present hours and past;

And Garrick comes not when we call. Yet-pass an age- and, after all, Even we may please the folk that look, When we are faces on the wall,

And voices in a history book!

In art the statesman still shall live, With collars keen, with Roman nose; To beauty still shall Millais give

The roses that outlast the rose. The lords of verse, the slaves of prose, On canvas yet shall seem alive, And charm the mob that comes and goes, And lives in 1985.

Saturday Review.

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