Or fondly toward Parnassus' summit toil, No more wide ocean's rolling billows watch, Or inspiration from the zephyrs catch; Seek, in some shady covert, soft repose, And pensive watch. the golden evening close; Nor view, while Night and solemn silence reign, The lucid moonbeams tremble o'er the plain; No more enraptured with Amanda stray, Where Spring luxuriant strews with flowers the way: With easy footsteps, pace th' enamel'd plain Some gently rising hillock's summit gain, Watch the grey morning chase the night The thought, which suggested the following Impromptu, addressed to a lady, who asked the authour, why Cupid was always painted blind, is borrowed from one of the modern Italian poets; which, I cannot now remember; Nor, if I could, have I at present, access to the volume; therefore cannot determine, whether it is an imitation or translation, or whether the substance of the last line only is borrowed., If such trifles are not below your attention, accept it, with the authour's assurance of respect and esteem. The price of The Port Foo is Six Dollars per annum, to be paid in advance. Printed and Published, for the Editor, by SMITH & MAXWELLg. No. 28, NORTH SECOND-STREET. (NEW SERIES) BY OLIVER OLDSCHOOL, ESQ. Various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, may be indulged-Cowp. dejection, I should have resembled the shrinking vegetable of irritableness, and, like the mimosa of the gardens, doomed to be at once stupid and sensitive. The courses of Nature and Fortune having taken a different direction, Parental Benignity having furnished me with the Keys, and Discipline and Habit having conducted me through the Portico of Education, I have ever found, whether walking in the Vestibule of Science, or meditating in the Groves of Philo WHENEVER I reflect upon my habitual attachment to books, I feel a new glow of gratitude towards that Power, who gave me a mind, thus disposed, and to those liberal friends, who have allowed the utmost latitude of in-phy, or hearkening to historians dulgence to my propensity. Had I been born on a barbarous shore, denied the glorious privileges of education, and interdicted an approach to the rich provinces of Literature, I should have been the most miserable of mankind. With a temperament of sensibility, with the nerves of a valetudinarean, with an ardent thirst for knowledge, and very scanty means for its acquisition, with a mind often clouded with care, and depressed by and poets, or rambling with Rabelais, such excellent companions, that Life has been beguiled of more than half its irksomeness. In sickness, in sorrow, in the most doleful days of dejection, or in the most gloomy seasons in the calendar, study is the sweetest solace and the surest refuge, particularly when my reading is directer' that immortal book, wher theme of this essay is tak an hour of adversity, wher G caught up this precious volume, I have found, instantly, the balm of Gilead and the medicine for the mind. The darkness of Despair has been succeeded by the brightest rays of Cheerfulness, and in place of grim phantoms, I have found Comfort, Peace, and Serenity. viewed in a proper light, it will, by an easy association, lead the observer to reflect more intensely upon the value of literature. for books are as demonstrable as The utility and delight of a taste any axiom of the severest Science. The most prosperous fortune is often harrassed by various vexations. The sturdiest son of Strength is sometimes the victim of Disease. Melancholy will sometimes involve the merriest in her shade, and the fairest month of the year will have its cloudy days. In these dreary seasons, from which no man may hope to escape, sensual delights will not fill scarcely a nook in the gloomy void of the troubled time. Brief as the lightning in the collied night, this sort of pleasure may flash before the giddy eyes, but then merely for a moment, and the twinkling radiance is still surrounded with the murkiest gloom. Eating, drink I hope that this style of speaking occasionally in the first person will be forgiven, even by the most fastidious reader, when he adverts to the custom of my predecessours. A periodical writer can hardly avoid this sort of egotism, and it is surely very harmless, when its employer muffles himself in the mantle of concealment, and in the guise, whether of a shrewd Spectator or a simple Lay Preacher, walks, unobtrusively, abroad. Mr. ADDISON and Monsieur MoNTAIGNE perpetually indulge this habit; and, on a very careful inspection of many editions of their essays, I have always found, bying, and sleeping; the song and the certain infallible marks, that those speculations had been most diligently perused, which abound in little sketches of the manners, humours, and habits of their authour. We are naturally curious thus to peep through the keyhole of a study, to see a writer in his elbowchair, and to listen to his story with the fondness and familiarity of friendship. Anonymous authours have a prescription from Parnassus to paint themselves; and when by a Tatler, a Spectator, or a Connoisseur nothing but good colours and modest tinting is employed, men look with mingled curiosity and complacency at the picture. In a speculation on the blessings, derived from a studious temper, if a miniature of a lover of books is introduced, provided it be a tolerable resemblance, and dance, the tabret and viol, the hurry of dissipation, the agitation of play, these resources, however husbanded, are inadequate to the claims of life. On the other hand, the studious and contemplative man has always a scheme of wisdom by which he can either endure or forget the sorrows of the heaviest day. Though he may be cursed with care, yet he is surely blessed when he readeth. Study is the dulce lenimen laborum of the Sabine bard. It is Sorrow's sweet assuager. By the aid of a book, he can transport himself to the vale of Tempe, or the gardens of Armida. He may visit Pliny at his villa, or Pope at Twickenham. He may meet Plato on the banks of Illysus, or Petrarch among the groves of Avignon. He may make philosophical experiments with Bacon, or enjoy the eloquence of Bolingbroke. He may speculate with Addison, moralize with Johnson, read tragedies and comedies with Shakspeare, and be raptured by the rhetorick of Burke. In many of the old romances, we are gravely informed, that the unfortunate knight in the dungeon of some giant, or fascinated by some witch or enchanter, while he sees nothing but hideousness and horrour before him, if haply a fairy, or some other benignant being, impart a talisman of wonderous virtue, on a sudden our disconsolate prisoner finds himself in a magnificent palace, or a beautiful garden, in the bower of Beauty, or in the arms of Love. This wild fable, which abounds in the legends of knight-errantry, has always appeared to me very finely to shadow out the enchantment of study. A book produces a delightful abstraction from the cares and sorrows of this world. They may press upon us, but when we are engrossed by study we do not very acutely feel them. Nay, by the magick illusion of a fascinating authour we are transported from the couch of Anguish, or the gripe of Indigence to Milton's Paradise or the Elysium of Virgil. For The Port Folio. A TREATISE ON ORIENTAL POETRY. The descriptions in the Shahnamah are always varied and perfectly well followed up, above all, those of battles which are as numerous as in the Iliad. Those of a more agreeable nature as of Gardens, Banquets, Thrones Palaces, Love, and Beauties, are no less admirable, and are painted by Ferdusi with all the richness and pride of the Oriental Imagination. He of ten writes: Ke deri bustanech hemicheh gulest "A garden, in which the rose per petually flourishes, whose borders are filled with Tulips and Hyacinths: where the air is mild, the walks superbly ornamented: where one neither experiences immoderate heat, nor excessive cold; but where a perpetual spring reigns; where the Nightingales incessantly warble among the branches of trees evergreen where the antelopes play on the hillocks." The descriptions of the morning are very animated in this poem, and decorated with the greatest variety of shades. When glorious day his shining splendour shewed, And shaded Earth with Pearls and Rubies strewed, When Sol displayed his gilded rays again, And scattered Camphor o'er the musky plain. That is to say, spreads light upon the obscurity of the plains, for the Oriental Poets often make an allusion to the two opposed colours, by Cam phor and Musk. We will here add a description of a more majecti̟ck kind, taken also from the Shahnamah, and which will give an idea of the Persian similies. Nekei kerd Barzev ber an deh suvar "Barzev regarded the ten warriors who advanced; he was like a Lion wan. dering in search of his prey. He immedi ately clothed himself with his coat of mail, and girded his loins with a belt of gold.-He placed upon his head a Turkish casque, and filled his quiver with arrows. Now he remained suspended to the trappings of his courser, and immediately he was fixed firm and upright in his saddle like a moving mountain. When, with his long javelin, and his sabre sparkling like the diamond, he advanced even as a cloud, which arises, one might have said, it is the firmament which shines, or it is the day which glitters, or it is a river which runs in the spring. When he stretched forth his two arms like the branches of the Plane tree, one might have cried, it is a tree laden with steel." We also find in Ferdusi, very tender descriptions, and as beautiful as affecting, as that of Frankis the daughter of Afrasiab, when she discovers the conspiracy which had been planned against her beloved Siavechi. "She tore the Hyacinths of her hair with an inexpressible gief, and bruised her tender bosom in her despair. She scattered the musk of her tresses upon the ivory hill of her beautiful breast, and bathed the Tulips of her cheeks with the streams which ran from her eyes. Her tears gushed out like a fountain when she thought upon the cruel design of Afrasiab.” With regard to the expressions and numbers of this poem, it is evident that their beauties can only be felt by those, who understand the original. We will then only remark, that they are bold and animated, throughout the whole work, and in some passages elevated and sublime in the highest degree. The Persian poet resembles Homer in some other peculiarities, as in the frequent repetition of the same lines and the same epithets. The light-footed Achilles and Agamemnon, the King of men, are not more frequently found in the Iliad, than the Lion-hearted R ustem, and Caikosrev, the King of the world, in the Shahnamah. SECTION III. Of their Love Poetry and Odes. We have now come to that kind of Poetry in which the Asiaticks principally excel. Love has so great a share in the Arabian Poems, that upon whatever subject they may be, they are always interspersed with the complaints of lovers and the descriptions of beloved beauties. The Arabian nation divides its time between warlike expeditions, and the mild occupations of the pastoral life. They transport their tents from place to place and when the camels and other beasts have consumed the pasture of one situation they leave it to return thither when the grass shall again have grown up. In this species of encampment the tribes which find themselves near each other, famili arly exchange intercourse, and the youth of both sexes form attachments, which are, for the most part, unfortunate, the change of residence and the difference of principle causing perpetual separations. Hence proceed the Arabian poems beginning almost always with the complaints of a lover upon the departure of his mistress; his friends are represented in them as endeavouring to console him, but he refu ses all consolation; he describes the beauty of his dear Maia, or Solima, or Zeine, or Azza; he announces the design which he has to go and see her in the new dwelling place of her tribe, should he find the passages defended by Lions or guarded by watchful Archers. Then he intro duces the description of his Camel or Horse, and comes by degrees to his principal subject. We will find few Arabian Poems without this species of exordium, whether they have, as an object, the military virtues, or grief, praise, or censure, or, in fine, love alone. The seven poems which were written in letters of gold and preserved in the Temple of Mecca, are in this style.* The authour of he * These seven Poems clearly transcribed with explanatory notes, are among Pocock's manuscripts at Oxford, No. 164. |