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The former were the productions of the Ionic and AEolic minstrels in Asia Minor, among whom Homer stood pre-eminent and eclipsed the brightness of the rest: the latter were the compositions of a school of bards in the neighbourhood of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, among whom in like manner Hesiod enjoyed the greatest celebrity.
Henry VIII. seemed, therefore, with the help of his minister, St. Leger, to have succeeded in breaking up the clans, after the Irish national government had been broken up long before. Confusion of titles, property, and traditions became worse confounded. How could the shanachies, bards, and brehons, any longer agree in their pedigrees, songs, and legal decisions?
Even Homer, in the field of poetry, made use of the bards who had sung for a thousand years before him. In the realms of philosophy the great men of all ages have built up new systems on the foundations which others have established.
So Byron says in the first edition of his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" "Too much in turtle Bristol's sons delight, Too much oer bowls of rack prolong the night." These lines will not be found in the modern editions; but the following are substituted: "Four turtle feeder's verse must needs he flat, Though Bristol bloat him with the verdant fat."
In the development of lyric poetry the Hindu bards, particularly those of the third period, have been eminently successful; their power is great in the sublime and the pathetic, and manifests itself more particularly in awakening the tender sympathies of our nature. Here we find many poems full of grace and delicacy, and splendid for their charming descriptions of nature.
I must, however, before I pass to another subject, recite a touching ballad, from one of our sweetest bards. Leopards and panthers are very similar in their appearance and habits; so much so, that I shall introduce them both in the same chapter. The engraving represents a panther. He is in some danger from the serpent near him, I am inclined to think.
Prichard has proved it to be, an early offshoot of the Indo-European family, and a people of unmixed descent, but that when driven out of their conquests by the later nations, the names and exploits of their heroes, and the compositions of their bards, spread far and wide among the invaders, and affected intimately their tastes and literature for many centuries, and that it has strong claims to be considered the cradle of European Romance.
The poet's walks were shared by Arthur Hallam, then affianced to his sister Emily. By 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson's second volume were circulating in MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends more encouraging. Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness among their acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in proof- sheets. Infamous or not, it is extremely diverting.
We sat down in a small temple made entirely of shells; and whether it was that the Creative Genius gave an undue charm to the place, I know not: but as the murmur of a rill, glassy as the Blandusian fountain, was caught, and re-given from side to side by a perpetual echo, and through an arcade of trees, whose leaves, ever and anon, fell startingly to the ground beneath the light touch of the autumn air; as you saw the sails on the river pass and vanish, like the cares which breathe over the smooth glass of wisdom, but may not linger to dim it, it was not difficult to invest the place, humble as it was, with a classic interest, or to recall the loved retreats of the Roman bards, without smiling too fastidiously at the contrast.
As we should not altogether reject, though neither are we bound to believe, the wild and uncertain traditions of which we have neither documentary nor monumental evidence, we will glance over rapidly what the old Bards and Story-tellers have handed down to us concerning Ireland before it became Christian.
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