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The tenth Eclogue, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associations of pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus' Daphnis to our own "Lycidas" and "Adonais," has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmosphere that should not be disturbed by biographical details. However, we must intrude.
He seems to have often written without any previous meditation or design. Several of his elegies may be said to have neither middle nor end: yet the transitions are so natural, and the gradations so easy, that though we wander through Elysian scenes of fancy, the most heterogeneous in their nature, we are sensible of no defect in the concatenation which has joined them together.
In this odd title he seems to refer to elegies of the Colophonian poet, who was famous in antiquity for the plaintive stress which he laid on the necessity of extracting from life all it had to offer, since there was nothing beyond mortal love, which was the life of life.
The vivid and picturesque sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering-places and country- houses in the eleventh and fourteenth elegies, or single touches, like that in the remarkable couplet Me mediae noctes, me sidera prona iacentem, Frigidaque Eoo me dolet aura gelu,
Was it a Homer, a Dante, a Corneille, one of those great poetical geniuses whose works can move a whole people, are addressed to all the world, and "will live forever"? No; it was a poet of the court and of the fashionable world of Paris, of Blois, and of Amboise, in the sixteenth century, a groom-of-the-chamber to Marguerite de Valois, and one of Francis I.'s favorites, who had written elegies, eclogues, epistles, complaints, roundelays, and epigrams on the incidents and for his masters and mistresses of the hour; France owed to him none of those great poetical works consecrated to description of the grand destinies and grand passions of man, and to the future as well as to the writer's own time.
He agreed, however, with Shenstone, that it was wrong in the brother of one of his correspondents to burn his letters; 'for, said he, 'Shenstone was a man whose correspondence was an honour. He was this afternoon full of critical severity, and dealt about his censures on all sides. He said, Hammond's Love Elegies were poor things.
There had been a decree for recalling him from his banishment already passed by the people, at the instance of Critias, the son of Callaeschrus, as appears by his elegies, in which he puts Alcibiades in mind of this service: From my proposal did that edict come, Which from your tedious exile brought you home; The public vote at first was moved by me, And my voice put the seal to the decree.
The toiling multitude rest every seventh day by virtue of a Jewish law; they are perpetually reading, 'for their example, the records of Jewish history, and singing the odes and elegies of Jewish poets; and they daily acknowledge on their knees, with reverent gratitude, that the only medium of communication between the Creator and themselves is the Jewish race.
Among a host of dramatic writers, Phya Doong, better known as P'hra Khein Lakonlen, is entitled to the first rank. He composed about forty-nine books in lyric and dramatic verse, besides epigrams and elegies.
In any case I remain Truly and faithfully yours, ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. Her elegies on Captain Cook and Major André went through several editions, as did her Louisa, a poetical novel, a class of composition in which she was the predecessor of Mrs. Browning herself. To Mr. Never was a child who cared more for 'a story' than I do; never even did I myself, as a child, care more for it than I do.
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