Ποίο είν' εκείνο το λεοντάρι, Και η πνοή του 'ς τους ουρανούς ! “Η ρίζαις τρέμουν, σαλεύ’ ονούς. "Ω 'Ασπρε! "Αγραφα! Καρπενήσι! Εσείς είπέτε το όνομά του: Βουνά και κάμποι, τα θαύματά του! “Ο Μάρκος Μπότσαρης είν' αυτός "Αυτός άγνάντια 'ς ταϊς χιλιάδες, Μπέηδες Σκόδρας, εχθρούς Πασάδες, Φονέας πρόφθασεν 'Αετός. 'Αδέλφια ! πάμε με το σκοτάδι. Διακόσιοι ειμαστε και σαράντα: » Ακολουθάτε εμένα πάντα, Κ' εσείς οι άλλοι υστερινα, Για τους Τυράννους τον σκορπισμόν. « "Ειπε, και ώρμησε λυσσασμένος, Κ' είς Τούρκων αίματα βαπτισμένος, *Εσπερνε φρίκης και οδυρμόν: Μωαμετάνον εις την φυγήν. Με την θανάσιμην την πληγήν Πάρε το άρμα μου, Κωνσταντίνε, Ως ου η νίκη τελειωθή Μόν' η Πατρίδα για να σωθώ. Κ' Ελλάδος είσθε όλι καρποί! 'Εκεί βαρβάρων βροντά τροπή! Κοντά 'ς της θάλασσας τα νερά! Σαν έγονάτισε κλαυθμηρά. 2 *Αρμα γενναῖον! Μάρμαρον Τάφου! Μὲ τὴν ἁπλῆν σας τὴν παῤῥησίαν Εις διαδόχους πολεμιστάς. *Ανθη ἀμάραντα καὶ στεφάνια Σ τὰ σπλάγχνα βλάστησαν τῆς Πατρίδος Εις βωμὸν δόξης ̔Ελληνικόν· Μ. Σχινάς. 1 ON THE DEATH OF MARCO BOZZARI. Darkness and death upon the world are brooding, 'Tis thus in sorrow and in sadness wailing, Yet as the glorious sun they rose and set: And their departed ghosts pursue them yet. Who is that noble lion, weak and wounded? And nought remains but its dark-prison shell. Thou Archelaus! Agrapha! Carpenisi! Shout mountains-shout ye fields his sacred fame, "Brothers!" he said, "now crowd around your leader! For freedom's hour is come-its voice is shouting He said, and rush'd upon the bandit crew, Weltering in Turkish gore—which round him stream'd Terror and desolation-how they scream'd When their proud scattering horde he overthrew ! Then fled the haughty Mussulman-he fled- And stains the flowers and turns the grasses red. Then called he to his brother" Take my sabre- Because I die.—I to my sons bequeath, And give to Greece their life and even their death." She bears, she nurtures her Leonides, Lo! the barbarian hears_and shrieks, and flees. My heart flies to Etolia—there to linger, The waves triumphant of the rolling sea- And shrine in sacred thoughts his memory. But simple, popular eloquence-inspired All the bright wreaths that victory e'er acquired. Whose incense has the fragrance of past days. J.B. ON MODERN FRENCH POETRY, WITH TRANSLATIONS. THERE have been two main ob- vanced),canexcuse poverty ofthinking stacles to the success of French and a dearth of fancy. Yet the French, poetry in this country: the one is quite as much as he English (and I the strange misconception which has believe more so collectedly regarduniformly prevailed, even among ed), are a “ thinking people.” Their writers of literary criticism, on the prose writers are by no means definature and character of French ver- cient in new and ingenious turns of sification: both Dr. Aikin and Mrs. thought or striking reflections; any More have chosen to represent their more than in a talent for lively. detragic and epic measures as anapæs- scription. Passionate sentiment, and tic; and by an unfair and sophistical a delicate impression of the beauties appeal to the sense of ridicule, have of natural scenery, when associated paralleled them by scraps of ludi- with sentiment, have made poets of crous poetry from the Bath Guide Rousseau and St. Pierre unconsciousand the ballad of the Cobler. This ly to themselves. It is idle then to argument is obviously null: the attempt accounting for the vapid inrhythm which is taken for granted to terest of their general poetry, by carry with it an inseparable associ- throwing the blame on the language. ation of levity has been adopted with Of its metrical laws and arrangement solemn and even grand effect by we are, as has been seen, about the eminent writers, while treating pa- very worst judges in Europe ; and thetic or lofty subjects : by Cowper, Julie and Virginie refute, in a thouin his Alexander Selkirk (though in sand eloquent and picturesque pasverse of less compass and lyrical sages, the trite charges of nerveless arrangement); and by Montgomery, diction and feeble inanity of expresin his ode on the Ocean. But the sion. The truth is, that the French, truth is, that the French regulate like every other language, has its their verse by time and not by ac- own emphatical words and idiomatic cent; and by rejecting an emphatic delicacies, which cannot without inrest on any one predominant syllable, jury be transplanted into another. and giving to their unaccentuated The reflective verb alone, answering vowels, when they do not melt into to the middle voice of the Greeks, is each other, a low-breathed metrical an advantage which we, who boast articulation, they diffuse the syllabic of our strength, may well covet. emphasis pretty equally over the Take a couplet which occurs to me whole verse; which, in their heroic from memory in a translation of standard, thus becomes a twelve- Pope's Eloisa : timed, though unemphatic, alexandrine. A second obstacle, and Je crois le voir, l'entendre, et ma main le this is one unhappily less chimerical, poursuit ; has been the want of force, variety, Ele croit l'arrêter—il se dissipe et fuit. and interest in the matter and man- Who will dispute the condensing ner of the poetry. I do not speak of force of the word se dissipe, or its light epigrams and airy songs; nor poetic effect? of idyls, fables, love-odes, and mock The defect has been in their sysheroic, or satire: for in these the tem. There is no want of language, French language has always been no toiling and spinning for a word, sufficiently rich : but I allude to the in Massillon, or Montesquieu, or Rayhigher and more serious departments nal. The Numa Pompilius of Floof poetry; which have usually ex- rian is a better poem than the Henhibited, on their side, a pompous riade. In prose the French are not emptiness, and elaborate common- afraid of being poetical ; and they place, together with a plentiful lack have probably been blamed without of images and ideas. No plea of in- reason for executing their versions of communicable elegancies of language ancient poets in prose. Yet enough (though such has usually been ad- has been done to prove the capacity a town. of their language, when not tamed it. Some of the old poets of France down by a sickly fastidiousness. were rich in the choice of expression, Some passages of Boileau from Ho- alive to striking effects of nature, mer, in his translation of Longinus, and even free and bold in the creaare so nearly balanced with the cor- tion of new terms, and the breaking responding versions of Pope, that their metre into pauses; for they they would seem to have been mu- used compound epithets, and ran one tually borrowed from each other. verse into another. Yet at that time Brebeuf is not inferior to Rowe in the French were as much accustomhis picture of Lucan's Sacred Forest: ed, as they have been since, to magand if the following extract from De niloquence of phrase on light occaLisle’s Eneid be compared with Pitt sions. We might also expect, if the (for Dryden gets into “ a smother," inference were sound, that their where we must needs leave him), it works of prose-eloquence would be will not be easy to convict' the rigid, dry, and technical, for the Frenchman of a want of either epic same reason; and yet we see that dignity or of imaginative power.. the writers are at no loss to express themselves with energy. The cause Where those rude piles of shatter'd ram- of the restraints, which the French, parts rise, poets bave usually imposed upon Stone rent from stone, a mighty ruin lies, themselves, must, I should imagine, And black with rolling smoke the dusty be rather sought in the timidity arti whirlwind flies, There Neptune's trident breaks the bul. ficially created by a heartless and warks down, finical court of criticism ; and that There from its basis heaves the trembling unlucky national propensity to ban ter and ridicule, of which Mr. Coba bett, a far better grammarian than Vois ta ces longs débris, ces pierres dis- poetical critic, seems to have caught persées, the very spirit, when he says of De ces brulantes tours les masses renversées ? Milton, referring to his allegorical Cette poudre, ces feux ondoyants dans les fiction of the process of creation, that airs ? he describes the Almighty as “takLà le trident en main le puissant Dieu des ing a pair of compasses out of a drawer. De la terre à grands coups entrouvrant les They have, in fact, gone on, like entrailles, the English school, fancifully called A leur base profonde arrache les murailles. Augustan, which was formed on their model, writing poetry after a recipe: Sterne exemplifies the French ten- handing from one to another a cerdency to conversational bombast of tain round of agreed periphrases, and expression by the asseveration of his established personifications, and enbarber; who protested to him, that deavouring as much as possible to “ the curls of his wig would stand think, feel, and describe exactly though he plunged them in the ocean. alike. On these terms the wonder As if, quietly observes the senti- would be, not that there were many mentalist, I should pull on my boots poets (so call them by courtesy), but and post to the shores of the Atlan- that all were not poets. Any man tic, for the purpose of trying the ex- with a dictionary of rhymes, and a periment! An English hair-dresser book of alphabetical beauties before would have contented himself with him, might, one should think, prosuggesting a dip in a bucket. This duce, without much wear and tear habit of exaggeration in their com- of the intellects, such elaborations as mon-life language has been adduced fill half the French tomes of epistles, to account for their characteristic and poèsies diverses, and be called, meagreness of diction in verse: as if like the author of the lumber lately having exhausted their force of ex- embalmed within two monumental pression, they had nothing left. But quartos of semi-auto-biography-a why should it have been exhausted ? bard. The maxim of Horace They might not be able, indeed, to -Mediocribus esse poetis, go beyond it; but there seems no Non Dii, non homines, non concessere coreason why they should sink below lumnæ, mers |