ruary, THE SHIPWRECK. [William Falconer, born in Edinburgh, 11th Feb1732; lost at sea in the Aurora frigate, December, 1769. His father was a barber and wig maker in the Netherbow, and afterwards a grocer, but always unfortunate in business. When about fourteen the poet was sent to sea. In 1750 he was second mate on board the Britannia, which, on the passage from Alexandria to Venice, was shipwrecked on the coast of Greece. Only three of the crew survived, of whom Falconer was one; and it was this incident which inspired his poem. He served some time as midshipman in the Royal Navy, then was appointed purser, and was engaged in that capacity in the Aurora when it was lost on the passage to India. The Shipwreck first appeared in 1762. and was received with high favour by the public. The most important of bis other poems are: The Demagogue; A Porm, sacred to the Memory of H.R.H. Frederic Prince of Wales: Ode on the Duke of York's Second Departure from England as Rear-admiral; To Miranda; The Fond Lover; and The Description of a Ninety-gun Ship. The Rev. John Mitford, in his life of Falconer prefixed to the Aldine edition of the Shipwreck, says of that poem: "It is a singularly elegant production of a person who had received no education beyond the mere elements of language, and who was subsequently occu pied in the severe duties and business of a seafaring life -equally without learning or leisure. The poetical powers of Falconer, in whatever rank they may be placed, were the gift of nature." Falconer compiled a valuable Marine Dictionary (1769).1] The moment fraught with fate approaches fast! While thronging sailors climb each quivering mast; The ship no longer now must stem the land, And "Hard a starboard!" is the last command: While every suppliant voice to Heaven applies, The prow, swift wheeling, to the westward flies; Twelve sailors, on the fore-mast who depend, High on the platform of the top ascend: Fatal retreat! for, while the plunging prow Immerges headlong in the wave below, Down prest by watery weight the bowsprit bends, And from above the stem deep-crashing rends: Beneath her bow the floating ruins lie; The fore-mast totters, unsustained on high; And now the ship, forelifted by the sea, Hurls the tall fabric backward o'er her lee; While, in the general wreck, the faithful stay Drags the main top-mast by the cap away: Flung from the mast, the seamen strive in vain, Through hostile floods, their vessel to regain; Weak hope, alas! they buffet long the wave, And grasp at life though sinking in the grave; Till all exhausted, and bereft of strength, It is said that Mr. Murray, founder of the famous publishing house, asked Falconer in 1768 to join him in the business. Mr. Murray wrote to him: "Many blockheads in the trade are making fortunes, and did we not succeed as well as they, I think it must be imputed only to ourselves." It is not known why Falconer declined this advantageous offer. O'erpowered they yield to cruel fate at length; The burying waters close around their head, They sink for ever numbered with the dead. Those who remain the weather shrouds embrace, The ship hangs hovering on the verge of death, In vain, alas! the sacred shades of yore In vain the cords and axes were prepared, Oh, were it mine with sacred Maro's art Like him, the smooth and mournful verse to dress As o'er the surf the bending main-mast hung, Her innocence to succour and defend, Five only left of all the shipwrecked throng Yet ride the mast which shoreward drives along; With these Arion still his hold secures And all assaults of hostile waves endures: O'er the dire prospect as for life he strives, He looks if poor Palemon yet survives"Ah wherefore, trusting to unequal art, Didst thou, incautious! from the wreck depart? Alas! these rocks all human skill defy; Who strikes them once, beyond relief must die: And now sore wounded, thou perhaps art tost On these, or in some oozy cavern lost:" Thus thought Arion; anxious gazing round In vain, his eyes no more Palemon foundThe demons of destruction hover nigh, And thick their mortal shafts commissioned fly: When now a breaking surge, with forceful sway, Two, next Arion, furious tears away; Hurled on the crags, behold they gasp, they bleed! And groaning, cling upon the elusive weed: Another billow bursts in boundless roar! Arion sinks! and memory views no more. Ha! total night and horror here preside, My stunned ear tingles to the whizzing tide; It is their funeral knell! and gliding near Methinks the phantoms of the dead appear! TALES OF THE ARABIANS. [Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi, born at Genoa, 9th May, 1773; died 25th June, 1842. Historian and miscellaneous writer. His chief works are: Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe (from which we quote), translated by Thomas Roscoe; History of the Crusades against the Albigenses in the 13th Century: History of the French; The Battles of Cressy and Poietiers; Religious Opinions during the 19th Century; Julie Sevère, an historical novel, &c.] IF the eastern nations possess not the epic or the drama, they have been the inventors of a style of poetry which is related to the epic, and which supplies amongst them the place of the drama. We owe to them those tales of which the conception is so brilliant, and the imagination so rich and varied; tales which have been the delight of our infancy, and which at a more advanced age we never read without feeling their enchantment anew. Every one is acquainted with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; but, if we may believe the French translator, we do not possess the six-and-thirtieth part of the great Arabian collection. This prodigious collection is not confined merely to books, but forms the treasure of a numerous class of men and women, who, throughout the whole extent of the Mohammedan dominion, in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of India, find a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds who delight to forget, in the pleasing | the other hand, we must consider that these dreams of imagination, the melancholy feelings of the present moment. In the coffee-houses of the Levant one of these men will gather a silent crowd around him. Sometimes he will excite terror or pity, but he more frequently pictures to his audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of eastern imaginations. He will even occasion. ally provoke laughter, and the severe brows of the fierce Mussulmans will only unbend upon an occasion like this. This is the only exhibition of the kind in all the Levant, where these recitations supply the place of our dramatic representations. The public squares abound with these story-tellers, who fill up the heavy hours of the seraglio. The physicians frequently recommend them to their patients, in order to soothe pain, to calm agitation, or to produce sleep after long watchfulness; and these storytellers, accustomed to sickness, modulate their voices, soften their tones, and gently suspend them, as sleep steals over the sufferer. story-tellers are our masters in the art of producing, sustaining, and unceasingly varying the interest of this kind of fiction; that they are the creators of that brilliant mythology of fairies and genii, which extends the bounds of the world, multiplies the riches and strength of human nature, and which, without striking us with terror, carries us into the realms of marvels and of prodigies. It is from them that we have derived that intoxication of love, that tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, and that reverential awe of women, by turns slaves and divinities, which have operated so powerfully on our chivalrous feelings. We trace their effects in all the literature of the south, which owes to this cause its mental character. Many of these tales had found their way into our poetical literature long before the translation of the Arabian Nights. Some of them are to be met with in our old Fabliaux, in Boccaccio, and in Ariosto; and these very tales which have charmed our infancy, passing from tongue to tongue, and from nation to nation, through channels frequently unknown, are now familiar to the memory, and form the delight of the imagination of half the inhabitants of the The imagination of the Arabs, which shines in all its brilliancy in these tales, is easily distinguished from the imagination of the chivalric nations, though it is easy to perceive a certain resemblance between them. The super-globe. natural world is the same in both, but the moral world is different. The Arabian tales, like the romances of chivalry, convey us into the fairy-realms, but the human personages which they introduce are very dissimilar. These tales had their birth, after the Arabians, yielding the empire of the sword to the Tartars, the Turks, and the Persians, had devoted themselves to commerce, literature, and the arts. We recognize in them the style of a mercantile people, as we do that of a warlike nation in the romances of chivalry. Riches and artificial luxuries dispute the palm with the splendid gifts of the fairies. The heroes unceasingly traverse distant realms, and the interests of merchandise excite their active curiosity, as much as the love of renown awakened the spirit of the ancient knights. Besides the female characters, we find in these tales only four distinct classes of personsprinces, merchants, monks or calenders, and slaves. Soldiers are scarcely ever introduced upon the stage. Valour and military achievements in these tales, as in the records of the East, inspire terror, and produce the most desolating effects, but excite no enthusiasm. There is, on this account, in the Arabian tales something less noble and heroic than we usually expect in compositions of this nature. But, on THE CHARM. Goodman, turn thy money! If the magpie, or the jay, Goodman, turn thy money! If when at the hearth thou sit Goodman, turn thy money! If the wizard's ring appear Goodman, turn thy money! 1 Brother Fabian's MS. and other Poems (Macmillan & Co) If the salt thou chance to spill, Goodman, turn thy money! Goodman true, wouldst fend thyself Goodman, turn thy money! Goodman, learn my charm and verse, Quoth Fabian. A POPULAR AUTHOR'S MISERIES. "I'll print it, And shame the rogues."-POPE. His My friend Fosbrook,-Dick Fosbrook-for the abbreviation which his good-fellowship had won for him at Westminster and Cambridge did not desert him upon his entrance into the real man and woman world of society-was a very excellent personage. He was something more substantial than a mere "good fellow:" he was a well-informed, sensible man, with more originality of talent than a reserved disposition permitted to rise to the surface. shyness at length took refuge behind a titlepage; that which he found no courage to say, he resolved to write. "Some sin, his parents' or his own," indeed, had dipped him in ink very early in life; his infant elegy upon his mother's favourite tabby had been wept over by every maiden aunt of the house of Fosbrook: his translations had been applauded by Busby; his prize-poems had been printed at Cambridge; he had lodged in the same house with Lord Byron; his grandmother was a Hayley; his bankers, Rogers, Towgood, & Co. Such a concatenation of impulses was irresistible, and Dick Fosbrook became an author! One fatal and highly unpoetical stumble befell him upon the very brink of Helicon. He married!neither a muse, nor a Madame Dacier; but a very pretty girl,-reasonably rich, and unreasonably silly;-a professional alliance, however, for she was the daughter of a master in Chancery, and was already at the bar. The duties of his legal vocation did not at present interfere with his homage to the Nine; or, as his wife persisted in calling them, the foolish virgins. He wrote, he published, and wrote and published again; and if "the learned world said nothing to his paradoxes," he was equally taciturn as to the amount of the printer's bill, which he annually pocketed with a genuine Christmas groan! He flattered himself he wrote for immortality; that post-obit bond, the dishonouring of which falls so lightly on our feelings!-and his wife and her relations, who regarded authorship as a lawless and cabalistic calling, inimical to the interests of church and state, and an increasing family, exulted in the premature deaths which unfailingly awaited his literary progeny. I dined with him once or twice at this period of his domestic felicity and public misfortunes, and I never beheld a happier or more contented man; he laughed at my bad jokes upon withered laurels, and Lethe, and the stream of Time; he told me that the indulgent public was a dunce, "sans ears, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything;" while his wife, half aside, whispered to me that the ingratitude of this senseless dunce had nearly alienated his mind from his former unprofitable studies. "Sur ces entrefaites," my own equally profitless pursuits led me to the Continent; and in the course of the three years I was vagabondizing through Italy, an incidental paragraph in Galignani's Journal bore honourable mention of "Mr. Fosbrook, the popular author!" "Poor Dick!" said I, involuntarily, "no relation of thine, I fear!" Yet 'twas the same-the very Dick I knew! One of his least meritorious works had made what is called a hit; he was now the "darling of the Muses;" and what is better still, of the booksellers; one of the literary ephemera, basking in the transient sunshine of modern fame. Soon afterwards I landed at Dover, and after the due proportion of wrangling at the customhouse, and grumbling at the divers instalments of tough beef-steaks and muddy wine, wherewith Messrs. Wright defy the patience of the returning exile, I arrived in town-heard the muffin-bell once more-that "Squilla di lontano Che paja 'l giorno pianger che si muore!" -and deposited myself and my yellow valet, Gioacchino, in an hotel in Brook Street. The next day I wandered to my old club, which was grown as fine and uncomfortable as "Ninette à la cour;" heard my contemporaries observe, as they glanced towards a mirror, that I was miserably altered; lost my way in a wil derness of new streets, and my footing in a | ed chimney-piece hung a fine portrait of its plunge through the puddles of a macadamized master in oils, and by Lawrence! and over a square; and just as I was recovering my equi- buhl secretaire a spirited sketch by Hayter librium of body, if not of temper, I perceived a lank, rueful visage, gazing sympathizingly upon my mischance. 'Twas a strangely familiar face-'twas Fosbrook's; not Dick's, but the "popular author's!" His dolorous physiognomy expanded into smiles on this unexpected recognition. He took my arm, and my way onwards, and we turned literally and figuratively to the passages of our youth, till he almost became Dick again by the force of reminiscence. Nay! had it not been for the deferential salutation of two wise men, two very learned pundits, and the raised hats of a bustling Westminster-ward Member or two, whom we met scuffling down Regent Street, his popularity and his authorship would have been forgotten between us. "Dine with me to-morrow," said he at parting, "we shall be alone, and can gossip over our Trinity days." "With all my heart," I answered. "At five-in Gower Street?" "No, no! at seven, in Curzon Street;" but the words came not trippingly from his tongue. The morrow came, and I was delighted to find that, among the various removes of the day, dear Old Bond Street had not changed its town residence, although "almost ashamed to know itself;" and as I re-paraded my daily walks and ancient neighbourhood, I was startled by the sight of poor Fosbrook's face frowning in all the panes of the print-shops. There, at least, he was no Dick of mine; for his worthy countenance was distorted into a most cynical sneer, and he looked as blue and yellow as an Edinburgh review. Rain came on, and I was driven to the cruel refuge of a morning-visit; when, having excused myself from an impromptu dinner invitation, through my "preengagement to my friend Mr. Fosbrook,' "The popular author?"-I was amused to find that even to be his friend was a rising point in the thermometer of fashion; and my intervention was humbly prayed to render him my friend's friend too. Poor Fosbrook! I remember the time when I scarcely contrived to procure a third man to make up dummy whist with him; he was considered a chartered bore, by right divine, and according to the most approved authorities! It was, however, with a feeling nearly amounting to respect for his new honours that I trod lightly upon the creaking step of my hackneycoach at the door of his new mansion, and was ushered by a sulky butler into a very literarylooking drawing-room. Over the marble sphinx being the original of the authorial print of the Bond Street windows. Poor Fosbrook! I remember the time when a paltry profile was the only copy of his countenance! Several proofs of splendid new engravings were "ordered to lie on the table," beside a few presentation copies of the latest works of the day. "Are they good for anything?" said I to Dick, who found me with a volume in my hands. "I really cannot take upon me to say," he replied gravely, and with the air of a man who is afraid of committing himself. "One of the worst consequences of scribbling ourselves is, that we have no leisure to look over these light productions, which are sometimes far from unamusing?" "We!"-thinks I to myself, editorial; while Richard (I will never Dick him any more) turned to the final page of the several works, and determined their length as the standard of their merits. A very light production now entered the room-Mrs. Fosbrook; looking as dressy as the frontispiece of "La Belle Assemblée." But if her gown were couleur de rose, her brow was black as Erebus; the honours which had made him sad had made her cross. I did not care; I had never abbreviated her name; so as it was the May of a London summer, I turned for consolation towards a fire bright enough to roast St. Lawrence. This movement necessitated a glance towards the card-rack, and I observed that its prominent features were "At Homes" from L. House and D. House, and a "requests the honour" from the Dowager Lady C. "Ah! ah!" said I to myself, "your popular author is ever a diner out." I trust my friend Fosbrook was an habitual one; or at least, that he did not affect to be "L'Amphitryon ou l'on dine." The solid joint and solid pudding of St. Pancras had been illexchanged, in his menu, for the unapproachable filets and fricandeaux of St. George's; and hot sauterne and iced Lafitte were abominable substitutes for the old Madeira and old port of old times. By the time the cloth and the lady were withdrawn I was as much out of humour as Mrs. Fosbrook with popular authorship. To judge by the lowering brow of my host, his feelings were turned to as doleful a key as my |