POLITICS AND POETICS;

OR, THE

DESPERATE SITUATION OF A JOURNALIST UNHAPPILY SMITTEN WITH THE LOVE OF RHYME. *

AGAIN I stop,-again the toil refuse!
Away, for pity's sake, distracting Muse;
Nor thus come smiling with thy bridal tricks
Between my studious face and politics.

Is it for thee to mock the frowns of fate?

Look round, look round, and mark my desperate state:

*These lines were omitted in the first edition, on account of the general indifference of the versification; but as they have been thought to resemble that mixture of fancy and familiarity, which the public have approved in the Feast of the Poets,' and as they involve also the anticipation of an event in the writer's life, which afterwards took place, and which he can look back upon, thank Heaven, without blushing for the manner in which he anticipated it, they are here for the greater part reprinted.

Cannot thy gifted eyes a sight behold,

That might have quelled the Lesbian bard of old,
And made the blood of Dante's self run cold?

Lo, first, this table spread with fearful books,
In which whoe'er can help it never looks,—
Letters to Lords, Remarks, Reflections, Hints,
Lives, snatch'd a moment from the public prints,-
Pamphlets to prove, on pain of our undoing,
That rags are wealth, and reformation ruin,
Journals, and briefs, and bills, and laws of libel,

And bloated and blood-red, the placeman's annual Bible.

Scarce from the load, as from a heap of lead,
My poor old Homer shows his living head;
Milton, in sullen darkness, yields to fate,

And Tasso groans beneath the courtly weight;
Horace alone (the rogue!) his doom has miss❜d,
And lies at ease upon the Pension List.

Round these, in tall imaginary chairs, Imps ever grinning, sit my daily cares,

Distastes, delays, dislikings to begin,

Gnawings of pen, and kneadings of the chin.
Here the Blue Dæmon keeps his constant stir,
Who makes a man his own barometer;
There Nightmare, horrid mass! unfeatured heap!
Prepares to seize me if I fall asleep;

And there, with hands that grasp one's very soul,
Frowns Head-ache, scalper of the studious poll,-
Head-ache, who lurks at noon about the courts,
And whets his tomahawk on East's Reports.

Chief of this social game, behind me stands, Pale, peevish, periwigg'd, with itching hands, A goblin double-tail'd, and cloak'd in black, Who, while I'm gravely thinking, bites my back. Around his head flits many a harpy shape, With jaws of parchment and long hairs of tape, Threatening to pounce, and turn whate'er I write With their own venom into foul despite.

Let me but name the court, they swear, and curse, And din me with hard names; and what is worse, 'Tis now three times that I have miss'd my purse.

No wonder poor Torquato went distracted, On whose gall'd senses just such pranks were acted, When the small tyrant,-God knows on what ground, With dungeons and with doctors hemm'd him round.*

See Black's Life of Torquato Tasso, which, if it does not evince a mature judgment in point of style, is written at once with great accuracy of investigation and enthusiasm of sympathy. Mr. Black, in opposition to Milton's, Seracci's, and indeed the general opinion, thinks that the misfortunes experienced by this illustrious poet at the court of Ferrara were not owing to a passion between him and the Princess Leonora; and perhaps the belief in it has been little more than a guess, not entirely destitute of internal evidence, and certainly not unfounded either in human nature, in the character of the poet himself, or in the general destiny of princesses. The reasons why Tasso might not talk more explicitly to the world on such a subject, are obvious. I believe it was not ascertained till lately, that the horrible persecution experienced by Baron Trenk from Frederick the Second of Prussia, was owing to an early attachment with which he had inspired the king's sister Amelia, and which that noble-minded and unfortunate princess carried with her to the grave. The interview that took place between the Baron and his royal Mistress in their old age, after never having seen each other since their youth, is one of the most affecting incidents in the history of the human heart. Leonora, like the Princess Amelia, died unmarried;-but, at all events, whether she had or had not any thing to do with the poet's destiny, one can never think without indignation of the state to which he was reduced by her brother the Duke of Ferrara, who, whatever was the cause of his dislike, chose to regard his morbid sensibility as madness, and not only locked him up, but drenched him with nauseous medicines. It is truly humiliating to hear the great poet, in spite

Last, but not least, (methinks I see him now!)
With stare expectant, and a ragged brow,
Comes the foul fiend, who,-let it rain or shine,
Let it be clear or cloudy, foul or fine,

Or freezing, thawing, drizzling, hailing, snowing,
Or mild, or warm, or hot, or bleak and blowing,
Or damp, or dry, or dull, or sharp, or sloppy,
Is sure to come, the Devil who comes for copy!

of his natural highmindedness, petitioning to be relieved from his inordinate quantity of physic, or promising, in the event of obtaining a small indulgence, to take it more patiently. One of the miseries with which persecution and a diseased fancy conspired to torment him during his confinement in Saint Anne's Hospital, was an idea that he was haunted by a mischievous little goblin, who tumbled his papers about, stole his money, and deranged his contemplations. The following wild and simple touch of pathos is supposed to have been written by him during these afflictions:

Tu, che ne vai in Pindo,

Ivi pende mia cetra ad un cipresso,

Salutala in mio nome, e dille poi,

Ch'io son dagli anni, e da fortuna oppresso.

Thou, who to Pindus tak'st thy way,
Where my harp hangs upon a cypress tree,
Salute it in my name, and say,

That I am old, and full of misery.