Norman knights, who signalized themselves, fills six pages. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, did wonders. He is described as clothed in a haubergeon, with a white shirt underneath, riding upon a white horse, and a baton in his hand. He was the brother of William. All the circumstances related by Vahe, conform to the famous Bayeux tapestry, worked by Maud, wife of the Conqueror. Harold, who had an eye put out by an arrow, at the commencement of the battle, and afterwards was wounded in the thigh, continued to fight, till at last he was killed. [Our historians represent him as not wounded by the arrow, till the close of the battle; that in the thigh, being inflicted after death, by a dastardly soldier, whom William punished. Translator.] Vace highly extols the valour of William. He had two horses killed under him. After the complete defeat of his enemies, he wished to sleep upon the field of battle; but it was represented to him, that among the wounded, with whom the field was strewed, some might have strength enough left to poignard him in the night. When he was disarmed, all his arms were found broken, through the blows struck upon them. [The passages which follow, are preeisely similar to the published accounts, and therefore are not given.] William had just burned the town of Mantes, and wished to cross it in the midst of the ruins. They occasioned his horse to fall, and the king was wounded by the pommel of the saddle. Many historians ascribe his death to the cousequences of that wound. Vace only says, that, upon his return to Rouen, he fell sick, and feeling his end approach, he disposed of his dominions, giving Normandy to Robert, his eldest son; England to William, who was the second; and to Henry, the third, 5,000 pounds. His disorder increasing, he died after six weeks illness. Vace makes him sixtyfour years old probably from copying Orderic Vitalis, but he was only sixty. [That excellent historian, Malmesbury, (De W. i.) says only fifty-nine. Translator.] Before his death, William liberated all the prisoners: of this number, for four years, was his brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux,who had been of much service to him at the battle of Hastings, but bad refused to give him any account of the revenues of England, the administration of which had been confided to him, Wil liam had been obliged to arrest him himself, nobody daring to lay bands upon a bishop. But, said the king, I arrest you, as Earl of Kent, by which distinction William thought to preserve the respect due to the episcopal authority. As soon as the king was dead, the people about him abandoned him to pillage the moveables, before he was put into the coffin. This custom of carrying off the moveables of great men, at the instant of their decease, subsisted a long while, especially in relation to bishops, and even to popes. William was buried at Caen, as he had ordered, in the church of the Abbey of St. Stephen, which he had founded. His tomb, destroyed by the protestants in 1569, was repaired in 1642. Vace does not forget the well-known fact, concerning the opposition, made to his burial, by a person named Ascelin, who pretended, that the part of the church, where they had prepared the bu rial of William, was, in his fief, and bad “ been forcibly seized by that prince. This clamour excited a great tumult. It is commonly considered, as the origin of the "Cry of Haro," a cry still usual in Normandy, to re-demand a thing taken by violence, and to obtain immediate restitution through the judge. By this formula, they say, the plaintiff invokes Rou (Rollo) chief of the Norman dynasty. Paulus Emilius, a modern writer, is generally quoted for the guarantee of this etymon, and I do not believe that it had been suggested before him. [The cry exists in Jersey and Guernsey; the relics which we retain of the duchy of Normandy, which was wrested by France from Jolin, some centuries before the existence of Paulus Emilius. See Falle p. 14. Ha! is the exclamation of a person suffering. Ro, the abbreviated name of the prince: so the custom is meutioned in the Chron. de Normandie 1. xxvi. See too Rouillié, Grand Coustumier de Normandie, fol. lxxvi. Torrien, Commentaires du Droict, &c. au Pays et Duché de Normandie, liv. vii. cb. xi. De Reb. gest. Francor. I. iii.— Masseville, list. Somnm, de Normandie p. i. 1. 3. p. 224. Translator] The poem of Vace, and other writers, near the time, when the fact happened, say nothing which may support the opinion of Panius Emelius. "I forbid all.” cried Ascelin. Here is no mention of Rou: it is the ecclesiastical authority to which Ascelin appealed. [M. Brequigny for got, that the delinquent was the prince. The The Haro might have been therefore absurd. He therefore appealed to the church, as our people did to the pope, The against the king. Translator.] bishops interrogated the neighbours, and upon their depositions, gave to Ascelin sixty sous for his land. We may add to this, says M. Brequigny, that the cry of Haro, appears to have been in these ages, a general appeal for assistance, Thus without any determinate sense. in the inquest taken in the thirteenth century, of the miracles of S. Louis, a woman, perceiving a child drowning, cries out Harou, Harou, come here, help me to draw out the child. This exclamation is, also found in some places of the Roman de la Rose, with which Rou could have no concern. [Here M. Brequigny makes out his case. Q. if both that and the Irish Arrah, the Normans being of northern origin, do not come from thence? Translator.] Some subsequent facts given by M. Brequigny, are common; I therefore pass on to some accounts of William Rufus, which are more favourable to his character, than general opinion. During the siege of Mount S. Michael, the king and the duke amused them selves with frequent challenges and justs, In one of these the king fell from his horse, but without quitting the saddle, which had gone off with him, the poitral and girths being broken by the violence of the blow, which had been struck. He defended himself sword in hand, with the saddle grasped fast between his legs, until succour arrived, and without theid being able to reproach him, with having evacuated the saddle, "fait vider les arçons," a fact which proves his courage, and the nice concern he took in the honour of chivalry. When he arrived at Barfleur, he marched to Maos, and delivered the castle. He gave to the inhabitants, who had defended it, all the houses of the town. Mayne was subdued: and the Earl Helias was made prisoner: but the king set him at liberty, telling him, to beware being taken again. * Cas se jon vous prens autrefois, Jamais de ma prison n'estrees." The king returned to England, and, after reigning thirteen years, was killed by an arrow, shot by one of the hunters. The chronicle, which copies the poem, says, that they accused Walter Tirel, [whom the M.S. calls Titam: the His brother Robert. French to this day not spelling or pronouncing English surnames accurately.] But Tirel protested many times with an oath, that he had not seen the king, and that he had not even gone, during the whole day, into the forest, where the prince was killed. This is further attested by Suger,(Rec. Hist. Franc, xii. 12) who had it from Tirel's own mouth, The poet contents himself with saying, that the king was struck, the direction of the arrow having been diverted, either because the arrow glanced against a tree, or because Tirel, in shooting it, was obstructed by his side, and altered the direction. Tirel, according to the poet, fled into France. Orderic Vitalis adds, that he married there, and a long time afterwards went to Jerusalem, where he died. [This death of William Rufus, except that he died by violent means, is exceedingly dubious. He was detested. The Saxon Chronicle only says, that he was killed by one of his own retinue with an Cadmer, a ho lived in the reign, arrow. says, (p. 54) that he was struck in the heart by an arrow, but whether, as some say, it was shot, or as more affirm, he stumbled and fell upon it, he thinks it not worth while to enquire. Neither the Saxon Chronicle or Cadmer mention Tyrrel's name: the stumbling upon the arrow, sounds like a lie artfully raised; and Tyrrel, from some pique, was perhaps made the scape-goat for the rest: for Cadmer adds, that the moment he was struck, he was deserted immediately by every body; a circumstance, which implies guilt. Possibly they shot at him from behind a tree for disguise, which occasioned the story of the arrow glancing, as a convenient excuse.. Tyrrel's name was picked up afterwards, by report perhaps. Translator.] To the Editor of the Monthly Magazinė. an SIR, an alteration (lately made) in the proAm informed that, in consequence of cess of drying White Lead, the health of the labourers, in an extensive manufactory in the neighbourhood of London, has been very materially benefited-the fatal constipation of the bowels, so common amongst them, having much decreased, which is attributed in a great measure, if not entirely, to this alteration. The different mode of drying the Lead adopted is (if I understand the matter right), that instead of laying it en chalk it is now poored into earthen ware ware pans, and left to dry in them, the lead does not undergo nearly so much handling as before, and the fine particles of it, which used to float in great abundance about the room, are not perceived in such dense clouds as they used to be; this dust entering the mouth was one principal cause of the diseases to which the workmen were liable. By means of your miscellany, I wish to give publicity to the above circumstance; and should any of your readers be able and willing to give ine any further particulars respecting this manufacture, which may be conducive to the health of those employed in it, they will much oblige A CONSTANT READER. For the Monthly Magazine. ON PASTORAL POETRY. "Hail, gentle Shenstone ! Prince of Nambypamby! Blest be thy lark, thy linnet, and thy lamby!" THE POLWHEL. HE sort of fairy ground, over which Pastoral Poetry leads its readers, has procured this species of composition numberless admirers; and it has enjoyed the additional eclat of employing the classic pens of Theocritus, Virgil, Pope, Gesner, and Guarini, besides various of the inspired bards of the Old Testament. Yet its eternal monotony renders it disgusting to persons of judgment and correct taste. However well executed, it is only fit to be admired by children. Who can with patience bear the unmeaning and endless repetition of faithless nymphs; dying swains; sighing breezes; purling rills; murmuring fountains; cooling grots; listening echoes; enamelled meads; tender lambkins; cooing doves; tuneful reeds; curling vines; perjured shepherds; and the sickening train of Corydons and Daphnes-Strephons and Cloes-Damons and Phillises? There may be occasionally a prettiness, which a man of understanding will be pleased with, as we would with a pretty child; or, to come nearer to the point, a pretty inanimate doll of a woman. It has, however, a fascination for young minds. I remember, when I thought Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad one of the most charming compositions in the English language; but at that period of life I also admired the Death of Abel, and Hervey's Medi tations! So absurd is the common fiction in the sentiments and situation of the characters, that Gay's Shepherds Week, where the nymphs and the swains are mere men In making these observations, I am far from condenining all pastoral poetry: Shakespeare's As you like it, his Winter's Tale, and other of his comedies, likewise Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, cannot fail to give the most exquisite pleasure to every person of taste. In these we have natural pictures of country life, interwoven with interesting story, instead of the insipid sing-song, and milk-and-water versification, by which we are surfeited even in the first pastoral writers. Bloom field's Farmer's Boy, and the pastoral titled, and for similar reasons, to the parts of Thompson's Seasons, are also euhighest praise. tions, I shall present to the reader a To illustrate the preceding observaview of Shenstone's celebrated ballad, which I select as being considered one of our best pastorals, one which in many passages has sterling merit, and which has even received some praise from Dr. Johnson, than whom no man ever inore despised this species of writing. That I ticed such stanzas as deserve little either may avoid prolixity, I shall pass unno of praise or censure. PART I. Absence.-The poet com- Whose flocks never carelessly roam; O call the poor wanderers home!"* Vulgar sheep are obliged to be driven home; but this poetical flock, it appears, will come at a call, like so many dogs! "Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find, I have left my dear Phillis behind.” me to my own whims, and go look after my sheep." The I at the end of the third line, followed by the I at the be ginning of the fourth, is a pretty concetto! "Now I know what it is to have strove With the torture of doubt and desire,; What it is to admire and to love, And to leave her we love and admire." To have strove is not grammar. The changes (to use a vulgar expression) are most delectably rung on love and admire. "Ah! lead forth my flock in the morn, And the damps of each ev'ning repel. Alas! I am faint and forlorn; I have bade my dear Phillis farewell." Here again our inamorato gives the shepherds fresh orders. His flock is now neither to be called nor driven, but to be led. What he means by telling them to repel the damps of each evening is at terly beyond my comprehension. If it allude to the sheep, I should think the covering given them by nature sufficient for this purpose; but probably these Arcodian sheep are more delicate in constitution than common huttons with which I have been acquainted. "I have bade" may be poetry, but it is not grammar-bid might have been admissible, as an abreviation of bidden, without derogation to the measure. Since Phillis vouchsaf'd me a look, I never once dreamt of my vine; May I lose both my pipe and my crook, If I know of a kid that was mine!" The first line of the above stanza seems to have been borrowed from Capt. Bobadil-"Vouchsafe me a light of this match, Master Kitely's man." "I never once dreamt" would in humble prose be the extreme of vulgarity; in pastoral verse it is perhaps a beauty. "May I lose both my pipe and my crook!" What a pretty, little, inno cent, pastoral oath! especially as the crook would be of no use, when he was determined no longer to take charge of his flock; and if, as is classically expressed in the last line, he did not know of a kid "that was mine," what had he to care about them. Mine appears to have been found a necessary rhyme to vine: and, on the other hand, although it is probable he had more vines than one, the singular has been used instead of the plu ral, to furnish a counter-rhyme to mine. It is not a little remarkable, that the preceding stanzas are all exceptionable, and that the remaining ones of Part I. are not only the reverse, but some of then eminently beautiful. PART II.-Hope. "My banks they are furnished with bees, And my hills are white over with From the furnishing in the first line, "Whose murmur invites one to sleep." I never could abide that one. It seems to have been introduced by ignorant or indolent translators, to Anglicise the French on; and now it has become almost an English idiom; but it will not be found used by any correct writer. The newspaper translators have been the means of giving currency to many false expressions in our language. Their hurry may furnish an excuse, but it is of fatal consequence, as the works of newspaper writers are read so universally, and by so many ignorant persons. Thus, our naval officers have universally adopted the verb to capture, which never was a verb till made such by these editors. In like manner, when the French papers speak of une corvette, which is neither more nor less than a sloop of war, our editors, and after them our captains, never capture" from France a sloop of war; it is always a corvette. But i digress 66 "Not a pine in my grove is there seen, But with tendrils of woodbine is bound; Not a beech's more beautiful green, But a sweetbriar entwines it around." Had this been the elfusion of a cockney poet, it might have been excusable; but for Shenstone, the former of the charming Leasowes, with all its delight. fu! walks and bowers, a first-rate critic in gardening, to forget that the sweetbriar is not a parasitical plant, was unpardonable. God knows the stanza is not so harmonious as to afford any poetical licence for this absurdity. However, the same structure must be continued in the next. "Not my fields, in the prime of the year, More charms than my cattle unfold; Not a brook that is limpid and clear, But it glitters with fishes of gold." Without cavilling at the equivocal word prime, which may either mean the first or the best of the year, I must ohserve, that the comparison between the charms of field and the charms of cattle have certainly the merit of novelty. As to the latter, I suppose their charms were 60 The third is a sad line, and that evidently for the measure and the rhyme. Taking it as it stands, one (to adopt the author's phrase) would imagine, that in this Elysian retreat there were various sorts of brooks, some limpid and clear, others dirty and muddy; and that only in the former glitter the "fishes of gold" -not literally gold fishes, but fishes from their brilliance painted as of gold, for the sake of a rhyme to unfold, a word in itself not here the most felicitous. "One would think she might like to re- To the bow'r I have labour'd to rear; But I hasted and planted it there." Here we have a delectable repetition of the favourite monosyllables one, not, and but. It was very cruel in Phillis, after her Corydon's hard labour in rearing this bower, that she would not retire to enjoy its beauties. "From the plains, from the woodlands, and groves, What strains of wild melody flow! How the nightingales warble their loves, From the thickets of roses that blow!" The that blow is a sad tag to furnish a rhyme to flow. On this stanza occurs an observation similar to that on the third-it is not common for nightingales to warble their loves from thickets of roses. A cotemporary poet, who mourned the death of Shenstone in the same pastoral measure, has improved on the preceding passage, by not only making nightingales sing on trees, but that in the north of Scotland, where never nightingale sang before.-In his song, The Banks of the Dee, he says, "Twas summer when softly the breezes were blowing, And sweetly the nightingale sang from each tree, At the foot of a rock where the river was I sat myself down on the banks of the The stanzas as to the wood pigeon's nest, as well as all that follow, have much merit. It is very odd, that our poet should be so exceptionable in the begin John Tait, Esq. who now, as Judge of Police at Edinburgh, wields his pen, like our Poet Laureat, to send rogues and prostitutes to Bridewell. ning of his parts, and conclude with excellence! com PART III-Solicitude.-The mencement of this part completely be lies my observation on the conclusion of the last. I must have the pleasure of transcribing it: "Why will you my passion reprove? She is ev'ry way pleasing to me." Had all the ballad been written with this charming simplicity, I should have burned a gross of pens, ere I had dipped one of them in ink to attack a performance of such real nerit. Some beautiful lines also follow. I do not see how I who may happen not to have Shenstone can fix my ideas in the mind of the reader, by him, but by copying the whole of the remainder. "you that have been of her train, That will sing out a song in her praise. town Come trooping and listen the while; But I cannot allow her to smile." attendant Jealousy-only the "nymphs "For when Paridel tries, in the dance, And his crook is bestudded around, "Tis his with mock passion to glow; And her bosom, be sure, is as cold. Repine at her triumphs, and die. •O Phillis, |