Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 128

The borrowed pomp, the armed array, Want, fear, and impotence, betray Strange proofs of power divine!

3 If service due from human kind, To men in slothful ease reclined, Can form a sovereign's claim: Hail, monarchs! ye, whom Heaven ordains, Our toils unshared, to share our gains, Ye idiots, blind and lame!

4 Superior virtue, wisdom, might, Create and mark the ruler's right, So reason must conclude: Then thine it is, to whom belong The wise, the virtuous, and the strong, Thrice sacred mult.i.tude!

5 In thee, vast All! are these contained, For thee are those, thy parts ordained, So nature's systems roll: The sceptre's thine, if such there be; If none there is, then thou art free, Great monarch! mighty whole!

6 Let the proud tyrant rest his cause On faith, prescription, force, or laws, An host's or senate's voice!

His voice affirms thy stronger due, Who for the many made the few, And gave the species choice.

7 Unsanctified by thy command, Unowned by thee, the sceptred hand The trembling slave may bind; But loose from nature's moral ties, The oath by force imposed belies The una.s.senting mind.

8 Thy will's thy rule, thy good its end; You punish only to defend What parent nature gave: And he who dares her gifts invade, By nature's oldest law is made Thy victim or thy slave.

9 Thus reason founds the just degree On universal liberty, Not private rights resigned: Through various nature's wide extent, No private beings e'er were meant To hurt the general kind.

10 Thee justice guides, thee right maintains, The oppressor's wrongs, the pilferer's gains, Thy injured weal impair.

Thy warmest pa.s.sions soon subside, Nor partial envy, hate, nor pride, Thy tempered counsels share.

11 Each instance of thy vengeful rage, Collected from each clime and age, Though malice swell the sum, Would seem a spotless scanty scroll, Compared with Marius' b.l.o.o.d.y roll, Or Sylla's hippodrome.

12 But thine has been imputed blame, The unworthy few a.s.sume thy name, The rabble weak and loud; Or those who on thy ruins feast, The lord, the lawyer, and the priest; A more ign.o.ble crowd.

13 Avails it thee, if one devours, Or lesser spoilers share his powers, While both thy claim oppose?

Monsters who wore thy sullied crown, Tyrants who pulled those monsters down, Alike to thee were foes.

14 Far other shone fair Freedom's band, Far other was the immortal stand, When Hampden fought for thee: They s.n.a.t.c.hed from rapine's gripe thy spoils, The fruits and prize of glorious toils, Of arts and industry.

15 On thee yet foams the preacher's rage, On thee fierce frowns the historian's page, A false apostate train: Tears stream adown the martyr's tomb; Unpitied in their harder doom, Thy thousands strow the plain.

16 These had no charms to please the sense, No graceful port, no eloquence, To win the Muse's throng: Unknown, unsung, unmarked they lie; But Caesar's fate o'ercasts the sky, And Nature mourns his wrong.

17 Thy foes, a frontless band, invade; Thy friends afford a timid aid, And yield up half the right.

Even Locke beams forth a mingled ray, Afraid to pour the flood of day On man's too feeble sight.

18 Hence are the motley systems framed, Of right transferred, of power reclaimed; Distinctions weak and vain.

Wise nature mocks the wrangling herd; For unreclaimed, and untransferred, Her powers and rights remain.

19 While law the royal agent moves, The instrument thy choice approves, We bow through him to you.

But change, or cease the inspiring choice, The sovereign sinks a private voice, Alike in one, or few!

20 Shall then the wretch, whose dastard heart Shrinks at a tyrant's n.o.bler part, And only dares betray; With reptile wiles, alas! prevail, Where force, and rage, and priestcraft fail, To pilfer power away?

21 Oh! shall the bought, and buying tribe, The slaves who take, and deal the bribe, A people's claims enjoy!

So Indian murderers hope to gain The powers and virtues of the slain, Of wretches they destroy.

22 'Avert it, Heaven! you love the brave, You hate the treacherous, willing slave, The self-devoted head; Nor shall an hireling's voice convey That sacred prize to lawless sway, For which a nation bled.'

23 Vain prayer, the coward's weak resource!

Directing reason, active force, Propitious Heaven bestows.

But ne'er shall flame the thundering sky, To aid the trembling herd that fly Before their weaker foes.

24 In names there dwell no magic charms, The British virtues, British arms Unloosed our fathers' band: Say, Greece and Rome! if these should fail, What names, what ancestors avail, To save a sinking land?

25 Far, far from us such ills shall be, Mankind shall boast one nation free, One monarch truly great: Whose t.i.tle speaks a people's choice, Whose sovereign will a people's voice, Whose strength a prosperous state.

JOHN LOGAN.

John Logan was born in the year 1748. He was the son of a farmer at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid-Lothian. He was educated for the church at Edinburgh, where he became intimate with Robertson, afterwards the historian. So, at least, Campbell a.s.serts; but he strangely calls him a student of the same standing, whereas, in fact, Robertson saw light in 1721, and had been a settled minister five years before Logan was born.

After finishing his studies, he became tutor in the family of Mr Sinclair of Ulbster, and the late well-known Sir John Sinclair was one of his pupils. When licensed to preach, Logan became popular, and was in his twenty-fifth year appointed one of the ministers of South Leith. In 1781, he read in Edinburgh a course of lectures on the Philosophy of History, and in 1782, he printed one of them, on the Government of Asia. In the same year he published a volume of poems, which were well received. In 1783, he wrote a tragedy called 'Runnymede,' which was, owing to some imagined incendiary matter, prohibited from being acted on the London boards, but which was produced on the Edinburgh stage, and afterwards published. This, along with some alleged irregularities of conduct on the part of Logan, tended to alienate his flock, and he was induced to retire on a small annuity. He betook himself to London, where, in conjunction with the Rev. Mr Thomson,--who had left the parish of Monzievaird, in Perthshire, owing to a scandal,--he wrote for the _English Review_, and was employed to defend Warren Hastings. This he did in an able manner, although a well-known story describes him as listening to Sheridan, on the Oude case, with intense interest, and exclaiming, after the first hour, 'This is mere declamation without proof'--after the next two, 'This is a man of extraordinary powers'--and ere the close of the matchless oration, 'Of all the monsters in history, Warren Hastings is the vilest.'

Logan died in the year 1788, in his lodgings, Marlborough Street. His sermons were published shortly after his death, and if parts of them are, as is alleged, pilfered from a Swiss divine, (George Joachim Zollikofer,) they have not remained exclusively with the thief, since no sermons have been so often reproduced in Scottish pulpits as the elegant orations issued under the name of Logan.

We have already declined to enter on the controversy about 'The Cuckoo,'

intimating, however, our belief, founded partly upon Logan's unscrupulous character and partly on internal evidence, that it was originally written by Bruce, but probably polished to its present perfection by Logan, whose other writings give us rather the impression of a man of varied accomplishments and excellent taste, than of deep feeling or original genius. If Logan were not the author of 'The Cuckoo,' there was a special baseness connected with the fact, that when Burke sought him out in Edinburgh, solely from his admiration of that poem, he owned the soft and false impeachment, and rolled as a sweet morsel praise from the greatest man of the age, which he knew was the rightful due of another.

THE LOVERS.

1 _Har_. 'Tis midnight dark: 'tis silence deep, My father's house is hushed in sleep; In dreams the lover meets his bride, She sees her lover at her side; The mourner's voice is now suppressed, A while the weary are at rest: 'Tis midnight dark; 'tis silence deep; I only wake, and wake to weep.

2 The window's drawn, the ladder waits, I spy no watchman at the gates; No tread re-echoes through the hall, No shadow moves along the wall.

I am alone. 'Tis dreary night, Oh, come, thou partner of my flight!

Shield me from darkness, from alarms; Oh, take me trembling to thine arms!

3 The dog howls dismal in the heath, The raven croaks the dirge of death; Ah me! disaster's in the sound!

The terrors of the night are round; A sad mischance my fears forebode, The demon of the dark's abroad, And lures, with apparition dire, The night-struck man through flood and fire.

4 The owlet screams ill-boding sounds, The spirit walks unholy rounds; The wizard's hour eclipsing rolls; The shades of h.e.l.l usurp the poles; The moon retires; the heaven departs.

From opening earth a spectre starts: My spirit dies--Away, my fears!

My love, my life, my lord, appears!

5 _Hen_. I come, I come, my love! my life!

And, nature's dearest name, my wife!

Long have I loved thee; long have sought: And dangers braved, and battles fought; In this embrace our evils end; From this our better days ascend; The year of suffering now is o'er, At last we meet to part no more!

6 My lovely bride! my consort, come!

The rapid chariot rolls thee home.

_Har_. I fear to go----I dare not stay.

Look back.----I dare not look that way.

_Hen_. No evil ever shall betide My love, while I am at her side.

Lo! thy protector and thy friend, The arms that fold thee will defend.

7 _Har_. Still beats my bosom with alarms: I tremble while I'm in thy arms!

What will impa.s.sioned lovers do?