. .
. . . . . . .
Methinks too little cost
For a moment so found, so lost!
The Isle
There was a little lawny islet
By anemone and violet,
Like mosaic, paven:
And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer's breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
Each a gem engraven; –
Girt by many an azure wave
With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake's blue chasm.
Fragment: To the Moon
Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,
To whom alone it has been given
To change and be adored for ever,
Envy not this dim world, for never
But once within its shadow grew
One fair as –
Epitaph
These are two friends whose lives were undivided;
So let their memory be, now they have glided
Under the grave; let not their bones be parted,
For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.
Notes
1 Conduct ed. 1816. See notes at end.
2 roots ed. 1816: query stumps or trunks. See note at end.
3 The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by the difference.
4 The oldest scholiasts read –
A dodecagamic Potter.
This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous, – but the alliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of later commentators.
5 To those who have not duly appreciated the distinction between Whale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather seem to belong to the Dandy than the Evangelic. The effect, when to the windward, is indeed so similar, that it requires a subtle naturalist to discriminate the animals. They belong, however, to distinct genera.
6 One of the attributes in Linnaeus's description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus is to be referred; – except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with those of others.
7 What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its kernal prostitution, or the kernal prostitution without this husk of a virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association, like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be called the »King, Church, and Constitution« of their order. But this subject is almost too horrible for a joke.
8 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that here alluded to.
9 Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute of philosophical accuracy.
10 Quasi, Qui valet verba: – i.e. all the words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his posterity.
11 A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists.
12 See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long poem in blank verse, published within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses: –
»This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she [Nature] shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.«
13 It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now unconquerable cause with the principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious.
If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral perversion laid to their charge.
14 Imeros, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love.
15 This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.
The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. –
16 See the Bacchae of Euripides.
17 The author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.
18 Pompeii.
19 Homer and Virgil
20 Aeaea, the island of Circe.
21 The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan.
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