We are His delegates; we rule and sway The cant of Liberals! the springes set There on the rock sits Palmerston-below Burst from thy sleep, old lion! rouse thy mane, Shall that bold heart, which looked unawed where shone The meteor glare of dread Napoleon, Crouch to the feeble? England, up! arise! And shake to dust these moth-nonentities. Shall the base roundhead come upon the scene, Bring to the scaffold-leave that woe unsaid, And spare to name that reverend patriot head. Must war be raised-must blood in torrents flow? I have heard a few men of letters and science, and many who have no pretension to literature, maintain the perfectibility of the human race. The Jew-bill has de-Christianised one branch of our legislature already; there is no saying where the rage for liberality may cease. England, the scorn of Europe, assumes to be the very navel of the green round earth- the centre of inspiration-the tripos of intelligence. The" Birds" of Aristophanes is a very laughable exposure of the follies of Athens. I think an adaptation of it to the English stage would be at once successful and useful. If the spirits of the dead are permitted to take a peep into the business of this little world (they of course in that case would travel much, and be the masters of all languages) Rousseau, and Voltaire, Tom Paine, and Frederick-called the Great-must find infinite amusement in attending the meetings of our sage rulers. It may be that the chancellor is only the mouthpiece of one of those merry wags who makes him ridiculous, and at the same time unconscious of the ridicule, while the less gifted among us suppose that his inspiration proceeds from spirits of another sort. VOL. X. NO. LV. C Shall anarchy and fierce rebellion rage, Shall none prevent the plague, or strive to stay? Base liars! who would heap on England's name Her heart is true, and full, thank Heaven! of life; The goodly stem; but now the plague is found. DEAN SWIFT'S MADNESS. A TALE OF A CHURN. (From the "Prout Papers.") "O thou, whatever title please thine ear, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind, Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind!"-Pope. We are fully cognisant of and perfectly prepared for the overwhelming burst of universal felicitation which we shall elicit from a sympathising public, when we announce the glad tidings of the safe arrival in London of the Watergrasshill "chest," fraught with treasures such as no Spanish galleon ever wafted from Manilla or Peru into the waters of the Guadalquiver. From the remote Irish highland where Prout wasted so much of true Athenian suavity on the desert air, unnoticed and unappreciated by the rude tenants of the hamlet, his trunk of posthumous papers has been brought into our cabinet; and there it stands before us, like unto the Trojan horse, replete with the armed offspring of the great man's brain, right well packed with most classic stuffing,-ay, pregnant with life and glory! Haply has Fate decreed that it should fall into proper hands and fitting custody; else to what vile uses might not this box of learned lumber have been unwittingly converted: we shudder in spirit at the probable destiny that would have awaited it. The Caliph Omar warmed the baths of Alexandria with Ptolemy's library; and the "Prout Papers might e'er now be lighting the pipes of" the boys" in Blarney Lane, while the chest itself might afford materials for a three-legged stoolTruncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum!" 66 In verity it ought to be allowable at times to indulge in that most pleasing opiate * The premier said in his place, that the legislature must yield to the spirit of the age. This comes well from the presumed Christian head of the presumed Christian government of a Christian people. Resist the devil and he will flee" is the apostolical prescript; yield to the devil and drive the best bargain you can with him, is the advice of the illustrious earl. Whose advice must we follow? The crisis is near at hand; there are signs of hope and triumph for the friends of order. The aristocracy and yeomanry of the country are against the Whigs, all the intelligence of the country is against them. The Dissenters and the manufacturers, and the tail of the Whigs, against John Bull! John will make short work of them, when he is once well wakened up. The old gentleman loves flattery, and he has had incense enough offered him to turn, sooth to say, a stronger head. But his heart is yet in the right place, or woe for us all! self-applause; and having made so goodly an acquisition, why should not we, OLIVER YORKE to wit, chuckle inwardly while we are congratulated from without, glancing an eye of satisfaction at the chest: Mihi plaudo ipse domi, simul ac contemplor in arcá!" Never did that learned ex-Jesuit, Angelo Mai, now librarian of the Vatican, rejoice more over a "palimpsest" MS. of some crazy old monk, in which his quick eye fondly hath detected the long lost decades of Livy-never did friend Pettigrew gloat over a newly uncoffined mummy (warranted of the æra of Sesostris) -never did (that living mummy) Maurice de Talleyrand exult over a fresh bundle of Palmerstonian protocols, with more internal complacency,-than did we, jubilating over this sacerdotal anthology, this miscellany "in boards," at last safely lodged in our possession. Apropos. We should mention that we had previously the honour of receiving from his excellency Prince Maurice (aforesaid) the following note, to which it grieved us to return a flat negative. "Le Prince de Talleyrand prie Mr. OLIVIER YORKE d'agréer ses respectueux hommages. Ayant eu l'avantage de connaître personellement feu l'Abbé de Prout lors de ses études à la Sorbonne en 1778, il serait charmé sitôt qu'arriveront les papiers de ce respectable ecclésiastique d'assister à l'ouverture du coffre. Cette faveur qu'il se flatte d'obtenir de la politesse reconnue de Monsieur YORKE il sçaura duement apprécier. "Ambassade de France, Hanovre Sq., ce 3 Juin." We suspected at once (and our surmise has proved correct) that many documents would be found referring to Marie Antoinette's betrayers and the practices of those three prime intriguers Mirabeau, Cagliostro, and Prince Maurice; so that we did well in eschewing the honour intended us in overhauling these papers,—non "Talley" auxilio. We hate a flourish of trumpets; and though we could justly command all the clarions of renown to usher in these Prout writings, let their own intrinsic worth be the sole herald of their fame. We are not like the rest of men - Liston Bulwer, Dr. Lardner, and Bob Montgomery-obliged to inflate our cheeks with incessant effort to blow our commodities into notoriety. No! we are not disciples in the school of Puffendorf; Prout's fish will be found fresh and substantial,-not" blown," as happens too frequently in the literary market. We have more than once acknowledged the unsought and unpurchased plaudits of our cotemporaries; but it is to the imperishable verdict of posterity that we ultimately look for a ratification of modern applause with Cicero we exclaim“Memoriá vestrá, Quirites, nostræ res vivent, sermonibus crescent, litterrarum monumentis veterascent et corroborabuntur!” Yes! while the ephemeral writers of the day, mere bubbles on the surface of the flood, will become extinct in succession, while a few, more lucky than their comrade dunces, may continue for a space to swim with the aid of those vile bladders, newspaper-puffs, Father Prout will be seen floating triumphantly down the stream of time, secure and buoyant in a genuine "Cork" jacket. : Some friends of literature have been importuning us to publish at once a catalogue raisonné, or table of contents, of all the matters, historic, critic, analytic, and philologic embraced in the range of these MS.; but, as we don't wish to tempt housebreakers to our premises, we shall keep the secret of our treasures locked up in our own breast, nor expose to any mishap a goose that is to lay so many eggs of anticipated gold. The example of Homer has been quoted to us in this matter ineffectually; and notwithstanding the famed "catalogue of ships" and redoubtable "army-list" with which he opens the business of the Iliad, enumerating all the component parts of the matériel de guerre which he subsequently puts in motion, still, for the obvious reason already stated, we demurred to this proposal. We owe it to the public to account for the delay experienced in the transmission of the "chest" from Watergrasshill to our hands; but the fact is, at a meeting of the parishioners held on the subject (Mat Horrogan, of Blarney, in the chair) it was resolved "That Terry Callaghan being a tall and trustworthy man, able to do credit to the village in London, and carry eleven stone weight (the precise tarif of the trunk), should be sent at the public expense, viá Bristol, with the coffer strapped to his shoulders, and plenty of the wherewithal to procurerefreshment' on the western road, until he should deliver the same at Mr. Fraser's, Regent Street, with the compliments of the parish." Terry, wisely considering, like the commissioners of the Deccan prize money, that the occupation was too good a thing not to make it last as long as possible, kept refreshing himself at the cost of the parochial committee on the great western road, and only arrived last week in Regent Street. Having duly stopped to admire Lady Aldborough's "round tower," and elbowed his way through what he calls the "Squadrint," he at last made his appearance at our office; and, having there discharged his load, went off to take pot-luck with Feargus O'Connor. Here then we are enabled, no longer deferring the promised boon, to lay before the public the first of the "Prout Papers;" breaking bulk, to use a seaman's phrase, and producing at hazard a specimen of what is contained in the coffer brought hither on the shoulders of tall and trustworthy Terry Callaghan. "Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas." Watergrasshill, March 1830. YET a few years, and a full century shall have elapsed since the death of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's. Yes, O my friends! if such I may presume to designate you into whose hands, when I myself am gathered to the silent tomb, these writings shall fall, and to whose kindly perusal I commend them, bequeathing at the same time the posthuinous blessing of a feeble and toil-worn old man-yes, when a few winters more shall have added to the accumulated snow of age that weighs on the hoary head of the pastor of this upland, and a short period shall have rolled on in the dull monotony of these latter days, the centenary cycle will be fully completed, the secular anthem of dirge-like solemnity may be sung, since the grave closed for ever on one whom Britain justly reveres as the most upright, intuitive, and gifted of her sages, and whom Ireland, when the frenzied hour of strife shall have passed away, and the turbulence of parties shall have subsided into a national calm, will hail with the rapture of returning reason, as the first, the best, the mightiest of her sons. The long arrears of gratitude to the only true disinterested champion of her people, the long deferred apotheosis of the patriot-divine, the shamefully forgotten debt of glory which the OLIVER YORKE. lustre of his genius shed around his semibarbarous countrymen, will be deeply and feelingly remembered: the old land-mark of genuine worth will be discerned in the ebbing of modern agitation, and due honour will be paid by a more enlightened age to the keen and scrutinising philosopher, the scanner of whate'er lies hidden in the folds of the human heart, the prophetic seer of coming things, the unsparing satirist of contemporary delinquency, the stern Rhadamanthus of the political and of the literary world, the star of a benighted land, the lance and the buckler of Israel "We ne'er shall look upon his like again."* And still why must I recall (what I would fain obliterate) the ever painful fact,―graven, alas! too indelibly on the stubborn tablets of his biographers, chronicled in the annals of the country, and, above all, firmly and fatally established by the monumental record of his own philanthropic munificence,— the disastrous fact, that ere this brilliant light of our island was quenched in death towards the close of the year 1745, previous to that sad consummation the flame had wavered wild and flickered fitfully in its lamp of clay, casting around shadows of ghastly form, and anon assuming a strange and melancholy hue, that made every Note in Prout's handwriting: Doyle, of Carlow, faintly resembles him. Bold, honest, disinterested, an able writer, a scholar, a gentleman; a bishop, too, in our church, with none of the shallow pedantry, silly hauteur, arrant selfishness, and anile dotage, which may be sometimes covered, but not hidden, under a mitre. Swift demolished in his day Woods and his bad halfpence: Doyle denounced Daniel and his box of coppers. A provision for the starving Irish was called for by the Dean,' and sued for by J. K. L.' Alas! when will England awaken to the voice of her sister island's best and most enlightened patriots? Truly, she hath 'Moses and the prophets' doth she wait until one come from the dead?" Doyle is since dead-but "defunctus adhuc loquitur!"-EDITOR. well-wisher hail as a blessing the event of its final extinction in the cold and dismal vaults of St. Patrick's? In what mysterious struggle his gigantic intellect had been cloven down, none could tell. But the evil genius of insanity had clearly obtained a masterdom over faculties the most powerful and endowments the highest that have fallen to the lot of man. We are told of occasional hours of respite from the fangs of his tormenting spirit-we learn of moments when the "mens divinior" was suffered to go loose from its gaoler, and to roam back, as it were on "parole," into the dominions of reason, like the ghost of the murdered king, allowed to revisit for a brief space the glimpses of our glorious firmament. But such gleams of mental enlightenment were but few and short in their duration. They were like the flash that is seen to illumine the wreck when all hope is gone, and, fiercely bursting athwart the darkness, appears but to seal the doom of the cargo and the mariners-intervals of lugubrious transport, described by our native bard as That ecstasy which, from the depths of sadness, Glares like the maniac's moon, whose light is madness." Alas! full rapidly would that once clear and sagacious spirit falter and relapse into the torpor of idiocy; his large expressive eyes rolling wildly, would at times exhibit the inward working of his reason, essaying in vain to cast off the nightmare that sat triumphant there, impeding that current of thought, once so brisk and brilliant : still was he noble and classic in the very writhings of delirium, and often sublime, he would appear a living image of the sculptured Laocoon, battling with a serpent that had grasped, not the body, but the mind, in its entangling folds. Yet must we repeat the sad truth, and again record in sorrow, that the last two or three years of Jonathan Swift presented nothing but the shattered remnants of what had been a powerfully organised being, to whom it ought to have been allotted, according to our faint notions, to carry unimpaired and undiminished into the hands of Him who gave such varied gifts, and formed such a goodly intellect, the stores of hoarded wisdom and the overflowing measure of talents well employed — Διος δ' ετελείετο βουλη. And here let me pause, for a sadly pleasing reminiscence steals across my mind, a recollection of youthful days. I love to fix, in its flight, a transitory idea; and I freely plead the privilege of discursiveness conceded to the garrulity of old age. When my course of early travel led me to wander in search of science, and I sought abroad that scholastic knowledge which was denied to us at home in those evil days; when by force of legislation I became, like others of my clerical brethren, a "peripatetic" philosopher, the sunny provinces of southern France were the regions of my choice; and my first gleanings of literature were gathered on the banks of that mighty stream so faithfully characterised by Burdigala's native poet, Ausonius, in his classic enumeration: "Lentus Arar, Rhodanusque celer, PLENUSque GARUMNA!" One day a goatherd, who fed his shaggy flock along the river, was heard by me, as seated on the lofty bank he gazed on the shining flood, to sing a favourite carol of the country. 'Twas but a simple ballad; but it struck me as a deep and philosophic illustration of the parallel between the flow of human life and the course of the running waters. And thus it began: "Salut! O! vieux fleuve qui coules par la plaine, Helas! un même cours ici bas nous entraine Egal est en tout notre sort. Tous deux nous fournissons la même carrière, Car un même destin nous mène, O Rivière, Vous à la mer! nous à la mort!" So sang the rustic minstrel. But it has occurred to me, calmly and sorrowfully pondering on the fate of Swift, that although this melancholy resemblance, so often alluded to in Scriptural allegory, may hold good in the general fortunes of mankind, still has it been denied to some to complete in their personal history the sad similitude for not a few, and these some of the most exalted of our species, have been forbidden to glide into the Ocean of Eternity bringing thereunto the fulness of their life current, with its brimming banks undrained. Who that has ever gazed on the glorious Rhine, coeval in historic glory with the first Cæsar, and boasting much previous traditionary renown, |