66 THE VIOLET GIRL.

"When fancy will continually rehearse

Some painful scene once present to the eye, 'Tis well to mould it into gentle verse, That it may lighter on the spirit lie.

Home yestern eve I wearily returned,

The reason assigned for the study of English poetry by English ladies, is truly characteristic of Lady Mary and of the female mind. A lady is to read through every volume of verse, and remember what she reads, to see that her lover writes his own valentine. Ye gods, should one swear to the truth of a song! If a woman will marry a poet,

Though bright my morning mood and short my she had better go through the course of study

way,

But sad experience in one moment earned,

Can crush the heaped enjoyments of the day.

Passing the corner of a populous street,

I marked a girl whose wont it was to stand, With pallid cheek, torn gown, and naked feet, And bunches of fresh violets in each hand. There her small commerce in the chill March

weather

She plied with accents miserably mild;
It was a frightful thought to set together
Those blooming blossoms and that fading child.

Those luxuries and largess of the earth,

Beauty and pleasure to the sense of man, And this poor sorry weed cast loosely forth On life's wild waste to struggle as it can!

To me that odorous purple ministers

Hope-bearing memories and inspiring glee, While meanest images alone are hers,

The sordid wants of base humanity.

Think after all this lapse of hungry hours,

In the disfurnished chamber of dim cold,
How she must loathe the very smiling flowers
That on the squalid table lie unsold!

Rest on your woodland banks and wither there,
Sweet preluders of spring! far better so,
Than live misused to fill the grasp of care,
And serve the piteous purposes of woe.
Ye are no longer Nature's gracious gift,
Yourselves so much and harbingers of more,
But a most bitter irony to lift

The veil that hides our vilest mortal sore."

Si sic omnia dixisset! This is poetry in all languages; it is like mercury, never to be lost or killed.

There is a passage in one of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters to her daughter which still continues to excite a smile on the lips of every

reader,

"The study of English poetry is a more important part of a woman's education than it is generally supposed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses, which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr. Walter. I remember, when I was a girl, I saved one of my companions from destruction, who communicated to me an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had naturally a good taste, she observed the lines were not so smooth as Prior's or Pope's, but had more thought and spirit than any of theirs. She was wonderfully delighted with such a demonstration of her lover's sense and passion, and not a little pleased with her own charms that had force enough to inspire such elegancies. In this triumph I showed her that they were taken from Randolph's poems, and the unfortunate transcriber was dismissed with the scorn he deserved."*

* Letters by Lord Wharncliffe, 2d edit., iii. 44.

Lady Mary recommends. Not that she is safe to secure a poet to herself after a long life of study. How few read Randolph, and yet he is a very fine poet. Lady Mary might have taken a copy of verses from Randolph to every female writer of the day, and passed them off for the production of a young, a handsome, and a rising writer, and no one would have set her right, or detected the imposition that was passed upon her. We are afraid we must recommend the study of our early English poets to English ladies on some other ground than the chance detection of a lover pleading his passion in the poetry of another under pretence of its being his own. Not that we have any particular predilection for "romancical ladies," as the dear old Duchess of Newcastle calls them, or girls with their heads stuffed full of passionate passages; but we should like to see a more prevalent taste for what is good, for poetry that is really excellent; and this we feel assured is only to be effected by a careful consideration of our elder poets, who have always abundance of meaning in them. It is no use telling young ladies that Mr. Bunn's poetry is not poetry, but only something that looks very like it and reads very unlike it; the words run sweetly to the piano; there is a kind of pretty meaning in what they convey, and the music is pleasing. What more would you want? Why, everything. But then, as we once heard a young lady remark with great good sense and candor, (and her beauty gave an additional relish to what she said,) these unmeaning songs are so much easier to sing. Your fine old songs, so full of poetry and feeling, require a similar feeling in the singer, and young ladies are too frequently only sentimental, and not equal to the task of doing justice to passionate poetry conveyed in music equally passionate, and where they can do justice to it they refuse because it is not fashionable to be passionate, and it really disturbs and disorders one to be so, and in mixed society, "above all.”

It cannot be concealed that we have never been Only run the eye over Mr. Dyce's octavo volume so well off for lady-poets as we are at present. of Specimens of British Poetesses, and compare the numerical excellencies of the past with the numerous productions of the present day! A few specimens of the elder poetesses such as the "Nocturnal Reverie," and "The Atheist and the Acorn," both by the Countess of Winchelsea, it would be very difficult to surpass, or even, perfor poetry, both natural and acquired, the ladies, haps, to equal; but in the general qualifications since Charlotte Smith, far surpass their female predecessors. Mrs. Norton is said to be the Bymuch of that intense personal passion," says the ron of our modern poetesses. Quarterly Reviewer, "by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper

"She has very

She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tender-
ness, his strong, practical thought and his forceful
expression." This is high praise.
"Let us sug-
gest, however," says the Athenæum, "that, in the
present state of critical opinion, the compliment is

communion with man and Nature of Wordsworth.

From Chambers' Journal.
LITERARY IMPOSITIONS.

THE Count Mariano Alberti sold to a bookseller at Ancona several unedited manuscripts of Tasso, some of which he interpolated, and others forged. In 1827, he declared himself in possession of two till then unknown poems in Tasso's hand-writing; afterwards he produced four other autographs; and then a volume containing thirty-seven poems, which he offered for sale to the Duke of Tuscany, whose agents, however, declared them to be spurious and modern. He then produced a file of Tasso's letters, which were regarded as genuine; till, in 1841, when, on his property being sequestered, the whole affair proved a tissue of almost unexampled forgery.

The literary world is now very generally of the belief that that very beautiful poem, John Chalkhill's Thealma and Clearchus, first published by Isaac Walton, (1683,) was actually the production of that honest angler.

Steevens says, that "not the smallest part of the work called Cibber's Lives of the Poets' was the composition of Cibber, being entirely written by Mr. Shiells, amanuensis to Dr. Johnson, when his Dictionary was preparing for the press. T. Cibber was in the King's Bench, and accepted of ten guineas from the booksellers for leave to prefix his name to the work; and it was purposely so prefixed, as to leave the reader in doubt whether himself or his father was the person designed."

William Henry Ireland having exercised his ingenuity with some success in the imitation of ancient writing, passed off some forged papers as the genuine manuscripts of Shakspeare. Some The copies of the "English Mercurie" (regard- of the many persons who were deceived by the ed as the earliest English newspaper) in the Brit- imposition, subscribed sums of money to defray ish Museum, have been discovered to be forgeries, the publication of these spurious documents, which and Chatterton is supposed to have been concerned in their fabrication.

were accordingly issued in a handsome folio volume. But when Ireland's play of "Vortigern" was performed at Drury Lane as the work of Shakspeare, the audience quickly discerned the cheat; and soon afterwards the clever imposter published his "Confessions," acknowledging himself to be the sole author and writer of these ancient-looking manuscripts.

At least a hundred volumes or pamphlets, besides innumerable essays and letters in magazines or newspapers, have been written with a view to dispel the mystery in which for eighty years the authorship of Junius' Letters has been involved. These political letters, so remarkable for the combination of keen severity with a polished and Poor young Chatterton's forgery of the poems brilliant style, were contributed to the "Public of Rowley, a priest of the fifteenth century, is Advertiser," during three years, under the signa- one of the most celebrated literary impositions on ture of Junius, the actual name of the writer being record. Horace Walpole, in a letter written in a secret even to the publisher of that paper. They 1777, says, "Change the old words for modern, have been fathered upon Earl Temple, Lord Sack-and the whole construction is of yesterday; but Í ville, Sir Philip Francis, and fifty other distin- have no objection to anybody believing what he guished characters. At present, an attempt is pleases; I think poor Chatterton was an astonishagain being made to prove them the productions ing genius." of Mr. Lauchan Maclean; but we need scarcely wish for anything like a positive or convincing result.

In all probability the exact nature of Macpherson's connection with what are called "Ossian's Poems" will never be known. Although snatches Some time before his death, Voltaire showed a of these poems, and of others like them, are proved perfect indifference for his own works; they were to have existed from old times in the Highlands, continually reprinting, without his being ever ac- there is no proof that the whole existed. Macquainted with it. If an edition of the "Henriade," pherson left what he called the original Gaelic or his tragedies, or his historical or fugitive pieces poems to be published after his death; "but," was nearly sold off, another was instantly pro- says Mr. Carruthers, "they proved to be an exact duced. He requested them not to print so many. counterpart of those in English, although in one They persisted, and reprinted them in a hurry of the earlier Ossian publications, he had acknowlwithout consulting him; and, what is almost in-edged taking liberties in the translations. Nothing credible, yet true, they printed a magnificent more seems to be necessary to settle that the book quarto edition at Geneva without his seeing a sin-must be regarded as to some unknown extent a gle page; in which they inserted a number of modern production, founded upon, and imitative of, pieces not written by him, the real authors of certain ancient poems; and this seems to be nearly which were well known. His remark upon this the decision at which the judgment of the unprejuoccasion is very striking-" I look upon myself as diced public has arrived." a dead man, whose effects are upon sale. The A species of literary imposition has become mayor of Lausanne having established a press, published in that town an edition called complete, with the word London on the title-page, containing a great number of dull and contemptible little pieces in prose and verse, transplanted from the works of Madame Oudot, the "Almanacs of the Muses," the "Portfolio Recovered," and other literary trash, of which the twenty-third volume contains the greatest abundance. Yet the editors had the effrontery to proclaim on the title-page that the book was wholly revised and corrected by the author, who had not seen a single page of it.

common latterly, namely, placing the name of some distinguished man on the title-page as editor of a work the author of which is not mentioned, because obscure. This system, done with a view to allure buyers, is unjust towards the concealed author, if the work really merit the support of an eminent editor, for it is denying a man the fair fame that he ought to receive; and if the work be bad, the public is cheated by the distinguished name put forth as editor and guarantee of its merits. Still, however, the tardiness of the people themselves in encouraging new and unknown

writers of merit, is the reason why publishers re- | on either side, with the crowd of examiners besort to this trick to insure a sale and profit.

tween.

Several ingenious deceptions have been played Every nation has its representatives in both the off upon geologists and antiquaries. Some youths, sexes not easily distinguished in the women for desirous of amusing themselves at the expense of their common dress; still, there is no mistaking Father Kircher, engraved several fantastic figures the red faces and long necks, albeit sometimes upon a stone, which they afterwards buried in a pretty blue eyes, of the English women; the easy, place where a house was about to be built. The inviting, at home manner of the French; the dark, workmen having picked up the stone while dig- passionate glances of the Italian women; the modging the foundation, handed it over to the learned est, curious, perhaps somewhat vain air of the Kircher, who was quite delighted with it, and be- Americans-not enough, however, to make a class; stowed much labor and research in explaining the the broad faces, soft skins, laughter-loving eyes meaning of the extraordinary figures upon it. of the Germans, and the indescribable high contour The success of this trick induced a young man at of the Russian faces. Among the men, the peaked Wurzburg, of the name of Rodrick, to practise a collars and trimmed whiskers and neat cravat, and more serious deception upon Professor Berenger, stiff hair, pointed out unmistakably English blood; at the commencement of the last century. Rod-there were besides, German beards and cropped rick cut a great number of stones into the shape of heads, and Italian sleekness covering dirtiness, and different kinds of animals and monstrous forms, greasy hair, and black moustaches-and the easy, such as bats with the heads and wings of butter-familiar air of the French in his broad-bottomed flies, flying frogs and crabs, with Hebrew charac-pantaloons, and waistcoat reaching to his thighs; ters here and there discernible about the surface. and the stiff, heavy moustache of the Russian, and These fabrications were gladly purchased by the the court coat of Austria, and the uniform of Sarprofessor, who encouraged the search for more. dinia, and the red coat of Indian captaincy, and A new supply was accordingly prepared, and boys the grey hood of Carmelites, and the red frocks were employed to take them to the professor, pre- of neophytes, and the shaved pates of scores of tending that they had just found them near the men in orders, and the crosses of men of honor, village of Eibelstadt, and charging him dearly for and the ribbons of princes, and the republican air the time which they alleged they had employed in of Americans, and the rich dresses of diplomacollecting them. Having expressed a desire to tists, and the splendid uniform of the Guard Novisit the place where these wonders had been bile, and the quaint Swiss men with their halberds found, the boys conducted him to a locality where and striped doublets, and over the railing, as the they had previously buried a number of specimens. cortege entered, came in more robes of cardinals At last, when he had formed an ample collection, and prelates and senators than could be rememhe published a folio volume, containing twenty- bered. eight plates, with a Latin text explanatory of them, dedicating the volume to the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg. The opinions expressed in this book, and the strange manner in which they are defended, render it a curious evidence of the extravagant credulity and folly of its author, who meant to follow it up with other publications; but being apprized by M. Deckard, a brother professor, of the hoax that had been practised, the deluded author became most anxious to recall his work. It is therefore very rare, being only met with in the libraries of the curious; and the copies which the publisher sold after the author's death, have a new title-page in lieu of the absurd allegorical one which originally belonged to them.

From the Commercial Advertiser.
THE MISERERE.

ROME, May, 1846. THURSDAY, April 9th, was a great day for ceremonies at Rome. The pope attends mass in the morning, in the chapel of St. Peter's; thence he passes to the balcony above the middle door of the church, and gives his benediction to the kneeling thousands in the piazza. Afterwards he returns to the church to perform the ceremony of washing the feet of the thirteen pilgrims of every nation. Meantime the whole church has been filling. The guards in double file have kept out of the north transept all not habited in black. The seats on either side are filled with ladies, with black veils over their heads, not enough obscured, however, to forbid being seen, and if they had been arranged like the Greek slaves, for inspection, no order would have been fitter-ranged rank above rank

In the boxes royal appeared presently the Russian phalanx, escort of the sister of the empress, with her family-their uniforms rich as possible; the son a lout of a boy in martial dress, the mother a weak-looking old woman, the daughter fair enough for a pretty girl, if she had not been a princess. They acted very much like other people, which is somewhat strange considering they formed the focus for the direction of more than five thousand pairs of eyes.

At length the pilgrims to be washed came marching in, in pasteboard caps and white frocks, of all colors, and speaking all languages; and all seeming curious in their strange position of being served by one whose toe they kissed on other days, and who rode on occasions in a carriage of gold, while they walked over Europe staff in hand, in an oil-skin cap cape, and with shells pinned to the corners. After them came the pope, with five or six to bear up his robe, and sat himself on a throne; and afterward, with his attendants still about him, marched toward the pilgrims and stooping with a towel he wiped their feet, that had been dipped in the water of a silver basin, carried by an attendant. Meantime the choir are chanting-the pope's choir-and in a way no other choir can chant.

The crowd drift out and up to secure places for seeing the ceremony of the "tavola" above. In it I go, nolens volens, through church and corridor, and up the stairs regal, and into the ante-chamber of the Chapel Paolina, where a line of soldiers three deep keep off the multitude, admitting the papal costume and the billeted only, through the narrow pass-way formed by soldiers of the guard. The hall of the table gained, all is a jam. Ladies that have sat for three hours alone have a chance of seeing the ceremony, and the push from church to tavola is an exercise of muscular strength which