PREFATORY NOTE.

In this collection of the Author's Poems will be found some not before printed, and some entirely re-written from the more imperfect productions of earlier years. Few, if any, that have previously appeared, have escaped revision and alteration.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 1]

THE NEW TIMON.

[Pg 4]

PART THE SECOND.

[Pg 44]

PART THE THIRD.

[Pg 48]

[Pg 49]

[Pg 67]

PART THE FOURTH.

FOOTNOTES

[A] Where now stands St. James's palace stood the hospital dedicated to St. James, for the reception of fourteen leprous maidens.

[B] Charles the First attended divine service in the Royal Chapel immediately before he walked through the park to his scaffold at Whitehall. In the palace of St. James's, Monk and Sir John Granville schemed for the restoration of Charles II.

[C] The Sanscrit term, denoting the mixture or confusion of classes; applied to that large portion of the Indian population excluded from the four pure castes.

[D] According to Eastern commentators, the march of the Israelites in the Desert was in a charmed circle; every morning they set out on their journey, and every night found themselves on the same spot as that from which the journey had commenced.

[E] The Tilt-yard.

[F] Since this was written, to Buckingham Palace has been prefixed a front which is not without merit—in thrusting out of sight the other three sides of the building.

[G] The reader need scarcely be reminded, that these lines were written years before the fatal accident which terminated an illustrious life. If the lines be so inadequate to the subject, the author must state freely that he had the misfortune to differ entirely from the policy pursued by Sir Robert Peel at the time they were written; while if that difference forbade panegyric, his respect for the man checked the freedom of satire. The author will find another occasion to attempt, so far as his opinions on the one hand, and his reverence on the other, will permit—to convey a juster idea of Sir Robert Peel's defects or merits, perhaps as a statesman, at least as an orator.

[H] Lord Stanley's memorable exclamation on a certain occasion which now belongs to history,—"Johnny's upset the coach!" Never was coach upset with such perfect sang-froid on the part of the driver.

[I] Written before Sir Robert's avowed abandonment of protection. Prophetic.

[J] "One of the most remarkable pictures of ancient manners which has been transmitted to us, is that in which the poet Gower describes the circumstances under which he was commanded by King Richard II.—

'To make a book after his hest.'

The good old rhymer—— ... had taken boat, and upon the broad river he met the king in his stately barge.... The monarch called him on board his own vessel, and desired him to book 'some new thing.'—This was the origin of the Confessio Amantis."—Knight's London, vol. i. art. The Silent Highway.

[K] "What a picture Hall gives us of the populousness of the Thames, in the story which he tells us of the Archbishop of York (brother to the King-maker), after leaving the widow of Edward IV. in the sanctuary of Westminster, 'sitting below on the rushes all desolate and dismayed,' and when he opened his windows and looked on the Thames, he might see the river full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester his servants, watching that no person should go to sanctuary, nor none should pass unsearched."—Id. ibid.

[L] A favourite rendezvous a few years since (and probably even still) for the heroes of that fraternity, more dear to Mercury than to Themis, was held at Devereux Court, occupying a part of the site on which stood the residence of the Knights Templars.

[M] The Amrita is the name given by the mythologists of Thibet to the heavenly tree which yields its ambrosial fruits to the gods.

[N] The Champac, a flower of a bright gold-colour, with which the Indian women are fond of adorning their hair. Moore alludes to the custom in the "Veiled Prophet."

[O] The perfumes from the island of Rhodes,—to which the roses that still bloom there gave the ancient name,—are wafted for miles over the surrounding seas.

[P] The Psyche of Naples, the most intellectual and (so to speak) the most Christian of all the dreams of beauty which Grecian art has embodied in the marble.

[Q] Every one knows, through the version of Mrs. Tighe, the lovely allegory of Eros and Psyche, which Apuleius—the neglected original, to whom all later romance writers are unconsciously indebted—has bequeathed to the delight of poets and the recognition of Christians.

[R] The reader will bear in mind these lines, important to the clearness of the story; and remember that Calantha bore a different name from her half-brother—that her mother's unnatural prejudice or pride of race had forbidden her ever to mention that brother's name; and that, therefore, her relationship to Morvale, until he sought her out, was wholly unknown to all: the reader will remember, also, that during Calantha's subsequent residence in Morvale's house, she lived as woman lives in the East, and was consequently never seen by her brother's guests.

[S] "At best it babies us."—Young.

[T] "For, oh! he stood before me as my youth."—Coleridge's Wallenstein.

[U] The beautiful story of Aimée—the delight of all children—is in the collection entitled "The Temple of the Fairies."

[V] According to the exploded hypothesis of Voltaire, that the Gipsies are a Syrian tribe, the remains of the long scattered fraternity of Isis.

[W] Whoever is well acquainted with the heathen learning must often have been deeply impressed with the mournful character of the mythological Elysium. Even the few admitted to the groves of asphodel, unpurified by death, retain the passions and pine with the griefs of life; they envy the mortal whom the poet brings to their moody immortality; and, amidst the disdained repose, sigh for the struggle and the storm.

[X] Not only were the lofty and cheering notions of the soul, that were cherished by the more illustrious philosophers of Greece, confined to a few, but even the grosser and dimmer belief in a future state, which the vulgar mythology implied, was not entertained by the multitude. Plato remarked that few, even in his day, had faith in the immortality of the soul; and indeed the Hades of the ancients was not for the Many. Amongst those condemned we find few criminals, except the old Titans, and such as imitated them in the one crime—blasphemy to the fabled gods: and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the poets and the heroes, the oligarchy of earth.

[Y] If a man wishes to leave a portion to his natural child, his lawyer will tell him to name the child as if it were a stranger to his blood. If he says, "I leave to John Tompson, of Baker-street, £10,000," John Tompson may probably get the legacy; if he says, "I leave to my son, John Tompson, of Baker-street, £10,000," and the said John Tompson is his son (a natural one), it is a hundred to one if John Tompson ever touches a penny! Up springs the Inhuman Law, with its multiform obstacles, quibbles, and objections—proof of identity—evidence of birth!—Many and many a natural child has thus been robbed and swindled out of his sole claim upon redress—his sole chance of subsistence. In most civilised countries a father is permitted to own the offspring, whom, unless he do so, he has wronged at its very birth—whom, if he do not so, he wrongs irremedially; with us the error is denied reparation, and the innocence is sentenced to outlawry. Our laws, with relation to illegitimate children, are more than unjust—they are inhuman.

[Pg 88]

PART THE FIRST.

[Pg 90]

PART THE SECOND.

[Pg 97]

PART THE THIRD.

[Pg 98]

[Pg 104]

PART THE FIFTH.

FOOTNOTES

[A] Imitated from Horace (Lib. ii., Od. 3).

[B] Schiller.

[Pg 117]