To thee he chants the sacred song, So Castor and great Hercules of old Were with her gods by graceful Greece enroll'd. With pious hymns and festal joy: It is very likely that hence the custom arose, among barbarous nations, of drinking to the health of their guests; an absurd custom, since we may drink four bottles without doing them the least good. The dictionary of Trevoux tells us that we should not drink to the health of our superiors in their presence. This may be the case in France or Germany, but in England it is a received custom. The distance is not so great from one man to another at London as at Vienna. It is of importance in England to drink to the health of a prince who pretends to the throne; it is to declare yourself his partisan. It has cost more than one Scotchman and Hibernian dear for having drank to the health of the Stuarts. All the whigs, after the death of king William, drank not to his health, but to his memory. A tory named Brown, bishop of Cork in Ireland, a great enemy to William in Ireland, said, " that he would put a cork in all those bottles which were drank to the glory of this monarch." He did not stop at this silly pun: he wrote in 1702 an episcopal address, to show the Irish that it was an atrocious impiety to drink to the health of kings, and above all to their memory; that the latter, in particular, is a profanation of these words of Jesus Christ: "Drink this in remembrance of me." It is astonishing that this bishop was not the first who conceived such a folly. Before him, the presbyterian Prynn had written a great book against the impious custom of drinking to the health of christians. Finally, there was one John Geza, vicar of the parish of St. Faith, who published "The Divine Potion to preserve Spiritual Health, by the Cure of the inveterate Malady of Drinking Healths; with clear and solid Arguments against this Criminal Custom; all for the Satisfaction of the Public, at the Request of a worthy Member of Parliament, in the Year of our Salvation 1648." Our reverend father Garasse, our reverend father Patouillet, and our reverend father Nonotte, are nothing superior to these profound Englishmen. We have a long time wrestled with our neighbours for the superiority-To which is it due? THE DRUIDS. The Scene is in Tartarus.-The Furies entwined with Serpents, and Whips in their Hands. COME along, Barbaraquincorix, Celtic Druid, and thou, detestable Grecian hierophant, Calchas; the moment of your just punishment has returned again; the hour of vengeance has arrived the bell has sounded! THE DRUID AND CALCHAS. Oh, heavens! my head, my sides, my eyes, my ears! pardon, ladies, pardon! CALCHAS. Mercy! two vipers are penetrating my eye-balls! CALCHAS. Alas, how I am mangled! And must my eyes be every day restored, to be torn again from my head? DRUID. Must my skin be renewed only to dangle in ribbons from my lacerated body? TISIPHONE. It will teach thee how to palm off a miserable parasitical plant for an universal remedy another time. Wilt thou still sacrifice boys and girls to thy god Theutates, priest?-still burn them in osier baskets to the sound of a drum? DRUID. Never, never; dear lady, a little mercy, I beseech you. J TISIPHONE. Thou never hadst any thyself. Seize him, serpents, and now another lash! ALECTO. Let them curry well this Calchas, who advances towards us "With cruel eye, dark mien, and bristled hair.”* CALCHAS. My hair is torn away; I am scorched, flayed, impaled! ALECTO. Wretch! Wilt thou again cut the throat of a beautiful young girl, in order to obtain a favourable gale, instead of uniting her to a good husband? CALCHAS AND THE DRUID. Oh, what torments! and yet we die not. TISIPHONE. Hey-day! God forgive me, but I hear music! It is Orpheus; why our serpents, sister, have become as gentle as lambs! CALCHAS. My sufferings cease; how very strange! THE DRUID. I am altogether recovered. Oh, the power of good music! And who art thou, divine man, who thus curest wounds, and rejoicest hell itself? ORPHEUS. My friends, I am a priest like yourselves, but I never deceived any one; nor cut the throat of either boy or girl in my life. When on earth, instead of making the gods hated, I rendered them beloved, and softened the manners of the men whom you made ferocious. I shall exert myself in the like manner in hell. I met, just now, two barbarous priests whom they were scourging beyond measure; one of them formerly Verse in the Iphegenia of Racine, descriptive of Calchas:“L'œil farouche, l'air sombre et le poil herissé.” hewed a king in pieces before the Lord, and the other cut the throat of his queen and sovereign at the horse gate. I have terminated their punishment; and, having played to them a tune on the violin, they have promised me, that when they return into the world, they will live like honest men. DRUID AND CALCHAS. We promise the same thing, on the word of a priest. ORPHEUS. Yes, but" Passato il pericolo, gabbato il santo."* [The Scene closes with a figure Dance, performed by Orpheus, the Condemned, and the Furies, to light and agreeable music.] EASE. EASY applies not only to a thing easily done, but also to a thing which appears to be so. The pencil of Correggio is easy, the style of Quinault is much more easy than that of Despreaux, and the style of Ovid surpasses in facility that of Persius. This facility in painting, music, eloquence, and poetry, consists in a natural and spontaneous felicity, which admits of nothing that implies research, strength, or profundity. Thus the pictures of Paul Veronese have a much more easy and less finished air than those of Michael Angelo. The symphonies of Rameau are superior to those of Lulli, but appear less easy. Bossuet is more truly eloquent and more easy than Fletcher. Rousseau, in his epistles, has not near the facility and truth of Despreaux. The commentator of Despreaux says" that this exact and laborious poet taught the illustrious Racine to make verses with difficulty, and that those which appear easy are those which have been made with the most difficulty." It is true, that it often costs much pains to express ourselves with clearness, as also that the natural may "The danger over, the saint is defrauded." An Italian saying, in allusion to vows of offerings to saints in the hour of peril, which are frequently forgotten when the danger is past. be arrived at by effort; but it is also true that a happy genius often produces easy beauties without any labour, and that enthusiasm goes much further than art, Most of the impassioned expressions of our good poets have come finished from their pen, and appear as easy as if they had in reality been composed without labour; the imagination, therefore often conceives and brings forth easily. It is not thus with didactic works; which require art to make them appear easy. For example, there is much less ease than profundity in Pope's Essay on Man. Bad works may be rapidly constructed, which having no genius will appear easy, and it is often the lot of those who, without genius, have the unfortunate habit of composing.* It is in this sense that a personage of the old comedy, called the Italian, says to another, "Thou makest bad verses admirably well.". The term easy is an insult to a woman, but is sometimes in society praise for a man; it is, however, fault in a statesman. The manners of Atticus were easy; he was the most amiable of the Romans; the easy Cleopatra gave herself as easily to Anthony as to Cæsar; the easy Claudius allowed himself to be governed by Agrippina: easy applied to Claudius is only a lenitive; the proper expression is weak. An easy man is in general one possessed of a mind which easily gives itself up to reason and remonstrance a heart which melts at the prayers that are made to it; while a weak man is one who allows too much authority over him. ECLIPSE. In the greatest part of the known world every extra"ordinary phenomenon was, for a long time, believed to be the presage of some happy or miserable event, Thus the Roman historians have not failed to observe, that an eclipse of the sun accompanied the birth of Romulus, that another announced his death, and that a third attended the foundation of the city of Rome. "The mob of gentlemen who write with ease."-T. |