the journal of some African traveller; but I had its authenticity confirmed to myself by a Wesleyan missionary, several of whose converts had been personally acquainted with the man who was thus beset, and yet escaped from the paw of the lion. A native of Namaqua-land, in the service of a Dutch farmer, who resided about 240 miles north of the Cape of Good Hope, one day attempting to drive his master's cattle into a pond, situated between two ridges of rock, and finding them strangely reluctant, instead of eager as they were wont to be, to approach and quench their thirst, looked about to discover the cause, when he espied a huge lion luxuriating in the midst of the water. He instantly took to his heels, and had sufficient presence of mind to run through the herd, which were now scattering in all directions. The lion, however, marked and followed him, without falling upon any of the animals. The Hottentot finding himself thus unexpectedly singled out, scrambled up a tree, in the trunk of which some steps had been notched, to come at the birds' nests among the branches. These belonged to a species of the genus Loxia, which live in society, and build a whole commonwealth of nests in one cluster, sometimes as much as ten feet in diameter, under a general penthouse or covering, and occupied by several hundred birds. Behind one of these clumps the fugitive concealed himself. At the instant of his ascending, his ferocious pursuer had made a spring at him, but missing his aim, he stalked in sullen silence round the tree, casting at times a terrific look towards the poor fellow, who had crept and coiled himself up into the smallest compass in the rear of the nests. After remaining a considerable time quiet and motionless, and hearing no longer at intervals the growl and the step of the monster, he ventured to put forth his head from his hidingplace, hoping that his besieger had decamped, but to his horror and amazement, his eyes met those of the lion, steadfastly looking upwards, and as he declared, flashing fire at the recovered sight of him. The beast then lay down at the foot of the tree, where he continued without stirring from the spot for twentyfour hours; when, being parched with thirst, he bounded off to a spring at some distance. The blockade was no sooner raised than the Hottentot seized the opportunity, nimbly descended, and fled homewards as fast as his feet could carry him. There, though about a mile off, he safely arrived. It afterwards appeared that the lion had returned to the tree, and missing his prey there, "like a staunch murderer steady to his purpose," had hunted him by the scent, or the track of his feet in the sand, to within three hundred yards of his door, and then, as the sonnet says, "gnashing his teeth, slunk back to his old den." It can hardly escape the notice of any intelligent reader how far, in this case, fact transcends fiction; and how much more of characteristic majesty and overpowering terror there is in the patient watching of the real lion under the tree, than in the impotent rage of the imaginary one rending the bark with his claws, and spurning the sand with his feet, to no purpose. Nature and truth must always exceed fancy and fable, where the creations of the latter are not founded upon actual knowledge of the former. Here the conception of the poet is great and his picture fine; but the stern reality is greater, and the live spectacle finer, beyond comparison. SONNET. From Petrarch, in which the Poet laments the death of his friend Signore Stefano Colonna, occurring soon after that of Laura. In the original there is a symbolical allusion to the names of both, -the one as a Column, the other a Laurel. FALL'N is the lofty Column, and uptorn The verdant Laurel, in whose shade my mind Found peace I ne'er again may hope to find, Though round the heavens o'er earth and ocean borne: -O Death! how hast thou me of comfort shorn! My double treasure to the grave consign'd, Which made life sweet! and wealth with power combin'd, Can ne'er restore to soothe my thought forlorn. What can I do, if fate have so decreed, How, in a moment's space, for ever gone ! 1 MORNA. Macpherson's Ossian has had many admirers; and it cannot be denied, that the compositions attributed to the son of Fingal abound with striking imagery, heroic sentiment, and hardy expression, the effect of which, on young minds especially, may be highly exhilarating for a while. But, independent of the obscurity, sameness, and repetition, which were probably characteristic of the originals-whatever those originals may have been the translation is "done into English," in such a 66 Babylonish dialect," that it might be presumed, no ear accustomed to the melody of pure prose or the freedom of eloquent verse, could endure the incongruities of a style, in which broken verse of various measures, and halting prose of almost unmanageable cadences, compound sentences as difficult to read and as dissonant to hear, as a strain of music would be in execution and effect, if every bar were set to a different time and in a different key. If for such wild works of imagination a corresponding diction be desirable, a style between prose and verse, not a heterogeneous jumbling of both, might perhaps be invented. For this we must have a poetical foundation with a prose superstructure; the former, that the vehicle of thought may admit of florid embellishment; the latter, that full licence may be obtained of accommodating, by expansion or contraction, the scope of the ideas, unincumbered with rhyme, and unrestricted by infrangible metrical trammels. The episode of Morna is, perhaps, the most truly beautiful and pathetic, as well as simple and intelligible, narrative among these rhapsodical productions. In the following experiment, which is submitted to the curious, the anapæstic foot is adopted as the groundwork, because cadences of that measure have peculiar fluency. There is some difficulty, indeed, to the reader, in hitting the right accents at all times, from the great laxity of our language in that respect, and the carelessness of writers; yet as this movement admits of the utmost variety of subdivisions, and the lines may be lengthened or shortened, according to the burden of the matter of each, it is well suited to a mode of composition, which would blend the harmony of song with the freedom of discourse, if such union were compatible. This, to some extent, has been proved practicable in many passages of several English translations of the Psalms and the Prophecies, of which a very perfect specimen may be found in the first seven verses of the ninety-fifth Psalm, according to the Common Prayer-book rendering. When read with simplicity, and the due accent laid upon the long syllables, nothing perhaps in human speech A A IV. can be quoted more delicately implicated than the clauses, or more melodious than the sequence of plain Saxon sounds that compose the diction, while the variety of cadence and the change of cesura in every turn of the thought is not less admirable. The strain passes into entirely another key from the eighth verse inclusive to the end, the theme in fact suggesting a correspondent change to the minstrel's hand, when he drops the hortatory preamble, and proceeds to the historical argument, or rather, when he gives way abruptly at the sound of the very voice to which he is calling upon his hearers to hearken; while JEHOVAH himself from between the cherubim (for the scene is in the temple) speaks out, "Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation **** when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works," &c. to the fearful close of the psalm. The following attempt to tame what has been called “ 'prose run mad,” into what may easily be designated by a phrase not less opprobrious, is made upon a principle more strictly rhythmical than the measured style of our vernacular translations of Scripture poetry; and in behalf of it a claim to be received with indulgence by the admirers of Gaelic legends may be fairly preferred, since the offence, if it be one, against good taste is not likely to be imitated, nor will the original culprit soon be induced to repeat it, being himself of opinion, that though a few pages got up in this manner may not be unpleasing, a volume would be intolerable. It may be necessary to add, that this experiment on the tale of Morna has not been made from Macpherson, but from a version of Fingal, of which a few copies only were printed at Edinburgh some years ago, for private circulation. Whether the work has ever been further published, the present writer knows not; but it appeared to him, on the hasty perusal of a lent copy, preferable to the old one. THE ARGUMENT. Cathbat and Morna are lovers. Duchômar, the rival of Cathbat, having slain the latter in the chase, meets Morna, tells her what he has done, and wooes her for himself. In the course of the interview they fall by each other's hands, and die together. The story is supposed to be related to Cuchullin, general of the tribes of Erin, who, at the conclusion, laments the premature loss of the two valiant warriors, and the death of the maiden. CATHBAT fell by the sword of Duchômar, |