Where the plighted word is ever the same, sure of fulfilment, whether it refer to a momentous matter or the merest trifle, how must all who knew him recal the honoured and happy memory of Phil. Harper, late of London, philosopher. Phil., the pliantest, and yet the stubbornest of mortals-the surest to attract, and the stoutest to resist-all inflexibility, all suavity-who never broke his word, and yet seemed to confer a favour while refusing to make a promise. The stranger who might chance to look for the first time upon the mild and tranquil countenance of young Phil.-he was youthful-looking even in age-would have decided that he might have been flurried into making any imaginable promise, and worried into breaking it as soon; but if the observer looked again, he detected traces of firmness of character, which made the simplicity in the face impressive, and its weakness formidable. Whatever there appeared at first view of lightness in the look, turned, on better acquaintance, to a gaze of power. Even his slight frame acquired an air of singular strength, as the quiet expression of his eye gained influence upon the beholder, and you then saw that he was not only capable of extraordinary moral energy, but of undergoing great bodily labour and fatigue. The passiveness of his demeanour began, after a time, by some strange process, to imply a prodigious power of action; the fixed, unconquerable will made itself silently manifest through the gentleness and amiability of character that enveloped all; and the apparent youth, unguarded and undetermined, grew insensibly into the penetrating, self-possessed judge of his fellow-men, zealous to serve them, able to guide-of easy nature, it would appear, and yet immoveable by any pressure from without. What glorious things he would undertake to do in a day! What a little book-full of promises he would make in the space of a morning! His spirit revelled in anticipation; it set itself troublesome tasks as though in pure sport, welcomed every comer so long as he came with a request in his mouth, and seemed inclined to say "Yes" to the whole petitioning world. It was quite impossible that he could do one-half he said; nay, so much had he undertaken, that he must necessarily forget the great matters, to begin with, and then hit upon the expedient of postponing the small. Whosoever said that, knew nothing, you may be sure, of honest Harper. Although he might appear to toss and scatter his good words about like squibs and rockets, they were all written down somewhere in his head, in letters bright as sparks; sparks never destined to go out until the promise they recorded was performed, but then to be instantly extinguished. He could no more forget the word he was bound to keep, than he could forget himself; a thing equally impossible to the generous or just man, as it is to the selfish one. Strangely the two extremes meet. But one man can seldom be so ready to grant, as a score are ready to beg. Phil., the good-natured, was well-nigh lost and stifled in the centre of a beseeching crowd-a crowd convinced that it was but to ask and have. What a mistake! Where the spring flowed, behold a closedup rock. Not a drop was to be extracted. No word of promise, though easily spoken, fed the empty ear of the listener. Phil.'s good-nature never ran to seed, breeding the rank weed deception. He would as readily descend to pass a forged note, as dream of offering a false promise, to patch some case of seeming necessity that must afterwards be all the worse for the counterfeit aid. He knew how to refuse, because he knew how to comply. With what inveteracy he kept his word! "As right as the mail," in those old times, was a weak phrase with us. The security of Phil.'s word put all comparisons to shame. We amused ourselves sometimes with thinking how awkward it would be some evening, for some fair lady never met before, if Phil. Harper, in his straightforward honesty, should happen to step up to her at a ball, and make her a promise of marriage when she was off her guard, and before she could stop him. Such a discharge of matrimonial artillery would, in ordinary cases, amount to nothing, to smoke, to a flash in the pan. Not so here. The bird would be brought down. The lady would most assuredly become Mrs. Harper. Nothing could save her, if he had once promised marriage. True-she might have an attached suitor in the next street; a lover, within a week of being her husband, in the refreshment-room at that moment; true also, she might be a widow in the first sable flush of her consternation and sorrow; nevertheless her name would infallibly be changed to Harper within the usual period, known to calculators as no time. He must have broken his heart when he broke his word. And what had such a result come to pass-what if he had then chosen to whisper in the ear of his fair rejecter, the flinty-hearted falsifier of his innocent word-" My ghost shall haunt you!" There his promise to pay a visit to her bed-side-a promise payable at sight-must have been duly met. There at least she could not have foiled him. We would have taken such a ghost's word for more than a thousand. Cæsar's at Philippi could have been no greater example of supernatural punctuality. Phil. would have met her at Philippi, if he had said so. These are grave considerations not to be avoided, when we are reflecting upon the propensities of people who always keep their word. Much as we wish them multiplied in the world, still they might breed-let us own to a rational fear-no little mischief here and there. As the world when a goes, savage who is nice about his honour threatens to horsewhip somebody, there is every prospect that the outrage will not be perpetrated, for the chances are that the threatener habitually lies; but in a community where truth prevails always, breaches of the peace must be alarmingly common. Many a gentleman who never tasted beaver (waterproof or otherwise) in his life, has given his word that he would eat his hat if something did not turn out which happened quite the other way; and when every body shall keep his word we must prepare for strange spectacles; digestion will have enough to do. Undertakings to send people to Jericho, though freely entered into, are never strictly observed; but that country under the new system would be thickly populated. The Irish reader will recollect the promise referred to in the affidavit of bodily fear put in by his nervous fellow-countryman in the usual form-that whereas the defendant had threatened to "break every bone of this deponent, and send him to hell, which this deponent verily believes he would have done, but that," &c. Up to the present mo ment this is a solitary instance of faith reposed in a promise of that E nature; but with people who always keep their word, the consequences would be appaling. Phil. Harper entered into no such rash engagements; but went through life earning happiness and winning honour, simply by ever acting up to his word. Death came to him at length, but as the just and unreluctant redemption of an old pledge. Dying, he appeared to be only performing a promise tacitly given when he first opened his eyes upon the world. And with the allusion to this kind of tacit pledge let us weave the remark that persons who always keep their word recognise in it more and more a sacredness beyond the letter of it, and are the first to feel that iz they are sometimes bound by a solemn contract, even where they have uttered no syllable in sanction of it. More promises are made than ever can be spoken. An angel ever in our company makes them for us. This may be shown by the homeliest and most familiar example; by reference to a character known to every body and beloved by no less a person. Burchell was a man who kept his word without making verbal promises. Witness that pleasant and touching incident in the prison, where the youngest of the ragged Primroses, to the dismay of his dear mother, is climbing up to Sir William's neck to kiss him: "What, Bill, you chubby rogue,' cried he, 'do you remember your old friend Burchell? and Dick, too, my honest veteran, are you here? You shall find I have not forgot you.' So saying, he gave each a large piece of gingerbread, which the poor fellows eat very heartily, as they had got that morning but a very scanty breakfast." 17 宜 BARRY CORNWALL'S ENGLISH SONGS. ENGLAND has some fine sayings about songs and ballads. The old Chevy-chase rhyme, moreover, is a national memory. Whatever may have been said, or may be said still, in reproach or ridicule of us as a a musical people, this is to all intents a song-loving land. And yet with this prevalent taste, or rather with this old, rooted, cordial feeling for song, and with a magnificent literature, wonderfully rich in its varieties of excellence-England, it is very true, is singularly "barren of songwriters." With the absurd inappropriateness that sometimes characterises established phrases of the proverbial kind, we are apt to remark of any thing very common that it may be had for an old song: an old song being the choicest rarity in the language. Most of our best poets have been full of the matter whereof songs are made, but few of them have tried to make a song, and fewer still have succeeded. We have a profusion of short pieces, beautiful exceedingly, but not exactly in the song's shape. We have scores of delicate little poems; but however these might be married to immortal airs, few of them could be brought "to sing well," If it be at all an objection to a drama that it is, under every combination of circumstances, unactable, it is a greater fault in a song that it cannot be sung with the sweetest and fullest of its effects. Barry Cornwall, in the dissertation prefixed to his volume, says what is perfectly right; the true song should not only be fitted for music, but it should be better for the accompaniment. We agree with the same authority that many of those lyrics which are scattered over the great dramatic writings are among the most songlike things we have; but, exquisite as they are, these never could wake the popular heart, and set a million throbbing as one. Of the more professed song-writers, not one scarcely is of the first rank. We have a great name in Dibdin; but true, home-felt, and indeed exquisite as his power was, "after its kind," his genius was not of the order to reconcile us to the surrounding barrenness. An Englishman, when people invite him to "give them a song," is generally obliged to borrow before he can give. And admirable use have we indeed made of the results of that delightful faculty which other nations have more happily cultivated. Our independence may not be distant; since of all those glories of song which Ireland and Scotland justly exult in, while hitherto we could do little more than hear and envy, the brightest, beyond question, are of modern date. The present age, in fact, has given to Scotland several song-writers ;—an almost needless bounty, for Burns alone is enough for the fame and honour of one country. That the genius of Barry Cornwall includes within its compass of imagination and feeling some of the truest, simplest, and most impressive qualities of song-writing, is partly attested by the wide and lasting popularity of several of his pieces, which have stirred the pulse and charmed the ear again and again, in circles high and low, wherever a song finds welcome. But better evidences still are to be found abundantly sown through this collection of the songs, in the pleasure they inspire without the aid of music; and in the harmonious instinct which leads us, by a sense of their truth and expressiveness, to set them of our own accord, while we read, to some silent, faithful measure, and give them unconsciously some fitting accompaniment answering to their bold hilarity, or their hushed tenderness; their exquisite play of fancy, or the flow of their homely affections. This is the way, at least, in which we found ourselves reading many of them, "singing them unaware," and yielding to the influence of that delicate and exact consistency of the music, with the sentiment and motive of the song, which is so essential, but so rare an excellence, and yet so frequently a characteristic of these masterly compositions. Barry Cornwall won his fame early and sustained it well. That done, he left it for some time to take care of itself in the jostle of rival reputations. It lost no gloss, and the poet forbore to weaken it by rash efforts for its advancement. Ten or eleven years ago, it was strengthened considerably, by a combination of sweetness and power with maturer knowledge and judgment, manifest to every poetical mind, in a small volume then issued under the title of " English Songs." Long out of print, the choicest and most perfect of those poems are here associated with many new ones, and a rich assemblage of dramatic aphorisms, portraitures and glances at character, never published before. It is to the present volume we look for the realization of the best promises of his younger muse; for the ripened fruits of a mind, retaining its fresh bright fancies, while deepening continually in knowledge of that human heart whereof it pas sionately sings. And these, beyond question, we find here in their fullest Let the reader consult for evidences the first part it is wholly new, and has as little of the superfluities of verse as can well be imagined. Of needless lines and make-weight epithets, there are few or none. Deep Philosophy often starts the subject, but it is Poetry that discourses. This is true of the poems at the opening, illustrative of London scenes, and of others of a similar class. In as fine a spirit, with more melting tenderness, are some, like the discourse between the "Beggar-Girl and the Widow;" which represents a delightful class of these compositions. To turn at once to a different order, let us copy for the reader a couple of dainties, bright and brief, sweet and short as songs can possibly be. We feel at once what perfect songs they are. |