Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846

Come shall the day – and come it may full soon —
When thou, more splendid than the moon,
Shalt rise; and, triumphing o'er night,
Turn ebon darkness into silver light:
The glory of thy brightness shall be shed
Around each faithful head:
Rising from thy long trance, earth shall behold
Thee loftier yet, and lovelier than of old;
And portion'd with the saints in bliss shall be
All who, through weal and woe, were ever true to thee!

RHYMED HEXAMETERS AND PENTAMETERS

[This species of versification, consisting of rhymed Hexameter and Pentameter lines, we do not remember to have seen before attempted, and we now offer it as a literary curiosity. It is, perhaps, subject to the objection that applies against painted statuary, as combining embellishments of a character not altogether consistent, and not adding to the beauty of the result. But we are not without a feeling that some additional pleasure is thus conveyed to the mind. The experiment, of course, is scarcely possible, except in quatrains of an epigrammatic structure. But the examples are selected from the most miscellaneous sources that readily occurred.]

HIS OWN EPITAPH

By Ennius

Adspicite, O cives! senis Ennii imagini' formam;
Hic vostrum panxit maxuma facta patrum.
Nemo me lacrumis decoret, nec funera fletu
Faxit. Cur? volito vivu' per ora virûm.

See, O citizens! here old Ennius's image presented,
Who to your forefathers' deeds gave their own glory again.
Honour me not with your tears; by none let my death be lamented:
Why? still in every mouth living I flit among men.

ON GELLIA

From Martial

Amissum non flet, cum sola est, Gellia patrem;
Si quis adest, jussæ prosiliunt lacrymæ.
Non dolet hic, quisquis laudari, Gellia, quærit;
Ille dolet verè qui sine teste dolet.

Gellia, when she's alone, doesn't weep the death of her father;
But, if a visitor comes, tears at her bidding appear.
Gellia, they do not mourn who are melted by vanity rather;
They are true mourners who weep when not a witness is near.

TO CECILIANUS

From Martial

Nullus in urbe fuit totâ qui tangere vellet
Uxorem gratis, Cæciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc positis custodibus ingens
Agmen amatorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.

Nobody, Cecilianus, e'er thought of your wife (she's so ugly!)
When she could gratis be seen, when she was easily won.
Now that, with locks and with guards you pretend to secure her so snugly,
Crowds of gallants flock around: faith, it is cleverly done.

ON A BEE INCLOSED IN AMBER

From Martial

Et latet et lucet Phaëthontide condita guttâ,
Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo.
Dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum:
Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori.

Lucid the bee lurks here, bright amber her beauty inclosing!
As in the nectar she made seems the fair insect to lie.
Worthy reward she has gain'd, after such busy labours reposing:
Well we might deem that herself thus would be willing to die.

THE SURVEYOR'S TALE

Good resolutions are, like glass, manufactured for the purpose of being broken. Immediately after my marriage, I registered in the books of my conscience a very considerable vow against any future interference with the railway system. The Biggleswades had turned out so well, that I thought it unsafe to pursue my fortune any further. The incipient gambler, I am told, always gains, through the assistance of a nameless personage who shuffles the cards a great deal oftener than many materialists suppose. Nevertheless, there is always a day of retribution.

I wish I had adhered to my original orthodox determination. During the whole period of the honeymoon, I remained blameless as to shares. Uncle Scripio relinquished the suggestion of "dodges" in despair. He was, as usual, brimful of projects, making money by the thousand, and bearing or bulling, as the case might be, with genuine American enthusiasm. I believe he thought me a fool for remaining so easily contented, and very soon manifested no further symptom of his consciousness of my existence than by transmitting me regularly a copy of the Railway Gazette, with some mysterious pencil-markings at the list of prices, which I presume he intended for my guidance in the case of an alteration of sentiment. For some time I never looked at them. When a man is newly married, he has a great many other things to think of. Mary had a decided genius for furniture, and used to pester me perpetually with damask curtains, carved-wood chairs, gilt lamps, and a whole wilderness of household paraphernalia, about which, in common courtesy, I was compelled to affect an interest. Now, to a man like myself, who never had any fancy for upholstery, this sort of thing is very tiresome. My wife might have furnished the drawingroom after the pattern of the Cham of Tartary's for any thing I cared, provided she had left me in due ignorance of the proceeding; but I was not allowed to escape so comfortably. I looked over carpet patterns and fancy papers innumerable, mused upon all manner of bell-pulls, and gave judgment between conflicting rugs, until the task became such a nuisance, that I was fain to take refuge in the sacred sanctuary of my club. Young women should be particularly careful against boring an accommodating spouse. Of all places in the world, a club is the surest focus of speculation. You meet gentlemen there who hold stock in every line in the kingdom – directors, committeemen, and even crack engineers. I defy you to continue an altogether uninterested auditor of the fascinating intelligence of Mammon. In less than a week my vow was broken, and a new liaison commenced with the treacherous Delilah of scrip. As nine-tenths of my readers have been playing the same identical game towards the close of last year, it would be idle to recount to them the various vicissitudes of the market. It is a sore subject with most of us – a regular undeniable case of "infandum regina." The only comfort is, that our fingers were simultaneously burned.

Amongst other transactions, I had been induced by my old fiend Cutts, now in practice as an independent engineer, to apply for a large allocation of shares in the Slopperton Valley, a very spirited undertaking, for which the Saxon was engaged to invent the gradients. This occurred about the commencement of the great Potato Revolution – an event which I apprehend will be long remembered by the squirearchy and shareholders of these kingdoms. The money-market was beginning to exhibit certain symptoms of tightness; premiums were melting perceptibly away, and new schemes were in diminished favour. Under these circumstances, the Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Valley Company were beneficent enough to gratify my wishes to the full, and accorded to me the large privilege of three hundred original shares. Two months earlier this would have been equivalent to a fortune – as it was, I must own that my gratitude was hardly commensurate to the high generosity of the donors. I am not sure that I did not accompany the receipt of my letter of allocation with certain expletives by no means creditable to the character of the projectors – at all events, I began to look with a milder eye upon the atrocities of Pennsylvanian repudiation. However, as the crash was by no means certain, my sanguine temperament overcame me, and in a fit of temporary derangement I paid the deposit.

In the ensuing week the panic became general. Capel-court was deserted by its herd – Liverpool in a fearful state of commercial coma – Glasgow trembling throughout its Gorbals – and Edinburgh paralytically shaking. The grand leading doctrine of political economy once more was recognised as a truth: the supply exorbitantly exceeded the demand, and there were no buyers. The daily share-list became a far more pathetic document in my eyes than the Sorrows of Werter. The circular of my brokers, Messrs Tine and Transfer, contained a tragedy more woful than any of the conceptions of Shakspeare – the agonies of blighted love are a joke compared with those of baffled avarice; and of all kinds of consumption, that of the purse is the most severe. One circumstance, however, struck me as somewhat curious. Neither in share-list nor circular could I find any mention made of the Slopperton Valley. It seemed to have risen like an exhalation, and to have departed in similar silence. This boded ill for the existence of the £750 I had so idiotically invested, the recuperation whereof, in whole or in part, became the subject of my nightly meditations; and, as correspondence in such matters is usually unsatisfactory, I determined to start personally in search of my suspended deposit.

I did not know a single individual of the Slopperton Provisional Committee, but I was well enough acquainted with Cutts, whose present residence was in a midland county of England, where the work of railway construction was going actively forward. As I drove into the town where the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat looking fellows – "the navies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them – busy at their embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our own circumstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of fortune gives a different complexion to our views. If I had been called upon two months earlier to pronounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general employment and high wages, I should have launched out con amore. Now, the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the nibbling of myriads of mites.

I found Cutts in his apartment of the hotel in the unmolested enjoyment of a cigar. He seemed fatter, and a little more red in the gills than when I saw him last, otherwise there was no perceptible difference.

"Hallo, old fellow!" cried the Saxon, pitching away a pile of estimates; "what the mischief has brought you up here? Waiter – a bottle of sherry! You wouldn't prefer something hot at this hour of the morning, would you?"

"Certainly not."

"Ay – you're a married man now. How's old Morgan? Lord! what fun we had at Shrewsbury when I helped you to your wife!"

"So far as I recollect, Mr Cutts, you nearly finished that business. But I want to have a serious talk with you about other matters. What has become of that confounded Slopperton Valley, for which you were engineer?"

"Slopperton Valley! Haven't you heard about it? The whole concern was wound up about three weeks ago. Take a glass of wine."

"Wound up? Why, this is most extraordinary. I never received any circular!"

"I thought as much," said Cutts very coolly. "That's precisely what I said to old Hasherton, the chairman, the day after the secretary bolted. I told him he should send round notice to the fellows at a distance, warning them not to cash up; but it seems that the list of subscribers had gone amissing, and so the thing was left to rectify itself."

"Bolted! You don't mean Mr Glanders, of the respectable firm of Glanders and Co?"