indeed as evidences of a healthy national | beyond that is naught. Learned men will vitality, superior to any literary product of munch stone and gravel out of long-worked the national mind that has yet appeared. and authorized beds, while the honey-laden Popular poetry, like wild plants to the thy my banks in regions of less orthodox botanist, has to the man of refined taste research, are left to waste their fragrance always a certain value beyond its inherent and their sweets on solitute. There is a worth as poetry, merely because it is popu- natural preference no doubt in favour of anlar. Even the vulgar epigrams of Martial, tiquity, which has its value without univerreplete as they are with low puns and filthy sity walls as well as within them; but a buffoonery, are, as the exponents of the wise man will not allow himself to be so corrupt life of imperial Rome, of far greater befooled by a venerable old grey stone, value to the literary historian, than some of however large, as to prefer it seriously to the most finished odes of Horace. What- the magnificent dome of a living St. Peter's. ever faults they have, they are plants which A vile daub, though guaranteed from the look like the soil whence they sprung; and hand of St. Luke himself, is after all the that is always pleasing to a scientific eye.- pious and artistic sentiment you can spend So these Romaic ballads are simple enough, upon it, only a daub; and the worst picture certainly; they are many of them mere that ever George Harvey painted, is to a voices or breathings of the popular life, sane eye in reality worth more, though the with very little poetic genius, and little or picture-dealers and the virtuosos talk less no artistic skill; still they have a fragance about it. Viewed in this light, the Romaic of nature about them, and a freshness, ballads will always form a most important such as Scottish noses snuff up from bleak department of the lyrical riches of the Greek moors and green fields, envying not at all language, even to those who know that the strong aroma that flows from exuberant there was not a drop of Greek blood in the fields overflushed with the living gold and body of Marco Bozzarri.* He and the purple of a rich tropical vegetation. Un- other brave Albanese heroes of the war of questionably inferior to our Scottish poetry independenee, were swallowed up by the of the same class in variety of dramatic overpowering influence of Greek civilisation, element, in the fine play of humour, and in and became Greeks, just as Lucan and Serhythmical compass, they are at the same neca, though Spanish born, became Romans. time so truly popular, and so thoroughly To discuss this popular poetry fully, and Greek, that whosover loves Greece must to bring out distinctly the traits of national love them. For ourselves we are free to history and character with which it is reconfess, that if a public bonfire of Greek plete, would require a separate article. We lyric poetry were to be made after the fash- can only indulge ourselves at present in ion of Don Quixote's library in Cervantes, giving one or two specimens of translation we should put in a strong word of interces- from our own portfolio. The ballad poetry sion in favour of the lisping Homers of is remarkable for being in the general case Souli and Maina, while the polished pretti- not rhymed; a classical feature which we nesses of the classical anthology, and trim hope may conciliate some academic reader. voluptuousness of the real and the pseudo- This feature the German translator, the Anacreon were postponed. It is incredible, well-known philhellene, Wilhelm Müller, indeed, what a stomach certain people have has preserved.* We shall generally follow for Greek within the arbitrary line of a cer- his example. The following short little tain established philology, while everything piece was much admired by Goethe.

CHARON AND THE SOULS.

"Why are the hills so dusky dark, so dark and sable-shrouded?
Is it the wind that flouts the crag, or is it the rain that's beating?"

""Tis not the wind that flouts the crag, 'tis not the rain that's beating;
'Tis only Charon with his dead, that o'er the hills is treading.

The young he drives before his path, the old he drags behind him;

The children, and the weeping babes, he on his saddle bindeth.

The old beseech the rider grim, the young with tears implore him—

'O Charon halt where the cottage smokes, where the fountain cool is flowing,

The old will drink the water clear, the young will fling the pebbles,

The children with their tender arms, will pluck the flowers so blooming.

"The soldiers of Souli, and the sailors of Hydra, the bravest warriors, and the most skilful mariners,

in the late struggle, were of the purest Albanian race, unaltered by any mixture of Hellenic blood."— Finlay, Medieval Greece and Trebizond, p. 39.

*Muller's edition of the ballads was published at Leipsig in 1825, the year immediately following their publication by Fauriel at Paris.

'I will not halt where the cottage smokes, nor where the fount is flowing; For mothers would come to the fountain clear, and know their weeping children, And wives would know their husbands dear, nor would allow the parting." Charon, or Death, is a great figure in the popular poetry of the modern Greeks, and is one of the very few, perhaps the only mythological personages which Byzantine orthodoxy, and Slavonian barbarism, have left to haunt the hills of Greece from the fair company that once peopled Olympus. Here is

another in which that grim ferryman of the ferruginous boat, assumes the functions of the ancient Nemesis, and rebukes the pride of life in one who is too young to know that "He that glorieth should glory in the Lord."

CHARON AND THE MAIDEN.

A fair young maid was boasting high she feared no harm from Charon,-
Nine brothers she had, and Constantine was soon to be her husband,
Who owned four lofty palaces, and was lord of many houses.
But Charon changed his shape, and came like to a black-winged swallow,
And flew athwart, and shot the maid i'the heart with his deadly arrow;
And her mother wept when she beheld, her mother wept full sorely.
"O Charon, cruel was thy aim, thy shot that smote my daughter,
My dear-loved girl, my only child, in all her youth and beauty!"
Then from the far and mountain glen came Constantine the bridegroom,
With fourscore men, and and sixty-two to harp the bridal music.
"Have done with glee, my trusty men; ye harpers, cease your harping;
A cross I see before the door of my bride's mother's dwelling.
Belike, belike, her mother is dead, her mother or else her father;
Or of her brothers one hath been sore wounded in the battle."

He spurs his steed, his good black steed, and to the church he cometh,
And finds the master-mason there, where he a tomb is building.
"God bless thee, master-mason, say, whose tomb here art thou building?"
"For the maid so fair, with yellow hair and dark eyes, I am building;
Nine brothers had she, and Constantine was soon to be her husband,
Who owned four lofty palaces, and was lord of many houses."
"O master-mason, master fine, I pray thee, speed thy building,
A little larger make the tomb, a tomb to hold two bodies,"

He took his golden-hilted sword, and in his heart he plunged it;
And in that tomb they buried two, the maid and the youth that loved her.

The above two ballads are from Fauriel's collection, and exhibit the general type of the short Romaic Tpayoudt, both in matter and manner. The rhymth is one sufficiently familiar to our ear, and handled not without a tincture of that sleepy monotony and canorous iteration, in which the uncultivated popular ear delights. The following is from: Dr. Kind's little volume, and is rhymed. THE CLEPTHS.

From the hills the Clepths came down,
Seeking horses to their mind;
Horses none when they could find
All my pretty lambs they stole
Lambs and kids they took the whole.
And away, away they go!

O woe's me! woe's me, waly wo!
My lambs away,

And my kids took they;

O woe's me, woe!

II.

And the pail in which I pour
The creaming milk, away they bore;
And the pipe to which I sing,
Rudely from my hands they wring.
And away, away they go!

O woe's me! woe's me, waly wo!
My lambs away

And my kids took they

O woe's me, woe!

III.

And they took away outright,
With its horns of silver white,
My brave belwether, that outrolled
Its shaggy fleece of flowing gold.

And away, away they go!
O woe's me! woe's me, waly wo!
My lambs and my wether
They stole together;

O woe's me, woe!

IV.

Would to God some vengeful hand
Might seize the lawless robber band
In their dens; and sheer undo
Them, and all their thievish crew!
That I might see my brave belwether,
And my lambs again together
In the fold.—O waly woe! ·
My lambs away

And my kids took they;
O woe's me, woe!

V.

If the All-holy in the skies

The ruthless robbers will chastise,
I will roast a lamb till it
Fall in pieces from the spit;

Mid flowers that tell of coming May,
On holy George's festal day,
I'll feast, and bless the queen all-holy.
That laid the ruthless robbers lowly.

O woe's me! woe's me! waly wo!
My lambs away

And my kids took they;

O woe's me, woe!

same name, in which the German Milton ("yes a very German Milton!") vented his vaporous piety. On a late occasion taking it up, (for Sunday reading,) before getting to the end of the first act, we were so This song is characteristic enough, both afflicted with a languid sensation, similar to of what certain parts of Greece are now, what oppresses the stomach after large po and of what certain parts of Scotland were tations of weak tea, that we could proceed not much over a hundred years ago. There no further. In "The Wanderer" of his is nothing in Greek brigandage but what brother Alexander, there are no doubt indivibelongs to the history of all nations at a dual passages of considerable lyric power and certain stage of civilisation. The last verse sublimity; but, as a whole, it is merely a with its prominent imprecation of the Vir- feeble and broken echo of Childe Harold. gin Mary, the all-holy (πavayía) queen of To condemn all the larger productions of the heaven, and Saint George, and the act of recent Greek Muse wholesale, we will not worship of which the roasting of a whole venture, because we have not read them; sheep forms a principal part, is peculiarly but what we have read, besides a great deal Neo-Hellenic, and will suggest to those of false and exaggerated sentiment, labours who have visited Greece, many a pleasant under the general vice of rhetorical diffusepicture of rustic piety of which they may ness, which must be violently cut down, behave been spectators. fore any high excellence can be achieved. Inferior in interest to the popular ballads, Among the lighter warblings of the lyre, but still not without a strong claim on the at- however, we have found several pieces, and tention of the lover of poetry, are the more hope to find more, that well deserve a place cultivated efforts of the young Greek lyre- in any collection of Greek lyric poetry; and not flying voices of the undistinguished peo- even in much that is feeble or exaggerated, ple, but distinct articulations of some known we have been delighted to recognise a flush singer, and professional student of verse. of nationality that is powerful to lend an In this department of literature the Greeks engaging charm even to weakness. Patrihave no doubt yet to look for their national otism, like charity, covers a multitude of spokesman. Instead of a poetical Napoleon, sins. In the following ode, for instance, of leading whole armies to the fields of harmo- Karatsoutscas, there is much that is juvenile nious conflict, and filling Europe with the in the style, and overworked in the senti sound of a succession of great battles, we ment: but it is so thoroughly Greek, and have only a few expert skirmishers, and expresses so burningly from the heart of Helcaptains of the guerilla warfare of the muses, lenic patriotism, the faith in a mighty past, whose exploits none hear of but those who and an impending future of national glory, visit the valleys where they are native. that it must be read with very great plea However high Panagiotes Soutzos may con- sure by all who sympathize with the hopes ceit himself to stand—and he has made some at present animating the best minds in curious revelations of self-esteem lately, in Greece. The allusion to Turkey in the the ""A" and elsewhere he may de- seventh and eighth stanzas, and to the respend upon it the eyes of Europe are not toration of the Byzantine empire in the condirected to him at the present moment. His cluding part of the poem, will be read with "Messiah," we are afraid, will never make interest at the present moment. Poets one-tenth part of the noise in Europe that have sometimes more to do with politics was made by that windy production of the than diplomatists.

PANHELLENICS.

I.

With Parnassus' laurel wreath, the wreath aye green and never fading,
Green in face of frosty winter, and rude Boreas harsh-invading;
With the laurel I will wreathe my lyre, a song of freedom raising
To my country, Greece and all her mighty glory truly praising;
Happy if my well-nerved hands shall strike no feebly falling measure,
If the ears that love the land shall drink my loyal strain with pleasure,
If with song while I commend thee,

One kind glance of fair approval thou, my country dear, shalt lend me !

Kind says that the author was only twenty years of age at the publication of the volume from which this extract is taken.

VOL. XX.

6

II.

For the Mars that wasted Creta, Greece a stole of sorrow weareth;
For the Mars that crushed fair Creta, Greece her locks of beauty teareth.
Creta, when the Mars that crushed thee, marched his club of terror shaking,
Brandishing the sword, which flashing fills the tyrant's heart with quaking,
Darkened was the ray that cometh from the disk of Phoebus streaming;
From its base in darkness rooted, to its peak with white snow gleaming,
Men beheld high Ida brightening,

Saw the seat of thundering Jove far-flaming with the frequent lightning.

III.

In the Sultan's hall, the Sultan's wisest counsellors assemble,

Seize their white beards with their hands, and inly puzzled think and tremble,
How thy patriot fire, O Creta, they may quench with tyrant's knavery;

And the powers of Europe lend a helping hand to fix thy slavery,

Ply with threats each dastard heart, and bait with golden wiles the traitor;
And amid the faithless crew,-O shame, O mockery of nature!
He whom Greece had made defender

Of her rights-her Consul-he was the first to cry-Surrender!

IV.

And the Greek that loves his country, when he saw his Cretan brother,
Prostrate, in his brother's breast the rising pity could he smother?
Was that sacred fire extinguished, that with generous inspiration,
When the stranger feared to touch her, filled the wide Hellenic nation?
Did the graves not ope their jaws, and forth with wrathful resurrection
Rush the dim troops of harnessed shades, to pledge their father-land's protection?
Did the past not fire the present,

In the hall of every burgher, in the hut of every peasant!

V.

No! that fire is not extinguished in the heart of Hellas glowing;

It shall burn while earth shall stand, while old Ocean's wave is flowing.
Slavery oft hath stamped on slaves the love of their own degradation:
But the type of years could never stamp with serf the free Greek nation.
Cursed be they who bind the hands of Hellas when her bonds she breaketh;
Cursed who bar the gates of freedom, when the glorious start she taketh;
May the curse of Greeks united,

Lie upon them, like the Furies, when their breath consumes the blighted!

VI.

"When the joyful news was speeded, that the sons of Crete had risen, All the people clapp'd their hands to hail the captive from his prison,

All the women and the children leap for joy; and every temple

Was hung with gifts and prayers for thee, that none on thy young rights might trample. But the hope of Greeks was darkened, and their vows had no completion,

And the men that hate her triumphed; and their hatred found addition,

Treachery vile hath triumphed o'er thee,

Crete; thou liest low; and we in vain with many tears deplore thee.

VII.

How should Europe, silly Europe, when the sign of death is plainly
Hung out on a nation's forehead, try to cheat strong nature vainly?
Can a tree be bright with blossom, can its fruit be ripe and glowing,
When a worm the pith consumeth, when no juice of life is flowing?
Even the water round the root, that with such busy care thou pourest,
Feeds the rot that eats the heart of the frail life that thou restorest.
When life's thread is broken, never

Shall the wits of all the wisest bind it with their strong endeavour.

VIII.

I will speak it in a figure: like a house with many chambers
Turkey stands an old house hoary with the crust of long Decembers.
Many a prideful year it witnessed, now it knows the hour of sorrow;
Tottering reels one wall to-day, and another falls to-morrow.
Let the hand of man approach it, and before its ruin bury
Nobler piles and worthier mansions, with a wise precaution hurry,
Down to cast the crazy dwelling,

And upraise a safer o'er it, and in beauty more excelling.

IX.

Europe, if a work thou seekest where thy toil shall find a blessing,
For the waste wouldst plant a garden worthy of thy nicest dressing,
List, and I will tell thee wisely how, being great, thou may'st be greater.
Near to Turkey is a land, a little land where kindly Nature

Such a power of brilliant beauty, and each comeliest grace has showered,
That no tongue can tell the store of that rich grace with which 'twas dowered.
'Tis a lovely land, concealing

Virtue, like the magnet's power, to seize the sense and charm the feeling.

X.

In this land a people dwells, rich in high ancestral glory;

Clio names no race more noble in her roll of various story.

Bound in darkness lay the Earth; the precious light of knowledge perished;
Rule tyrannic, deeply rooted, spread its arms abroad and flourished.

The forced sweat of all the nations, and their bright blood crimson flowing,
Sucked a monstrous biform dragon, proud the double ensign shewing
Of the crown to monarchs given,

And the mitre of the priest who serves the Lord that rules in Heaven.

XI.

In the claws of this Chimera torn, humanity lay bleeding.

From the East a wasting fire-flood came, and wildly Westward speeding,
Spread to Earth's remotest corner, death and devastation dealing;
But unharmed amid the deluge stood the Hellenic tribe, revealing

A miraculous virtue stable; by despotic sway surrounded,

Greece preserved her laws and freedom undisturbed and unconfounded;
She serene and independent,

All the world a march of tyrants, with a train of serfs attendant.

XII.

Strong and self-sustained, Greece never to a sacred priestly college

Sold her right of thought: free-branching flowed the common stream of knowledge.
Brutish gods she never worshipped, crocodiles and creeping creatures,
But Apollo and the Muses, gods with bright benignant features.
Pyramids she never pil d, colossal rows of Sphynxes keeping
Watch around the solemn Dead, in their cold stone-chambers sleeping;
But she raised the glorious temple,

With its clear sun-fronting rock, and its pillar'd ranges ample.

XIII.

In this land the seed of Poesy, by the gods benignly planted,

Swelled and grew to leafy grandeur. Orpheus here and Linus chanted
Songs that stirred the rooted forest, stayed the flood, and tamed the lion ;
Here the stones in rhythmic order rose to please thy lute, Amphion;
Here the far career of thought first opened on the wondering nations;
Here of every art were laid, of every science, sure foundations;

And all subtle searching spirits

Loved to graft their art with thoughts which all the world from Greece inherits.

XIV.

But alas! a savage storm swept o'er the land, before whose power
Even their trees uprooted fell, the fair trees of the Grecian bower,
And the seed of truth was wafted where a cool-brained race, laborious,

Reaped, from fields which thou hadst sown, an intellectual harvest glorious;
And when feasting on the fragrance of thy fruitful gardens, never
Dreamt to cast a grateful glance on thee, of these fair gifts the giver.
Greece their stumbling march assisted,

But to their conceit no Greece in all the measured world existed.

XV.

Where the Muse of Eschylus soared on wings of solemn chorus ample,
Turcoman lordes the soil of Hellas with unlettered feet did trample,
Then when Riga's mighty martyr gathered in the inspiration

Of his war-song, all the slender hopes that still sustained his nation.

On his head the axe descended, lay his laurel crushed and bloody;
But from that free song came forth a wondrous blossom bright and ruddy :
As from a mother's throes laborious

Greece was born anew in him, and Freedom rose to life victorious.