Lie helplessly, nor heed their bounden duties. In heavy masses, all unbound, Her golden glittering hair lies heaped upon the ground. Old Ocean, all aghast At the sad scene that passed, On crested waves stole sadly to the shore, To where the maiden lay, And kissed her cold feet in affliction sore; Whereat she started from her trance, And rising, gazed around with sad and troubled glance. But soon rushed back again The torrent of her pain, Her lover's vessel was in sight no longer; Dreaming he may be found, She roams the isle around, And ever as she roams her grief grows stronger; Until the doubt is dreadful truth, That he hath fled the isle, and left her without ruth. Then, yielding to despair, She tears her yellow hair, And beats her bursting breast in hopeless sorrow; Curses the desert strand, And fain from frenzy would she comfort borrow. In shedding floods of tears she seeks a sad relief. The birds and beasts are all But Philomela, from a neighbouring bush Such plaintive numbers pours, Bids from her throat such thrilling notes to gush, That drowned in liquid music down she dying falls. Sad Ariadne's grief Found in the song relief, And half in listening she forgot her woes; But when she saw her slain By her excess of pain, Envying the bird that thus her grief could close, She hied her homewards to her cave, And rather slew herself than would her sorrows brave." Even more perfect is "Love's Creed." If we sought for a parallel to it, we should be obliged to turn to Goethe in order to find any analogous combination of an almost Catullian form with an ethereal grace and tenderness of spirit. "Sitting once with my beloved, When our inmost hearts were moved The following exists only as a fragment, and is as suggestive a bit of landscape as any in Tennyson: "Upon the reedy margin of the shore, Shallow and waste, I stand, And hear far Ocean's low continuous roar Over the flats and sand. The wide, gray sky hangs low above the verge, No sound, save the eternal-sounding surge, While the salt sea-wind whispers in my ears, I seem absolved from the departed years, The Sonnets alone would, as it seems to us, be sufficient to stamp the writer as one of the company of poets who deserve to be remembered, though their words may be few. The following triad can hardly fail to command admiration: I. "If the first meaning of imagined words Had not been dulled by long promiscuous use, Or if, within the breasts of those that choose Of most deep meaning, and touch hidden clues,— II. Then would I say, thou hadst a shape of beauty, A most rare judgment hadst thou, which was seen Thence sprang thy wisdom, which did ever lean Thy lofty courage hid itself in gentleness; And such a soft dependence didst thou prove With these great gifts, thou, like a babe. didst press III. Love in thy heart like living waters rose, Of thy divine affections rose; white congress, And Love which casts out fear,-this was the sum of thee." We must not omit to cite an instance of the melancholy depth to be found in some parts of the series, noticing at the same time the characteristic manner in which gloom as well as cheerfulness is set forth through the medium of a beautiful artistic image: Behold the melancholy season's wane! Oppressed with clouds and with the rainy days, Wax fainter, and my face grows to the grave." There is a quiet strength, we think, in all which we have quoted, without which nothing is really graceful in any high sense. Grace implies a certain elasticity,-a certain natural tendency to the erect, and an easy, unconstrained movement within the limits of natural power; and these qualities emi- nently belong to Mr. Roscoe's poems. We conclude our notice with the short piece which the editor has placed at the close of the Minor Poems, and which may fitly conclude any notice of the poet's works or life. 66 SYMBOLS OF VICTORY. Yellow leaves on the ash-tree, Soft glory in the air, And the streaming radiance of sunshine On the leaden clouds over there. At a window a child's mouth smiling, At the flying rainy landscape Angels hanging from heaven, And the promise of great salvation L ART. VIII.—DE BIRAN'S PENSÉES. Maine de Biran, sa Vie et ses Pensées, publiées par Ernest Naville. Paris, 1857. THE name Maine de Biran is probably unknown to the majority of even serious readers in England. Indeed, in his own country, according to his biographer, M. de Naville, "on le lit peu, et on le connaît mal." Yet no less an authority than M. Cousin has pronounced him "the greatest metaphysician by whom France has been honoured since Malebranche." The volume before us constitutes in some respects one of the most profoundly interesting and valuable delineations of the interior life and moral and spiritual progress of a man of genius with which we are acquainted. It is under this aspect exclusively that we shall consider the production issued by M. de Naville. Although a portion of the philosophical writings of Maine de Biran, in four quarto volumes, has been published, his biographer says, that "we possess but a very incomplete account of the doctrines of this philosopher." There is some naïveté in this admission; for it is exceedingly plain from the Pensées, which extend over a space of thirty years, and of which the last were written only a few weeks before his death, that "this philosopher" himself was not much clearer in this matter than his readers. And, in fact, if it were possible to give a complete account of his views, the work we are about to notice would be wanting in that which constitutes its peculiar interest, as the selfdelineation of a man whose whole life was occupied in making and recording observations of his actual psychological experience, with a characteristic horror of any thing which was not either a spiritual fact, or an immediate and obvious deduction from it; |