Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 | Page 2

singing bird--does not appear: but we suspect the former, for this sonnet is immediately followed by "A Pastoral Ballad!" calling upon some Celia unknown to "pity his tears and complaint," &c., in the usual namby-pamby style of these compositions. To any one who considers the smart, espiègle, highly artificial style of "Tom Moore's" after compositions, his "Pastoral Ballad" will be what Coleridge called his Vision, a "psychological curiosity."
Passing on through the volumes, in the Number for February 1794 we find a paraphrase of the Fifth Ode of Anacreon, by "Thomas Moore;" another short poem in June 1794, "To the Memory of Francis Perry, Esq.," signed "T. M.," and dated "Aungier Street." These are all which can be identified by outward and visible signs, without danger of mistake: but there are a number of others scattered through the volumes which I conjecture may be his; they are under different signatures, generally T. L., which may be taken to stand for the alias "Thomas Little," by which Moore afterwards made himself so well known. There is an "Ode to Morning," in the Number for March 1794, above the ordinary run of magazine poetry. And in the Number for May following are "Imitations from the Greek" and Italian, all under this same signature. And this last being derived from some words in Petrarch's will, bequeathing his lute to a friend, is the more curious; and may the more probably be supposed Moore's, as it contains a thought which is not unlikely to have suggested in after years the idea of his celebrated melody, entitled the "Bard's Legacy." The Number for Nov. 1794, last but one in the fourth volume, contains a little piece on "Variety," which independent of a T. M. signature, I would almost swear, from internal evidence, to be Moore's; it is the last in the series, and indicates such progress as two years might be supposed to give the youthful poet, from the lack-a-daisical style of his first attempts, towards that light, brilliant, sportive vein of humour in which he afterwards wrote "What the Bee is to the Flowret," &c., and other similar compositions. I now give Moore's first sonnet, including its footnote, reminding us of the child's usual explanatory addition to his first drawing of some amorphous animal--"This is a horse!" or "a bear!" as the case may be. Neither the metre nor the matter would prepare us for the height to which the writer afterwards scaled "the mountain's height of Parnassus:"
"TO ZELIA.
(On her charging the Author with writing too much on Love.)
'Tis true my Muse to love inclines, And wreaths of Cypria's myrtle twines; Quits all aspiring, lofty views, And chaunts what Nature's gifts infuse: Timid to try the mountain's* height, Beneath she strays, retir'd from sight, Careless, culling amorous flowers; Or quaffing mirth in Bacchus' bowers. When first she raised her simplest lays In Cupid's never-ceasing praise, The God a faithful promise gave-- That never should she feel Love's stings, Never to burning passion be a slave, But feel the purer joy thy friendship brings.
* Parnassus!"
If you think this fruit of a research into a now almost forgotten work, which however contains many matters of interest (among the rest, "The Baviad of Gifford"), worth insertion, please put it among "N. & Q.;" it may incite others to look more closely, and perhaps trace other "disjecta membra poet?."
A. B. R.
Belmont.
* * * * *
NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.
(Continued from p. 544.)
Let no one say that a tithe of these instances would have sufficed. Whoever thinks so, little understands the vitality of error. Most things die when the brains are out: error has no brains, though it has more heads than the hydra. Who could have believed it possible that after Steevens's heaped-up proofs in support of the authentic reading, "carded his state" (King Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2.), Warburton's corruption, 'scarded, i. e. discarded, was again to be foisted into the text on the authority of some nameless and apocryphal commentator? Let me be pardoned if I prefer Shakspeare's genuine text, backed by the masterly illustrations of his ablest glossarist, before the wishy-washy adulterations of Nobody: and as a small contribution to his abundant avouchment of the original reading, the underwritten passage may be flung in, by way of make-weight:
"Carded his state (says King Henry), Mingled his royaltie with carping fooles."
"Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach doctrinas novas et peregrinas, new imaginations never heard of before, or to revive the old and new dress them. And these--for that by themselves they will not utter--to mingle and to card with the Apostles' doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent them."--One of the Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on