WILLIAM MUNFORD. [Born, 1775. Died, 1825.] WILLIAM MUNFORD, the translator of the " Ilind." was born in the county of Mecklenburg, in Virginia, on the fifteenth of August, 1775. His father, Colonel ROBERT MUNFORD, was honourably distinguished in affairs during the Revolution, and afterward gave much attention to literature. Some of his letters, to be found in collections relating to the time, are written with grace and vigour, and he was the author of several dramatic pieces, of considerable merit, which, with a few minor poems, were published by his son, the subject of the present article, at Petersburg, in 1798. In his best comedy, "The Candidates," in three acts, he exposes to contempt the falsehood and corruption by which it was frequently attempted to influence the elections. In "The Patriots," in five acts, he contrasts, probably with an eye to some instance in Virginia, a real and pretended love of country. He had commenced a translation of Ovin's " Metamorphoses" into English verse, and had finished the first book, when death arrested his labours. He was a man of wit and humour, and was respected for many social virtues. His literary activity is referred to thus particularly, because I have not seen that the pursuits and character of the father, have been noticed by any of the writers upon the life of the son, which was undoubtedly in a very large degree influenced by them. WILLIAM MUNFORD was transferred from an academy at Petersburg, to the college of William and Mary, when only twelve years of age. In a letter written soon after he entered his fourteenth year, we have some information in regard to his situation and prospects. "I received from nature," he says, "a weakly constitution and a sickly body; and I have the unhappiness to know that my poor mother is in want. I am absent from her and my dear sisters. Put this in the scale of evil. I possess the rare and almost inestimable blessing of a friend in Mr. WYTHE and in JOHN RANDOLPH; I have a mother in whose heart I have a large share; two sisters, whose affections I flatter myself are fixed upon me; and fair prospects before me, provided I can complete my education, and am not destitute of the necessaries of life. Put these in the scale of good." This was a brave letter for a boy to write under such circumstances. Mr. WYTHE here referred to was afterward the celebrated chancellor. He was at this time professor of law in the college, and young MUNFORD lived in his family; and, sharing the fine enthusiasm with which the retired statesman regarded the literature of antiquity, he became an object of his warm affection. His design to translate the “ Iliad" was formed at an early period, and it was probably encouraged by Mr. WYTHE, who per sonally instructed him in ancient learning. In 1792, when Mr. WYTHE was made chancellor, and removed to Richmond, Mr. MUNFORD accompanied him, but he afterward returned to the college, where he had graduated with high honours, to at tend to the law lectures of Mr. ST. GEORGE TUCKER. In his twentieth year he was called to the bar, in his native county, and his abilities and industry soon secured for him a respectable practice. He rose rapidly in his profession, and in the public confidence, and in 1797 was chosen a member of the House of Delegates, in which he continued until 1802, when he was elected to the senate, which he left after four years, to enter the Privy Council, of which he was a conspicuous member until 1811. He then received the place of clerk of the House of Delegates, which he retained until his death. This occurred at Richmond, where he had resided for nineteen years, on the twentyfirst of July, 1825. In addition to his ordinary professional and political labours, he reported the decisions of the Virginia Supreme Court of Ap peals, preparing six annual volumes without assistance, and four others, afterward, in connexion with Mr. W. W. HENRY. He possessed in a remarkable degree the affectionate respect of the people of the commonwealth; and the House of Delegates, upon his death, illustrated their regard for his memory by appointing his eldest son to the office which he had so long held, and which has thus for nearly a quarter of a century longer continued in his family. The only important literary production of Mr. MUNFORD is his HOMER. This was his life-labour. The amazing splendour of the Tale of Troy captivated his boyish admiration, and the cultiva tion of his own fine mind enabled him but to see more and more its beauty and grandeur. It is not known at what time he commenced his ver sion, but a large portion of it had been written in 1811, and the work was not completed until a short time before he died. In his modest preface he says: "The author of this translation was induced to undertake it by fond admiration of the almost unparalleled sublimity and beauty of the original; neither of which peculiar graces of HoMER's muse has, he conceives, been sufficiently expressed in the smooth and melodious rhymes of POPE. It is true that the fine poem of that elegant writer, which was the delight of my boy. ish days, and will always be read by me with un common pleasure, appears in some parts more beautiful than even the work of HOMER himself; but frequently it is less beautiful; and seldom does it equal the sublimity of the Greek." He had not seen CowPER'S "Iliad" until his own was consid erably advanced, and it does not appear that he was ever acquainted with CHAPMAN'S or SOTHEBY'S. He wrote, too, before the Homeric poetry had received the attention of those German scholars whose masterly criticisms have given to its literature an entirely new character. But he had studied the "Iliad" until his own mind was thoroughly imbued with its spirit; he approached his task with the fondest enthusiasm; well equipped with the best learning of his day; a style fashioned upon the most approved models: dignified, various, and disciplined into uniform elegance; and a judicial habit of mind, joined with a consci EXTRACTS FROM THE "ILIAD." THE MEETING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE. This said, illustrious HECTOR stretch'd his arms The brazen helm, and crest with horse-hair crown'd, Which, nodding dreadful from its lofty cone, Alarm'd him. Sweetly then the father smiled, And sweetly smiled the mother! Soon the chief Removed the threatening helmet from his head, And placed it on the ground, all beaming bright; entious determination to present the living HOMER, as he was known in Greece, to the readers of our time and language. His manuscript remained twenty years in the possession of his family, and was finally published in two large octavo volumes, in Boston, in 1846. It received the attention due from our scholars to such a performance, and the general judgment appears to have assigned it a place near to CHAPMAN'S and CowPER's in fidelity, and between COWPER'S and POPE's in elegance, energy, and all the best qualities of an English poem. Then having fondly kiss'd his son beloved EMBARKATION OF THE GREEKS. They, all day long, with hymns the god appeased; To hear that pleasant song-and when the sun JOHN SHAW. [Born, 1778. Died, 1809.] JOHN SHAW was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on the fourth of May, 1778; graduated at St. John's College, in that city, in 1796; after studying medicine two years, with a private teacher, entered the medical school connected with the University of Pennsylvania, in 1798; in the same year suddenly sailed for Algiers, as surgeon of several vessels built in this country for the Algerine government; became secretary to General Eaton, our consul at Tunis; returned to Annapolis in 1800; the next year went to Edinburgh for the completion of his professional education; in 1803 left Scotland with Lord WHO HAS ROBBED THE OCEAN CAVE? WHO has robbed the ocean cave, On thy breath their fragrance borne: Guard thy bosom from the day, Lest thy snows should melt away. But one charm remains behind, Which mute earth could ne'er impart; Nor in ocean wilt thou find, Nor in the circling air, a heart : Fairest, wouldst thou perfect be, THE LAD FROM TUCKAHOE. On the lad from Tuckahoe, Is the lad whom I love dearly, I tell it you sincerely, That all the truth may know. From the day that first I knew him He struck my fancy so, That my love shall still pursue him, The lad from Tuckahoe. He alighted at the door, Where my aunt and I were spinning, And his looks they were so winning, I thought of work no more. My aunt, her anger hiding, Ask'd what made me trifle so, But I never mind her chiding, When he comes from Tuckahoe. | Selkirk, then about to establish his colony on the north side of Lake St. Clair; in 1805 settled in his native town as a physician; in 1807 was married, and removed to Baltimore, and was busy with efforts to found a medical college there, when his health failed, and died, on a voyage to the Bahama Islands, on the tenth of January, 1809. He had been a writer for "The Port Folio," and other periodicals, and after his death a collection of his poems was published in Baltimore. They have not generally much merit, but among them is a beautiful song,beginning, "Who has robbed the ocean cave?" which will live. THE FALSE MAIDEN. OH, wert thou hail'd the sole queen Of all that greets the day-star's view, And curling falls thy glossy hair, For ah! thy flinty cold heart Ill suits thy beauty's treacherous glow, "T is filled alone with woman's art, And ne'er could love or pity know. Ah, wo to him who loves thee!Not knowing thee he loves thee; For thou canst trifle with his woes, While passion never moves thee. With what fond love I wooed thee, Each sleepless night sad witness bears, My breast that heaved with sighs for thee, My wan cheek wet with bitter tears. All told how much I loved thee, And thou didst know I loved thee, And thou couldst smile to see the pain Of him who dearly loved thee. But broken is the fond spell: My fate no more depends on thee; And thou, perhaps, one day shalt tell Thy sorrow and remorse for me; For none can ever love thee As dearly as I loved thee, And I shall court thy chains no more,— CLEMENT C. MOORE. [Born about 1778.] CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. D., a son of the Right Reverend BENJAMIN MOORE, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York, was born at Newtown, on Long Island, about the year 1778, and graduated bachelor of arts at Columbia College in 1799. His early addiction to elegant literature was illustrated in various poetical and prose contributions to the "Port Folio" and the New York "Evening Post ;" and his abilities as a critic were shown in a pungent reviewal of contemporary American poetry, especially of Mr. JOSEPH STORY'S "Powers of Solitude," in a letter prefixed to his friend JOHN DUER'S "New Translation of the Third Satire of JUVENAL, with Miscellaneous Poems, Original and Translated," which appeared in 1806. "Anna Matilda," and "Della Crusca," were still the fashionable models of our sentimentalists, and Mr. STORY followed Mrs. MORTON, ROBERT TREAT PAINE, WILLIAM LADD, and others of that school, who, to use Mr. MOORE's language, "if they could procure from the wardrobe of poesy a sufficient supply of dazzling ornaments wherewith to deck their intellectual offspring, were utterly regardless whether the body of sense which these decorations were designed to render attractive were worthy of attention, or mean and distorted and in danger of being overwhelmed by the profusion of its ornaments.' Devoting his attention to biblical learning, Mr. ROBERT MERRY, after being graduated master of arts at Oxford, went to Italy, and by some means was elected into the celebrated Florentine academy of "Della Crusca," the name of which he adopted, with characteristic modesty, as the signature of numerous pieces of verse which he wrote in rapid succession for "The Florence Miscellany," and a periodical in London called "The World." He became the leader of a school of small poets, one of whom was Mrs. Piozzi, so well known to the readers of BOSWELL, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Anna Matilda," and another, Mrs. ROBINSON, a profligate actress, who announced herself as "Laura Maria." The "nonsense verses" of these people became fashionable; the press teemed for some years with their silly effusions; and men of taste could not refrain from regarding them as an intolerable nuisance. At the same time a base fellow, named JOHN WILLIAMS, was writing lampoons in verse under the name of " Anthony Pasquin." After the publication of GIFFORD'S "Baviad and Mæviad," "Anthony Pasquin" was driven from England by contempt, and "Della Crusca" by derision; and both found an asylum in the United States- the libeller to become the editor of a democratic newspaper, and the sentimentalist to acquire an influence over our fledgeling poets not less apparent than that which TENNYSON has exerted in later years. He resided in our principal cities, and continued to write and publish till he died, in Baltimore, on the twenty-fourth of December, 1798, in the forty-third year of his age. STORY, in his "Powers of Solitude," pays him the following tribute: "Wild bard of fancy! o'er thy timeless tomb To sing, at evening close, their roundelay, With Spring's rich flowers shall dress thy sacred grave, MOORE in 1809 published in two volumes the first American "Lexicon of the Hebrew Language," and he was afterwards many years professor of Hebrew and Greek in the General Theological Seminary, of which he was one of the founders and principal benefactors. His only or most important publications in later years have been a volume of "Poems," in 1844, and "George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, King of Albania," an historical biography, in 1852. In some touching lines to Mr. SOUTHEY, written in 1832, Dr. MOORE reveals a portion of his private history, which proves that the happiest condition is not exempt from the common ills; but his life appears to have been nearly all passed very quietly, in the cultivation of learning, and in intercourse with a few congenial friends. In his old age, sending a bunch of flowers to the late Mr. PHILIP HONE, he wrote to him: "These new-cull'd blossoms which I send, Nor how they all should be combined, The true emotions of my mind. If mingled in proportions right, These colours that so various gleam, With friendship's pure and tranquil beam." In his answer, Mr. HONE says: "Filled as thou art with attic fire, And skilled in classic lore divine, And welcome, shall thy steps attend; More dear to me than all, as friend." In the preface to the collection of his poems, Dr. MOORE remarks that he has printed the melancholy and the lively, the serious, the sportive, and even the trifling, that his children, to whom the book is addressed, might have as true a picture as possible of his mind. They are all marked by good taste and elegance. "I do not pay my readers," he says, "so ill a compliment as to offer the contents of this volume to their view as the mere amusements of my idle hours, as though the refuse of my thoughts were good enough for them. On the contrary, some of the pieces have cost me much time and thought, and I have composed them all as carefully and correctly as I could." A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS. "T WAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen ! On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blitzen- TO MY CHILDREN, AFTER HAVING MY PORTRAIT TAKEN FOR THEM. THIS semblance of your parent's time-worn face When we have mouldered in the silent tomb. But no! it is not we who moulder there, We, of essential light that ever burns; We take our way through untried fields of air, When to the earth this earth-born frame returns. And 't is the glory of the master's art Some radiance of this inward light to find, Some touch that to his canvas may impart A breath, a sparkle of the immortal mind. Alas! the pencil's noblest power can show But some faint shadow of a transient thought, Some wakened feeling's momentary glow, Some swift impression in its passage caught. Oh that the artist's pencil could portray A father's inward bosom to your eyes, Then might this unsubstantial image prove The void that baffles all the painter's art; And when those mimic features meet your eye, Then fancy that they speak a parent's heart. Think that you still can trace within those eyes, Fancy those lips still utter sounds of praise, Or kind reproof that checks each wayward will, The warning voice, or precepts that may raise Your thoughts above this treacherous world of ill. And thus shall art attain her loftiest power; |