BOOK SECOND.

1797-1805. T. 22-30.

AUTHORSHIP OF GEBIR, AND EARLIEST FRIENDSHIPS.

I. Gebir.-II. Some Opinions of Gebir.-III. Doctor Parr.-IV. Attack of the Monthly Review. V. Sergeant Rough. - VI. Corresponding with Parr

and Adair. - VII. At Paris in 1802. VIII. Poetry by the Author of Gebir. -IX. Walter Birch; and Succession to Family Estates.

I. GEBIR.

Ir is easier to laugh at a thing than to take the trouble to comprehend it; and when the Quarterly Review said, a good many years ago, that Gebir was a poem it did any man credit to have understood, there was more in the saying than its author meant. He was not himself entitled to the credit, though he might have won it with a little pains.

The intention of the poem is, by means of the story of Gebir and his brother Tamar, to rebuke the ambition of conquest, however excusable its origin, and to reward the contests of peace, however at first unsuccessful. Gebir is an Iberian prince, sovereign of Bætic Spain, whose conquest of Egypt, undertaken to avenge the wrongs and assert the claims of his ancestors, is suspended through his love for its young Queen Charoba, by the treachery of whose nurse he is nevertheless slain amid the rejoicings of his marriage feast. Tamar is a shepherd youth, the keeper of his brother's herds and flocks, by whom nothing is so eagerly desired as to conquer to his love one of the sea-nymphs whom at first he vainly contends with, but who, made subject to mortal control by the superior power of his brother, yields to the passion already inspired in her, and carries Tamar to dwell with her forever beyond the reach of human ambitions.

Fanciful and wild in its progress as the Arabian tale that suggested it, there is yet thus much purpose in the outline of Gebir; but its merit lies apart from intention or construction, and will be found in the passion and intellect pervading it everywhere, in its richness of detail and descriptive power. Style and treatment constitute the

charm of it.

The vividness with which everything in it is presented to sight as well as thought, the wealth of its imagery, its marvels of language, these are characteristics pre-eminent in Gebir. In *From Gebir we are to suppose Gibraltar to be derived, after the fashion of the Teucro-Latin names in Virgil.

the treatment, never abruptly contrasted, natural and supernatural agencies are employed with excellent art; and everywhere as real to the eye as to the mind are its painted pictures, its sculptured forms, and the profusion of its varied but always thoughtful emotion.

These qualities I shall exhibit in describing the seven books, containing nearly two thousand lines, that tell the story; and my extracts will also show the sweetness of the verse, which, though with occasional want of variety in modulation, is to a remarkable degree both energetic and harmonious. I shall quote from it at unusual length; not only because it is unknown to the present reading generation, but because no description without such assistance could account for the effect produced by it upon a few extraordinary men. The mark it made in Landor's life will constantly recur; and of the manner in which his genius affected his contemporaries, not by influencing the many, but by exercising mastery over the few who ultimately rule the many, no completer illustration could be given.

The love inspired in the brothers respectively finds expression in the First Book, which opens with the invasion of Egypt by Gebir in redemption of an oath sworn to his father, to satisfy his dead ancestors and revenge primeval wrongs. In the fourth line is one of those touches which are frequent in the poem, and proof of high imagination; where a single epithet conveys to the mind the full impression which the sense would receive from detailed presentment of the objects sought to be depicted. The "dark helm " covers the crowd of invading warriors.

"He blew his battle horn, at which uprose

Whole nations; here, ten thousand of most might
He called aloud; and soon Charoba saw

His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile."

The young queen in her terror seeks Dalica her nurse, who reassures her, tells her the invader shall be destroyed, and instructs her, instead of flying from him, to go to his tents and use persuasion to induce him, in honor of his ancestors, to rebuild the city which had once been theirs.

"But Gebir, when he heard of her approach,
Laid by his orbed shield; his vizor-helm,
His buckler, and his corslet he laid by,
And bade that none attend him; at his side
Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course,
Shaggy, deep-chested, croucht; the crocodile,
Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears
And push their heads within their master's hand.*
There was a brightening paleness in his face,
Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks
Showered on the lonely Latmian; on his brow
Sorrow there was, yet naught was there severe.
But when the royal damsel first he saw,

* Among Landor's papers I found a list, prepared by himself, of resemblances to passages of his own writing to be found in Scott's Tales of the Crusaders. There were several from Gebir, and among them that of Coeur de Lion's hound "thrusting his long rough countenance into the hand of his master." The poem had made a great impression on Scott, who read it at Southey's suggestion.

Faint, hanging on her handmaid, and her knees
Tottering, as from the motion of the car,
His eyes lookt earnest on her, and those eyes
Showed if they had not that they might have loved,
For there was pity in them at that hour."

After the interview the prince seeks Tamar, intending to speak of the passion that has taken possession of him, when he is surprised by a confidence which anticipates his own, and has to listen first to Tamar's confession. The shepherd youth's description of the seanymph-a powerful, impulsive, yet submissive creature of the elements, with large supernatural strength taming itself to little natural human ways is perfect in every detail to the old Greek fancy.

In the picture of her dress are two lines,

“Her mantle showed the yellow samphire-pod,

Her girdle the dove-colored wave serene,'

which I quote that I may connect with them a characteristic trait of the writer, who told me once that he had never hesitated more about a verse than in determining whether the mantle or the girdle was to be dove-colored; his doubts having arisen, after he had written the lines, on recollecting from the great Lucretius that the Roman ladies wore a vest of the same description, - teriturque thalassina vestis Assidue, &c.

A prize to be contended for had been proposed between Tamar and the nymph. She has nothing of equal worth to one of his sheep to offer; but she tells him, in a passage which has become one of the glories of our language,* and which it is impossible even to transcribe *I quote from one of Landor's letters to me. "It was my practice, as you know from Gebir, to try my hand at both Latin and English where I had been contented with any passage in one. In Gebir there are a few which were written first in Latin. The Shell was one of these. Poor Shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital." Not without reason he had been irritated by a critic who rebuked Lord Byron for naming Gebir as the source from which he had drawn a passage in his Island; this unlucky critic, after informing the noble poet that his original was not in Landor, but in an exquisite passage" by Mr. Wordsworth, having proceeded to quote the lines from the Excursion in which, like Byron, Wordsworth had copied Landor, but, unlike Byron, without confessing it.

"I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmuring from within
Were heard sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea."

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I will add the passage of the nobler original as it appears in the Latin Gebirus. It may, indeed, be doubted whether the English or the Latin is most perfect.

"At mihi cæruleæ sinuosa foramina conchæ
Obvolvunt, lucemque intus de sole biberunt,
Nam crevêre locis ubi porticus ipsa palatî
Et quà purpureâ medius stat currus in undâ,
Tu quate, somnus abit: tu lævia tange labella
Auribus attentis, veteres reminiscitur ædes,
Oceanusque suus quo murmure murmurat illa."

without something of the pleasure that must have attended its conception:

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed

In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

The conflict or wrestling-match that follows is intensely Greek in the manner of the narration, and simple even to rudeness; but they who would turn it into ridicule will find more abounding opportunity for the same kind of mirth in the idyls of Theocritus and the descriptions of the Odyssey. In the contest the nymph is victor, and leaves Tamar; but

"More of pleasure than disdain
Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip,

And eyes that languisht, lengthening, just like love.
Restless then ran I to the highest ground

To watch her; she was gone; gone down the tide;
And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand

Lay like a jasper column half upreared."

As the brothers take their way to the camp, Gebir confesses in turn his love for Charoba, and his resolve for her to forego his native country and resuscitate in Egypt, the city of his ancestors. The Second Book shows this labor in progress.

"The Gadite men the royal charge obey.

Now fragments weighed up from the uneven streets
Leave the ground black beneath; again the sun
Shines into what were porches, and on steps

Once warm with frequentation; clients, friends,
All morning; satchelled idlers all midday;

Lying half up and languid though at games."

Slowly the buried city emerges; its masses of stone and marble green with the growth of centuries; and its pavements painted with flowers and figures, which, as water is flung on them, start fresh to view.

"Here arches are discovered; there huge beams
Resist the hatchet, but in fresher air

Soon drop away: there spreads a marble squared
And smoothened; some high pillar for its base
Chose it, which now lies ruined in the dust.
Clearing the soil at bottom, they espy
A crevice; and, intent on treasure, strive
Strenuous, and groan, to move it: one exclaims:
'I hear the rusty metal grate; it moves!'
Now, overturning it, backward they start,
And stop again, and see a serpent pant,
See his throat thicken, and the crisped scales
Rise ruffled, while upon the middle fold
He keeps his wary head and blinking eye,
Curling more close and crouching ere he strike.
Go, mighty men, invade far cities, go,
And be such treasure portions to your heirs."

Portents of a more terrible kind succeed. Six days' labor had seemed to bring the end within reach, when, on the seventh day, what was done is found undone, and everything restored to what it had been. Gebir is pierced with sorrow, for he sees that other than mortal hands are raised against him; and, calling together his followers, he bids them supplicate the Gods. Southey thought no English poetry presented anything so Homeric as the passage that succeeds. It would be difficult certainly to imagine a finer image than its closing personification of prayers:

"Swifter than light are they, and every face,

Though different, glows with beauty; at the throne
Of Mercy, when clouds shut it from mankind,
They fall bare-bosomed, and indignant Jove
Drops at the soothing sweetness of their voice
The thunder from his hand.”

But here prayers are vain; and Gebir, believing it now to be some secret power that opposes him other than that of the Gods, hopes that, by subduing to his will the sea-nymph beloved by Tamar, he may obtain the secret from her. He seeks her, dressed as his brother, passing through the woodland to the sea:

"And as he passes on, the little hinds

That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough,
Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied:
Pleased more if chestnut, out of prickly husk
Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade."

Upon the sea-nymph, meanwhile, waiting for Tamar, desire has come; and the wings of love, which she held at her will in the former conflict, she has languidly let loose: the prince is victor; and as, after discovery that Gebir has been her antagonist, she cries for Tamar, now eager to declare and enjoy her passion as a human nymph would be timidly to conceal it, he promises again and again to restore to her his brother, if she will but say whose work the ruin is that comes each night upon the city, and from whence are the horrid yells of rapture heard amid its falling walls. Then she:

"Neither the Gods afflict you, nor the Nymphs.
Return me him who won my heart, return
Him whom my bosom pants for, as the steeds
In the sun's chariot for the western wave...
Promise me this: indeed I think thou hast,
But 't is so pleasing, promise it once more.'

He complies; and she tells him then of the demons and incantations that prevail in Egypt, and by what sacrifices he is to appease them. The lines descriptive of the latter have a weird and startling picturesqueness. Upon the site of the ancient city he performs all that is required; and as her last bidding is done, the earth gapes before him, he descends, passes through the darkness, and sees around him the souls of those among his ancestors who had rejoiced in war and conquest, expiating by pains of more or less intensity