Read Ebook: Ηλέκτρα by Euripides BCE BCE Tanagras Angelos Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 202 lines and 30630 words, and 5 pages

Editor: Edgar Allan Poe

Produced by: Ron Swanson

THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER:

DEVOTED TO EVERY DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS.

RICHMOND: T. W. WHITE, PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR. 1835-6.

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

T. W. WHITE, PROPRIETOR. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.

MSS. OF BENJ. FRANKLIN.

This, supposing as they do, that to scandalize is a crime; which you have convinced all reasonable people is an opinion absolutely erroneous. Let us leave then, these select mock-moralists, while I entertain you with some account of my life and manners.

ALICE ADDERTONGUE.

I thank my correspondent, Mrs. Addertongue, for her good will, but desire to be excused inserting the articles of news she has sent me, such things being in reality no news at all.

QUERIES TO BE ASKED THE JUNTO.

Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summer time?

Does the importation of servants increase or advance the wealth of our country?

Would not an office of insurance for servants be of service, and what methods are proper for the erecting such an office?

Whence does it proceed that the proselytes to any sect or persuasion, generally appear more zealous than those that are bred up in it?

If he is not sincere, he is obliged at least to put on an appearance of great zeal, to convince the better his new friends that he is heartily in earnest, for his old ones he knows dislike him. And as few acts of zeal will be more taken notice of than such as are done against the party he has left, he is inclined to injure or malign them because he knows they contemn and despise him. Hence one Renegado is worse than ten Turks.

If a sound body and a sound mind, which is as much as to say health and virtue, are to be preferred before all other considerations,--Ought not men, in choosing of a business either for themselves or children, to refuse such as are unwholesome for the body, and such as make a man too dependant, too much obliged to please others, and too much subjected to their humors in order to be recommended and get a livelihood.

I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with; how shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the virtues I imagine she has?

To the Printer of the Gazette.

According to the request of your correspondent T. P., I send you my thoughts on the following case by him proposed, viz:

A man bargains for the keeping of his horse six months, whilst he is making a voyage to Barbadoes. The horse strays or is stolen soon after the keeper has him in possession. When the owner demands the value of his horse in money, may not the other as justly demand so much deducted as the keeping of the horse six months amounts to?

But the owner of the horse may possibly insist upon being paid the whole sum of ten pounds, without allowing any deduction for his keeping after he was lost, and that for these reasons.

Thus we have heard what can be said on both sides. Upon the whole, I am of opinion that no deduction should be allowed for the keeping of the horse after the time of his straying.

I am yours, &c. THE CASUIST.

TO A COQUETTE.

Heave no more that breast of snow, With sighs of simulated wo, While Conquest triumphs on thy brow, And Hope, gay laughing in thine eye, Cheers the moments gliding by, Welcomes Joy's voluptuous train, Welcomes Pleasure's jocund reign, And whispers thee of transports yet in store, When fraught with Love's ecstatic pain, Shooting keen through every vein, Thy heart shall thrill with bliss unknown before.

But smile not so divinely bright; Nor sport before my dazzled sight, That "prodigality of charms," That winning air, that wanton grace, That pliant form, that beauteous face, Zephyr's step, Aurora's smile; Nor thus in mimic fondness twine, About my neck thy snowy arms; Nor press this faded cheek of mine, Nor seek, by every witching wile, My hopes to raise, my heart to gain, Then laugh my love to scorn, and triumph in my pain.

I love thee, Julia! Though the flush Of sprightly youth is flown-- Though the bright glance, and rose's blush From eye and cheek and lip are gone-- Though Fancy's frolic dreams are fled, Dispelled by sullen care-- And Time's gray wing its frost has shed Upon my raven hair-- Yet warm within my bosom glows, A heart that recks not winter's snows, But throbs with hope, and heaves with sighs For ruby lips and sparkling eyes; And still--the slave of amorous care-- Would make that breast, that couch of Love, its lair.

TO THE SAME.

Shade! O shade those looks of light; The thrilling sense can bear no more! Veil those beauties from my sight, Which to see is to adore.

That dimpled cheek, whose spotless white, The rays of Love's first dawning light, Tinge with Morning's rosy blush, And cast a warm and glowing flush, Even on thy breast of snow, And in thy bright eyes sparkling dance, And through the waving tresses glance That shade thy polished brow Who can behold, nor own thy power? Who can behold, and not adore?

But like the wretch, who, doomed to endless pain, Raises to realms of bliss his aching eyes, To Heaven uplifts his longing arms in vain While in his tortured breast new pangs arise-- Thus while at thy feet I languish, Stung with Love's voluptuous anguish, The smile that would my hopes revive, The witching glance that bids me live Shed on my heart one fleeting ray, One gleam of treacherous Hope display; But soon again in deep Despair I pine: The dreadful truth returns: "Thou never wilt be mine."

Then shade! O shade those looks of light; The thrilling sense can bear no more! Veil those beauties from my sight, Which to see is to adore.

But stay! O yet awhile refrain! Forbear! And let me gaze again! Still at thy feet impassioned let me lie, Tranced by the magic of thy thrilling eye; Thy soft melodious voice still let me hear, Pouring its melting music on my ear; And, while my eager lip, with transport bold, Presumptuous seeks thy yielded hand to press, Still on thy charms enraptured let me gaze, Basking ecstatic in thy beauty's blaze, Such charms 'twere more than Heaven to possess: 'Tis Heaven only to behold.

LIONEL GRANBY.

But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one of his simple and unaffected suppers!

I cheerfully assented to this invitation, and following my conductor up a flight of crooked and dark steps, we entered into a room, over a brazier's shop. A dull light trembled through the small and narrow apartment where, shrouded in a close volume of tobacco smoke, sat in pensive gentility--the kind--the generous--the infant-hearted Charles Lamb; the man whose elastic genius dwelled among the mouldering ruins of by-gone days, until it became steeped in beauty and expanded with philosophy--the wit--the poet--the lingering halo of the sunshine of antiquity--the phoenix of the mighty past. He was of delicate and attenuated stature, and as fragilely moulded as a winter's flower, with a quick and volatile eye, a mind-worn forehead and a countenance eloquent with thought. Around a small table well covered with glasses and a capacious bowl, were gathered a laughing group, eyeing the battalia of the coming supper. Godwin's heavy form and intellectual face, with the swimming eye of Coleridge, flanked the margin of the mirth-inspiring bowl.

At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters, stately porticoes, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled away his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He was an author belonging to his own exclusive school--a school of simplicity, grace and beauty. He neither skewered his pen into precise paragraphs, nor rioted in the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the rare and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of Elizabeth and Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian of Euphues "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to sink deeper in the sea of oblivion.

How has he obtained those curiously bound books, I whispered to Coleridge, as my eye fell on a column of shelves groaning under a mass of tattered volumes which would have fairly crazed my poor uncle?

Tell him Lamb! said Coleridge repeating my inquiry, give him the rank and file of your ragged regiment.

Slowly, and painfully as a neophyte, did I build the pile, replied Lamb. Its corner stone was that fine old folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, for a long year had peeped out from a bookseller's stall directly in my daily path to the India House. It bore the great price of sixteen shillings, and to me, who had no unsunned heap of silver, I gazed on it until I had almost violated the decalogue. Poetry made me an economist, and at the end of two months my garnered mites amounted to the requisite sum. Vain as a girl with her first lover, I bore it home in triumph, and that night my sister Bridget read "The Laws of Candy" while I listened with rapture to that deep and gurgling torrent of old English, which dashed its music from this broken cistern. To her is the honor due, her taste has called all these obsolete wits to my library, for she keenly relished their fantasies, and smiled at their gauderies. In early life she had been tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it, but I can answer for it that it makes most incomparable old maids.

Godwin in vain essayed to introduce the "conduct of the ministry," and being repeatedly baffled, he said pettishly to Lamb, And what benefit is your freehold, if you do not feel interested in government?

Ah! I had a freehold it is true, the gift of my generous and solemn god-father, the oil-man in Holborn; I went down and took possession of my testamentary allotment of three quarters of an acre, and strode over it with the feeling of an English freeholder, that all betwixt sky and earth was my own. Alas! it has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it!

The bowl now danced from hand to hand, and I did not observe its operation until Lamb and Coleridge commenced an affectionate talk about Christ's Hospital, the blue coat boys, and all the treasured anecdotes of school-day friendship. This is the first and happiest stage of incipient intoxication, and the "willie-draughts" which are pledged to the memory of boyhood, ever inspire brighter and nobler sympathies, than are found in the raciest toasts to beauty, or the deepest libations to our country.

The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie The silken down with which his back is dight His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes.

Col. R. now motioned to me to retire, and I bid a reluctant goodnight to the joyous scene, the exclamation "do you not remember!" from Coleridge, and the cheerful laugh ringing through the whole house and its dying echo following us to the street.

THE PRAIRIE.

Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies. These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear prairie--a broad unvaried expanse--presents rather a monotonous appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. They answered my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation.

In these charming woodlands are a number of small lakes, the most picturesque and delightful sheets of water imaginable. The prairies in the summer are covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass, and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun pours his light upon the water and streams through the sloping glades. To a traveller unaccustomed to such scenes, they are pictures of a mimic paradise. Sometimes they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voluptuous as the warm billows of a southern sea.

In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers. Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf. Thus they pursue the deer with a cry not unlike that of hounds, and have been known to rush by a farm-house in hot pursuit. The officers of the army stationed at the posts on the Prairies amuse themselves hunting these little wolves which in some parts are very numerous.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet