21

THE LAST GREEK BARD'S SONG OF HOMER.

BY GOODWYN BARMBY.

BRING me, boy, the Samian flask!
Sound thy flute beneath those trees,

While at ease my limbs I bask

Where the myrtles woo the breeze;
Bring the tablets, ink, and reed-
Homer sang here, ages past,
And old Echo's grots may lead
To his fount of song at last.

Bright the blue Egean flows!
Tempe's vale is rich with bloom;
Scented Hybla sweeter grows;
And Ilissus hallows gloom ;
But though blue the skies above,
And though green the earth below,
Have they brought us, in their love,
Father Homer's tuneful flow?

Fair the Academic groves!

Life-like statues there we see ;
Marbled Virtues, Graces, Loves—
All but motioned symmetry!
Yet not statues, but true men
Still we want, and singing pray,
Bring us Homer back again!

Such may live to swell his lay.

Proud the dames of Athens move,
Lone in wealth and slaves of state,
Listless in the terraced grove,

Poor in love, and weak in hate;
Stately formed, and decked with art,
Jewelled though their armlets be,
Are they worthy Homer's heart-
He who sung Penelope ?

Have we women? Have we men ?
Men we have, and women too;

Look upon them once again,

Scarce the different sex you know.

Men we have for whom the helm
Weighs too heavy on the brow;
Did such aid, in Homer's realm,
Achilles' wrath or Hector's woe?
Barbaric hordes press on our soil,

And swords are pointed not to save;
In ease inglorious is our toil-

We have no strength to earn a grave.
The bard has fall'n on sad dark days,

And Homer will not leave the tomb,
When Life has lost its crown of bays,

And Death's urns tell no noble doom.

Then break the tablets, break the reed:
Though Greece is fair in earth and sky,
Though rich the Marathonian mead

With blood whose fame can never die,
In vain we strive as bards to sing,
Unless we first can show us men;
The gods no inspiration bring,

Nor send us Homer back again.

But though we to barbarians fall,
Like temple to the bats a prey,
I have one hope—the last of all—
It is in our old Homer's lay:
While it survives, our Greece will live,
The land of a most glorious lyre,

And unborn laurelled poets give

Our prince of bards a crown of fire!

CLUB-CROTCHETS AND CHEAP COMFORTS:

BEING

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WHITTINGTON FUND.

INTRODUCTORY.

Ir people's legislation was confined to themselves alone, one might be amused rather than disturbed at the view of life taken by certain worthy and unworthy characters, who seem theoretically and practically resolved to carry out "the greatest misery principle." "We live in a vale of tears," they say, "and, therefore, you shall wipe your eyes on clouts as coarse as sail-cloths."

Another set, it is true, deny the beauty or the virtue of eyes being wiped at all. But with persons so far gone in the science of self-torment, we have no more to do, than with the hook-swingers of Indian Fanaticism. They are hardly likely to establish a church or a colony in this Utilitarian England of ours, where

Everything is done by steam,

And men are killed with powder.

The moderate class of grumblers and objectors are more troublesome, not to say formidable: since they represent prejudices which are tainted with plausibility, and paralyse the timid with warnings, and half-reasons; or they are for " waiting by the road-side, from a sense of duty," so long, that the proper time for a start is passed. Time was, when they raised their voices against Education of the People. Anarchy, they preached, was to come in with the Alphabet: the humbler classes, taught to read and write, would, thenceforth and for ever, declare against work help themselves to the meat, clothes, and fire of their betters, and when all was eaten, worn, and burned out, we were, gentle and simple, to be all of us hopelessly ruined! Well, ten times more has been done, than it roused their holy fears to hear of; and still, it is only now for the first time clearly seen, that England is merely at the beginning of a progressive and comprehensive Educational movement; from which, nevertheless, ruin will not accrue. Now, they seem disposed to growl and groan, because of certain plans for the diffusion of intellectual enjoyment, physical comfort, and honourable intercourse, which are working their way through the under-currents of society. Their talk is of "privileges." They profess to be uneasy for the future of Science and Scholarship, because of the diffusion of cheap literature. They sneer, with a well-managed sort of sad contempt, at the imaginary picture of Art in the Kitchen, and Music in the Pantry under the stairs. Counting-houses, to please them, must be the airless and cobwebbed holes, in which no clerk can be distracted over his ledger-work, by the waving of a tree-branch, or a sight of the sunshine. Shops are to be kept wisely open till bed-time, lest the shop-boy should enter the labyrinths of Dancing or the seductions of Music, or acquire ideas above his station, by light or heavy reading. The relief from small, grinding, domestic cares, which co-operation, judiciously administered, might be made to furnish, is to be discountenanced, on the original hypo

thesis of respecting the sanctity of home by maintaining such "strong yet tender ties" as the smell of ill-cooked food--the steam of wet linen-the loaded atmosphere of small chambers perpetually inhabited. Things are to go on as Miss Edgeworth's Farmer Goodenough wished. They hold comfort, luxury, and permissible amusement in as holy a horror as that with which the Second George regarded "Boetry and Bainting."

is

Perhaps to be fair-the sanguineness of persons "given to move may have, in part, exasperated their stupidity. In the matters, for instance, which I am about to treat, the cry of "Clubs has been mixed up with all manner of extraneous matters to the mystification of those sybilline leaves, the PenceTable and the Ready-Reckoner. There have been visions of this grand staircase, and the other ceiling, painted in encaustic (by some hairy Herr from foreign parts, or some noticeable native talent); of damask curtains, true Opera-colour-“ bouton d'or,” and velvet chairs of Soyers presiding over the confection of "Lucullusian dinners "of all the dainty delights and lavish luxuries, in short, which the combination of many rich persons required to produce. And, perhaps, these dreams—monstrous though they seem, when simply stated-on which too much time has been bestowed and stress laid,-have not, unnaturally, distanced those useful but unpalatable persons, whose vocation in life is to play the part of Weight-behind-the-Door, and Wet-Blanket. Of these I profess myself one. Resisting, to the death if need be, all the insolent and stupid apportionments of "privilege," refinement, social comfort, or public enjoyment, as belonging to any one class alone, and going out, with all my heart, to meet those who popularise good in every form, I am still cold enough to recollect that a penny is not a pound-that limited cash and unlimited credit are two distinct things: and to apprehend that there is more suffering in breaking down after one has enjoyed pleasure, than in waiting for a while, till it can be placed on a permanent basis. Good morals forbid that any class of English society should sink into the squalor of Crabbe's Clelia-who, when unable any longer to queen it in boxes of the Theatre, could derive a dismal satisfaction from queening it in the Gallery, and pointing out to her new associates, her old magnificence.

She would to plays on lowest terms resort,
Where once her box was to the beaux a court;

And, strange delight! to the same house where she
Joined in the dance, all gaiety and glee,

Now with the menials, crowding to the wall,
She'd see, not taste, the pleasures of the ball,
And, with degraded vanity, unfold

How she too triumphed in the years of old!

Let us never go back. Let us not fall into the debauchery of a cynical acquiescence with what is coarse and second-rate, after we have tasted of better things. But that such an anti-climax may not happen—a misery to those who feel it, a degradation to those who submit to it cheerfully. Let us "take heed to our ways: let us look warily, while we feel warmly and work unweariedly.

Thus, under (perhaps) the Utopian notion of combining prudence and sympathy, I venture to tender a few considerations, experiences, warnings, and other like precious matters, to those interested in the Whittington Club, and the Whittington Fund. As an Operative who must needs labour for his penny-as a Bachelor who has been sworn at Highgate to prefer white bread to brown, etc. .—as a Citizen who has a holy horror of the sound of Bow Bells, heard "within the rules"-I think, of course, that my wisdom is worth laying to heart. There are four points to be treated in turnThe House The Guests-The Entertainment-Their Behaviour.

THE HOUSE.

In warning all persons concerned against house-pride, it must never be forgotten, that, since a cheap Club is, essentially, an establishment for use at all seasons, not for show during one ;since it must be arranged to be perpetually frequented by the largest possible number of guests, there is one element of splendour which becomes a necessity-spaciousness. There will be favourite hours of the four-and-twenty, when, be it June or January-the Epsom week, or the Long Vacation-the readingroom ought never to be empty; and, as reading is hungry rather than composing, with those to whom it comes as a treat, the eating-room will do well to bear a close proportion, in its dimensions, to the same. Further, where the party is a mixed one, it will never do to crowd your members to the point at which the lady cried to Sir Terence O'Fay, in Miss Edgeworth's novel, "Sir, you have your finger in my ear!" Space there must be and this is hardly to be got on the continental plan of arrangement so largely obtaining in our new London houses-namely, by piling story on