Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 056.djvu/338

332 has been applied to vice, may be applied also to folly, "Nemo repente fuit stultissimus." Never was there a richer offering laid on the shrine of the goddess Stultitia than the tale of Sir Hubert, with which the volume concludes. But our business at present is with “The River.”

The common practice of writers who deal with stories of love, whose “course never did run smooth,” is to make their heroes commit suicide, on finding that the ladies whom they had wooed in vain were married to other people. But in the poem before us, Mr Patmore improves upon this method; he drowns his lover, Witchaire, because the lady, whom he had never wooed at all, does not marry him, but gives her hand (why should she not?) to the man who sues for it. Did Witchaire expect that the lady was to propose to him? The poem opens with some very babyish verses descriptive of an "old manor hall":—

And so on, until we are introduced to the lady of the establishment:—

The lady, finding that her lover continues to hang back, dries her tears, and very properly gets married to another man. During the celebration of the ceremony, the poet recurs to his hero, who has taken up his position in the park—

Witchaire then goes and drowns himself, in a river which "runneth round" the lady’s property—a dreadful warning to all young lovers "who love too much to sue."

On a fine day in the following summer, the poet brings the lady to the banks of this river. His evident intention is, to raise in the reader's mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover's body, or some other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This expectation, however, he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is, that the lady does not find the corpse, nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive conclusion the reader is befooled.

The only incident which we ever heard of, at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending, is one which we once heard related at a party, where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered, and restored to their owners—the ring of Polycrates, which was found in the maw of a fish after having been sunk in deep waters, being, as the reader knows, the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations, the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it, à la Patmore, conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his story of "The River."

A lady and her lover once
 * Were walking on a rocky beach:

Soft at first, and gentle, was
 * The music of their mutual speech,

And the looks were gentle, too,
 * With which each regarded each.

At length some casual word occurr'd
 * Which somewhat moved the lady's bile;

From less to more her anger wax'd—
 * How sheepish look'd her swain the while!—

And now upon their faces twain
 * There is not seen a single smile.

A ring was on the lady's hand,
 * The gift of that dumb-founder'd lover—