What is my crime? a deed of love;I fed my child with pilfer’d food:Your laws will not the act approve,The law of Nature deems it good.
What is my crime? a deed of love;I fed my child with pilfer’d food:Your laws will not the act approve,The law of Nature deems it good.
instead ofll. 43-6:
My years, indeed, are sad and few,Though weak these limbs, and shrunk this frame:For Grief has done what Time should do;And I am old in care and shame.
My years, indeed, are sad and few,Though weak these limbs, and shrunk this frame:For Grief has done what Time should do;And I am old in care and shame.
Part II.
instead ofll. 29-34:
Compell’d to feast in full delightWhen I was sad and wanted power,Can I forget that dismal night?Ah! how did I survive the hour?
Compell’d to feast in full delightWhen I was sad and wanted power,Can I forget that dismal night?Ah! how did I survive the hour?
instead ofll. 39-41:
And there my father-husband stood—I felt no words can tell you how—As he was wont in angry mood,And thus he cried, “Will God allow,
And there my father-husband stood—I felt no words can tell you how—As he was wont in angry mood,And thus he cried, “Will God allow,
Preface: p. 92, l. 21.The following footnote to the words, His Dedication,was omitted in Vol. I: Neither of these were adopted. The author had written, about that time, some verses to the memory of Lord Robert Manners, brother to the late Duke of Rutland; and these, by a junction, it is presumed, not forced or unnatural, form the concluding part of “The Village.”
END OF VOL. II.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Footnotes[1]Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.[2]The reader will perceive in these and the preceding verses allusions to the state of France, as that country was circumstanced some years since, rather than as it appears to be in the present date; several years elapsing between the alarm of the loyal magistrate on the occasion now related, and a subsequent event that farther illustrates the remark with which the narrative commences.[3]Allusion is here made, not to the well-known species ofsumach,called the poison-oak, ortoxicodendron, but to theupas, or poison-tree of Java; whether it be real or imaginary, this is no proper place for inquiry.[4]This appellation is here used not ironically, nor with malignity; but it is taken merely to designate a morosely devout people, with peculiar austerity of manners.[5]As the author’s purpose in this Tale may be mistaken, he wishes to observe, that conduct like that of the lady’s here described must be meritorious or censurable just as the motives to it are pure or selfish; that these motives may in a great measure be concealed from the mind of the agent; and that we often take credit to our virtue for actions which spring originally from our tempers, inclinations, or our indifference. It cannot therefore be improper, much less immoral, to give an instance of such self-deception.[6]The ditches of a fen so near the ocean are lined with irregular patches of a coarse and stained lava; a muddy sediment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs, which in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a fat-leaved pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and the razor-edged bull-rush in the summer and autumn. The fen itself has a dark and saline herbage; there are rushes andarrow-head, and in a few patches the flakes of the cotton-grass are seen, but more commonly thesea-aster, the dullest of that numerous and hardy genus; athrift, blue in flower, but withering and remaining withered till the winter scatters it; thesaltwort, both simple and shrubby; a few kinds of grass changed by their soil and atmosphere, and low plants of two or three denominations undistinguished in a general view of the scenery;—such is the vegetation of the fen when it is at a small distance from the ocean; and in this case there arise from it effluvia strong and peculiar, half-saline, half-putrid, which would be considered by most people as offensive, and by some as dangerous; but there are others to whom singularity of taste or association of ideas has rendered it agreeable and pleasant.[7]Fasil was a rebel chief, and Michael the general of the royal army in Abyssinia, when Mr. Bruce visited that country. In all other respects their characters were nearly similar. They are both represented as cruel and treacherous; and even the apparently strong distinction of loyal and rebellious is in a great measure set aside, when we are informed that Fasil was an open enemy, and Michael an insolent and ambitious controller of the royal person and family.[8]The sovereign here meant is the Haroun Alraschid, or Harun al Rashid, who died early in the ninth century; he is often the hearer, and sometimes the hero, of a tale in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.
Footnotes
[1]Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.
[1]Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.
[2]The reader will perceive in these and the preceding verses allusions to the state of France, as that country was circumstanced some years since, rather than as it appears to be in the present date; several years elapsing between the alarm of the loyal magistrate on the occasion now related, and a subsequent event that farther illustrates the remark with which the narrative commences.
[2]The reader will perceive in these and the preceding verses allusions to the state of France, as that country was circumstanced some years since, rather than as it appears to be in the present date; several years elapsing between the alarm of the loyal magistrate on the occasion now related, and a subsequent event that farther illustrates the remark with which the narrative commences.
[3]Allusion is here made, not to the well-known species ofsumach,called the poison-oak, ortoxicodendron, but to theupas, or poison-tree of Java; whether it be real or imaginary, this is no proper place for inquiry.
[3]Allusion is here made, not to the well-known species ofsumach,called the poison-oak, ortoxicodendron, but to theupas, or poison-tree of Java; whether it be real or imaginary, this is no proper place for inquiry.
[4]This appellation is here used not ironically, nor with malignity; but it is taken merely to designate a morosely devout people, with peculiar austerity of manners.
[4]This appellation is here used not ironically, nor with malignity; but it is taken merely to designate a morosely devout people, with peculiar austerity of manners.
[5]As the author’s purpose in this Tale may be mistaken, he wishes to observe, that conduct like that of the lady’s here described must be meritorious or censurable just as the motives to it are pure or selfish; that these motives may in a great measure be concealed from the mind of the agent; and that we often take credit to our virtue for actions which spring originally from our tempers, inclinations, or our indifference. It cannot therefore be improper, much less immoral, to give an instance of such self-deception.
[5]As the author’s purpose in this Tale may be mistaken, he wishes to observe, that conduct like that of the lady’s here described must be meritorious or censurable just as the motives to it are pure or selfish; that these motives may in a great measure be concealed from the mind of the agent; and that we often take credit to our virtue for actions which spring originally from our tempers, inclinations, or our indifference. It cannot therefore be improper, much less immoral, to give an instance of such self-deception.
[6]The ditches of a fen so near the ocean are lined with irregular patches of a coarse and stained lava; a muddy sediment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs, which in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a fat-leaved pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and the razor-edged bull-rush in the summer and autumn. The fen itself has a dark and saline herbage; there are rushes andarrow-head, and in a few patches the flakes of the cotton-grass are seen, but more commonly thesea-aster, the dullest of that numerous and hardy genus; athrift, blue in flower, but withering and remaining withered till the winter scatters it; thesaltwort, both simple and shrubby; a few kinds of grass changed by their soil and atmosphere, and low plants of two or three denominations undistinguished in a general view of the scenery;—such is the vegetation of the fen when it is at a small distance from the ocean; and in this case there arise from it effluvia strong and peculiar, half-saline, half-putrid, which would be considered by most people as offensive, and by some as dangerous; but there are others to whom singularity of taste or association of ideas has rendered it agreeable and pleasant.
[6]The ditches of a fen so near the ocean are lined with irregular patches of a coarse and stained lava; a muddy sediment rests on the horse-tail and other perennial herbs, which in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a fat-leaved pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and the razor-edged bull-rush in the summer and autumn. The fen itself has a dark and saline herbage; there are rushes andarrow-head, and in a few patches the flakes of the cotton-grass are seen, but more commonly thesea-aster, the dullest of that numerous and hardy genus; athrift, blue in flower, but withering and remaining withered till the winter scatters it; thesaltwort, both simple and shrubby; a few kinds of grass changed by their soil and atmosphere, and low plants of two or three denominations undistinguished in a general view of the scenery;—such is the vegetation of the fen when it is at a small distance from the ocean; and in this case there arise from it effluvia strong and peculiar, half-saline, half-putrid, which would be considered by most people as offensive, and by some as dangerous; but there are others to whom singularity of taste or association of ideas has rendered it agreeable and pleasant.
[7]Fasil was a rebel chief, and Michael the general of the royal army in Abyssinia, when Mr. Bruce visited that country. In all other respects their characters were nearly similar. They are both represented as cruel and treacherous; and even the apparently strong distinction of loyal and rebellious is in a great measure set aside, when we are informed that Fasil was an open enemy, and Michael an insolent and ambitious controller of the royal person and family.
[7]Fasil was a rebel chief, and Michael the general of the royal army in Abyssinia, when Mr. Bruce visited that country. In all other respects their characters were nearly similar. They are both represented as cruel and treacherous; and even the apparently strong distinction of loyal and rebellious is in a great measure set aside, when we are informed that Fasil was an open enemy, and Michael an insolent and ambitious controller of the royal person and family.
[8]The sovereign here meant is the Haroun Alraschid, or Harun al Rashid, who died early in the ninth century; he is often the hearer, and sometimes the hero, of a tale in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.
[8]The sovereign here meant is the Haroun Alraschid, or Harun al Rashid, who died early in the ninth century; he is often the hearer, and sometimes the hero, of a tale in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.
Transcriber's Notes:Antiquated spellings have been preserved.Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.Where double quotes have been repeated at the beginnings of consecutive stanzas, they have been omitted for clarity.
Transcriber's Notes:
Antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
Where double quotes have been repeated at the beginnings of consecutive stanzas, they have been omitted for clarity.