L'IDÉAL

Page 71. This elegy on departed youth is a faithful picture of life. It was Schiller's aim, as he says in a letter to Humboldt, *' to leave the reader with this feeling of peaceful limitation." Its tenderness and melancholy résignation are only surpassed by Gray, whose elegy, On a Distant Prospect of Eton Collège, it resembles.

" Use thy youth so that thou mayest hâve comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Use it as the springtime which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow ail provisions for a long and happy life." — Sir Walter Raleigh.

"Art thou gone irrevocably, thou golden hour of youth and fantasy, fleeting down the stream of time to the infinité océan of the past? With the days of youth melt away its dreams, its sweet faith in its own créations : ail that was once so fair and godlike falls a prey to harsh reality. As Pygmalion's longing gave life to the stone he carved, so my désire quickened Nature: she was dumb and insensate, but she awoke: tree, rose, and fount echoed back my cry. The narrow confines of my breast held a world within, and travailed to give it birth in act and word, in form and sound. Alas that what seemed so vast in the germ has blossomed forth so puny ! Youth sprang forth on life's way, full of dreams, uncurbed by care: even to the faintest star in heaven I was fain to climb : nought was too high, nought too far. Love and Happiness, Famé and Truth, accompanied my course, as the Hours fleet before the car of Aurora. But ail too soon they turned treacherously away: Happiness flitted from me; Doubt came, dimming the rays of Truth; Famé wreathed ignoble brows, and Love left me ail too lightly. The path grew hard and solitary, and one pallid gleam of Hope alone shone at my side. Of ail that tumultuous company two only abide with me, follow me even to the dark abodes — Friendship, early won, the sharer of life's burdens; and Industry, the unwearied soother of the tempest of the soûl, ever creating, never destroying. She builds for Eternity, grain by grain; yet cancels minutes, days and years from the debt man owes to the âges."

II. Pygmalion: the taie of Pygmalion and his statue bride is told by Ovid, in the Métamorphoses.

Pygmalion fell in love with the statue of a beautiful maiden he had made, and when the festival of Venus was being celebrated with great pomp at Cyprus he stood before the altar of the goddess and addressed her thus:

" O Aphrodite, kind and fair,

That what thou wilt canst give, Oh, listen to a sculptor's prayer,

And bid mine image live !

For me the ivory and gold

That clothes her cedar frame Are beautiful, indeed, but cold;

Ah, touch them with thy flame !

Oh, bid her move those lips of rose,

Bid float that golden hair, And let her choose me, as I choose,

This fairest of the fair !

And then an altar in thy court

ni offer, decked with gold; And there thy servants shall resort,

Thy doves be bought and sold."

— Andrew Lang.

Venus granted his prayer, and Pygmalion married the maiden, who was called Galatea. From this union was born Paphos, by which name the city sacred to Venus is known.

LENORE

Page 73. Bûrger's Leonore originally appeared in 1774. The first literary work of Walter Scott was the translation he made of Lenore under the title of William and Helen. It is a curions coïncidence that Alexandre Dumas, another great romantic writer, should hâve begun his literary career with a translation of the same work. German literature owes less to Biirger, perhaps, than English owes to Burns, but it owes him a great deal. He revived the ballad form in which so much of the finest German poctry has since been cast. With his lyric gifts and his dramatic power, he infuses

into his poems the spirit and life that hâve made them an important part of the folk lore of his native land. Bùrger wrote many beautiful poems, but Schlegel says : " Lenore will always be Bùrger's jewel, the precious ring with which, like the Doge of Venice espousing the sea, he married himself to the folk-song forever." 4. Prague capitiilated in 1744 to Frederick the Great. 17. dans tous les sens: in ail directions.

Page 74. 4. le très-saint sacrament: the Blessed Sacrament meaning the Holy Eucharist.

Page 76. 2. Hourra! les morts vont vite: Wm. Taylor has copied the imitative harmony of the German in this passage and described the spectral journey in language resembling that of the original in this manner :

Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed,

Splash, splash, across the sea ; Hurrah, the dead can ride apace !

Dost fear to ride with me?

19. Ils serrent le cheval de près: They spur the horse to the utmost.

Page 77» 14- Il s*élance à bride abattue: H e rushes at full speed.