poorly conversant with the latter, and rendered indifferent to the former, acquire bad ideas of both. Instead of the worship of Love, we have the worship of Mammon; and all the difference we can see between the sufferings attending on either is, that the sufferings from the worship of Love exalt and humanize us, and those from the worship of Mammon debase and brutalize. Between the delights there is no comparison. Still our uneasiness keeps our knowledge going on. A word or two more of Alain Chartier's poem. M. Aleyn," saith the argument, "secretary to the king of France, framed this dialogue between a gentleman and a gentlewoman, who finding no mercy at her hand, dieth for sorrow." We know not in what year Chartier was born; but he must have lived to a good age, and written this poem in his youth, if Chaucer translated it; for he died in 1449, and Chaucer, an old man, in 1400. The beginning however, as well as the goodness of the version, looks as if our countryman had done it; for he speaks of the translation's having been enjoined him by way of penance; and the Legend of Good Women was the result of a smilar injunction, in consequence of his having written some stories not so much to the credit of the sex! He,-who as he represents, had written infinite things in their praise! But the Court-ladies, it seems, did not relish the story of Troilus and Cressida. The exordium, which the translator has added, is quite in our poet's manner. He says, that he rose one day, not well awaked; and thinking how he should best enter upon his task, he took one of his morning walks, Till I came to a lusty green valley Full of flowers, to see a great pleasaunce; Master Aleyn's dialogue, which is very long, will not have much interest except for those who are in the situation of his lover and belle Dame; but his introduction of it, his account of his riding abroad, thinking of his lost mistress,-his. hearing music in a garden, and being pressed by some friends who saw him to come in,-is all extremely lively and natural. At his entrance, the ladies," every one by one," bade him welcome a great deal more than he was worthy." They are waited upon, at their repast, not by "deadly servants," but by gentlemen and lovers; of one of whom he proceeds to give a capital picture. ъ Emong all other, one I gan espy, Which in great thought ful often came and went, In his language not greatly dilligent, His countenance he kept with great turment, For ever his eye went after his entent, But to return to our other Belle Dame. LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, The sedge is wither'd from the lake, Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, And the harvest's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever.dew; I met a Lady in the meads Full beautiful, a fairy's child; I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone: She found me roots of relish sweet, She took me to her elfin grot, And there she gaz'd and sighed deep, And there we slumber'd on the moss, On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; I saw their starv'd lips in the gloom. And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing. CAVIARE Orders received by the Newsmen, by the Booksellers, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard, Printed by Joseph Appleyard, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand. Price 2d. THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER. No. XXXII.-WEDNESDAY, MAY 17th, 1820. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW-MEN WEDDED TO BOOKS THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE NIGHTINGALE AND MUSICIAN. We have often had occasion to think of the exclamation of that ingenious saint, who upon reading a fine author, cried out "Pereant male qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!"-" Deuce take those who have said our good things before us!"-Now, without mentioning the extendibility (we are writing in high spirits, early on a fine morning, and cannot stop to find a better word)-without mentioning the extendibility of this judicious imprecation to deeds, as, "Deuce take those who have anticipated our exploits ;" or to possessions, as "Confound those fellows that ride in our coaches and eat our asparagus ;we cannot help thinking the phrase particularly applicable to those who have read our authors-" Plague take those who anticipate our articles, who quote our highly-interesting passages out of old books." Here is a Retrospective Review set up, which with an alarming precision of prepositions undertakes to make "Criticisms upon, Analyses of, and Extracts from, curious, useful, and valuable Books in all Languages, that have been published from the Revival of Literature to the Commencement of the Present Century:"-And what is very inconsiderate, it performs all this, and more. It's criticisms are of a very uncritical kind; deep and well-tempered. It can afford to let other people have their merits. Proud of the literature of past ages, it is nevertheless not at all contemptuous of the present; and even in reading a lecture to modern critics, as it does admirably in it's Second Number in an article on the once formidable John Dennis, it expostulates in so genial and informing a spirit, that he must be a very fargone critical old woman indeed, who does not feel inclined to leave off the brandy-drinking of abuse,-the pin-sticking of grudging absurdity. It is extremely pleasant to see it travelling in this way over so wide a range of literature, warming as well as penetrating as it goes, with a sunny eye,-now fetching out the remotest fields, and anon driving the shadows before it and falling in kindly lustre upon ourselves. The highest compliment that we can pay it, or indeed any other work, is to say, that the enthusiasm is young, and the knowledge. old; a rare, a wise, and a delightful combination. It is lucky for us that we happened to speak of this work in another publication, the very day before the appearance of the second number; for the latter contained a very kind mention of the little work now before the reader; and thus our present notice might have been laid to the account of a vanity, which however gratified, is not the cause of it. The value of praise as well as rebuke does indeed depend upon the nature of the persons from whom it comes; and it is as difficult not to be delighted with panegyric from some, as it is easy to be indifferent to it, or even pained by it, from others. But when we confess our pleasure in this instance, we ean say with equal truth, that all our feelings and hopes being identified with the cause of what we think good and kind, our very self-love becomes identified with it; and we would consent to undergo the horrible moment of annihilation and oblivion the next instant, could we be assured that the world would be as happy as we were unremembered. And yet what a Yes! would that be! But to get from under the imagination of this crush of our being, and emerge into the lightness and pleasurability of life,-it was very hard of the Retrospective Review, that while it praised us, it should pick our intentional pockets of an extract we had long thought of making from an old poet. We allude to the poem called Music's Duel from Crashaw. Here the feelings expressed at the head of our paper come over us again. It has been said of fond students that they were "wedded to their books." We have even heard of ladies who have been jealous of an over-seductive duodecimo; as perhaps they might, if every literary husband or lover were like the collegian in Chaucer, who would rather have And yet we feel that we could very well like them too at the bed's head, without at all diminishing our regard for what should be at the bed's heart. We could sleep under them as under a bower of imaginations. We are one of those who like to have a book behind one's pillow, even though we know we shall not touch it. It is like having all our treasures at hand. But if people are to be wedded to their books, it is hard that under our present moral dispensations, they are not to be allowed the usual exclusive privileges of marriage. A friend thinks no more of borrowing a book now-a-days, than a Roman did of borrowing a man's wife; and what is worse, we are so far gone in our immoral notions on this subject, that we even lend it as easily as Cato did his spouse. Now what a happy thing ought it not to be to have exclusive possession of a book,-one's Shakspeare for instance; for the finer the wedded work, the more anxious of course we should be, that it should give nobody happiness but ourselves. Think of the pleasure not only of being with it in general, of having by far the greater part of it's company, but of having it entirely to one's self; of always saying internally, "It is my property;" of seeing it well-dressed in "black or red," purely to please one's own eyes; of wondering how any fellow could be so impudent as to propose borrowing it for an evening; of being at once proud of his admiration, and pretty certain that it was in vain; of the excitement nevertheless of being a little uneasy whenever we saw him approach it too nearly; of wishing that it could give him a cuff of the cheek with one of it's beautiful boards, for presuming to like it's beauties as well as ourselves; of liking other people's books, but not at all thinking it proper that they should like our's; of getting perhaps indifferent to it, and then comforting ourselves with the reflection that others are not so, though to no purpose; in short, of all the mixed transport and anxiety to which the exclusiveness of the book-wedded state would be liable; not to mention the impossibility of other people's having any literary offspring from our fair unique, and consequently of the danger of loving any compilations but our own. Really if we could burn all other copies of our originals, as the Roman Emperor once thought of destroying Homer, this system would be worth thinking of. If we had a good library, we should be in the situation of the Turks with their seraglios, which are a great improvement upon our petty exclusivenesses. Nobody could then touch our Shakspeare, our Spenser, our Chaucer, our Greek and Italian writers. People might say, "Those are the walls of the library!" and "sigh, and look, and sigh again ;" but they should never get in. No Retrospective rake should anticipate our privileges of quotation. Our Mary Woolstonecrafts and our Madame de Staels, no one should know how finely they were lettered,-what soul there was in their disquisitions. We once had a glimpse of the feelings, which people would have on these occasions, It was in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The keeper of it was from home; and not being able to get a sight of the Manuscript of Milton's Comus, we were obliged to content ourselves with looking through a wire work, a kind of safe, towards the shelf on which it reposed. How we winked, and yearned, and imagined we saw a corner of the all-precious sheets, to no purpose! The feelings were not very pleasant, it is true; but then as long as they were confined to others, they would of course only add to our satisfaction, But to come to our extract; for not being quite recovered yet from our late ill-health, we mean to avail ourselves of it still. It is remarkable, as the Reviewer has observed, for "a wonderful power over the resources of our language." The original is in the Prolusions of Strada, where it is put into the mouth of the celebrated Castiglione, as an imitation of the style of Claudian. From all that we recollect of that florid poet, the imitation, to say the least of it, is quite as good as any thing in himself. Indeed, as a description of the niceties of a musical performance, we remember nothing in him that can come up it. But what will astonish the reader, in addition to the exquisite tact with which Strada is rendered by the translator, is his having trebled the whole description, and with an equal minuteness in his exuberance. We cannot stop to enter into the detail of the enjoyment, as we would; and indeed we should not know perhaps how to express our sense of it but by repeating his masterly niceties about the "clear unwrinkled song," the "warbling doubt of |