Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/93

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We have seen in Swift a humourous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a

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 Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menaleas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called Pastora.

"I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn,
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,"



says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—

"With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,"—



(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period!) . . . . It continues—

"Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,
Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face,
Scalding with tears the already faded grass.
*****To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come?
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb?
Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far,
Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are;
With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased,
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized."



This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the "Great Shepherd," lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!

In the "Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas" (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess!

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come in to work here again. At the sight of her grief—

"Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego,
And dumb distress and new compassion show,
Nature herself attentive silence kept,
And motion seemed suspended while she wept!"—