466 



ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, 



Who art thou, with anxious mien 

 Stealing o'er the shifting scene ? 

 Eyes with tedious vigils red, 

 Sighs by doubts and wishes bred ; 

 Cautious step and glancing leer, 

 Speak thy woes, and speak thy fear. 



When sorrow associates herself with both fear and fancy, she then pro- 

 duces the demon brood of dejection, gloom, vapours, moroseness, heavi- 

 ness, and melancholy ; all of them begotten, like the last, 



In Stygian cave forlorn, 

 'Mong horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy. 



Such is the origin of melancholy, as given by Milton, in his Allegro, or 

 ode to Mirth ; but in his Penseroso, or ode to Melancholy herself, he de- 

 rives her from a purer source, and dresses her in the pensive character of 

 a religious recluse. The picture shows a fine imagination ; but is, per- 

 haps, less true to nature than the preceding. 



Come, pensive nun, devout and pure. 

 Sober, steadfast, and demure. 

 All in a robe of darkest grain, 

 Flowing with majestic train, 

 And sable stole of cypress lawn 

 Over thy decent shoulders drawn — 

 Come, but keep thy wonted state. 

 With even step, and musing gait, 

 And looks commercing with the skies, 

 Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes. 

 There, held in holy passion, still 

 Forget thyself to marble, till 

 With a sad, leaden, downward cast. 

 Thou fix them on the earth at last. 



Despair or distraction brings up the rear of the miserable and tumultii^ 

 ous group before us. This passion has generally been contemplated as a 

 mingled emotion ; but it is perhaps far less so than most of the rest. It 

 is a concentration of pure, unmitigated horror, equally void of hope, fear, 

 and all moral feeling— an awful type of the torments of the lower world. 

 The sensorial power is hurried forward towards a single outlet, and with 

 a rushing violence that threatens its instantaneous exhaustion from the en- 

 tire fi-ame, like the discharge of electricity accumulated in a Leyden jar 

 when touched by a brass rod. The eye is fixed ; the limbs tremble ; 

 upon the countenance hangs a wild and unutteralDle sullenness. The 

 liarrowed and distracted soul shrinks at nothing, and is attracted by no- 

 thing ; the deepest danger and the tenderest ties have equally I'ost their 

 command over it. 



Despair is, hence, the most selfish of all the passions. In its overwhelm- 

 ing agony, and its pressing desire of gloom and solitude, it approaches to 

 what is ordinarily called heart- ache ; but, generally speaking, the emo- 

 tion is far more contracted and personal, and the action far more precipi- 

 tous and daring. Despair, as it commonly shows itself, is either hope- 

 lessness from mortified pride, blasted expectations, or a sense of personal 

 ruin. 



The gamester, who cares for no one but himself, may rage with all the 

 horror of despair ; but the heart-ache belongs chiefly to the man of a 

 warmer and more generous bosom, stung to the quick by a wound he 

 least expected, or borne down, not by the loss of fortune, but of a dear 



