men that lead their age. But listen to what he says of Shakespeare: "He was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greatest commendation: he was naturally learned he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature: he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike: were he so, I should do him injustice to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flatly insipid: his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit and did not raise himself as high above the rest of poets, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." That is what I call good strong English. Belton. It is indeed. Mallett. Listen again to what he says of Ben Jonson: "He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him." But he could rail as well as he could praise. Witness his attack on Little's play, "The Empress of Morocco," which is as bitter and biting as satire can be. He takes the poor author up as a mastiff would a cur, and shakes the very life out of him. "This upstart literary scribbler," he says, "who lies more open to censure than any writer of the age, comes among the poets like one of the earth-born brethren, and his first business in the world is to attack and murder all his fellows. This, I confess, raised a little indignation in me, as much as I was capable of for so contemptible a wretch, and made me think it somewhat necessary that he should be made an example to the discouragement of all such petulant ill writers and that he should be dragged out of the obscurity to which his own poetry would have forever condemned him. I knew, indeed, that to write against him was to do him too great an honour; but I considered Ben Jonson had done it before to Dekker," etc.; and with this prologue to battle he begins, and tears his adversary to pieces. Belton. I like this less than the praise. Little would have perished without all this savagery; and, vigorous as it is, it would | have been better unsaid. Mallett. At all events, it is not weak, bombastic, or artificial, as much in his drama is. But poetry in his day was already in the decline, while prose was still in the strength of its manhood. Afterwards poetry made an alliance with nonsense, exiling sense from its domains, and welcoming in its stead gilded furious feebleness and swelling distortion. England has many great examples of bombast and artificiality of diction, but I doubt if she can show a single author who in these qualities is superior to the American poet, (God save the mark!) Robert Treat Paine, who wrote at the beginning of this century. His bombast and artificiality surpass everything in literature. And yet he was famous in his day, and his contemporaries placed him in the front rank as a poet. Listen to this passage in his poem on the "Invention of Letters," where he is celebrating the virtues of Washington: Could Faustus live, by gloomy grave resigned, Belton. Magnificent! Absurdity, or, to use Dryden's words, "the rumbling of robustious nonsense," can truly go no fur ther. Mallett. Listen, too, to what his biographer calls "the following nervous lines in his famous poem of "The Ruling Pas "sion: " 66 Mallett. No, it does not; on some questions, as those of religion, for instance, it is not permissible for men not to think, and deeply consider what they profess to believe. song of his time, entitled "Adams and Lib-like; they believe what they are taught to erty," which was sung everywhere in Amer- believe. They learn certain phrases and ica with the utmost enthusiasm to the air formulas, and these stand in their minds now known as "The Star-Spangled Ban- for thoughts and opinion. But after all it ner," and thought to be a wonderful pro- serves the same purpose. duction of genius. Wonderful indeed it is, though not exactly in the same sense. But let me read you the account of one of the verses of this song as given by his biographer. "There was," he says, never a political song more sung in America than Belton. Too much thinking might lead this; and one of more poetical merit was, to unbelief, since we cannot satisfactorily perhaps, never written. An anecdote de- solve anything if we begin to inquire too serves notice respecting one of the best curiously into it. It is better, therefore, to stanzas in it. Mr. Paine had written all accept a ready-made creed, established and he intended, and, being in the house of recognized by fifty generations of menMajor Russell, the editor of the Senti- for which heroes have died and martyrs nel, showed him the verses. It was high- have gone to the stake - than to vamp up ly approved, but pronounced imperfect, as a new one out of our own individual ideas. Washington was omitted. The sideboard At all events, it is easier to drop anchor was replenished, and Paine was about to in the Church's port than to war with the help himself, when Major Russell famil- winds and waves of controversy, and exiarly interfered, and insisted in his humor-pose ourselves to the dangers of heresy or ous manner that he should not slake his thirst till he had written an additional stanza in which Washington should be introduced. Paine marched back and forth for a few minutes, and suddenly starting, called for a pen. He immediately wrote the following sublime stanza, afterwards making one or two trivial verbal amend His sword from the sleep Of his scabbard would leap, And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep. For ne'er shall the sons, etc. Belton. Bravo, Paine! what an image! what a picture! He must have been a wonderful man! How is it that he is not known throughout the world? Mallett. "The world knows nothing of its greatest men," and ungratefully has suffered him and his works to pass away into oblivion. Belton. It is certainly clear, when such verses are written and admired, that neither poet nor public can think it worth while to exercise their common sense, and that there is some charm quite beyond any intelligible meaning that they must have. But it comes back to what we were saying. For the most part people do not think at al'. They like what they are taught to atheism. Why should I set up my opinion against the mass of authority? I like the Roman Church because it takes all the trouble of thinking off my mind. It thinks for me, and tells me what to believe: I accept it, and am perfectly happy. From The Contemporary Review. WEST-INDIAN SUPERSTITIONS. IN bringing such a subject before the English public, one has the advantage of entering upon comparatively unbroken ground. The number of these superstitions is so great, that some, at least, will almost certainly be new to every reader of this review. Even to West-Indians themselves, familiar with many of these extraordinary beliefs from their childhood, some mentioned in this article will be new, from the fact that they vary greatly in different islands of the Caribbean group, so greatly that sometimes the superstitions connected with the same thing are almost directly opposite in islands geographically very near each other. The character, too, of many of the superstitions is such that there is an interest attaching to them not dependent upon the way in which the subject may be treated. The study of them is, and has always been, to the writer a very fascinating one. It would naturally be so from his profession. But it has other attractions besides its bearing upon professional duties. There is in these things a wide enough field for guessing as to their origin and meaning. It is but guess-work, as of course we possess but few data to give us any clue to the meaning of many opinions that have always had a firm hold on the minds of the ignorant in these islands, or to the purpose of many practices that obtain among them, whether these be of directly African origin or otherwise. They are amusing enough from their very absurdity. But he who would root them out of negro minds will find he has a harder task than he bargained for. Many generations must pass; education must be much more widely diffused; and religion must become much more of a reality, before the hold of these notions can be even loosened, whether they be only West-Indian forms of European or American superstitions, or whether they be direct African importations. The writer has found great difficulty in inducing people who believed in these superstitions to tell them to him. They have a sort of feeling that these things are in themselves wrong, and therefore they shrink from telling them to "the parson." And they have an instinctive perception that you will laugh at them. Some superstitions, common in these parts, are not peculiarly West-Indian. They have been transplanted bodily, and the only thing to be remarked about them is that they find a congenial soil in the Caribbean Archipelago, and flourish as vigourously as in their native homes. Such, for example, is the belief about a parson's giving a vessel a bad passage a superstition that has evidently sprung from the bad results of Jonah's presence in a certain vessel. An old West-Indian skipper once told me that he had remarked that if you carried more than one parson at once you were all right. The old fellow thought that one acted as an antidote to the other. "The trouble is when you have only one, sir," he said to me; no matter how favourable the wind has been, it is sure either to go dead ahead or to fall off entirely." 66 Such another superstition, prevalent in almost every Christian land, is that thirteen is an unlucky number at dinnerunlucky, at least, for the one who leaves the table first. This belief is by no means confined to the lower orders. There is no wonder it should be so widespread and so deeply rooted when its origin is remembered. Most know that it sprang from the fatal result which attended Judas, the first who left the table at that most wonderful supper ever known on earth the supper at which the Great Master and his chosen apostles made the thirteen. As might be expected, the most abundant of all West-Indian superstitions are those connected with dead bodies and funerals. When one of our people has a sore or bruise of any description, he will on no account have anything to do with a dead body. The sore is made incurable thereby, or almost so. This notion is very prevalent both in St. Croix and Grenada, two islands widely different in every respect, as unlike in their physical conformation, in the habits and manners of their people, indeed in their character altogether, as two West-Indian islands can be. But in neither of them will any person who has a sore, follow a funeral. Even if the sore be on the leg or foot, and thus be covered, it matters not. to that funeral you must not, if you wish the sore to get well. Even if the deceased be so near of kin to you that you must needs be one of the funeral procession, beware how you have anything to do with getting the body ready for the grave. You must not be about the corpse in any way. Go Instances of the firm grasp this notion has on the negro mind can be readily furnished by any clergyman in these islands. And it is far from being relaxed even in minds that have received some cultivation. I recollect a black man in the island of Grenada, who was very intelligent, and had read a good deal, and was also a member of the Grenada House of Assembly, who assigned a bruise on his foot as the reason of his absence from a funeral where I had expected to see him. He alluded to it as a matter of course, and was apparently astonished at my being unable to feel that his excuse was a good one. This was a min, who, though entirely self-taught, could quote Shakespeare, of whom he was very fond, with great accuracy, and at much length. Doubtless, even on that occasion, he consoled himself with his favourite author; and, although he did not say so, he thought that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy." 66 In St. Croix, a very slight bruise indeed is sufficient to make it highly dangerous for you to have any dealings with a dead body. At one of the first funerals I attended here, I was putting on my gown and bands at the house where the corpse lay, and I happened, in fastening the bands, to give my finger a prick with a pin, sufficient to draw a drop of blood. One of the people present earnestly entreated me not to go into the room where the dead body lay in the yet uncovered coffin. "You must not look upon the a good dead now, sir," said the woman woman too. is no more virtue in your friend's dead hand than there was in his living one. Yes, alone you must encounter him. And what, then, will you do with the "duppies," as they call ghosts in Barbados, or "jumbies," as they say in St. Croix? It is true you can take a light when you go in to do the rubbing, and we all know Possibly this belief in the harmful pow-that jumbies, or duppies, or whatever they ers of dead bodies may be connected are, can't bear light, except it be pale, dim That will be a little help. with the Jewish notion of the uncleanness moonlight. that came from touching the dead. Not But still there is a risk. Woe betide him that there is any repugnance in these who dares in Barbados, pass a light, countries to touching, or being with a whether lamp or candle, across a dead dead body as such. Our people are only person's face, or even hold it over it! too ready to crowd in to see a dead body, Such an outrageously venturesome person to sit up with it at night, to wash it, or would soon have the lamp of his own life aught else, provided only there be no sore extinguished as the price of his temerity! in the case. Then they give the corpse a wide berth. Even sore eyes are made much worse by looking on the dead. But yet, strange to say, the superstition in Barbados is that, if any rum be used in washing the corpse, the person who will use it afterwards for washing the eyes, may then and there dismiss all fear of bad eyes for the future. You are thus safe from cataract, or any other eye-ailment -such is the magic power of this disgusting remedy. And, verily, any one who could be found willing to go through such an ordeal ought to have his reward in eyes made strong enough to last him his lifetime. Some of the authorities in Barbados, however, hold that it is not necessary for the living to use the very rum which has been used for the dead, so the washing of the sore or weak eyes be performed in the presence of the dead body. In another respect, too, the Barbadian superstition about contact with a dead body differs from the St. Croisian. The touch of a dead hand has a wonderful effect upon all swellings and chronic pains. I believe that, even in Barbados, there ought to be no abrasion of the skin; but of this I am not quite sure. Anyhow, as regards the pain or swelling, any old Barbadian negro woman will tell you how to cure itay, even when the "great doctors" have given it up. You have only to get into the room at night with the corpse, take its hand, and pass it carefully over You can the swollen or painful place. then go away quite sure that the swelling will go down, or the pain diminish, contemporaneously with the decay of that dead body in the grave. But now comes the important point. You must go into the room alone, and remain in it alone all the time, or else there Alluding, as I did just now, to the practice of washing the dead, reminds me of a custom prevailing in St. Croix among those who perform that unpleasant office, or who otherwise assist in preparing the body for the coffin. They are almost sure to take home with them, and keep in their own homes, something immediately connected with that body. It may be a lock of hair, or it may be some garment, or even a fragment of a garment. But be it what it may, something must be taken, if the spirit of the dead is to be prevented from molesting those daring ones who ventured to tamper with the place of its late habitation. Of course it is difficult to give the rationale of any particular superstition. This last may, however, he perhaps explained. At first thought, it seems most natural to believe that the surest way to prevent any visit from a dead man is to take nothing of his with you. But not so. A liberty has been taken with his body by one who is probably a total stranger, hired perhaps for the express purpose of preparing him for his coffin. Now, if you take something of his, something that is either a part of him, or has been on his person, you in a sense identify yourself with him; you establish, as it were, a kind of relationship, and thus the liberty you take with him must seem much less to him. Kinglake relates, in “ Eöthen,” a similar custom prevailing among the people of Constantinople. When an Osmanlee dies, one of his dresses is cut in pieces, and every one of his friends receives a small piece as a memorial of the deceased. If it be true that the infection of the plague is in clothes, then, as Kinglake observes, this is certainly a fatal present, for it not only forces the living to remember the dead, but often to follow and bear him company. The disgusting and heathenish practice of having dancing during the night, while a corpse is in the house, prevails among the negroes in many West-Indian islands. Revolting superstitions are probably connected with this custom, which seems at once to transplant us to lands where the light of the gospel has not yet penetrated. All old negroes, when asked about it, say that this custom came from Africa. We pass now to superstitions connected with funerals, where also we have a wide field — too wide, indeed, to be occupied within the limits of a single article. These are perhaps more plentiful in Grenada, St. Lucia, and Dominica, than in other West-Indian islands. In all the islands rain at a funeral, or on the day of a man's burial, is thought a good sign about him. The old superstition, expressed in the saying, "Blessed is the dead that the rain rains on," prevails here as in Europe. There is a curious practice, not uncommon among the very ignorant in Grenada. When a corpse is passing through the door on the way to interment, the bearers will let down the head of the coffin gently three times, tapping the threshold with it every time. I have been told that this was to let the dead bid farewell to his house in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We say to let the dead bid farewell, for that the body is merely the tenement in which the man lived, the machine through which he acted, is an idea which the negroes have in no wise realized yet. They are far, generally speaking, from believing that the living, sentient man is gone, and is living for the present in a separate existence. The body to them is still the man. Sometimes a gourd, or a small cup, will be thrown into the grave just before the coffin is lowered. It is brought from the house of the deceased, and contains earth, or perhaps, if the people are Roman Catholics, it has holy water, brought from church on Good Friday, and kept hitherto as a great charm. I have in Grenada, seen the bearers of a corpse running at a tolerably quick pace, and, on remonstrating about the impropriety, I was told that the bearers could not help it, as the dead was running. Both the bearers and my informant firmly believed this; and he was a shrewd black man, who could read and write, who was thriving as a cocoa-planter on a small scale, and was even a communicant of my own church. He proceeded on that occasion, in proof of his statement, to relate to me many cases he had known of this wonderful desire on the part of a corpse to have a run, as also some in which the corpse had almost refused to go, from an objection to some one of the bearers. It had, of course, been always found that, on the substitution of some one else for the obnoxious bearer, the dead man had gone to his grave cheerfully enough. This is another proof how far from the negro mind is any notion of the person, the individual "I," being anything else than the body itself. It must be remarked, however, that corpses do not play these funny tricks in every island. I have never known them in St. Croix for example, to have any decided propensity either to run or to stand still, so the bearers have an easier time of of it. In measuring a dead body for the coffin, the thing generally used in Grenada is one of those reeds called "wild canes." These grow in swampy places, and are very common in Grenada. A clump of them looks from a distance exceedingly like sugar-canes. But whether it be the wild cane or any other stick, the measuring-rod is taken to the grave, and thrown in on the coffin as soon as this is lowered. It is worth while knowing, too, that to take the rod that has measured a dead body and measure yourself against it is certain death at no long interval. The custom common in St. Croix, and all but universal in Grenada and some other islands, for every person present at a funeral to cast in at least one handful of earth on the coffin, after the funeral service is over, has been variously explained to me, as an asking for the dead person's prayers, as an act of praying for him, as a formal taking leave of him, or as a helping to do the last act for him viz., make his grave. I think the second is the prominent idea in most negro minds, for I have often heard a "God bless you," or a "God rest you," accompanying the act. I have also myself heard, along with the throwing-in of the earth, the request made for the dead man's prayers. Among the more educated of our lower orders, the last is perhaps the reason—the taking a share in making up your friend's last resting-place. Whether this throwing in earth is an imitation of any ceremony in use among the illustrious body of Freemasons, who cer |