younger gives the following account of a droll circumstance, which occurred at a supper at Auteuil, with the above-mentioned literati : "At this supper, at which my father was not present, the sage Boileau was no more master of himself than any of his guests. After the wine had led them into the gravest train of moralizing, they agreed that life was but a state of misery; that the greatest happiness consisted in having never been born, and the next greatest in an early death; and finally, they formed the romantic resolution of throwing themselves, without loss of time, into the river. Accordingly, the river not being far distant, they actually went thither. Molière, however, remarked that such a noble and heroic action ought not to be buried in the obscurity of night; but was worthy to be performed in the open day.' This observation produced a pause; they looked on each other, and said he is right.''Gentlemen,' said Chapelle, we had better wait till the morning to throw ourselves into the water, and, meanwhile, we will return home to finish our wine.' This anecdote has been brought upon the stage, by Andrieux, in a piece entitled Molière and his friends at the supper at Auteuil.'" One of Boileau's favourite amusements at Auteuil was, playing at skittles. "This game," says the younger Racine," he plays with an extraordinary skill. I have repeatedly seen him knock down all the nine pins at a single throw." "It cannot be denied," said Boileau, (speaking of himself,) " that I possess two distinguished talents, both equally useful to mankind-the one, that I can play well at skittles; the other, that I can write good verses." Boileau was advanced in years when he found himself necessitated to sell his villa at Auteuil, a circumstance which not a little tended to em"You bitter the remaining part of his life. shall be as much at home as ever in your own villa," said Monsieur Le Verier, who purchased it of him;" and I beg that you will retain an apartment, and come very often to stay in it.” Boileau, a few days after, really went to this residence, walked about the garden, and missed an arbour which had afforded the most pleasing associations. "What is become of my arbour?" exclaimed the indignant bard, to Antoine, the gardener, whom he has celebrated in his Epistles. "Mons. Le Verier ordered it to be cut down," replied Antoine. "What have I to do here?". continued Boileau," here! where I am no longer master?" He mounted into his carriage, and quickly returned to Paris, and never afterwards beheld his Tivoli. Gendron, the celebrated physician, in the sequel became the proprietor of Boileau's villa. Voltaire, when he paid him his first visit there, complimented him in the following clever impromptu : "C'est ici le vrai Parnasse Des vrais enfans d'Apollon; Sous le nom de BOILEAU ces lieux virent Horace, KÖRNER. CHARLES THEODORE KÖRNER, the celebrated young German Poet and Soldier, was killed in a skirmish with a detachment of French troops, on the 26th August, 1813, a few hours after the composition of his popular piece, "The Sword Song." This he composed during the halt of his regiment, in a forest not far from Rosenberg. In the glimmering dawn of the morning of the 26th, he noted it down in his pocket-book, and was reading it out to a friend, when the signal for the onset was given. The engagement took place on the road which leads from Gadebusch to Schwerin: the enemy were more numerous than had been expected, but fled, after a short resistance, over a narrow plain into a neighbouring thicket. Among those who were most active in the pursuit was Körner, and there he met that glorious death which he had often anticipated in his poems with so much animation. The Sharp-shooters, who had formed an ambush in the under-wood, poured from thence a heavy shower of balls upon the Cavalry who were in pursuit. One of these, after passing through his horse's neck, hit Körner in the belly, traversed his liver and spine, and deprived him, at once, of speech and consciousness. He fell, and his companions in arms carefully raised him from the ground: his features remained unaltered, and exhibited no traces of any painful sensation. Nothing was omitted which could possibly have tended to restore him; but all was in vain. He was buried at the village of Wöbbelin, in Mecklenburgh, under a beautiful oak, in a recess of which he had frequently deposited verses, composed by him while campaigning in its vicinity. The monument, erected to his memory beneath this tree, is of cast-iron, and the upper part is wrought into a Sword and Lyre, a favourite emblem of Körner's, from which one of his works had been entitled. Near the grave of the Poet is that of his only sister, who died of grief for his loss, having only survived him long enough to complete his portrait, and a drawing of his burial-place. Over the gate of the cemetery is engraved one of his own lines: Vergiss die treuen Todten nicht;"-Forget not the faithful dead. 66 THE GRAVE OF KÖRNER. (By Mrs. Hemans.) ́ "Green wave the Oak for ever o'er thy rest! Thou that beneath its crowning foliage sleepest, Thy place of memory, as an altar, keepest! Rest, Bard! rest, Soldier!-By the father's hand, With his wreath-offering silently to stand In the hush'd presence of the glorious dead. * The Poems of Körner, which were chiefly devoted to the cause of his country, are strikingly distinguished by religious feeling, and a confidence in the Supreme Justice, for the final deliverance of Germany. |