ELOQUENCE. To speak or write Things which dare meet the searching light, Judgment, and trimm'd with handsome wit; Sweet numbers, which can Pleasure's soul distil, And thro' the willing heart their conquests thrill Words tuned by The heavenly sphere's high melody, Words which with charming ravishment surprise, Is brave, I grant: And yet no certain argument But he who thus doth speak or write May be a "son" of swarthy night; Nor must we think to calculate of men By the sole horoscope of tongue or pen. That man for me, Not in whose words, but deeds I see Zeal's gallant flames. I dare not found His only is the solid excellence Of rhetoric, whose life's his eloquence. Yet whatever may have been the privations and disappointments which our author was condemned to experience, in consequence of the temporary overthrow of the constitution in church and state, we know that he waited the return of better times with faith, and charity, and hope; and the poems now before me, which were written during the gloomiest period of national anarchy, exhibit, in almost every page, proofs of this happy disposition, proofs not only of his piety and Christian forgiveness, but of that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which could only spring from a mind conscious of having acted well, and therefore at peace within itself. There are, in particular, four poems towards the conclusion of the series, entitled "The Times," "Idleness," " "Idleness," " Hope," and "Content,” which strongly mark this character of the man. From the first I give two stanzas, as affording an admirable lesson for those who, without reforming themselves, complain of the badness of the times: the language, it is true, is simple and unadorned, but on that account, perhaps, only the more forcible and striking. Why slander we the times? Have days and years, that we 'Tis not the times are bad, but man. If thy desire it be To see The times prove good, be thou Shall, spite of mischief, happy be. The third on Hope is entitled, from its very subject, to a more poetical treatment, and it accordingly meets with it in the following very beautiful lines: Bear up: Yet still bear up: no bark did e'er Hope, tho' slow she be, and late, Hope in sorrow is delight; Hope is day in darkest night : Trust Hope, and be Assured that she Will bid thee welcome to security. Against the violence of the tempest, indeed, which raged on all sides around him during a series of the most turbulent years which this country ever experienced, our poet possessed another resource, which, next to religion, has been found most efficient in reconciling man to the numerous evils which await him in this sublunary state; for we learn from the history of his life, that the affection of his friends and the love of his family were with him under all his afflictions and trials. To this, in fact, the poems I am now noticing bear testimony, in almost every page; for they speak of friendship and domestic enjoyment in language whose sincerity will scarcely admit of a doubt. He who was entitled from experience to record the first of these blessings in the subsequent terms, could not, under any circumstances, be deemed an unfortunate man: Parental kindness cold may grow, Be chill, and faint, and die away : But there is no production in the volume before me which so undisguisedly and decidedly unveils to us the amiable character of our bard, and the happiness which he felt by his own fire-side, as the second of two poems entitled "Home." There is an earnestness, a naïveté, in the language of this little piece, which must steal into every heart, and which brings before us, infinitely better than a more polished and elaborate diction would do, a distinct and glowing picture of the comforts which were wont to |