But my hearers cry ont: What a dence dost thou ail? Derry down, &c. The 'squire, whose good grace was to open the scene, And often took leave, but was loath to depart. Derry down, &c. "What frightens you thus, my good son ?' says the priest; For 'twas not that I murdered, but that I was taken.' 'Pooh, prithee ne'er trouble thy head with such fancies; If the money you promised be brought to the chest, 'And what will folks say, if they see you afraid? Courage, friend, for to-day is your period of sorrow; To-morrow!' our hero replied in a fright; He that's hanged before noon, ought to think of to-night." Derry down, &c. Alas!' quoth the 'squire, howe'er sumptuous the treat, I should therefore esteem it great favour and grace, Would you you be so kind as to go in my place." Derry down, &c. That I would,' quoth the father, and thank you to boot; The feast I proposed to you, I cannot taste, For this night by our order, is marked for a fast." Derry down, &c. Then turning about to the hangman, he said: For thy cord and my cord both equally tie, And we live by the gold for which other men die." Ode to a Lady: She refusing to Continue a Dispute with me, and leaving me in the argument. Spare, generous victor, spare the slave, In the dispute, whate'er I said, My heart was by my tongue belied: And in my looks you might have read Fow much I argued on your side. I say, whatever you maintain Of food and drink in several nations. As, in a watch's fine machine, The added movements which declare However more reduced and plain, The watch would still a watch remain : The whole stands still or breaks to pieces, But 'tis the stomach's solid stroke Soon ceases all the worldly bustle, REV. JAMES BRAMSTON. Two satirical poems by the REV. JAMES BRAMSTON (circa 16941744), included in Dodsley's 'Collection,' were much admired in their day. These are: The Art of Politics; in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry,' 1729; and The Man of Taste; occasioned by Pope's Epistle on that Subject,' 1731. Bramston also wrote an imitation of Philips's Splendid Shilling,' entitled 'The Crooked Sixpence.' In 1 The mind. 2 A noted watchmaker of the day. 3 An undertaker. 1707, Bramston was admitted at Westminster School; in 1713, he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1725 he became vicar of Harting, in Sussex. His two principal poems are good imitations of the style of Young's and Pope's satires. The following is the conclusion of his 'Art of Politics:' Parliamenteering is a sort of itch, That will too oft unwary knights bewitch. Men that have votes, and women that have none; In 'The Man of Taste' he thus ironically expatiates: Verse without rhyme I never could endure, Confirmed and settled by the nation's voice, Always upheld by national support, Of market, university, and court: Thomson, write blank; but know that for that reason Rhyme binds and beautifies the poet's lays, As London ladies owe their shape to stays. JONATHAN SWIFT. JONATHAN SWIFT, one of the most remarkable men of the age, was born in Dublin, November 30, 1667. He was of English parentage a fact which he never forgot, conceiving that there was a great dis tinction (as he wrote to Pope) between the English gentry of Ireland and the savage old Irish.' His grandfather was vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, who lost his fortune through his zeal and activity for Charles I. during the Civil war. Three of the vicar's sons settled in Ireland; and Jonathan Swift, father of the celebrated author, was bred to the law in Dublin He was steward to the society of the King's Inns, but died in great poverty before the birth of his distinguished son. Swift was supported by his uncle; and the circum stances of want and dependence with which he was early familiar, seem to have sunk deep inso his haughty soul. Born a posthumous child,' says Sir Walter Scott, and bred up an object of charity, he early adopted the custom of observing his birthday as a term, not of joy, but of sorrow, and of reading, when it annually recurred, the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house "that a man-child was born." Swift was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, which he left in his twenty-first year-having only received his degree by special favour-and was received into the house of Sir William Temple, a distant relation of his mother. Here Swift met King William, and indulged hopes of preferment, which were never realised. In 1692, he repaired to Oxford, for the purpose of taking his degree of M.A; and shortly after obtaining this distinction, he resolved to quit the establishment of Temple, and take orders in the Irish Church. He procured the prebend of Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor, but was soon disgusted with the life of an obscure country clergyman with an income of £100 a year. He returned to Moor Park, the house of Sir William Temple, and threw up his living at Kilroot. Temple died in 1699, and the poet was glad to accompany Lord Berkeley to Ireland in the capacity of chaplain. From this nobleman he obtained the rectory of Aghar, and the vicarages of Laracor and Rathveggan ; to which was afterwards added the prebend of Dunlavin, making his income only about £200 per annum. At Moor Park, Swift had (as stated in our notice of Temple) contracted an intimacy with Miss Esther Johnson, nominally the daughter of Sir William Temple's housekeeper; but her face, her position in the family, and Sir William's treatment of her, seemed to some to proclaim the fact that she was Temple's natural child. He left her £1000. She went, with a female friend, to reside in Ireland, to be near Swift, her early instructor, but they never were alone together. In 1701, Swift became a political writer on the side of the Whigs, and on his visits to England, he associated with Addison, Steele, and Halifax. In 1704 was published his 'Tale of a Tub,' the wildest and wittiest of all polemical or controversial works. In 1710, conceiving that he was neglected by the ministry, he quarreled with the Whigs, and united with Harley and the Tory administration. He was received with open arms. 'I stand with the new people,' he writes to Stella, 'ten times better than ever I did with the old, and forty times more caressed.' He carried with him shining weapons for party warfare-irresistible and unscrupulous satire, steady hate, and a dauntless spirit. From his new allies, he received, in 1713, the deanery of St. Patrick's. During his residence in England, he had engaged the affections of another young lady, Esther Vanhomrigh, who, under the name of Vanessa, rivalled Stella in poetical celebrity, and in personal misfortune. After the death of her father, this young lady and her sister retired to Ireland, where their father had left a small property near Dublin. Human nature has, perhaps, never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections. His pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early attached. Though, he said, he 'loved her better than his life a thousand millions of times,' he kept her hanging on in a state of hope deferred, injurious alike to her peace and reputation. Did he fear the scorn and laughter of the world, if he should marry the obscure daughter of Sir William Temple's housekeeper? He dared not afterwards, with manly sincerity, declare his situation to Vanessa, when this second victim avowed her passion. He was flattered that a girl of eighteen, of beauty and accomplishments, sighed for a gown of forty-four,' and he did not stop to weigh the consequences. The removal of Vanessa to Ireland, as Stella had gone before, to be near the presence of Swift-her irrepressible passion, which no coldness or neglect could extinguish— her life of deep seclusion, only checkered by the occasional visits of Swift, each of which she commemorated by planting with her own hand a laurel in the garden where they met her agonising remonstrances, when all her devotion and her offerings had failed, are touching beyond expression. 'The reason I write to you,' she says, 'is because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you. For when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me, and believe that I cannot help telling you this and live.' To a being thus agitated and engrossed with the strongest passion, how poor, how cruel, must have seemed the return of Swift! Cadenus, common forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart; Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ, For pastime, or to shew his wit; But books, and time, and state affairs, Had spoiled his fashionable airs; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love: His conduct might have made him styled The tragedy continued to deepen as it approached the close. Eight years had Vanessa nursed in solitude the hopeless attachment. At length she wrote to Stella, to ascertain the nature of the connection between her and Swift; the latter obtained the fatal letter, and rode instantly to Marley Abbey, the residence of the unhappy Vanessa. 'As he entered the apartment,' to adopt the picturesque language of Scott in recording the scene, 'the sternuess of his countenance, |