Like new-born infant wound up in his swathes,
Or victim tumbled flat upon his back,
That throbs beneath his sacrificer's knife;
Mute must thou bear the strife of little tongues,
And coward insults of the base-born crowd,
That grudge a privilege thou never hadst,
But only hoped for in the peaceful grave-
Of being unmolested and alone!
Arabia's gums and odoriferous drugs,
And honours by the heralds duly paid
In mode and form, e'en to a very scruple;
(O cruel irony !) these come too late,

And only mock whom they were meant to honour!

The death of the strong man is forcibly depicted:

Strength, too! thou surly and less gentle boast
Of those that laugh loud at the village ring!
A fit of common sickness pulls thee down
With greater ease than e'er thou didst the stripling
That rashly dared thee to the unequal fight.
What groan was that I heard? Deep groan, indeed,
With anguish heavy laden! let me trace it:
From yonder bed it comes, where the strong man,
By stronger arm belaboured, gasps for breath
Like a hard-hunted beast. How his great heart
Beats thick! his roomy chest by far too scant
To give the lungs full play! What now avail
The strong-built sinewy limbs and well-spread
shoulders?

See, how he tugs for life, and lays about him,
Mad with his pain! Eager he catches hold
Of what comes next to hand, and grasps it hard,
Just like a creature drowning. Hideous sight!
Oh how his eyes stand out, and stare full ghastly!
While the distemper's rank and deadly venom
Shoots like a burning arrow 'cross his bowels,
And drinks his marrow up. Heard you that
groan?

It was his last. See how the great Goliah,
Just like a child that brawled itself to rest,
Lies still. What mean'st thou then, O mighty
boaster,

To vaunt of nerves of thine? What means the bull,
Unconscious of his strength, to play the coward,
And flee before a feeble thing like man;
That, knowing well the slackness of his arm,
Trusts only in the well-invented knife?

In our extracts from Congreve, we have quoted a passage, much admired by Johnson, descriptive of the awe and fear inspired by a cathedral scene at midnight, 'where all is hushed and still as death.' Blair has ventured on a similar description, and has imparted to it a terrible and gloomy power:

See yonder hallowed fane! the pious work Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot, And buried midst the wreck of things which were: There lie interred the more illustrious dead. The wind is up: hark! how it howls! methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary! Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird,

Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered, and hung round with shreds of

'scutcheons,

And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound,
Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults,

The mansions of the dead. Roused from their slumbers,

In grim array the grisly spectres rise,
Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen,
Pass and repass, hushed as the foot of night.

Again the screech-owl shrieks-ungracious sound!
I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill.

With tenderness equal to his strength, Blair laments the loss of death-divided friendships:

Invidious Grave! how dost thou rend in sunder
Whom love has knit, and sympathy made one!
A tie more stubborn far than nature's band.
Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweetener of life! and solder of society!

I owe thee much. Thou hast deserved from me
Far, far beyond what I can ever pay.
Oft have I proved the labours of thy love,
And the warm efforts of thy gentle heart,
Anxious to please. Oh! when my friend and I
In some thick wood have wandered heedless on,
Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down
Upon the sloping cowslip-covered bank,
Where the pure limpid stream has slid along
In grateful errors through the underwood,
Sweet murmuring, methought the shrill-tongued
thrush

Mended his song of love; the sooty blackbird
Mellowed his pipe, and softened every note:
The eglantine smelled sweeter, and the rose
Assumed a dye more deep; whilst every flower
Vied with its fellow-plant in luxury

Of dress! Oh! then the longest summer's day Seemed too, too much in haste: still, the full heart

Had not imparted half: 'twas happiness
Too exquisite to last. Of joys departed
Not to return, how painful the remembrance!

Some of his images are characterised by a Shakspearian force and picturesque fancy. Of suicides he says:

The common damned shun their society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul.

Men see their friends

Drop off like leaves in autumn; yet launch out
Into fantastic schemes, which the long livers
In the world's hale and undegenerate days
Would scarce have leisure for.

The divisions of churchmen are for ever closed:
The lawn-robed prelate and plain presbyter,
Erewhile that stood aloof, as shy to meet,
Familiar mingle here, like sister-streams
That some rude interposing rock has split.
Man, sick of bliss, tried evil; and, as a result:

The good he scorned

Stalked off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost,
Not to return; or, if it did, in visits,

Like those of angels, short and far between.

The latter simile has been appropriated by Mr Campbell in his Pleasures of Hope, with one slight verbal alteration, which can scarcely be called an improvement:

What though my winged hours of bliss have been,
Like angel visits, few and far between.

The original comparison seems to belong to Norris of Bemerton, who, prior to Blair, wrote a poem, The Parting, which contains the following verse:

How fading are the joys we dote upon;
Like apparitions seen and gone;

But those who soonest take their flight,
Are the most exquisite and strong,
Like angels' visits short and bright;
Mortality's too weak to bear them long.

DR WATTS.

ISAAC WATTS-a name never to be pronounced without reverence by any lover of pure Christianity, or by any well-wisher of mankind-was born at

Dr Watts.

Southampton, July 17, 1674. His parents were remarkable for piety. Means would have been provided for placing him at the university, but he

early inclined to the Dissenters, and he was educated at one of their establishments, taught by the Rev. Thomas Rowe. He was afterwards four years in the family of Sir John Hartopp, at Stoke Newington. Here he was chosen (1698) assistant-minister by an Independent congregation, of which four years after he succeeded to the full charge; but bad health soon rendered him unfit for the performance of the heavy labours thus imposed upon him, and in his turn he required the assistance of a joint-pastor. His health continuing to decline, Watts was received in 1712 into the house of a benevolent gentleman of his neighbourhood, Sir Thomas Abney of Abney Park, where he spent all the remainder of his life. There is no circumstance in English literary biography parallel to the residence of this sacred bard in the house of a friend for the long period of thirtysix years. Abney House was a handsome mansion, surrounded by beautiful pleasure-grounds. He had apartments assigned to him, of which he enjoyed the use as freely as if he had been the master of the house. Dr Gibbons says: 'Here, without any care of his own, he had everything which could contribute to the enjoyment of life, and favour the pursuit of his studies. Here he dwelt in a family which, for piety, order, harmony, and every virtue, was a house of God. Here he had the privilege of a country recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading lawn, the flowery garden, and other advantages to soothe his mind and aid his restoration to health; to yield him, whenever he chose them, most grateful intervals from his laborious studies, and enable him to return to them with redoubled vigour and delight.' The death of Sir Thomas Abney, eight years after he went to reside with him, made no change in these agreeable arrangements, as the same benevolent patronage was extended to him by the widow, who outlived him a year. While in this retirement, he preached occasionally, but gave the most of his time to study, and to the composition of those works

which have given him a name in the annals of literature. His treatises on Logic and on the Improvement of the Mind are still highly prized for their cogency of argument and felicity of illustration. Watts also wrote several theological works and

volumes of sermons. His poetry consists almost wholly of devotional hymns, which, by their simplicity, their unaffected ardour, and their imagery, powerfully arrest the attention of children, and are never forgotten in mature life. In infancy we learn

the hymns of Watts, as part of maternal instruction, and in youth his moral and logical treatises impart the germs of correct reasoning and virtuous selfgovernment. The life of this good and useful man terminated on the 25th of November 1748, having been prolonged to the advanced age of seventy-five.

[The Rose.]

How fair is the rose! what a beautiful flower,

The glory of April and May!

But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour,
And they wither and die in a day.

Yet the rose has one powerful virtue to boast,
Above all the flowers of the field;

When its leaves are all dead, and its fine colours lost,
Still how sweet a perfume it will yield!

So frail is the youth and the beauty of men,
Though they bloom and look gay like the rose;
But all our fond care to preserve them is vain,
Time kills them as fast as he goes.

Then I'll not be proud of my youth nor my beauty,
Since both of them wither and fade;

But gain a good name by well doing my duty;
This will scent like a rose when I'm dead.

[The Hebrew Bard.]

Softly the tuneful shepherd leads
The Hebrew flocks to flowery meads:
He marks their path with notes divine,
While fountains spring with oil and wine.
Rivers of peace attend his song,
And draw their milky train along.
He jars; and, lo! the flints are broke,
But honey issues from the rock.

When, kindling with victorious fire,
He shakes his lance across the lyre,
The lyre resounds unknown alarms,
And sets the Thunderer in arms.
Behold the God! the Almighty King
Rides on a tempest's glorious wing:
His ensigns lighten round the sky,
And moving legions sound on high.

Ten thousand cherubs wait his course,
Chariots of fire and flaming horse:
Earth trembles; and her mountains flow,
At his approach, like melting snow.

But who those frowns of wrath can draw,
That strike heaven, earth, and hell with awe?
Red lightning from his eyelids broke;
His voice was thunder, hail, and smoke.

He spake; the cleaving waters fled,
And stars beheld the ocean's bed:
While the great Master strikes his lyre,
You see the frighted floods retire:
In heaps the frighted billows stand,
Waiting the changes of his hand :
He leads his Israel through the sea,
And watery mountains guard their way.
Turning his hand with sovereign sweep,
He drowns all Egypt in the deep:
Then guides the tribes, a glorious band,
Through deserts to the promised land.
Here camps, with wide-embattled force,
Here gates and bulwarks stop their course;
He storms the mounds, the bulwark falls,
The harp lies strewed with ruined walls.

How fine has the day been, how bright was the sun, How lovely and joyful the course that he run, Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun,

And there followed some droppings of rain!
But now the fair traveller's come to the west,
His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best;
He paints the sky gay as he sinks to his rest,
And foretells a bright rising again.

Just such is the Christian; his course he begins,
Like the sun in a mist, when he mourns for his sins,
And melts into tears; then he breaks out and shines,
And travels his heavenly way:

But when he comes nearer to finish his race,
Like a fine setting sun, he looks richer in grace,
And gives a sure hope at the end of his days,
Of rising in brighter array.

MATTHEW GREEN.

MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) was author of a poem, The Spleen, which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling Hudibras, but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one.

The Spleen was first published by Glover, the author of Leonidas, himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of real poetry and music.' As The Spleen is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line, marked by italic, which is certainly one of the happiest and wisest things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare

Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.

[Cures for Melancholy.]

To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some hilly walks; all exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies;
Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen;
And kitten, if the humour hit,
Has harlequined away the fit.

Since mirth is good in this behalf,
At some particulars let us laugh.
Witlings, brisk fools-

Who buzz in rhyme, and, like blind flies,
Err with their wings for want of eyes.
Poor authors worshipping a calf;
Deep tragedies that make us laugh;
Folks, things prophetic to dispense,
Making the past the future tense;
The popish dubbing of a priest;
Fine epitaphs on knaves deceased;
A miser starving to be rich;
The prior of Newgate's dying speech;
A jointured widow's ritual state;
Two Jews disputing tête-à-tête;
New almanacs composed by seers;
Experiments on felons' ears;
Disdainful prudes, who ceaseless ply
The superb muscle of the eye;
A coquette's April-weather face;
A Queen' brough mayor behind his mace,
And fops in military show,

Are sovereign for the case in view.

If spleen-fogs rise at close of day,

I clear my evening with a play,
Or to some concert take my way.
The company, the shine of lights,
The scenes of humour, music's flights,
Adjust and set the soul to rights.

In rainy days keep double guard,
Or spleen will surely be too hard;
Which, like those fish by sailors met,
Fly highest while their wings are wet.
In such dull weather, so unfit
To enterprise a work of wit;
When clouds one yard of azure sky,
That's fit for simile, deny,

I dress my face with studious looks,
And shorten tedious hours with books.
But if dull fogs invade the head,
That memory minds not what is read,
I sit in window dry as ark,

And on the drowning world remark:
Or to some coffee-house I stray
For news, the manna of a day,

And from the hipped discourses gather,
That politics go by the weather.

*

Sometimes I dress, with women sit,

And chat away the gloomy fit;

I never game, and rarely bet, Am loath to lend or run in debt. No Compter-writs me agitate; Who moralising pass the gate,

*

*

And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding visits there,
And forces Folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.

This view, profusely when inclined,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience, joined with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their laboured end,

At once both wind and stream contend:

Success herein is seldom seen,

#

*

And zeal, when baffled, turns to spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent,
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent;
His skiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pulled against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd,
Sees unconcerned life's wager rowed,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.
Yet philosophic love of ease
I suffer not to prove disease,
But rise up in the virtuous cause
Of a free press, and equal laws.
Since disappointment galls within,
And subjugates the soul to spleen,
Most schemes, as money snares, I hate,
And bite not at projector's bait.
Sufficient wrecks appear each day,
And yet fresh fools are cast away.
Ere well the bubbled can turn round,
Their painted vessel runs aground;
Or in deep seas it oversets
By a fierce hurricane of debts;
Or helm-directors in one trip,
Freight first embezzled, sink the ship.

When Fancy tries her limning skill
To draw and colour at her will,
And raise and round the figures well,
And shew her talent to excel,

I guard my heart, lest it should woo
Unreal beauties Fancy drew,
And, disappointed, feel despair
At loss of things that never were.

[Contentment A Wish.]

Forced by soft violence of prayer,

The blithesome goddess soothes my care;
I feel the deity inspire,

And thus she models my desire :
Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid,
Annuity securely made,

A farm some twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own;
Two maids that never saw the town,
A serving-man not quite a clown,
A boy to help to tread the mow,

And drive, while t' other holds the plough;
A chief, of temper formed to please,

Fit to converse and keep the keys;
And better to preserve the peace,
Commissioned by the name of niece;
With understandings of a size,
To think their master very wise.
May Heaven-it's all I wish for-send
One genial room to treat a friend,
Where decent cupboard, little plate,
Display benevolence, not state.

And may my humble dwelling stand
Upon some chosen spot of land:

A pond before full to the brim,

Where cows may cool, and geese may swim;
Behind, a green, like velvet neat,
Soft to the eye, and to the feet;
Where odorous plants in evening fair
Breathe all around ambrosial air;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground,
Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned,
Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,
Who pay their quit-rents with a song;
With opening views of hill and dale,
Which sense and fancy do regale,
Where the half cirque, which vision bounds,
Like amphitheatre surrounds:

And woods impervious to the breeze,
Thick phalanx of embodied trees;
From hills through plains in dusk array,
Extended far, repel the day;

Here stillness, height, and solemn shade,
Invite, and contemplation aid:
Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
The dark decrees and will of fate;
And dreams, beneath the spreading beech
Inspire, and docile fancy teach;
While soft as breezy breath of wind,'
Impulses rustle through the mind:
Here Dryads, scorning Phoebus' ray,
While Pan melodious pipes away,
In measured motions frisk about,
Till old Silenus puts them out.
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green;

Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep,

Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep,
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear,
And poppy top-knots deck her hair,

And silver streams through meadows stray,
And Naiads on the margin play,
And lesser nymphs on side of hills,
From plaything urns pour down the rills.

Thus sheltered free from care and strife,

May I enjoy a calm through life;
See faction, safe in low degree,
As men at land see storms at sea,
And laugh at miserable elves,
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Cursed with such souls of base alloy,
As can possess, but not enjoy;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By avarice, sphincter of the heart;

Who wealth, hard earned by guilty cares,
Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs;
May I, with look ungloomed by guile,
And wearing virtue's livery-smile,
Prone the distressed to relieve,
And little trespasses forgive;
With income not in fortune's power,
And skill to make a busy hour;
With trips to town, life to amuse,
To purchase books, and hear the news,
To see old friends, brush off the clown,
And quicken taste at coming down,
Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage,
And slowly mellowing in age,
When fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain,
Perhaps to blossom soon again.

Sing, ye Muses, tobacco, the blessing of peace; Was ever a nation so blessed as this?

Air.

When summer suns grow red with heat,
Tobacco tempers Phoebus' ire;
When wintry storms around us beat,
Tobacco cheers with gentle fire.
Yellow autumn, youthful spring,
In thy praises jointly sing.

Recitativo.

Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets,
Fraught with tobacco's balmy sweets;
Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power,
And Boreas is afraid to roar.

Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off":

Little tube of mighty power,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax and eye of fire;
And thy snowy taper waist
With my finger gently braced,
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper pressed,
And the sweetest bliss of blisses
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.

Thomson is the subject of the third imitation:

O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth,

That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought,
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns;
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise,
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Pætotheke with pungent powers perfumed
Itself one tortoise, all, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; then rudely rammed illume,
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds,
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires: I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse: oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrined,

Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.

This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's turgid style and diction employed on such a theme is highly ludicrous, the good-natured poet was offended with Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires, which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than his Night Thoughts, not then written. Pope is thus imitated:

Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To templars, modesty, to parsons, sense :
So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content more solid than the smile of lords:

703