And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art:

When twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,

That Charles himself might chace

To Carisbrook's narrow case;
That thence the royal actor borne,
The tragic scaffold might adorne,
While round the armed bands,

Did clap their bloody hands:
He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene;

But with his keener eye,

The axe's edge did trye.

Nor call'd the Gods with vulgar spight,
To vindicate his helplesse right:

But bow'd his comely head

Downe, as upon a bed.

This was that memorable houre,

Which first assured the forced power;

So when they did designe

The capitol's first line,

A bleeding head where they begun
Did fright the architects to run.

The poems of Marvell are, for the most part, productions of his early youth. They have much of that over-activity of fancy, that remoteness of allusion, which distinguishes the school of Cowley; but they have also a heartfelt tenderness, a childish simplicity of feeling, among all their complication of thought, which would atone for all their conceits, if conceit were indeed as great an offence against poetic nature as Addison and other critics of the French school pretend. But though there are cold conceits, a conceit is not necessarily cold. The mind, in certain states of passion, finds comfort in playing with occult or casual resemblances, and dallies with the echo of a sound.

We confine our praise to the poems which he wrote for himself. As for those he made to order, for Fairfax or Cromwell, they are as dull as every true son of the muse would wish these things to be. Captain Edward Thomson, who collected and published Marvell's works in 1776, has, with mischievous industry, scraped together, out of the state poems, and other common sewers, a quantity of obscene and scurrilous trash, which we are convinced Marvell did not write, and which, by whomsoever written, ought to be delivered over to condign oblivion.

With less injury to Marvell's reputation, but equal disregard of probability, Captain Thompson ascribes to him the hymns or paraphrases, "When all thy mercies, Oh my God," "The spacious firmament on

high," which were published in the Spectator, and afterwards in the works of Addison, to whom they undoubtedly belong. He was not the man to claim what was not his own. As to their being Marvell's, it is just as probable that they are Chaucer's. They present neither his language, his versification, nor his cast of thought.

We cannot better conclude, than with the following beautiful extract from a letter to a friend in affliction, which is novel on a trite subject,— that of consolation:

HONOURED SIR,

Having a great esteem and affection for you, and the grateful memory of him that is departed being still green and fresh upon my spirit, I cannot forbear to enquire, how you have stood the second shock, at your sad meeting of friends in the country. I know that the very sight of those who have been witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a calamity. I know the contagion of grief, and infection of tears; and especially when it runs in a blood. And I myself could sooner imitate than blame those innocent relentlings of nature, so that they spring from tenderness only, and humanity, not from an implacable sorrow. The tears of a family may flow together like those little drops that compact the rainbow, and if they be placed with the same advantage towards heaven, as those are to the sun, they, too, have their splendour; and like that bow, while they unbend into seasonable showers, yet they promise that there shall not be a second flood. But the dissoluteness of grief-the prodigality of sorrow-is neither to be indulged in a man's self, nor complied with in others. Though an only son be inestimable, yet, it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his gowrd. He that gave his own son, may he not take ours? It is pride that makes a rebel; and nothing but the overweening of ourselves, and our own things, that raises us against Divine Providence. Whereas, Abraham's obedience was better than sacrifice. And if God please to accept both, it is indeed a farther trial, but a greater honour. 'Tis true, it is a hard task to learn and teach at the same time. And where yourselves are the experiment, it is as if a man should dissect his own body, and read the anatomy lecture. But I will not heighten the difficulty, while I advise the attempt. Only, as in difficult things, you would do well to make use of all that may strengthen and assist you; the word of God, the society of good men, and the books of the ancients: there is one way more, which is, by diversion, business, and activity, which are also necessary to be used in their season."

RICHARD BENTLEY, D.D.

THE life of BENTLEY is not a pleasing retrospect. It affords a painful proof that peaceful pursuits are not always pursued in peace— that the irascible passions may be excited, no less by controversies of literature, than by disputes of politics; and that mean, and malignant interests are as busy in academic shades, as they can be in "high-viced cities;"-that power is as eagerly, and unscrupulously grasped at by the scholar, as by the courtier; and that money was once as unrighteously worshipped in Trinity College, Cambridge, as now in Threadneedle Street, or Capel Court.

So says Ovid.

This is one of the first apothegms that poor little Latiners are doomed to learn; and a beautiful one it is; displaying the value of classical learning in the clearest light. There is but one small objection to it :-it is not true.

It were well for great authors, poets, philosophers, scholars,-may be also for divines, if their memory lived only in their works-if their books were like the pyramids, which are admired the more, because we know not by whom, or for what, they were erected. Happiest, as the first and greatest of poets, is HOMER, of whose corporeal existence, not a record survives. So utterly are the footsteps of his mortal pilgrimage obliterated, that certain irrefragable doubters deny that he ever appeared in the body, and maintain that the Iliad is a meteor formed of the exha lations of a national mind, a unison of many voices, blended by the distance of a remote age; and it is pleasanter to believe even this, than to think that his life was spent in petty squabbles, and qui tam litigation or that, according to one tradition, he drowned himself from vexation, because he could not guess a miserable riddle.

It may not be an unfitting introduction to the biography of England's first Hellenist, if we attempt to fix the just value of that literature, to which BENTLEY dedicated those hours, which were not engaged in

litigious feuds, from which no distraction of affairs, no peril of estate, or reputation, ever diverted him. In the ceaseless ebb and flow of opinion, what has been unduly exalted by one age, is oft times as unjustly depreciated in the next, and so it has happened, that a minute acquaintance with the niceties of two dead languages, which has been honoured with the exclusive name of scholarship, and regarded as the sole type and symbol of a liberal education, is now considered by the most influ ential movers of popular judgment, as the specious disguise of self complacent ignorance, the fruitless blossom of indefatigable idleness, at best a frivolous accomplishment, and not seldom, an insidious abettor of privileged prejudice, and of " creeds outworn." But in truth there is no more wisdom, and far less amiability, in running along with a new folly, than in sitting still in the shadow of an old one.

In the wide circuit of human capacity, there is room for every art, and every science. As that liberty which infringes on another's birthright is usurpation, so that knowledge, whatever it be, which allows not space for all knowledge to expand, is merely learned ignorance. Neither the exact sciences, which are part and parcel of the pure reason; nor the practical arts of life, which good sense constructs out of experience, are any wise defrauded, by the attention which certain intellects choose to bestow, on the remains of antiquity. It is a very useless enquiry—what kind of knowledge, or what line of occupation is best— all are good, and in a complex system of society, all are needful. The community will best be served, if each do strenuously what he can do best, without troubling himself about the comparative worth or dignity of his vocation. When we consider the excellence to which Sciliger, Bentley, Heman, Heyne, attained in their art, we cannot reasonably doubt, that the All-giver endued them with peculiar faculties, fitted to their peculiar object, and that devoting themselves to that object, they obeyed the will of him who bestows on each man according to his divine pleasure. When we see a beautiful picture, we know that its maker was bound by special duty to paint. When we read an acute and elegant criticism, we are sure that its author is right in being a philologer. Wherever we find any branch of learning cultivated to the detriment of general information, we say not "this is overrated," but "other things are underrated," the fabric of learning has been built on too narrow a basis, and without that symmetry and inter-dependence of parts which is no less indispensable to intellectual soundness, than to visible beauty. But though the commonwealth of mind requires universal erudition, yet for the individual it is sufficient that he be wise in his own craft— the division of labour allows and demands that particular functions should appropriate particular agents-all will go well for each and all,

if there be not wanting some few overlooking and ruling geniuses, some master intellects, some architectonic sages, to keep the operatives to their work, and to restrict them to their province.

The question is not, therefore, whether critical learning be not useful and ornamental to the individual, not whether a Bentley employed, or misemployed, his faculties, but whether the predominance assented by classical studies over all other human knowledge, is rightfully conceded. Never for a moment would we allow it to be disputed that Mozart and Handel were glorious beings, who well fulfilled these duties to nature and to society; for be it remembered, that we speak not of those higher duties to God and the soul, which are essentially the same for all degrees, ranks, ages, sexes, and capacities. Their excellence proves irrefragably that they laboured in their appointed path; nevertheless we would not willingly constitute the music masters a committee of general instruction, nor do we very highly approve the fashion, which confines every female not born to manual labour, and too many of those that have no secure or honorable prospects of exemption from servitude or toil, hour after hour to a Piano-forte, for six days in the week, if the seventh be kept holy-wasting her happy spirits in the weary iteration of sounds, in which she delights not herself, and by which therefore she cannot delight others. By parity of argument the excellence of Virgil's verses does not demonstrate the propriety of compelling every boy, who is not sent to a ship or a factory, to be a Latin versifier, nor will the well-earned reputation of PORSON and BLOMFIELD, justify that arrangement, which measures the fitness of any man to form the mind of youth, and to tend over the souls of the poor, by his skill in deciding the priority of Greek readers, and his zeal for the abdicated rights of the Eolic Digamma.

In the history of classical learning in England, the most conspicuous name is that of RICHARD BENTLEY, who was one of the most prominent characters of the age to which he belonged. He was equally distinguished for the vigour of his intellect, the extent of his erudition, and the violence of his conduct. His life was long and active, and certainly not spent in an even tenor. From the manner in which it was occupied, his natural element appears to have been that of strife and contention. His literary controversies, not few in number, were conducted with much ferocity; nor was his name more familiarly known in the classical haunts of the Muses, than in the unclassical Court of King's Bench, where he had six law-suits in less than three years. The name of Bentley occupies a very prominent place in the works of Pope, Swift, and other contemporary satirists, and is familiarly known to multitudes who have no knowledge of his writings, or of his real character.