What do I see!

Bir. Isabella, arm'd !

Isa. Against my husband's life!

Who, but the wretch, most reprobate to grace,
Despair e'er harden'd for damnation,
Could think of such a deed-Murder my husband!
Bir. Thou didst not think it.

Isa. Madness has brought me to the gates of hell, And there has left me. Oh, the frightful change Of my distractions! Or is this interval

Of reason but to aggravate my woes,

To drive the horror back with greater force
Upon my soul, and fix me mad for ever?

Bir. Why dost thou fly me so?

Isa. I cannot bear his sight; Distraction, come, Possess me all, and take me to thyself! Shake off thy chains, and hasten to my aid; Thou art my only cure-Like other friends, He will not come to my necessities;

Then I must go to find the tyrant out—

My mind is overcast the gathering clouds
Darken the prospect-I approach the brink,
And soon must leap the precipice! Oh, heaven!
While yet my senses are my own, thus kneeling,
Let me implore thy mercies on my wife:
Release her from her pangs; and if my reason,
O'erwhelm'd with miseries, sink before the tempest,
Pardon those crimes despair may bring upon me!
[Rises.

Enter Nurse.

Nurse. Sir, there is somebody at the door must needs speak with you; he will not tell his name. Bir. I come to him. [Exit Nurse.

'Tis Belford, I suppose; he little knows Of what has happen'd here; I wanted him, Must employ his friendship, and then- [Exit.

SONG.

IN SIR ANTHONY LOVE, OR THE RAMBLING LADY.

PURSUING beauty, men descry

The distant shore, and long to prove Still richer in variety

The treasures of the land of love.

We women, like weak Indians, stand
Inviting from our golden coast
The wand'ring rovers to our land :

But she who trades with them is lost,
With humble vows they first begin,
Stealing unseen into the heart;
But by possession settled in,

They quickly play another part.
For beads and baubles we resign,
In ignorance, our shining store;
Discover nature's richest mine,

And yet the tyrants will have more.

Be wise, be wise, and do not try

How he can court, or you be won; For love is but discovery:

When that is made, the pleasure's done.

ROBERT BLAIR was minister of the parish of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian. His son, who died not many years ago, was a very high legal character in Scotland. The eighteenth century has produced few specimens of blank verse of so powerful and simple a character as that of The Grave. It is a popular poem, not merely because it is religious, but because its language and imagery are free, natural, and picturesque. The latest editor of the poets has, with singularly bad taste, noted some of this author's most nervous and expressive phrases as vulgarisms, among which he reckons that of friendship "the solder

of society." Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dullness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty*.

[* Blair was a great favourite with Burns, who quotes from "The Grave," very frequently in his letters.

"Blair's Grave," says Southey, "is the only poem I can call to mind which has been composed in imitation of the Night Thoughts." Life of Cowper, vol. ii. p. 143.]

WHILST Some affect the sun, and some the shade,
Some flee the city, some the hermitage;
Their aims as various, as the roads they take
In journeying through life ;-the task be mine
To paint the gloomy horrors of the tomb;
Th' appointed place of rendezvous, where all
These travellers meet.--Thy succours I implore,
Eternal king! whose potent arm sustains
The keys of hell and death.The Grave-dread
thing!

Men shiver when thou'rt named: Nature, appall'd,
Shakes off her wonted firmness.--Ah! how dark
Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes !
Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark
Dark as was chaos, ere the infant sun [night,
Was roll'd together, or had tried his beams
Athwart the gloom profound.The sickly taper,
By glimm'ring through thy low-brow'd misty vaults
(Furr'd round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime),
Lets fall a supernumerary horror,

And only serves to make thy night more irksome.
Well do I know thee by thy trusty yew,
Cheerless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell
'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms:
Where light-heel'd ghosts, and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan cold moon (as fame reports,)
Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds.
No other merriment, dull tree, is thine.

See yonder hallow'd fane ;-the pious work
Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot,
And buried 'midst the wreck of things which were;
There lie interr'd 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,
Rook'd in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles
Black plaster'd, and hung round with shreds of
'scutcheons

And tatter'd 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, hush'd as the foot of Night.
Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound!
I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill.
Quite round the pile, a row of reverend elms
(Coeval near with that) all ragged show,
Long lash'd by the rude winds. Some rift half down
Their branchless trunks; others so thin a-top,
That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree.
Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen'd
here:

Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs :
Dead men have come again, and walk'd about ;

And the great bell has toll'd, unrung, untouch’d. (Such tales their cheer at wake or gossiping, When it draws near to witching time of night.)

Oft, in the lone church-yard at night I've seen, By glimpse of moonshine chequering through the The schoolboy, with his satchel in his hand, [trees, Whistling aloud to bear his courage up, And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones (With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown), That tell in homely phrase who lie below. Sudden he starts, and hears, or thinks he hears, The sound of something purring at his heels; Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him, Till out of breath he overtakes his fellows: Who gather round, and wonder at the tale Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly, That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand O'er some new-open'd grave; and (strange to tell!) Evanishes at crowing of the cock.

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 the gentle heart,
Anxious to please.-Oh! when my friend and I
In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,
Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down
Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd 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
Mellow'd his pipe, and soften'd every note:
The eglantine smell'd 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
Seem'd 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!

Beauty-thou pretty plaything, dear deceit, That steals so softly o'er the stripling's heart, And gives it a new pulse, unknown before, The grave discredits thee: thy charms expunged, Thy roses faded, and thy lilies soil'd,

What hast thou more to boast of? Will thy lovers Flock round thee now, to gaze and do thee homage! Methinks I see thee with thy head low laid,

Whilst surfeited upon thy damask cheek
The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd,
Riots unscared.- -For this, was all thy caution?
For this, thy painful labours at thy glass?
To improve those charms, and keep them in repair,
For which the spoiler thanks thee not. Foul feeder,
Coarse fare and carrion please thee full as well,
And leave as keen a relish on the sense.
Look how the fair one weeps !-the conscious tears
Stand thick as dew-drops on the bells of flowers:
Honest effusion! the swollen heart in vain
Works hard to put a gloss on its distress.

.

Sure 'tis a serious thing to die! My soul, What a strange moment must it be, when near Thy journey's end, thou hast the gulf in view! That awful gulf no mortal e'er repass'd To tell what's doing on the other side. Nature runs back, and shudders at the sight, And every life-string bleeds at thoughts of parting; For part they must: body and soul must part; Fond couple! link'd more close than wedded pair. This wings its way to its almighty source, The witness of its actions, now its judge; That drops into the dark and noisome grave, Like a disabled pitcher of no use.

Tell us, ye dead, will none of you, in pity To those you left behind, disclose the secret? Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out; What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be. I've heard, that souls departed have sometimes Forewarn'dmen of their death:-'Twas kindly done To knock, and give the alarm.-But what means This stinted charity?'Tis but lame kindness That does its work by halves.-Why might you not Tell us what 'tis to die? do the strict laws Of your society forbid your speaking Upon a point so nice ?-I'll ask no more: Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter; A very little time will clear up all,

And make us learn'd as you are, and as close. Death's shafts fly thick :-Here falls the villageswain,

And there his pamper'd lord.-The cup goes round:
And who so artful as to put it by !
'Tis long since death had the majority;
Yet strange! the living lay it not to heart.
See yonder maker of the dead man's bed,
The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle,
Of hard unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole
A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand
Digs through whole rows of kindred and acquaint-

ance,

By far his juniors.--Scarce a skull's cast up,
But well he knew its owner, and can tell
Some passage of his life.Thus hand in hand
The sot has walk'd with death twice twenty years;
And yet ne'er yonker on the green laughs louder,
Or clubs a smuttier tale :—When drunkards meet,
None sings a merrier catch, or lends a hand

More willing to his cup.-Poor wretch! he minds That soon some trusty brother of the trade [not Shall do for him what he has done for thousands.

Poor man!-how happy once in thy first state!
When yet but warm from thy great Maker's hand,
He stamp'd thee with his image, and, well pleased,
Smiled on his last fair work.-Then all was well.
Sound was the body, and the soul serene ;
Like two sweet instruments, ne'er out of tune,
That play their several parts.—Nor head, nor heart,
Offer'd to ache: nor was there cause they should;
For all was pure within: no fell remorse,
Nor anxious castings-up of what might be,
Alarm'd his peaceful bosom.-Summer seas
Show not more smooth, when kiss'd by southern
winds

Just ready to expire- -scarce importuned,
The generous soil, with a luxurious hand,
Offer'd the various produce of the year,
And everything most perfect in its kind.
Blessed! thrice blessed days!—But ah! how short!
Bless'd as the pleasing dreams of holy men ;
But fugitive like those, and quickly gone.
Oh! slippery state of things.-What sudden turns!
What strange vicissitudes in the first leaf
Of man's sad history!--To-day most happy,
And ere to-morrow's sun has set, most abject.
How scant the space between these vast extremes!
Thus fared it with our sire:-Not long h' enjoy'd
His paradise.-Scarce had the happy tenant
Of the fair spot due time to prove its sweets,
Or sum them up, when straight he must be gone,
Ne'er to return again.—And must he go?
Can nought compound for the first dire offence
Of erring man?- -Like one that is condemn'd,
Fain would he trifle time with idle talk,
And parley with his fate.- -But 'tis in vain.
Not all the lavish odours of the place,
Offer'd in incense, can procure his pardon,
Or mitigate his doom.--A mighty angel,
With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay,
And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take
One last and farewell round.

Sure the last end Of the good man is peace !-How calm his exit ! Night-dews fall not more gently to the ground, Nor weary worn-out winds expire so soft. Behold him in the evening-tide of life, A life well-spent, whose early care it was His riper years should not upbraid his green : By unperceived degrees he wears away; Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting. (High in his faith and hopes) look how he reaches After the prize in view! and, like a bird That's hamper'd, struggles hard to get away: Whilst the glad gates of sight are wide expanded To let new glories in, the first fair fruits Of the fast-coming harvest.-Then, oh then! Each earth-born joy grows vile, or disappears, Shrunk to a thing of nought.-Oh! how he longs

D D

Make up the full account; not the least atom
Embezzled, or mislaid, of the whole tale.
Each soul shall have a body ready furnish'd ;
And each shall have his own.-Hence, ye profane!
Ask not, how this can be ?-Sure the same pow'r
That rear'd the piece at first, and took it down,
Can re-assemble the loose scatter'd parts,
And put them as they were.-Almighty God
Has done much more; nor is his arm impair'd
Through length of days: And what he can, he will:

His faithfulness stands bound to see it done.
When the dread trumpet sounds, the slumb'ring dust
(Not unattentive to the call) shall wake:
And ev'ry joint possess its proper place,
With a new elegance of form, unknown

To its first state. -Nor shall the conscious soul
Mistake its partner, but amidst the crowd
Singling its other half, into its arms

Shall rush with all the impatience of a man
That's new come home, and, having long been absent,
With haste runs over ev'ry different room,
In pain to see the whole. Thrice happy meeting!
Nor time, nor death, shall ever part them more.
'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night;
We make the grave our bed, and then are gone.
Thus, at the shut of ev'n, the weary bird
Leaves the wide air, and in some lonely brake
Cow'rs down, and dozes till the dawn of day,
Then claps his well-fledged wings, and bears

away.

Ir is singular that a subject of such beautiful unity, divisibility, and progressive interest as the description of the year, should not have been appropriated by any poet before Thomson*. Mr. Twining, the translator of Aristotle's Poetics, attributes the absence of poetry devoted to pure rural and picturesque description among the ancients, to the absence or imperfection of the art of landscape painting. The Greeks, he observes, had no Thomsons because they had no Claudes. Undoubtedly they were not blind to the beauties of natural scenery; but their descriptions of rural objects are almost always what may be called sensual descriptions, exhibiting circumstances of corporeal delight, such as breezes to fan the body, springs to cool the feet, grass to repose the limbs, or fruits to regale the taste and smell, rather than objects of contemplative pleasure to the eye and imagination. From the time of Augustus, when, according to

* Even Thomson's extension of his subject to the whole year seems to have been an after-thought, as he began with the last of the seasons. It is said that he conceived the first design of his Winter, from a poem on the same subject by a Mr. Rickleton. Vide the Censura Literaria, vol. ii. where there is an amusing extract from the first and second edition of Thomson's Winter. I have seen an English poem, intitled The Seasons, which was published earlier (I think) than those of Thomson; but it is so insignificant that it may be doubted if Thomson ever heard of it.

[ He tells us so himself in one of his early letters. See Memoir of Thomson in Aldine Poets, p. xvii. The recovery of Rickleton's poem would be an addition to our poetry, for Thomson speaks of its many masterly strokes.]

Pliny, landscape painting was first cultivated, picturesque images and descriptions of prospects seem to have become more common. But on the whole there is much more studied and detailed description in modern than in ancient poetry, There is besides in Thomson a pure theism, and a spirit of philanthropy, which, though not unknown to classic antiquity, was not familiar to its popular breast. The religion of the ancients was beautiful in fiction, but not in sentiment. It had revealed the most voluptuous and terrifie agencies to poetry, but had not taught her to contemplate nature as one great image of Divine benignity, or her creatures as the objects of comprehensive human sympathy. Before popular poetry could assume this character, Christianity, philosophy, and freedom, must have civilised the human mind.

Habits of early admiration teach us all to look back upon this poet as the favourite companion of our solitary walks, and as the author who has first or chiefly reflected back to our minds a heightened and refined sensation of the delight which rural scenery affords us. The judgment of cooler years may somewhat abate our estimation of him, though it will still leave us the essential features of his poetical character to abide the test of reflection. The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most unfavourable comparison with the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper; at the same time the pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry is in general more bland and delightful than that of his great rival in rural description. Thomson seems to contemplate the creation with

an eye of unqualified pleasure and ecstacy, and to love its inhabitants with a lofty and hallowed feeling of religious happiness; Cowper has also his philanthropy, but it is dashed with religious terrors, and with themes of satire, regret, and reprehension. Cowper's image of nature is more curiously distinct and familiar. Thomson carries our associations through a wider circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches cannot be more faithful than Cowper's, but they are more soft and select, and less disturbed by the intrusion of homely objects. Cowper was certainly much indebted to him; and though he elevates his style with more reserve and judgment than his predecessor, yet in his highest moments he seems to retain an imitative remembrance of him. It is almost stale to remark the beauties of a poem so universally felt; the truth and genial interest with which he carries us through the life of the year; the harmony of succession which he gives to the casual phenomena of nature; his pleasing transition from native to foreign scenery; and the soul of exalted and unfeigned benevolence which accompanies his prospects of the creation. It is but equal justice to say, that amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons, we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy narrative, and unhappy digression-with a parhelion eloquence that throws a counterfeit glow of expression on common-place ideas-as when he treats us to the solemnly ridiculous bathing of Musidora; or draws from the classics instead of nature; or, after invoking Inspiration from her

hermit-seat, makes his dedicatory bow to a patronising countess, or speaker of the House of Commonst. As long as he dwells in the pure contemplation of nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the human breast, his redundant style comes to us as something venial and adventitious it is the flowing vesture of the druid; and perhaps to the general experience is rather imposing: but when he returns to the familiar narrations or courtesies of life, the same diction ceases to seem the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy difference from the common costume of expression. Between the period of his composing the Seasons and the Castle of Indolence, he wrote several works, which seem hardly to accord with the improvement and maturity of his taste exhibited in the latter production. To the Castle of Indolence he brought not only the full nature, but the perfect art, of a poet. The materials of that exquisite poem are derived originally from Tasso; but he was more immediately indebted for them to the Fairy Queen and in meeting with the paternal spirit of Spenser he seems as if he were admitted more intimately to the home of inspiration. There he redeemed the jejune ambition of his style, and retained all its wealth and luxury without the accompaniment of ostentation. Every stanza of that charming allegory, at least of the whole of the first part of it, gives out a group of images from which the mind is reluctant to part, and a flow of harmony which the car wishes to hear repeated.

O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great;

[* Thomson was admirable in description; but it always seemed to me that there was somewhat of affectation in his style, and that his numbers are sometimes not well harmonised. I could wish too, with Dr. Johnson, that he had confined himself to this country; for when he describes what he never saw, one is forced to read him with some allowances for possible misrepresentation. He was, however, a true poet, and his lasting fame has proved it.-COWFER, Letter to Mrs. King, June 19th, 1788.

Thomson was an honour to his country and to mankind, and a man to whose writings I am under very particular obligations; for if I have any true relish for the beauties of nature, I may say with truth, that it was from Virgil and from Thomson that I caught it.-BEATTIE to R. Arbuthnot.

The love of nature seems to have led Thomson to a cheerful religion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love of nature. The one would carry his

For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,

And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come an heavier bale, Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale. fellow-men along with him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow-men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson immeasurably below him; yet I still feel the latter to have been the born poet.-COLERIDGE.]

[+ This is too true; but Thomson, we learn from Smollett, intended, had he lived, to have withdrawn the whole of these dedications-not from their poetic impropriety, however, but from the ingratitude of his patrons. To the Castle of Indolence, his latest, chastest, but not his best work, there is no dedication.]

[ He had slight obligations also to Alexander Barclay's Castle of Labour, and to a poem of Mitchell's on Indolence, which, with his own lazy way of life, gave occasion to this delightful allegorical poem, in which the manner he professed to imitate is perhaps the most perfect without servility ever made of any author. There is no imitation of Spenser to approach it in genius and in manner. Gilbert West has Spenser's style and his style only.]