With woful measures wan Despair,
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air;
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.
But thou, oh Hope! with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail.
Still would her touch the strain prolong;
And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She called on Echo still through all the song;
And where her sweetest theme she chose,
A soft responsive voice was heard at every close;
And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden

hair:

And longer had she sung, but with a frown

Revenge impatient rose;

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,

And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,

And blew a blast so loud and dread,

Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of wo;

And ever and anon he beat

The double drum with furious heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,
Dejected Pity at his side

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien,
While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting

from his head.

But oh! how altered was its sprightly tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,
Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Fawn and Dryad known;

The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen,
Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen

Peeping from forth their alleys green;
Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed;
But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids,

Amidst the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing:
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth, a gay fantastic round,
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound:
And he, amidst his frolic play,
As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

45

EPODE.

Yet, even where'er the least appeared,
The admiring world thy hand revered;
Still 'midst the scattered states around,

And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear. Some remnants of her strength were found;

They saw, by what escaped the storm,
How wondrous rose her perfect form;
How in the great, the laboured whole,
Each mighty master poured his soul;
For sunny Florence, seat of art,
Beneath her vines preserved a part,
Till they, whom science loved to name,
(Oh, who could fear it?) quenched her flame.
And, lo, a humbler relic laid
In jealous Pisa's olive shade!
See small Marino joins the theme,
Though least, not last in thy esteem;
Strike, louder strike the ennobling strings
To those whose merchants' sons were kings;
To him, who, decked with pearly pride,
In Adria weds his green-haired bride:

Oh Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid,
Why, goddess! why to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?
As in that loved Athenian bower,
You learn an all-commanding power;
Thy mimic soul, oh nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard.
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to virtue, fancy, art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders in that godlike age
Fill thy recording sister's page;
'Tis said, and I believe the tale,
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age;
Even all at once together found,
Cecilia's mingled world of sound.
Oh! bid your vain endeavours cease,
Revive the just designs of Greece;
Return in all thy simple state;
Confirm the tales her sons relate.

Ode to Liberty.

STROPHE.

Who shall awake the Spartan fife,
And call in solemn sounds to life,
The youths, whose locks divinely spreading,
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue.

At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding,
Applauding freedom loved of old to view?
What new Alceus, fancy-blessed,
Shall sing the sword, in myrtles dressed,

At wisdom's shrine a while its flame concealing, (What place so fit to seal a deed renowned ?)

Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,
It leaped in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound!

Oh goddess, in that feeling hour,
When most its sounds would court thy ears,

Let not my shell's misguided power,
E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears.
No, freedom, no; I will not tell
How Rome, before thy face,

With heaviest sound, a giant statue fell,
Pushed by a wild and artless race
From off its wide ambitious base,

When time his northern sons of spoil awoke,

And all the blended work of strength and grace,
With many a rude repeated stroke,

And many a barbarous yell, to thousand fragments
broke.

The maids and youths shall linger here,
And, while its sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.
Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,
When Thames in summer wreaths is drest;
And oft suspend the dashing oar,

To bid his gentle spirit rest!

And oft as ease and health retire
To breezy lawn, or forest deep,
The friend shall view yon whitening spire,
And 'mid the varied landscape weep.

But thou, who own'st that earthly bed,
Ah! what will every dirge avail?
Or tears, which love and pity shed,

That mourn beneath the gliding sail!

Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye

Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near? With him, sweet bard, may fancy die,

And joy desert the blooming year.

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide

No sedge-crowned sisters now attend, Now waft me from the green hill's side,

Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!

And see, the fairy valleys fade,

Dun night has veiled the solemn view! Yet once again, dear parted shade,

Meek nature's child, again adieu!

The genial meads, assigned to bless

Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom! Their hinds and shepherd girls shall dress With simple hands thy rural tomb.

Long, long thy stone and pointed clay

Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes: O vales, and wild woods, shall he say, In yonder grave your Druid lies!

WILLIAM SHENSTONE.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE added some pleasing toral and elegiac strains to our national poetry, but he wanted, as Johnson justly remarks, comprehension and variety.' Though highly ambitious of poetical fame, he devoted a large portion of his time, and squandered most of his means, in landscapegardening and ornamental agriculture. He reared up around him a sort of rural paradise, expending his poetical taste and fancy in the disposition and embellishment of his grounds, till at length pecuniary difficulties and distress drew a cloud over the fair prospect, and darkened the latter days of the poet's life. Swift, who entertained a mortal aversion to all projectors, might have included the unhappy Shenstone among the fanciful inhabitants of his Laputa. The estate which he laboured to adorn was his natal ground. At Leasowes, in the parish of Hales Owen, Shropshire, the poet was born in November 1714. He was taught to read at what is termed a dame school, and his venerable preceptress has been immortalised by his poem of the Schoolmistress. At the proper age he was sent to Pembroke college, Oxford, where he remained four years. In 1745, by the death of his parents and an elder brother, the paternal estate fell to his own care and management, and he began from this time, as Johnson characteristically describes it, to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied

The Leasowes.

means to external embellishment, that he was compelled to live in a dilapidated house, not fit, as he acknowledges, to receive 'polite friends.' An unforpas-tunate attachment to a young lady, and disappointed ambition-for he aimed at political as well as poetical celebrity-conspired, with his passion for gardening and improvement, to fix him in his solitary situation. He became querulous and dejected, pined at the unequal gifts of fortune, and even contemplated with a gloomy joy the complaint of Swift, that he would be forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' Yet Shenstone was essentially kind and benevolent, and he must at times have experienced exquisite pleasure in his romantic retreat, in which every year would give fresh beauty, and develop more distinctly the creations of his taste and labour. The works of a person that builds,' he says, 'begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve.' This advantage he possessed, with the additional charm of a love of literature; but Shenstone sighed for more than inward peace and satisfaction. He built his happiness on the applause of others, and died in solitude a votary of the world. His death took place at the Leasowes, February 11, 1763.

The works of Shenstone were collected and published after his death by his friend Dodsley, in three volumes. The first contains his poems, the second his prose essays, and the third his letters and other pieces. Gray remarks of his correspondence, that it is about nothing else but the Leasowes, and his writings with two or three neighbouring clergyman who wrote verses too.' The essays are good, displaying an ease and grace of style united to judgment and discrimination. They have not the mellow

ripeness of thought and learning of Cowley's essays, but they resemble them more closely than any others we possess. In poetry, Shenstone tried different styles; his elegies barely reach mediocrity; his levities, or pieces of humour, are dull and spiritless. His highest effort is the Schoolmistress,' a descriptive sketch in imitation of Spenser, so delightfully quaint and ludicrous, yet true to nature, that it has all the force and vividness of a painting by Teniers or Wilkie. His Pastoral Ballad, in four parts, is also the finest English poem of that order. The pastorals of Spenser do not aim at lyrical simplicity, and no modern poet has approached Shenstone in the simple tenderness and pathos of pastoral song. Mr Campbell seems to regret the affected Arcadianism of these pieces, which undoubtedly present an incongruous mixture of pastoral life and modern manners. But, whether from early associations (for almost every person has read Shenstone's ballad in youth), or from the romantic simplicity, the true touches of nature and feeling, and the easy versification of the stanzas, they are always read and remembered with delight. We must surrender up the judgment to the imagination in perusing them, well knowing that no such Corydons or Phylisses are to be found; but this is a sacrifice which the Faery Queen equally demands, and which few readers of poetry are slow to grant. Johnson quotes the following verses of the first part, with the striking eulogium, that, if any mind denies its sympathy to them, it has no acquaintance with love or nature:

CYCLOPÆDIA OF

6

We subjoin the best part of the Schoolmistress;' but one other stanza is worthy of notice, not only. for its intrinsic excellence, but for its having probably suggested to Gray the fine reflection in his elegy

'Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,' &c. Mr D'Israeli has pointed out this resemblance in his Curiosities of Literature,' and it appears wellfounded. The palm of merit, as well as originality, seems to rest with Shenstone; for it is more natural

and just to predict the existence of undeveloped powers and great eminence in the humble child at school, than to conceive they had slumbered through life in the peasant in the grave. Yet the conception of Gray has a sweet and touching pathos, that sinks into the heart and memory. Shenstone's is as follows:

Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
Even now sagacious foresight points to show
A little bench of heedless bishops here,
And there a chancellor in embryo,
Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so,
As Milton, Shakspeare-names that ne'er shall die!
Though now he crawl along the ground so low,
Nor weeting how the Muse should soar on high,
Wisheth, poor starveling elf! his paper kite may fly.

TO 1780.

Cottage of the Schoolmistress, near Hales-Owen, Shropshire.

And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree,
Which learning near her little dome did stowe;
Whilom a twig of small regard to see,
Though now so wide its waving branches flow,
And work the simple vassals mickle wo;
For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew,
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view.
But their limbs shuddered, and their pulse beat low;
And as they looked, they found their horror grew,

Near to this dome is found a patch so green,
On which the tribe their gambols do display;
And at the door imprisoning board is seen,
Lest weakly wights of smaller size should stray;
Fager, perdie, to bask in sunny day!
The noises intermixed, which thence resound,
Do learning's little tenement betray;
Where sits the dame, disguised in look profound,
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around.

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
Emblem right meet of decency does yield:
Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trow,
As is the harebell that adorns the field;