Lost was that sweet simplicity; So fades the flower before its time, So droops the bud upon its stem What is Life? And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run, Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought. And Happiness? A bubble on the stream, That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought. And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn, That robs each flowret of its gem-and dies; A cobweb, hiding disappointment's thorn, Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise. And what is Death? Is still the cause unfound? That dark mysterious name of horrid sound? A long and lingering sleep the weary crave. And Peace? Where can its happiness abound? No where at all, save heaven and the grave. Then what is Life! When stripped of its disguise, A thing to be desired it cannot be; Since everything that meets our foolish eyes Gives proof sufficient of its vanity. 'Tis but a trial all must undergo, To teach unthankful mortal how to prize That happiness vain man's denied to know, Until he's called to claim it in the skies. Summer Morning. 'Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze, The wakening charms of early day! Where glittering dew the ground illumes, As sprinkled o'er the withering swaths Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes. And hear the beetle sound his horn, And hear the skylark whistling nigh, Sprung from his bed of tufted corn, A hailing minstrel in the sky. First sunbeam, calling night away To see how sweet thy summons seems; Split by the willow's wavy gray, And sweetly dancing on the streams. Unnoticed to vulgar eyes; 'Neath their morning burthen lean, While its crop my searches shields, Sweet I scent the blossomed bean. Making oft remarking stops; So emerging into light, From the ignorant and vain Fearful genius takes her flight, Skimming o'er the lowly plain. The Primrose-A Sonnet. Welcome, pale primrose! starting up between Dead matted leaves of ash and oak that strew The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through, 'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green; How much thy presence beautifies the ground! How sweet thy modest unaffected pride Glows on the sunny bank and wood's warm side! And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found, The schoolboy roams enchantedly along, Plucking the fairest with a rude delight: While the meek shepherd stops his simple song, O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight; The welcome news of sweet returning spring. The Thrush's Nest-A Sonnet. Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush I watched her secret toils from day to day; How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay. And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue: And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.* First-Love's Recollections. First-love will with the heart remain Their fragrance when they die: I felt a pride to name thy name, How loath to part, how fond to meet, At sunset, with what eager feet Scarce nine days passed us ere we met Thy face was so familiar grown, A moment's memory when alone, *Montgomery says quaintly but truly of this sonnet,Here we have in miniature the history and geography of a thrush's nest, so simply and naturally set forth, that one might think such strains No more difficile Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle. But let the heartless critic who despises them try his own hand either at a bird's nest or a sonnet like this; and when he has succeeded in making the one, he may have some hope of being able to make the other.' But now my very dreams forget When last that gentle cheek I prest, Even loftier hopes than ours; Spring bids full many buds to swell, That ne'er can grow to flowers. Dawnings of Genius. In those low paths which poverty surrounds, While moiled and sweating, by some pasture's side, For which his language can no utterance find; Dim burns the soul, and throbs the fluttering heart, [Scenes and Musings of the Peasant Poet.] Each opening season, and each opening scene, And tales of fairyland he loved to hear, And how the restless slut was pinched black and blue. How ancient dames a fairy's anger feared, To make the charm succeed, had cautious placed there. And thousands such the village keeps alive; As long as wild rusticity has birth To spread their wonders round the cottage-hearth. On Lubin's mind these deeply were impressed; Oft fear forbade to share his neighbour's mirth: And long each tale, by fancy newly dressed, Brought fairies in his dreams, and broke his infant rest. He had his dreads and fears, and scarce could pas A churchyard's dreary mounds at silent night, But footsteps trampled through the rustling grass, And ghosts 'hind grave-stones stood in sheets of white; Dread monsters fancy moulded on his sight; Soft would he step lest they his tread should hear, And creep and creep till past his wild affright; Then on wind's wings would rally, as it were, So swift the wild retreat of childhood's fancied fear. And when fear left him, on his corner-seat Much would he chatter o'er each dreadful tale; Tell how he heard the sound of 'proaching feet, And warriors jingling in their coats of mail; And lumping knocks as one would thump a flail; Of spirits conjured in the charnel floor; And many a mournful shriek and hapless wail, Where maids, self-murdered, their false loves deplore; And from that time would vow to tramp on nights no more. O! who can speak his joys when spring's young morn, From wood and pasture, opened on his view! When tender green buds blush upon the thorn, And the first primrose dips its leaves in dew: Each varied charm how joyed would he pursue, Tempted to trace their beauties through the day; Gray-girdled eve and morn of rosy hue Have both beheld him on his lonely way, Far, far remote from boys, and their unpleasing play. Sequestered nature was his heart's delight; The freshened landscapes round his routes unfurled, His heart with wild sensations used to beat; 1 T Of sheltering trees it humbly peeped between ; The stone-rocked wagon with its rumbling sound; The windmill's sweeping sails at distance seen; And every form that crowds the circling round, Where the sky, stooping, seems to kiss the meeting ground. And dear to him the rural sports of May, O'er brook-banks stretching, on the pasture-sward That like low genius sprang, to bloom their day and die. O! who can tell the sweets of May-day's morn, When the gilt east unveils her dappled dawn, While all the prospect round beams fair to view, Like a sweet opening flower with its unsullied dew. Ah! often brushing through the dripping grass, As o'er the mountain top the red sun 'gins to peep. The bright unwearied sun seemed loath to drop, beam. And here the rural muse might aptly say, As sober evening sweetly siles along, How she has chased black ignorance away, And warmed his artless soul with feelings strong, To teach his reed to warble forth a song; And how it echoed on the even-gale, All by the brook the pasture-flowers among: But ah! such trifles are of no availThere's few to notice him, or hear his simple tale. O Poverty! thy frowns were early dealt O'er him who mourned thee, not by fancy led To whine and wail o'er woes he never felt, Staining his rhymes with tears he never shed, And heaving sighs a mock song only bred : Alas! he knew too much of every pain That showered full thick on his unsheltered head; And as his tears and sighs did erst complain, His numbers took it up, and wept it o'er again. JAMES AND HORACE SMITH. JAMES SMITH (1775-1839) was a lively and amusing author both in prose and verse. His father, Mr Robert Smith, was an eminent legal practitioner in London, and solicitor to the Board of Ordnancea gentleman of learning and accomplishments, whose James Smith. latter years were gratified by the talents and reputation of his two sons, James and Horace. James, the eldest, was educated at a school at Chigwell, in Essex, and was usually at the head of his class. For this retired schoolboy spot' he ever retained a strong affection, rarely suffering, as his brother relates, a long interval to elapse without paying it a visit, and wandering over the scenes that recalled the truant excursions of himself and chosen playmates, or the solitary rambles and musings of his youth. Two of his latest poems are devoted to his reminiscences of Chigwell. After the completion of his education, James Smith was articled to his father, was taken into partnership in due time, and eventually succeeded to the business, as well as to the appointment of solicitor to the Ordnance. With a quick sense of the ridiculous, a strong passion for the stage and the drama, and a love of London society and manners, Smith became a town wit and humorist-delighting in parodies, theatrical colloquies, and fashionable criticism. His first pieces appear to have been contributed to the Pic-Nic newspaper established by Colonel Henry Greville, which afterwards merged into The Cabinet, both being solely calculated for the topics and feelings of the day. A selection from the Pic-Nic papers, in two small volumes, was published in 1803. He next joined the writers for the London Review-a journal established by Cumberland the dramatist, on the novel principle of affixing the writer's name to his critique. 429 The Review proved a complete failure. The system right, which had been originally offered to Mr Mur of publishing names was an unwise innovation, de-ray for L.20, was purchased by that gentleman, in stroying equally the harmless curiosity of the reader, and the critical independence of the author; and Cumberland, besides, was too vain, too irritable and poor, to secure a good list of contributors. Smith then became a constant writer in the Monthly Mirror (wherein Henry Kirke White first attracted the notice of what may be termed the literary world), and in this work appeared a series of poetical imitations, entitled Horace in London, the joint production of James and Horace Smith. These parodies were subsequently collected and published in one volume in 1813, after the success of the Rejected Addresses had rendered the authors famous. Some of the pieces display a lively vein of town levity and humour, but many of them also are very trifling and tedious. In one stanza, James Smith has given a true sketch of his own tastes and character : Me toil and ease alternate share, With these, and London for my home, The Circus or the Forum! To London he seems to have been as strongly at tached as Dr Johnson himself. A confirmed metropolitan in all his tastes and habits, he would often 1819, after the sixteenth edition, for L.131. The articles written by James Smith consisted of imita tions of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and a few travesties. Some of them are inimitable, particularly the parodies on Cobbett and Crabbe, which were also among the most popular. Horace Smith contributed imitations of Walter Scott, Moore, Monk Lewis, Lord Byron, W. T. Fitzgerald (whose Loyal Effusion' is irresistibly ludicrous for its extravagant adulation and fustian), Dr Johnson, &c. The amount of talent displayed by the two brothers was pretty equal; for none of James Smith's parodies are more felicitous than that of Scott by Horace. The popularity of the Rejected Addresses' seems to have satisfied the ambition of the elder poet. He afterwards confined himself to short anonymous pieces in the New Monthly Maga zine and other periodicals, and to the contribution of some humorous sketches and anecdotes towards Mr Mathews's theatrical entertainments, the authorship of which was known only to a few. The Country Cousins, Trip to France, and Trip to America, mostly written by Smith, and brought out by Mathews at the English Opera House, not only brought the witty writer a thousand pounds—a sum filled the theatre, and replenished the treasury, but to which, we are told, the receiver seldom made ejaculating, A thousand pounds for nonsense! allusion without shrugging up his shoulders, and Mr Smith was still better paid for a trifling exer the late Mr Strahan, the king's printer, then suffer- Your lower limbs seemed far from stout The power that props the body's length, In you mounts upwards, and the strength quaintly observe, that London was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter; or quote Dr Johnson's dogma-"Sir, the man that is tired of London is tired of existence." At other times hetion of his muse; for, having met at a dinner party would express his perfect concurrence with Dr Mosley's assertion, that in the country one is always maddened with the noise of nothing: or laughingly quote the Duke of Queensberry's rejoinder on being told one sultry day in September that London was exceedingly empty-" Yes, but it's fuller than the country." He would not, perhaps, have gone quite so far as his old friend Jekyll, who used to say, that "if compelled to live in the country, he would have the approach to his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down the street all day long;" but he would relate, with great glee, a story showing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country house, when a gentleman, informing him that the family were all out, proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds. "Stroll! why, don't you see my gouty shoe ?" "Yes, but what then? you don't really mean to say that you have got the gout? I thought you had only put on that shoe to avoid being shown over the improvements."* There is some good-humoured banter and exaggeration in this dislike of ruralities; and accordingly we find that, as Johnson found his way to the remote Hebrides, Smith occasionally transported himself to Yorkshire and other places, the country seats of friends and noblemen. The 'Rejected Addresses' appeared in 1812, having engaged James and Horace Smith six weeks, and proving one of the luckiest hits in literature.' The directors of Drury Lane theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken on opening the new edifice; and a casual hint from Mr Ward, secre Mr Strahan was so much gratified by the compli That refuge, Miss Edgeworth, can never be thine. WORTH. The easy social bachelor-life of James Smith was tary to the theatre, suggested to the witty brothers perately, and at his club-dinner restricted himself to much impaired by hereditary gout. He lived ter the composition of a series of humorous addresses, his half-pint of sherry; but as a professed joker and professedly composed by the principal authors of the day. The work was ready by the opening of the over-indulgence and irregular hours. Attacks of 'diner out,' he must often have been tempted to theatre, and its success was almost unexampled. gout began to assail him in middle life, and he gra Eighteen editions have been sold; and the copy-dually lost the use and the very form of his lim bearing all his sufferings, as his brother states, with an undeviating and unexampled patience.' One of * Memoir prefixed to Smith's Comic Miscellanies, 2 vols. 1841. 430 POETS. the stanzas in his poem on Chigwell displays his World, in thy ever busy mart Four acts are done, the jest grows stale; He held it a humiliation to be ill, and never com- The surviving partner of this literary duumvirate -the most constant and interesting, perhaps, since that of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more affectionate from the relationship of the parties-has distinguished himself by his novels and historical romances, and by his generosity to various literary men. Mr Horace Smith has also written some copies of verses, one of which, the Address to the Mummy, is a felicitous compound of fact, humour, and sentiment, forcibly and originally expressed. The Theatre.-By the Rev. G. C. [Crabbe.] What various swains our motley walls contain ! With pence twice five, they want but twopence more, But talk their minds, we wish they'd mind their talk; Yet here, as elsewhere, chance can joy bestow, In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat; The Baby's Debut.-By W. W. [Wordsworth.] My brother Jack was nine in May, Jack's in the pouts, and this it is, Quite cross, a bit of string I beg, And bang, with might and main, This made him cry with rage and spite; If he's to melt, all scalding hot, And trotted down the street. I saw them go: one horse was blind; 431 |