most dangerous effect in lessening the power and influence of all persons in authority.

But I will not proceed further in this discussion, as Milverton said that he was tired. I trust, however, that he will take this remark of mine into consideration when he recommences.

[I must make an addition to this conversation, and must apologize for having to make it. At some point in the conversation Mr. Milverton became excited with his subject, and spoke very rapidly. Moreover, what he said particularly interested me; and, while thinking of it, I failed to make a note of it. He was speaking of the great power which the governing classes of any country still possessed great power for good, as he said. And then he went on to say that whenever in history the governing classes had broken down, as it were, and the State had gone into revolution or into ruin, it was because those governing classes had either been cowardly or unsympathetic, or perhaps both combined. He scarcely could believe, he added, that a nation could drift into these evil courses so long as its upper classes were courageous and sympathetic. He took care, however, to make an exception for those cases where the political disturbance was created by foreign war or dynastic quarrels.]

LONGEVITY.

We have often felt a vague wonder at the industry of that anonymous writer who daily adds up the ages of the longest-lived persons mentioned in the obituary of the Times, and determines their average tenure of existence. We confess that we do not share the astonishment by which he appears to be periodically seized on the discovery that the united ages of half a dozen people recently deceased amount to over five hundred years, and their average age to near ninety. We have no particular data by which to guide our anticipations, and the phenomenon to which our attention is invited has now occurred so very often that we have ceased to regard it as bordering on the miraculous. But if our unknown friend would carry his investigations a little further, we fancy that he might provide material for some really interesting speculation. A German observer, for example, has recently calculated the average longevity attained in different professions. His information, if trustworthy, would be very interesting, not merely to insuranceoffices, but to young men settling the difficult question of their employments for life. If a youth will be content with 56 years, he may become a doctor; if he requires a year more, he may be an artist; if he wants 58 years of life, he may go to the bar; but, in order to have a fair prospect of attaining to 65, he must enter into holy orders. Is it better to attend to the physical or to the 'spiritual wants of man, when nine additional years of life reward the higher line of duty? Does the superior longevity of clergymen spring from the possession of a good conscience? or from the fact that the responsibility of attending to the soul presses more lightly than that of attending to the body? or from differences in the physical conditions of the two professions? or from the varying demands which they make upon the intellect? De Maistre drew an inference in favor of Catholicism from the supposed fact that the average reigns of kings in countries which had adhered to the old faith were longer than those in countries polluted by heresy. We should be sorry to adopt his logic in this case, though we do not quite see our way to the opposite conclusion, apparently adopted by the British Medical Journal (from which we derive our information), and embodied in the old saying about those whom the gods love. Whatever occult causes may be at work, it is plain that in any case the average longevity in any profession must be affected by a number of complicated conditions; and to unravel their varying influence it would be necessary to check these simple observations by others bearing upon different sets of causes. We may assume, for example, that the intellectual conditions go for something, though they are generally subordinate to others which act more immediately.

When, for instance, we find that artists come so low in the list, we may suspect that not merely the irregularities to which they are tempted, or their disposition to a town instead of a country life, must be accountable for a great deal, but also that some effect should be ascribed to the peculiarities of the artistic temperament. It would be interesting from this point of view to compare the average longevity of men who pursue different studies under similar physical conditions. Thus we might ask whether in universities professors of theology are generally found to live longer than professors of medicine or of literature or the fine arts. If so, part of the superiority of the clerical tenure of life must be ascribed to the nature of their studies, as well as to the external circumstances of the clergy. We are not prepared with any body of facts bearing upon these inquiries, and merely throw out the hint for the benefit of those whom it may concern.

There are, however, a few obvious facts which may suggest the possible fruitfulness of such investigations. Parents have for a good many centuries been disgusted when their sons have plunged into metre instead of taking to the counting-house; but they have never, we suspect, made full use of the argument from the deleterious influence of the pursuit upon human life. Poetry, we should be inclined to say, from a cursory inspection of the most accessible facts, is almost as destructive as those trades which are proposed to be the subjects of parliamentary interference. It is as bad as razor-grinding. Looking through any list of English poets, the number of early deaths is startling. Burns, and Byron, and Shelley, and Keats, and Chatterton will occur at once. To the list of those who died before fifty we may add Spenser, Thomson, Collins, and Goldsmith. Shakspeare managed just to get beyond his fiftieth year, and Pope and Gray got half-way from fifty to sixty; but an aged poet is an exception of the proverbial kind.' Milton lived to a respectable age; but then he long refrained from indulgence in this dangerous practice in favor of the superior (we speak from a sanitary point of view) pursuit of political life. He did not long survive the recurrence to his earlier pursuits. Cowper lived to near seventy; but it drove him mad. Dryden reached the same age without the same penalty; and Wordsworth, by dint of a regular country life, survived all his contemporaries, and attained the respectable age of eighty. The only wonder, in the last case, is that a man of so sound a constitution, and placed under such favorable circumstances, did not live to confute Sir G. Cornewall Lewis; he is really a case of premature death, and we suspect that the" Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" took ten years out of his life, while his other inspired moments may account for the remaining period. Besides which, two years in the lakes cannot be counted for more than one in London. Dryden alone remains to confront us; and it must be confessed that Dryden's poetry comes very close to the borders of prose. By way of contrast, let us suggest the names of a few speculative philosophers amongst English writers of reputation. We find that Bacon and Hume lived to be 65; Berkeley to be 69; Locke, 72; Reid, 86; and Hobbes, 91. Amongst the German metaphysicians, Kant died at 80, and Schelling at 79, whilst Hegel was prematurely cut off at 62. In France, Malebranch lived,. in spite of a delicate constitution, to be 87, and then had to be killed by an encounter with his brother metaphysician, Berkeley. Descartes, it is true, died about the age of Shakspeare; but Descartes was naturally delicate, whereas we can hardly doubt that Shakspeare had a fine constitution. If they had exchanged pursuits, no one can say that Shakspeare might not have rivalled Hobbes, and Descartes perished as early as Keats. Spinoza, again, died at 44; but De Quincey very properly argues from this and other circumstances that he must have been murdered. Let us hope for the credit of philosophy that such was the case. At any rate, though the shortest-lived of metaphysicians, he would have had a very fair tenure of life for a poet. We have not indulged in any profound researches; but we have had the curiosity to determine the average age of the English poets contained in a short list at the end of the

Golden Treasury. The result comes out precisely 56, which, according to our German authority, is just that of the most unhealthy of all professions. The average, however, is materially increased by the admission of sich unreasonably long-lived people as Rogers and Mrs. Barbauld, and other minor poets. A still shorter list of metaphysicians gives an average of 68 years, or a length of life superior even to that of the clergy; but we admit that it would be desirable to base any decided theory on a wider collection of facts.

There is of course nothing surprising in these results. The true philosophical temperament is precisely that which is favorable to long life. A man who never irritates himself about any thing, who never subjects his machinery to an unnecessary shock, will go on living when a far stronger man, animated by more troublesome passions, will beat himself to pieces against the world. The same disposition which fits a man for long processes of patient meditation, will generally enable him to take life easily; and it is curious to observe how such a speculator, for example, as Hume, whilst his philosophy tends to upset all established creeds, may be personally a conservative of the strongest kind, and desire the stability of the institutions whose vitality he is doing his best to destroy. Just so Gibbon attacked Christianity in theory, but was utterly disgusted when revolutionists began to reduce his theory to practice. Poetry of a certain class may be comparatively innocuous for similar reasons. Chaucer, Wordsworth, and Goethe, were all long-lived poets, because they seldom indulged in violent emotion. Descriptive poetry generally may be regarded as fairly harmless; and even graceful song-writers, like Herrick in old days and Tom Moore in ours, may be a long time in wearing themselves out. But a young man who takes to writing revolutionary odes, or who shares the passionate impulses of a Byron or a Shelley, might almost as well take to drinking, so far as his prospects of longevity are concerned. It is the feverish irritability to which all poets are more or less liable that is really destructive; though, of course, they may occasionally keep their passion within bounds. Perhaps there is an apparent contradiction to this theory in the fact that clergymen are said to be long-lived. Mr. Galton asserts, in his work on hereditary genius, that the spiritual heroes of the world have generally been men of sickly constitution; and one might fancy that a tendency to indulge in strong religious emotion would be as pernicious as the analoogous disposition to poetry. But, in the first place, it is probable that the mass of clergymen are as little inclined to undue excitement of any kind as their neighbors. Most of the sermons which we hear give very little indication of a fiery soul absorbed by uncontrollable passion, and overpowering its feeble tenement of clay. And, moreover, excitement does not appear to be injurious when it is worked off in action. Politicians and lawyers live long enough, though they go through a constant course of vehement excitement. A man of a certain strength of constitution probably finds the stimulus rather healthy than otherwise; and men like Brougham or Palmerston are all the better for the ceaseless strain upon their faculties. If they had been excluded from any practical displays of energy, and condemned to be always working themselves up into vehement emotion, with no better mode of discharge than writing verses, it is possible that they would have fretted themselves out of the world at an earlier period. We must add, however, that in all such speculations there is always an obvious alternative. It may be not that poetry exercises a deleterious influence, but that men of weak constitutions naturally take to expressing themselves in poetry. The disease may, in short, be the cause, instead of the effect. It would be impossible to pronounce confidently on so large a question, and we can merely commend the subject to statistical inquirers. If they apply themselves to the investigation, we might discover some useful hints, and even find out in time what particular schools of art or theology are most destructive; whether, for example, a Calvinist generally lives as long as an Arminian, or a classical as a romantic poet. The field is boundless, and we are content to leave the development of the subject to those who may have time and opportunity to work it out.

TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE TEXT OF SHAKSPEARE.

D'ISRAELI, in his "Curiosities of Literature," makes mention of a religious work, which, consisting of only one hundred and seventy-two pages, had an Errata at the end occupying fifteen pages. This was an unlucky pamphlet, and in the preface the author expresses his firm belief that Satan himself had tampered with the types, and that the very printers must have worked under the personal influence of the same malignant power. But, without going down quite so deep for a reason, we may take it for granted that in any book, each page of which contains possibly more than three thousand separate types, there must, in the nature of things, be certain typographical errors and oversights, some of which will escape both the eye and the ear of even the most practised reader. Now, these typographical blunders will, in the majority of cases, be found to fall into one of three classes, viz. : errors of the ear, errors of the eye, and errors from what, in printers' language, is called "a foul case." The first two classes I will pass in rapid review, the main object of these remarks being to draw attention to the third, which as a source of corruption does not seem hitherto to have received that attention from the students of Shakspeare which it deserves.

1. Errors of the Ear. Every compositor when at work reads over a few words of his copy, and retains them in his mind until his fingers have picked up the various types belonging to them. While the memory is thus repeating to itself a phrase, it is by no means unnatural, nor in practice is it uncommon, for some word or words to become unwittingly supplanted in the mind by others which are similar in sound. It was simply a mental transposition of syllables that made the actor exclaim, "My Lord, stand back, and let the parson cough," instead of "the coffin pass" ("Rich. III.," act i. sc. 2.); and by a slight confusion of sound the word mistake might appear in type as must take ("Hamlet," act iii. sc. 1). So idle votarist would easily become idol votarist ("Timon," act iv. sc. 3), and long delays be transformed to longer days ("Titus," act iv. sc. 2). From the time of Gutenberg until now, this similarity of sound has been a fruitful source of error among printers.

eye

2. Errors of the Eye. The often misleads the hand of the compositor, especially if he be at work upon a crabbed manuscript or a worn-out reprint. Take away a dot, and This time goes manly becomes This tune goes manly ("Macb.," act iv. sc. 3). So a clogged letter turns What beast was't then, into What boast was't then ("Macb.,” act 1. sc. 7). Examples might be indefinitely multiplied from many an old book, so I will quote but one more instance. The word preserve spelt with a long s might without much carelessness be misread preferre ("Hen. VI.," pt. 1. act iii. sc. 2), and thus entirely alter the sense. 3. Errors from "a foul case.". This class of errors is of an entirely different kind from the two former. They came from within the man, and were from the brain; this is from without, mechanical in its origin as well as in its commission. As many readers may never have seen the inside of a printing-office, the following short explanation may be found useful. A " case is a shallow wooden drawer, divided into numerous square receptacles called "boxes," and into each box is put one sort of letter only, say all a's or b's or c's. The compositor works with two of these cases slanting up in front of him, and when from a shake, a slip, or any other accident, the letters become misplaced, the result is technically known as "a foul case." A further result is, that the fingers of the workman, although going to the proper box, will often pick up a wrong letter, he being entirely unconscious the while of the fact.

Now, if we can discover any law which governs this abnormal position of the types-if, for instance, we can predicate that the letter o, when away from its own, will be more frequently found in the box appropriated to letter a, than any other; that b has a general tendency to visit the I box, and the v box; and that d, if away from home, will be almost certainly found among the n's - if we can show

this, we shall then lay a good foundation for the re-examination of many corrupt or disputed readings in the text of Shakspeare, some of which may receive fresh life from such

a treatment.

To start with, let us obtain a definite idea of the arrangement of the types in both "upper" and "lower" case in the time of Shakspeare- -a time when long s's, with the logotypes ct, ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl, sb, sh, si, sl, ss, ssi, ssl, and others, were in daily use. There are several representations of old cases in early printed books, but these are all adapted for "black-letter," the combinations and logotypes of which varied considerably from those of the Roman letter. The earliest representation of Roman cases, as used in England, may be seen in that very rare book "Moxon's Mechanical Exercises," 1683; and this was undoubtedly the same as in 1632, the date of the First Folio edition of Shakspeare, and remained without change until the abandonment of the long s and its combinations, which took place at the commencement of the present century.

The following design represents a pair of cases us used by printers in the seventeenth century. The boxes not marked, being without a definite appropriation, were filled with accented letters, zodiacal, or other signs, according to the language or nature of the work about to be printed. The only accents used in the First Folio were the long vowels, which served to show contractions: as the most handy position, these would be placed as shown by the diagram.

The chief cause of a "foul" case was the same in Shakspeare's time as now; and no one interested in the subject should omit visiting a printing-office, where he could personally inspect the operation. Suppose a compositor at work"distributing;" the upper and lower cases, one above the other, slant at a considerable angle towards him, and as the types fall quickly from his fingers they form conical heaps in their respective boxes, spreading out in a manner very similar to the sand in the lower half of an hour-glass. Now, if the compositor allows his case to become too full, the topmost letters in each box will certainly slide down into the box below, and occasionally, though rarely, into one of the side boxes. When such letters escape notice, they necessarily cause erroneous spelling, and sometimes entirely change the whole meaning of a sentence.

But now comes the important question. Are errors of this kind ever discovered, and especially do they occur in Shakspeare? Doubtless, they do; but to what extent a long and careful examination alone can show. As examples merely, and to show the possible change in sense made by a single wrong letter, I will quote one or two instances.

For revives read reviles. "No scope of nature ("King John," act iii. sc. 4.) has been thought by many good critics to be a misprint for scape. From a typographical point of view, the change of letter is by no means unlikely to happen. Perhaps from the same cause the word stronds, which is found in "King Henry IV.” (act i. sc. 1.), should be spelled strands, a form not uncommon in Shakspeare's time.

I think sufficient evidence has now been produced to show the possibility, if not the probability, of erroneous readings having crept into the text through technical accidents, and to others I leave the task of applying the test afforded by the above diagram. Before leaving the subject, however, the reader should be warned to notice the double and treble letters marked in the diagram, and so avoid a wrong deduction. For instance, the change of light into sight must not be considered as a question of a single letter of s in the box: the diagram shows si in one piece, which could never be taken by mistake from the box. And so with the other logotypes.

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY DURING THE LATE

ECLIPSE.

PROF. RESPIGHI, the eminent Italian spectroscopist, succeeded in making a noteworthy advance in our knowledge of solar physics during the progress of the eclipse of last December; and, what is of even greater importance, employed a totally novel method of observing the eclipsed sun, his actual discovery being probably but the first-fruits

of this method. We propose to give a brief account of the results obtained by Prof. Respighi, and a description of those features of the method which constitute its importance.

ure,

It will be in the remembrance of many of our readers that during the eclipse of December, 1870, considerable attention was directed to the circumstance that the sun's corona appeared to consist of two distinct portions. Close to the black disc of the moon there was seen a bright ring of pearly light, not uniformly wide, but nowhere extending to a distance much exceeding a fourth or fifth part (for accounts differed) of the moon's apparent diameter. Outside this ring-formed corona appeared a much more extensive, but much fainter halo, radiated in its general structor rather cloven in places by certain well-marked dark rifts or gaps. There was so sudden a degradation of luminosity near the borders of the bright inner corona, as to suggest very strongly the idea that the two coronas are totally distinct solar envelopes. Indeed, it was proposed to give the inner corona a name specially invented for the occasion, the name Leucosphere, which, fortunately, was not received with favor. Indeed, it presently appeared that the supposed discovery was no discovery at all, the two-fold nature of the corona having been recognized 165 years ago, and having since been repeatedly confirmed during total eclipses. So far back as 1852 our own Astronomer Royal had suggested for the two envelopes the names of the "Ring-formed" and the "Radiated" coronas. It must be added, furthermore, that when favorably seen, the inner or ring-formed corona is not pearly-white in hue, but marked by a distinct tinge of rose-color.

Now, astronomers have been endeavoring since the great eclipse of 1868 to determine the real nature of the light emitted by the various parts of the corona. They have sought, in fact, to apply the modern method of observation called spectrum analysis to the corona, as they had already applied it to the prominences; and thus to learn whether the light of the corona comes from glowing vapor, or from incandescent particles, or is merely sunlight reflected from opaque matter spread in a sort of cosmical dust around the solar orb.

But important difficulties stood in their way. They did obtain on turning their spectroscopes towards the corona a spectrum which, in itself, indicated that the source of light was glowing vapor. A certain green line appeared, which, if it really were the spectrum of the corona, could bear no other interpretation. But it was not clear that this greenline spectrum belonged to the corona at all, the doubt arising from the fact that the green line still made its appearance when the spectroscope was turned to parts of the sky to which the corona could not be supposed to extend. This is easily explained. In these days every one knows that the sun's light, when dealt with by a spectroscope, presents a rainbow-tinted streak crossed by dark lines, and that these dark lines indicate the presence, in the sun, of the vapors of many familiar elements, - as iron, copper, zinc, and so forth. But if we turn a spectroscope towards the sky, or even towards a sheet of white paper illuminated by the sun, we see the same dark lines; yet we know that there is no glowing iron-vapor in the sky or in the paper. The fact really is, that we receive, from the sky and from the paper, reflected sunlight, and so naturally find in such light the qualities of sunlight. How, if in like manner, when the observers of recent eclipses have seen a bright-line spectrum, while examining only reflected light, and so had still to determine the true source of the light? Nay, rather it was clear that from some parts of the sky they did get this green line from reflected light; how, then, were they to distinguish where the inherent luminosity ceased and the reflected luminosity began?

The problem seemed intractable; but, as a matter of fact, Prof. Young, of America, solved it very satisfactorily by carefully considering the amount of this green luminosity received under different circumstances. We need not examine his reasoning, but the result may be very simply stated. He inferred that in all probability a region somewhat more extensive than the ring-formed corona shines with this green-line-forming light. We believe that no one

who examines and understands Prof. Young's reasoning can doubt that he legitimately established this conclusion. It follows that the ring-formed corona, or a somewhat larger region around the sun, is due to a true atmospheric envelope. The interest of this discovery is enhanced by the circumstance that the green line of the coronal spectrum is a conspicuous feature of the spectrum of our own auroras. Prof. Respighi has confirmed Young's discovery. In confirming it, however, he has added another equally important.

Thus far we have been speaking of a green line of the inner corona. But it occurred to Respighi that he would endeavor to see a green image of this solar envelope. There were two ways in which he might try to effect this. The first is a method devised independently by Huggins and Zöllner, and first successfully applied by the former, though occasionally called the Janssen-Lockyer method (being confounded, apparently, with a perfectly distinct method of observation). The other was proposed by Fraunhofer, in the very infancy of the science of spectroscopic analysis, and has lately been revived by the Italian astronomers Secchi and Respighi. Neither method need be described, but each has this effect, that when the source of light is a glowing gas, then, instead of a spectrum of such and such colored lines, there is formed a series of correspondingly colored images of the source of light. Thus when one of the solar prominences is observed in this way, instead of a red, an orange, a green, and an indigo line (and other faint lines), the methods referred to show a red image of the prominence, an orange image, a green image, and an indigo image (the images corresponding to the fainter lines being too faint to be discernible under ordinary circumstances).

Now let the reader carefully note the importance of this method as applied to the corona. As applied during eclipse to the colored prominences, it could teach nothing new, for it would merely resolve the prominences, already visible as rose-colored objects, into four several pictures, alike in figure, but differing in color. The effect might be exceedingly beautiful, or rather was so, for Respighi has seen such images, but it taught nothing new. As applied to the corona, however, the value of the method was far greater. So soon as totality began, Respighi saw, instead of the bright green line which Prof. Young had proved to belong to the corona, a beautiful green image of the inner ringformed corona. Here, indeed, was proof patent to the eye that the green light is inherent in the inner corona, and not merely due to reflection in our own atmosphere. For just as our sky in the daytime, when we examine it with a spectroscope, is found to give the solar dark lines, but cannot possibly give an image of the sun, so the sky in eclipse could give the green line by reflection, but not an image of the source whence the green light comes. Only because the inner corona is itself that source, could its image be rendered visible by applying Respighi's method.

So far, however, Respighi's work only confirms a result already established. But another result, and one altogether new, was at the same time obtained. The green image of the inner corona was not alone; two others one red, and the other blue-green - made their appearance, in or near the places corresponding to the two bright lines of hydrogen called by spectroscopists the C-line (red) and the F-line (blue-green). The three images were not strictly alike, and we may infer from the brief telegraphic account sent in the first instance that the hydrogen images were not quite so extensive as the green image. But into minutiae of this sort we need not at present enter. The great facts rendered patent by Respighi's late observation are these, that surrounding the sun to a depth of nearly two hundred thousand miles, reaching, therefore, above the summits of the loftiest prominences, there is an atmosphere consisting of glowing hydrogen, and of some other vapor, distinct in condition and composition from the chromatosphere, whose average height is but about four thousand miles. This enormous external atmospheric shell must be of exceeding rarity, or the pressure on the chromatosphere would enormously exceed the actual observed pressure. It is outside this atmosphere that the radiated corona projects into the sun

surrounding space to distances often exceeding a million miles. We may confidently expect that the news which we have received respecting the inner ring-formed corona will be so supplemented by the photographic records now on their way to Europe, that we shall obtain much clearer ideas than we have hitherto had respecting the outer and radiated corona. Truly, a remark with which the spectroscopist Janssen closes his letter to the Paris Academy respecting his own observations seems abundantly justified: "The question whether the corona is due to the earth's atmosphere is now disposed of [tranchée], and we may look forward to a series of researches into the matter surrounding the sun which cannot fail to be extremely interesting and fruitful."

ENGLISH RURAL POETRY.

THERE was a time when the term rural poetry would have been regarded as synonymous, or nearly so, with pastoral poetry; that is to say, the most artificial verse ever written, and which, in its legitimate form, was 66 a slavish mimicry of classical remains," was confounded, as at the beginning of the last century, with the poetry that describes the simple sights, sounds and occupations of country life, — the changes of the seasons, the color of wayside flowers, the song of birds, the beauty of woods and meadows, of rivers winding through rich pasture-lands, of sunny nooks and shady lanes, and forest glades lying close to the haunts of rustics. Before Pope's time, and after it, a city poet, who knew nothing about the life of nature, or the ways of country livers, and who had probably never ventured beyond Epsom or Bath, would sing, as a matter of course, of shepherds and shepherdesses, and produce conventional pictures of the country unlike any thing that ever existed outside a verse-maker's covers. Edmund Spenser, it is true, following the examples of Theocritus and Virgil, had long before introduced this grotesque form of composition; and a still greater poet had also given a slight sanction to it by the publication of his immortal "Lycidas;" but these poetssuch is the power of genius - could make their shepherdswains discuss dogmatic theology while tending their sheep without raising a smile, the incongruity of the position being atoned for in these cases by the rare beauty of the song. In the splendid English which Dryden knew how to write, we can enjoy a fable in which the controversy between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England is discussed by a milk-white hind and a spotted panther.

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The pastorals of Pope, although destitute, as Wartɔn has pointed out, of a single rural image that is new, possesses a certain smoothness of versification. They are well-nigh unreadable now, and the praise they won at the time from able critics sounds ridiculous to us. Both the poetry and the criticisms upon it are as foreign to modern taste as the euphuism of Lyly; but that Pope satisfied a want of his which was eminently artificial and prosaic is evident from the mass of so-called pastoral poetry that was issued during the first half of the last century. Nevertheless, Wordsworth is not far wrong in saying that, with one or two insignificant exceptions, "the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost' and the Seasons' that is to say, from 1667 to 1728 - does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination." He might have added - for the coincidence is striking-that the year in which Thomson published the "Seasons" in a complete form, Allan Ramsay produced his beautiful pastoral of the "Gentle Shepherd," a poem which is remarkable in many ways, and especially as presenting pictures of rustic life free from the conventional diction and the allegorical personations which deform other pastorals. Ramsay's poem is written in the Scottish dialect; in English we have no poem of the kind at that period that can bear comparison with it, for the "Faithful Shepherdess "of Fletcher, exquisite though it be, is

wholly devoid of the realism demanded in such a work. Of the Elizabethan dramatists, by the way, few care to describe with accuracy the varied aspects of nature. Jonson has some choice descriptive passages in his lyrical poems (it was he who called the nightingale "the dear good angel of the spring"); but we recall few in his dramas, and it may be questioned whether all the plays of Webster, Massinger, Middleton, Marlowe, and Shirley could supply a page of imagery drawn from the simple objects of rural life. Shakspeare, great in all ways, is pre-eminent also in what Lord Lytton somewhat thoughtlessly calls "the very lowest degree of poetry, viz., the descriptive." In perusing dramas like Ben Jonson's" Volpone," or his " Alchemist," the reader breathes an indoor and somewhat confined atmosphere; in reading Shakspeare, he feels as if every window were thrown open, or as if he were inhaling the fresh and fragrant air of the country. And this feeling is often produced by a single line, occurring in scenes which are far enough removed from the life of nature, as, for instance, when in "Measure for Measure," the Duke, conversing in a business way with the Provost, suddenly exclaims, "Look! the unfolding star calls up the shepherd; " or when, in "Cymbeline," the dull-witted Cloten hires musicians to sing under Imogen's window that most delicious of Shakspearian songs, "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings." Shakspeare's rural descriptions are, as they should be, incidental; but these incidental touches suffice to make the reader feel the open-air influences to which we have alluded. His affection for the violet is as noteworthy as Chaucer's for the daisy, or Wordsworth's for the celandine; and in the description of wild flowers, of birds and animals, of country pursuits and pastimes, his accuracy is unrivalled. His "As You Like It" has been justly called a pastoral comedy. Milton, on the contrary, beautiful though many of his descriptive passages are, and notwithstanding the delicious rural charm that pervades his best descriptive poems, L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso,” appears sometimes to have written from book-knowledge rather than from actual observation, and his usual imagery is, therefore, occasionally defective. There are two writers, both of whom lived a little earlier than Milton, who deserve a rather prominent place as rural poets. We allude to William Browne, of Tavistock, and to Robert Herrick. Some years ago a folio edition of Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," with MS. notes by Milton, was sold by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson. The notes are not critical, but they testify at least to the interest with which Milton had read the volume. In Milton's own works, however, we have stronger proofs than these notes afford, how carefully Browne's poetry was perused. There can be little doubt that the Fourth Eclogue of the " Shepherd's Pipe" suggested to the greater poet his peerless "Lycidas;" and in " Comus," as well as "Paradise Regained," we find traces of Browne's influence. All his poetry was produced in early life, and it won for him instant reputation, and the friendship of such men as Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Chapman. Few readers would have the patience to read pastorals now, in which English shepherds and shepherdesses, English rivers and familiar country places, are curiously associated with rivergods and wood-nymphs; yet the lover of poetry will find much in them to reward him for his toil. Picturesque descriptions, luxuriant fancy, and frequent felicity of expression, are to be found in "Britannia's Pastorals." The verse moves sometimes very sweetly, sometimes it is rugged and impeded, like a stream held in by rocks; but whether rough or smooth, it is rarely without vitality, and you feel that you are in the company of a poet, not of a mere versifier. If Keats owed much to Spenser, it is scarcely possible to doubt that he owed something to Browne. There are passages in "Endymion" which remind us strongly of the "Pastorals," and the wonderful picture of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes was probably suggested by a description of Browne's, which, if marked by conceits, is not wholly without beauty.

And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste, With naked iv'ry neck and gown unlaced, Within her chamber, when the day is fled,