THIS nobleman's public and private virtues, and his merits as the historian of Henry II., will be remembered when his verses are forgotten. By a felicity very rare in his attempts at poetry, the kids and fawns of his Monody do not entirely extinguish all appearance of that sincere feeling with which it must have been composed. Gray, in a letter to Horace Walpole, has justly remarked the beauty of the stanza beginning "In vain I look around." "If it were all like this stanza,"

he continues, "I should be excessively pleased. Nature, and sorrow, and tenderness are the true genius of such things, (monodies,) and something of these I find in several parts of it (not in the orange-tree.) Poetical ornaments are foreign to the purpose, for they only show a man is not sorry; and devotion is worse, for it teaches him that he ought not to be sorry, which is all the pleasure of the thing."*

FROM THE MONODY.

AT length escaped from every human eye,

From every duty, every care,

That in my mournful thoughts might claim a share,
Or force my tears their flowing stream to dry;
Beneath the gloom of this embowering shade,
This lone retreat, for tender sorrow made,
I now may give my burden'd heart relief;
And pour forth all my stores of grief;
Of grief surpassing every other woe,
Far as the purest bliss, the happiest love
Can on th' ennobled mind bestow,
Exceeds the vulgar joys that move
Our gross desires, inelegant and low.

*

*

In vain I look around

*

Lyttelton's Ode, but a very poor one. It is not a little curious, we may add, that Tom Jones is inscribed to Lyttelton, and that the Gosling Scrag of Peregrine Pickle was the patron of Fielding.]

And saw our happiness unchanged remain:
Still in her golden chain
Harmonious concord did our wishes bind:
Our studies, pleasures, taste, the same.
O fatal, fatal stroke,

That all this pleasing fabric love had raised
Of rare felicity,

On which ev'n wanton vice with envy gazed,
And every scheme of bliss our hearts had form'd,
With soothing hope, for many a future day,
In one sad moment broke!

Yet, O my soul, thy rising murmurs stay;
Nor dare the all-wise Disposer to arraign,

Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain,

That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade; Was his most righteous will-and be that will obey'd.

PROLOGUE TO CORIOLANUS.*

I COME not here your candour to implore For scenes whose author is, alas! no more; He wants no advocate his cause to plead; You will yourselves be patrons of the dead. No party his benevolence confined, No sect-it flow'd alike to all mankind. He loved his friends-forgive this gushing tear: Alas! I feel I am no actor here.

He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it, but our tears may tell.
Oh candid truth, Oh faith without a stain,
Oh manners greatly firm and nobly plain,
Oh sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his ?
Such was the man,-the Poet well you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause
You heard him teach fair Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste muse employ'd her heav'n-taught
lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire:
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which dying he could wish to blot.
Oh may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add to grace his tomb!
Whilst he superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet if to those, whom most on earth he loved,
From whom his pious care is now removed,
With whom his liberal hand and bounteous heart
Shared all his little fortune could impart;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from him receive,
That, that, even now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.

THIS unfortunate young man, who died in a mad-house at the age of twenty-four, left some pieces of considerable humour and originality in the Scottish dialect. Burns, who took the hint of his Cotter's Saturday Night from Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, seems to have esteemed him with an exaggerated partiality, which can only be accounted for by his having perused him in his youth. On his first visit to Edinburgh, Burns traced out the grave of Fergusson, and placed a head-stone over it at his own expense, inscribed with verses of appropriate feeling.

Fergusson was born at Edinburgh, where his father held the office of accountant to the British Linen-hall. He was educated partly at the highschool of Edinburgh, and partly at the grammarschool of Dundee, after which a bursary, or exhibition, was obtained for him at the university of St. Andrew's, where he soon distinguished himself as a youth of promising genius. His

[Thomson's posthumous play, and spoken by Quin. This is among the best prologues in our language: and is excelled only by Pope's before Cato, and Johnson's Drury Lane opening.]

[† Burns in one place prefers him to Allan Ramsay; "the excellent Ramsay," he says, "and the still more excellent Fergusson." But he has found no follower. Burns' obligations to Fergusson are certainly greater

eccentricity was, unfortunately, of equal growth with his talents; and on one occasion, having taken part in an affray among the students, that broke out at the distribution of the prizes, he was selected as one of the leaders, and expelled from college; but was received back again upon promises of future good behaviour. On leaving college he found himself destitute, by the death of his father; and after a fruitless attempt to obtain support from an uncle at Aberdeen, he returned on foot to his mother's house at Edinburgh, half dead with the fatigue of the journey, which brought on an illness that had nearly proved fatal to his delicate frame. On his recovery he was received as a clerk in the commissary's clerk's office, where he did not continue long, but exchanged it for the same situation in the office of the sheriff clerk, and there he remained as long as his health and habits admitted of any application to business. Had he possessed ordinary

than to Ramsay, and gratitude for once warped his generally good, sound, and discriminating taste in poetic cri ticism.]

[No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
No storied urn nor animated bust:
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way,
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust.]

prudence, he might have lived by the drudgery of copying papers; but the appearance of some of his poems having gained him a flattering notice, he was drawn into dissipated company, and became a wit, a songster, a mimic, and a free liver; and finally, after fits of penitence and religious despondency, went mad. When committed to the receptacle of the insane, a consciousness of his dreadful fate seemed to come over him. At the moment of his entrance, he uttered a wild cry of despair, which was re-echoed by a

shout from all the inmates of the dismal mansion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who had the task of attending him. His mother, being in extreme poverty, had no other mode of disposing of him. A remittance, which she received a few days after, from a more fortunate son, who was abroad, would have enabled her to support the expense of affording him attendance in her own house; but the aid did not arrive till the poor maniac had expired.*

THE FARMER'S INGLE.

Et multo imprimis hilarans convivia Baccho,
Ante focum, si frigus erit.-VIRG.

WHAN gloamin grey out owre the welkin keeks;"
Whan Batie ca's his owsen' to the byre;
Whan Thrasher John, sair dung, his barn-door
steeks,"

An' lusty lasses at the dightin' tire; What bangs fu' leal the e'enin's coming cauld, An' gars snaw-tappit Winter freeze in vain; Gars dowie mortals look baith blithe an' bauld, Nor fley'd' wi' a' the poortith o' the plain; Begin, my Muse! and chaunt in hamely strain.

Nor drogs their noddle and their sense confound, Till death slip sleely on, an' gie the hindmost wound.

On sicken food has mony a doughty deed By Caledonia's ancestors been done; By this did mony a wight fu' weirlike bleed In brulzies frae the dawn to set o' sun. "Twas this that braced their gardies stiff an' strang;

That bent the deadly yew in ancient days; Laid Denmark's daring sons on yird alang; Garr'd Scottish thristles bang the Roman bays; For near our crest their heads they dought na raise.

The couthy cracks" begin whan supper's owre;
The cheering bicker gars them glibly gash
O' Simmer's showery blinks, an' Winter's sour,
Whase floods did erst their mailin's produce
hash.d

'Bout kirk an' market eke their tales gae on; How Jock woo'd Jenny here to be his bride; An' there, how Marion, for a bastard son,

Upo' the cutty-stool was forced to ride;
The waefu' scauld o' our Mess John to bide.

The fient a cheep 's amang the bairnies now; For a' their anger's wi' their hunger gane: Ay maun the childer, wi' a fastin' mou,

Grumble an' greet, an' mak an unco maen. In rangles round, before the ingle's low, Frae gudame's mouth auld warld tales they hear,

O' warlocks loupin round the wirrikow:

O' ghaists, that win' in glen an kirkyard drear, Whilk touzles a' their tap, an' gars them shake wi' fear!

For weel she trows, that fiends an' fairies be
Sent frae the deil to fleetch* us to our ill;
That ky hae tint' their milk wi' evil ee;

An' corn been scowder'd" on the glowin' kiln.

ing cakes.- Beer-barrel. Broth with greens.-t Kitchen here means what is eaten with bread: there is no English word for it; obsonium is the Latin.- Palates.- Assiduous. Foretell. In contests. -y Arms.-z Earth.a Pleasant talk. The cup.-c Chat.-d Destroy the produce of their farms. Not a whimper.-f Moan.- Circles. - Grandame.- Scare-crow.-j Abide. Entice.- Lost -m Scorched.

O mock nae this, my friends! but rather mourn, Ye in life's brawest spring wi' reason clear; Wi' eild our idle fancies a' return,

And dim our dolefu' days wi' bairnly fear; The mind's ay cradled whan the grave is near.

Yet Thrift, industrious, bides her latest days, Though Age her sair-dow'd front wi' runcles

wave;

Yet frae the russet lap the spindle plays;

Her e'enin' stent reels she as weel's the lave." On some feast-day, the wee things buskit braw, Shall heese her heart up wi' a silent joy, Fu' cadgie that her head was up an' saw Her ain spun cleedin' on a darlin' oy;" Careless though death shou'd mak the feast her foy."

In its auld lerroch' yet the deas" remains, [ease, Where the gudeman aft streeks him at his A warm and canny lean for weary banes

O' labourers doylt upo' the wintry leas. Round him will baudrins an' the collie come, To wag their tail, and cast a thankfu' ee, To him wha kindly flings them mony a crum O' kebbuck whang'd, an' dainty fadge to prie;" This a' the boon they crave, an' a' the fee.

Frae him the lads their mornin' counsel tak: [till; What stack she wants to thrash; what rigs to

How big a birn" maun lie on bassie's back,
For meal an' mu'ter to the thirlin' mill.
Niest, the gudewife her hirelin' damsels bids
Glowr through the byre, an' see the hawkies
bound;

Tak tent, case Crummy tak her wonted tids,

An' ca' the laiglen's treasure on the ground; Whilk spills a kebbuck nice, or yellow pound.

Then a' the house for sleep begin to green,
Their joints to slack frae industry a while;
The leaden god fa's heavy on their e'en,
An' hafflins steeks them frae their daily toil:
The cruizy, too, can only blink and bleer;

The reistit ingle's done the maist it dow;
Tacksman an' cottar eke to bed maun steer,
Upo' the cod' to clear their drumly pow
Till wauken'd by the dawnin's ruddy glow.

Peace to the husbandman, an' a' his tribe, [year! Whase care fells a' our wants frae year to Lang may his sock* and cou'ter turn the gleyb,'

An' banks o' corn bend down wi' laded ear! May Scotia's simmers ay look gay an' green;

Her yellow ha'rsts frae scowry blasts decreed! May a' her tenants sit fu' snug an' bien," Frae the hard grip o' ails, and poortith freed; An' a lang lasting train o' peacefu' hours succeed!

ON MR. NASHI'S PICTURE, AT FULL LENGTH, BE-
TWEEN THE BUSTS OF SIR I. NEWTON
AND MR. POPE, AT BATH.*

n Age.

THE old Egyptians hid their wit
In hieroglyphic dress,

To give men pains in search for it,
And please themselves with guess.
Moderns, to hit the self-same path,
And exercise our parts,
Place figures in a room at Bath-
Forgive them, God of Arts!

Newton, if I can judge aright,
All wisdom does express;

Childish.- Task. The rest.-Grandchild. Her farewell entertainment. - Corner. — u Bench.-Stretches.-w The cat.- Cheese.-y Loaf. To taste.a Burden. The horse. The miller's perquisite.d Cows.-e Fits.- The milk-pail.- To long. The lamp. — i Pillow. —j Thick heads. - Ploughshare. - Soil.m Comfortable.

[To wld to his honours, the corporation of Bath placed a full-length statue of him in Wiltshire's Ballroom, between the busts of Newton and Pope. It was upon this occasion that the Earl of Chesterfield wrote that severe but witty epigram, the last lines of which were so deservedly admired, and ran thus:

The statue placed the busts between
Adds to the satire strength;

His knowledge gives mankind new light,
Adds to their happiness.

Pope is the emblem of true wit,

The sunshine of the mind;
Read o'er his works for proof of it,

You'll endless pleasure find.
Nash represents man in the mass,
Made up of wrong and right;
Sometimes a knave, sometimes an ass,
Now blunt, and now polite.
The picture placed the busts between
Adds to the thought much strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly's at full length.

Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.

GOLDSMITH, Life of Nash (Prior.)
vol. iii. p. 314.

Mr. Prior says that the first version of this celebrated epigram appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1741, but we find it in Mr. Dyce's Specimens of British Poetesses, as by Jane Brereton, who died in 1740, and among her poems collected by Cave in 1744. It was soon after 1735 that the statue, not the picture, was put up at Bath. Good sayings fly loose on the surface of society, and are generally assigned to men whom it is the fashion to celebrate, and who accept in silence all such felicities.]

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was born at a place called Pallas, in the parish of Forney, and county of Longford, in Ireland. His father held the living of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath.* There was a tradition in the family, that they were descended from Juan Romeiro, a Spanish gentleman, who had settled in Ireland, in the sixteenth century, and had married a woman whose name of Goldsmith was adopted by their descendants. Oliver was instructed in reading and writing by Thomas Byrne, a schoolmaster in his father's parish, who had been a quarter-master in the wars of Queen Anne; and who, being fond of relating his adventures, is supposed to have communicated to the young mind of his pupil the romantic and wandering disposition which showed itself in his future years. He was next placed† under the Rev. Mr. Griffin, schoolmaster of Elphin, and was received into the house of his father's brother, Mr. Goldsmith of Ballyoughter. Some relations and friends of his uncle, who were met on a social party, happening to be struck with the sprightliness of Oliver's abilities, and knowing the narrow circumstances of his father, offered to join in defraying the expense of giving him a liberal education. The chief contributor was the Rev. Thomas Contarine, who had married our poet's aunt. He was accordingly sent, for some time, to the school of Athlone, and afterward to an academy at Edgeworthstown, where he was

[* His mother, by name Ann Jones, was married to Charles Goldsmith on the 4th of May, 1718.-PRIOR, vol. i. p. 14.]

[† An attack of confluent small-pox, which had nearly deprived him of life, and left traces of its ravages in his face ever after, first caused him to be taken from under the care of Byrne.—PRIOR, VOl. i. p. 28.]

This benevolent man was descended from the noble family of the Contarini of Venice. His ancestor, having married a nun in his native country, was obliged to fly with her into France, where she died of the small-pox. Being pursued by ecclesiastical censures, Contarini came to England; but the puritanical manners which then prevailed, having afforded him but a cold reception, he was on his way to Ireland, when at Chester, he met with

But

fitted for the university. He was admitted a sizer or servitor of Trinity College, Dublin, in his sixteenth year, [11th June, 1745,] a circumstance which denoted considerable proficiency; and three years afterward was elected one of the exhibitioners on the foundation of Erasmus Smith. though he occasionally distinguished himself by his translations from the classics, his general appearance at the university corresponded neither with the former promises, nor future development of his talents. He was, like Johnson, a lounger at the college-gate. He gained neither premiums nor a scholarship, and was not admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts till two years after the regular time. His backwardness, it would appear, was the effect of despair more than of wilful negligence. He had been placed under a savage tutor, named Theaker Wilder, who used to insult him at public examinations, and to treat his delinquencies with a ferocity that broke his spirit. On one occasion poor Oliver was so imprudent as to invite a company of young people, of both sexes, to a dance and supper in his rooms; on receiving intelligence of which, Theaker grimly repaired to the place of revelry, belaboured him before his guests, and rudely broke up the assembly. The disgrace of this inhuman treatment drove him for a time from the university. He set out from Dublin, intending to sail from Cork for some other country, he knew not

a young lady of the name of Chaloner, whom he married. Having afterward conformed to the established church, he, through the interest of his wife's family, obtained ecclesiastical preferment in the diocese of Elphin. Their lineal descendant was the benefactor of Goldsmith.-[See PRIOR, vol. 1. p. 51.]

[? Out of nineteen elected on the occasion, his name stands seventeenth on the list; the emolument was trifling being no more than about thirty shillings; but the credit something, for it was the first distinction he had obtained in his college career.-PRIOR, vol. i. p. 87.]

Mr. Prior discovered several notices of Goldsmith in the College books. On the 9th of May, 1718, he was turned down; twice he was cautioned for neglecting a Greek lec ture, and thrice commended for diligence in attending it.]