Was I forbidden by thy arm to fall?

There, where fierce Hector, victim of the lance

Of great Achilles, and, in kindred dust,

Divine Sarpedon, lies; while Simõis rolls

Qe'r broken shields and helms, his troubled waves, And many a hero's bones."

25

THE SPEECH OF ENEAS ON DISCOVERING HIMSELF TO DIDO.-B. I. v. 594.

THEN to the queen, while all in wonder stood,
Eager he cries-"Snatch'd from the Lybian flood,
Lo! whom you seek, Trojan Æneas, here.
“O! thou, alone, who heed'st the suppliant tear
Of toil-exhausted Troy, and deign'st to ǎfford
To the sad reliques of the Grecian sword
(By land, by sea, with every ill opprest,
Grief-worn and destitute) a home of rest

Within thy walls-thy palace !—thanks to give,
Such as thy noble bounty should receive,

5

10

Dido! exceeds our power :-the Dardan race,
Thro the vast world wide scatter'd, cannot grace
Thy worth with equal praise! The Gods alone
(If heavenly powers make pious deeds their own,-
If they the good revere) and thy own heart,
Conscious of worth, can fit rewards impart.
Blest age! blest parents! who such virtues bore!
"Whatever region call me to its shore,-

While confluent rivers to the ocean move,

15

Round swelling mountains while their shadows rove,* While round the pole the cherish'd stars shall shine, Thy honour, name and praise shall ne'er decline.

* If the object of the version did not restrict me to literal translation,

I should have preferred, in place of v. v. 19, 20,

While confluent rivers to the ocean flow,

"While towering mountains shade the vales below," &c.

THE

HOPE OF ALBION.

Several years ago,—even so early as in the season of my boy-hood, I projected, and laid the plan of an Epic Poem, on the subject of the exile and restoration of Edwin of Northumberland,-the earliest of our Saxon princes celebrated for the establishment of laws, and the effective and impartial administration of justice. After an interval of fourteen or fifteen years, in the depths of solitude and irksome seclusion from all active life, the mind recurred to its former project. After much meditative preparation, the pen was resumed; and, during an almost uninterrupted interval of fifteen or sixteen weeks, the subject was prosecuted with devoted enthusiasm; and four or five thousand verses (constituting the matter of the first six books) were composed, and

in part corrected. Circumstances, the remembrance of which it is not desirable to revive (because dishonourable to those who produced them,) interrupted at that time my further progress. easily to be resumed; and event succeeding to event, partly driving, and partly drawing, me from my retire. ment, plunged me again (tho in a new character) into the bustle of professional exertion and public intercourse. In the pursuit of an intricate science, and amid the duties of a laborious profession, "The Hope of Albion" became almost entirely banished from my thoughts,except only, at those moments, "permitted for short intervals and rare," when contemplation indulged itself in expatiating with regret, on a delightful employment, which leisure could not be found to resume.

The thread once broken, was not

Whether the remaining books will ever be written; or even the different transcripts of those already composed, be collated for final revision, is now exceedingly doubtful. Some fragments, however, of a work so long meditated, and so likely, therefore, to preserve a faithful record of settled sentiments and permanent feelings, (feelings and sentiments-which, when faithfully recorded, and accurately understood, will not be in danger of being vehement censure!) I am desirous to preserve, in some form that

may give them a degree of permanency and diffusion: and, as there are many portions of that work, which, assuming an oratorical form, seem well adapted to the purposes of recitation, I have thought it not amiss to incorporate some of them with the science, which it is my profession to teach. Something of this kind has, indeed, already, been partially and adventitiously accomplish'd; some small fragments of the poem having been introduced into a former volume of Selections, and the entire second book having been printed in a volume of poems, which, for the sake of variety, has occasionally been us'd as a classbook in my Institution. But now, that I am printing a volume expressly for the purpose of recitation among my pupils, I am not disposed to lose the opportunity of transferring some further specimens from the silence of my port-folio, to the memory of those, whose voices, hereafter, may give them an expression, not less effective, from their having been used as instruments for the improvement of the melodies of elocution, and the energies of oratorical delivery.

It is only necessary further to premise, as an introduction to this extract, that at the entrance of the East Anglian Prince, he finds his friend, (the hero of the poem,) -though not unconscious of the perils that surround