Then turned his face against the rising day,

And raised his voice to welcome in the May:

"For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear, If not the first, the fairest of the

year:

For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours,
And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers:
When thy short reign is past, the feverish Sun
The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on.
So
may thy tender blossoms fear no blight,
Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite,
As thou shalt guide my wandering steps to find
The fragrant greens I seek, my brows to bind."
His vows address'd, within the grove he stray'd.

How poor is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser "with a lusty heart." How inferior the common-place of the "fiery steed," which need not involve any actual notion in the writer's mind, to the courser "starting as the fire ;"-how inferior the turning his face to" the rising day" and " raising his voice," to the singing "loud against the sunny sheen;" and lastly, the whole learned invocation and adjuration of May, about guiding his "wandering steps" and "so may thy tender blossoms" &c. to the call upon the "fair fresh May," ending with that simple, quick-hearted line, in which he hopes he shall get "some green here;" a touch in the happiest vivacity. Dryden's genius, for the most part, wanted faith in nature. It was too gross and sophisticate. There was as much difference between him and his original, as between a hot noon in perukes at St. James's, and one of Chaucer's lounges on the grass, of a May-morning.

All this worship of May is over now,

There is no issuing forth, in glad companies, to gather boughs; no adorning of houses with "the flowery spoil;" no songs, no dances, no village sports and coronations, no courtly poetries, no sense and acknowledgment of the quiet presence of nature, in grove or glade.

O dolce primavera, o fior novelli,

O aure o arboscelli o fresche erbette,
O piagge benedette, o colli o monti,
O valli, o fiumi, o fonti, o verdi rivi,
Palme lauri, ed olive, edere e mirti;
O gloriosi spiriti de gli boschi;
O Eco, o antri foschi, o chiare linfe,
O faretrate ninfe, o agresti Pani,
O Satiri e Silvani, o Fauni e Driadi,
Naiadi ed Amadriadi, o Semidee,

Oreadi e Napee,—or siete sole.-Sannazzaro.

O thou delicious spring, O ye new flowers,

O airs, O youngling bowers; fresh thickening grass,
And plains beneath heaven's face; O hills and mountains,
Vallies, and streams, and fountains; banks of green,

Myrtles, and palms serene, ivies, and bays;

And ye who warmed old lays, spirits o' the woods,
Echoes, and solitudes, and lakes of light;
O quivered virgins bright, Pans rustical,
Satyrs and Sylvans all, Dryads, and ye
That up the mountains be; and ye beneath
In meadow or flowery heath,-ye are alone.

Two hundred years ago, our ancestors used to delight in anticipating their May holidays. Bigotry came in, and frowned them away; then Debauchery,

and identified all pleasures with the town; then Avarice, and we have ever since been mistaking the means for the end.

Fortunately, it does not follow, that we shall continue to do so. Commerce, while it thinks it is only exchanging commodities, is helping to diffuse knowledge. All other gains,—all selfish and extravagant systems of acquisition,-tend to over-do themselves, and to topple down by their own undiffused magnitude. The world, as it learns other things, may learn not to confound the means with the end, or at least (to speak more philosophically,) a really poor means with a really richer. The veriest cricket-player on a green has as sufficient a quantity of excitement as a fundholder or a partizan; and health, and spirits, and manliness to boot. Knowledge may go on; must do so, from necessity; and should do so, for the ends we speak of; but knowledge, so far from being incompatible with simplicity of pleasures, is the quickest to perceive its wealth. Chaucer would lie for hours, looking at the daisies. Scipio and Lælius could amuse themselves with making ducks and drakes on the water. Epaminondas, the greatest of all the active spirits of Greece, was a flute-player and dancer. Alfred the Great could act the whole part of a minstrel. Epicurus taught the riches of temperance and intellectual pleasure in a garden. The other philosophers of his country walked between heaven and earth in the colloquial bowers of Academus; and "the wisest heart of Solomon," who found

every thing vain because he was a king, has left us panegyrics on the Spring and "the voice of the turtle," because he was a poet, a lover, and a wise

man.

XXXVI. SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY.

THE fifth of May, making the due allowance of twelve days from the twenty-third of April, according to the change of the Style, is the birth-day of Shakspeare. Pleasant thoughts must be associated with. him in every thing. If he is not to be born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have him with her on her blithest holidays, like her favourite lover.

O thou divine human creature-greater name than even divine poet or divine philosopher—and yet thou wast all three-a very spring and vernal abundance of all fair and noble things is to be found in thy productions! They are truly a second nature. We walk in them, with whatever society we please; either with men, or fair women, or circling spirits, or with none but the whispering airs and leaves. Thou makest worlds of green trees and gentle natures for us, in thy forests of Arden, and thy courtly retirements of NaThou bringest us among the holiday lasses on. the green sward; layest us to sleep among fairies in the bowers of midsummer; wakest us with the song of the lark and the silver-sweet voices of lovers;

varre.

bringest more music to our ears, both from earth and from the planets; anon settest us upon enchanted islands, where it welcomes us again, from the touching of invisible instruments; and after all, restorest us to our still desired haven, the arms of humanity. Whether grieving us or making us glad, thou makest us kinder and happier. The tears which thou fetchest down, are like the rains of April, softening the times that come after them. Thy smiles are those of the month of love, the more blessed and universal for the tears.

The birth-days of such men as Shakspeare ought to be kept, in common gratitude and affection, like those of relations whom we love. He has said, in a line full of him, that

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

How near does he become to us with his thousand touches! The lustre and utility of intellectual power is so increasing in the eyes of the world, that we do not despair of seeing the time when his birth-day will be a subject of public rejoicing; when the regular feast will be served up in tavern and dwelling-house, the bust crowned with laurel, and the theatres sparkle with illuminations.

In the mean time, it is in the power of every admirer of Shakspeare to honour the day privately. Rich or poor, busy or at leisure, all may do it. The busiest finds time to eat his dinner, and may pitch one considerate glass of wine down his throat. The poorest