and brilliancy of colouring in his grand groups-that power of keeping under all minor details-the perspective of descriptive poetry, which is necessary for the production of a strong and uniform effect. All is too much of

equal size, crowded into the foreground; and the author loses his purpose in the indiscriminate prominence of his details. Yet there are many charming passages. In the month of May, the poet, as is usual with his tuneful brethren of these olden times, rises early, before dawn, and wanders into a garden of pleasance and delight. Aurora, with her countenance sweet yet pale, and her mantle bordered with sable, had not yet unclosed the curtains of the couch within which lay Flora, the goddess of flowers, but a delicious fragrance was breathed from its flowery carpet, and a rich melodious song burst from the groves around it --"

Unaltered Specimen.

The fragrant flouris blomand in the irseis, Ourspreid the levis of Natures tapestries; Abone the quhilk, with heavenly harmonies, The birdis sat on twistis and on greis, Melodiously makand their kindlie gleis, Quhais schill notis fordinned all the skyis; Of repercust air the echo cryis,

Amang the branches of the blomed treis, And on the laurers silver droppis lyis.

Quhill that I rowmed in that paradyce, Replenishit and full of all delice, Out of the sey Eous alift his heid, I mene the hors quhilk drawis at device The assiltrie and golden chair of price Of Tytan, quhilk at morrow semis reid; The new collour that all the nicht lay deid Is restorit, baith foulis, flouris, and rice Recomfort was, throw Phoebus gudlyheid.

Of Titan-which by night looks dark and dead,

But changeth in the morn to ruby red; Whilst birds, and fields, and flowers, on holm and hight,

New life assume in glittering vests bedight.

The daisy sweet, the marigold and rose, That all the night their silken buds did close,

Lest icy rimes their tender twigs should sear, Expanded fragrant; and, as Titan rose, Each ancient tree his greeny glories shows. Emerging joyous from the darkness drear, All living things the kindly warmth did cheer;

The idle grasshoppers both chirpt and play'd,

The sweet laborious bees melodious music made.

With spreit arraisit, and every, wit away, Quaking for fear both pulse and vein and nervis.

Upon this he very sensibly determines to go home, but is suddenly arrested on his road by an extraordinary incident, which he thus describes :

Forth from the skies a sudden light did
glance,

That threw me into ecstasy or swoon;
Instant I fell in an enchanted trance,
And feeble as a woman sunk I down:
With that strange gleam, all faded was my
might,

Silent my voice, and dizzied grew my sight;
Sans motion, breath, or hearing, tranced

I stood

Was never seen so weak a living wight.

hour,

The glorious sun uprising in his power, Bathed with a kindly heat all growing things,

Nor boisterous Eolus, with blast and shower,

Nor Saturn, with his aspect sad and sour, Dar'd in that place unfurl his icy wings, But sweet Favonius thither fragrance brings,

And little streams, half hid in moss, do run, Making a pleasant chime, and glancing in the sun.

Encircled with these varied delights, the poet desires anxiously to pour forth a strain worthy of the occasion, to

Nature queen, and eke to lusty May;

when, for what reason he fails to inform us, his faculties become weak, and he is seized with a trembling which incapacitates him

Confounds the brain, and chases back the blood

Unto the sinking heart in ruby flood: And the faint members of the body, all Refuse to work-when terror doth appal.

'Twere hard to tell how long the fit did last ; At length my colour came, though sore aghast,

And a wild wondrous vision met mine ee.
Thro' a huge forest I did seem to roam,
In lonely gloom, far far from mortal home,
Fast by the margin of a sullen sea,
In whose dead waters grisly fishes be:
'Twas hideous all-yet here I shall essay
To tell mine aventure, though rude may be
the lay.

Finding himself in this doleful region -(I follow Dr Irving's analysis of the "Palace of Honour")- he begins to complain of the iniquity of Fortune; but his attention is soon attracted by the arrival of a magnificent cavalcade "of ladies

fair, and guidlie men," who pass before him in bright and glorious procession. Having gone by, two caitiffs approach, one mounted on an ass, the other on a hideous horse, who are discovered to be the arch-traitors Sinon and Achitophel. From Sinon the poet learns that the brilliant assembly whom he has just beheld is the court of Minerva, who are journeying through this wild solitude to the Palace of Honour. He not unnaturally asks how such villains were permitted to attend upon the goddess, and receives for answer, that they appear there on the same principle that we sometimes find thunder and tornadoes intruding themselves into the lovely and placid month of May. The merry horns of hunters are now heard in the wood, and a lovely goddess is seen surrounded by buskined nymphs, mounted upon an elephant, cheering on her hounds after an unhappy stag, who proves to be Acteon, pursued by Diana and his own dogs. Melodious music succeeds to this stirring scene, and through an opening in the forest the court of Venus approaches, shedding a transcendent brightness over the groves, and composed of every hero and heroine of classical and romantic story. The description of Mars upon his barded courser stout and bald," is noble :

The mighty Mars a barded courser bore, Grim was his look, his body large and square,

His sinewy neck in breadth a span or more, Round which did shortly curl his crisp

brown hair;

His limbs well-knit, and of proportion fair, Were clothed in panoply of radiant steel. On Venus still he gazed with amorous air,

And she her knight him call'd in woe or weal, Whilst o'er his noble form her love-lit glances steal.

This brave apparition is scarcely past, when it is succeeded by the court of Minerva, composed of "wise, eloquent fathers, and pleasant ladies of fresh beauty," all of them directing their course to the Palace of Honour, and cheering the tedium of the journey by rehearsing Greek and Latin histories, and chanting to their lyre sapphic and elegiac odes. We regret it is impossible to follow them in their progress; but some of the insulated pictures are beautiful. The poet mounts a gallant steed, caparisoned with woodbine; and, under the guidance of a sweet nymph to whom he had been introduced by Calliope, he takes his joyous way with the Muses, and at length arrives at the Castalian fount :

Beside that fount, with clearest crystal blest,

Alighted down the Muses, bright of hue, Themselves to solace and their steeds to

rest;

green,

were seen