Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled, Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall; A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore, His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er. And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood. SELECTIONS FROM THE SONNETS. I. ON REVISITING THE RIVER LODON. AH! what a weary race my feet have run When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun! Much pleasure, more of sorrow marks the scene. Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature ; II. WRITTEN AT WINSLADE, HAMPSHIRE. WINSLADE, thy beech-capt hills, with waving grain Her fairest landscapes whence my muse has drawn, In this alone they please, howe'er forlorn, III. WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF DUGDALE'S MONASTICON. DEEM not devoid of elegance the sage, Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, IV. WRITTEN AT STONEHENGE. THOU noblest monument of Albion's isle ! Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd: V. WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WILTON HOUSE. FROM Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic art VI. ON SUMMER. While summer suns o'er the gay prospect played, Should wear, when most my cheerless mood to chase, HENRY JAMES PYE. Born in London in 1745. Made laureate in 1790. Died in 1813. (Reign of George III.) WHEN Warton died, there were many suggestions from the critics that the Laureateship be abolished. Edward Gibbon said: "This is the best time for not filling up the office, when the prince is a man of virtue, and the poet just departed was a man of genius." Byron said that Henry James Pye was a man eminently respectable in everything but his poetry; and his critics and lampooners fret themselves over the puzzle why he was made poet laureate. The Chronique Scandaleuse, seeking for a solution, finds it in the fact that once Pye and George III. were hunting together. The king tumbled and lost his wig. Pye hastened to raise his sovereign from his undignified position, but His Majesty, with ill-concealed anxiety, began to search in the bog for his wig. "Never mind your royal wig," said Pye impulsively; " I care more for the safety of your sacred Majesty's person. I sincerely trust your Majesty is unhurt." This solicitude impressed the king to such an extent that when Warton died, and a list of candidates for the Laureateship being presented to the king, he straightway recommended Pye. Henry James Pye was an aristocrat, belonged to an ancient family which had come over to England with the Conqueror, and had afterwards been connected with royalty. One of his ancestors was Auditor of the Exchequer in the reign of James I. It was therefore Sir Robert Pye's duty to pay Ben Jonson his annual grant, and it was to him that Jonson addressed his famous epistle when the salary was in arrears. Sir Robert Pye's son married the daughter of John Hampden. It is not with his ancestors, however, but with the laureate himself that we must concern ourselves. His childhood was a happy one. Taught by a private tutor at home, he was studious and precocious, read Homer at ten years of age, and delighted in mental gymnastics such as in these days are unknown to our children. At seventeen he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, and at twenty-one he left the university on account of the death of his father. The estate was a large one, and he felt his responsi |