Thy numbers, Jealousy, to naught were fixed;
Sad proof of thy distressful state;

Of different themes the veering song was mixed,
And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sat retired;

And from her wild sequestered seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul;
And dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels joined the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole;
Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,
Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away.

But O! how altered was its sprightlier tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemmed with morning-dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known;
The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen,
Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed;
But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw, in Temple's vale, her native maids,
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing:
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round,
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound:
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid,
Why, Goddess! why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?
As in that loved Athenian bower,
You learned an all-commanding power;
Thy mimic soul, O nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard.
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to virtue, fancy, art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste. sublime!
Thy wonders in that godlike age
Fill thy recording sister's page;
"Tis said, and I believe the tale,
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
E. L. v. iv.-2

Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age;
E'en all at once together found,
Cecilia's mingled world of sound.
O bid our vain endeavours cease,
Revive the just designs of Greece;
Return in all thy simple state;
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

To fair Fidele's grassy tomb

Dirge in Cymbeline.

Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing spring.
No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove,
But shepherd lads assemble here,

Sung by GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS over FIDELE, supposed to be dead.
The red-breast oft, at evening hours,
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gathered flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.
When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake the sylvan cell,
Or midst the chase, on every plain,
The tender thought on thee shall dwell.
Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more;
And mourned till Pity's self be dead.

And melting virgins own their love.
No withered witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew;

Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson.

The scene of the following stanzas is supposed to lie on the Thames, near Richmond. In yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise, To deck its poet's sylvan grave.

The maids and youths shall linger here,
And while its sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in Pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.

Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,
When Thames in summer wreaths is
drest;

And oft suspend the dashing oar,
To bid his gentle spirit rest!

And oft, as Ease and Health retire
To breezy lawn or forest deep,
The friend shall view yon whitening spire,
And 'mid the varied landscape weep.

But thou, who own'st that earthy bed,
Ah! what will every dirge avail;

Or tears, which love and pity shed,
That mourn beneath the gliding sail?

Yet lives there one whose heedless eye
Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering
near?
With him, sweet bard, may fancy die,
And joy desert the blooming year.

But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide

No sedge-crowned sisters now attend, Now waft me from the green hill's side, Whose cold turf hides the buried friend.

And see, the fairy valleys fade,

Dun night has veiled the solemn view!
Yet once again, dear parted shade,
Meek nature's child, again edien!

The genial meads, assigned to bless
Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom:
Their hinds and shepherd-girls shall dress,
With simple hands, thy rural tomb.

Long, long thy stone and pointed clay

Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes: 'O vales, and wild-woods,' shall he say, 'In yonder grave your Druid lies !'

*The harp of Æolus, of which see a description in the Castle of Indolence. -COL

LINS.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE added some pleasing pastoral and elegiac strains to our national poetry, but he wanted, as Johnson justly remarks, comprehension and variety.' Though highly ambitious of poetical fame, he devoted a large portion of his time, and squandered most of his means, in landscape-gardening and ornamental agriculture. He reared up around him a sort of rural paradise, expending his poetical taste and fancy in the disposition and embellishment of his grounds, till at length pecuniary difficulties and distress drew a cloud over the fair prospect, and darkened the latter days of the poet's life. Swift, who entertained a mortal aversion to all projectors, might have included the unhappy Shenstone among the fanciful inhabitants of his Laputa. The estate which he labored to adorn was his natal ground. At Leasowes, in the parish of Hales-Owen, Shropshire, the poet was born in November, 1714. He was taught to read at what is termed a dame-school, and his venerable preceptress has been immortalised by his poem of the Schoolmistress.' In the year 1732, he was cent to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he remained four years. In 1745, the paternal estate fell to his own care and management, and he began from this time, as Johnson characteristically describes it, ' to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.' Descriptions of the Leasowes have been written by Dodsley and Goldsmith. The property was altogether not worth more than £300 per annum, and Shenstone had devoted so much of his means to external embellishment, that he was compelled to live in a dilapidated house, not fit, as he acknowledges, to receive 'polite friends.' An unfortunate attachment to a young lady, and disappointed ambition-for he aimed at political as well as poetical celebrity-conspired, with his passion for gardening and improvement, to fix him in his solitary situation. He became querulous and dejected, pined at the unequal gifts of fortune, and even contemplated with a gloomy joy the complaint of Swift, that he would be forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' Yet Shenstone was essentially kind and benevolent, and he must at times have experienced exquisite pleasure in his romantic retreat, to which every year would give fresh beauty, and develop more distinctly the creations of his taste and labour. The works of a person that builds,' he says, begin immediately to decay, while those of him who plants begin directly to improve.' This advantage he possessed with the additional charm of a love of literature; but Shenstone sighed for more than inward peace and satisfaction. He built his happiness on the applause of others, and died in solitude a votary of the world. His death took place at the Leasowes, February 11, 1763.

The works of Shenstone were collected and published after his death by his friend Dodsley, in three volumes. The first contains his poems, the second his prose essays, and the third his letters and other pieces. Gray remarks of his correspondence, that it is abcut nothing else but the Leasowes, and his writings with two or three neighbouring clergymen who wrote verses too.' The essays are good, displaying an ease and grace of style united to judgment and discrimination. They have not the mellow ripeness of thought and learning of Cowley's essays, but they resemble them more closely than any others we possess. In poetry, Shenstone tried different styles: his elegies barely reach mediocrity; his levities, or pieces of humour, are dull and spiritless. His highest effort is the Schoolmistress,' published in 1742, but said to be written at college, 1736.' It was altered and enlarged after its first publication. This poem is a descriptive sketch in imitation of Spenser, so delightfully quaint and ludicrous, yet true to nature, that it has all the force and vividness of a painting by Teniers or Wilkie. His Pastoral Ballad,' in four parts, is also the finest English poem of that order. The pastorals of Spenser do not aim at lyrical simplicity, and no modern poet has approached Shenstone in the simple tenderness and pathos of pastoral song. Campbell seems to regret the affected Arcadianism of these pieces, which undoubtedly present an incongruous mixture of pastoral life and modern manners. But, whether from early associations-for almost every person has read Shenstone's Ballad' in youth-or from the romantic simplicity, the true touches of nature and feeling, and the easy versification of the stanzas, they are always read and remembered with delight. We must surrender up the judgment to the imagination in perusing them, well knowing that no such Corydons or Phyllises are to be found; but this is a sacrifice which few readers of poetry are slow to make.

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6

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We subjoin part of the Schoolmistress;' but one other stanza is worthy of notice, not only for its intrinsic excellence, but for its having probably suggested to Gray the fine reflection in his Elegy:

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, &c.

Mr. D'Israeli has pointed out this resemblance in his 'Curiosities of Literature,' and it appears well founded. The palm of merit, as well as originality, seems to belong to Shenstone; for it is more natural and just to predict the existence of undeveloped powers and great eminence in the humble child at school, than to conceive they had slumbered through life in the peasant in the grave. Yet the conception of Gray has a sweet and touching pathos, that sinks into the heart and memory. Shenstone's is as follows:

Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
Even now sagacious foresight points to shew

A little bench of heedless bishops here,

And there a chancellor in embryo,

Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so,'

As Milton, Shakspeare-names that ne'er shall die! Though now he crawl along the ground so low, Nor weeting how the Muse should soar on high, Wisheth, poor starveling elf! his paper-kite may fly.

The Schoolmistress.

Ah me! full sorely is my heart forlorn,
To think how modest worth neglected lies;
While partial fame doth with her blasts adorn
Such deeds alone as pride and pomp disguise;
Deeds of ill sort, and mischievous emprise;
Lend me thy clarion, goddess! let me try
To sound the praise of merit ere it dies;
Such as I oft have chanced to espy,
Lost in the dreary shades of dull obscurity.

In every village marked with little spire,
Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame,
There dwells, in lowly shed, and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name;
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame:
They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent,
Awed by the power of this relentless dame;
And ofttimes, on vagaries idly bent,

For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent.

And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree,

Which Learning near her little dome did stow;
Whilom a twig of small regard to see,

Though now so wide its waving branches flow,
And work the simple vassals mickle woe;

For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew,
But their limbs shuddered, and their pulse beat low;
And as they looked, they found their horror grew,
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view.

Near to this dome is found a patch so green,
On which the tribe their gambols do display;
And at the door imprisoning board is seen,
Lest weakly wights of smaller size should stray;
Eager, perdie, to bask in sunny day!

The noises intermixed, which thence resound,

Do learning's little tenement betray;

Where sits the dame, disguised in looks profound, And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around.

Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,

Emblem right meet of decency does yield:
Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trow,
As is the harebell that adorns the field;

And in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield

Tway birchen sprays; with anxious fear entwined, With dark distrust, and sad repentance filled; And steadfast hate, and sharp affliction joined, And fury uncontrolled, and chastisement unkind. A russet stole was o'er her shoulders thrown; A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air; 'Twas simple russet, but it was her own; Twas her own country bred the flock so fair; 'Twas her own labour did the fleece prepare;