labours are now beginning; the shepherd counts his sheep, under the old hawthorn in the dell, to see if any have strayed during the night; the milkmaid comes abroad with her pails, and the mower whets his scythe in the hayfield; while over the hills is heard the cheerful echo of the huntsmen's horns and hounds,-these are the delights of the cheerful man

"To hear the lark begin his flight

And singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow;
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before :

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures

Russet lawns and fallows grey,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees,
'Bosom'd high in tufted trees,

Where perhaps some beauty lies,

The cynosure of neighbouring eyes."

What a picture is presented in the following

stanzas :

"Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savoury dinner set,
Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tann'd haycock in the mead."

The cheerful man continues his walk through the day; he delights to hear the peal of the merry bells, of the jocund rebeck on the village green; he delights to watch the village youth. dancing beneath the shade, when the young and the old come forth to make the blithe holiday; he delights to see the spicy nutbrown ale circling round the board, to hear the stories told of the strange feats of fairies, and the wonderful doings, especially of that ancient frolicsome elf, Robin Goodfellow; he listens to these tales, till frighted all creep to their beds, and are lulled to sleep by the whistling winds.

The cheerful man delights in the life of cities, in the busy hum of men, in the throng of courts, where knights and barons mingle in the gentle contentions of peace; the gay scenery of the masque pleases him; the pomp, and feast, and ancient pageantry; he does not altogether scorn the theatre, if "Jonson's learned sock be on," or "sweetest Shakspeare"

"Warble his native wood-notes wild."

The cheerful man delights in music, in "soft Lydian airs"

"In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony."

All the elements of this exquisite cheerfulness, it should be noticed, are derived from virtuous enjoyments. Cowley, or any of the other poets of that age, would have given very different colours to the merry men of their fancy; but there is a dignity and propriety in every source of enjoyment, in the

"Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides;"

the melancholy man, but of a very different order; the solemn sounds that murmur through old abbeys; not the rebeck, but the organ; not the merry sounds of the cheerful dancers, but the solemn choristers in the old and vast cathedral.

"But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows, richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high, and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heav'n doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live."

Dr. Johnson calls these pieces "two noble efforts of the imagination." Almost every line

is a picture; and by ordinary readers they will perhaps be more readily perused than the more august and exalted strains of the poet. They are both portraits of temperaments entirely individual; they are "silent, solitary inhabitants of the breast; they neither receive nor transmit communication: no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle."*

Mr. Todd quotes a fine letter from that accomplished scholar, Sir William Jones, to Lady Spenser, dated Oxford, September 7th, 1769. It seems from it, that it was his opinion that we are indebted, not to Horton, but to Forest Hill, for his descriptive pictures of the country. It was written during the celebrated Garrick Jubilee, in honour of Shakspeare, at Stratfordupon-Avon, and is interesting for many reasons we will therefore cite it here.

"The necessary trouble of correcting the first printed sheets of my history, prevented me to-day from paying a proper respect to the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee.

* Johnson's Life of Milton, Lives of Poets.