Auratumque habitat, vel eburno ex dente lacunar;
Fulcitur plumis et pulvinaribus albis.

Vive diu, infelix, morbo indignissimus isto.
Now and then, however, the religious earnestness, which
is at the bottom of all which Balde writes, openly appears,
as when he reminds the fretful and impatient sufferer, of
One who had no such solaces and alleviations of pain, as
are largely granted to him:

... non dormiit ostro,
Mollibus effultus cygnis, foliisque rosarum :
Affixus fuit ILLE cruci, clavisque quaternis
Ex ferro fossus terram inter et astra pependit;
Felle sitim relevans, pertusus vocibus aures
Sacrilegis ; toto laniatum corpore funus.
Te capit infusum lectica simillima Ledæ,
Invitum quæ vel queat invitare soporem ;
Accinit Amphion, et fundit dulcia Rhenus ,
Demulcet conjux ; lepidi solantur amici;
Et potes, heu! lecto trux indignarier isti,

Duraque fata queri, quæ sunt mollissima fatu.
These brief extracts may suffice to give a slight con-
ception of what the character of this poem is. But it is,
undoubtedly, as a lyric poet that Balde is greatest; and in
that aspect the poem which follows will shew him.

LVIII. CHOREA MORTUALIS SIVE

LESSUS.

DE SORTIS ET MORTIS IN HUMANAS RES IMPERIO:

Argumentum
Inter funebres tædas, ad modulatos Umbrarum passus

decantandum.

LVIII. Balde, Poëmata, Coloniæ, 1660, v. 4, p. 424.-The empress Leopoldina, wife of Ferdinand the third, died in childbirth at Vienna after one year's marriage

, in the year 1649. The great commonplaces of death, which, if always old, are yet always

have seldom clothed themselves in grander form, or found a more solemn utterance, than they do in this sublime poem. How noble the third, the fourth, and the sixth stanzas !

9. æstas] The empress died on the 7th of August.

new,

69. Suecica castra] A fine allusion to the recent desolations of Germany. It is true that when the empress died, peace had been restored for nearly a year, the treaty of Westphalia having been signed in October, 1648. But the wounds of Germany could scarcely have begun to heal ; and it was only four years before, that the smoke of the Swedish watchfires had been visible from the ramparts of Vienna.