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What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well-touch'd, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?

He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise."

In the last, On his deceased Wife, the allusion to Alcestis is beautiful, and shows how the poet's mind raised and refined his thoughts by exquisite classical conceptions, and how these again were enriched by a passionate reference to actual feelings and images. It is this rare union that gives such voluptuous dignity and touching purity to Milton's delineation of the female character.

"Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight:
But O as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."

There could not have been a greater mistake or a more unjust piece of criticism than to suppose that Milton only shone on great subjects; and that on ordinary occasions and in familiar life, his mind was unwieldly, averse to the cultivation of grace and elegance, and unsusceptible of harmless pleasures. The whole tenor of his smaller compositions contradicts this opinion, which however they have been cited to confirm. The notion first got abroad from the bitterness (or vehemence) of his controversial writings, and has been kept up since with little meaning and with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others are not more remarkable for the display of a scholastic enthusiasm, than for that of the most amiable dispositions. They are "severe in youthful virtue unreproved." There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise on Education) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. "But to return to our own institute," he says, "besides these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature, not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much then, but to ride out in companies with prudent and well staid guides, to all quarters of the land," &c. Many other passages might be quoted, in which the poet breaks through the ground-work of prose, as it were, by natural fecundity and a genial, unrestrained sense of delight. To suppose that a poet is not easily accessible to pleasure, or that he does not take an interest in individual objects and feelings, is to suppose that he is no poet; and

proceeds on the false theory, which has been so often applied to poetry and the Fine Arts, that the whole is not made up of the particulars. If our author, according to Dr. Johnson's account of him, could only have treated epic, high-sounding subjects, he would not have been what he was, but another Sir Richard Blackmore.-I may conclude with observing, that I have often wished that Milton had lived to see the Revolution of 1688. This would have been a triumph worthy of him, and which he would have earned by faith and hope. He would then have been old, but would not have lived in vain to see it, and might have celebrated the event in one more undying strain!

MILK AND HONEY, OR THE LAND OF PROMISE.

LETTER VI.

Miss SABRINA BARROW to Miss FANNY FADE.

CONTENTS.

Reminiscences of Ring-dropping.-" Parcius junctas quatiunt fenestras."-Lady Harriot Butler and Miss Ponsonby.-Emperor Charles.-Invocations to American Independence.-Bohea and Souchong.-Generals Washington and Burgoyne.Niagara.-Lord Cornwallis.-Colossus at Rhodes.-American Authors.-Mr. Southey's Fingers.—Belzoni in a Boat.-The Bonassus.-Titans in Type.-Eastbourne and Kirk, booksellers.-Parr's Wig.-Liberty Hall.-Literature neat as imported.-London Booksellers.-Poets at Wapping.

My gentle co-partner, astride on a Muse,

To charge Phoebus' heights, at the head of the Blues;
Who, with thy Sabrina, the beaten church path,
A summer at Brighton, a winter at Bath,
An autumn at Tunbridge, ring-tilting, hast trod,
By the will-o'-wisp light of the torch-bearing god:
Since suitors more sparingly tap at our windows,
And Cupid cares for us no more than a pin does,
And man, fickle man, is as false as Iscariot:
Let me be Miss Ponsonby, thee Lady Harriot:
Like them, fly from Paphos, its scandals and snarls,
Abjuring two crowns, like the Emperor Charles,
And smile, like two mariners tost upon dry land-
But first read this letter; it comes from York Island.
The first thing I did, at New York, was to stop
At the door of a well-looking bookseller's shop.
"Oh realm," I exclaim'd to myself, "proudly free,
Who, in seventy-five, spurn'd the tax on bohea,
Who, led on by Washington, sounded the gong
Of Mars, with the war cry of Death or souchong;'
Who plus in adversity, minus in coin,

Yet caught in a trap the redoubted Burgoyne,
Bade loud Niagara repeat war's alarms,

And forced Lord Cornwallis to lay down his arms.
Now striding o'er seas, like the giant of Rhodes,
Of whom there's a very good likeness at Coade's,
In arts, as in arms, thou art doubtless full grown,
And happy in verse and in prose of thine own.
Some females are thine, who, with quill fleet as Gurney's,
Out-publish our Edgeworths, and Opies, and Burneys;
Some western Sir Walters, some quakers in drab,
Who write home-heroics much better than Crabbe;

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Some Southeys whose fingers no blisters environ,
Not having yet handled a red-hot Lord Byron;
Some Anna Marias, like her of Thames Ditton:
I wonder their names never reach'd us in Britain.
Ye bards, who stalk over these mountainous glebes,
With heads twice as big as young Memnon's at Thebes,
(Which cost brave Belzoni, who went in a boat,
Such trouble and money to set it afloat :)
Ye poets, whose Pegasi galloping pass us,
As big and as bluff as the London Bonassus ;
Ye Brobdignags, trampling our Lilliput tribes,
Atlantic sky-proppers, Leviathan scribes,
Goliahs in print; how I long for your works"—
So saying, I stept into Eastbourne and Kirk's.

The man of the shop, in a buzz wig like Parr's,
Sat kicking the counter and smoking cigars :
He saw us approach, with a gape and a stare,
But never once offer'd to reach me a chair.
Papa, as, astonish'd, I drew on my shawl,
Said, "Never mind, child, this is Liberty-hall."
To all my objections this hint put a stop:
But, Fanny, the next time I go to a shop,
With Liberty parlour I mean to make bold,
For Liberty-hall is uncommonly cold.

I civilly said, "If you please, Mr. Kirk,

I want some good native American work."

"Good native!" he cried with a grin, "yonder rows,
I guess, show you all I have got; look at those."
I felt as amazed, when I look'd at their backs,
As if you had chopp'd off my head with an axe!
Ye Colburns, ye Murrays, whose wares glide so fleet
From your counters in Conduit and Albemarle Street;
Ye Rivington brothers, ye Longmans, whose Co.
Would reach, if pull'd out, half the length of "the Row,"
Suspend for a while, what ye part with at high rates,
Your Sardanapuli, your Cains and your Pirates,
And list, while my Muse is obliged to confess
What springs from this native American press.
The Shipwreck by Falconer, Poems by Tickell,
Swift's Lemuel Gulliver, Peregrine Pickle,
Tom Brown, The Old Bachelor, Brodum on Chyle,
Moll Flanders, Charles Phillips's Emerald Isle,
Hugh Trevor, Theatrical Album, Tighe's Psyche,
The Bruiser, or Memoirs of Pig, christen'd Ei Key,
Little Jack, George Ann Bellamy, Fielding's Tom Jones,
The Family Shakspeare cut down from Malone's;
Hunt's Radical Coffee, or Dregs at the Top,
Webbe Hall's hint to Farmers to look to their crop,
John Bunyan, Wat Tyler, and Hone's Slap at Slop!

"What!" cried I amazed, "have you no bards who court
The Muse?"-"No, not one; what we want we import.
At present we think of pounds, shillings, and pence,
Time enough for Belles Lettres a hundred years hence:
Our people, I guess, have employment enough
In cocoa, rum, cotton, tobacco and snuff,

In digging, land-clearing, board-sawing, log-chopping-
Pray how many poets have you got at Wapping ?”
But papa is come home from the city hotel,
And asks for Sabrina; so Fanny farewell!

S. B.

LETTER VII.

MR. RICHARD BARROW TO MR. ROBERT BRIGGS.

CONTENTS.

Farther Specimens of FANCY Rhetoric.-America angry, and why.-Affecting Memoir of Major André.-Tom Pipes and Peregrine Pickle.—Disinterment of Paine by Cobbet. Quotation from King Lear.-By-standers in dudgeon.-Cobbet's Reasons satisfactory.-The Tyrant Mezentius.-Fashion spreads.-London Radicals disinter each other.-American Tax upon Grave-digging.—Its financial Effects.

BOB, Jonathan's queer: he is mizzled a ration,
He does not half stomach a late ex-humation;

Some culls, here, have taken to grubbing the clay
That tucks up the body of Major André.
With your resurrectionists, that is not very
Unusual, who dig up as fast as you bury,
And charge iron coffins the devil's own fee-
(Lord Stowel there buried the poor Patentee.)
But here, Bob, the gabies have not come to that.
Would you fancy it? Jonathan's yet such a flat
As to think, when a corpse has been waked by a train
Of mourners, 'tis wicked to wake it again.

Methink's you're for asking me who André was?
(Book-learning and you, Bob, ar'n't cronies, that's pos.)
I'll tell you. André, urged by arguments weighty,
Went out to New York, Anno Domini 80.
He quitted the land of his fathers to bleed
In war, all along of his love for Miss Sneyd;
But, finding his name not enrolled in a high line
Of rank for promotion, he took to the Spy-line.
He sewed in his stocking a letter from Arnold:
A sentinel nabb'd it—why did'nt the darn hold?
Or why, when he stitch'd it up, did not he put
The letter between his sole-leather and foot?
By mashing it, then, he had 'scaped all disaster,
As Pipes mash'd the letter of Pickle his master.
Within the lines taken, a prisoner brought off,
They troubled him with a line more than he thought of;
For, finding the young man's despatches not trim,
To shorten my story, Bob, they despatched him.

He long might have slept-with the ci-devant crew,

As soundly as here other buried men do;
But fashion, as somebody says on the stage,
In words and in periwigs will have her rage.
The notion of bringing dead people away
Began upon Paine, and went on to André:
The Yankees thought Cobbet was digging for dibs,
But when out he trundled a thigh-bone and ribs,
They did not half like it: and cried with a groan,
"Since poor Tom's a-cold, why not leave him alone?"-
"I mean, Sirs," said Cobbet, who stood on the bank,
"To take Mister Paine, in a box, to Sir Frank;
"Twill show that I'm not quite unworthy of trust,
For this way, at least, I can down with the dust.
I next mean to ask of The Powers that be,'
To let Tom go home, as he fled, duty-free,
And pick John Bull's heart by a skeleton key.
Thus England may for her past errors atone,
By making America bone of her bone."

This argument told: cheek-by-jowl off they sped,
Like the friends of Mezentius, one living, one dead.
The fashion's afloat; and, now, stop it who can!
Your Liberty bucks will be boned to a man.

Already young Watson's for digging up Priestley,—
Which Sabby and Lyddy denominate beastly.

Sir Bob, of the Borough, has learnt the spade's art right,
To dig up, at Midsummer, old Major Cartwright.
How sharp after Waithman looks Alderman Wood!
And Waithman, I know, would have Wood if he could.
Sir Francis, at Putney, will scratch like a rook,

In the field where he doubled-up Johnny Horne Tooke.
Gale Jones has an eye to Hone's carcase, and Hone's
Quite on the qui vive for a dig at Gale Jones,
Who's "not by no means" in a hurry to rise,
Remembering the adage-" Lie still if you're wise."
And Wooller, with pick-axes, cracking his shell-wall,
Will nab the quid restat of Lecturer Thelwall.
Church-yards will be 'tatoe-fields-two-pence a pound:
They won't leave a radical plant under ground.
For my part, I don't like the scheme, Mr. Briggs,
I'll tell it to Congress: I will, please the pigs.
To men of my gumption, you can't think how sad's
The thought of this grand resurrection of Rads;
For if all the great dead-wigs thus bolt from below,
Who knows what may happen, when you and I go!
I'll prove that a tax upon bones will atone
For the tax on new rum, at a dollar a bone.

Nay, I hope they'll extend it to mattock and spade,

And make resurrection a contraband trade.

The Act, when once past, by Dick Barrow's assistance,

Will make you rum customers "keep your yard's distance."
From live or dead nuisances keep the coast clear,

And dub it "not lawful to shoot rubbish here."

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WHY com'st thou, Cynthia, with thine eyes of light
To pry into the darkness of the grove,

Where, placed with me beneath the beech, my love
Sits in the welcome shadow of the night?

Perhaps offended at thy shepherd's slight,

Whose loitering steps for thee too slowly move,
Here dost thou seek him from thy realms above,
And hovering in the heaven suspend'st thy flight.
If thus thou fear'st this stolen embrace of mine,
Vain is the foolish terror that alarms,
Déeming me him who fired that breast divine
Not for Endymion from these circling arms
Would Phillis move, nor I my love resign

For thee, with all thy more than mortal charms.

R. B.

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