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WE had predetermined on confining this collection within the strict limits of one year's consecutive issues of Prout Paper, deeming (we know not how justly) the perusal of a dozen such essays a full equivalent to the twelve labours of Hercules: but we find, from our printer's statement, that we must make it a year "and a day;" otherwise (quoth Franklyn) this meagre volume, compared to its yoke-fellow, would typify one of Pharaoh's lean kine ploughing with an Althorpean heifer. We have deferred to his judgment. "Mille et une Nuits" is the French title of the "Arabian Nights." Let our twelvemonth be Bissextile.

We have therefore glanced over the subsequently published writings of the father, for the purpose of selecting some kindred effusion wherewith to follow up the "Songs of Italy," and our eye has been arrested by the epigraph affixed to the first of "A Series of Modern Latin Poets :"

Ecco Alessandro! il mio signor Farnese,

O dotta compagnia! che seco mena

Blosio, Pierio, e VIDA CREMONESE

D'alta facondia inessiccabil' vena.

Orland. Fur. cant. ult. st. xiii.

The addition of Vida to the dotta compagnia of Italian bards would hence appear fitting and natural.

Alexander Pope has taken every opportunity of recording his admiration of this Italian bishop's poetry; whence we may conjecture that Vida's works were early placed in his hands by the priest his tutor. What higher compliment could be paid than the following juxtaposition?

But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days,

Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays;
Rome's ancient genius, o'er the ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears its reverend head:

Then Sculpture and her sister arts revive,

Stones leap to form, and rocks begin to live-
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung,
A RAPHAEL painted, and a VIDA Sung!

We shall therefore make no apology for winding up this second volume with " the Silkworm," a poem acknowledged to be his most finished production.

Vida was born at Cremona in 1490. After going through his collegiate course with distinction at the universities of Padua and Bologna, we find him, at the accession of Leo X., a resident canon of St. John's Lateran. His brilliant acquirements soon attracted the attention of the Roman Court, of which he at once became the delight and ornament. His peculiar excellence as a Latin poet pointed him out as the fittest to execute a project Leo had long wished to see realised,—that of a grand epic, of which the establishment of Christianity was to furnish the theme, and Virgil's Æneid to supply the model. Vida had

too much sagacity not to see the hopelessness of such an attempt. As the request, however, came accompanied with the gift of a rich priory (St. Silvestro at Frascati), he set to work; and the result of his Tusculan meditations appeared in the shape of "Christiados libri xii. ;" whereupon Prout pathetically exclaims,

Mantua, væ miseræ nimiùm vicina Cremonæ!

Clement VIII., however, gave him as reward the bishopric of Alba. In his episcopal capacity, he took his seat at the Council of Trent; and if good sense and good taste, piety, learning, and liberality, found any place in that assembly, it was pre-eminently in the person of Jerome Vida. His poem on the game of chess, "Scacchia Ludus," has been largely pillaged by Pope, in his "Rape of the Lock;" and many passages in the " Essay on Criticism" have their startling prototypes in the "Artis Poeticæ libri iv.," which Vida wrote for the children of Francis I. All these matters are dwelt on by Prout (in loco), who takes a strange delight in detecting "coincidences." He undertook this translation to forward the Irish Silk Company's efforts, in 1825, to naturalise a new branch of industry in the south of Ireland. Without a poor-law what can be ever done in that country?

O. Y.

The Silkworm. A Poem.

CANTO FIRST.

I.

List to my lay, daughter of Lombardy!
Hope of Gonzaga's house, fair Isabelle!
Graced with thy name, the simplest melody,
Albeit from rural pipe or rustic shell,
Might all the music of a court excel :
Light though the subject of my song may seem,
'Tis one on which thy spirit loves to dwell;
Nor on a tiny insect dost thou deem

Thy poet's labour lost, nor frivolous my theme.

II.

For thou dost often meditate how hence

Commerce deriveth aliment; how art

May minister to native opulence,

The wealth of foreign lands to home impart, And make of ITALY the general mart. These are thy goodly thoughts-how best to raise Thy country's industry. A patriot heart Beats in thy gentle breast—no vulgar praise! Be then this spinner-worm the hero of my lays!

III.

Full many a century it crept, the child
Of distant China or the torrid zone;
Wasted its web upon the woodlands wild,
And spun its golden tissue all alone,

Clothing no reptile's body but its own.
So crawled a brother-worm o'er mount and glen,
Uncivilised, uncouth; till, social grown,

He sought the cities and the haunts of men—
Science and art soon tamed the forest denizen.

IV.

Rescued from woods, now under friendly roof
Fostered and fed, and sheltered from the blast,
Full soon the wondrous wealth of warp and woof-
Wealth by these puny labourers amassed,
Repaid the hand that spread their green repast:
Right merrily they plied their jocund toil,

And from their mouths the silken treasures cast,
Twisting their canny thread in many a coil,

While men looked on and smiled, and hailed the shining spoil.

V.

Sweet is the poet's ministry to teach

How the wee operatives should be fed ;
Their wants and changes; what befitteth each;
What mysteries attend the genial bed,
And how successive progenies are bred.
Happy if he his countrymen engage

In paths of peace and industry to tread;
Happier the poet still, if o'er his page
Fair ISABELLA's een shed radiant patronage!

* Tenui nec honos nec gloria filo!