"Sir Fopling Flutter." Sit near Spring Gardens, | turn your back on Carlton Terrace, and you can almost imagine that lady of "easy virtue" in your vicinity to be Mistress Nelly Gwynne, dressed in the costume of the nineteenth century. "A mighty stretch of the imaginative powers!" says sceptical reader. "Credat Judæus!" Well, well-I care

not.

As I do not pretend to class authors of the same time together, my readers must not be surprised if I place in juxta position authors who were not exactly contemporaries. I ought, perhaps, to have mentioned Sir Philip Sydney in the same page with his friend Spenser ; but, as I write currente calamo, you must not expect precision.

Of the "Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sydney-"that honey-bee of quaint conceits," as Hazlitt somewhere calls him-I can read but only "here a little and there a little," in an idle hour. There are too many flowers-fancy sickens. Nevertheless, there are many sweet thoughts, which seem so strange when read by us readers of 1857 in the great, massive, dusty tome that enshrines them. That book I have lost with the rest. It was a dear old moth-eaten volume-an eleventh edition of A.D. 1652. But a few lines which I remember, and have, I believe, quoted in an early chapter, yet ring in my ears. They picture the bliss of matrimony, and I prefer them to the much-praised lines of Rogers on a like subject; which lines, in all impartiality, I will thereunder subjoin, trusting to your hearty verdict in favour of the hero of Zutchpen in preference to the poetbanker of St. James's. Below are the lines of which I speak and first, in point of time, comes

SYDNEY.

Believe me, man, there is no greater blisse,
Than is the quiet joye of loving wife,
Which whoso wants, half of himself doth misse,
Friend without change-playfellow without strife,
Food without surfeit, counsel without pride,
Is this sweet doublinge of our single life.

Beautiful lines, are they not? But now listen to the elegant

ROGERS.

His house she enters-there to be a light
Shining within, when all without is night;
A guardian-angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing;
Winning him back, when mingling in the throng,
Back from a world we love, alas! too long,
To fireside happiness, to hours of ease,
Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
How oft her eyes read his; her gentle mind
To all his wishes, all his thoughts inclined;
Still subject-ever on the watch to borrow
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts-touch them but rightly-pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!

Well, reader, and to whom-Rogers or Sydney -will you give the palm? Recollect, however, before giving in your award, that Rogers takes sixteen lines to express what Sydney paints in six.

549

There is an epigrammatic force-an inborn sincerity in these brief lines of the author of "Arcadia," which are worth more to me than the beauty, however ornate, of the melodious lines of the author of the "Pleasures of Memory." What say you, fair reader? Possibly your opinion fluctuates; both poets flatter your sex, and yet both beautifully speak truth, in language beautiful enough to break the heart of any poor old bachelor who has passed the "grand climacteric" of his life, and who now misses that "sweet doubling" of it, so graphically described by that high-souled gentleman who, as he lay dying on the gory field of Zutchpen, pushed away the cup of water proffered to his death-parched lips, because at his side there lay a wounded soldier who, said chivalry personified in Sydney, "needs it more than I!"

Read the "Arcadia "-parts thereof-for it may seem heavy as a whole now-a-days-and thank me, who am now babbling of my book-recollections for the recommendation. So shall thy love, gentlest of readers, grow more and more daily for that 'branch of honour and of martial sprite," Sir Philip Sydney.

I know not why the "melancholy" Cowley, (as he calls himself in the "Complaint," though the author of the "Anacreontics," which, as Hazlitt says, "breathe the very spirit of love and wine," would not seem to have been much troubled with such a gloomy passion as melancholy) should be so little read in these degenerate days. I grant that he is too pedantic a poet, and that to some, alas! his quaint conceits, beautiful in their fantastic quaintness, may seem strained and vapid; yet is there much good food for the scholar in the "Notes to Davideis," and much philosophy in the "Verses Written on Several Occasions." I transcribe, for my reader's delectation, two verses from the "Hymn to the Light:"

First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come,
From the old Negro's darksome womb,
Which, when it saw the lovely child,

The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled. What more poetical idea of the first dawn of light on the world could be imagined by any poet? Again

A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;

A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;

The virgin lilies in their white

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

Is there not a richness of poetry in the first line-a fantastic beauty-and withal beauty true to nature-in the last conceit ? Yet Cowley, says Hazlitt, is "mechanical!" Scholar! read the "Notes to Davideis," oh! bon vivant, read the "Anacreontics," oh! philosopher, read the fragments, disjecta membra poeta, at the end of that sweet book, and ye will severally bless with me the poet and the printer.

For general readers the "Miscellaneous Poems," and "Several Discourses by way of Essays," will possess greater attractions than the more elaborate efforts of our poet; the Epicurean content, the

This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high,
Such honour I would have

Not from great deeds but good alone,
The unknown are better than ill-known,

Rumour can ope the grave.

Acquaintance I would have-but when't depends Not on the number but the choice of friends. Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night. My house a cottage more

Than palace, and should fitting be

For all my use, no luxury.

My garden painted o'er

With Nature's hand, not Art's, and pleasures yield
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well twice runs his race,
And in this true delight,

These unbought sports, that happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,

But boldly say each night, To-morrow let my sun his beams display, Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day. Oh! rare Cowley-surely thou wert a philosopher when in long clothes!-wise above children must thou have been when a boy of thirteen-an Epicurus of thirteen summers-thou didst write those lines-lines which should be read in a garden such as thou didst love. Well did thy master, Epicurus, choose a garden wherein, beneath the shady trees, by which loud chirped the cicala, he might expound to that eager band of disciples the art of "living well."

When Epicurus to the world had taught
That pleasure was the only good,

(And was perhaps i'the right, if rightly understood,) His life he to his doctrine brought,

And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure scught. If I have glanced but cursorily over Cowley omitting many beauties, and substituting comments for quotations-I still shall have effected my purpose if by these unworthy comments of mine, I shall have induced any one of my readers to seek out" mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the poems of the "melancholy Cowley." Or if, oh gentle Cowley, my reader should think I have dallied too long for his patience with thee, even as one who, meeting an old friend in the busy street stays too long with him, leaving the new friend to shift for himself-surely such a fault may be forgiven me when now I bid thee farewell.

Fuller is another son of wisdom, whose works are undeservedly covered with the dust of neglect. Have none of my readers (if I be fortunate enough to carry any with me thus far) seen "the Holy War" and "the Holy and Profane States,"

perchance, the "Racing Calendar," or the "Sporting Magazine," flaunted proudly in the newest honours of Russia leather? And yet we may read, greatly unto edification, the "Characters" of Fuller's "Holy and Profane States," and the biographies appended to each. Learning, wit, strong common sense in quaint guise, are the characteristics of good Thomas Fuller. Reader! take unto thy heart the "Holy and Profane States," bound up with the " Holy War." All will find Fuller's piety pleasing, but not obtrusively thrust into every place; his common sense will be as wholesome meat, and his witty quaintness as racy sauce to the mental palate. A first edition, a good, well-worn copy of Fuller, is more attractive to a bookworm, like myself, than any reprint, however artistically executed, could possibly be. What charms would the quaint title page and frontispiece of the "Holy War" possess, if lithographed by Haghe and Day? They (the titlepage, etc.,) might be better done, but the magic charm of moth-eaten age would be lost. You would, in fact, sublime old beauties in the crucible of modern taste, and the attempt would result after all, like all such efforts, in a dull caput mortuum, I doubt not. There is something in externals as regards books and reading. If any of my readers doubt the truth of my assertion, let me ask them if they would care to read Fuller in a first floor lodging at a bow-window in Regentstreet! Could there be, in such a case, any moral union between the "Good Merchant" of Fuller, and the flashy proprietor of the flashy shop over the way?

And now "for fresh fields and pastures new" let us leave old books (those dear old tomes, printed at "Ye Bible, in St. Paul's Churchyard," et id genus omne,) for their modern descendants of Albemarle-street, Paternoster-row, and elsewhere. Fair readers (if such should so far highly honour me as to glance over these pages) with "eyes darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," will hardly forgive me for lightly passing by Byron-as it is my present purpose to do. It is a work of supererogation to descant on acknowledged beauties. Byron is known to all, from the maiden of Berkeley-square to the maid-of-all-work at Stoke Newington. I dare not-I cannot criticise him— honestly. Byron seems likely to be immortal in every way. We hear his name breathed endearingly by young ladies in their teens, by young gentlemen hurriedly in drawing rooms; by

blighted beings" of every rank and age-from the dandy of St. James's-street to the hopeless "counter-jumper" of High Holborn. Few provincial towns are without a Lara, and few people but can number among their acquaintance a Don Juan of St. George's Hospital or of the Temple. We can with difficulty bring our minds to recollect that the author of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," died at Missolonghi, and was buried at Hucknall in the year of grace, 1824. His portraits are in

the windows of countless print-shops; his busts are, and are recognised by all, on the board of every Italian vendor of plaster of Paris casts; while his less fortunate, but equally gifted friend, Shelley, is forgotten, save by a few, and they are in a small minority. The ashes of that guileless, gentle-hearted poet, lie in a foreign land, his name awakens obloquy in the minds of many; and the human race the great brotherhood-for whom he laboured in love, during his brief and melancholy existence, have hardly yet learned to appreciate the single-hearted child of genius. "A burning and a shining light" was quenched for ever, when that frail bark, which held Shelley and Trelawny, sunk beneath the sullen sea.

If Shelley was guilty of many errors in theory, he was, at least, guilty of few in practice. Let those who from prejudice have suffered the poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley to be unread by them, read "Queen Mab," that sweet fledgling of his genius -and, though his and their theories may not agree, yet must they, as candid men, admit that that poet "with all the odorous dews of pathos" around him, inculcated as sublime a practice as any author of any "Whole Duty of Man." Shelley owned no law but the law of Love, and to Love he paid a tribute too enthusiastic to escape the scorn of a cold-hearted world. If Love-the most exalted attribute of the Deity-was the sole object of Shelley's worship; if he severed that one of many attributes from the grand Whole, to worship that one attribute with the warmth of a pure young heart, was he guilty of such monstrous impiety as bigotry would have us believe?-for, is not that one attribute the essence and governing principle of all? From Shelley's lyre sprang into being many sweet sounds, whose soul-purifying music will ring through the ears of many till this evil world shall pass away, and Love shall be lord of all. May God hasten that time when creeds shall no longer, as now, by too many, be set up as cold substitutes for that charity which "thinketh no evil!" A time will come, let us hope, when man will not hate his brother, if they worship one God at different altars—a time so ardently looked for by that believer in man's perfectibility, the truehearted, if often erring, P. B. Shelley. Those who living too much in the world are "of the earth, earthy," sneer at the golden fancies of a child of song; they know not how such blossoms bring forth pleasant fruit. The man described by Wordsworth is a fine type of these groundlings-Wordsworth's clown perchance lacked worldliness sufficient to render the resemblance more complete

"A primrose by the river's brim, A yellow primrose was to himBut it was nothing more.” As that clown could pass by and trample on the the primrose at his feet, without one thought of the beauty in simplicity, or of God who made this firstling of spring-so these literal varlets can carp at sentences, though they will never extract

* But did Shelley worship at any altar?

551

goodness from a volume, whose beauties they cannot appreciate. Such people vituperate Shelley's writings on the ground of their posssessing no earthly interest. If "Prometheus Unbound" serves to elucidate no practical purpose-as some men affirm-still the lover of the beautiful can quench his spirit's thirst at the pure fount of Shelley's inspiration, and rise refreshed from the draught. It will be admitted that Patience and Love are attributes of God-godlike. Did not Shelley offer up the incense of his ardent, guileless heart, at such shrines? "The winged words" of the poet are like the seed which "the sower went forth to sow." They may be hid in the ungrateful heart of the world for a long period-or they may be scoffed at and trodden under foot by "the beasts of the people;" yet some must "fall on good ground"-and may they bring forth a golden harvest in the world's mind! The prose-writers appeal more to the head, or reasoning faculties, than to the heart. The poet's music, (to borrow a phrase from Fuller, who defines poetry as music in words," as music is "poetry in sound") followś men into the world-the sound rings in their ears in the privacy of their chamber, and oft amid the turmoil of busy life that music appeals unto their better, purer feelings-it brings back to the hacknied man of the world the green days of youth, and all should refuse to close their ears against that sweet music which comes across the dull monotony of daily life, like some sweet air anew remembered.

Let us not lose ourselves in the mazes of that rich garden of poesy, Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," when we have not even time to cull together a few flowers and then go on our way. If ever man was born a poet, that man was Shelley. From his earliest youth he had built for his soul a nest of sweet fancies-to which he might retreat, and in which he, during his brief existence, shrouded his too sensitive mind from life's sterner realities. Hear what the Fourth Spirit sings:

On a poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept;

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality !*

There is the poetic character hit off by a few faint yet masterly touches by a poet; and a poet in the truest, holiest, purest sense of that high word was Shelley; he was no hard of the salon; he had a great heart, which beat for all his fellow men. From his visionary youth to the dream-land beauty of his maturer years he had devoted his heart and mind to poesy-he had not

"Prometheus Unbound."-Chorus of Spirits.

552

I have not loved the world nor the world me,

I have not flattered its rank breath-nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee,

Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo.

Why Byron's popularity exceeded Shelley's we can easily understand; in the first place, the English are a lord-loving people. Is it to be wondered if, having before them a "living lord," young, handsome, and a child of genius, they should be fascinated? Byron invested vice with the mantle of poetry; his villains were not contemptible" rather to be admired," thought the English reader, whose mind was agog on Germanisms (if such a word may be allowed me). Every young gentleman who happened to have been crossed in love, or to have been supplanted by a more favoured rival, found in Byron's pages limnings (thought the aforesaid youth) of his own "dark soul"—their collars were turned downverses, á la " Fare-thee well," indited, signed and sealed; and the young man became a Fleet-street Lara-haughty, sullen, and poetically unhappy; Every youth who happened to be of a dissipated turn of mind could find in Byron's pages morbid administerings to ill-feeling. Much as I admire Byron's fiery flow of verse, his hatred of humbug, his unflinching advocacy of what he believed to be true-much as my own heart yearns in sympathy towards "Childe Harold," as my eyes grow dim while reading verses where the passion, throbs of that noble heart are laid bare to the light of day -still I cannot blind my convictions to the fact that Colton, the author of "Lacon," well defined the tendency of Byron's works, when he said, they taught the youth of that day that the whole duty of man was "to hate your neighbour, and love your neighbour's wife!"

Since I read that opinion, I must own that "the glass-eyed, teeth-grinding, lone Caloyer," as Carlyle nicknames Byron, has lost much of his power over me.

But I had nearly forgotten Shelley while speaking of his friend Byron. As regards the charge of immoral tendency alleged so bitterly against Shelley's works I will only say-point me out one line which, irrespective of creed, inculcates immorality, and I will own the allegation just. That Shelley did make grievous mistakes in religious opinion, I am ready to acknowledge and deplore; but he was from his childhood a calumniated, persecuted being and surely we can little wonder if, when he heard the professors of a creed disgrace it by calumny, in bitter mockery of their profession, that he should be led insensibly to confound theory with practice, and a creed with its upholders. Persecution always hardens.

played on the trial of Mr. Moxon (Shelley's publisher) for "blasphemy," by the counsel for the defendant, the late Mr. Justice Talfourd.

Mr. Moxon, as doubtless many of you remember, was indicted at the instance of one Hetherington, for having published Sheiley's "Poetical Works." Speaking of certain passages therein, which formed the groundwork of that ill-advised prosecution, Serjeant Talfourd said :—*

They appeal to no passion; they pervert no affection; they find nothing in human nature, frail as it always is guilty as it sometimes becomes, to work on. Contemplated apart from the intellectual history of the extraordinary being who produced them, and from which they can never be severed by any reader of this book, they would excite no feelings but those of wonder at their andacity, and pity for their weakness. Not only are they incapable of awakening any chords of evil in the soul, but they are ineffectual to present to it an intelligible heresy. Are they more than atoms of chaotic thought not yet subsided into harmony, over which the spirit of love has not yet brooded so as to make them pregnant with life and beauty and joy? Now when it is proved that this poem ("Queen Mab"] thus containing the doctrine of immortality, is presented with the distinct statement that Shelley himself in mature life departed from its offensive dogmas,-when it is accompanied by his own letter, in which he expresses his wish for its suppression.

.

surely all sting is taken out of the rash and uncertain passages which have been selected as indicating blasphemy! But is it not antidote enough to the poison of a pretended atheism, that the poet, who is supposed to-day to deny Deity, finds Deity in all things?

Well said that gifted advocate, when speaking of a certain alleged blasphemous passage in an essay written by Shelley and appended to “Queen Mab,"-an essay disclaimed long before his death by Shelley himself :—

Here you shall see a poet whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling with a theory gross, material, shallow; imagine the great struggle by which the Spirit of the Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to its uses. His genius was pent up within the hard and bitter riud of his philosophy, as Ariel was in the rift of the cloven pine; and what wonder if a spirit so enthralled should send forth strange and discordant cries? . . Here is a spectacle which angels may admire and weep over! Here is a poet of fancy the most ethereal-feelings the most devout-charity the most Christian enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and debasing! Here is a youth endowed with that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years; who (with a spirit of selfsacrifice which the oldest Christianity might exalt in, if found in one of its martyrs) is ready to lay down that intellectual being-to be lost in loss itself-if by annihilation he could multiply the enjoyments and hasten the progress of his species-and yet, with strange wilfulness, rejecting that religion in form to which in essence he is imperishably allied! Observe these radiant fancies, pure and cold as frostwork; how would they have been kindled by the warmth through eternity," and think how they would repose in their of Christian love! Track "those thoughts that wander proper home! And trace the inspired but erring youth, poem after poem, year after year, month after month, how shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his genius gradually dissolve; the wreaths of mist ascend from his path;

* See report of the trial of Mr. Moxon, for blasphemy, in special jury-June 23, 1841. Counsel for defendant, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and Mr. Hayward.

and the distance spread out before him peopled with human affections, and skirted by angels' wings!

See how this

I have before me now, in an old M.S. book,

Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen-and, in its contemplation, the softened poet exclaims, in his "Prometheus," of the followers of Christ :

The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee. And thus he proceeds, with light shining more and more towards perfect day, which he was not permitted to realise in this world. As you trace this progress, alas ! Death veils it-veils it, not stops it; and this perturbed, imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from us till the sea shall give up its dead.

But I have wandered too far and too long with Memory. I have thought too much of my own impressions of books and reading, and have expressed too little aright; I have filled sundry sheets of paper, and now find that I have said too little to the purpose, and too much of myself. Let me hope, dear reader, that you will pardon all this: it is hard to lose one's books and one's home together; it is very natural to remember both tenderly, and to seek to indulge such a train of thought, albeit at the expense of a reader's patience. Be this, then, my excuse.

very

TO MY BOOKS ON PARTING WITH THEM.

As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers, as he may, Affliction's dart;
Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder Art,
Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you-nor with failing heart;
For, past a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more!

THE western wind sighed through the palm groves of an Indian clime, and the sun's glowing rays brightened into the mellow horizon. The sky, and sea, and land were blazing with the glory of the dying day, as an Indian mother bowed her graceful head over the fragile being who owed to her its new found life; her hair in its wild luxuriance covered the infant form, and her tears fell fast on its tender limbs.

She wept, for she thought of the sin and sorrow of the world it had entered; she wept, for she felt the impotency of her own mind alone to save it from that sin; and wept, because she had heard so little, and knew so little, of the way in which that might be done, or of that great being who, in his divine love, came from heaven to earth, and went from earth to heaven again on this sin-destroying mission.

The gentle west wind moaned round that young loving mother, kissed her heated brow, bathed her limbs with its cooling stream, sought to waft her sorrow from her, and sang its own murmuring lullaby to woo her into rest.

"Rest thee, Fayaway, child of the golden East," it sighed; "grieve not at the doom of earth; weep not for that which as yet is not-which never may be. Rest thee, Fayaway; rest thee, gentle one, and let me kiss thine eyelids into sleep.

I'll murmur round thee in thy slumbers, whisper to thee in thy dreams, and wander from thee to heaven's blue vault, only to summon thence those blest guardians of the sky, whose office of love it henceforth shall be to watch thy tender child. Rest thee! rest thee!"—and the wind murmured until the Indian girl slept beside her child.

Then it hushed its lulling breezes, and fled towards the distant west-farther and farther it went on its heaven bound mission-farther and farther.

The sun had set; the air became murky and still; insects buzzed and fluttered; noisome reptiles crawled forth-the wily snake and poisonous adder-stole near the spot where lay that gentle being and her helpless infant.

But there came one creature, more subtle, more dangerous than all. Slowly, stealthily it advanced, and breathed on the sleeping child. Its serpent form was raised as its poisoned tongue darted at the infant-another moment, and its sting had entered that tender frame; but the gentle western breeze returned, and brought on its balmy wings beings of light and love, of seraph essence, of angelic nature, who spread their outstretched pinions between the slimy reptile and the sleeping babe. "Away," they said; and the willing echo repeated the command, as the reptile dragged its