IV.

I have been patient, let me be so yet,

I had forgotten half I would forget,

But it revives-Oh! would it were my lot
To be forgetful as I am forgot!-

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell
In this vast lazar-house of many woes?

Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor even men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes-
Many, but each divided by the wal!,

Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;-
While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call-
None! save that one, the veriest wretch of all, (1)
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between Distraction and Disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,
Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
Would I not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward Sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our stoical success?
No!-still too proud to be vindictive-I
Have pardon'd princes' insults, and would die.
Yes, sister of my sovereign! for thy sake
1 weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest; (2)
Thou pitiest not-but I can not forsake.

V.

Look on a love which knows not to despair, (3)
Bat all unquench'd is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart
As dwells the gather'd lightning in its cloud,
Encompass'd with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-ethereal dart!
And thus, at the collision of thy name,
The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me;-they are gone-I am the same,

commands of his prince. His name was Agostino Mosti. Tasso says of him, in a letter to his sister, ed usa meco ogni sorte di rigore ed inumanità.'" Hobhouse.-L. E.

(1) This fearful picture is finely contrasted with that which Tasso draws of himself in youth, when nature and meditation were forming his wild, romantic, and impassioned genius. Indeed, the great excellence of the Lament consists in the ebbing and flowing of the noble prisoner's soul;-his feelings often come suddenly from afar off, -sometimes gentle airs are breathing, and then all at once arise the storins and tempest, the gloom, though black as night while it endures, gives way to frequent bursts of radiance, and when the wild strain is closed, our pity and commiseration are blended with a sustaining and elevating sense of the grandeur and majesty of his character." Wilson.-L.E.

(2) Not long after his imprisonment, Tasso appealed to the mercy of Alfonso, in a canzone of great beauty, couched in terms so respectful and pathetic, as must have moved, it might be thought, the severest bosom to relent. The heart of Alfonso was, however, impregnable to the appea!; and Tasso, in another ode to the princesses, whose pity he invoked in the name of their own mother, who had herself known, if not the like horrors, the like solitude of imprisonment, and bitterness of soul. "Considered merely as

And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes reveal'd it, they, alas!
Were punish'd by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not veuture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipp'd at holy distance, and around
Hallow'd and meekly kiss'd the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and array'd
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismay'd-
Oh! not dismay'd-but awed, like one above;
And in that sweet severity there was

A something which all softness did surpass―
I know not how-thy genius master'd mine—
My star stood still before thee;-if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design,
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;

But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me-but for thee.
The very love which lock'd me to my chain
Hath lighten'd half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain. (4)

VI.

It is no marvel-from my very birth

My soul was drunk with love,-which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;

Of objects all inanimate I made

Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours, (5)
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe,
And that the only lesson was a blow;-
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Return'd and wept alone, and dream'd again
The visions which arise without a sleep.

poems," says Black, "these canzoni are extremely beautiful; but, if we contemplate them as the productions of a mind diseased, they form important documents in the history of man." Life of Tasso, vol. ii. p. 408.-L. E.

(3) "As to the indifference which the Princess is said to have exhibited for the misfortunes of Tasso, and the little effort she made to obtain his liberty, this is one of the nega tive arguments founded on an hypothesis, that may be easily destroyed by a thousand others equally plausible. Was not the Princess anxious to avoid her own ruin? In taking too warm an interest for the poet, did she not risk destroying herself, without saving him?" Foscolo.-L. E.

(4) "Tasso's profound and unconquerable love for Leonora, sustaining itself without hope throughout years of darkness and solitude, breathes a moral dignity over all his sentiments, and we feel the strength and power of his noble spirit in the un-upbraiding devotedness of his passion." Wilson.-L. E.

(5) It has been remarked by an anonymous author of Memoirs of Lord Byron, that "this is so far from being in character, that it is the very reverse; for, whether Tasso was in his senses or not, if his love was sincere he would have made the object of his affection the sole theme of his meditation, instead of generalizing his passion, and talking about the original sympathies of his nature."-P. E.

And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into one want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought-and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorb'd in thine-the world was past away—
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!

VII.

I loved all solitude-but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant;-had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave, (1)
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave?
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wreck'd sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him—mine is here,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though he perish, he may lift his eye
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky-
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

VIII.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline, (2)
But with a sense of its decay:-I see
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange demon, who is vexing me
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to one, who long hath suffer'd so,
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
And all that may be borne, or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but man,
But spirits may be leagued with them-all Earth
Abandons-Heaven forgets me;—in the dearth
Of such defence the Powers of Evil can,
It may be, tempt me further, and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.

(2) "Nor do 1 lament," wrote Tasso, shortly after his confinement, "that my heart is deluged with almost constant misery, that my head is always heavy and often painful, that my sight and hearing are much impaired, and that all my frame is become spare and meagre; but passing all this with a short sigh, what I would bewail is the infirmity of my mind. My mind sleeps, not thinks; my fancy is chill, and forms no pictures; my negligent senses will no longer furnish the images of things; my hand is sluggish in writing, and my pen seems as if it shrunk from the office. I feel as if I were chained in all my operations, and as if I were overcome by an unwonted numbness and oppressive stupor."-Opere, t. viii. p. 258.—L. E.

Why in this furnace is my spirit proved
Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.

IX.

I once was quick in feeling-that is o'er;-
My scars are callous, or I should have dash'd
My brain against these bars, as the sun flash'd
In mockery through them;—if I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more
Which hath no words,-'t is that I would not die,
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame
Stamp Madness deep into my memory,
And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No-it shall be immortal!—and I make
A future temple of my present cell,
Which nations yet shall visit for my sake. (3)
While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shalt fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,
A poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,-
A poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls! (4)
And thou, Leonora !-thou-who wert ashamed
That such as I could love-who blush'd to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear,
Go! tell thy brother, that my heart, untamed
By grief, years, weariness-and it may be
A taint of that he would impute to me-
From long infection of a den like this,
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,
Adores thee still:-and add-that when the towers
And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,
This-this-shall be a consecrated spot!
But thou-when all that Birth and Beauty throws
Of magic round thee is extinct-shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave. (5)

can, and, after a short struggle, or rather suspense, Ferrars passed away for ever from the dominion of the house of Este." Hobhouse.-L. E.

(5) In July, 1586, after a confinement of more than seven years, Tasso was released from his dungeon. In the hope of receiving his mother's dowry, and of again beholding his sister Cornelia, he shortly after visited Naples, where his presence was welcomed with every demonstration of esteer and admiration. Being on a visit at Mola di Gaeta, be received the following remarkable tribute of respect, Mares di Sciarra, the notorious captain of a numerous troop of banditti, hearing where the great poet was, sent to compli ment him, and offered him not only a free passage, but pro tection by the way, and assured him that he and his fel lowers would be proud to execute his orders. See Manso, Vita del Tasso, p. 219. Mr. Rogers thus introduces the incident into his description of the life, "fearful and full of change," of the mountain-robber :

"Time was, the trade was nobler, if not honest;
When they that robb'd were men of better faith
Than kings or pontiffs; when, such reverence
The poet drew among the woods and wilds,
A voice was heard, that never bade to spare,
Crying aloud, Hence to the distant bills!
Tasso approaches; he, whose song beguiles
The day of half its hours; whose sorcery
Dazzles the sense, turning our forest-glades
To lists that blaze with gorgeous armoury,
Our mountain-caves to regal palaces:
Hence, nor descend till he and his are gone.
Let I fear nothing!'"-L. E.

No power in death can tear our names apart,
As none in life could rend thee from my heart. (1)

(1) In the MS,

wring

}

"As none in life could wrench thee from my heart."-L. E. rend

(2) "The 'pleasures of imagination' have been explained | and justified by Addison in prose, and by Akenside in verse, hat there are moments of real life when its miseries and its necessities seem to overpower and destroy them. The * history of mankind, however, furnishes proofs, that no bodily suffering, no adverse circumstances, operating on our material nature, will extinguish the spirit of imagination. Perhaps there is no instance of this so very affecting and so very sublime as the case of Tasso. They who have seen the dark, horror-striking dungeon-hole at Ferrara, in which be was confined seven years under the imputation of mad

Yes, Leonora! it shall be our fate

To be entwined for ever-but too late! (2)

ness, will have had this truth impressed upon their hearts in a manner never to be erased. In this vault, of which the sight makes the hardest heart shudder, the poet em. ployed himself in finishing and correcting his immortal epic poem. Lord Byron's Lament on this subject is as sublime and profound a lesson in morality, and in the pictares of the recesses of the human soul, as it is a production most eloquent, most pathetic, most vigorous, and most elevating among the gifts of the Muse. The bosom which is not touched with it-the fancy which is not warmed,- the understanding which is not enlightened and exalted by it, is not fit for human intercourse. If Lord Byron had written nothing but this, to deny him the praise of a grand poet would have been flagrant injustice or gross stupidity." Sir E. Brydges.-L. E.

1.

Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,

However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing,
And other things which may be had for asking.

Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's tutor, says, in his Schoolmaster-Although I was only nine days at Venice, I aw, in that little time, more liberty to sin, than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years."

Beppo was written at Venice, in October 1817, and acquired great popularity immediately on its publication in the May of the following year. Lord Byron's letters show that be attached very little importance to it at the time. He was not aware that he had opened a new vein, in which his genius was destined to work out some of its brightest triumphs. "I have written," he says to Mr. Murray, "a poem humorous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, and founded on a Venetian anecdote which mused me. It is called Beppo-the short name for GinPp-that is, the Joe of the Italian Joseph. It has polifics and ferocity." Again-"Whistlecraft is my immediate model, but Berni is the father of that kind of writing; which, I think, suits our language, too, very well. We shall see by this experiment. It will, at any rate, show that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism." He wished Mr. Murray to accept of Beppo as a free gift, or, as he chose to express it," as part of the contract for Canto Fourth of Childe Harold," adding, however,-"if it pleases, you shall have more in the same mood; for I know the Italian way of life, and, as for the verse and the passions, I have them still in tolerable vigour." The Right Honourable John Hookham Frere has, then,

*He one day received by the mail a copy of Whistlecraft's propectus and specimen of an intended national work, and, moved by playfulness, immediately after receiving it began Beppo, which he finished at a sitting." Galt.-P. E.

II.

The moment night with dusky mantle covers

The skies (and the more duskily the better), The time less liked by husbands than by lovers Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter; And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,

Giggling with all the gallants who beset her; And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming, Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.

by Lord Byron's confession, the merit of having first intro. duced the Bernesque style into our language; but his performance, entitled "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table," though it delighted all elegant and learned readers, obtained at the time little notice from the public at large, and is already almost forgotten. For the causes of this failure, about which Mr, Rose and others have written at some length, it appears needless to look further than the last sentence we have been quoting from the letters of the author of the more successful Beppo, Whistlecraft had the verse; it had also the humour, the wit, and even the poetry of the Italian model; but it wanted the life of actual manners, and the strength of stirring passions. Mr. Frere had forgot, or was, with all his genius, unfit to profit by remembering, that the poets, whose style he was adopting, always made their style appear a secondary matter. They never failed to embroider their merriment on the texture of a really interesting story. Lord Byron perceived this; and avoiding his immediate master's one fatal error, and at least equalling him in the excellences which he did display, engaged at once the sympathy of readers of every class, and became substantially the founder of a new species of English poetry,

In justice to Mr. Frere, however, whose "Specimen" has long been out of print, we must take this opportunity of showing how completely, as to style and versification, he bad anticipated Beppo and Don Juan. In the introductions to his cantos, and in various detached passages of mere

III.

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,

All people, as their fancies hit, may choose, But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,—Therefore take heed, ye freethinkers! I charge ye.

description, he had produced precisely the sort of effect at which Lord Byron aimed in what we may call the secondary, or merely ornamental, parts of his Comic Epic. For example, this is the beginning of Whistlecraft's first canto :"I've often wish'd that I could write a book, Such as all English people might peruse;

I never should regret the pains it took,

That's just the sort of fame that I should choose:

To sail about the world like Captain Cook,

I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse,

And we'd take verses out to Demarara,
To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.
"Poets consume excisable commodities,

They raise the nation's spirit when victorious,
They drive an export trade in whims and oddities,
Making our commerce and revenue glorious;
As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis
That poets should be reckon'd meritorious:
And therefore I submissively propose

To erect one board for verse and one for prose.
"Princes protecting sciences and art

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print;
I never saw them elsewhere, for my part,
And therefore I conclude there's nothing in 't:
But every body knows the Regent's heart;

I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint;
Each board to have twelve members, with a seat
To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat :-

"From princes I descend to the nobility:

In former times all persons of high stations,
Lords, baronets, and persons of gentility,
Paid twenty guineas for the dedications:
This practice was attended with utility;

The patrons lived to future generations,
The poets lived by their industrious earning,-
So men alive and dead could live by learning.

"Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune;

Now, we must starve unless the times should mend:
Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune

If their addresses are diffusely penn'd;

Most fashionable authors make a short one

To their own wife, or child, or private friend,
To show their independence, I suppose;
And that may do for gentlemen like those.

"Lastly, the common people I beseech

Dear people! if you think my verses clever,
Preserve with care your noble parts of speech,
And take it as a maxim to endeavour

To talk as your good mothers used to teach,

And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tail'd words in osity and ation.
"I think that poets (whether Whig or Tory)

(Whether they go to meeting or to church)
Should study to promote their country's glory
With patriotic diligent research;
That children yet unborn may learn the story,
With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch:
It stands to reason-This was Homer's plan.
And we must do-like him--the best we can.

"Madoc and Marmion, and many more.

Are out in print, and most of them have sold:
Perhaps together they may make a score;
Richard the First has had his story told,
But there were lords and princes long before,

That had behaved themselves like warriors bold:
Among the rest there was the great KING ARTHUR,
What hero's fame was ever carried farther?"

The following description of King Arthur's Christmas at Carlisle is equally meritorious;

"The Great King Arthur made a sumptuous feast,

And held his royal Christmas at Carlisle,

And thither came the vassals, most and least,
From every corner of this British Isle;
And all were entertain'd, both man and beast,
According to their rank, in proper style;
The steeds were fed and litter'd in the stable,
The ladies and the knights sat down to table.

IV.

You'd better walk about begirt with briars,
Instead of coat and small-clothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,

Although you swore it only was in fun;
They'd haul you o'er the coals, and stir the fires
Of Phlegethon with every mother's son,
Nor say one mass to cool the caldron's bubble
That boil'd your bones, unless you paid them double.

The bill of fare (as you may well suppose)
Was suited to those plentiful old times,
Before our modern luxuries arose.

With truffles and ragouts, and various crimes;
And therefore, from the original in prose,

I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes:
They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars,
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores;
"Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,

Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacock, swan, and bustard,
Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies and custard:
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cyder of our own;
For porter, punch, and negus were not known.
"The noise and uproar of the scullery tribe,

All pilfering and scrambling in their calling.
Was past all powers of language to describe-
The din of manful oaths and female squalling:
The sturdy porter, huddling up his bribe,
And then at random breaking beads and bawling.
Outeries, and cries of order, and contusions,
Made a confusion beyond all confusions;
"Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy
Minstrels and singers with their various airs,
The pipe, the tabor, and the hurdy-gurdy,
Jugglers and mountebanks with apes and bears,
Continued from the first day to the third day,
An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fairs;
There were wid beasts and foreign birds and creatures,
And Jews and foreigners with foreign features.
"All sorts of people there were seen together,
All sorts of characters, all sorts of dresses;
The fool with fox's tail and peacock's feather,
Pilgrims, and penitents, and grave burgesses;
The country people with their coats of leather,

Vintners and victuallers with cans and messes;
Grooms, archers, varlets, falconers and yeomen,
Damsels and waiting-maids, and waiting-women.
But the profane indelicate amours,

The vulgar unenlighten'd conversation
Of minstrels, menials, courtezans, and boors,
(Although appropriate to their meaner station)
Would certainly revolt a taste like yours;
Therefore I shall omit the calculation

Of all the curses, oaths, and cuts, and stabs, Occasion'd by their dice, and drink, and drabs. "We must take care in our poetic cruise,

And never hold a single tack too long;
Therefore my versatile ingenious Muse
Takes leave of this illiterate low-bred throng.
Intending to present superior views,

Which to genteeler company belong,
And show the higher orders of society
Behaving with politeness and propriety.
"And certainly, they say, for fine behaving

King Arthur's court has never had its match;
True point of honour, without pride or braving,
Strict etiquette, for ever on the watch:
Their manners were refined and perfect-saving
Some modern graces, which they could not catch;
As spitting through the teeth, and driving stages,
Accomplishments reserved for distant ages!
They look'd a manly generous generation;
Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick,
Their accents firm and loud in conversation,

Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,
Showed them prepared, on proper provocation,
To give the lie, pull noses, stab, and kick;
And for that very reason, it is said,
They were so very courteous and well-bred.
"The ladies look'd of an heroic race-

At first a general likeness struck your eye,
Tall figures, open features, oval face,
Large eyes, with ample eyebrows arch'd and high;
Their manners had an odd peculiar grace,
Neither repulsive, affable, nor shy,
Majestical, reserved, and somewhat sullen;
Their dresses partly silk, and partly woollen."

V.

Bat, saving this, you may put on whate'er
You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak,
Such as in Moumouth-street, or in Rag Fair,
Would rig you out in seriousness or joke;
And even in Italy such places are,

With prettier names in softer accents spoke, For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on

VII.

VI.

This feast is named the carnival, (2) which, being
Interpreted, implies "farewell to flesh: "
So call'd, because the name and thing agreeing,
Through Lent they live on fish both salt and fresh.
But why they usher Lent with so much glee in,
Is more than I can tell, although I guess
Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting,
In the stage-coach or packet, just at starting.

The little snatches of critical quizzing introduced in Whistlecraft are perfect in their way. Take, for example, this good-humoured parody on one of the most magnificent passages in Wordsworth:

"In castles and in courts Ambition dwells,

But not in castles or in courts alone;

She breathed a wish, throughout those sared cells,
For bells of larger size, and louder tone;

Giants abominate the sound of bells,

And soon the fierce antipathy was shown,
The tinkling and the jingling, and the clangor,
Roused their irrational gigantic anger.

"Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate!

Unhappy monks! you see no danger nigh;
Exulting in their sound, and size, and weight,
From morn till noon the merry peal you ply:
The belfry rocks, your bosoms are elate,

Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly;
Tired, but transported, panting, pulling, hauling,
Ramping and stamping, overjoy'd and bawling.

Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded
The silent valley where the convent lay,
With tintinnabular uproar were astounded,
When the first peal burst forth at break of day:
Feeling their granite ears severely wounded,

They scarce knew what to think, or what to say;
And (though large mountains commonly conceal
Their sentiments, dissembling what they feel,

"Yet) bin intimation
Cader Gibbrish from his cloudy throne
Of this strange rumour, with an awful tone,
Thund ring his deep surprise and indignation;
The lesser hills, in language of their own,
Discuss'd the topic by reverberation;
Discoursing with their echoes all day long,
Their only conversation was, ding-dong.''

Mr. Rose has a very elegant essay on Whistlecraft, in his Thoughts and Recollections by One of the last Century, which thus concludes:

Bippo, which had a story, and which pointed but one way, met signal and universal success; while The Monks and the Giants been little appreciated by the majority of readers. Yet those who will only laugh upon a sufficient warrant may, on analysing bravara-poem, find legitimate matter for their mirth. The want ning cannot certainly be objected to it, with reason; for it s a deep substratum of sense, and does not exhibit a character bas not, or might not have, its parallel in nature. I remember the time this poem was published, (which was, when the French archy seemed endangered by the vacillating conduct of Louis Till, who, ander the guidance of successive ministers, was trimbetween the loyalists and the liberals, apparently thinking that ity and conciliation was a remedy for all evils,) a friend dared prove my assertion; and, by way of a text, referred me to the aracter of the crippled abbot, under whose direction,

'The convent was all going to the devil,
While he, poor creature, thought himself beloved
For saying handsome things, and being civil,
Wheeling about as he was pull'd and shoved.'

The obvious application of this was made by me to Louis XVIII. ; and if it was not the intention of the author to designate him in par iar, the applicability of the passage to the then state of France, and her ruler, shows, at least, the intrinsic truth of the description.

VIII.

And therefore humbly I would recommend

"The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend, Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross (Or if set out beforehand, these may send

By any means least liable to loss) Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;

Take, in the same way, the character of Sir Tristram, and we shall find its elements, if not in one, in different living persons.

'Songs, music, languages, and many a lay.
Asturian, or Armoric, Irish, Basque,
His ready memory seized and bore away;
And ever when the ladies chose to ask
Sir Tristram was prepared to sing and play,
Not like a minstrel, earnest at his task,
But with a sportive, careless, easy style,
As if he seem'd to mock himself the while.

His ready wit, and rambling education,

With the congenial influence of his stars,
Had taught him all the arts of conversation,
All games of skill, and stratagems of wars;
His birth, it seems, by Merlin's calculation,
Was under Venus, Mercury, and Mars:
His mind with all their attributes was mix'd,
And, like those planets, wand'ring and unfix'd."

"Who can read this description, without recognising in it the portraits (flattering portraits, perhaps) of two military characters well known in society?"

The reader will find a copious criticism on Whistlecraft, from the pen of Ugo Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review, vol. vi.-L. E.

(2) "The carnival," says Mr. Rose, "though it is gayer or duller, according to the genius of the nations which celebrate it, is, in its general character, nearly the same all over the peninsula. The beginning is like any other season; towards the middle you begin to meet masques and mummers in sunshine: in the last fifteen days the plot thickens; and during the three last all is burly-burly. But to paint these, which may be almost considered as a separate festi val, I must avail myself of the words of Messrs. William and Thomas Whistlecraft, in whose 'Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work' I find the description ready made to my hand, observing that, besides the ordi. nary dramatis persona,

'Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy,
Minstrels and singers, with their various airs,.
The pipe, the tabor, and the hurdy-gurdy,
Jugglers and mountebanks, with apes and bears.
Continue, from the first day to the third day,

An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fairs.'

The shops are shut, all business, is at a stand, and the drunken cries heard at night afford a clear proof of the pleasures to which these days of leisure are dedicated. These holidays may surely be reckoned amongst the secondary causes which contribute to the indolence of the Italian, since they reconcile this to his conscience, as being of religious institution. Now there is, perhaps, no offence which is so unproportionably punished by conscience as that of indolence. With the wicked man, it is an intermittent disease; with the idle man, it is a chronic one." Letters from the North of Italy, vol. ii. p. 171.-L. E.