with great self-confidence, "Oh, they run down again." He bore the tidings very well, hoped for better luck next time, was sorry for his family's sake, because they knew he was no fool, and retired to his diocese to ruminate on his seventh repulse."

"Forty-seven per cent. plucked in five days-nice prospects for incipient little goers," said Bagshaw.

"Well, then, you must retire to Stinkomallee, and become a member of the Open-to-all-and-influenced-by-none University-they'd be right glad to get a few refugees from us or Cambridge," said Morris. "Come, come, Morris, you should not be so savage against them, see how they hold out the right hand of fellowship."

Ay, they may have the right hand of fellowship if they like, but whip me if they ever get the palm of scholarship," replied the objector.

Approaching lectures now dispersed the company; some to walk off their feed in the groves, some to sleep through a slow lecture, and others to endeavour to read-a difficult task after feeding-time. Hetherington and myself strolled down the High Street, and, after looking in at his bookseller's, on our return encountered the bishop, a middle-sized, mealy-faced man, with long counsellor-like bands, a white tie, and a very large home-made gentleman commoner's gown; his countenance stamps him for a genius, and enables me to believe that he once construed "Galbaneoque agitare graves nidore chelydros" in the following scholarlike manner :-Agitare, they shakechelydros, the willows-graves oppressed-galbaneo nidore, with their chalky whiteness. This despatch is so large, that I fear your governor's frank will hardly cover the lucubrations of

Your affectionate friend,

EDGAR HAMILTON.

LETTER IV.

TO MILTON COLERIDGE STUBBS, ESQ., PARADISE VILLA, NEAR THE DEVIL'S PUNCH-BOWL.

State of poetry in Oxford-Newdigates-Moscow-Latin verse-Daniel in the lions' den-Political bits.

MY DEAR POetaster,

X-x. Coll., Oxford, Nov.—, 18—

Considering your occasional flirtations with the Pierian Virgins, and stolen draughts at the fount of Hippocrene, I cannot communicate my present thoughts in a more suitable and appropriate quarter. Poetry undoubtedly does not flourish in this monastic state, and although not excluded after the rule of the Platonists, it is gradually depreciating, and unless a new Heber, Milman, or Keble, arise among our youngsters, must shortly die of inanition. Year after year the English prize poems become more stately, senseless, and moulded ; line follows line in due order and proportion, but all is marrowlesssound, sound, and nothing else; the same images make their annual

tour in the two hundred ten-feet lines called poems, and are patiently heard, and even applauded, by the audience, and published at the expense of these sucking Miltons, and their admiring relations and friends. Allusions to political events form the chief points in what is called a good poem; the appropriateness of the allusion is not considered so as it be on the right side, and sufficiently broad and expressive. The Catholic Emancipation Act would not be thought. out of place in the fall of Grenada, or the Reform Bill in the Burning of Moscow, and I really should not be astonished if the Registration Act were made to round a period in the Gipsies. A few days since I had the pleasure (for so I believe it is called) of perusing the manuscript of a poem, intended, but, alas! not sent in, for a former prize; the subject is the "Fall of Moscow," and opens thus:

""Twas night, along the sombre face of Heaven,

Pile upon pile the fleecy clouds were driven."

This is no unusual beginning; it is always ""Twas night," or "Twas morn," or "eve," in the proems to these compositions. Then, after the approved recipe, the moon and all her attendant stars approach to take a parting look at the fated city; to them succeeds the river so swollen with tears as to overflow her steep banks; and after the river god has wept his fill, the French army walks in at one gate whilst the Russians run out at the other. Tents are pitched, though slightly, superfluous watch-fires lighted, arms piled, maps produced, and Napoleon sits down to an attentive perusal of the draft bulletin for the "Moniteur." The poet then proceeds in the minute method. "Close o'er the flame the conqueror stooped to scan The last few relics in his silvern pan,

Pressed the few grains within its smallest nook,
Took the last pinch, and turned him to his book."

The fact of the emperor being out of Irish blackguard having been thus immortalized, smoke, the avant courier of the conflagration, is allowed to cloud the sky serene under the similitude of a heavy thunderstorm.

"As when on high some airy child of flight,

Bursts from the storehouse of the murky night,

Wraps tower and minaret spire and swelling dome,

In one unbounded soul-appalling gloom,

Bears on its whirlwind wings the shadowy car

Of Nature's wreck and elemental war."

After a little more smoke, on the principle of "non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem," the flames begin to crackle over the roofs and spires of the Kremlin.

"From roof to roof the living flames aspire;
Good God! the Holy City is on fire;

Around, above, the burning billows swell,

Like fiery ocean round a sable hell.”

The fire having played its part to the evident delight of the poet,

a post-mortem inquisition is held on the ruins, as to the probable
causes of the conflagration. Cellars are searched, and therein are
found "coals piled on wood," rolls of sulphureous match," packets of
sulphur, pitch, tar, hand-grenades." Our author's acquaintance with
the best mode of getting up a blaze is truly refreshing; vague gene-
ralities have too long been the staple commodity of the poet, and
should now give way to microscopic detail.

The Guy Fawkes like materials developed, some invisible agent,
X, Y, or Z, puts this leading question-

"Who fired thy turrets, wrapped thy walls in flames ?
Hark to that answer with one voice of glee,

Comes from thy children's bosoms-We! we! we!"

The inquest concluded, and the jury having returned citycide, the
baffled emperor, with his roof burnt over his head, and hardly a great
coat to wear, soliloquizes on his prospects.

"Was it for this that widowed Austria fell?
Was it for this I sold myself to hell?
Leapt like a cataract down the Pyrenees?
And boldly trampled on St. Peter's keys ?"

This historical and biographical sketch brings his fortune down to the
date of the expedition, and then sees afar off his future career usque
ad finem. After many pathetic allusions to Leipsic, Waterloo, Wel-
lington, and Elba, the hero dies, or, as the poet sings—

"He died, was buried, and his funeral pall,

Was but his general's cloak, and that was all."

Exit Napoleon in a Mackintosh. Latin poetry drags on its accus-
tomed monotonous existence; beginnings of lines from one book of
Virgil joined on to endings from another Æneid-detached phrases
from the Gradus ad Parnassum-several curruits? with notes of ad-
miration-here and there an "æthera scandit," supported by a “pue-
rosque puellas," and some few more choice endings, always have done,
and always will do, the Latin verse-writer's work. Take, for instance,
such a subject as Ricardus Tertius; of course he is "Sanguinis
altro prodigus humani," "Cecernerunt horrida bellum classica,"
"Acerba funera densantur," "Mediis in millibus ardet," come to the
assistance of the writer, are marshalled into their places, and called a
Latin prize poem. O for poor dear Perkins to astonish them with
his Latin verses; his the unrivalled relics of ancient minstrelsy. Do
you not remember with what thunders of applause the concluding
lines of his "Daniel in the Lions' Den" were received, when we
gathered round Dame Morton's fire? I think I can see him now
standing on the table, reading ore rotundo-

"Cras Rex Solque simul surgunt, Rex advenit antrum,
Et voce exclamat lacrymosâ, Si potes exi;
Respondit vates, 'Rex vive in sæcula cuncta.''

Up to the present time the Latin poems have been free from politics,

but I do not despair of a bold cry of "Down with the Whigs" in "Marcus Crassus," or "Church and State" in " Alexander ad Indum." Should such an event take place, such news shall be forthwith despatched to my poetic friend from his old schoolfellow,

EDGAR HAMILTON.

EARLY WOO'D AND WON.

BY MRS. ABDY.

Early woo'd and early won,

Was never repented under the sun!"

GERMAN PROVERB.

O! SIGH not for the fair young bride,
Gone in her opening bloom,

Far from her kindred, loved and tried,
To glad another home;
Already are the gay brief days
Of girlish triumph done,
And tranquil happiness repays
The early woo'd and won.

Fear shall invade her peace no more,
Nor sorrow wound the breast,

Her passing rivalries are o'er,
Her passing doubts at rest;

The glittering haunts of worldly state
Love whispers her to shun,
Since scenes of purer bliss await
The early woo'd and won.

Hers is a young and guileless heart,
Confiding, fond, and warm,
Unsullied by the world's vain mart,
Unscathed by passion's storm;
In "hope deferred" she hath not pined,
Till Hope's sweet course was run:
No chains of sad remembrance bind
The early woo'd and won.

Her smiles and songs have ceased to grace
The halls of festal mirth,

But woman's safest dwelling-place

Is by a true one's hearth;

Her hours of duty, joy, and love,
In brightness have begun;

Peace be her portion from Above,
The early woo'd and won.

His early life-His amours-Joan of Naples-Affairs of Florence-Uguccione della Faggiuola, Castruccio Castracani-The Duke of Athens-Boccaccio's public lifeHis conversion-His last years-His classical studies-The Decameron.

On the north-western end of the city of Naples, voluptuously encircling that sleepy bay, there spreads a long verdant ridge, which the early Greek colonists called Pausilipo, the end of sorrow; because heaven and earth seem to conspire in securing the inhabitants of that privileged spot against all evils attendant on the rest of their

race.

Throughout the bowels of the mountain there opens in the rock a wide gallery, a Roman work, three-quarters of a mile in length, which, under the name of "Grotta del Monte Posilipo," remained unmatched among the most glorious efforts of man until its wonders were superseded by the bolder undertakings of the galleries of Mount Simplon, and by the never-ending work of the Thames Tunnel.

Above the entrance of that tenebrous passage, in a fragrant grove of orange and myrtle, in sight of Naples and her gulf, of Vesuvius and its wide-spreading sides, exhibited to the worship of five hundred thousand souls, there lies an ancient monument, from time immemorial designated by fame as the tomb of Virgil. The tradition, among the less cultivated classes in the country, is, that this Virgil was an old wizard, whose tomb stands, as it were, as the guard of the grotto, that was digged in one night, at his bidding, by a legion of d'emons enlisted in his service.

Over that haunted sepulchre there grew a laurel, which some of our grandfathers remember still to have seen, and which might perchance be there still, braving the inclemencies of the north winds, and the lightnings of heaven, had it not been plucked to the very roots by the religious enthusiasm of classical tourists.

Under the shade of that hallowed tree, kneeling on the marble steps of that holy tombstone, there was, five hundred and seven years ago, (1333,) a handsome youth, of about twenty years of age, with long dark locks falling upon his shoulders, with a bright smiling countenance, a noble forehead, and features after the best antique Florentine cast, with the hues of health and good humour on his cheeks, and the habitual smile of a man whose life-path had hitherto lain amidst purple and roses.

That youth was Giovanni Boccaccio.

Born under unfavourable circumstances, and obliged to atone by a 1 Continued from yol, xxvii. p. 245.