“Al me!" she cried; and, sinking on the ground,
Kissed her dear babes, regardless of the wound:
"Oh cease not yet to beat, thou vital urn,
Wait, gushing life, oh wait my love's return!"-
Hoarse barks the wolf, the vulture screams from far,
The angel Pity shuns the walks of war!—

“Oh spare, ye war-hounds, spare their tender age!
On me, on me," she cried, "exhaust your rage!"
Then with weak arms her weeping babes caressed,
And sighing, hid them in her blood-stained vest.
From tent to tent the impatient warrior flies,
Fear in his heart, and frenzy in his eyes:
Eliza's name along the camp he calls,
"Eliza" echoes through the canvas walls;

Quick through the murmuring gloom his footsteps tread,

O'er groaning heaps, the dying and the dead, Vault o'er the plain, and in the tangled wood,— Lo! dead Eliza weltering in her blood!

Soon hears his listening son the welcome sounds,
With open arms and sparkling eye he bounds.
"Speak low," he cries, and gives his little hand;
"Mamma's asleep upon the dew-cold sand."
Poor weeping babe, with bloody fingers pressed,
And tried with pouting lips her milkless breast.
"Alas! we both with cold and hunger quake:
Why do you weep? Mamma will soon awake.”
-"She'll wake no more!" the hapless mourner cried,
Upturned his eyes, and clasped his hands, and
sighed;

Stretched on the ground, awhile entranced he lay,
And pressed warm kisses on the lifeless clay;
And then upsprung with wild, convulsive start,
And all the father kindled in his heart;
"Oh heavens!" he cried, "my first rash vow forgive!
These bind to earth, for these I pray to live!"
Round his chill babes he wrapped his crimson vest,
And clasped them sobbing to his aching breast.

that drew instant attention. Hazlitt says: "Churchill is a fine rough satirist. He had sense, wit, eloquence, and honesty." This praise must be qualified somewhat, for the satirist does not seem to have been actuated by high principle in his attacks. He led a discreditable life, and died at Boulogne, of fever, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. So popular had his satires been that the sale of them had placed him in easy circumstances. He had offered "The Rosciad" for five guineas. It was refused, and he published it at his own risk, its success surpassing his most extravagant hopes.

REMORSE.

FROM THE CONFERENCE" (1763).

That Churchill felt compunction for many of his errors is evident from the following lines, which would seem to have come from the heart.

Look back! a thought which borders on despair,
Which human nature must, yet cannot, bear!
"Tis not the babbling of a busy world,
Where praise and censure are at random hurled,
Which can the meanest of my thoughts control,
Or shake one settled purpose of my soul:
Free and at large might their wild curses roam,
If all, if all, alas! were well at home.
No! 'tis the tale which angry Conscience tells,
When she, with more than tragic horror, swells
Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true,
She brings bad actions forth into review,
And, like the dread handwriting on the wall,
Bids late Remorse awake at Reason's call;
Armed at all points, bids scorpion Vengeance pass,
And to the mind holds up Reflection's glass-
The mind which, starting, heaves the heartfelt
groan,

And hates that form she knows to be her own.

Charles Churchill.

The son of a clergyman in Westminster, Churchill (1731-1764) was educated at Cambridge. His father died in 1758, and Charles was appointed his successor in the iracy and lectureship of St. John's at Westminster. He now launched into a career of dissipation and extravagance, and was compelled to resign his situation. He assisted Wilkes in editing the North Briton, and wrote a somewhat forcible satire directed against the Scottish *ation, and entitled "The Prophecy of Famine." But his satirical poem, "The Rosciad," gave him his principal fame. In this work, criticising the leading actors of the day, he evinced great vigor and facility of versificaton, and a breadth and boldness of personal invective

YATES, THE ACTOR. FROM THE ROSCIAD."

Lo, Yates!-Without the least finesse of art,
He gets applause-I wish he'd get his part.
When hot Impatience is in full career,
How vilely "Hark'e! Hark'e!" grates the ear!
When active Fancy from the brain is sent,
And stands on tiptoe for some wished event,
I hate those careless blunders which recall
Suspended sense, and prove it fiction all.

In characters of low and vulgar mould, Where Nature's coarsest features we behold; Where, destitute of every decent grace, Unmannered jests are blurted in your face,—

There Yates with justice strict attention draws,
Acts truly from himself, and gains applause.
But when, to please himself or charm his wife,
He aims at something in politer life;

When, blindly thwarting nature's stubborn plan,
He treads the stage by way of gentleman,—
The clown, who no one touch of breeding knows,
Looks like Tom Errand dressed in Clincher's
clothes.

Fond of his dress, fond of his person, grown,
Laughed at by all, and to himself unknown,

From side to side he struts, he smiles, he prates,
And seems to wonder what's become of Yates!

Or might not reason even to thee have shown
Thy greatest praise had been to live unknown?
Yet let not vanity like thine despair:
Fortune makes Folly her peculiar care.

A vacant throne high placed in Smithfield view,
To sacred Dulness and her first-born due;
Thither with haste in happy hour repair,
Thy birthright claim, nor fear a rival there.
Shuter himself shall own thy juster claim,
And venal ledgers puff their Murphy's name;
While Vaughan or Dapper, call him what you
will,

Shall blow the trumpet and give out the bill.
There rule secure from critics and from sense,
Nor once shall genius rise to give offence;
Eternal peace shall bless the happy shore,
And little factions break thy rest no more.

How few are found with real talents blessed!
Fewer with nature's gifts contented rest.
Man from his sphere eccentric starts astray;
All hunt for fame, but most mistake the way.
Bred at St. Omer's to the shuffling trade,
The hopeful youth a Jesuit might have made,
With various readings stored his empty skull,
Learned without sense, and venerably dull;
Or, at some banker's desk, like many more,
Content to tell that two and two make four,
His name had stood in city annals fair,
And prudent Dulness marked him for a mayor.
What, then, could tempt thee, in a critic age,
Such blooming hopes to forfeit on a stage?
Could it be worth thy wondrous waste of pains
To publish to the world thy lack of brains?

MRS. CLIVE AND MRS. POPE.
FROM "THE ROSCIAD."

In spite of outward blemishes, she shone
For humor famed, aud humor all her own.
Easy, as if at home, the stage she trod,
Nor sought the critic's praise, nor feared his rod.
Original in spirit and in ease,

She pleased by hiding all attempts to please :
No comic actress ever yet could raise,
On Humor's base, more merit or more praise.
With all the native vigor of sixteen,
Among the merry troop conspicuous seen,
See lively Pope advance in jig and trip,
Corinna, Cherry, Honeycomb, and Suip.
Not without art, but yet to nature true,
She charms the town with humor, just yet new:
Cheered by her promise, we the less deplore
The fatal time when Clive shall be no more.

QUIN.

FROM "THE ROSCIAD."

No actor ever greater heights could reach
In all the labored artifice of speech.

Speech! Is that all? And shall an actor found
A universal fame on partial ground?
Parrots themselves speak properly by rote,
And, in six months, my dog shall howl by note.

I laugh at those who, when the stage they tread,
Neglect the heart to compliment the head;
With strict propriety their cares confined
To weigh out words, while passion halts behind.

Last, Garrick came: behind him throng a train Of snarling critics, ignorant as vain.

One finds out," He's of stature somewhat low,— Your hero always should be tall, you know: True natural greatness all consists in height." Produce your voucher, critic.-"Sergeant Kite." Another can't forgive the paltry arts

By which he makes his way to shallow hearts: Mere pieces of finesse, traps for applause— "Avaunt, unnatural start, affected pause!"

For me, by nature formed to judge with phlegm, I can't acquit by wholesale, nor condemn. The best things, carried to excess, are wrong: The start may be too frequent, pause too long; But, only used in proper time and place, Severest judgment must allow them grace. If bunglers, formed on Imitation's plan, Just in the way that monkeys mimic man, Their copied scene with mangled arts disgrace, And pause and start with the same vacant face, We join the critic laugh; whose tricks we scorn, Which spoil the scene they mean them to adorn. But when from Nature's pure and genuine source These strokes of acting flow with generous force; When in the features all the soul's portrayed, And passions such as Garrick's are displayed,To me they seem from quickest feelings caught; Each start is Nature, and each pause is Thought.

209

"If manly sense, if Nature linked with Art, If thorough knowledge of the human heart, If powers of acting vast and unconfined, If fewest faults with greatest beauties joined; If strong expression, and strange powers which lie Within the magic circle of the eye;

If feelings which few hearts like his can know, And which no face so well as his can show,Deserve the preference,---Garrick, take the chair, Nor quit it-till thou place an equal there."

William Cowper.

Cowper (1731-1800), the son of Dr. Cowper, chaplain to George II., was born at the rectory of Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire. His father's family was ancient, and his mother's distantly of royal descent. His grandfather, Spencer Cowper, was Chief-justice of the Common Pleas, and his grand - uncle was Lord High Chancellor of England. When about six years old, Cowper lost his mother, whom he always remembered with the tenderest affection. At the age of ten he was removed from a country school to Westminster, where, being constitutionally timid and delicate, the rough usage he experienced at the hands of the elder boys had a sad effect upon him.

At the age of eighteen he was articled to an attorney, and in 1754 was called to the bar: he, however, never made the law his study. Receiving the appointment of Clerk of Journals of the House of Lords, his nervousness was such that he was plunged into the deepest misery, and even attempted suicide. The seeds of insanity soon appeared; he resigned his appointment, and was placed in a private mad-house kept by Dr. Nathaniel Cotton, the poet. Here, by kind attention, Cowper's shattered mind was gradually restored for a time. On his recovery, renouncing all London prospects, he settled in Huntingdon solitude was bringing back his melancholy, when he was received into the Rev. Mr. Unwin's house as a boarder, and, in the society of an amiable circle of friends, the "wind was tempered to the shorn lamb." On her husband's death in 1767, the poet retired, with Mrs. Unwin and her daughter, to Olney. He found a new friend in the Rev. John Newton, the curate. But in 1773 his spirit was again, for about five years, envel oped in the shadows of his malady; and he again attempted suicide. The unwearied cares of Mrs. Unwin and of Mr. Newton slowly emancipated him from his darkness of horror. A deep religious melancholy was the form of his mental disease. An awful terror that his soul was lost forever, beyond the power of redemption, hung in a thick night-cloud upon his life. Three times after the first attack the madness returned.

While his convalescence was advancing, he amused his mind with the taming of hares, the construction of birdcages, and gardening; he even attempted to become a painter. At length, at the age of nearly fifty, the fountain of his poetry, which had been all but scaled, was reopened. The result was the publication of a volume of

poems in 1782. The sale of the work was slow, but Cowper's friends were eager in its praise; and Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin recognized in him a true poet. At Olney he formed a close friendship with Lady Austen. To her he owed the origin of his "John Gilpin; also that of his greatest work, "The Task." She asked him to write some blank verse, and playfully gave him the "Sofa" as a subject. Beginning a poem on this homely theme, he produced the six books of "The Task." In it he puts forth his power both as an ethical and a rural poet. Mrs. Unwin became jealous of Lady Austen's cheerful influence over her friend, and, to please her, Cowper had to ask Lady Austen not to return to Olney.

Dissatisfied with Pope's version of the Greek epics,

Cowper now undertook to translate Homer into Eng

lish blank verse; and, by working regularly at the rate of forty lines a day, he accomplished the undertaking in a few years, and it appeared in 1791. It is a noble translation, but has never had the reputation it deserves. A pension of £300 from the king comforted the poet's declining days. But the last and thickest cloud was darkening down on his mind, and only for brief intervals was there any light, until the ineffable brilliance of a higher life broke upon his gaze. His last poem was "The Castaway," which, while it shows a morbid anxiety about his soul, indicates no decline in his mental powers.

Cowper was constitutionally prone to insanity; but the predisposing causes were aggravated by his strict, secluded mode of life, and the influences to which he was subjected. His cousin, Lady Hesketh, was a more wholesome companion for him than the curate, John Newton; for cheerfulness was inspired by the one, and terror by the other. Newton was an energetic man, who had once commanded a vessel in the slave-trade, and, after a life full of adventure, had become intensely religious in a form not likely to have a sanative effect upon a sensitive and sympathetic nature.

The success of Cowper's "John Gilpin" was helped by John Henderson, the actor, who chose it for recitation before it became famous. Mrs. Siddons heard it with delight; and in the spring of 1775 its success was the event of the season. Prints of John Gilpin filled the shop-windows; and Cowper, who was finishing "The Task," felt that his serious work would be helped if it were published with his "John Gilpin," of which he says: "I little thought, when I mounted him upon my Pegasus, that he would become so famous."

RURAL SOUNDS.

FROM "THE TASK," BOOK I.

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds,
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of Ocean on his winding shore,
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind;
Unnumbered branches waving in the blast,

And all their leaves fast fluttering all at once.
Nor less composure waits upon the roar
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice
Of neighboring fountain, or of rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and, chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course.
Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,
But animated nature sweeter still,
To soothe and satisfy the human ear.
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The livelong night: nor these alone, whose notes
Nice-fingered Art must emulate in vain;

But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud;
The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl,
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh,
Yet heard in scenes where peace forever reigns,
And only there, please highly for their sake.

AFFECTATION.

FROM "THE TASK," BOOK II.

In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn!
Object of my implacable disgust!
What! will a man play tricks? will he indulge
A silly, fond conceit of his fair form,
And just proportion, fashionable mien,
And pretty face, in presence of his God?
Or will he seek to dazzle me with tropes,
As with the diamond on his lily hand,
And play his brilliant parts before my eyes,
When I am hungry for the bread of life?
He mocks his Maker, prostitutes and shames
His noble office, and, instead of truth,
Displaying his own beauty, starves his flock.
Therefore, avaunt all attitude, and stare,
And start theatric, practised at the glass!
I seek divine simplicity in him

Who handles things divine; and all besides,

Though learned with labor, and though much ad

mired

By curious eyes and judgments ill-informed,
To me is odious as the nasal twang
Heard at conventicle, where worthy men,
Misled by custom, strain celestial themes
Through the pressed nostril, spectacle-bestrid.

INDUSTRY IN REPOSE.

FROM "THE TASK," BOOK III.

How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return

Esteems that busy world an idler too!
Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,—
Delightful industry enjoyed at home,
And Nature in her cultivated trim
Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad-
Can he want occupation who has these?
Will he be idle who has much to enjoy?
Me, therefore, studious of laborious ease,
Not slothful; happy to deceive the time,
Not waste it; and aware that human life
Is but a loan to be repaid with use,
When He shall call his debtors to account
From whom are all our blessings,-business finds
Even here! while sedulons I seek to improve,
At least neglect not, or leave unemployed,

The mind he gave me; driving it, though slack
Too oft, and much impeded in its work

By causes not to be divulged in vain,
To its just point-the service of mankind.
He that attends to his interior self;

That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind
That hungers, and supplies it; and who seeks
A social, not a dissipated life,——

Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve
No unimportant, though a silent, task.

A life all turbulence and noise may seem,
To him that leads it, wise, and to be praised;
But wisdom is a pearl with most success
Sought in still water and beneath clear skies :
He that is ever occupied in storms,

Or dives not for it, or brings up instead,
Vainly industrious, a disgraceful prize!

WELCOME TO EVENING.

FROM "THE TASK," BOOK IV.

Come, Evening, once again, season of peace!
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long!
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
With matron step slow moving, while the Night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed
In letting fall the curtain of repose

On bird and beast, the other charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:
Not sumptuously adorned, not needing aid,
Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems;

A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow,
Suffices thee; save that the Moon is thine
No less than hers; not worn, indeed, on high
With ostentatious pageantry, but set
With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.
Come, then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm,
Or make me so. Composure is thy gift:
And, whether I devote thy gentle hours
To books, to music, or the poet's toil;
To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit;
Or twining silken threads round ivory reels,
When they command whom man was born to
please,―

I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still.

AN ODE: BOADICEA.

When the British warrior-queen,

Bleeding from the Roman rods, Sought, with an indignant mien, Counsel of her country's gods,

Sage beneath the spreading oak

Sat the Druid, hoary chief; Every burning word he spoke

Full of rage, and full of grief.

"Princess! if our agéd eyes Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, "Tis because resentment ties

All the terrors of our tongues.

"Rome shall perish-write that word
In the blood that she has spilt-
Perish, hopeless and abhorred,
Deep in ruin as in guilt!

"Rome, for empire far renowned,

Tramples on a thousand states: Soon her pride shall kiss the ground— Hark! the Gaul is at her gates!

"Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name; Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize, Harmony the path to fame.

"Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command.