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Though spice-breathing gales on his caravan hover,
Though for him Arabia's fragrance ascends,
The merchant still thinks of the woodbines that cover
The bower where he sat with-wife, children, and
friends.

The day-spring of youth still unclouded by sorrow,
Alone on itself for enjoyment depends;
But drear is the twilight of age, if it borrow

No warmth from the smile of-wife, children, and friends.

Let the breath of renown ever freshen and nourish The laurel which o'er the dead favourite bends; O'er me wave the willow, and long may it flourish, Bedewed with the tears of-wife, children, and friends.

Let us drink, for my song, growing graver and graver, To subjects too solemn insensibly tends;

Let us drink, pledge me high, love and virtue shall

flavour

The glass which I fill to-wife, children, and friends.

To

Too late I stayed-forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours;

How noiseless falls the foot of Time!
That only treads on flowers!

What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of the glass,

When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass!

Oh! who to sober measurement
Time's happy swiftness brings,
When birds of Paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings!

Epitaph upon the Year 1806.

"Tis gone, with its thorns and its roses!
With the dust of dead ages to mix!
Time's charnel for ever encloses

The year Eighteen Hundred and Six!
Though many may question thy merit,
I duly thy dirge will perform,
Content if thy heir but inherit

Thy portion of sunshine and storm.
My blame and my blessing thou sharest,
For black were thy moments in part;
But oh! thy fair days were the fairest
That ever have shone on my heart!
If thine was a gloom the completest
That death's darkest cypress could throw,
Thine, too, was a garland the sweetest

That life in full blossom could show!

One hand gave the balmy corrector

Of ills which the other had brewedOne draught from thy chalice of nectar All taste of thy bitter subdued. 'Tis gone, with its thorns and its roses! With mine, tears more precious may mix To hallow this midnight which closes The year Eighteen Hundred and Six!

Stanzas.

When midnight o'er the moonless skies

Her pall of transient death has spread, When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, And nought is wakeful but the dead:

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at the time of the American war, he espoused the British interest with so much warmth, that he had to leave the new world and seek a subsistence in the old. He took orders in the church of England, and was sometime tutor to the nephew of Lord Chandos, near Southgate. His son (who was named after his father's pupil, Mr Leigh) was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he continued till his fifteenth year. 'I was then,' he says, 'first deputy Grecian; and had the honour of going out of the school in the same rank, at the same age, and for the same reason as my friend Charles Lamb. The reason was, that I hesitated in my speech. It was understood that a Grecian was bound to deliver a public speech before he left school, and to go into the church afterwards; and as I could do neither of these things, a Grecian I could not be.' Leigh was then a poet, and his father collected his verses, and published them with a large list of subscribers. He has himself described this volume as a heap of imitations, some of them clever enough for a youth of sixteen, but absolutely worthless in every other respect. In 1805, Mr Hunt's brother set up a paper called the News, and the poet went to live with him, and write the theatrical criticisms in it. Three years afterwards, they established, in joint partnership, the Examiner, a weekly journal still conducted with distinguished

POETS.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

ability. The poet was more literary than political in his tastes and lucubrations; but unfortunately he ventured some strictures on the prince regent, which were construed into a libel, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. The poet's captivity was not without its bright side. He had much of the public sympathy, and his friends (Byron and Moore being of the number) were attentive in their visits. One of his two rooms on the ground-floor' he converted into a picturesque and poetical study:-I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling coloured with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds; and when my bookcases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. I took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise on issuing from the borough, and passing through the avenues of a jail, was dramatic. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy tale. But I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to the neighbouring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass plot. The earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple-tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my flowers, they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from Derbyshire (Mr Moore) told me he had seen I bought the "Parnaso no such heart's-ease. Italiano" while in prison, and used often to think of a passage in it, while looking at this miniature piece of horticulture:

Mio picciol orto,

A me sei vigna, e campo, e silva, e prato.-Baldi.

My little garden,

To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and wood, and meadow. Here I wrote and read in fine weather, sometimes under an awning. In autumn, my trellises were hung with scarlet runners, which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes in my arm-chair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off. But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning. A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison. The latter was only for vegetables, but it contained a cherry-tree, which I twice saw in blossom.'*

On

This is so interesting a little picture, and so fine an example of making the most of adverse circumstances, that it should not be omitted in any life of Hunt. The poet, however, was not so well fitted to battle with the world, and apply himself steadily to worldly business, as he was to dress his garden and nurse his poetical fancies. He fell into difficulties, and has been contending with them ever since. leaving prison he published his Story of Rimini, an Italian tale in verse, containing some exquisite lines and passages. He set up also a small weekly paper called the Indicator, on the plan of the periodical essayists, which was well received. He also gave to the world two small volumes of poetry, Foliage, and The Feast of the Poets. In 1822 Mr Hunt went to Italy to reside with Lord Byron, and to establish the Liberal, a crude and violent melange of poetry and politics, both in the extreme of liberalism. This connexion was productive of mutual disappointment and disgust. The 'Liberal' did not sell; Byron's titled and aristocratic friends cried out against so

* Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, vol. ii. p. 2:8.

plebeian a partnership; and Hunt found that the
noble poet, to whom he was indebted in a pecuniary
sense, was cold, sarcastic, and worldly-minded. Still
more unfortunate was it that Hunt should after-
wards have written the work, Lord Byron and Some
of his Contemporaries, in which his disappointed feel-
ings found vent, and their expression was construed
into ingratitude. His life has been spent in struggling
with influences contrary to his nature and poetical
temperament. The spirit of the poet, however, is
still active and cheerful, as may be readily con-
ceived from perusing the following set of blithe
images in a poem written in December 1840, on the
birth of the Princess Royal.

Behold where thou dost lie,

Heeding naught, remote on high!
Naught of all the news we sing
Dost thou know, sweet ignorant thing;
Naught of planet's love nor people's;
Nor dost hear the giddy steeples
Carolling of thee and thine,

As if heaven had rained them wine;
Nor dost care for all the pains
Of ushers and of chamberlains,
Nor the doctor's learned looks,
Nor the very bishop's books,
Nor the lace that wraps thy chin,
No, nor for thy rank a pin.
E'en thy father's loving hand
Nowise dost thou understand,
When he makes thee feebly grasp
His finger with a tiny clasp;
Nor dost thou know thy very mother's
Balmy bosom from another's,

Though thy small blind eyes pursue it;
Nor the arms that draw thee to it;
Nor the eyes that, while they fold thee,
Never can enough behold thee!

In 1840 Mr Hunt brought out a drama entitled
The Palfrey. His poetry, generally, is marked by a
A Legend of Florence, and in 1842 a narrative poem,
profusion of imagery, of sprightly fancy, and ani-
mated description. Some quaintness and affectation
in his style and manner fixed upon him the name of
a Cockney poet; but his studies have lain chiefly in
the elder writers, and he has imitated with success
the lighter and more picturesque parts of Chaucer
and Spenser. Boccaccio, and the gay Italian authors,
appear also to have been among his favourites. His
prose essays have been collected and published under
the title of The Indicator and the Companion, a Mis-
cellany for the Fields and the Fireside. They are
deservedly popular-full of literary anecdote, poe-
tical feeling, and fine sketches both of town and
country life. The egotism of the author is undis-
guised; but in all Hunt's writings, his peculiar
tastes and romantic fancy, his talk of books and
flowers, and his love of the domestic virtues and
charities (though he has too much imagination for
his judgment in the serious matters of life), impart a
particular interest and pleasure to his personal dis-
closures.

[May Morning at Ravenna.]
[From Rimini."]

The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May
A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen,
Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay.
Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green;
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light,
For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night
And there's a crystal clearness all about;
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out;

423

A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze;
The smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees;
And when you listen, you may hear a coil
Of bubbling springs about the grassy soil;
And all the scene, in short-sky, earth, and sea,
Breathes like a bright-eyed face, that laughs out
openly.

'Tis nature, full of spirits, waked and springing:
The birds to the delicious time are singing,
Darting with freaks and snatches up and down,
Where the light woods go seaward from the town;
While happy faces, striking through the green
Of leafy roads, at every turn are seen;
And the far ships, lifting their sails of white
Like joyful hands, come up with scattery light,
Come gleaming up, true to the wished-for day,

And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay.
Already in the streets the stir grows loud,

Of expectation and a bustling crowd.
With feet and voice the gathering hum contends,
The deep talk heaves, the ready laugh ascends;
Callings, and clapping doors, and curs unite,
And shouts from mere exuberance of delight;
And armed bands, making important way,
Gallant and grave, the lords of holiday,
And nodding neighbours, greeting as they run,
And pilgrims, chanting in the morning sun.

[Funeral of the Lovers in Rimini.']
The days were then at close of autumn still,
A little rainy, and, towards nightfall, chill;
There was a fitful moaning air abroad;
And ever and anon, over the road,

The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees,
Whose trunks now thronged to sight, in dark varieties.
The people, who from reverence kept at home,
Listened till afternoon to hear them come;
And hour on hour went by, and nought was heard
But some chance horseman or the wind that stirred,
Till towards the vesper hour; and then 'twas said
Some heard a voice, which seemed as if it read;
And others said that they could hear a sound
Of many horses trampling the moist ground.
Still, nothing came-till on a sudden, just
As the wind opened in a rising gust,
A voice of chanting rose, and as it spread,
They plainly heard the anthem for the dead.
It was the choristers who went to meet

The train, and now were entering the first street.
Then turned aside that city, young and old,

And in their lifted hands the gushing sorrow rolled.
But of the older people, few could bear

To keep the window, when the train drew near;
And all felt double tenderness to see
The bier approaching slow and steadily,
On which those two in senseless coldness lay,
Who but a few short months-it seemed a day-
Had left their walls, lovely in form and mind,
In sunny manhood he-she first of womankind.
They say that when Duke Guido saw them come,
He clasped his hands, and looking round the room,
Lost his old wits for ever. From the morrow
None saw him after. But no more of sorrow.
On that same night those lovers silently
Were buried in one grave under a tree;
There, side by side, and hand in hand, they lay
In the green ground: and on fine nights in May
Young hearts betrothed used to go there to pray.

To T. L. H., Six Years Old, During a Sickness.
Sleep breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;

And balmy rest about thee

Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down, and think
Of all thy winning ways:
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillowed meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart in pain and weakness,
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand
That wipes thy quiet tears,
These, these are things that may demand
Dread memories for years.

Sorrows I've had severe ones,

I will not think of now;
And calmly 'midst my dear ones,
Have wasted with dry brow;

But when thy fingers press
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness-
The tears are in their bed.
Ah! first-born of thy mother,

When life and hope were new,
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father, too;

My light, where'er I go,
My bird, when prison bound,
My hand in hand companion-no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.
To say 'He has departed'-

'His voice'' his face is gone;" To feel impatient-hearted,

Yet feel we must bear on;

Ah, I could not endure To whisper of such wo, Unless I felt this sleep insure

That it will not be so.

Yes, still he's fixed, and sleeping!
This silence too the while-
Its very hush and creeping
Seem whispering as a smile:
Something divine and dim
Seems going by one's ear,
Like parting wings of cherubim,
Who say, 'We've finished here.'

Dirge.

Blessed is the turf, serenely blessed,
Where throbbing hearts may sink to rest,
Where life's long journey turns to sleep,
Nor ever pilgrim wakes to weep.
A little sod, a few sad flowers,⚫
A tear for long-departed hours,
Is all that feeling hearts request
To hush their weary thoughts to rest.
There shall no vain ambition come
To lure them from their quiet home;
Nor sorrow lift, with heart-strings riven,
The meek imploring eye to heaven;
Nor sad remembrance stoop to shed
His wrinkles on the slumberer's head;
And never, never love repair
To breathe his idle whispers there!

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket.
Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;

Oh, sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are
strong

At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song-
In-doors and out, summer and winter, mirth.

I had forgotten; and, alas!

Fancied myself in heaven, not where I was;
And from that time till this, I bear

Such love for the green bower, I cannot rest elsewhere.

JOHN CLARE.

JOHN CLARE, one of the most truly uneducated of

The Celebrated Canzone of Petrarch- Chiare, fresche, e English poets, and one of the best of our rural de

dolce acque.'

Clear, fresh, and dulcet streams,

Which the fair shape, who seems

To me sole woman, haunted at noontide;

Bough, gently interknit

(I sigh to think of it),

Which formed a rustic chair for her sweet side;
And turf, and flowers bright-eyed,

O'er which her folded gown

Flowed like an angel's down;

And you, O holy air and hushed,

Where first my heart at her sweet glances gushed;
Give ear, give ear, with one consenting,

To my last words, my last and my lamenting.

If 'tis my fate below,

And Heaven will have it so,

That love must close these dying eyes in tears,
May my poor dust be laid

In middle of your shade,

While my soul, naked, mounts to its own spheres.
The thought would calm my fears,

When taking, out of breath,

The doubtful step of death;

For never could my spirit find.

A stiller port after the stormy wind:

Nor in more calm abstracted bourne,

scribers, was born at Helpstone, a village near Peterborough, in 1793. His parents were peasants -his father a helpless cripple and a pauper. John obtained some education by his own extra work as a ploughboy: from the labour of eight weeks he generally acquired as many pence as paid for a month's schooling. At thirteen years of age he met with Thomson's Seasons, and boarded up a shilling to purchase a copy. At daybreak on a spring morning, he walked to the town of Stamford-six or seven miles off-to make the purchase, and had to wait some time till the shops were opened. This is a fine trait of boyish enthusiasm, and of the struggles of youthful genius. Returning to his native village with the precious purchase, as he walked through the beautiful scenery of Burghley Park, he composed his first piece of poetry, which he called the Morning Walk. This was soon followed by the Evening Walk, and some other pieces. A benevolent exciseman instructed the young poet in writing and arithmetic, and he continued his obscure but ardent devotions to his rural muse. 'Most of his poems,' says the writer of a memoir prefixed to his first volume, were composed under the immediate impression of his feelings in the fields or on the road sides. He could not trust his memory, and therefore he wrote them

Slip from my travailed flesh, and from my bones out-down with a pencil on the spot, his hat serving him

worn.

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for a desk; and if it happened that he had no opportunity soon after of transcribing these imperfect memorials, he could seldom decipher them or recover his first thoughts. From this cause several of his poems are quite lost, and others exist only in fragments. Of those which he had committed to writing, especially his earlier pieces, many were destroyed from another circumstance, which shows how little he expected to please others with them: from a hole in the wall of his room where he stuffed his manuscripts, a piece of paper was often taken to hold the kettle with, or light the fire.' In 1817, Clare, while working at Bridge Casterton, in Rutlandshire, resolved on risking the publication of a volume. By hard working day and night, he got a pound saved, that he might have a prospectus printed. This was accordingly done, and a Collection of Original Trifles was announced to subscribers, the price not to exceed 3s. 6d. I distributed my papers,' he says; but as I could get at no way of pushing them into higher circles than those with whom I was acquainted, they consequently passed off as quietly as if they had been still in my possession, unprinted and unseen.' Only seven subscribers came forward! One of these prospectuses, however, led to an acquaintance with Mr Edward Drury, the poems were published by Messrs Taylor and bookseller, Stamford, and through this gentleman Hessey, London, who purchased them from Clare for £20. The volume was brought out in January 1820, with an interesting well-written introduction, and bearing the title, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant. The attention of the public was instantly awakened to the circumstances and the merits of Clare. The magazines and reviews were unanimous in his favour. This interesting little volume,' said the Quarterly Review, bears indubit

able evidence of being composed altogether from the impulses of the writer's mind, as excited by external objects and internal sensations. Here are no tawdry and feeble paraphrases of former poets, no attempts at describing what the author might have become acquainted with in his limited reading. The woods, the vales, the brooks, "the crimson spots i' the bottom of a cowslip," or the loftier phenomena of the heavens, contemplated through the alternations of hope and despondency, are the principal sources whence the youth, whose adverse circumstances and resignation under them extort our sympathy, drew the faithful and vivid pictures before us. Examples of minds highly gifted by nature, struggling with, and breaking through the bondage of adversity, are not rare in this country: but privation is not destitution; and the instance before us is, perhaps, one of the most striking of patient and persevering talent existing and enduring in the most forlorn, and seemingly hopeless condition, that literature has at any time exhibited.'

In a short time Clare was in possession of a little fortune. The present Earl Fitzwilliam sent £100 to his publishers, which, with the like sum advanced by them, was laid out in the purchase of stock; the Marquis of Exeter allowed him an annuity of fifteen guineas for life; the Earl of Spencer a further annuity of £10, and various contributions were received from other noblemen and gentlemen, so that the poet had a permanent allowance of £30 per annum. He married his Patty of the Vale,' the rosebud in humble life,' the daughter of a neighbouring farmer; and in his native cottage at Helpstone, with his aged and infirm parents and his young wife by his side-all proud of his now rewarded and successful genius-Clare basked in the sunshine of a poetical felicity. The writer of this recollects, with melancholy pleasure, paying a visit to the poet at this genial season in company with one of his publishers. The humble dwelling wore an air of comfort and contented happiness. Shelves were fitted up, filled with books, most of which had

is now, we believe, in a private asylum-hopeless, but not dead to passing events. This sad termina tion of so bright a morning it is painful to contenplate. Amidst the native wild flowers of his song we looked not for the deadly nightshade'—and, though the example of Burns, of Chatterton, and Bloomfield, was better fitted to inspire fear than hope, there was in Clare a naturally lively and cheerful temperament, and an apparent absence of strong and dangerous passions, that promised, as in the case of Allan Ramsay, a life of humble yet prosperous contentment and happiness. Poor Clare's muse was the true offspring of English country life. He was a faithful painter of rustic scenes and occupations, and he noted every light and shade of his brooks, meadows, and green lanes. His fancy was buoyant in the midst of labour and hardship; and his imagery, drawn directly from nature, is various and original. Careful finishing could not be expected from the rustic poet, yet there is often a fine delicacy and beauty in his pieces, and his moral reflections and pathos win their way to the heart. It is seldom,' as one of his critics remarked, that the public have an opportunity of learning the unmixed and unadulterated impression of the loveliness of nature on a man of vivid perception and strong feeling, equally unacquainted with the art and reserve of the world, and with the riches, rules, and prejudices of litera ture.' Clare was strictly such a man. His reading before his first publication had been extremely limited, and did not either form his taste or bias the direction of his powers. He wrote out of the fulness of his heart; and his love of nature was 80 universal, that he included all, weeds as well as flowers, in his picturesque catalogues of her charms. In grouping and forming his pictures, he has recourse to new and original expressions—as, for example

Brisk winds the lightened branches shake
By pattering, plashing drops confessed;
And, where oaks dripping shade the lake,
Paint crimping dimples on its breast.

been sent as presents. Clare read and liked them A sonnet to the glow-worm is singularly rich in this

all! He took us to see his favourite scene, the
haunt of his inspiration. It was a low fall of swampy
ground, used as a pasture, and bounded by a dull
rushy brook, overhung with willows. Yet here
Clare strayed and mused delighted.

Flow on, thou gently-plashing stream,
O'er weed-beds wild and rank;
Delighted I've enjoyed my dream
Upon thy mossy bank:
Bemoistening many a weedy stem,
I've watched thee wind so clearly,
And on thy bank I found the gem

That makes me love thee dearly.

In 1821 Clare came forward again as a poet. His second publication was entitled The Village Minstrel and other Poems, in two volumes. The first of these

vivid word-painting :

Tasteful illumination of the night,

Bright scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth Hail to the nameless coloured dark and light, The witching nurse of thy illumined birth. In thy still hour how dearly I delight To rest my weary bones, from labour free; In lone spots, out of hearing, out of sight, To sigh day's smothered pains; and pause on thee, Bedecking dangling brier and ivied tree, Or diamonds tipping on the grassy spear; Thy pale-faced glimmering light I love to see, Gilding and glistering in the dewdrop near: O still-hour's mate! my easing heart sobs free, While tiny bents low bend with many an added

tear.

pieces is in the Spenserian stanza, and describes the In these happy microscopic views of nature, Grahame, himself sitting for the portrait of Lubin, the humble the patio competition with Clare. The delicacles

rustic who 'hummed his lowly dreams'

Far in the shade where poverty retires.

poet who caf

profusion with others less correct or pleasing, may some of his sentimental verses, mixed up in careless The descriptions of scenery, as well as the expres-/ be seen from the following part of a ballad, The Fate

sion of natural emotion and generous sentiment in this poem, exalted the reputation of Clare as a true poet. He afterwards contributed short pieces to the annuals and other periodicals, marked by a more choice and refined diction. The poet's prosperity was, alas! soon over. His discretion was not equal to his fortitude: he speculated in farming, wasted his little hoard, and amidst accumulating difficulties sank into nervous despondency and despair. He

of

Amy :

The flowers the sultry summer kills
Spring's milder suns restore;
But innocence, that fickle charm,
Blooms once, and blooms no more.
The swains who loved no more admire,
Their hearts no beauty warms;
And maidens triumph in her fall
That envied once her charms.

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