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BEDMINSTER, this is subject enough for an Eclogue. The bower, the porch, the yews by the laundry, the yard horse-chesnuts, the mortality, as my grandmother called it the changes now, colloquially told; and then to catch the sound of Ashton-bells, and speak of the family buryingplace. The best kitchen, the black boarded parlour, the great picture-bible. What a treat! And then the old bird and beast book. I wish I had that book! an old book of natural history has such fine lies. I just remember the whale in it.

SOPHONISBA drinking the poison. A Monodrama.

INSCRIPTION at Penshurst, by the oak planted at Sir Philip Sidney's birth. So all things perish but the memory of the great.'

A FEW lines with this point,-think of the future, and you will never have cause to regret the past.

THE holly-tree, an emblem, and somewhat in Quarles's way. Kingdoms should be like it, fenced well, but only strict there; men gentler at home than anywhere else. Again, we should lose our asperities as we grow old; again, we should be serious in youth, that we may be cheerful in age, and all like the holly tree.

WINTER, they paint thee like a bluelipped, blue-nosed, icicle-bearded old man, like a walking snow-ball; but they should paint thee a fine ruddy faced old boy, sitting by the Christmas fire.

A TRAVELLING thought. The present scenery beautiful; but in remembrance the very recollection of fatigue will increase its interest.

See Inscription, xvi. "For a Tablet at Penshurst," Poems, p. 173.

See "The Holly Tree," Poems, p. 129.
Worked up in Sonnet xv. Poems, p. 109.
J. W. W.

THERE is a marine on board the Royal George who persuaded his father to murder his mother, and then turned king's evidence against him, and had him hung. This will make a very diabolical ballad. This man is benighted, and falls in with a traveller in the dark. The voice strikes him as familiar; and when the moon appears he sees the very face of his father, for it is a devil in the corpse. He leads him to the wheel where his father had suffered, and fixes him there.

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THERE is a lie in the life of St. Isidore which may perhaps make a ballad. A man who could find no surety for his rent appealed to the saint, pledging his word to the landlord before his tomb, and praying if he failed that Isidore might punish him. The fellow however could not pay it, and so run away one night. His road lay by the church of St. Andrew, wherein Isidore was buried, and he was miraculously kept

4 Worked up in Sonnet xix. Poems, p. 109. See the exquisite lines on his early friend, Edmund Seward, Poems, p. 131.

• See the Ballad," Old Christaval's Advice," &c. Poems, p. 433. J. W. W.

all night running round and round the church, while he thought he was getting on his way. In the morning the landlord found him; he repented, prayed for forgiveness, worked harder, and paid the debt.

DONA ANA MARIA REMESAL promised, on the wedding day of her sister Mariana, to give a sum of money towards the canonization of St. Isidore. She either forgot her vow or neglected it. Maria de la Cabera, the wife of Isadore, appeared to her with an Alguazil and a black dog, as she lay in her bed, and arrested her for this debt. They let her go, however, on her sincere promise of speedy payment. This will make a tolerable ballad. Let her be called from the company on the wedding evening, and led to the tomb of St. Isidore, to pass the night. It should be the bridegroom who makes the vow.

ONE of my war poems may be made upon that description of Jemappe given me by Carlisle, expressing joy for the event, with an abhorrence of the war principle.

ANOTHER must be upon this story. At the evacuation of Toulon, a husband, his wife, and infant were attempting to escape in the last boat. The husband had got in, when they pushed off. The wife flung her child to him. The child fell short, and sunk, and the mother leapt after. Tom' told me this on the authority of an eye-witness.

THE treatment of Colonel Despard,2 described as in a dramatic fragment. Related abroad as a proof of foreign tyranny to an Englishman.

INSCRIPTION in a forest,3 near no path; who reads it has most like been led by the love of nature, and he may enjoy the beauties of

His brother, Captain Thomas Southey,often mentioned.

2 See ESPRIELLA's Letters, vol. iii. p. 95, third edit.

3 See Inscriptions, p. 172. J. W. W.

scenery more by knowing another has felt them. If it has pleased thee to be told of this, cleanse the moss and weeds from the tablet!

ECLOGUE. The witch. A man nailing a horse-shoe at his door. Tales of the old woman, and superstitions.

ECLOGUE. A winter evening. Children and their grandmother. They beg for a story. A ghost story. My mother's account of Moll" Bees's murder, and the remorse of the murderer, that led him to accuse himself. A gibbet and a ghost are easily added.

HISTORY, the painful feelings it excites. The historic Muse appears. She speaks of Greece, of Rome, Holland, Padilla, and the many martyrs of freedom; then personally addresses the poet.

ORMIA, a Monodrama, where did the Portugueze writer find the story? She enters her husband's tent at midnight, and his surprise must be expressed by her.

THE death of Malcolm's murderers. A ballad.

WHAT can be made of the story of St. Romuald? Should it be a ballad showing how a man might be too good?

MRS. WILSON's story of the dog. A gentleman sat up in a haunted house at Dublin with a great dog. The dog growled at first, his anger increased, at last he leaped at a particular part of the wall, then round and round the room ran raging, and leapt again at the same place, then pawed at the door furiously. The man let him out, he rushed

See English Eclogues, Poems, p. 154.

5 Ibid. "The Grandmother's Tale," p. 150. See Poems, p. 140. "History."

7 See Ballad, "St. Romuald," Poems, p. 436. She was the old occupant of Greta Hall, and the kind friend of all the children.

J. W. W.

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The camp, my cavern, the legend of the building to which there leads no path, Cook's folly and its tale, the suicide at Sea-Mills. Trenchard and Gordon. Chatterton. Bristol, too, might have its fame. And Ashton might be mentioned. The hot wells, and those who come to die there.

THE devil once came to St. Antony to ask why people abused him for all their wickedness, when their own corrupt nature was the cause. Applied to Pitt.

THE glow-worm.

MARULLE de Stilimene. The Turks under Soliman Bassa attacked Coccin, the capital of the isle. They forced the gate, the combat was fierce in the gateway, and the women fought. Marulle was wounded by the same blow that slew her father the governor. She seized his shield and buckler, and repelled the foe. On the morrow the Venetian commander arrived to relieve the

isle, and found them safe. In the name of the senate he adopted Marulle, desired her to choose among his captains a husband, and promised a dowry from the state. "A good captain," she replied, “might be a bad father, and that the field of battle was not

SONNET to the pocket-handkerchief of the place to choose a husband." This story one's mistress.5

ECLOGUE. The spirit of a monk and a devil. The monk stiffly refusing to go with the fiend, a wandering angel hears the dispute; it is concluded by allowing the monk his own psalm-singing heaven.

AN old woman's snuff-box.

LOVE elegy. On Delia's hair. What Cupid makes of it. Happy the comb, the barber, the curling-paper. The bear who died for his grease."

SONNET on an old quid of tobacco.

LOVE elegy. The poet has stolen a lock of Delia's hair, and finds he has spoilt her wig.5

SYLPHS, dip your gossamer pencils in her cheek, to tinge the rose; scent the violets with her breath. Gnomes, bring up your diamonds to ripen from her eye-beams. Salamanders, bask in her looks. Light from her eye, the glow-worm. Nymphs, catch her tear to make pearls.5

5 The reader will find all these hints worked up in The Amatory Poems of Abel Shufflebottom, PP. 114-416.

These are probably worked up under "Snuff," p. 161. J. W. W.

has suggested to me the idea of dramatizing in single scenes such subjects as are not in themselves enough for whole plays. Didra

mas.

WHEN the Turks were on the point of taking Sigeth, 1566, an Hungarian was about to kill his wife, to preserve her from violation. She bids him not have the guilt of murder, arms herself, goes with him to battle, and dies with him. A Didrama.Imp. Hist. p. 692.

Little Poems.

SANCIE de Navarre. Sancho, king of Navarre, was slain in combat by Gonzales, Count of Castille. Theresa, sister of the slain, wife of the king of Leon, vowed revenge. To get him into her power, she entered into a treaty of marriage for him and her sister Sancie. Gonzales repaired to Navarre to the marriage. Gercias, the king, an accomplice in Theresa's plot, seized him on his arrival, fettered and dungeoned him. Sancie visited him in prison, kept her plighted faith, delivered and married him.

Le Moyne. La Galerie, p. 150.

CONSTANCE. Barri de S. Aunez, her hus

band. St. Foix. Françoise de Cezeley. Dame de Barry. La Galerie, p. 298.

THE American Indians' death-song.

THE Peruvian's dirge over the body of his father, stolen from the Spaniards' cemetery.

HALCYONE, a Monodrama.

THE oak of the forest. Its trunk was strong, and the swine fed under its boughs; but the ivy clung round it, and as the oak decayed, the woodman, instead of lopping away the parasite plant, hewed off its broad boughs.

MYTHOLOGICAL sketches. Greenland. Lapland. Japan. N. American. Celtic. The last little known, the rest new to poetry. Also characteristic poems of their man

ners.

A LADY stayed to dress herself, instead of going to church in time. Mass was half over as she came to the church door, and a troop of little devils were dancing on her long train.

ST. JAMES of Nisibis was abused by some young girls washing at a fountain. He made them all old and ugly.

INSCRIPTION for the prison-room of Sa

vage.

THE glow-worm. Shines in the dark, like certain men of letters. "With love, the light of love." Exposed to danger, &c.

KING WILLIAM'S Cove. Torbay. Where he landed. The precedent.

THE ebb tide more rapid than the flood, —so with human happiness and human vir

tue.

See "The Oak ofour Fathers," Poems, p. 123. 2 See Poems, p. 230. J. W. W.

INSCRIPTION. Taunton and Judge Jef

feries.3

For the market-place at Rouen.

FOR Old Sarum.4 Addressed to a foreigner. What must be the privileges of English subjects, when the old pauper there sends two Members to Parliament !

FOR St. Domingo and Mr. Pitt.

To a book-worm, that had eat my Sidney's Arcadia. Why not go to such and such books.

THE weathercock. Could I copy thee, I also might ornament the church.

FOR where Jane Shore died.

ECLOGUE. Describing the new clergyman of a village, as contrasted with his prede

cessor.

BALLAD. The single combat between the dog and the murderer of his master.

THE pig.5 Not ugly. His eyes, pignsnies, that see the wind. His ears. His tail curled like hop-tendrils, or a lady's hair. Aptitude of parts. Pig a philosopher, and without prejudices. What is dirt? Berkleian hypothesis sublimely introduced. Pig a democrat, and right obstinate. Pig an aristocrat, seeking to profit himself dirtily. Man not so wise in life, not so useful in death. Pig the victim of society. Wild boar. Pig unfortunate. The sow-gelder's horn. Tythe pig, learned pig, brawn pig, pig's chitterlins, black puddings. Smell of the beanflowers. Bacon. Pig's ringed nose, earrings, but the pig does not conceive his to be an ornament. Pig's yoke, his cravatt,

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