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The disappointed foe, deliverance found
Unlooked for, life preserved and peace restored,
Fruits of omnipotent eternal love.

O evenings worthy of the gods! exclaimed
The Sabine bard. O evenings, I reply,
More to be prized and coveted than yours!
As more illumined, and with nobler truths,
That I, and mine, and those we love, enjoy.

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. nor 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.

The Rev. THOMAS Moss, a very worthy contemporary of Cowper, and minister of Brierly Hill, and of Trentham, in Straffordshire, published, in 1762, a collection of miscellaneous poems, forming a thin quarto volume. One of these poems, The Beggar, contains much pathetic and natural sentiment, finely expressed. It was copied by Dodsley into the Annual Register,' and thence it has been transferred into almost every collection of fugitive poems since made. Moss died in 1808, but at what age is unknown.

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THE BEGGAR.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,

Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,

Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak,
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years;

And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek,
Has been the channel to a flood of tears.

Yon house, erected on the rising ground,

With tempting aspect drew me from my road,
For plenty there a residence has found,
And grandeur a magnificent abode.

(Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor!
Here craving for a morsel of their bread,
A pampered menial forced me from the door,
To seek a shelter in a humbler shed.

Oh! take me to your hospitable dome,

Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold!
Short is my passage to the friendly tomb,
For I am poor, and miserably old.

Should I reveal the sources of my grief,

If soft humanity e'er touched your breast,
Your hands would not withhold the kind relief,
And tears of pity could not be repressed.

Heaven sends misfortunes-why should we repine?
'Tis Heaven has brought me to the state you see:
And your condition may be soon like mine,

The child of sorrow, and of misery.

A little farm was my paternal lot,

Then, like the lark, I sprightly hailed the morn;
But ah! oppression forced me from my cot;
My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.

My daughter-once the comfort of my age!
Lured by a villain from her native home,
Is cast, abandoned, on the world's wide stage,
And doomed in scanty poverty to roam.

My tender wife-sweet soother of my care!
Struck with sad anguish at the stern decree,
Fell-lingering fell, a victim to despair,

And left the world to wretchedness and me.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man!

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span,

Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

Mickle, Beattie, Macpherson, Bruce, Logan, and Burns, will complete the list of British poets embraced in the original design of these lectures.

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, a poet of taste and elegance, but of no great originality of genius, is chiefly celebrated for his translation of 'The Lusiad' of Camoens, the most distinguished poet of Portugal. Mickle was the son of the minister of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, where he was born, on the twenty-ninth of September, 1734. He was instructed by his father, a very accomplished scholar, and one of Bale's translators, until the thirteenth year of his age, when he entered the High-school of Edinburgh, and there

remained till he had completed his studies. At this time his aunt owned a large brewery in Edinburgh, and in the brewing business Mickle entered with her, first as a conductor of the establishment, and afterwards as a partner. He was, however, unsuccessful, and therefore, in 1764, went to London in search of literary distinction. Lord Littleton noticed and encouraged his poetical efforts, and Mickle was buoyed up with dreams of patronage and celebrity; but two years of destitution dispelled this vision, and the poet was glad to accept the situation of corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford.

Soon after Mickle's settlement at Oxford, he published Pollio, an elegy, and The Concubine, a moral poem, after the manner of Spenser, with whose writings he had become familiar while pursuing his studies at Edinburgh. He adopted the obsolete phraseology of Spenser, which Thomson had almost wholly discarded in his 'Castle of Indolence,' and which doubtless proved an impediment to the success of the work. The first stanza of this poem has been quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in illustration of the remark made by him, that Mickle,' with a vein of great facility, united a power of verbal melody, which might have been envied by bards of much greater The stanza is as follows:

renown.'

Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy to thy faery bower betake;

Even now, with balmy sweetness, breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;

Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake,

And Evening comes with locks bedropped with dew;

On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake

The withered rye-grass and the harebell blue,

And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew.

This poem was published anonymously, and was so successful as to pass through three editions in a single year.

In 1771, Mickle, having acquired a thorough knowledge of the Portuguese language, published the first canto of his great translation, which was completed four years after; and being supported by a long list of subscribers, was highly advantageous, both to his fame and his fortune. In 1779, he went out to Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnstone, and was received with much distinction in Lisbon by the countrymen of Camoens. On the return of the expedition, he was appointed joint agent for the distribution of the prizes. His own share was considerable; and having received some money by his marriage with a lady whom he had known in his obscure sojourn at Oxford, his latter days were spent in ease and leisure. He died at Forrest Hill, near Oxford, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1789.

Of Mickle's original poems, the most popular is his ballad of Cumnor Hall; and to this work additional celebrity is attached by its having suggested to Sir Walter Scott the groundwork of his romance of Kenilworth. Of Mickle's tenderness and pathos the strongest proof is afforded by the

'following Scottish song, delineating humble matrimonial happiness and

affection :

Sae true his words, sae smooth his speech,

His breath like caller air!

His very foot has music in't
As he comes up the stair.

And will I see his face again?
And will I hear him speak?

I'm downright dizzy with the thought,

In troth I'm like to greet.

Then there are the two lines-a happy Epicurean fancy, but elevated by the situation and the faithful love of the speaker-which Burns says are worthy of the first poet':

The present moment is our ain,

The neist we never saw.

As Mickle's fame, however, rests almost exclusively on his translation of 'The Lusiad,' we shall select our principal extract from that work:—

THE SPIRIT OF THE CAPE.

Now prosperous gales the bending canvass swelled;
From these rude shores our fearless course we held:
Beneath the glistening wave the god of day
Had now five times withdrawn the parting ray,
When o'er the prow a sudden darkness spread,
And slowly floating o'er the mast's tall head
A black cloud hovered; nor appeared from far
The moon's pale glimpse, nor faintly twinkling star;
So deep a gloom the lowering vapour cast,
Transfixed with awe the bravest stood aghast.
Meanwhile a hollow bursting roar resounds,
As when hoarse surges lash their rocky mounds;
Nor had the blackening wave, nor frowning heaven,
The wonted signs of gathering tempest given.
Amazed we stood-0 thou, our fortunes guide,
Avert this omen, mighty God, I cried;

Or through forbidden climes adventurous strayed,

Have we the secrets of the deep surveyed,

Which these wild solitudes of seas and sky

Were doomed to hide from man's unhallowed eye?

Whate'er this prodigy, it threatens more

Than midnight tempest and the mingled roar,

When sea and sky combine to rock the marble shore.
I spoke, when rising through the darkened air,

Appalled we saw a hideous phantom glare;
High and enormous o'er the flood he towered,
And thwart our way with sullen aspect lowered.
Unearthly paleness o'er his cheeks was spread,
Erect uprose his hairs of withered red;

Writhing to speak, his sable lips disclose,
Sharp and disjoined his gnashing teeth's blue rows;
His haggard beard flowed quivering on the wind,
Revenge and horror in his mien combined;
His clouded front, by withering lightnings seared,
The inward anguish of his soul declared.
His red eyes glowing from their dusky caves
Shot livid fires: far echoing o'er the waves
His voice resounded, as the caverned shore
With hollow groan repeats the tempest's roar.
Cold gliding horrors thrilled each hero's breast;
Our bristling hair and tottering knees confessed
Wild dread; the while with visage ghastly wan,
His black lips trembling, thus the Fiend began:
O you, the boldest of the nations, fired
By daring pride, by lust of fame inspired,
Who, scornful of the bowers of sweet repose,

Through these my waves advance your fearless prows,
Regardless of the lengthening watery way,

And all the storms that own my sovereign sway,

Who 'mid surrounding rocks and shelves explore
Where never hero braved my rage before;

Ye sons of Lusus, who, with eyes profane,
Have viewed the secrets of my awful reign,

Have passed the bounds which jealous Nature drew,
To vail her secret shrine from mortal view,
Hear from my lips what direful woes attend,
And bursting soon shall o'er your race descend.
With every bounding keel that dares my rage,
Eternal war my rocks and storms shall wage;
The next proud fleet that through my dear domain,
With daring search shall hoist the streaming vane,
That gallant navy by my whirlwinds tost,
And raging seas, shall perish on my coast.
Then He who first my secret reign descried,

A naked corse, wide floating o'er the tide
Shall drive. Unless my heart's full raptures fail,
O Lusus! oft shalt thou thy children wail;
Each year thy shipwrecked sons shalt thou deplore,
Each year thy sheeted masts shall strew my shore.
He spoke, and deep a lengthened sigh he drew,
A doleful sound, and vanished from the view;
The frightened billows gave a rolling swell,
And distant far prolonged the dismal yell;
Faint and more faint the howling echoes die,
And the black cloud dispersing leaves the sky.

* *

JAMES BEATTIE was the son of a small farmer and shopkeeper, at Laurencekirk, in Kincardshire, and was born on the twenty-fifth of October, 1735. His father died while he was a child, but an older brother, who perceived indications of talent in the boy, assisted him in obtaining a good education; and in his fourteenth year he was admitted into Marischal College, Aberdeen. Having closed his studies at the university, Beattie, in the

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