Light, colour, sweetness; thus unto the last
The poet o'er his worn-out lyre will cast
A nerveless hand, and still new numbers try;
Not unrewarded, if its parting sigh

Seem like the lingering echo of the past.

THE SEAT AT BERRY'S HILL.

It was a happy thought, upon the brow

Of this slight eminence, abrupt and sheer,
This artless seat and straw-thatch'd roof to rear;
Where one may watch the labourer at his plough;
Or hear well-pleased, as I am listening now,

The song of wild birds falling on the ear,
Blended with hum of bees, or, sound more drear,
The solemn murmur of the wind-swept bough.
Tent-like the fabric-in its centre stands
The sturdy oak, that spreads his boughs on high
Above the roof: while to the unsated eye

Beauteous the landscape which below expands,
Where grassy meadows, richly cultured lands,
With leafy woods and hedge-row graces vie.

TO A GRANDMOTHER.

Old age is dark and unlovely.—OSSIAN.
Oh say not so! A bright old age is thine;
Calm as the gentle light of summer eves,
Ere twilight dim her dusky mantle weaves;
Because to thee is given, in thy decline,
A heart that does not thanklessly repine

At aught of which the hand of God bereaves,
Yet all He sends with gratitude receives ;—
May such a quiet thankful close be mine!

And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me

A peaceful throne-which thou wert form'd to fill;

Thy children, ministers who do thy will;

And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee,
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee

As one who claims their fond allegiance still.*

A Journal of Summer Time in the Country. By the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, 1849.

(Continued from p. 356.)

P. 106.—Mr. Willmott has collected some interesting notices concerning Waller's poetry and language, and interspersed them with judicious remarks of his own. As however he has not mentioned Goldsmith's judgment, we shall be not deemed we trust " either obvious or obtrusive " in giving it :"Our poetry was not quite harmonised in Waller's time: so that this on the Death of the Protector, which would be now looked upon as a slovenly sort of versification, was, with respect to the times in which it was written, almost a prodigy of harmony. A modern reader will be chiefly struck with the strength of the writing, and the turn of the compliments bestowed

* "A good Sonnet. Dixi."-C. LAMB.

GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXII.

30

on the Usurper."* Atterbury (who was supposed to be the author of the Life of Waller, prefixed to the first octavo edition of his Works), says, in another place," Mr. Waller in some of his last verses, which, though they are worse poetry than the rest, yet are in correcter English."+ Perhaps little can be objected to the manner in which Mr. Hallam has balanced his merits and defects, and summed up somewhat in his favour. Mr. Neve mentions a curious fact, that, of the five editions of Waller's poems printed in his lifetime, not one appears to have been published by himself. The first was printed surreptitiously, while he was abroad, in 1645; the second in 1664; and in the fifth, or last, is continued the bookseller's preface of 1664; and in 1690, after his death, was published a small octavo, entitled "Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems."§

We must close our interview with this poet by an act which we are afraid he would deem uncourteous, i. e. in shewing where he probably took his famous stanza in his verses-"To a Lady Singing a Song of his composing":

That eagle's fate and mine are one,

Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high.

For which we turn to a fragment of Æschylus, preserved by the Scholiast on Aristophanes Aves, ver. 804, which may thus be given :—

Ως δ' εστι μυθων των Λιβυστικων λογος
Πληγεντ ̓ ἀτρακτω τοξίκῷ τον αἰετον.

Ειπειν, ίδοντα μηχανην πτερωματος

Ταδ' ουχ υπ' ἀλλων, άλλα τοῖς αυτών πτεροις
Αλισκόμεθα.

So speaks the Libyan Fable: that the eagle,
Struck by the fatal arrow, saw the plume
That sped it to his death, and dying cried,
"Not by another's feather, but by those
From my own wing, I perish."||

P. 123.-" Pope wrote no lines more affecting than the four inscribed on the column to his mother in the garden at Twickenham-Again! Again! Again! Again !" Where are these words recorded? for they have escaped our recollection, and the column has now been removed to a

* See Goldsmith on English Poetry.-REV.

+ See Boyle's "Answer to Bentley," p. 96 (Atterbury's part).-REV.

See Neve's" Cursory Remarks on the English Poets," p. 70.-Rev.

§ For a new Life of Waller, we may remark, Evelyn's Memoirs should be consulted, and the "Works and Life of Sir William Temple." A few of his poems are still not collected, which we could point out to the editor. It was on Waller's poem "On the Death of the Protector" that Withers's poem, called "Salt upon Salt," was written, and an allusion to Waller may be seen in it at p. 49. Miss Berry informs us, that the correspondence of his favourite mistress "Sacharissa" is absolutely deficient both in style and spelling. Some of her letters to her son-in-law, the Marquis of Halifax, lately published, are too strong a proof of the justice of this assertion.-REV.

The saying is proverbial, “ Τοῖς εμοις κατ ̓ ἐμοῦ κεχρηται πτεροις. He uses my feathers or wings against myself." See more on this subject in Abresch's Note on the Epistolæ Aristænati, p. 144; in Heliodori Æthiop. ii. p. 120; Aristides Orat. ed. Jebb, iii. p. 402; Philon. Judæus, p. 737; and see Erasmi Adagia "Suo Sibi hunc gladio jugulo ;" and Apulei v. Miles, p. 104, "Præclarus ille Sagittarius ipse me meo telo percussit." Our readers will probably be contented with the above illustrations, or more might be added if they express a desire for the same.-REV.

distant part of the country. We only remember "Ah! Editha. Ah! Mater optima," &c. There was sold at Strawberry Hill a most interesting pencil drawing, by Richardson, of Pope's mother in her extreme age, Pope's father lying on his death bed, Pope himself, and Lord Bolingbroke, in one frame. They were formerly in Pope's possession. We also saw not long ago a small bronze or copper medallion of Pope-his head with a wreath of laurel round it, and with this inscription.-MOI AYTOZ HANKHN.

P. 137. Cowper found his Marivaux in Barclay, whose romance of Argenis he thought the best that ever was written," &c. This is somewhat stronger than the exact language of Cowper. He says, "The Argenis is interesting in a high degree, richer in incident than can be imagined, full of surprises which the reader never foretells, and yet free from all entanglement and confusion. The style also appears to me such as would not dishonour Tacitus himself." Let our readers be told, John Barclay, the author, was in England some time tempore R$ Jacobi. He was then an old man,— white beard, and wore a hat with a feather, which gave some severe people offence. He was library-keeper at the Vatican, and there poisoned.* It is said that Barclay, offended by the request of James the First to translate the Arcadia into Latin, composed the Argenis to show he could write a better original. The author of "Friar Gerund" jeers at him for his nicety of phrase. "Then you have the Scotsman J. Barclay, who would not say 'exhortatio' to escape the flames, but 'parainesis,' which signifies the same, but is a little more of the Greek; nor obedire,' but 'decedere,' which is of more abstruse signification, and is equivocal into the bargain." +

P. 140.—Mr. Willmott writes, "The Chancellor's installation was approaching, and Gray had promised to compose the ode, but he could not think of a beginning. A friend calls at his rooms, and is received with the startling salutation

Hence! avaunt! 'tis holy ground!

The visitor is alarmed, but the poem is commenced. That slight circumstance-a knock at the door-was the key to a splendid chamber of imagery."-We are much afraid that we must disturb by our ill-timed entrance the harmony of the beautiful but delusive creation which our poetical author has raised, and he must descend with us in the lower and less pleasing regions of historical truth. The fact stands as in Mr. Nicholls' own words:" After I had quitted the University I always paid Mr. Gray an annual visit; during one of the visits it was he determined, as he said, to

* See on the Argenis Aubrey's Letters, ii. p. 226. See also Herbert's Mem. of Charles I. p. 144. Another work, Beattie's Essays, 4to. p. 512; Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. p. 26; Scott's Lives of the Novelists, ii. p. 171; Fortescue, Feriæ Academicæ, pp. 190-199, 1630; Chaudon, Dict. Historique, art. Barclay; Tib. Magiri Epon. Crit. i. p. 105; Censura Literaria, iii. p. 296. This work has been thrice translated, -by R. Le Grys, Knt. 1629; Kingsmill Long, esq. 1636; another, 1762 or 1772, by a lady, 4 vols. under the title of the Phoenix (query Clara Reeve ?).—REV.

+ Barclay wrote also, among other works, the Icon Animorum," which was Englished by Thomas May the poet, 12mo. 1633, under the title of "Mirror of Minds," and to which we have thought Goldsmith was indebted for hints in his poem of "The Traveller." John Barclay must not be confounded with William Barclay, who wrote in Latin on a contest between Buchanan and Eglesham about a paraphrase of a Psalm, in a volume called "Poeticum Duellum," 1620, 12mo.-a volume of great rarity, which we may soon notice.-REV.

offer with a good grace what he could not have refused if it had been asked of him, viz. to write the Installation Ode for the Duke of Grafton. This however he considered as a sort of task, to which he submitted with great reluctance; and it was long after he first mentioned it to me before he could prevail upon himself to begin the composition. One morning, when I went to him as usual after breakfast, I knocked at his door, which he threw open and exclaimed with a loud voice

Hence! avaunt! 'tis holy ground!

I was so astonished that I almost feared he was out of his senses, but this was the beginning of the ode which he had just composed." So that, instead of Mr. Nicholls's knock suggesting the line, it appears the whole ode was already written before he came, and Gray happily quoted the commencing verse; consequently Mr. Willmott's conclusion, "that a knock at the door was the key to a splendid chamber of imagery," is too rapid. We have no doubt that these oversights will be set right in another edition, especially such incidents as those which form main links in an argument, detailed at some length and supported by other instances. Now we will give our own opinion on this subject; and we believe that a passage in the poem called the "Spleen," by Matthew Greene, happily suggested the opening of this singularly beautiful ode. Gray held this poem in much estimation, and availed himself, as we shall now show, of some of the happy expressions found in it; and as this, so far as we know, has never been observed before by any of his editors or commentators, we beg a patient attention to our proofs :

Let not profane this sacred place
Hypocrisy with Janus face;

Or pomp, mixt state of pride and care,
Court kindness, falsehood's polished ware;
Scandal disguised in friendship's veil,

That tells, unasked, the injurious tale, &c.

Here the structure of the composition, the allegorical passages, and the verbal expressions bear a striking resemblance to the commencement of "the Installation Ode." There is a suggestion, we most fully believe, of which Gray availed himself, and no closer resemblance could of course be expected; but we now proceed to corroborate this, by showing his familiarity with other passages in the works of the same very clever writer :

And mounting in loose robe the skies,

Showed light and fragrance as she flies.-GREENE.
'Till April starts and calls around

The sleepy fragrance from the ground,

And lightly o'er the living scene

Scatters his freshest, tend'rest green.-GRAY.

Virtue, in charming dress arrayed.-GREENE.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed.-GRAY.

Here stillness, thought, and solemn shade

Invite and contemplation aid;

Here nymphs from pollard oaks relate

The dark decrees and will of fate;

And dreams beneath the spreading beech

Inspire, &c.-Greene.

Compare these lines with the opening of Gray's "Ode on Spring."

The world can't hear the still small voice.-(GREENE.)

The still small voice of gratitude.-(GRAY.)

The thinking soul then helps to raise

Deep thoughts-the Genius of the place.-(GREENE.)
The Genius of the stream.-(GRAY.)

Say, Father Thames, whose gentle pace
Gives leave to view what beauties grace

Your flow'ry banks, if you have seen.-(GREENE.)

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen.— —(GRAY.)

While insects from the threshold preach,

And minds dispos'd to musing teach,

From maggot-youth through change of state

They feel like us the turns of fate.

Some born to creep have learn'd to fly, &c.—(GREENE.)

Compare this with the Ode to Spring. Methinks I hear the sportive mind reply," The insect youth are on the wing," &c. " And they that creep and they that fly," &c. We shall be repaid for our labour if these specimens should bring an unjustly neglected poet again into favour.

P. 142.-"History is a commentary on the wisdom of Butler. A proclamation furls the sails of a ship; and Cromwell, instead of plying his axe in a forest-clearing of America, blasphemes God, and beheads his sovereign at home." We have mentioned on some previous occasion that we believe this assertion, so often and so boldly made, is not historically correct. Some ship was forbid sailing, but not the ship in which Cromwell was to embark. It is an incident that has served, among a thousand others, to throw its false lights on the romance which has been called English history.

P. 144.-" Nor should we underrate such occasions of critical offence. Whatever breaks the unity of interest in a book, statue, or picture must detract by mutilation. In the great Vandyck at Wilton the escutcheon of the Pembroke family stares out from the corner." This is Mr. Gilpin's observation, who did not give his meed of praise to this picture, placed generally among Vandyck masterpieces,-" To destroy the harmony still more, a large escutcheon of the Pembroke arms hangs in one corner of the picture, filled with such a profusion of red and yellow that it catches the eye at once, and may properly be called one of the principal figures." (Vide Western Tour, p. 113.)

P. 153.—" Demosthenes manifests in every oration the student of Thucydides; and violets of Colonos peep out under the hedges of Milton's Eden." On the latter clause of this sentence we have nothing to remark; but if Demosthenes does really manifest in every oration the student of Thucydides, it would be well to be a little more precise in pointing out the resemblance. Certainly in his structure and choice of language we can see none at all; and indeed one of the editors in his preface remarks,“ In orationibus Demosthenis nullum vestigium magni illius historici, videre videor."

P. 163.—" The Anacharsis of Barthelemy is not free from the defect of Glover. Becker compares his characters to antique statues, in French costume and lace ruffles. Telemachus still stands alone." We take the opportunity thus afforded of mentioning a circumstance or two not generally known, relating to Barthelemy and his work, which cost the author