very spear of Fortune. Burton said of poets, more than two hundred years ago, "that they are like the grasshoppers; sing they must in the Summer, and pine in the Winter." He might have added, that many never know a Summer at all. Poverty and suffering are the parents of adulation. Read Dryden's Dedications, and understand how quickly this pernicious habit becomes natural; how soon the poison is absorbed into the moral circulation: of that depravity, or weakness of mind, which induces a writer to honour vice and ❝ daub iniquity," contempt too unmitigated cannot be expressed—yet who can refrain from pity at the spectacle of Genius bartering its birth-right for a mess of pottage; like the untutored Indian, who exchanges a bar of gold for a cracked looking-glass.*

WORTHIES OF TRINITY.

SIDNEY, AND HIS FRIEND BROOKE; NEWTON, ETC.

SURELY, if the Religio Loci dwell anywhere, it must be within these courts, every spot of which is hallowed by the feet of Piety and Genius. While passing under the gateway, the form of Newton seemed to rise before me, and I turned round to

* See this subject treated at greater length in the Biographia Literaria.

look at that window where he so often stood, decomposing the rays of morning. There was something inexpressibly delightful in the fancy. Nor was he absent from my mind, whose life has been so happily described, as poetry put into action. I mean Sir Philip Sidney, who, although he was entered of Christ Church, appears, according to the fashion of the age, to have studied also in this College. Never has one individual united so many suffrages in his favour; never have the Graces bound so many garlands on any other grave. Alike honoured and beloved by statesman and by poet; the contemporary of Shakspeare; the patron and friend of Spenser. It was happily said, in allusion to his political sagacity, that he started into manhood without passing through youth. Spenser, in some very touching and affectionate verses, has recorded-the gentle benignity of his countenance— those lineaments of gospel-books-which formed the correct index of his temper. Nature had showered her blessings upon him. His voice was so sweet and agreeable, that by one of his contemporaries he is styled, nectar-tongued Sidney. Can we be surprised at the enthusiastic admiration of his friends? His tutor at Oxford wished it to be written upon his grave that he had been the instructor of Sir Philip Sidney; and Lord Brooke thought his highest claim to future distinction con

sisted, not in having been the servant of Elizabeth, or the councillor of James, but the bosom friend of the author of the Arcadia. Of such a man we are not to judge by those productions which opportunity allowed him to bring forth. He never, we are told by one most competent to speak, wrote anything for fame; his chief object was to improve the life of himself and others. But he did not labour without his reward. His apology for poetry appeared at a most dark and inauspicious season; yet that stream of sweetly-uttered knowledge, to employ his own words, did not flow in vain; those high-erected thoughts found echoes in other hearts. Of the dignified and Christian strain of his eloquence, you have only to open his Defence to be convinced. The harp of Sion has never been lauded in a more glowing or beautiful eulogium.

The highest compliment I can bestow upon the poetry of his friend, Lord Brooke, is, that it has obtained the praise of Southey. Their history has the romance of poetry. They were born, I think, in the same year, educated at the same school, and grew up together in the most affectionate intercourse. Tradition still points out the terrace near Sir Fulke's seat in Warwickshire, where the friends were wont to take their morning walks.

THE

REMAINS OF A LATE SIZAR OF QUEEN'S.

Lighted by that dim torch our sorrow bears,

We sadly trace thy coffin with our tears-HENRY KING.

THE Author of the following verses is equally beyond the reach of praise or of censure; he is deaf to the voice of the charmer, charm she never so wisely. Death, that constant and tender friend of the forsaken, has at length rocked the sufferer asleep upon his cold pillow. Yet it would have poured some consolation into his wounded and bruised spirit, to have known, that the harp-string to which he had intrusted his name, should win some hearts to its music; that his memory should survive in a few pure and affectionate bosoms.

The following poems, with many others, were the amusement of his leisure hours. What he might have accomplished under a kinder fortune, and in a happier condition of mind, it will not benefit him to inquire; but it cheered him to reflect, when all worldly hopes had faded from his heart, that he had written no line which, for its moral tendency, he would "wish to blot." At that awful hour, he felt this assurance to be better than fame.

TO A CHILD IN PRAYER.

FOLD thy little hands in prayer,
Bow down at thy mother's knee;
Now thy sunny face is fair,
Shining through thy golden hair,

Thine eyes are passion-free;

And pleasant thoughts, like garlands, bind thee Unto thy home, yet grief may find theeThen pray, child, pray!

Now thy young heart, like a bird,
Singeth in its Summer-nest;
No evil thought, no unkind word,
No chilling Autumn-wind hath stirr'd
The beauty of thy rest:

But Winter cometh, and decay

Shall waste thy verdant home away—
Then pray, child, pray!

Thy bosom is a house of glee,

And gladness harpeth at the door;
While ever with a joyful shout,
Hope, the May-queen, danceth out,

Her lips with music running o'er:
But Time those strings of joy will sever,
And Hope will not dance on for ever—
Then pray, child, pray!