FROM 'RETALIATION.'

Here lies our good Edmund', whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it, or blame it, too much;
Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat,
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote :
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining;
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit,
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit;
For a patriot too cool; for a drudge disobedient;
And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.
In short, 'twas his fate, unemployed, or in place, sir,
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can,
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;
As an actor, confessed without rival to shine:
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line:
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart,
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art.
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread,
And beplastered with rouge his own natural red.
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ;
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting.
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turned and he varied full ten times a day:
Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick,
If they were not his own by finessing and trick:
He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came,
And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame;
Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease,
Who peppered the highest, was surest to please.
1 Edmund Burke.

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Mr. T. Townshend, M.P. for Whitchurch, afterwards Lord Sydney.

But let us be candid, and speak out our mind,
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind.

2

Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys1, and Woodfalls so grave,

What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave! How did Grub-street re-echo the shouts that you raised, While he was be-Rosciused, and you were bepraised!

But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies,

To act as an angel and mix with the skies :

Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill,
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will,

Old Shakspeare receive him with praise and with love,
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.

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Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind;

His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;

His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart:

To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,

When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

STANZAS ON WOMAN.

When lovely Woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye,

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom, is-to die.

1 Hugh Kelly, author of False Delicacy, &c. Died 1777.
"William Woodfall, printer of the Morning Chronicle. Died 1803.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was deaf and used an ear-trumpet.

THOMAS WARTON.

[THOMAS WARTON was born in 1728 at Basingstoke, of which town his father (Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1718 to 1728) was vicar. He was educated at first by his father, and in 1743 became a member of Trinity College, Oxford, of which society he became a Fellow in 1751. He was Professor of Poetry from 1757 to 1767, and became Poet-Laureate on the death of Whitehead in 1785. He died in 1790. His poems, published separately from time to time, were collected in 1777, and again, in two vols. 8vo., in 1802.]

Thomas Warton is in his poetry chiefly imitative, as was natural in so laborious a student of our early poetical literature. The edition of his poems which was published by his admirer and his brother's devoted pupil, Richard Mant, offers a curious example of a poet 'killed with kindness'; for the apparatus of parallel passages from Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and others, is enough to ruin any little claim to originality which might have been put forward for him. The Pleasures of Melancholy is a cento of Il Penseroso, Comus, and The Faerie Queene; the Ode on the Approach of Summer is a mere echo of L'Allegro. Again, the influence of Gray makes itself far too strongly felt in Warton's elegiac poems and odes. But there are reasons why his genial figure should not be altogether excluded from a representative English anthology. It has often been said that his History of English Poetry, with Percy's Reliques, turned the course of our letters into a fresh channel; but what is more noticeable here is that his own poetry-or much of it, for he is not always free from the taint of pseudo-classicalism-instinctively deals with materials like those on which the oder writers had drawn. In reaction against the didactic and critical temper of the earlier half of his century, he is a student of nature; he is even an 'enthusiast,' in Whitehead's sense. He has two passions, well expressed in the

two sonnets here given-the passion for 'antiquity' and the passion for nature; for the Bodleian Library and for

The field, the forest, green and gay,

The dappled slope, the tedded hay;'

and, we may add, for Oxford, his home for forty-seven years, at whose service he was always ready to place his invention, his humour, and his gift of satire. The real Warton is to be looked for in the writings in which these passions find their vent; in the History, in the Sonnets (a form of composition which he revived among us), and in the Humorous Pieces; not in the 'quit-rent odes' which were wrung from him by the unhappy necessities of his laureateship.

EDITOR

FROM 'THE TRIUMPH OF ISIS

Let Granta boast the patrons of her name,
Each splendid fool of fortune and of fame :
Still of preferment let her shine the queen,
Prolific parent of each bowing dean:

Be hers each prelate of the pampered cheek,
Each courtly chaplain, sanctified and sleek:
Still let the drones of her exhaustless hive
On rich pluralities supinely thrive:
Still let her senates titled slaves revere,
Nor dare to know the patriot from the peer;
No longer charmed by Virtue's lofty song,
Once heard sage Milton's manly tones among,
Where Cam, meandering thro' the matted reeds,
With loitering wave his groves of laurel feeds.
'Tis ours, my son, to deal the sacred bay,
Where honour calls, and justice points the way;
To wear the well-earned wreath that merit brings,
And snatch a gift beyond the reach of kings.
Scorning and scorned by courts, yon Muse's bower
Still nor enjoys, nor seeks, the smile of power.
Though wakeful Vengeance watch my crystal spring,
Though Persecution wave her iron wing,
And, o'er yon spiry temples as she flies,
'These destined seats be mine,' exulting cries;
Fortune's fair smiles on Isis still attend:
And, as the dews of gracious heaven descend
Unasked, unseen, in still but copious showers,
Her stores on me spontaneous Bounty pours.
See, Science walks with recent chaplets crowned;
With fancy's strain my fairy shades resound;
My Muse divine still keeps her customed state,
The mien erect, and high majestic gait :

This poem was written when Warton was an undergraduate, in answer to 'Isis, an Elegy,' by Mason.