mended to the publick were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. "When upon some slight encouragement I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address; and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre, that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in publick, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. "Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. "The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. "Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the publick should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. "Having carried on my work, therefore, with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, "My Lord, "Your Lordship's most humble, "Most obedient Servant, "SAMUEL JOHNSON." My concluding extract is of a very different description— as different as the character and situation of the two persons to whom the letter and the stanzas relate. These verses again tell their own story, though they do not tell the whole, for Johnson, poor himself, was to the poor apothecary a generous patron and an unfailing friend. The poem has much of the homely pathos, the graphic truth of Crabbe, and is so free from manner, that it might rather pass for his than for Dr. Johnson's. ON THE DEATH-BED OF ROBERT LEVETT. Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, Well tried through many a varying year, Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills Affection's eye Obscurely wise and coarsely kind, Nor lettered arrogance deny Thy praise to merit unrefined. When fainting nature called for aid, And hovering Death prepared the blow, His vigorous remedy displayed The power of Art without the show. In misery's darkest caverns known, Where helpless anguish poured his groan, No summons mocked by chill delay, His virtues walked their narrow round, K The busy day, the peaceful night, His fame was firm, his powers were bright, XII. OLD POETS. ROBERT HERRICK-GEORGE WITHER. NOTHING seems stranger in the critics of the last century than their ignorance of the charming lyrical poetry of the times of the early Stuarts and the Commonwealth. One should think that the songs of the great dramatists, whose genius they did acknowledge-Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson-might have prepared them to recognise the kindred melodies of such versifiers as Marlowe and Raleigh, and Wither and Marvell. His Jacobite prejudices might have predisposed Dr. Johnson in particular to find some harmonious stanzas in the minstrels of the cavaliers, Lovelace and the Marquis of Montrose. But so complete is the silence in which the writers of that day pass over these glorious songsters, that it seems only charitable to suppose that these arbiters of taste had never met with their works. With the honourable exceptions of Thomas Warton and Bishop Percy, there is not a critic from Johnson downward, who does not cite Waller as the first poet who smoothed our rugged tongue into harmonious verse. And the prejudice lingers still in places where one does not expect to find it. The parish clerk of Beaconsfield is by no means the only, although by far the most excusable authority who, standing bare-headed before his pyramidal tomb in the churchyard, assured me with the most honest conviction that Waller was the earliest and finest versifier in the language. Herrick is one of the many whose into court to overturn this verdict. lyrics might be called Originally bred to the bar, he took orders at a comparatively late period, and ob tained a living in Devonshire, from which he fled during the strict rule of the Lord Protector, concealing himself under a lay habit in London, and returning to his parsonage with the return of the monarch, whose birth had formed the subject of one of his earliest pastorals. More than any eminent writer of that day Herrick's collection requires careful sifting: but there is so much fancy, so much delicacy, so much grace, that a good selection would well repay the publisher. Bits there are that are exquisite: as when in enumerating the cates composing Oberon's Feast" in his "Fairyland," he includes, amongst a strange farrago of unimaginable dishes, "The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music." Some of his pieces, too, contain curious illustrations of the customs, manners, and prejudices of our ancestors. I shall quote one or two from the division of the Hesperides that he calls "charms and ceremonies," beginning with the motto: The adorning the houses with evergreens seems then to have been as common as our own habit of decking them with flowers : CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE. Down with rosemary and bays, The holly hitherto did sway; Then youthful box, which now has grace Your houses to renew, Grown old, surrender must his place Unto the crisped yew. When yew is out, then birch comes in Both of a fresh and fragrant kin To honour Whitsuntide. Green rushes then and sweetest bents, Come in for comely ornaments To re-adorn the house. Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold, THE BELLMAN. From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, From all mischances that may fright The description of a steer in one of his "Bucolics," is graphic and life-like. The herdswoman is lamenting the loss of her favourite : I have lost my lovely steer, That to me was far more dear Smooth in each limb as a die; Clear of hoof, and clear of horn, Sharply pointed as a thorn; With a neck by yoke unworn, From the which hung down, by strings, Balls of cowslip, daisy rings Interlaced by ribbonings. Faultless every way for shape, Not a straw could him escape; Pardon, Lacon, if I weep. But his real delight was amongst flowers and bees, and nymphs and cupids; and certainly these graceful subjects were never handled more gracefully : THE CAPTIVE BEE. As Julia once a slumbering lay, |