There's nought in this life sweet,
If men were wise to see't,
But only melancholy,

Oh sweetest melancholy!

Welcome, folded arms, and fixèd eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound!
Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon.

Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

THE SATYR'S SPEECH, FROM THE "FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS."

Through yon saine bending plain,

That flings his arms down to the main,
And thro' these thick woods have I run
Whose bottom never kissed the sun,
Since the lusty Spring began.
All to please my master Pan,
Have I trotted without rest
To get him fruit; for at a feast,
He entertains this coming night
His paramour, the Syrinx bright.
But behold, a fairer sight!
By that heavenly form of thine,
Brightest fair, thou art divine;
Sprung from great immortal race
Of the gods; for in thy face
Shines more awful majesty,
Than dull weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold

And live! Therefore on this mould

Lowly do I bend my knee
In worship of thy deity.
Deign it, goddess, from my hand
To receive whate'er this land
From her fertile womb doth send
Of her choice fruits; and but lend
Belief to that the satyr tells :
Fairer by the famous wells
To this present day ne'er grew,
Never better nor more true.

Here be grapes, whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good;

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown

Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em ;
Deign, oh! fairest fair, to take 'em!

For these black-eyed Dryope

Hath oftentimes commanded me
With my clasped knee to climb:

See, how well the lusty time

Hath decked their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a queen,

Some be red, some be green;

These are of that luscious meat

The great god Pan himself doth eat:

All these, and what the woods can yield,

The hanging mountain, or the field,

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong;
Till when humbly leave I take,

Lest the great Pan do awake,

That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.
I must go, I must run,
Swifter than the fiery sun.

The charming pastoral from whence this beautiful speech is taken, was irrevocably condemned in the theatre on the first and only night of representation; which catastrophe, added to a similar one that befell Congreve's best comedy, "The Way of the World," both authors being at the time in the very flood-tide of popularity, has been an unspeakable comfort to unsuccessful dramatists ever since. I recall it chiefly to mention the hearty spirit with which two of the most eminent of Fletcher's friendly rivals came to the rescue with laudatory verses. The circumstance does so much honour to all parties, and some of the lines are so good, that I cannot help quoting them. George Chapman says that the poem

Renews the golden world, and holds through all
The holy laws of homely Pastoral;

Where flowers and founts and nymphs and semi-gods
And all the graces find their old abodes;

Where forests flourish but in endless verse,

And meadows, nothing fit for purchasers :
This iron age-

(Think of that in the days of James the First!)

This iron age that eats itself will never
Bite at your golden world, that others ever
Loved as itself.

Ben Jonson, first characterising the audience after a fashion by no means complimentary, says that the play failed because it wanted the laxity of moral and of language which they expected and desired. He continues:

I that am glad thy innocence was thy guilt,
And wish that all the Muses' blood were spilt
In such a martyrdom, to vex their eyes,
Do crown thy murdered poem, which shall rise
A glorified work to time, when fire

Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.

For the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, that mine of superb and regal poetry, I have no room now. They must remain untouched.

IX.

FASHIONABLE POETS.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

It is now nearly thirty years ago that two youths appeared at Cambridge, of such literary and poetical promise as the University had not known since the days of Gray. What is rarer still, the promise was kept. One of these "marvellous boys" turned out a man of world-wide renown-the spirited poet, the splendid orator, the brilliant historian, the delightful essayist-in a word, Thomas Babington Macaulay, now, I suppose, incontestibly our greatest living writer. The other was the subject of this paper.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed—(I wish it had pleased his godfathers and godmothers to bestow upon him a plain English Christian name, and spare him and me the vulgar abomination of this conglomeration of inharmonious sounds!)— Winthrop Mackworth Praed was born in London, in the beginning of this century, of parents belonging to the great banking-house, which still remains in the family. Sent early to Eton, he, while yet a schoolboy, followed the example of Canning, who appears to have been the object of his emulation in more points than one, and in conjunction with Mr. Moultrie set up a paper called the "Etonian," to which he was the principal contributor, and which was so successful that it went through four editions, and established for the

chief writer a high reputation for precocious talent. At Cambridge this reputation was more than sustained. He was the pride and glory of Trinity, and left college with an almost unprecedented number of prizes, for Greek ode and Latin epigram. Even the greater world of London, where University fame so often melts away and is seen no more, was equally favourable to Mr. Praed. He and his friendly rival, Mr. Macaulay, gave their valuable assistance to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," and every fresh article made its impression. He wrote also in the "New Monthly," and in the annuals, then seen on every table, with still increasing brilliancy; contributed pungent political satire to other journals, and finally entered Parliament with such hopes and expectations as his talents might well warrant, but which have seldom been excited by an untried member.

In the House of Commons he did quite enough to justify the warmest anticipations of his friends, and to earn for himself the name of a "rising man," that most auspicious of all names to a political aspirant.

What he might have become had life been spared, it were now vain to conjecture. He married happily, he died young. Light, lively, brilliant, the darling of every society that he entered, he was yet most beloved by those who knew him best. To me it seems that had he outlived the impetuosity of youth, he would have become something higher and better than a political partisan, however clever, or a fashionable poet, however elegant. There was through all his poetry-and it is its deepest although not its most obvious charm-a love of the genuine and the true, a scorn for the false and the pretending, which is the foundation of all that is really good in eloquence as well as in poetry, in conduct and in character, as well as in art. The germ of the patriot and the statesman is to be found in the love of truth and the hatred of pretence; and never were they more developed than in the poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

That these poems are the most graceful and finished verses of society that can be found in our language, it is impossible to doubt. At present they are so scarce that the volume from which I transcribe the greater part of the following extracts is an American collection, procured with considerable difficulty and delay from the United States. Others of the poems

are taken from his own manuscripts, most kindly lent to me by one of his nearest connexions, whom I am happy enough to call my friend; and one or two of the charades I have copied from the "Penny Magazine " of the author's early friend, Mr. Charles Knight, where they are strangely enough called enigmas.

THE VICAR.

Some years ago, ere Time and Taste
Had turned our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way between
St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket,
Was always shown across the Green,
And guided to the Parson's wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;

Fair Margaret in her tidy kirtle
Led the lorn traveller up the path,

Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,

Upon the parlour steps collected,

Wagged all their tails and seemed to say:
"Our master knows you; you're expected."

Up rose the Reverend Doctor Brown,

Up rose the Doctor's "winsome marrow;"
The lady laid her knitting down,

Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow.
Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed,
Pundit or papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,

And welcome for himself and dinner.

If, when he reached his journey's end,
And warmed himself in court or college,
He had not gained an honest friend,
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;
If he departed as he came,

With no new light on love or liquor,
Good sooth the traveller was to blame,
And not the Vicarage or the Vicar
His talk was like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slipped from politics to puns;

It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels or shoeing horses.