AARON HILL [Born, 1685. Died, 1750.] WAS born in 1685, and died in the very minute of the earthquake of 1750, of the shock of which, though speechless, he appeared to be sensible. His life was active, benevolent, and useful: he was the general friend of unfortunate genius, and his schemes for public utility were frustrated only | VERSES WRITTEN WHEN ALONE IN AN INN AT SOUTHAMPTON. TWENTY lost years have stolen their hours away, Pensive and cold this room in each changed part more; Not one dear footstep tunes th' unconscious floor. Oh life How short thy period, yet how fierce thy fires! Scarce can a passion start (we change so fast), Ere new lights strike us, and the old are past. Schemes following schemes, so long life's taste explore, That ere we learn to live, we live no more. by the narrowness of his circumstances. Though his manners were unassuming, his personal dignity was such, that he made Pope fairly ashamed of the attempt to insult him, and obliged the satirist to apologise to him with a mean equivocation. Who then can think- yet sigh, to part with breath, Yet hold-one tender pang revokes that pray'r, ALEXIS; OR, POPE. FROM A CAVEAT*. TUNEFUL ALEXIS, on the Thames' fair side, And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves. [* These lines are in Hill's best manner, and excellent of themselves. He makes his individual case, which is true enough, generally true, which it is not; Pope however felt their sting, and has left a writhe in writing. Hill could hardly expect to receive what Prior and Thomson failed in finding-a return in kind for their poetic commendations.] WILLIAM HAMILTON, of Bangour, was of an ancient family in Ayrshire. He was liberally educated, and his genius and delicate constitution seemed to mark him out for pacific pursuits alone; but he thought fit to join the standard of rebellion in 1745, celebrated the momentary blaze of its success in an ode on the battle of Gladsmuir, and finally escaped to France, after much wandering and many hardships in the Highlands. He made his peace however with the government, and came home to take possession of his paternal estate; but the state of his health requiring a warmer climate, he returned to the Continent, where he continued to reside till a slow consumption carried him off at Lyons, in his 50th year. The praise of elegance is all that can be to his verses. In case any reader should b moderately touched with sympathy for his sufferings, it is proper to inform him, Hamilton was thought by the fair ones o day to be a very inconstant swain. A S lady, whom he teased with his addresses, ap to Home, the author of Douglas, for advice to get rid of them. Home advised her to to favour his assiduities. She did so, and were immediately withdrawn*. FROM "CONTEMPLATION, OR THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE." O VOICE divine, whose heavenly strain Ascending heaven's height, Contemplation, take thy flight: Behold the moon exert her light, As blushing bride on her love-night : Her bridemaids, mount the azure plain. Till heaven set all its windows wide, And drown in violence of show'r : Ah! haunting spirit, art thou there! I thought, O Love! thou wouldst disdain [* It has not hitherto been noticed that the first translation from Homer in blank verse was made by Hamilton.] Well pleased the matron set to show Grant, heaven, if heaven means bliss for me, Contemplation, baffled maid, Remains there yet no other aid? Helpless and weary must thou yield To love supreme in ev'ry field? Let Melancholy last engage, Rev'rend, hoary-mantled sage. Sure, at his sable flag's display Love's idle troop will flit away: And bring with him his due compeer, Silence, sad, forlorn, and drear. Haste thee, Silence, haste and go, To search the gloomy world below. My trembling steps, O Sibyl, lead, Through the dominions of the dead : Where Care, enjoying soft repose, Lays down the burden of his woes ; Where meritorious Want no more Shiv'ring begs at Grandeur's door; Unconscious Grandeur, seal'd his eyes, O say! for whom of human race And hark! methinks a spirit calls, Low winds the whisper round the walls, A voice, the sluggish air that breaks, Solemn amid the silence speaks. Mistaken man, thou seek'st to know, What known will but afflict with woe; Yet ah! why swells my breast with fears? Love's chains: O heaven! thy will be done. Though now the maid my heart alarms, SONG. AH the poor shepherd's mournful fate, Nor dare disclose his anguish. My secret soul discover ; While rapture trembling through mine eyes, The tender glance, the reddening cheek, O'erspread with rising blushes, For oh! that form so heavenly fair, Those languid eyes so sweetly smiling, That artless blush and modest air, So fatally beguiling! The every look and every grace, So charm whene'er I view thee; Till death o'ertake me in the chace, Still will my hopes pursue thee: Then when my tedious hours are past, Be this last blessing given, Low at my feet to breathe my last, And die in sight of heaven. GILBERT WEST. [Born, 1706. Died, 1755.] THE translator of Pindar was the son of the Rev. Dr. West, who published an edition of the same classic at Oxford. His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. Though bred at Oxford with a view to the church, he embraced the military life for some time, but left it for the employment of Lord Townshend, then secretary of state, with whom he accompanied the king to Hanover. Through this interest he was appointed clerk extraordinary to the privy council, a situation which however was not immediately profitable. He married soon after, and retired to Wickham, in Kent, where his residence was often visited by Pitt and Lord Lyttelton. There he wrote his Observations on the Resurrection, for which the university of Oxford made him a doctor of laws. He succeeded at last to a lucrative clerkship of the privy council, and Mr. Pitt made him deputy treasurer of Chelsea Hospital; but this accession to his fortune came but a short time previous to his death, which was occasioned by a stroke of the palsy*. ALLEGORICAL DESCRIPTION OF VERTU. FROM "THE ABUSE OF TRAVELLING." So on he passed, till he comen hath For stones and rubbish, that did choak its tide, For the rich spoil of all the continents, All these and many more that may not here be told. [* That West had a yearly pension of two hundred and fifty pounds, is a fact new to our literary history. Southey has spoken of him as the founder or originator of the school of Akenside, Mason, Gray, and the Wartons: "His There in the middest of a ruin'd pile, That seem'd a theatre of circuit vast, Where thousands might be seated, he erewhile Discover'd hath an uncouth trophy placed; Seem'd a huge heap of stone together cast In nice disorder and wild symmetry, Urns, broken friezes, statues half defaced, And pedestals with antique imagery Emboss'd, and pillars huge of costly porphyry. Aloft on this strange basis was ypight With girlonds gay adorn'd a golden chair, In which aye smiling with self-bred delight, In careless pride reclined a lady fair, And to soft music lent her idle ear ; The which with pleasure so did her enthral, That for aught else she had but little care, For wealth, or fame, or honour feminal, Or gentle love, sole king of pleasures natural. poems," says Coleridge, with far more justice, "have the merit of chaste and manly diction: but they are cold, and, if I may express it, only dead-coloured."] Als by her side in richest robes array'd, Thereto herself a pompous title bore, Mimes, fiddlers, pipers, eunuchs squeaking fine, Painters and builders, sons of masonry, Who well could measure with the rule and line, And all the orders five right craftily define. But other skill of cunning architect, How to contrive the house for dwelling best, With self-sufficient scorn they wont neglect, As corresponding with their purpose least; And herein be they copied of the rest, Who aye pretending love of science fair, And generous purpose to adorn the breast With liberal arts, to Vertù's court repair, Yet nought but tunes and names and coins away do bear. For long, to visit her once-honour'd seat The studious sons of learning have forbore: Who whilom thither ran with pilgrim feet, Her venerable reliques to adore, And load their bosom with the sacred store, Whereof the world large treasure yet enjoys. But sithence she declined from wisdom's lore, They left her to display her pompous toys To virtuosi vain and wonder-gaping boys. WILLIAM COLLINS. [Born, 1720. Died, 1759.] COLLINS published his Oriental Eclogues while at college, and his lyrical poetry at the age of twenty-six. Those works will abide comparison with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty. If they have rather less exuberant wealth of genius, they exhibit more exquisite touches of pathos. Like Milton, he leads us into the haunted ground of imagination; like him, he has the rich economy of expression haloed with thought, which by single or few words often hints entire pictures to the imagination. In what short and simple terms, for instance, does he open a wide and majestic landscape to the mind, such as we might view from Benlomond or Snowden, when he speaks of the hut "That from the mountain's side Views wilds and swelling floods." And in the line "Where faint and sickly winds for ever howl around," he does not merely seem to describe the sultry desert, but brings it home to the senses. A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of! his associations, and the daring sweep of his allusions; but the shadow is transitory, and interferes very little with the light of his imagery, or the warmth of his feelings. The absence of even this speck of mysticism from his Ode on the Passions is perhaps the happy circumstance that secured its unbounded popularity. Nothing is common-place in Collins. The pastoral eclogue, which is insipid in all other English hands, assumes in his a touching interest, and a picturesque air of novelty. It seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners; but surely no just reader of them cares any more about this circumstance than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy*. In his Ode to Fear he hints at his dramatic ambition, and he planned several tragedies. Had he lived to enjoy and adorn existence, it is not easy to conceive his sensitive spirit and harmonious ear descending to mediocrity in any path of poetry; yet it may be doubted if his mind had not a passion for the visionary and remote forms of imagination too strong and exclusive for the general purposes of the drama. His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry, than in the atmosphere of [*These eclogues by Mr. Collins," says Goldsmith, "are very pretty: the images, it must be owned, are not very local; for the pastoral subject could not well admit of it. The description of Asiatic magnificence and manners is a subject as yet unattempted amongst us, and, I believe capable of furnishing a great variety of poetical imagery." Of eastern imagery our poetry is now nearly stuffed fullthanks to Collins, Sir William Jones, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Moore.] |