on Parliamentary Reform;" these publications, together with occasional pieces of poetry, which he wrote within the last years of his residence in England, attest at once the vigour and elegance of his mind, and the variety of its application. to light. In 1794 he published, also from the Sanscrit, a translation of the Ordinances of Menu, who is esteemed, by the Hindoos, to be the earliest of created beings, and the holiest of legislators; but who appears, by the English translator's confession, to have lived long after priests, statesmen, and metaphysicians had learned to combine their crafts. While business required his daily attendance at Calcutta, his usual residence was on the banks of the Ganges, at the distance of five miles from the court. To this spot he returned every even early as to reach his apartments in time, by setting out on foot at the first appearance of dawn. He passed the months of vacation at Chrishnagur, a country residence, sixty miles from Calcutta, remarkable for its beauty, and interesting, from having been the seat of an ancient Hindu college. Here he added botany to the other pursuits of his indefatigable curiosity. On the succession of the Shelburne administration, he obtained, through the particular interest of Lord Ashburton, the judicial office in Bengal for which he had been hitherto an unsuccessful competitor. In March 1783, he received the honour of knighthood. In the April following he married Anna Maria Shipley, the daughtering after sunset; and, in the morning, rose so of the Bishop of St. Asaph, to whom he had been so many years attached. He immediately sailed for India, having secured, as his friend Lord Ashburton congratulated him, the two first objects of human pursuit, those of love and ambition. The joy with which he contemplated his situation is strongly testified in the descriptions of his feelings which he gives in his letters, and in the gigantic plans of literature which he sketched out. Happily married-still in the prime of life-surprising that the strongest constitution should leaving at home a reputation which had reached the hemisphere he was to visit, he bade adieu to the turbulence of party politics, which, though it had not dissolved any of his friendships, had made some of them irksome. The scenes which he had delighted to contemplate at a distance were now inviting his closest researches ! He approached regions and manners which gave a living picture of antiquity; and, while his curiosity was heightened, he drew nearer to the means of its gratification. In December 1783, he commenced the discharge of his duties as an Indian judge, with his characteristic ardour. He also began the study of Sanscrit. He had been but a few years in India, when his knowledge of that ancient language enabled him, under the auspices of the Governor, to commence a great plan for administering justice among the Indians, by compiling a digest of Hindu and Mahometan laws, similar to that which Justinian gave his Greek and Roman subjects. His part in the project was only to survey and arrange its materials. To that superintendence the Brahmins themselves submitted with perfect confidence. To detail his share in the labours of the Society of Calcutta, the earliest, or at least the most important, philosophical society established in British India, would be almost to abridge its Transactions during his lifetime. He took the lead in founding it, and lived to see three volumes of its Transactions appear. In 1789 he translated the ancient Hindu drama, "Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring," by Callidas, an author whom Sir William Jones calls the Shakspeare of India, and who lived about the time of Terence, in the first century before the Christian In the burning climate of Bengal, it is not have sunk under the weight of his professional duties, and of his extensive literary labours. The former alone occupied him seven hours during the session time. His health, indeed, seems to have been early affected in India. In 1793, the indisposition of Lady Jones rendered it necessary that she should return to England. Sir William proposed to follow her in 1795, delaying only he should complete the system of Indian legisla tion. But they parted to meet no more. In 1794 he was attacked with an inflammation of the liver, which acted with uncommon rapidity; and, before a physician was called in, had advanced too far to yield to the efficacy of medicine. He expired in a composed attitude, without a groan, or the appearance of a pang; and retained an expression of complacency on his features to the last. In the course of a short life, Sir William Jones acquired a degree of knowledge which the ordnary faculties of men, if they were blest with antediluvian longevity, could scarcely hope to surpass. His learning threw light on the laws of Greece and India, on the general literature of Asia, and on the history of the family of nations. He carried philosophy, eloquence, and philaathropy into his character of a lawyer and a judge. Amidst the driest toils of erudition, he retained a sensibility to the beauties of poetry, and a talent for transfusing them into his own language, which has seldom been united with the same degree of industry. Had he written nothing but the delightful ode from Hafiz, "Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight," it would alone testify the harmony of his ear, and the elegance of his taste. When he went abroad, it was not to enrich himself with the spoils of avarice or ambition; but to search, amidst the ruins of Oriental literature, for treasures which he would not have exchanged "For all Bokhara's vaunted gold, Or all the gems of Samarcand." It is, nevertheless, impossible to avoid supposing, that the activity of his mind spread itself in too many directions to be always employed to the best advantage. The impulse that carried him through so many pursuits, has a look of something restless, inordinate, and ostentatious. Useful as he was, he would in all probability have been still more so, had his powers been concentrated to fewer objects. His poetry is sometimes elegant; but altogether, it has too much of the florid luxury of the East. His taste would appear, in his latter years, to have fallen into a state of Brahminical idolatry, when he recommends to our particular admiration, and translates, in pompous lyrical diction, the Indian description of Cumara, the daughter of Ocean, riding upon a peacock; and enjoins us to admire, as an allegory equally new and beautiful, the unimaginable conceit of Camdeo, the Indian Cupid, having a bow that is made of flowers, and a bowstring which is a string of bees. Industrious as he was, his history is full of abandoned and half-executed projects. While his name reflects credit on poetical biography, his secondary fame as a composer shows, that the palm of poetry is not likely to be won, even by great genius, without exclusive devotion to the pursuit*.— ̓Αλλὰ οὔπως ἅμα πάντα δυνήσεαι αὐτὸς ἑλέσθαι ; Αλλῳ μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκε θεὸς πολεμήϊα ἔργα, *Αλλῳ δὲ ὀρχηστὺν, ἑτέρῳ κίθαριν καὶ ἀοιδήν. ILIAD. xiv. 729. A PERSIAN SONG OF HAFIZ. SWEET maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight, Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow, Oh! when these fair perfidious maids, In vain with love our bosoms glow : Speak not of fate: ah! change the theme, Beauty has such resistless power, But, ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear What cruel answer have I heard? Go boldly forth, my simple lay, AN ODE. IN IMITATION OF ALCEUS. WHAT Constitutes a State? Not high-raised battlement or labour'd mound, Thick wall or moated gate; Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd; Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; With powers as far above dull brutes endued As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; [* It is not Sir William Jones's poetry that can perpetuate his name -SOUTHEY, Quarterly Review, vol. xi. p. 502.] Men, who their duties know, And e'en th' all-dazzling Crown But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain : These constitute a State, And sovereign Law, that state's collected will, Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill; Shall Britons languish, and be men no more! Since all must life resign, Those sweet rewards, which decorate the brave, "Tis folly to decline, And steal inglorions to the silent grave. WITH A PRESENT OF A KNIFE. "A KNIFE," dear girl, "cuts love," they say! The knife, that cuts our love in two, That self-same blade from me must sever Till that be done, (and I'd as soon If in a kiss-delicious treat!- TO THE SAME ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HER WEDDING-DAY, WHICH WAS "THEE, Mary, with this ring I wed❞— Behold another ring!" for what?" With that first ring I married youth, If she, by merit since disclosed, Here then to-day, (with faith as sure, I took thy troth, and plighted mine,) And why-They show me every hour, EPIGRAM. QUOD PETIS, HIC EST. No plate had John and Joan to hoard, Plain folk, in humble plight; One only tankard crown'd their board ; And that was fill'd each night ; Along whose inner bottom sketch'd, In pride of chubby grace, Some rude engraver's hand had etch'd A baby angel's face. John swallow'd first a moderate sup; John often urged her to drink fair; When Jolin found all remonstrance vain, And where the Angel stood so plain, Joan saw the horns, Joan saw the tail, John stared, with wonder petrified ; "Oh! John," she said, " am I to blame? EPIGRAM. SPLENDEAT USU. SEE! stretch'd on nature's couch of grass, For him the sun its power displays, EPIGRAM. QUOCUNQUE MODO REM. A VETERAN gambler, in a tempest caught, I feel conviction-and will be prepared- JOHN BAMPFYLDE. [Born, 1754 Died, 1796] JOHN BAMPFYLDE was the younger brother of Sir Charles Bampfylde. He was educated at Cambridge, and published his Sonnets in 1776 when very young. He soon after fell into mental derangement, and passed the last years of his life in a private madhouse. After twenty years' confinement he recovered his senses, but not till he was in the last gasp of consumption. SONNET. As when, to one, who long hath watch'd the morn Advancing, slow forewarns th' approach of day, (What time the young and flow'ry-kirtled May Decks the green hedge, and dewy grass unshorn With cowslips pale, and many a whitening thorn;) And now the sun comes forth, with level ray Gilding the high-wood top, and mountain gray; And, as he climbs, the meadows 'gins adorn; * Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 301. [See a very interesting account of Bampfylde, in a letter from Mr. Southey The rivers glisten to the dancing beam, Th' awaken'd birds begin their amorous strain, And hill and vale with joy and fragrance teem; Such is the sight of thee; thy wish'd return To eyes, like mine, that long have waked to mourn, That long have watch'd for light, and wept in vain! to Sir Egerton Brydges, printed in Brydges' Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 257, and in Mr. Dyce's Specimen Sonnets, p. 217.] SONNET. TO THE REDBREAST. WHEN that the fields put on their gay attire, Thou silent sitt'st near brake or river's brim, Whilst the gay thrush sings loud from covert dim; But when pale Winter lights the social fire, And meads with slime are sprent and ways with mire, Thou charm'st us with thy soft and solemn hymn, From battlement or barn, or hay-stack trim; And now not seldom tunest, as if for hire, Thy thrilling pipe to me, waiting to catch The pittance due to thy well-warbled song: Sweet bird, sing on! for oft near lonely hatch, Like thee, myself have pleased the rustic throng, And oft for entrance 'neath the peaceful thatch, Full many a tale have told and ditty long. SONNET. ON A WET SUMMER. ALL ye, who far from town, in rural hall, Like me, were wont to dwell near pleasant field, Enjoying all the sunny day did yield, With me the change lament, in irksome thrall, By rains incessant held; for now no call Silent the swallow sits beneath the thatch, And vacant hind hangs pensive o'er his hatch, Counting the frequent drop from reeded eaves. SONNET. COLD is the senseless heart that never strove, With the mild tumult of a real flame; Rugged the breast that beauty cannot tame, The pathless vale, the long-forsaken grove, Give me to waste the hours in amorous play With Delia, beauteous maid, and build the rhyme Praising her flowing hair, her snowy arms, And all that prodigality of charms Form'd to enslave my heart and grace my lay. ROBERT BURNS. [Born, 1758. Died, 1796.] ROBERT BURNS was born near the town of Ayr, within a few hundred yards of "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," in a clay cottage, which his father, who was a small farmer and gardener, had built with his own hands. A part of this humble edifice gave way when the poet was but a few days old; and his mother and he were carried, at midnight, through the storm, to a neighbour's house that gave them shelter. After having received some lessons in his childhood, from the schoolmaster of the village of Alloway, he was, at seven years of age, put under a teacher of the name of Murdoch, who instructed him in reading and English grammar. This good man, who is still alive, and a teacher of languages in London, boasts, with a very natural triumph, of having accurately instructed Burns in the first principles of composition*. At such an age, Burns' study of principles could not be very profound; yet it is due to his early instructor to observe that his prose style is more accurate than we should expect even from the vigour of an untutored mind, and such as would lead us to suppose that he had been early initiated in the rules of grammar. His father's removal to another farm in Ayrshire, at [* Murdoch died about the year 1822, respected and poor.] Mount Oliphant, unfortunately deprived him of the benefit of Murdoch as an instructor, after he had been about two years under his care; and for a long time he received no other lessons than those which his father gave him in writing and arithmetic, when he instructed his family by the fireside of their cottage in winter evenings. About the age of thirteen he was sent, during a part of the summer, to the parish-school in Dalrymple, in order to improve his hand-writing. In the following year he had an opportunity of passing several weeks with his old friend Murdoch, with whose assistance he began to study French with intense ardour and assiduity. His proficiency in that language, though it was wonderful considering his opportunities, was necessarily slight; yet it was in showing this accomplishment alone, that Burns's weakness ever took the shape of vanity. One of his friends, who carried him into the company of a French lady, remarked, with surprise, that he attempted to converse with her in her own tongue. Their French, however, was soon found to be almost mutually unintelligible. As far as Burns could make himself understood, he unfortunately offended the foreign lady. He meant to tell her, that she was a charming |