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There in a cave asleep she lay,

Lull'd by the hoarse-resounding main;
When a bold savage pass'd that way,
Impell'd by destiny, his name Disdain.
Of ample front the portly chief appear'd:
The hunted bear supplied a shaggy vest;
The drifted snow hung on his yellow beard;
And his broad shoulders braved the furious blast.
He stopped: he gazed: his bosom glow'd,
And deeply felt the impression of her charms:
He seized the advantage fate allow'd,

And straight compress'd her in his vigorous arms.

STROPHE.

The curlew scream'd, the tritons blew
Their shells to celebrate the ravish'd rite;
Old Time exulted as he flew ;
And Independence saw the light.
The light he saw in Albion's happy plains,
Where under cover of a flowering thorn,
While Philomel renew'd her warbled strains,
The auspicious fruit of stolen embrace was born-
The mountain dryads, seized with joy,
The smiling infant to their charge consign'd;
The Doric Muse caress'd the favourite boy;
The hermit Wisdom stored his opening mind.
As rolling years matured his age,

He flourish'd bold and sinewy as his sire;
While the mild passions in his breast assuage
The fiercer flames of his maternal fire.

ANTISTROPHE

Accomplish'd thus he wing'd his way,
And zealous roved from pole to pole,
The rolls of right eternal to display,

And warm with patriot thoughts the aspiring soul.
On desert isles 'twas he that raised
Those spires that gild the Adriatic wave,
Where tyranny beheld amazed

Fair Freedom's temple, where he mark'd her grave.
He steel'd the blunt Batavian's arms
To burst the Iberian's double chain;
And cities rear'd, and planted farms,
Won from the skirts of Neptune's wide domain.
He, with the generous rustics, sate
On Uri's rocks in close divan;
And wing'd that arrow sure as fate,
Which ascertained the sacred rights of man.

STROPHE.

Arabia's scorching sands he cross'd,
Where blasted nature pants supine,
Conductor of her tribes adust,

To freedom's adamantine shrine;

And many a Tartar horde forlorn, aghast!
He snatch'd from under fell oppression's wing;
And taught amidst the dreary waste
The all-cheering hymns of liberty to sing.

He virtue finds, like precious ore,
Diffused through every baser mould,

Even now he stands on Calvi's rocky shore,
And turns the dross of Corsica to gold;
He, guardian genius, taught my youth
Pomp's tinsel livery to despise :

My lips by him chastised to truth,

Ne'er paid that homage which the heart denies.

ANTISTROPHE.

Those sculptured halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnish'd Vice and Vanity combined,
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread;
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.
While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears,
And all the flowers of spurious fancy blow;
And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears,

Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow;

Where ever-dimpling Falsehood, pert and vain, Presents her cup of stale profession's froth; And pale Disease, with all his bloated train, Torments the sons of gluttony and sloth.

STROPHE.

In Fortune's car behold that minion ride,
With either India's glittering spoils opprest;
So moves the sumpter-mule, in harness'd pride,
That bears the treasure which he cannot taste.
For him let venal bards disgrace the bay,
And hireling minstrels wake the tinkling string;
Her sensual snares let faithless Pleasure lay;
And all her jingling bells fantastic Folly ring;
Disquiet, Doubt, and Dread shall intervene ;
And Nature, still to all her feelings just,
In vengeance hang a damp on every scene,
Shook from the baleful pinions of Disgust.

ANTISTROPHE.

Nature I'll court in her sequester'd haunts,
By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell,
Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts,
And Health, and Peace, and Contemplation
dwell.

There Study shall with Solitude recline;
And Friendship pledge me to his fellow-swains;
And Toil and Temperance sedately twine
The slender cord that fluttering life sustains:
And fearless Poverty shall guard the door ;
And Taste unspoil'd the frugal table spread;
And Industry supply the humble store;
And Sleep unbribed his dews refreshing shed:
White-mantled Innocence, ethereal sprite,
Shall chase far off the goblins of the night:
And Independence o'er the day preside,
Propitious power! my patron and my pride.

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Ar length escaped from every human eye,
From every duty, every care,

That in my mournful thoughts might claim a share,
Or force my tears their flowing stream to dry;
Beneath the gloom of this embowering shade,
This lone retreat, for tender sorrow made,
I now may give my burden'd heart relief,
And pour forth all my stores of grief;
Of grief surpassing every other woe,
Far as the purest bliss, the happiest love
Can on th' ennobled mind bestow,
Exceeds the vulgar joys that move
Our gross desires, inelegant and low.

In vain I look around

O'er all the well-known ground,
My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry;
Where oft we used to walk,

Where oft in tender talk

We saw the summer sun go down the sky;

Nor by yon fountain's side,
Nor where its waters glide

Along the valley, can she now be found:

In all the wide-stretch'd prospects' ample bound No more my mournful eye

Can aught of her espy,

But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie.

Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns, Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns By your delighted mother's side:

Who now your infant steps shall guide ?

[* And in a letter to Wharton, he says, "Have you seen Lyttelton's Monody on his wife's death? there are parts of it too stiff and poetical, but others truly tender and elegiac as one would wish."-Works by Mitford, vol. iii. p. 49.

Among Smollett's Poems is a Burlesque on Lyttelton's Ode, but a very poor one. It is not a little curious, we may add, that Tom Jones is inscribed to Lyttelton, and that the Gosling Scrag of Peregrine Pickle was the patron of Fielding.]

Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care
To every virtue would have form'd your youth,
And strew'd with flowers the thorny ways of truth?
O loss beyond repair!

O wretched father! left alone,

To weep their dire misfortune and thy own : How shall thy weaken'd mind, oppress'd with woe, And drooping o'er thy Lucy's grave, Perform the duties that you doubly owe!

Now she, alas! is gone, [save? From folly and from vice their helpless age to

O best of wives! O dearer far to me
Than when thy virgin charms
Were yielded to my arms:

How can my soul endure the loss of thee?
How in the world, to me a desert grown,
Abandon'd and alone,

Without my sweet companion can I live?
Without thy lovely smile,

The dear reward of every virtuous toil,
What pleasures now can pall'd ambition give?
Ev'n the delightful sense of well-earn'd praise,
Unshared by thee, no more my lifeless thoughts could
raise.

For my distracted mind
What succour can I find?

On whom for consolation shall I call?
Support me, every friend;
Your kind assistance lend,

To bear the weight of this oppressive woe.
Alas! each friend of mine,

My dear departed love, so much was thine,
That none has any comfort to bestow.
My books, the best relief

In every other grief,

Are now with your idea sadden'd all : Each favourite author we together read My tortured memory wounds, and speaks of Lucy dead.

We were the happiest pair of human kind ;
The rolling year its varying course perform❜d,
And back return'd again;
Another and another smiling came,
And saw our happiness unchanged remain :
Still in her golden chain

Harmonious concord did our wishes bind :
Our studies, pleasures, taste, the same.
O fatal, fatal stroke,

That all this pleasing fabric love had raised Of rare felicity,

On which ev'n wanton vice with envy gazed,

And every scheme of bliss our hearts had form'd,
With soothing hope, for many a future day,
In one sad moment broke !-
Yet, O my soul, thy rising murmurs stay;
Nor dare the all-wise Disposer to arraign,
Or against his supreme decree
With impious grief complain,

That all thy full-blown joys at once should fade; Was his most righteous will-and be that will obey'd.

PROLOGUE TO CORIOLANUS*.

I COME not here your candour to implore
For scenes whose author is, alas! no more;
He wants no advocate his cause to plead ;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence confined,
No sect-it flow'd alike to all mankind.
He loved his friends-forgive this gushing tear:
Alas! I feel I am no actor here.

He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it, but our tears may tell.
Oh candid truth, O faith without a stain,
Oh manners greatly firm and nobly plain,
Oh sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his!
Such was the man,-the Poet well you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause
You heard him teach fair Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyr
None but the noblest passions to inspire:
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which dying he could wish to blot.
Oh may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add to grace his tomb!
Whilst he superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet if to those, whom most on earth he loved,
From whom his pious care is now removed,
With whom his liberal hand and bounteous heart
Shared all his little fortune could impart;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from his receive,
That, that, even now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.

[* Thomson's posthumous play, and spoken by Quin. This is among the best prologues in our language: and is excelled only by Pope's before Cato, and Johnson's Drury Lane opening.]

ROBERT FERGUSSON.

[Born, 1750. Died, 1774.]

THIS unfortunate young man, who died in a mad-house at the age of twenty-four, left some pieces of considerable humour and originality in the Scottish dialect. Burns, who took the hint of his Cotter's Saturday Night from Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, seems to have esteemed him with an exaggerated partiality, which can only be accounted for by his having perused him in his youth. On his first visit to Edinburgh, Burns traced out the grave of Fergusson, and placed a head-stone over it at his own expense, inscribed with verses of appropriate feeling+.

Fergusson was born at Edinburgh, where his father held the office of accountant to the British Linen-hall. He was educated partly at the highschool of Edinburgh, and partly at the grammarschool of Dundee, after which a bursary, or exhibition, was obtained for him at the university of St. Andrew's, where he soon distinguished himself as a youth of promising genius. His eccentricity was, unfortunately, of equal growth with his talents; and on one occasion, having taken part in an affray among the students, that broke out at the distribution of the prizes, he was selected as one of the leaders, and expelled from college; but was received back again upon promises of future good behaviour. On leaving college he found himself destitute, by the death of his father; and after a fruitless attempt to obtain support from an uncle at Aberdeen, he returned on foot to his mother's house at Edin

burgh, half dead with the fatigue of the journey, which brought on an illness that had nearly proved fatal to his delicate frame. On his recovery he was received as a clerk in the commissary clerk's office, where he did not continue long, but exchanged it for the same situation in the office of the sheriff clerk, and there he remained as long as his health and habits admitted of any application to business. Had he possessed ordinary prudence, he might have lived by the drudgery of copying papers; but the appearance of some of his poems having gained him a flattering notice, he was drawn into dissipated company, and became a wit, a songster, a mimic, and a free liver; and finally, after fits of penitence and religious despondency, went mad. When committed to the receptacle of the insane, a consciousness of his dreadful fate seemed to come over him. At the moment of his entrance, he uttered a wild cry of despair, which was re-echoed by a shout from all the inmates of the dismal mansion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who had the task of attending him. His mother, being in extreme poverty, had no other mode of disposing of him. A remittance, which she received a few days after, from a more fortunate son, who was abroad, would have enabled her to support the expense of affording him attendance in her own house; but the aid did not arrive till the poor maniac had expired‡.

THE FARMER'S INGLE.

Et multo imprimis hilarans convivia Baccho, Ante focum, si frigus erit.-VIRG.

;

WHAN gloamin grey out owre the welkin keeks a Whan Batie ca's his owsenb to the byre; Whan Thrasher John, sair dunge, his barn-door steeks 4,

An' lusty lasses at the dightin'e tire;

[* Burns in one place prefers him to Allan Ramsay; "the excellent Ramsay," he says, "and the still more excellent Fergusson." But he has found no follower. Burns' obligations to Fergusson are certainly greater than to Ramsay, and gratitude for once warped his generally good, sound, and discriminating taste in poetic criticism.]

[t No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
No storied urn nor animated bust;
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way,
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust.]

a Peeps.-b Oxen.-c Fatigued.-d Shuts-e Winnowing.

What bangs fu' leal the e'enin's coming cauld, An' gars snaw-tappit Winter freeze in vain ; Gars dowie mortals look baith blithe an' bauld, Nor fley'd wi' a' the poortith o' the plain; Begin, my Muse! and chaunt in hamely strain.

Frae the big stack, weel winnow't on the hill,
Wi' divots theekiti frae the weet an' drift;

Sods, peats, and heathery turfs the chimley fill,
An' gar their thickening smeek salute the lift.

[ O thou my elder brother in misfortune, By far my elder brother in the muses,

With tears I pity thy unhappy fate!-BURNS.]

What bangs fu' leal-what shuts out most comfortably. - Makes.- Frightened. Thatched with turf.-) Chimney Smoke,

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