but now they began to consider us as elevating ourselves into a state of superiority, and immediately began to envy, hate, and declare war against

us.

The neighbouring little squires too, were uneasy to see a poor renter become their equal in a matter in which they placed so much dignity; and not doubting but it arose in me from the same ostentation, they began to hate me likewise, and turn my equipage into ridicule, asserting that my horses, which were as well matched as any in the kingdom, were of different colours and sizes, with much more of that kind of wit the only basis of which is lying."

The foregoing is an admirably wrought picture, and exactly describes Fielding's own position during his three years' residence in the country after his marriage. Unable wholly to shut out the rustic world around him, he could scarcely have appeared in a less congenial sphere; he occupied no decided station; and as a small landed proprietor, with the high feelings and accomplishments of a gentleman and a man of letters, he was a kind of anomaly in the world of property, and may be said to have had no equals, no superiors, no inferiors, much less friends or companions with whom he could associate upon agreed and appropriate terms.

In this dilemma, Fielding adopted the expedient recommended to the traveller "of doing as they do at Rome;" as the best recipe for making time pass less disagreeably. Forgetting his judicious resolves, and unsatisfied with rural and literary pursuits calculated to add something to his restricted income, though, at the same time, fondly attached to his family, and delighting in the pastimes of children, "his chief pleasure," we are told, "consisted in society and convivial mirth;" hospitality threw open his doors, and in less than three years, entertainments, hounds, and horses entirely devoured a little patrimony which might have secured him independence and a character free from those imputations which mankind generally put upon the actions of a man whose imprudence has led him into difficulties.

When once it has become the fashion to condemn, few, it has been remarked, "are willing to distinguish between the impulses of necessity and the inclinations of the heart." But let those who wish to estimate at its real worth the character and conduct of our great novelist, read the vindication of him, written after his death, by his friend Lord Lyttleton; and they will cease to judge the actions of a man possessed of genius and sensibility like his too closely by the standard set up as rules for the direction of common minds. If the world will try genius by its own rules, and wish to reduce it to its own level of morality and mental quietude, that world has no right to bask in the sunny smiles of its fancy; to warm its torpid feeling in the flashes of its wit; to exult in the triumph, and share in the spoils of its all-conquering intellect. For genius may be said, in the words of our greatest poet, to be "like the imagination itself, all compact;" the world should be content and grateful to take it as it is; and wise and charitable enough to reflect that had Fielding been the cool and calculating moneymaker, the quiet country farmer, eager only to increase his store, he might indeed have died "worth something," in the world's acceptation of the term, but might never have been impelled by the force of circumstances, acting upon his inventive and vigorous powers, to produce masterpieces capable of entertaining and instructing that world through countless generations. If genius, moreover, carried away by some of the finest and strongest impulses of our nature, is apt to err, it is often its own worst enemy; its regrets are rendered more acute by keener sensi

bility, and its offences are visited by the world which it cheers and enlightens with the bitter penalties of a stern, unrelenting severity. It is the war of Plutus and Mammon against superior intellect,-of darkness against light. The punishment which genius, like that of Burns and Fielding, almost invariably inflicts upon itself, by omitting to walk with the worldly-wise, and plodding, to take advantage of the tide of fortune; compelled to pass the remainder of its days, like those of our author, amidst heroic but unavailing efforts, is not thought sufficient without the sneers of the proud and wealthy, the envy of meaner minds, the jealousy of contemporaries, and the poisoned shafts of surviving malice.*

With a mind and magnanimity, above wasting its energies in vain complaints and repinings, and of which many a more worldly-minded man would have been incapable, Fielding now resolved to resume the study of the law, which he had pursued with such unremitted assiduity at the University of Leyden. With this view, he immediately returned to London, and, at the age of thirty, entered himself a student of the Inner Temple. Eager to retrieve his dilapidated fortune, he applied himself, with exemplary diligence, to his legal studies, regularly kept his terms, and omitted no occasion of forming professional connexions. At the same time, with a laudable anxiety to mitigate the consequences of his own imprudence, he resumed his compositions for the stage; he also connected himself with the few public prints then in existence, projected new publications; and, besides his numerous prefaces, poems, and other pieces, which he subsequently published under the title of Miscellanies,' wrote essays and tracts upon political and other subjects. Never, perhaps, was there a stronger example of industry and energy of heart and mind; no toil, no difficulties deterred him; and there seems little doubt that, had not his health given way under such intense application, he would soon have become a distinguished ornament of the English bar.

It is gratifying, however, to reflect that his honourable toils (for few perhaps who have once lost their property, willingly again encounter the labour necessary to regain it,) were still cheered by the smiles of an approving conscience, and by his affection for a wife and children to whom he was tenderly attached. The proofs of friendship also which he met with from men of professional rank and abilities, both at this and at a subsequent period, must have encouraged him in his arduous efforts, formed the best answer to the calumnies of his enemies, and did lasting honour to his memory. Notwithstanding the temptations to former gaiety and levity, especially in the dramatic world, and in bringing forward some new performance, or amidst occasional dissipations, nothing could repress his thirst of knowledge and the delight he felt in acquiring fresh stores from which he embellished his inimitable pictures of life; and with such intense ardour did he follow up his favourite studies, in addition to his legal acquisitions, that he was frequently known to retire late at night from a convivial meeting and proceed to read and make extracts from the most abstruse authors before he retired to rest; and in this habit he continued while the vigour of his constitution and his indefatigable energy supported him. But the sword was fast wearing out the scabbard.

Of the unjust and disparaging manner in which Swift, Bolingbroke, and that age of wits, spoke of Fielding's early efforts, and were succeeded by Horace Walpole, Richardson, and his partisans, who attacked, not only his more matured labours, but his character, not a few instances have been preserved in the annals of literary scandal. They form, perhaps, the best criterion of his superiority.

At length the time of his probation expired, and Henry Fielding was called to the bar; not having kept his terms merely for the sake of form, he was eager to make his legal studies useful to his family, and to leave no means untried to advance himself in practice. With sufficient learning, strong natural ability and a good head, as it is termed, for the law, he had now a fair prospect of retrieving his affairs; was regular in his attendance at Westminster, and on the Western Circuit, where he soon became favourably known. We are told by Chalmers, that a tradition respecting the new barrister had been preserved by the gentlemen of the Western Circuit, and though not quite consistent with the account given by Murphy, it is perfectly in accordance with the idea entertained of his humour and character. Having attended the judges two or three years, it seems, without the least prospect of success, Fielding published proposals for a new law book: and this being circulated about the country, the young barrister was at the ensuing assizes loaded with briefs at every town in the circuit. But it is added that his practice, thus suddenly increased, was observed almost as suddenly to leave him. It is true that his success was of very short duration, though the real cause for it is not here assigned. Fielding had already begun to feel his way, and had produced a favourable impression of his abilities and skill as a pleader, when his dearest hopes and prospects were suddenly blighted. Repeated attacks of the gout had already undermined a constitution naturally strong; and early dissipation, late hours, severe study, with the exertion of vigorous intellect in literary composition always upon the spur, added to family anxieties, had produced premature lassitude, the symptoms of which he had too long neglected. Still he did not relax his efforts to turn his legal acquisitions to account. Possessing a sound knowledge of jurisprudence, he directed his research to crown law, and prepared a voluminous Digest of the Statutes at Large, in two folio volumes, which evince the industry and perseverance of which he was capable; but they failed to supply his present exigencies, and remained unpublished in the hands of his brother, Sir John Fielding, who succeeded him in his office of a Middlesex magistrate. Nothing, in fact, could overcome the disadvantage of his continued absence from the courts; and again, with fortune and reputation almost within his grasp, Fielding was compelled to relinquish his hopes derived from publications on the law, and to renew his applications to the comic muse, in the person of the managers of the theatres. Far from being enabled to engage in several important works which he had projected, he was now obliged to find a substitute for the law, and to provide for the morrow as it came. There were few subjects of the day upon which he did not exercise his well-practised pen; and it was at this time that he contributed largely to the Champion,' a paper chiefly indebted for its reputation to his support. Many of its best articles, on a great variety of topics, be ar intrinsic evidences of his hand, though it would be difficult at this time to adopt them with certainty in an edition of his works; nor could they perhaps add anything to a reputation like his. Such as are known, however, to be from his pen, are given; though in irregular numbers, and marked in the same order as they first appeared. But the best proof of his talent for periodical writing was the manner in which that journal fell in public esteem when placed under other auspices, and the fact that none of the essays were republished, except two volumes, which included the exact time when Fielding was the principal author of the work.

In speaking of this eventful period of his life it is impossible to withhold the expression of our admi

ration, in common with all his biographers, of the singular force and vigour of his mind: when under the most discouraging circumstances-the loss of comparative fortune-of health—of the fruits of years of successful toil, his body lacerated, as Mr. Murphy describes it, by the acutest pains, with a family looking up to him for immediate support, he was still capable, with a degree of Christian fortitude, almost unexampled, to produce, as it were, extempore, a play, a farce, a pamphlet or a newspaper. Nay, like Cervantes, whom he most resembled in his wit as well as genius, he could jest upon his misfortunes, and make his own sufferings a source of entertainment to the rest of the world. One of these harmless satires upon himself,-ironical hits at his own evil fortune, by which only wits can revenge themselves upon her malice, we possess from the pen of Fielding, in the form of an epistle to Sir Robert Walpole; and we give it here, as forcibly applying to his actual position, and as a humorous concentration upon one object of all "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" at once :

"While at the helm of state you ride,
Our nation's envy, and its pride;
While foreign courts, with wonder gaze,
And curse those councils which they praise;
Would you not wonder, sir, to view
Your bard a greater man than you?
Which that he is, you cannot doubt,
When you have read the sequel out.
You know, great sir, that ancient fellows,
Philosophers, and such folks, tell us,
No great analogy between
Greatness and happiness is seen.
If then, as it might follow straight,
Wretched to be, is to be great;
Forbid it, gods, that you should try
What 'tis to be so great as I!
The family that dines the latest
Is in our street esteem'd the greatest;
But latest hours must surely fall
'Fore him who never dines at all.
Your taste in architect, you know
Hath been admired by friend and foc;
But can your earthly domes compare
With all my castles-in the air?
We're often taught, it doth behove us
To think those greater, who 're above us;
Another instance of my glory,

Who live above you, twice two story;
And from my garret can look down
On the whole street of Arlington.
Greatness by poets still is painted
With many followers acquainted:
This too doth in my favour speak;
Your levée is but twice a week;
From mine I can exclude but one day,
My door is quiet on a Sunday.
Nor in the manner of attendance
Doth your great bard claim less ascendance.
Familiar you to admiration

May be approached by all the nation;
While I, like the Mogul in Indo,

Am never seen but at my window.

If, with my greatness, you 're offended,
The fault is easily amended;

For I'll come down, with wond'rous ease,
Into whatever place you please.
I'm not ambitious; little matters

Will serve us great, but humble creatures.
Suppose a secretary o' this isle,
Just to be doing with a while;
Admiral, gen'ral, judge, or bishop:
Or I can foreign treaties dish up.
If the good genius of the nation
Should call me to negociation,
Tuscan and French are in my head,
Latin I write, and Greek-I read.
If you should ask, what pleases best?
To get the most, and do the least.

What fittest for?-You know, I'm sure,
I'm fittest for-a sine-cure."

While on the subject of the author's poetical and miscellaneous pieces, it will be interesting perhaps to give his own opinions contained in a very amusing preface, where he justly describes them as treating of

subjects which bear not the least relation to each other. "Perhaps," he adds, "what Martial says of his epigrams may be applicable to these several productions: Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura," and it must be admitted that the latter designation is the most appropriate with reference to the correctness, wit, or other merits, of some of his poetical compositions. Still we ought not to forget they were written, when very young, by a student in his gayer hours, and were productions of the heart rather than of the head. Neither then nor subsequently did the author profess to make poetry his pursuit; his occasional essays were of the slightest texture-were chiefly the garnish of his comedies and farces, or mere jeux-d'esprit thrown off in the spirit of the moment. In few instances were they of a serious turn, though his adaptation of part of the sixth satire of Juvenal (originally sketched out before he was twenty), and a very spirited version, is a proof that he possessed considerable talent for satirical composition. It has been supposed that this imitation was intended as a satirical reflection upon one of his female acquaintance; but if we may believe the author's own interpretation of its object, it was not so: "for my part," he says, "I am much more inclined to panegyric on that amiable sex which I have always thought treated with a very unjust severity by ours, who censure them for faults (if they are truly such) into which we ourselves allure and betray them"-a sentiment as amiable and generous as it is just.

It is equally amusing and instructive to trace the author's views as described by himself in his prefatory remarks on other subjects. Speaking of his Essay on Conversation,' he observes, "that his design in it will at least be allowed good, being to ridicule out of society one of the most pernicious evils which attends it-pampering the gross appetites of selfishness and ill-nature with the shame and disquietude of others, whereas I have endeavoured in it to show that true good breeding consists in contributing with our utmost power to the satisfaction and happiness of all around us." The author displays throughout the same just and discriminating taste, with intimate knowledge of character and manners as met with in the world. In his 'Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men' he endeavoured, he says, to expose a second great evil, namely, hypocrisy-the bane of all virtue, morality, and goodness; and to arm as well as he could the honest, undesigning, open-hearted man, who is generally the prey of this monster, against it. He maintained with honest zeal that most mischiefs (especially those which fall on the worthiest part of mankind) owe their original to this detestable vice.

On the subject of a 'Journey from this World to the Next,' he says, it would be paying a very mean compliment to the human understanding to suppose him under the necessity of vindicating himself from designing in an allegory of that kind to oppose any present system, or to erect a new one of his own. "Perhaps," he continues, "the fault may lie rather in the heart than in the head, and I may be misrepresented without being misunderstood. If there be any such men I am sorry for it; the good-natured reader will not, I believe, want any assistance from me to disappoint their malice." The author farther adds this remarkable observation-"I profess fiction only;" which, if we apply it to his productions generally, shows how well he estimated the peculiar powers which he possessed, and which he was now preparing more fully to develop.

In adverting to the origin of his comedy of the "Good-natured Man,' the author gives also some particulars of his acquaintance with the celebrated

Garrick, whose kind offices and skilful exertions in favour of his comic muse he has so often gratefully acknowledged. "Mr. Garrick, whose abilities as all actor will, I hope, rouse up better writers for the stage than myself, asked me one evening if I had any play by me, telling me he was desirous of appearing in a new part. I answered him I had one almost finished; but I conceived it so little the manager's interest to produce anything new on his stage this season, that I should not think of offering it him, as I apprehended he would find some excuse to refuse and adhere to the theatrical politics' of never introducing new plays on the stage but when driven to it by absolute necessity. Mr. Garrick's reply was so warm and friendly, that, as I was full as desirous of putting words into his mouth as he could appear to be of speaking them, I mentioned the play the very next morning to Mr. Fleetwood, who embraced my proposal so heartily that an appointment was immediately made to read it to the actors who were principally to be concerned in it. When I came to revise this play, which had likewise lain by some years, though formed on a much better plan and at an age when I was much more equal to the task than the former, I found I had allowed myself too little time for the perfecting it; but I was resolved to execute my promise, and accordingly, at the appointed day, I produced five acts which were entitled The Good-natured Man.'"

Of the extreme haste and rapidity with which he composed some of his comedies, when a manager's commission and a speedy remuneration stimulated his exertions, we may form a pretty accurate idea from the following passage relating to one of his earliest comedies. "I accordingly sat down with a resolution to work night and day during the short time allowed me, which was about a week, in altering and correcting this production of my more juvenile years: when, unfortunately, the extreme danger of life into which a person very dear to me (his first wife) was reduced, rendered me incapable of executing my task. To this accident alone I have the vanity to apprehend the play owes most of the glaring faults with which it appeared. However, I resolved rather to let it take its chance, imperfect as it was, with the assistance of Mr. Garrick, than to sacrifice a more favourite, and, in the opinion of others, a much more valuable performance, and which could have had very little assistance from him.”

"I then acquainted Mr. Garrick," he continues, "with my design, and read it to him and Mr. Macklin; Mr. Fleetwood agreed to the exchange, and thus the 'Wedding Day' was destined to the stage.

"Perhaps it may be asked me, why then did I suffer a piece which I myself knew was imperfect to appear? I answer honestly and freely, that reputation was not my inducement; and that I hoped, faulty as it was, it might answer a much more solid, and, in my unhappy situation, a much more urgent, motive. If it will give my enemies any pleasure to know that they totally frustrated my views, I will be kinder to them, and give them a satisfaction which they denied me; for though it was acted six nights, I received not 50%. from the house for it."

In his history of Jonathan Wild' the author declares that it was not his intention to enter the lists with that excellent historian who, from authentic papers and records, hath already given so satisfactory an account of the life and actions of this great man. My narrative," he says, "is rather of such actions which he might have performed, or would or should have performed, than what he really did; and may in reality as well suit any other such great man, as the person himself whose name it bears."

66

"I solemnly protest," he further observes, "I do by no means intend, in the character of my hero, to represent human nature in general. Such insinuations must be attended with very dreadful conclusions; nor do I see any other tendency they can naturally have but to encourage and sooth men in their villanies, and to make every well-disposed man disclaim his own species and curse the hour of his birth into such a society. For my part, I understand those writers who describe human nature in this character, as speaking only of such persons as Wild and his gang; and I think it may be justly inferred that they do not find in their own bosoms any deviation from the general rule. Indeed, it would be insufferable vanity in them to conceive themselves as the only exception to it.

"But without considering Newgate as no other than human nature, with its mask off, which some very shameful writers have done-a thought which no price should purchase me to entertain-I think we may be excused for suspecting that the splendid palaces of the great are often no other than Newgate with the mask on. Nor do I know anything which can raise an honest man's indignation higher than that the same morals should be in one place attended with all imaginary misery and infamy, and in the other with the highest luxury and honour. Let any impartial man in his senses be asked for which of these two places a composition of cruelty, lust, avarice, rapine, insolence, hypocrisy, fraud, and treachery, was best fitted, surely his answer must be certain and immediate. And yet I am afraid all these ingredients, glossed over with wealth and a title, have been treated with the highest respect and veneration in the one, while one or two of them have been condemned to the gallows in the other.

"If there are, then, any men of such morals who dare to call themselves great, and are so reputed or called, at least by the deceived multitude, surely a little private censure by the few is a very moderate tax for them to pay, provided no more was to be demanded; but I fear this is not the case. However the glare of riches may dazzle and terrify the vulgar-nay, however hypocrisy may deceive the more discerning—there is still a judge in every man's breast, which none can cheat nor corrupt, though perhaps it is the only uncorrupt thing about him. And yet, inflexible and honest as this judge ishowever polluted the bench on which he sits-no man can, in my opinion, enjoy any applause which is not adjudged to be his due.

"Nor hath goodness less advantage in the article of pleasure than of honour over this kind of greatness. The same righteous judge always annexes a bitter anxiety to the purchases of guilt, whilst it adds a double sweetness to the enjoyments of innocence and virtue for fear, which all the wise agree is the most wretched of human evils, is in some degree always attending on the former, and never can in any manner molest the happiness of the latter.

"Now, as to that greatness which is totally devoid of goodness, it seems to me in nature to resemble the False Sublime in poetry, whose bombast is, by the ignorant and ill-judging vulgar, often mistaken for solid wit and eloquence, while it is in effect the very reverse. Thus pride, ostentation, insolence, cruelty, and every kind of villany, are often construed into true greatness of mind, which always includes an idea of goodness.

"This bombast greatness, then, is the character I intend to expose; and the more this prevails in and deceives the world, taking to itself not only riches and power, but often honour, or at least the shadow of it, the more necessary to strip the monster of these

false colours, and show it in all its native deformity. For by suffering vice to possess the reward of virtue, we do a double injury by encouraging the former, and taking away the chief incentive to the latter. Nay, though it is, I believe, impossible to give vice a true relish of honour and glory, even though we confer riches and power to enhance the enjoyment of them, yet it contaminates the food it cannot taste, and sullies the robe which neither fits nor becomes it, till virtue disdains them both."

In alluding to the delay which had occurred in bringing his Miscellanies' before the public, the author thus feelingly describes the cause of it-" the real reason of which was the dangerous illness of one from whom I draw all the solid comfort of my life, during the greatest part of this winter. This, as it is most sacredly true, so will it, I doubt not, sufficiently excuse the delay to all who know me.

"Indeed, when I look back a year or two, and survey the accidents which have befallen me, and the distresses I have waded through while engaged in these works, I could almost challenge some philosophy to myself for having been able to finish them as I have; and, however imperfectly that may be, I am convinced the reader, were he acquainted with the whole, would want very little good-nature to extinguish his disdain at any faults he meets with.

"But this hath dropt from me unawares; for I intend not to entertain my reader with my private history; nor am I fond enough of tragedy to make myself the hero of one."

To the severity with which he had been attacked by some of his contemporaries, and especially some anonymous libellers, envious at once of his reputation, and the consistency and integrity of his public principles, he replied by the following just strictures. They furnish a triumphant answer to base insinuations like those of a Walpole.

"However, as I have been very unjustly censured, as well on account of what I have not written, as for what I have, I take this opportunity to declare, in the most solemn manner, I have long since (as long as from June, 1741) desisted from writing one syllable in the Champion,' or in any other public paper; and, that I never was, nor will be, the author of anonymous scandal on the private history or family of any person whatever.

"Indeed there is no man who speaks or thinks with more detestation of the modern custom of libelling. I look on the practice of stabbing a man's character in the dark to be as bad and as barbarous as that of stabbing him with a poniard in the same manner, nor have I ever been once in my life guilty of it."

In allusion to this subject, he farther remarks in a tone of deep feeling; "the reader will pardon my having dwelt on this particular, since it is so especially necessary in this age when almost all the wit we have is employed in this way; and when I have already been a martyr to such unjust suspicions; of which I will relate one instance. While I was last winter laid up in the gout, with a favourite child dying in one bed, and my wife in a condition very little better on another, attended with other circumstances which served as very proper decoration to such a scene, received a letter from a friend, desiring me to vindicate myself from two very opposite reflections which two opposite parties thought fit to cast upon me, namely the one of writing in the 'Champion' (though I had not then wrote in it for upwards of half a year); the other of writing in the Gazetteer,' in which I never had the honour of inserting a single word." Of the manner in which his private sufferings, as here described, the loss of a favourite child, and the

I

mind, and interrupted his once active labours, we have the following account in his own words :-

"To defend myself, therefore, as well as I can from all past, and to enter a caveat against all future censure of this kind; I once more solemnly declare that since the end of June, 1741, I have not, besides 'Joseph Andrews,' published one word, except the 'Opposition,' a vision; 'A Defence of the Duchess of Marlborough's Book ;' Miss Lucy in Town' (in which I had a very small share). And I do farther protest that I will never hereafter publish any book or pamphlet whatever, to which I will not put my name;-a promise which, as I shall sacredly keep, so will it, I hope, be so far believed, that I may henceforth receive no more praise or censure, to which I have not the least title."

The author of this interesting and valuable transcript of his own views and feelings, while bearing up against sorrows and difficulties, added to the inroads of serious disease, which rendered his latter days so painful, and consigned him to an early grave, always expresses himself in a tone of cheerful resignation, which strongly reminds us of the mode in which his great predecessor, Cervantes, in nearly similar circumstances, takes leave of his readers :"And now, my good-natured reader, recommending my works to your candour, I bid you heartily farewell; and take this with you, that you may never be interrupted in the reading of these Miscellanies' with that degree of heartache which hath often discomposed me in the writing them."

Among the poetical pieces contained in the 'Miscellanies,' but not given in Murphy's edition of his works, his epistle on 'True Greatness,' his 'Address to Liberty,' and his lines to a friend on 'The Choice of a Wife,' are distinguished by elevated and generous sentiment, and by considerable power of versification, though deficient in that higher polish and correctness which only severe study and revision can give.

That Fielding's merits, nevertheless, have in this respect been passed over and even studiously underrated by preceding biographers, the following specimens from his works will, we think, clearly establish. First, as a witty and amusing commentary upon the conduct of the Walpole ministry, hit off, doubtless, in one of the author's most genial and facetious hours, when he could turn his occasional embarrassments into a subject of witticism for the entertainment of his friends, and intended to convey, perhaps, a serious reproach and complaint of the minister, we may instance the following lines addressed also to Sir Robert Walpole (1731) :—

"Great Sir, as on each levée day

I still attend you-still you say-
I'm busy now, to-morrow come;
To-morrow, sir, you 're not at home;
So says your porter, and dare I
Give such a man as him the lie?
In imitation, sir, of you,
I keep a mighty levée too;
Where my attendants, to their sorrow,
Are bid to come again to-morrow.
To-morrow they return no doubt,
And then, like you, sir, I'm gone out.
So says my maid; but they less civil
Give maid and master to the d-1;
And then with menaces depart,

Which could you hear would pierce your heart.
Good sir, do make my levée fly me,
Or lend your porter to deny me."

There is both spirit and wit, as well as something of the gay and gallant humour which marked the times of the Surreys, the Raleighs, the Wallers, and the better part of the reign of the second Charles, in the following lines, written extempore 'On a

the Author redeemed for Half-a-Crown:'

"Dear little, pretty, favourite ore,

That once increased Gloriana's store;
That lay within her bosom blest,
Gods might have envied thee thy rest!
I've read, imperial Jove of old
For love transform'd himself to gold:
And why for a more lovely lass
May he not now have lurk'd in brass?
Oh! rather than from her he'd part
He'd shut that charitable heart,
That heart whose goodness nothing less
Than his vast power could dispossess.
From Gloriana's gentle touch
Thy mighty value now is such,
That thou to me art worth alone

More than his medals are to Sloane."

Perhaps the following lines, from an epistle on 'Good Nature,' will convey a just idea of the author's powers, while the spirit in which they are written-their deep moral truth and beauty, must raise the character of the poet in our eyes. After describing the wretched state of man, produced by the pursuance of a selfish and anti-social policy by the different governments of the world, and the higher orders that administer class laws, he thus fervently exclaims :—

"Must it not wond'rous seem to hearts like thine,
That God, to other animals benign,
Should unprovided Man alone create,
And send him hither but to curse his fate?
Is this the being for whose use the earth
Sprung out of nought, and animals had birth?
This he whose bold imagination dares
Converse with Heav'n, and soar beyond the stars?
Poor reptile! wretched in an angel's form,
And wanting that which nature gives the worm.
Far other views our kind Creator knew
When Man, the image of himself, he drew.
So full the stream of nature's bounty flows,
Man feels no ill but what to man he owes.
The earth abundant furnishes a store
To sate the rich and satisfy the poor.
These would not want, if those did never hoard;
Enough for Irus falls from Dites' board.
And dost thou, common son of nature, dare
From thy own brother to withhold his share?
To vanity, pale idol, offer ap

The shining dish and empty golden cup!
Or else in caverns hide the precious ore,
And to the bowels of the earth restore
What for our use she yielded up before?
Behold and take example how the steed
Attempts not selfish to engross the mead.
See now the lowing herd and bleating flock
Promiscuous graze the valley or the rock;
Each tastes his share of Nature's general good,
Nor strives from others to withhold their food.
But say, O Man; would it not strange appear,
To see some beast (perhaps the meanest there)
For his repast the sweetest pastures choose,
And e'en the sourest to the rest refuse.
Would'st thou not view with scornful wond'ring eye
The poor contented starving herd stand by?
All to one beast a servile homage pay,

And, boasting, think it honour, to obey!"

In his poem on 'Liberty,' there are many detached passages of great beauty; and a generous love of what is truly great and good gives animation to the whole. It is addressed to his friend Lord Lyttleton :"See Liberty, bright goddess, comes along! Roused at thy name, she animates the song! Thy name, which Lacedemon had approved, Rome had adored, and Brutus' self had loved. Come, then, bright maid, my glowing heart inspire, Breathe in my lines, and kindle all thy fire. 'Behold,' she cries, the groves, the woods, the plains, Where Nature dictates see how Freedom reigns; The herd promiscuous o'er the mountain strays; Nor begs this beast the others' leave to graze. Each freely dares his appetite to treat, Nor fears the steed to neigh, the flocks to bleat. Did God, who freedom to these creatures gave, Form his own image, Man, to be a slave? But men it seems to laws of compact yield, While Nature only governs in the field. Curse on all laws which liberty subdue, And make the many wretched for the few.