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"Not I so happy, answer'd then that swaine,

As thou unhappy, which them thence did chace,
Whom by no meanes thou canst recall againe."

He could not look back with comfort upon having been forced to give up his pastoral visions.

But to return to our subject. The all-including genius of Shakspeare has given the finest intimations of pastoral-writing in some of the masques introduced in his plays, and in his plays themselves; if indeed "As You Like It" might not equally as well be called a pastoral play as a comedy; though, to be sure, the Duke and his followers do not willingly take to the woods, with the exception of the "sad shepherd" Jaques; and that is a great drawback on the pleasures of the occasion, which ought to breathe as freely as the air and the wild roses. Rosalind, however, is a very bud of the pastoral-ideal, peeping out of her forester's jerkin. Again, in the "Winter's Tale," where the good housewife is recorded, who had her "face o' fire" with attending to the guests, and "my sister," who has the purchase of the eatables, "lays it on," as her brother the clown says, in the article of rice, there is the truest pastoral of both kinds, the ideal and the homely.

SHEPHERD." Fie, daughter! when my old wife lived upon
This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook;
Both dame and servant; welcom'd all; serv'd all;
Would sing her song, and dance her turn; now here,
upper end o' the table, now i' the middle;

At

On his shoulder, and his; her face o' fire

With labour; and the thing she took to quench it,
She would to each one sip."

What a poet, and what a painter!

Now a Raphael, or Michael Angelo, now a Jan Steen, or a Teniers! Here also is Autolycus, the most exquisite of impudent vagabonds, better even than the Brass of Sir John Vanbrugh, selling his love ballads, so without indecency, "which is strange," and another ballad of a singing Fish, with "five justice's hands to it," to vouch for its veracity. But, above all, here is Perdita,

Perdita also, though supposed to be a shepherdess born, is a Sicilian princess, and makes our BLUE JAR glisten again in the midst of its native sun and flowers.

"O Proserpina

For the flow'rs now, that, frighted, thou letst fall
From Dis's wagon!

("Wagon," be it observed, was as much a word of respect in those days as "chariot" is now.)

Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath.-Bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one! O! these I lack,
To make you garlands of; and, my sweet friend,

(Turning to her lover,)

To strew him o'er and o'er.

What! like a corse?

FLORIZEL.
PERDITA. NO; like a bank, for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse; or if,-not to be buried;
But quick, and in mine arms."

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Shelley has called a woman, "one of Shakspeare's women," implying by that designation all that can be suggested of grace and sweetness. They were very subtle," as Mr. Wordsworth said of the French ladies. Not that they were French ladies, or English either; but Nature's and refinement's best possible gentlewomen all over the world. Tullia d'Aragona, the Italian poetess, who made all her suitors love one another instead of quarrel, must have been a Shakpeare woman. Gaspara Stampa was another; and we should take the authoress of " Auld Robin Gray" for one.

"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,"

and Lucy, Countess of Bedford, must have been such. So was Mrs. Brooke, who wrote "Emily Montagu;" and probably Madame Riccoboni; and certainly my Lady Winchelsea, who worshipped friendship, and green retreats, and her husband. Terrible people all, to look upon, if the very sweetness of their virtue did not enable us to bear it.

Ben Jonson left an unfinished dramatic pastoral, entitled the " Sad Shepherd." It is a story of Robin Hood, in connexion with a shepherd who has gone melancholy mad for the supposed death of his mistress-a lucky character for the exalted wilfulness of the author's style. The lover opens the play with the following elegant extravagance:

EGLAMOUR. "Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the spring by following her."

This is a truly lover-like fancy; and the various, impulsive, and flowing versification is perfect. But Jonson can never leave out his learning. The lost mistress must be compared in the impossible lightness of her step, with Virgil's Camilla, who ran over the tops of

corn:

"For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk."
TORRENS'S Arabian Nights.

What a woman! How different from the bride of Bedreddin Hassan!

"Up, up in haste!' the young man cries:

Ah! slender waist! she cannot rise

For heavy hips, that say, Sit still,'

And make her linger 'gainst her will."

The best passage in the "Sad Shepherd" is a description of a witch and her habits-a subject which every way suited the arbitrary and sullen turn of the poet's notions of power. It also enabled him to shew his reading, as he takes care to let us know, by means of one of the by-standers:

ALKEN.

"Know ye the witch's dell?

SCATHLOCK. No more than I do know the walls of hell.

ALKEN.

JOHN.

GEORGE.

Within a glooomy dimble she doth dwell,
Down in a pit, o'ergrown with brakes and briars,
Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey,

Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground,
'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house,
Where you shall find her sitting in her form,
As fearful and melancholic as that

She is about with caterpillars kells,

And knotty cobwebs, rounded in with spells.
Thence she steals forth to relief in the fogs,
And rotten mists upon the fens and bogs,
Down to the drowned lands of Lincolnshire;

To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow,
The housewife's tun not work, nor the milk churn!
Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep,
Get vials of their blood! and where the sea
Casts up its slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms,
Planted about her in the wicked feat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold.
I wonder such a story could be told
Of her dire deeds.

I thought a witch's banks
Had inclosed nothing but the merry pranks
Of some old woman.

Yes, her malice more.
As it would quickly appear had we the store
Of his collects.

SCARLET.
SCATHLOCK.

GEORGE.

Ay, this good learned man
Can speak her right.

SCARLET.
ALKEN.

He knows her shifts and haunts.
And all her wiles and turns. The venom'd plants
Wherewith she kills! where the sad mandrake grows
Whose groans are deathful; the dead-numbing nightshade,
The stupifying hemlock, adder's tongue,

And martagan: the shrieks of luckless owls

We hear, and croaking night-crows in the air!
Green-bellied snakes, blue firedrakes in the sky,
And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings!
The scaly beetles, with their habergeons,
That make a humming murmur as they fly!
There in the stocks of trees, white faies do dwell,
And span-long elves that dance about a pool,
With each a little changeling in their arms!
And airy spirits play with falling stars,
And mount the sphere of fire to kiss the moon!"
While she sits reading by the glowworm's light,
Or rotten wood, o'er which the worm hath crept,
The baneful schedule of her nocent charms."

The idea of "span-long elves," who dance about a pool, carrying each a stolen infant, that must be bigger than themselves, is a very capital and fantastic horror.

Old burly and strong-sensation-loving Ben, (as his friend Chapman, or Mr. Bentham might have called him,) could shew, however, a great deal of delicacy when he had a mind to it. He could turn his bluster into a zephyr that inspired the young genius of Milton. Some of his court masques are pastoral; and this is the style in which he receives the king and queen. Maia (the goddess of May) says—

"If all the pleasures were distill'd

Of every flower in every field

(This kind of return of words was not common then, as he has since made it)

And all that Hybla's hives do yield,
Were into one broad mazer fill'd;
If thereto added all the gums,
And spice that from Panchaia comes,
The odours that Hydaspes lends,
Or Phoenix proves before she ends;
If all the air my Flora drew,
Or spirit that Zephyr ever blew,
Were put therein; and all the dew
That ever rosy morning knew;
Yet all, diffused upon this bower,
To make one sweet detaining hour,
Were much too little for the grace

And honour you vouchsafe the place."

In the Masque of Oberon, Silenus bids his Satyrs rouse up a couple of sleeping Sylvans, who ought to have been keeping watch; "at which," says the poet's direction," the Satyrs fell suddenly into this catchmusicians know it well:

"Buz, quoth the blue flie,

Hum, quoth the bee:

Buz and hum they cry,

And so do we.

In his ear, in his nose,

Thus, do you see? [They tickle them.]
He eat the dormouse,

Else it was he."

It is impossible that anything could better express than this, either the wild and practical joking of the Satyrs, or the action of the thing described, or the quaintness and fitness of the images, or the melody and even the harmony, the intercourse, of the musical words, one with another. None but a boon companion with a very musical ear could have written it. It was not for nothing that Ben lived in the time of the fine old English composers, Bull and Ford, or partook his canary with his "lov'd Alphonso," as he calls him, the Signor Ferrabosco.

We have not yet done with this delightful portion of our subject. Fletcher and Milton await us still; together with a word on William Browne, and on a few other poets, who, though they wrote no pastorals, were pastoral men.

WHEN lamented but irremediable events are concerned, I have always found it the wisest and best plan to bury them as we do the loved we have lost, and ever after be as careful of disturbing them. Otherwise I might, by contrasting my former circumstances with those in which I have since figured, as the keeper of a lodging-house, produce what painters call a very effective bit of colouring, but this is not my object; I shall, therefore, briefly state, (in order to introduce myself to my readers,) that, possessed of a handsome fortune, I had early in life married a young man of moderate independence, with whom I conti

nued to share as complete happiness as can possibly fall to the lot of human nature. We had children, and our affairs in other respects went on prosperously; our plantations flourished, our flocks increased, and as we always lived within our income, there appeared little risk of our ever knowing want. In a few years, however, a mania arose for speculating, and, among the rest, my husband was seized with the prevailing fureur-heavy losses were incurred, and thousand after thousand of our pretty property was withdrawn from the funds to meet fresh demands, and ensure a return for the capital already sunk in the undertaking. Like an alchymist in his search for gold, or a gambler who believes ill luck has lasted so long that the next throw must certainly recover it, he seemed determined to make new trials, till, at length, all was lost; our wealth had vanished in the attempt at transmutation, and we were left utterly ruined.

From this time my husband's health declined; the loss of his property, and the alteration it entailed in the circumstances and expectations of his little household, preyed upon his spirit with a bitterness little short of remorse for some actual crime; and gradually I perceived his mind yielding to a weight that I had not the power to alleviate, till at length he was totally incapacitated from taking any share in the concerns of business, or the interests of his family. So unnaturally had mental disease warped his understanding, that the very affection of his children added to his sufferings, and even I could not persuade him that my cheerfulness was sincere, and that I did not in my heart curse him, for the want in which he had involved us. In fact, in the noon of manhood, he bade fair to become that sad, sad thing, a nervous hypochondriac; but consumption, of the most rapid description, stepped between him and semi-idiocy, and in less than twelvemonths from the failure of our prosperity, I laid the husband of my youth, the father of my children, in the grave.

Roused, at length, from the lethargy of grief by the voice of twofold duty, I turned over in my mind the several means of establishing a home for my children, with a prospect of maintaining it, that the sale of such supernumerary articles as remained from the days of our affluence would effect, and finding it the only business to be undertaken without capital, and anxious, under any circumstances, to keep myself free from pecuniary obligations, I stifled my lady-like prejudices in the anxieties of human nature, and from having played the hostess in my husband's elegant and hospitable home, sank into a lower caste of the same character, as proprietress of a lodging-house. I did not, however, have recourse to that interesting form of advertisement which tells you, that a widow lady, whose daughters are musical, or who is herself of an agreeable disposition, having a larger house than her present circumstances require, (of course in a genteel neighbourhood,) is desirous of adding to her family circle, (felicitous phrase,) by the accession of one or two gentlemen, or ladies, who are anxious to ensure the comforts of society, and a delightful home, to the convenience of a town residence."

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My establishment was situated in one of the private streets off the Strand, which, lying in the very heart of gaiety and business, midway between the courts of law, and close to the theatres, was a favourite locality with East and West Indian merchants, army and navy men on leave, persons engaged in law suits, and provincial families visiting.