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Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,
The biscuit, or confectionary plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd

There sits quiescent on the floods, that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd: | Around her, fanning light her streamers gay;
All this, and more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall,
Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks,
That humour interposed too often makes ;
All this still legible in mem'ry's page,
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honours to thee as my numbers may;
Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere,

So thou, with sails how swift! hast reach'd the
shore,

Not scorn'd in Heav'n, though little noticed here.
Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours,
When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flow'rs,
The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

I prick'd them into paper with a pin,
(And thou wast happier than myself the while,
'Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head, and
Could those few pleasant days again appear, [smile,)
Might one wish bring them, would I wish them here?
I would not trust my heart-the dear delight
Seems so to be desired, perhaps I might.-
But no-what here we call our life is such,
So little to be loved, and thou so much,
That I should ill requite thee to constrain
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast
(The storms all weather'd and the ocean cross'd)
Shoots into port at some well-haven'd isle
Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile,

"Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,"
And thy loved consort on the dang'rous tide
Of life long since has anchor'd by thy side.
But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest,
Always from port withheld, always distress'd—
Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss'd,
Sails ripp'd, seams op'ning wide, and compass lost,
And day by day some current's thwarting force
Sets me more distant from a prosp'rous course.
Yet O the thought that thou art safe, and he !
That thought is joy, arrive what may to me.
My boast is not, that I deduce my birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth;
But higher far my proud pretensions rise—
The son of parents pass'd into the skies.
And now, farewell-Time unrevoked has run
His wonted course, yet what I wish'd is done.
By contemplation's help, not sought in vain,
I seem t' have lived my childhood o'er again ;
To have renew'd the joys that once were mine,
Without the sin of violating thine;

And, while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft-
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.

ERASMUS DARWIN.

[Born, 1732, Died, 1802.]

ERASMUS DARWIN was born at Elton, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, where his father was a private gentleman. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and took the degree of bachelor in medicine; after which, he went to Edinburgh, to finish his medical studies. Having taken a physician's degree at that university, he settled in his profession at Litchfield; and, by a bold and successful display of his skill in one of the first cases to which he was called, established his practice and reputation. About a year after his arrival, he married a Miss Howard, the daughter of a respectable inhabitant of Litchfield, and by that connexion strengthened his interest in the place. He was, in theory and practice, a rigid enemy to the use of wine, and of all intoxicating liquors; and, in the course of his practice, was regarded as a great promoter of temperate habits among the citizens: but he gave a singular instance of his departure from his own theory, within a few years after his

arrival in the very place where he proved the apostle of sobriety. Having one day joined a few friends who were going on a water-party, he got so tipsy after a cold collation, that, on the boat approaching Nottingham, he jumped into the river, and swam ashore. The party called to the philosopher to return; but he walked on deliberately, in his wet clothes, till he reached the market-place of Nottingham, and was there found by his friend, an apothecary of the place, haranguing the town's-people on the benefit of fresh air, till he was persuaded by his friend to come to his house and shift his clothes. Dr. Darwin stammered habitually; but on this occasion wine untied his tongue. In the prime of life, he had the misfortune to break the patella of his knee, in consequence of attempting to drive a carriage of his own Utopian contrivance, which upset at the first experiment.

He lost his first wife, after thirteen years of domestic union. During his widowhood, Mrs.

Pole, the wife of a Mr. Pole, of Redburn, in Derbyshire, brought her children to his house, to be cured of a poison, which they had taken in the shape of medicine, and, by his invitation, she continued with him till the young patients were perfectly cured. He was soon after called to attend the lady, at her own house, in a dangerous fever, and prescribed with more than a physician's interest in her fate. Not being invited to sleep in the house in the night after his arrival, he spent the hours till morning beneath a tree, opposite to her apartment, watching the passing and repassing lights. While the life which he so passionately loved was in danger, he paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet on the dream which predicted to him the death of Laura. Though less favoured by the muse than Petrarch, he was more fortunate in love. Mrs. Pole, on the demise of an aged partner, accepted Dr. Darwin's hand, in 1781; and, in compliance with her inclinations, he removed from Litchfield to practise at Derby. He had a family by his second wife, and continued in high professional reputation till his death, in 1802, which was occasioned by angina pectoris, the result of a sudden cold.

Dr. Darwin was between forty and fifty before he began the principal poem by which he is known. Till then he had written only occasional verses, and of these he was not ostentatious, fearing that it might affect his medical reputation to be thought a poet. When his name as a physician had, however, been established, he ventured, in the year 1781, to publish the first part of his

to build systems of vital sensibility on mere mechanical principles; and in the former, he paints everything to the mind's eye, as if the soul had no pleasure beyond the vivid conception of form, colour, and motion. Nothing makes poetry more lifeless than description by abstract terms and general qualities; but Darwin runs to the opposite extreme of prominently glaring circumstantial description, without shade, relief, or perspective.

His celebrity rose and fell with unexampled rapidity. His poetry appeared at a time peculiarly favourable to innovation, and his attempt to wed poetry and science was a bold experiment, which had some apparent sanction from the triumphs of modern discovery. When Lucretius wrote, science was in her cradle; but modern philosophy had revealed truths in nature more sublime than the marvels of fiction. The Rosicrucian machinery of his poem had, at the first glance, an imposing appearance, and the variety of his allusion was surprising. On a closer view, it was observable that the Botanic goddess, and her Sylphs and Gnomes, were useless, from their having no employment; and tiresome, from being the mere pretexts for declamation. The variety of allusion is very whimsical. Dr. Franklin is compared to Cupid; whilst Hercules, Lady Melbourne, Emma Crewe, Brindley's canals, and sleeping cherubs, sweep on like images in a dream. Tribes and grasses are likened to angels, and the truffle is rehearsed as a subterranean empress. His laborious ingenuity in find

"Botanic Garden." Mrs. Anna Seward, in hering comparisons is frequently like that of Hervey

life of Darwin, declares herself the authoress of the opening lines of the poem ; but as she had never courage to make this pretension during Dr. Darwin's life, her veracity on the subject is exposed to suspicion*. In 1789 and 1792, the second and third part of his botanic poem appeared. In 1793 and 1796, he published the first and second parts of his "Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life." In 1801, he published "Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening ;" and, about the same time, a small treatise on female education, which attracted little notice. After his death appeared his poem, "The Temple of Nature," a mere echo of the "Botanic Garden."

Darwin was a materialist in poetry no less than in philosophy. In the latter, he attempts

in his "Meditations," or of Flavel in his "Gardening Spiritualized."

If Darwin, however, was not a good poet, it may be owned that he is frequently a bold personifier, and that some of his insulated passages are musical and picturesque. His Botanic Garden once pleased many better judges than his affected biographer, Anna Seward; it fascinated even the taste of Cowper, who says, in conjunction with Hayley,

"We, therefore pleased, extol thy song,
Though various yet complete,
Rich in embellishment, as strong
And learned as 'tis sweet.

And deem the bard, whoe'er he be,
And howsoever known,

That will not weave a wreath for thee,
Unworthy of his own."

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Defiled each hallow'd fane, and sacred wood,
And, drunk with fury, swell'd the Nile with blood;
Waved his proud banner o'er the Theban states,
And pour'd destruction through her hundred gates;
In dread divisions march'd the marshal'd bands,
And swarming armies blacken'd all the lands,
By Memphis these to Ethiop's sultry plains,
And those to Hammon's sand-encircled fanes.
Slow as they pass'd, the indignant temples frown'd,
Low curses muttering from the vaulted ground;
Long aisles of cypress waved their deepen'd glooms,
And quivering spectres grinn'd amid the tombs !
Prophetic whispers breathed from Sphinx's tongue,
And Memnon's lyre with hollow murmurs rung;
Burst from each pyramid expiring groans,
And darker shadows stretch'd their lengthen'd cones.
Day after day their deathful route they steer,
Lust in the van, and Rapine in the rear.

Gnomes! as they march'd, you hid the gather'd fruits,

The bladed grass, sweet grains, and mealy roots; Scared the tired quails that journey'd o'er their heads,

Retain'd the locusts in their earthy beds;
Bade on your sands no night-born dews distil,
Stay'd with vindictive hands the scanty rill.—
Loud o'er the camp the fiend of Famine shrieks,
Calls all her brood and champs her hundred beaks;
O'er ten square leagues her pennons broad expand,
And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand:
Perch'd on her crest the griffin Discord clings,
And giant Murder rides between her wings;
Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill,
And showers of tears in blended streams distil;
High poised in air her spiry neck she bends,
Rolls her keen eye, her dragon claws extends,
Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop
With iron fangs the decimated troop.

Now o'er their head the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,

And the live desert pants, and heaves beneath;
Tinged by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies,
In red arcades the billowy plain surround,
And whirling turrets stalk along the ground.
-Long ranks in vain their shining blades extend,
To demon-gods their knees unhallow'd bend,
Wheel in wide circle, form in hollow square,
And now they front, and now they fly the war,
Pierce the deaf tempest with lamenting cries,
Press their parch'd lips, and close their blood-shot

eyes.

Gnomes! o'er the waste you led your myriad powers,
Climb'd on the whirls, and aim'd the flinty showers!
Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge,
Clouds follow clouds, and mountains mountains

urge;

Wave over wave the driving desert swims,
Bursts o'er their heads, inhumes their struggling

limbs ;

Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush, Hosts march o'er hosts, and nations nations crush

Wheeling in air the winged islands fall,
And one great earthy ocean covers all!-
Then ceased the storm,-Night bow'd his Ethiop
brow

To earth, and listen'd to the groans below,—
Grim Horror shook,-awhile the living hill
Heaved with convulsive throes, and all was still!

FROM CANTO III.

Persuasion to Mothers to suckle their own Children.

CONNUBIAL Fair! whom no fond transport warms
To lull your infant in maternal arms;
Who, bless'd in vain with tumid bosoms, hear
His tender wailings with unfeeling ear;
The soothing kiss and milky rill deny

To the sweet pouting lip, and glistening eye !—
Ah! what avails the cradle's damask roof,
The eider bolster, and embroider'd woof!
Oft hears the gilded couch unpitied plains,
And many a tear the tassel'd cushion stains!
No voice so sweet attunes his cares to rest,
So soft no pillow as his mother's breast!—
Thus charm'd to sweet repose, when twilight hours
Shed their soft influence on celestial bowers,
The cherub Innocence, with smile divine,
Shuts his white wings, and sleeps on beauty's shrine.

FROM THE SAME.

Midnight Conflagration; Catastrophe of the families of Woodmason and Molesworth.

FROM dome to dome when flames infuriate climb,
Sweep the long street, invest the tower sublime;
Gild the tall vanes, amid the astonish'd night,
And reddening Heaven returns the sanguine
light;

While with vast strides and bristling hair aloof
Pale Danger glides along the falling roof;
And giant Terror howling in amaze
Moves his dark limbs across the lurid blaze.
Nymphs! you first taught the gelid wave to rise,
Hurl'd in resplendent arches to the skies;
In iron cells condensed the airy spring,
And imp'd the torrent with unfailing wing;
-On the fierce flames the shower impetuous falls,
And sudden darkness shrouds the shatter'd walls;
Steam, smoke, and dust, in blended volumes roll,
And night and silence repossess the pole.

Where were ye, Nymphs! in those disastrous

hours,

Which wrapp'd in flames Augusta's sinking towers! Why did ye linger in your wells and groves, When sad Woodmason mourn'd her infant loves? When thy fair daughters with unheeded screams, Ill-fated Molesworth! call'd the loitering streams!The trembling nymph on bloodless fingers hung, Eyes from the tottering wall the distant throng,

With ceaseless shrieks her sleeping friends alarms, Drops with singed hair into her lover's arms,— The illumined mother seeks with footsteps fleet, Where hangs the safe balcony o'er the street, Wrapp'd in her sheet her youngest hope suspends, And panting lowers it to her tiptoe friends; Again she hurries on affection's wings,

And now a third, and now a fourth she brings;
Safe all her babes, she smooths her horrent brow,
And bursts through bickering flames, unscorch'd
below,

So by her son arraign'd, with feet unshod,
O'er burning bars indignant Emma trod.

E'en on the day when Youth with Beauty wed,
The flames surprised them in their nuptial bed;—
Seen at the opening sash with bosom bare,
With wringing hands, and dark dishevel'd hair,
The blushing bride with wild disorder'd charms
Round her fond lover winds her ivory arms;
Beat, as they clasp, their throbbing hearts with
fear,

And many a kiss is mix'd with many a tear ;Ah me! in vain the labouring engines pour Round their pale limbs the ineffectual shower-Then crash'd the floor, while shrinking crowds retire,

And Love and Virtue sunk amid the fire !With piercing screams afflicted strangers mourn, And their white ashes mingle in their urn.

FROM CANTO IV.

The heroic Attachment of the Youth in Holland, who attended his mistress in the plague.

THUS when the Plague, upborne on Belgian air, Look'd through the mist and shook his clotted hair;

O'er shrinking nations steer'd malignant clouds, And rain'd destruction on the gasping crowds;

The beauteous Ægle felt the venom'd dart*,
Slow roll'd her eye, and feebly throbb'd her heart;
Each fervid sigh seem'd shorter than the last,
And starting Friendship shunn'd her as she pass'd.
-With weak unsteady step the fainting maid
Seeks the cold garden's solitary shade,
Sinks on the pillowy moss her drooping head,
And prints with lifeless limbs her leafy bed.
-On wings of love her plighted swain pursues,
Shades her from winds, and shelters her from dews,
Extends on tapering poles the canvas roof,
Spreads o'er the straw-wove mat the flaxen woof,
Sweet buds and blossoms on her bolster strows,
And binds his kerchief round her aching brows;
Soothes with soft kiss, with tender accents charms,
And clasps the bright infection in his arms.-
With pale and languid smiles the grateful fair
Applauds his virtues, and rewards his care;
Mourns with wet cheek her fair companions fled
On timorous step, or number'd with the dead;
Calls to her bosom all its scatter'd rays,
And pours on Thyrsis the collected blaze;
Braves the chill night, caressing and caress'd,
And folds her hero-lover to her breast.—
Less bold, Leander at the dusky hour
Eyed, as he swam, the far love-lighted tower;
Breasted with struggling arms the tossing wave,
And sunk benighted in the watery grave.
Less bold, Tobias claim'd the nuptial bed
Where seven fond lovers by a fiend had bled;
And drove, instructed by his angel-guide,
The enamour'd demon from the fatal bride.-
-Sylphs! while your winnowing pinions fann'd the
And shed gay visions o'er the sleeping pair; [air,
Love round their couch effused his rosy breath,
And with his keener arrows conquer'd Death.

*When the plague raged in Holland, in 1636, a young girl was seized with it, had three carbuncles, and was removed to a garden, where her lover, who was betrothed to her, attended her as a nurse, and slept with her as his wife. He remained uninfected, and she recovered, and was married to him. The story is related by Vinc. Fabricius, in the Misc. Cur. Ann. II. Obs. 188.

JAMES BEATTIE.

[Born, 1735. Died, 1803.]

JAMES BEATTIE was born in the parish of Lawrence Kirk, in Kincardineshire, Scotland. His father, who rented a small farm in that parish, died when the poet was only seven years old; but the loss of a protector was happily supplied to him by his elder brother, who kept him at school till he obtained a bursary at the Marischal College, Aberdeen. At that university he took the degree of master of arts; and, at nineteen, he entered on the study of divinity, supporting himself, in the mean time, by teaching a school in the neighbouring parish. Whilst he was in this obscure situation, some pieces

of verse, which he transmitted to the Scottish Magazine, gained him a little local celebrity. Mr. Garden, an eminent Scottsh lawyer, afterwards Lord Gardenstone, and Lord Monboddo, encouraged him as an ingenious young man, and introduced him to the tables of the neighbouring gentry: an honour not usually extended to a parochial schoolmaster. In 1757, he stood candidate for the place of usher in the highschool of Aberdeen. He was foiled by a competitor, who surpassed him in the minutiae of Latin grammar; but his character as a scholar suffered so little by the disappointment, that at

the next vacancy he was called to the place without a trial. He had not been long at this school, when, in 1761, he published a volume of Original Poems and Translations which (it speaks much for the critical clemency of the times) were favourably received, and highly commended in the English Reviews. So little satisfied was the author himself with those early effusions, that, excepting four, which he admitted to a subsequent edition of his works, he was anxious to have them consigned to oblivion; and he destroyed every copy of the volume which he could procure. About the age of twenty-six, he obtained the chair of Moral Philosophy in the Marischal College of Aberdeen, a promotion which he must have owed to his general reputa- | tion in literature: but it is singular, that the friend who first proposed to solicit the High Constable of Scotland to obtain this appointment, should have grounded the proposal on the merit of Beattie's poetry. In the volume already mentioned there can scarcely be said to be a budding promise of genius.

Upon his appointment to this professorship, which he held for forty years, he immediately prepared a course of lectures for the students; and gradually compiled materials for those prose works, on which his name would rest with considerable reputation, if he were not known as a poet. It is true, that he is not a first-rate metaphysician; and the Scotch, in undervaluing his powers of abstract and close reasoning, have been disposed to give him less credit than he deserves, as an elegant and amusing writer. But the English, who must be best able to judge of his style, admire it for an ease, familiarity, and an Anglicism that is not to be found even in the correct and polished diction of Blair. His mode of illustrating abstract questions is fanciful and interesting.

In 1765, he published a poem entitled "The Judgment of Paris," which his biographer, Sir William Forbes, did not think fit to rank among his works*. For more obvious reasons Sir William excluded his lines, written in the subsequent year, on the proposal for erecting a monument to Churchill in Westminster Abbey-lines which have no beauty or dignity to redeem their bitter expression of hatred. On particular subjects, Beattie's virtuous indignation was apt to be hysterical. Dr. Reid and Dr. Campbell hated the principles of David Hume as sincerely as the author of the Essay on Truth; but they never betrayed more than philosophical hostility, while Beattie used to speak of the propriety of excluding Hume from civil society.

His reception of Gray, when that poet visited Scotland in 1765, shows the enthusiasm of his

* It is to be found in the Scottish Magazine; and, if I may judge from an obscure recollection of it, is at least as well worthy of revival as some of his minor pieces. [See it also in the Aldine edition of Beattie, p. 97.]

literary character in a finer light. Gray's mind was not in poetry only, but in many other respects, peculiarly congenial with his own; and nothing could exceed the cordial and reverential welcome which Beattie gave to his illustrious visitant. In 1770, he published his "Essay on Truth," which had a rapid sale, and extensive popularity; and within a twelvemonth after, the first part of his "Minstrel.” The poem appeared at first anonymously; but its beauties were immediately and justly appreciated. The second part was not published till 1774. When Gray criticised the Minstrel he objected to its author, that, after many stanzas, the description went on and the narrative stopped+. Beattie very justly answered to this criticism, that he meant the poem for description, not for incident. But he seems to have forgotten this proper apology, when he mentions in one of his letters his intention of producing Edwin, in some subsequent books, in the character of a warlike bard inspiring his countrymen to battle, and contributing to repel their invaders. This intention, if he ever seriously entertained it, might have produced some new kind of poem, but would have formed an incongruous counterpart to the piece as it now stands, which, as a picture of still life, and a vehicle of contemplative morality, has a charm that is inconsistent with the bold evolutions of heroic narrative. After having portrayed his young enthusiast with such advantage in a state of visionary quiet, it would have been too violent a transition to have begun in a new book to surround him with dates of time and names of places. The interest which we attach to Edwin's character, would have been lost in a more ambitious effort to make him a greater or more important, or a more locally defined being. It is the solitary growth of his genius, and his isolated and mystic abstraction from mankind, that fix our attention on the romantic features of that genius. The simplicity of his fate does not divert us from his mind to his circumstances. A more unworldly air is given to his character, that instead of being tacked to the fate of kings, he was one "Who envied not, who never thought of kings ;" and that, instead of mingling with the troubles which deface the creation, he only existed to make his thoughts the mirror of its beauty and magnificence. Another English critic§ has blamed Edwin's vision of the fairies as too splendid and artificial for a simple youth; but

[ Gray complained of a want of action. "As to description," he says, "I have always thought that it made the most graceful ornament of poetry, but never ought to make the subject."]

[This was no written intention, but one delivered orally in reply to a question from Sir William Forbes. An invasion however, had been for long a settled pointsome great service that the minstrel was to do his country; but his plan was never concerted.]

§ Dr. Aikin.

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