Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine?

Who up the lofty diapason roll

Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,

Then let them down again into the soul!
Now rising love they fanned; now pleasing dole
They breathed, in tender musings, through the heart;
And now a graver sacred strain they stole,
As when seraphic hands a hymn impart :
Wild-warbling Nature all, above the reach of Art!

Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state,
Of Caliphs old, who on the Tigris' shore,
In mighty Bagdad, populous and great,

Held their bright court, where was of ladies store;
And verse, love, music still the garland wore :
When sleep was coy, the bard, in waiting there,
Cheered the lone midnight with the Muse's lore;
Composing music bade his dreams be fair,
And music lent new gladness to the morning air.
Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran
Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell,
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began
(So worked the wizard) wintry storms to swell,
As heaven and earth they would together mell:
At doors and windows, threatening, seemed to call
The demons of the tempest, growling fell,
Yet the least entrance found they none at all;
Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall.

And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,
That played, in waving lights, from place to place,
And shed a roseate smile on Nature's face.
Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,
So fleece with clouds, the pure ethereal space;
Ne could it e'er such melting forms display,
As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.

No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no!
My Muse will not attempt your fairy-land;
She has no colours that like you can glow:
To catch your vivid scenes, too gross her hand.
But sure it is, was ne'er a subtler band

Than these same guileful angel-seeming sprites, Who thus in dreams, voluptuous, soft, and bland, Poured all the Arabian heaven upon our nights, And blest them oft besides with more refined delights.

They were in sooth a most enchanting train,
Even feigning virtue; skilful to unite
With evil good, and strew with pleasure pain.
But for those fiends whom blood and broils delight;
Who hurl the wretch, as if to hell outright,
Down, down black gulfs, where sullen waters sleep,
Or hold him clambering all the fearful night
On beetling cliffs, or pent in ruins deep;

They, till due time should serve, were bid far hence to keep.

Ye guardian spirits, to whom man is dear,
From these foul demons shield the midnight gloom!
Angels of fancy and of love, be near,
And o'er the blank of sleep diffuse a bloom!
Evoke the sacred shades of Greece and Rome,
And let them virtue with a look impart :
But chief, awhile, O! lend us from the tomb
Those long-lost friends for whom in love we smart,
And fill with pious awe and joy-mixed woe the heart.
(From Book i.)

The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall,
Whilst thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
Rule, Britannia, &c.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies,
Serves but to root thy native oak.
Rule, Britannia, &c.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe and thy renown.
Rule, Britannia, &c.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
Rule, Britannia, &c.

The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest isle, with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair!
Rule, Britannia, &c.

In 1897 the Rev. D. C. Tovey published a good edition of The Poetical Works of James Thomson, with critical appendices and a memoir; and there is a convenient Selection by J. Logie Robertson (Clarendon Press, 1891). Murdoch and Dr Johnson were early biographers; there are also Lives by Gilfillan, by W. M. Rossetti, and by W. Bayne ('Famous Scots,' 1898). A German monograph by Schmeding appeared in 1889: and Professor Léon Morel is the author of a singularly full monograph on James Thomson, sa l'ie et ses Euvres (1895).

David Mallet (1705?-65), author of some popular ballad stanzas, and some florid unimpassioned poems in blank verse, was a successful but unprincipled literary adventurer. His original name was Malloch, the name adopted by many of the Macgregors when their clan was broken up (1603). His father was said to have kept an inn at Crieff, but seems rather to have been the well-to-do tenant of the farm of Dunruchan, near Muthill in Perthshire. Educated at Crieff parish school and Edinburgh University, where he made the acquaintance of James Thomson, Mallet went to London as tutor in the Duke of Montrose's family in 1723. Next year his ballad of William and Margaret appeared; and he soon numbered among his friends Young, Pope, and other authors, to whom his assiduous attentions, his agreeable manners, and literary tastes rendered his society acceptable. In 1726 he began to write his name Mallet, for there is not one Englishman,' he said, 'that can pronounce Malloch;' and

Dennis had made a jest on Moloch that rankled. A great dandy, he succeeded not merely in keeping clear of Scotticisms in his published works, but 'in clearing his tongue of his native pronunciation.'

In 1728 he published his poem the Excursion, written in servile imitation of the blank verse of Thomson. By command of Frederick, Prince of Wales, then head of the Opposition, he wrote, in conjunction with Thomson, the masque of Alfred, which was performed in 1740, at Cliefden, the prince's summer residence. In this slight dramatic performance—afterwards altered by Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury Lane in 1751– 'Rule, Britannia,' first appeared. In the reissue Mallet indirectly claimed the song-and all that was best in the masque-as his own. But it seems to be fatal to his claim that the song was published in 1752 as by Thomson. In the same year (1740) he wrote a Life of Bacon, prefixed to an edition of the works. In 1742 he was appointed under-secretary to the Prince of Wales; and a fortunate second marriage with a daughter of Lord Carlisle's steward added to his income. Both Mallet and his wife were professed deists. When Gibbon the historian left Oxford and entered the Roman Catholic Church, he went to live in Mallet's house, but was rather scandalised than reclaimed by the philosophy of his host. In 1749 Mallet figured as the ostensible editor of Bolingbroke's Patriot King -insulting the memory of his benefactor Pope; and the peer rewarded him by bequeathing to him the whole of his works, manuscripts, and library. Mallet's love of money and freethinking views were equally gratified by this bequest; he published the collected works of Bolingbroke in 1754, and drew down

on Bolingbroke's head and his own Johnson's famous sarcasm (see above at page 203), in which Mallet figured as the hungry Scotchman whom Bolingbroke hired for half-a-crown to fire off after his death the gun he was himself too great a coward to discharge. The accession of George III. opened a way for all literary Scotsmen subservient to the Crown, and Mallet was soon a worshipper of the favourite Lord Bute. He dedicated his tragedy of Elvira (1763) to Bute, and was rewarded with the sinecure office of Keeper of the Book of Entries for the port of London, worth £300 a year.

Gibbon anticipated that if ever his friend Mallet should attain poetic fame, it would be by his Amyntor and Theodora (1747), a blank-verse tale of a hermit in St Kilda; but, contrariwise, the poetic repute of Mallet has rested on his ballads, and chiefly on his William and Margaret, written about the age of twenty-two. Critics from Dr Percy down gave high praise to the ballad; attempts were at the same time made-in vain— to prove it a wholesale plagiarism. But it is sufficiently obvious that Mallet used freely both the ideas and the words of actual old ballads. Thus the injured maid had often returned from

her grave to reproach her undoer; and the hungry worm and the cock crowing are precise parallels to the channerin' worm and the cock in 'The Wife o' Usher's Well' (see Vol. I. p. 537). Mallet confessed to having followed a verse in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle :

When it was grown to dark midnight,

And all were fast asleep,

In came Margaret's grimly ghost,

And stood at William's feet.

In the first printed copies of Mallet's ballad the first two lines were all but identical:

When all was wrapt in dark midnight,
And all were fast asleep.

William and Margaret.
'Twas at the silent solemn hour,
When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet.
Her face was like an April morn

Clad in a wintry cloud;
And clay-cold was her lily hand
That held her sable shroud.
So shall the fairest face appear,

When youth and years are flown :
Such is the robe that kings must wear,
When death has reft their crown.

Her bloom was like the springing flower, That sips the silver dew;

The rose was budded in her cheek,

Just opening to the view.

But love had, like the canker-worm,
Consumed her early prime;

The rose grew pale, and left her cheek,
She died before her time.

'Awake!' she cried, 'thy true love calls,
Come from her midnight grave:
Now let thy pity hear the maid

Thy love refused to save.

'This is the dark and dreary hour

When injured ghosts complain;
When yawning graves give up their dead,
To haunt the faithless swain.

'Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
Thy pledge and broken oath!
And give me back my maiden vow,
And give me back my troth.

'Why did you promise love to me,

And not that promise keep? Why did you swear my eyes were bright, Yet leave those eyes to weep?

'How could you say my face was fair,

And yet that face forsake?
How could you win my virgin heart,
Yet leave that heart to break?

'Why did you say my lip was sweet,

And made the scarlet pale?
And why did I, young, witless maid!
Believe the flattering tale?

'That face, alas! no more is fair,

Those lips no longer red:

Dark are my eyes, now closed in death, And every charm is fled.

'The hungry worm my sister is ;

This winding-sheet I wear :

And cold and weary lasts our night,

Till that last morn appear.

'But hark! the cock has warned me hence; A long and last adieu!

Come see, false man, how low she lies,
Who died for love of you.'

The lark sung loud; the morning smiled
With beams of rosy red:

Pale William quaked in every limb,
And raving left his bed.

He hied him to the fatal place

Where Margaret's body lay;

And stretched him on the green-grass turf
That wrapt her breathless clay.

And thrice he called on Margaret's name,
And thrice he wept full sore;
Then laid his cheek to her cold grave,
And word spake never more!

The Birks of Invermay.

The smiling morn, the breathing spring,
Invite the tuneful birds to sing;
And, while they warble from the spray,
Love melts the universal lay.
Let us, Amanda, timely wise,

Like them, improve the hour that flies;
And in soft raptures waste the day,
Among the birks of Invermay.

For soon the winter of the year,
And age, life's winter, will appear;
At this thy living bloom will fade,
As that will strip the verdant shade.
Our taste of pleasure then is o'er,
The feathered songsters are no more;
And when they drop and we decay,
Adieu the birks of Invermay!

the Ballantyne brothers. The Dragon of Wantley (1744) was popular on the stage. In all he produced some two hundred works. It was of him it was said that 'he led a life free of reproach, and hanged himself October 4th, 1743.' From Henry Carey, as Lord Macaulay noted, 'descended that Edmund Kean who in our time transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago, and Othello.' Carey's poem of Namby Pamby has added a word to the English language. It is a burlesque of the child-poems of Ambrose Philips, and is a reductio ad absurdum in child-language, 'Namby Pamby Pilli-pis,' the name of the poet, corresponding with 'rhimypimed on missy-mis.' The reference is to the 'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,' and 'Timely blossom, infant fair' style of odes by Ambrose Philips.

Namby Pamby: or, a Panegyric on the new Versification addressed to A— P, Esq.

'Nauty Pauty Jack-a-dandy
Stole a piece of sugar-candy
From the Grocer's shoppy-shop,

And away did hoppy-hop.'

All ye poets of the age,
All ye witlings of the stage,
Learn your jingles to reform :
Crop your numbers, and conform :
Let your little verses flow
Gently, sweetly, row by row.
Let the verse the subject fit,
Little subject, little wit.
Namby Pamby is your guide,
Albion's joy, Hibernia's pride.
Namby Pamby Pilli-pis,
Rhimy-pim'd on missy-mis.
As an actor does his part,
So the nurses get by heart
Namby Pamby's little rhymes,
Little jingle, little chimes.
Namby Pamby ne'er will die
While the nurse sings lullaby.
Namby Pamby 's doubly mild,
Once a man, and twice a child;
To his hanging-sleeves restor❜d,
Now he foots it like a lord;
Now he pumps his little wits,
All by little tiny bits.

Now methinks I hear him say,
Boys and girls, come out to play,
Moon does shine as bright as day. . .
Now he sings of Jacky Horner
Sitting in the chimney corner,
Eating of a Christmas pie,
Putting in his thumb, oh, fie!
Putting in, oh, fie! his thumb,
Pulling out, oh, strange! a plum.
Now he acts the Grenadier,
Calling for a pot of beer.
Where's his money? he's forgot,
Get him gone, a drunken sot.
Now on cock-horse does he ride;
And anon on timber stride,
See-and-saw and Sacch'ry down,
London is a gallant town.

In Chrononhotonthologos the Great, a burlesque of the bombast of the stage, and much ado about nothing, Bombardinion, general of Queerummania, reports an invasion of the Antipodeans, but defeats them. Meanwhile the King falls in love with the captive Queen, and quarrels with the general, who first kills the King and then himself. The plot is -intentionally, it may be presumed-utterly silly and senseless, but there are amusing passages, the most being made of the fantastic names.

SCENE.-An Anti-Chamber in the Palace. Enter RIG-
DUM-FUNNIDOS and ALDIBORONTIPHOSCOPHORNIO.
Rig-Fun. Aldiborontiphoscophornio !
Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?

Aldi. Fatigu'd with the tremendous toils of war,
Within his tent, on downy couch succumbent,
Himself he unfatigues with gentle slumbers,
Lull'd by the cheerful trumpet's gladsome clangour,
The noise of drums, and thunder of artillery,
He sleeps supine amidst the din of war.
And yet 'tis not definitively sleep;
Rather a kind of doze, a waking slumber,
That sheds a stupefaction o'er his senses;

For now he nods and snores; anon he starts;
Then nods and snores again. If this be sleep,
Tell me, ye gods! what mortal man's awake!
What says my friend to this?

Rig.-Fun. Say! I say he sleeps dog-sleep: What a plague would you have me say?

Aldi. O impious thought! O curst insinuation!
As if great Chrononhotonthologos

To animals detestable and vile
Had aught the least similitude!

SCENE.

BOMBARDINION'S Tent. KING and BOMBARDINION, at a table, with two Ladies. Bomb. This honour, royal sir! so royalizes The royalty of your most royal actions,

The dumb can only utter forth your praise;

For we, who speak, want words to tell our meaning.
Here! fill the goblet with Falernian wine,
And, while our monarch drinks, bid the shrill trumpet
Tell all the gods, that we propine their healths.

King. Hold, Bombardinion, I esteem it fit,
With so much wine, to eat a little bit.

Bomb. See that the table instantly be spread,
With all that art and nature can produce.
Traverse from pole to pole; sail round the globe,
Bring every eatable that can be eat:

The king shall eat; tho' all mankind be starv'd.

Cook. I am afraid his majesty will be starv'd, before I can run round the world for a dinner; besides, where's the money?

King. Ha! dost thou prattle, contumacious slave? Guards, seize the villain! broil him, fry him, stew him; Ourselves shall eat him out of mere revenge.

Cook. O pray, your majesty, spare my life; there's some nice cold pork in the pantry: I'll hash it for your majesty in a minute.

King. Be thou first hash'd in hell, audacious slave.
[Kills him, and turns to BOMBARDINION.

Hash'd pork! shall Chrononhotonthologos
Be fed with swine's flesh, and at second-hand?
Now, by the gods! thou dost insult us, general!
Bomb. The gods can witness, that I little thought

Bomb. A blow! shall Bombardinion take a blow? Blush! blush, thou sun! start back thou rapid ocean! Hills! vales! seas! mountains! all commixing crumble, And into chaos pulverize the world; For Bombardinion has receiv'd a blow, And Chrononhotonthologos shall die. King. What means the traitor? Bomb.

Thus I defy thee!

[Draws.

Traitor in thy teeth, [They fight; he kills the King. Ha! what have I done?

Go, call a coach, and let a coach be call'd;
And let the man that calls it be the caller;
And, in his calling, let him nothing call,
But coach! coach! coach! Oh! for a coach, ye gods!
[Exit raving; returns with a Doctor.
Bomb. How fares your majesty?

Doct.
My lord, he's dead.
Bomb. Ha! dead! impossible! it cannot be !
I'd not believe it, tho' himself should swear it.
Go join his body to his soul again,

Or, by this light, thy soul shall quit thy body.

Doct. My lord, he 's far beyond the power of physic,
His soul has left his body and this world.
Bomb. Then go to t' other world and fetch it back.
[Kills him.

And, if I find thou triflest with me there,
I'll chase thy shade through myriads of orbs,
And drive thee far beyond the verge of Nature.
Ha!-Call'st thou, Chrononhotonthologos?

I come! your faithful Bombardinion comes!
He comes in worlds unknown to make new wars,
And gain thee empires numerous as the stars.

[Kills himself.

Carey thus tells the occasion of his classical lyric, Sally in our Alley, the music of which is also his 'A shoemaker's apprentice making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields: from whence proceeding to the Farthing Piehouse, he gave her a collation of buns, cheese-cakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale; through all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little sketch of nature.' The song, he adds, was more than once mentioned with approbation by 'the divine Addison.' There is no good ground for crediting him with the authorship of God save the King, though after his death his son claimed it for him.

Sally in our Alley.

Of all the girls that are so smart, There's none like pretty Sally: She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

There is no lady in the land
Is half so sweet as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

Her father he makes cabbage-nets,

And through the streets does cry 'em : Her mother she sells laces long,

To such as please to buy 'em :

But sure such folks could ne'er beget
So sweet a girl as Sally!
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

When she is by, I leave my work
(I love her so sincerely),
My master comes like any Turk,
And bangs me most severely :
But let him bang his belly full,
I'll bear it all for Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

Of all the days that's in the week,
I dearly love but one day,

And that's the day that comes betwixt
A Saturday and Monday.

For then I'm dressed all in my best,

To walk abroad with Sally; She is the darling of my heart, And she lives in our alley.

My master carries me to church,
And often am I blamed,
Because I leave him in the lurch

As soon as text is named:

I leave the church in sermon time,
And slink away to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

When Christmas comes about again,
O then I shall have money;
I'll hoard it up and box it all,

I'll give it to my honey:

I would it were ten thousand pounds,
I'd give it all to Sally;

She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.

My master and the neighbours all
Make game of me and Sally;
And (but for her) I'd better be

A slave, and row a galley :

But when my seven long years are out,
O then I'll marry Sally,

O then we'll wed, and then we'll bed,
But not in our alley.

Philip Doddridge, Nonconformist divine, was born in London, 26th June 1702. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shepperton in Middlesex by the Act of Uniformity in 1602; and his father, a well-to-do oilman in London, married the only daughter of a German Lutheran pastor who had fled from Prague to escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Palatine. In

1712 Doddridge was sent to school at Kingstonupon-Thames; but both his parents dying, he was removed to St Albans in 1715, and whilst there was admitted a member of the Nonconforming congregation. When, in 1718, the Duchess of Bedford offered to educate him at either university for the Church of England, Doddridge declined from conscientious scruples. Dr Clarke, Presbyterian minister of St Albans, befriended him, and in 1719 he was placed at a Dissenting academy at Kibworth in Leicestershire. Here for three years he pursued his studies for the ministry, cultivating a taste for elegant literature, and, as appears from his correspondence, usually in love with somebody, and in brisk correspondence with her. The playfulness and even gaiety of some of these epistles are remarkable in one so staid and devout, and suggest Cowper's.

From his first sermon, delivered at the age of twenty, Doddridge became a marked preacher among the Dissenters, and had calls to various congregations. He declined several calls because the congregations inviting were 'a very rigid kind of people,' or were too orthodox; but in 1729 he settled at Northampton, becoming also the head of a theological academy. He believed that he was 'in all the most important points a Calvinist ;' but the orthodox suspected him, and Stoughton holds that his view of the Trinity was Sabellian. But even those who suspected his orthodoxy, and thought his truly Catholic liberality too allembracing, revered his personal piety. He had a happy family life and many devoted friends. He first appeared as an author in 1730, when he published a pamphlet on the Means of Reviv ing the Dissenting Interest. His Sermons on the Education of Children (1732), Sermons to Young People (1735), Ten Sermons on the Power and Grace of Christ (1736), and Practical Discourses on Regeneration (1741) were all well received; and The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul (1745) is one of the few works of practical religion which has been accepted by all denomi nations of evangelical Christians as next to the Bible the best aid to the devout life, and has been translated into French, Dutch, German, Danish, Gaelic, Welsh, Tamil, and other tongues. In 1747 appeared Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain by the Rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, Sept. 21, 1745-the life of a Scottish officer who served with distinction under Marlborough, and from a gay libertine life was suddenly converted to the strictest piety by a visible representation of Christ upon the cross amidst a blaze of light, and the audible words: 'O sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns?' The Family Expositor, containing a Version and Paraphrase of the New Testament, with Critical Notes and a Practical Improvement (6 vols. 1739-56), also received a wide welcome. Doddridge's health failing, he was, in 1751, advised to remove to a