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B. Little is known now of the author of these Works, Human and Divine;" but what there is is significant. While he was composing what he calls the crowning jewel of his works—a Low Dutch "Faërie Queene”—(conceive, if you can, that!)—it is said his exhaustion by evaporation was so great, that he kept continually calling for more hollands and water; and that it was his habit while operi intentus to drink like a fish. Hence the term

A. Was he the author of anything good for anything?

B. Why, yes: he may be said to be the author of a great part of his native country, Holland, for it became dry land by his means, if it is good for anything. While he was revising his works, that he might not be interrupted, he hired a house on what was seashore when he took it; but when he had sent the last sheet to press, this house was up the country a long day's journey inland. Wherever he went the waters retired, and were

seen no more.

A. It is said that this is the very volume which gave poor Petrarch his death. He was found dead in his library, with his laurelled head lying on a book. This!

B. And now we will drop the dry book. Nonsense may cease to be nonsense. It is a vice in humour when it runs riot, and forgets itself. The

manner of death of a man said to have been in his life "a fine and deep poet-an excellent scholara real lover—a fast friend-a patriot-a gentleman -and an honest man" is no subject for a jest, however good or bad that jest may be.

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ON THE POEMS

OF

DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

DRUMMOND is a greater poet than he is said to be by the few admirers of early English poetry who have noticed him. It is true his greatness is only occasional. This should not set aside his claim to be eminent among the eminent. The greatest

poets are not always great. Homer has been seen to nod. Milton failed in his paraphrases of the Psalms.* Unfortunately, the critical readers of Drummond discover, first, his faults, and by them estimate his genius-instead of fairly comparing his beauties with his deformities, and striking the

*It is indeed remarkable that the paraphrasts of the Psalms have universally failed, from Milton down to Cowper; and I do not mean to be uncharitable when I express my hearty wish that every good poet who attempts this work may likewise fail as for the bad, we may be sure of them. It may sound like a paradox to say that rendering the prose of those beautiful pieces of inspiration into verse is really turning what is already the finest and noblest poetry into a tinkling sort of prose; but it is very like the truth.

fair balance of his reputation. His innumerable concetti (derived, with all the errors of the poets of the same era, from his study of the poetry of the Italians, and more especially of Petrarch-his preceptor in the sonnet, and brother in love, and in misfortune in that love)-take in some degree 'from his greatness: yet, these errors granted, Drummond is still a true poet. A sincere lover of the early English Muse will not be deterred from searching out his beauties, and, as he finds them, give them their due admiration, because he has been instructed-by those who had eyes perhaps more willing to discover blemishes than beauties-that there are 66 Iweeds which have no business there." He would as soon be dissuaded from wandering in a wood for its violets, because brambles and nettles also grow in luxuriant wildness there for, among these, as if they would be protected by them from the common eye, these lovely children of the wilds have their hiding-places; and so, among the thorns and weeds of Drummond's poetry, you may find little communities of beautiful images, and most of the flowers and much of "the honey of the old woods." Even in his most barren places, some flower may be found blooming alone-some single line of deep beauty, or fine tone, that rewards your patient searching.

The chief qualities of Drummond as a poet are deeply-religious impressions, and holy and arder

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aspirations after a goodness and purity not of earth ; touching pathos; noble imagery; exquisitely smooth versification, and richly-varied expression : — his faults are overlabouring of epithets; occasional quaintness; frequent alliteration, but not so frequent as in other poets of his time; and that worst Italian error in early English poetry to which we have already alluded-the straining after conceits, which, however ingenious they were, and however much admired in their day, have had their day, and are done with as out of date. His finest pieces, especially his sonnets, are wholly free from this fault, and indeed from all fault. He is almost the first of the early poets of England in whose writings is to be found what is called ethical poetry. There is a fine line of Drummond's which has been the father of many like lines, for import and concise construction:

"GOD, various in Names, in essence ONE."

:

Pope was maliciously said to be a poet of fine single lines it would be difficult to find in his works a comprehensive idea more concisely expressed than in this noble line of the neglected Drummond. Indeed, if single thoughts and couplets picked out here and there are to give character to a poet, some of Drummond's, for their richness of painting, depth and concentration of meaning, and harmonious flow, are as fine as the most praised of itope and Dryden. Here is a line, picked out at