To grace romantic Glory's genial rites : The minstrel struck his kindred string, Or bore the radiant red-cross shield In rude affrays untaught to fear With fairy trappings fraught, and shook their plumes sublime. "Such were the themes of regal praise Had quench'd the fires of feudal rage, Adventurous Valour idly bleeds: By social imagery beguil'd, He moulds his harp to manners mild; Nor longer weaves the wreath of war alone, Nor hails the hostile forms that grac'd the "And now he tunes his plausive lay Where Thames, yet rural, rolls an artless Who love to view the vale divine, To kings, who rule a filial land, Should Treason arm the weakest To these his heart-felt praise he bears, And with new rapture hastes to greet This festal morn, that longs to meet, With luckiest auspices, the laughing Spring: And opes her glad career, with blessings on her wing! ON HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH-DAY, JUNE 4TH, 1788. "The noblest bards of Albion's choir Have struck of old this festal lyre. Of Britain's bay to bloom on Chaucer's brow: In tones majestic hence he told "Won from the shepherd's simple meed, The whispers wild of Mulla's reed, Sage Spenser wak'd his lofty lay O'er the proud theme new lustre to diffuse, From fabling Fancy's inmost store A rich romantic robe he bore; And o'er his virgin queen the fairy texture flung. "At length the matchless Dryden came, Does the mean incense of promiscuous praise, His partial homage, tuned to kings! Be mine, to catch his manlier chord, Rous'd to revenge, by love subdued; And still, with transport, new, the strains to trace, "Had these blest bards been call'd, to pay Each had confess'd a fairer throne, His colourings, warm from Fiction's loom, And deck'd with truth alone the lay; All real here, the bard had seen The glories of his pictur'd queen! The tuneful Dryden had not flatter'd here, His lyre had blameless been, his tribute all sincere!" Warton had a fine eye and a feeling heart for nature-as indeed he had for every thing good-and perhaps some of his unambitious descriptive verses may please you more than his statelier Odes. It has been said that they are rather deficient in sentiment-too purely descriptive; some of them are so -others not-and we think that objection will by none be felt to lie against his delightful lines entitled "The Hamlet.' Headley calls it "a most exquisite little piece," and says "it contains such a selection of beautiful rural images as perhaps no other poem of equal length in our language presents us with." Headley, we think, was a Trinity man, and as such must have loved Warton, and his praise may need pruning; but he was a good judge because a fine genius. "The Hamlet" is "written on Whichwood Forest" which lies towards the western side of Oxfordshire, and near the Poet's parish of Cuddington. INSCRIPTION IN A HERMITAGE. "Beneath this stony roof reclin'd "Within my limits lone and still "At morn I take my custom'd round, I teach in winding wreaths to stray Fantastic ivy's gadding spray. "At eve, within yon studious nook, "While such pure joys my bliss create, And to the world's tumultuous stage Prefer the blameless hermitage ?" Headley remarks, too, that the leading idea of these lines was suggested by an account of the life of a peasant in Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island." Dr Mant agrees with him; but we see small reason or none for thinking so, and believe that the "leading idea," which is obvious to all mankind, was suggested to Warton many hundred times during his walks in the Forest of Whichwood. Fletcher's stanzas, however, are" beautiful exceedingly". as these two declare. "His certain life that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: The smooth leaved beeches on the field receive him His life is neither tost on boisterous seas Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease; Pleased and full blest he lives where he his God can please. "His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithful spouse hath place, His little son into his bosom creeps, The lively picture of his father's face; Never his humble house or state torment him, Lesse he could like, if lesse his God had sent him, And when he dies, green turfs -with grassie tomb content him." Joseph and Thomas Warton, as all the world once knew, were most affectionate brothers-and Tom seldom left Oxford but to visit Joe at Winchester, which he did annually as long as he lived, and where he was the delight of the boys, writing for them their themes and tasks, and mingling with their amusements till the very last. Before Joseph's elevation to the mastership, he went abroad with the Duke of Bolton, and on that occasion Thomas indited the beautiful lines, "Sent to a Friend on his leaving a favourite Cottage in Hampshire." SENT TO A FRIEND. "Ah mourn, thou lov'd retreat! No more Shall classic steps thy scenes explore! When morn's pale rays but faintly peep O'er yonder oak-crown'd airy steep, Who now shall climb its brows to view The length of landscape, ever new, Where Summer flings, in careless pride, Her varied vesture far and wide! Who mark, beneath, each village-charm, Or grange, or elm-encircled farm: The flinty dove-cote's crowded roof, "Who now shall indolently stray Descry the rainbow-painted tower? Nor fond attention loves to note Th' unwilling genius flies forlorn, side Its chalky entrails opens wide, On the green summit, ambush'd high, No pearl-crown'd maids with wily look, "So by some sage enchanter's spell, (As old Arabian fablers tell,) Amid the solitary wild, Luxuriant gardens gaily smil'd: From sapphire rocks the fountains stream'd, With golden fruit the branches beam'd; Dun clouds obscur'd the groves of gold, The gorgeous castle disappeared; And a bare heath's unfruitful plain Usurp'd the wizard's proud domain." We call these beautiful lines; nor does it detract much from their merit that they have little or no claim to origina lity for if much of the images be borrowed from books, as much is taken from nature, and the whole is finely fused together by an affectionate heart and a glowing fancy, and comes from the process, Poetry. The close was, perhaps, imitated from Akenside— "So fables tell, The adventurous hero, bound on hard ex- But Akenside imitated Addison, and of the three fine pictures, Addison's is the finest as you will confess. We have it by heart. "We are every where entertained with pleasing shows and apparitions; we discover imaginary glories in the heavens and in the earth, and see some of their visionary beauty poured out on the whole creation. But what a rough unsightly sketch of nature should we be entertained with, did all her colouring disappear, and the several distinctions of light and shade vanish? In short, our souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted hero in a romance, who sees beautiful castles, woods, and meadows, and at the same time hears the warbling of birds and purling of streams; but, upon the finishing of some secret spell, the fantastic scene breaks up, and the disconsolate knight finds himself on a barren heath, or in a solitary forest." It is something—much—to deserve the name of a descriptive Poet even of the lowest order. No man can describe natural objects well, without some feeling of their beauty-without the power of re-awakening in himself that feeling, by an act of the imagination. The feeling keeps him to the truth, and inspires him to paint it. And he who has this power of feeling is so far a Poet. He who has it not, or in whom it is faint and fluctuating, may have no inconsiderable pleasure, even beyond that of the senses, in the charms of nature; but in attempting to describe them, he makes but sorry work of it, and the more gorgeous his imagery, and the more laboriously gathered, the more prosaic is his picture. Often nowa-days they who have little or no knowledge of nature, and therefore who can have little or no pleasure in her appearances, try to deceive themselves into the belief that they are haunted-possessed by a sense of her most potent charms, and to escape the tame assume the intense! Such gentry would despise Warton's lines "On the approach of Summer." But you will not despise them-you will read them with delight. "Oft when thy season, sweetest queen, Has dress'd the groves in liv'ry green; When in each fair and fertile field Beauty begins her bow'r to build! While Evening, veil'd in shadows brown, Puts her matron-mantle on, And mists in spreading streams convey More fresh the fumes of new-shorn hay: Then, goddess, guide my pilgrim feet Contemplation hoar to meet, As slow he winds in museful mood, Or o'er old Avon's magic edge, Nor wants there fragrance to dispense Till from the path I fondly stray Me, heart-rejoicing goddess, lead The nymphs and swains, a busy throng; Of mirth and toil that hums around; "But ever, after summer shower, "Me, goddess, in such cavern lay, While all without is scorch'd in day; Sore sighs the weary swain, beneath His with'ring hawthorn on the heath; The drooping hedger wishes eve, In vain, of labour short reprieve! Meantime, on Afric's glowing sand, Smote with keen heat, the trav`ller stands; Low sinks his heart, while round his eye Measures the scenes that boundless lie, |