the aërial battlements, who does not know that they have no stable existence? but, who does not sigh when they pass away?

The "Mirror for Magistrates" was a work to which many of the most eminent Writers in Elizabeth's Reign contributed. It consists of Narratives of the adventures of certain Princes, and other great characters in English history, whose lives had been unfortunate. It's incidents are founded on the old Chronicles, which, indeed, are followed so servilely in general, as to give to the work a very prosaic character, and to take from it all claim to originality. The most valuable portion of it is the Induction, by Lord Buckhurst. The Poet supposes himself to be led, like Dante, to the Infernal Regions, under the conduct of Sorrow; where he meets with the Spirits of those persons, alike distinguished for their high station, and their misfortunes, whose narrations compose the Volume. He also meets with various Allegorical characters: such as Fear, Sorrow, Old Age, Sleep, and Death; and it is in the wonderful power and spirit with which the Poet personifies these allegorical beings, that the great merit of his work consists. What, for instance, can be finer, or truer, than the following picture of Old Age?

"And next in order sad Old Age we found;

His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind,
With drooping cheer still poring on the ground,
As on the place where nature him assign'd
To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined
His vital thread, and ended with their knife,
The fleeting course of fast-declining life.

Crookback'd he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed,
Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four;
With old lame bones that rattled by his side,

His scalp all piled, and he with eld forlore;
His wither'd fist still knocking at Death's door.
Trembling and drivelling as he draws his breath,
In brief, the shape and messenger of Death."

Sleep is also delineated with the pencil of a

master:

"By him lay heavy Sleep, Cousin of Death,

Flat on the ground, and still as any stone;
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath;

Small keep took he, whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up into the Throne
Of high renown; but as a living death,
So dead alive, of life he drew the breath.

The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,

The travail's ease, the still Night's fere was he,

And of our life in earth the better part;

Rever of sight, and yet in whom we see

Things oft' that 'tide, and oft' that never be.

Without respect, esteeming equally

King Croesus' pomp, and Irus' poverty."

The following description of Night may likewise challenge a comparison with any thing on the same subject in the language:

"Midnight was come, when every vital thing

With sweet, sound sleep their weary limbs did rest;
The beasts were still, the little birds that sing,
Now sweetly slept beside their mother's breast,
The old and all were shrouded in their nest;

The waters calm, the cruel seas, did cease,
The woods, and fields, and all things held their peace.

The golden Stars were whirl'd amid their race,
And on the Earth did laugh with twinkling light;
When each thing nestled in his resting place,
Forgot Day's pains with pleasure of the Night:
The hare had not the greedy hound in sight;
The fearful deer of death stood not in doubt;
The partridge dreamt not of the falcon's foot."

I have not time to dwell at large upon the merits of the other Narrative Poets of the Elizabethan age. Drayton was a man of real genius; but, like many of his contemporaries, he was a bad economist of his powers. He wasted them upon unworthy subjects; and often exhibits feebleness, on occasions where the exertion of his highest

powers is demanded and deserved. Warner in his "Albion's England" has preserved many of our old national traditions, and embellished them with much truth, nature, and simplicity. The Ballad stanza, however, in which he writes, becomes tedious and fatiguing, when excruciated to the length in which he employs it. Chamberlain's "Pharonnida" is a very noble work. The characters are drawn and supported with great truth and force; the action of the Poem is eventful and interesting, and the images bold, natural, and original. A very few instances will suffice to shew how rich the Poem is in the latter particular. Joys not yet mature, or consummated, are elegantly said to be

"Clothed in fresh

Blossoms of Hope, like Souls ere mix'd with flesh :"

and Hope is styled

"That wanton bird that sings as soon as hatch'd."

The agitation of Pharonnida, when discovered by her Father with her Lover's letter in her hand, is thus described:

"She stands

A burthen to her trembling legs, her hands

Wringing each other's ivory joints, her bright
Eyes scattering their distracted beams."

May wrote the Histories of Henry the Second, and of Edward the Third, in verse. He also translated the " Georgics" of Virgil, and the “ Pharsalia” of Lucan. The last is a performance of great merit; as is also the continuation of the Poem to the death of Julius Cæsar, by the translator. The Reign of Queen Elizabeth was peculiarly rich in Poetical translations. Fairfax's Tasso, which was so long and so strangely neglected, is now recovering it's popularity. Of all the strange caprices of the Public taste, there is none more strange, than the preference which was given to the rhyme-tagged prose of Hoole, over this spirited and truly poetical production of Fairfax. Chapman's Homer, with all it's faults, is also a production of great value and interest. The "Iliad" is written in the cumbrous and unwieldly old English measure of fourteen syllables, which, however, the Author had the judgment to abandon in the "Odyssey," for the heroic measure of ten. The following description from the Thirteenth Book of the "Iliad," of Neptune and his chariot, will, notwithstanding it's occasional quaintness, sufficiently prove the power and energy of the Translator: