My countrywoman hail! thy worth alone

Gives fame to worlds, and makes whole ages glorious!
Let Se'noaks vaunt the hospitable seat

Of Knoll* most ancient; awfully my muse
These social scenes of grandeur and delight,
Of love and veneration let me tread.

How oft beneath yon oak has am'rous Prior
Awaken'd echo with sweet Cloe's name!
While noble Sackville heard, hearing approv'd,
Approving greatly recompens'd. But he,
Alas! is number'd with th' illustrious dead,
And orphan merit has no guardian now!

Nor shalt thou, Mereworth, remain unsung,
Where noble Westmoreland, his country's friend,
Bids British greatness love the silent shade;
Where piles superb, in classic elegance,
Arise, and all is Roman, like his heart.
Nor Chatham, though it is not thine to show
The lofty forest, or the verdant lawns,

Yet niggard silence shall not grudge thee praise!
The lofty forests, by thy sons prepar'd,
Become the warlike navy, brave the floods,
And give Sylvanus empire in the main.
Oh, that Britannia, in the day of war,
Would not alone Minerva's valour trust,

But also hear her wisdom!

Then her oaks,

Shap'd by her own mechanics, would alone
Her island fortify, and fix her fame;

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Nor would she weep like Rachel, for her sons,
Whose glorious blood, in mad profusion,
In foreign lands is shed-and shed in vain!

The seat of the Duke of Dorset.

ELIJAH FENTON.

BORN ABOUT 1680.-DIED 1730.

"Why art thou slow to strike th' harmonious shell,
Averse to sing, who know'st to sing so well?
If thy proud muse the tragic buskin wears,
Great Sophocles revives, and re-appears;
If by thy hand the Homeric lyre be strung.
The lyre returns such sounds as Homer sung ;-
Then let the list'ning groves repeat the sound,
And Grecian muses chant on British ground."

(Epistle to Fenton, by Dr. W. Broome.)
"As when the King of Peace, and Lord of Love,
Sends down some brighter angel from above,
Pleas'd with the beauties of the heavenly guest,
Awhile we view him in full glory drest;
But he, impatient from his heaven to stay,
Soon disappears, and wings his airy way ;—
So didst thou vanish, eager to appear,
And live triumphant in thy native sphere."

(Lines on the death of Fenton, by the same.)

Instead of apologizing for the omission of this writer in the chronological rank in which we ought to have placed him, we should perhaps rather ask excuse for giving him a place at all, having had but a slight connec tion with the county of Kent; but Dr.Johnson thought him worthy of a niche in his temple of poetical fame ; Pope made choice of him as a coadjutor in his great work; and he appears to have been loved and honoured by his contemporaries. From these we have gathered the following memorial,

ELIJAH FENTON was born at Shelton, near Newcastle-under-line, of an ancient family of considerable property, but being the youngest of twelve children, he was destined for the clerical profession, and after leaving school, was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took a Batchelor's degree, in 1704. At that time of discord and debate, many wise and virtuous men consulted conscience rather than interest, and Fenton, among these, doubting the legality of the government, declined to qualify himself for public employment by taking the oaths required, and left the university, with no other prospect of a livelihood than such as he could derive from his literary talents.

"The life that passes in penury," says Dr. Johnson, must necessarily pass in obscurity." His biographer adds that it was impossible to trace Fenton from year to year, or to discover what means he used for his support, as enquiry of his relations in Staffordshire had been made in vain. We find him usher at one time to Mr.Bonwicke, a celebrated schoolmaster, at Headley in Surrey, and he was afterwards master of the free grammar school of Sevenoaks; this he left in 1710, for a more lucrative employment, becoming under the patronage of St, John, Lord Bolingbroke, secretary to Charles, "Earl of Orrery in Flanders, and tutor to his only son, who always mentioned him with great esteem and tenderness. At the termination of this engagement, he obtained through the recommendation of Pope, a desirable situation with the Hon. James Craggs, Secretary of State, (about 1720,) the advantages of which he was soon deprived of, in consequence of the death of that minister by the small pox. His industry then met with

an employment which engaged rather his versifying, than his poetical powers.

"When Pope," says Dr. Johnson, "after the great success of his Iliad, undertook the Odyssey, being, as it seems, weary of translating, he determined to engage auxiliaries. Twelve books he took himself, and twelve he distributed between Broome and Fenton; the books attributed to the latter, were the 1st, the 4th, the 10th and the 20th. How the two associates performed their parts is well known to the readers of poetry, who have never been able to distinguish their books from those of Pope."

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For this task he received £300; and by his tragedy of "Mariamne," which was brought on the stage in 1723, and met with great applause, he is said to have gained £1000, which he very honourably employed to discharge a debt contracted during his attendance at court. As Fenton's exertions appear to have been rather the products of necessity than choice, it is not wonderful that he is little to be traced as a writer after this period; for having obtained an easy situation as tutor to the son of Sir William Trumbull, whom he accompanied to Cambridge, and afterwards resided in the family, he had recourse to the press only as an amusement. To an edition of Milton's Poems, in which he undertook to revise the punctuation, he prefixed a short and elegant account of the author: he also published in 1729, a very splendid edition of Waller.

He died in 1730, at East-hamstead Park, near Oakingham, in Berkshire, the seat of Lady Trumbull, and like his employer Craggs, was

"Prais'd, wept, and honour'd by the muse he lov'd.”

Pope, who had been always his friend, wrote his epitaph; and Lord Orrery adds this attestation to the character of his tutor,-" He was one of the worthiest and honestest men that ever belonged to the court of Apollo. Tears arise when I think of him, though he has been dead above twenty years."

As specimens of the poetical powers of Fenton, we will give the Ode to Lord Gower, which Pope pronounced "the next ode in the English language to Dryden's Cecilia," with extracts from his Epistles; also two or three pieces from a volume published by Lintot, under the title of "Oxford and Cambridge Verses." He also wrote some lighter poems, which should never have seen the light.

ODE.

To the Rt. Hon. JOHN LORD GOWER; written in the Spring, 1716.

O'er Winter's long inclement sway,
At length the lusty Spring prevails;
And, swift to meet the smiling May,
Is wafted by the western gales.
Around him dance the rosy hours,
And damasking the ground with flowers,
With ambient sweets perfume the morn:
With shadowy verdure flourish'd high,
A sudden youth the groves enjoy;
Where Philomel laments forlorn.

By her awak'd, the woodland choir
To hail the coming god prepares;
And tempts me to resume the lyre,
Soft warbling to the vernal airs,