No poet any passion can excite,

But what they feel transport them when they write.
Have you been led through the Cumaan cave,
And heard the impatient maid divinely rave?
I hear her now; I see her rolling eyes;

And panting, 'Lo! the God, the God,' she cries:

With words not hers, and more than human sound, She makes the obedient ghosts peep trembling through

the ground.

But, though we must obey when Heaven commands,
And man in vain the sacred call withstands,
Beware what spirit rages in your breast;

For ten inspired, ten thousand are possess'd:
Thus make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
As when the cheerful hours too freely pass,
And sparkling wine smiles in the tempting glass,
Your pulse advises, and begins to beat
Through every swelling vein a loud retreat:
So when a Muse propitiously invites,
Improve her favours, and indulge her flights;
But when you find that vigorous heat abate,
Leave off, and for another summons wait.
Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp,
Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp,
Appear not meaner than mere human lines,
Compared with those whose inspiration shines:
These, nervous, bold; those, languid and remiss;
There cold salutes; but here a lover's kiss.
Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide,
With foaming waves the passive Saone divide;

Whose lazy waters without motion lay,

While he, with eager force, urged his impetuous way.

CHARLES COTTON.

HEARTY, careless Charley Cotton' was born in 1630. His father, Sir George Cotton, was improvident and intemperate in his latter days, and left the poet an encumbered estate situated at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, near the river Dove. This place will recall the words quoted by O'Connell in Parliament in reference to the present Lord Derby :

'Down thy fair banks, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby dilly, with its six insides.'

Charles studied at Cambridge; and after travelling abroad, married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp in Nottinghamshire, who does not appear to have lived long. His extravagance keeping him poor, he was compelled to eke out his means by translating works from the French and Italian, including those of a spirit somewhat kindred to his own-Montaigne. At the age of forty, he obtained a captain's commission in the army, and went to Ireland. There he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess Dowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She possessed a jointure of £1500 a-year, secured, however, after marriage, from her husband's imprudent and reckless management. He returned to his English estate, where he became passionately fond of fishing,-intimate with Izaak Walton, whom he invited in a poem, although now eighty-three years old, to visit him in the country-and where he built a fishing-house, with the initials of Izaak's name and his own united in ciphers over the door; the walls, too, being painted with fishing scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton appearing upon the beaufet. Poor Charles had a less fortunate career than his friend, dying insolvent at Westminster in 1687.

Careless gaiety and reckless extravagance, blended with heart, sense, and sincerity, were the characteristics of Cotton as a man, and were, as is usually the case, transferred to his poetry. He squandered his pence and his powers with equal profusion. His travestie of the 'Eneid' is pronounced by Christopher North (who must have read it, however,) a beastly book. Campbell says, with striking justice, of another of Cotton's produc

tions, 'His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already.' It is like trying to turn the 'Tale of a Tub' into ridicule. But Cotton's own vein, as exhibited in his 'Invitation to Walton,' his 'New Year,' and his 'Voyage to Ireland,' (which anticipates in some measure the style of Anstey in the New Bath Guide,') is very rich and varied, full of ease, picturesque spirit, and humour, and stamps him a genuine, if not a great poet.

INVITATION TO IZAAK WALTON.

1 Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl, and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time
Has been of many years before;

2 Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The chillest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made;

3 Whilst all the ills are so improved Of this dead quarter of the year,

That even you, so much beloved,

We would not now wish with us here:

4 In this estate, I say, it is

Some comfort to us to suppose,

That in a better clime than this,

You, our dear friend, have more repose;

5 And some delight to me the while,

Though Nature now does weep in rain,
To think that I have seen her smile,
And haply may I do again.

6 If the all-ruling Power please

We live to see another May,
We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day.

7 We then shall have a day or two,

Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly.

8 A day with not too bright a beam;
A warm, but not a scorching sun;
A southern gale to curl the stream;
And, master, half our work is done.

9 Then, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray,

We'll

prove it just, with treacherous bait, To make the preying trout our prey;

10 And think ourselves, in such an hour, Happier than those, though not so high, Who, like leviathans, devour

Of meaner men the smaller fry.

11 This, my best friend, at my poor home, Shall be our pastime and our theme; But then-should you not deign to come, You make all this a flattering dream.

A VOYAGE TO IRELAND IN BURLESQUE.

CANTO I.

The lives of frail men are compared by the sages Or unto short journeys, or pilgrimages,

As men to their inns do come sooner or later,
That is, to their ends, to be plain in my matter;
From whence when one dead is, it currently follows,
He has run his race, though his goal be the gallows;
And this 'tis, I fancy, sets folks so a-madding,
And makes men and women so eager of gadding;
Truth is, in my youth I was one of these people
Would have gone a great way to have seen a high

steeple,

And though I was bred 'mongst the wonders o' th' Peak,
Would have thrown away money, and ventured my neck
To have seen a great hill, a rock, or a cave,

And thought there was nothing so pleasant and brave:
But at forty years old you may, if you please,
Think me wiser than run such errands as these;
Or had the same humour still ran in my toes,
A voyage to Ireland I ne'er should have chose;
But to tell you the truth on't, indeed it was neither
Improvement nor pleasure for which I went thither;
I know then you'll presently ask me for what?
Why, faith, it was that makes the old woman trot;
And therefore I think I'm not much to be blamed
If I went to the place whereof Nick was ashamed.
O Coryate! thou traveller famed as Ulysses,
In such a stupendous labour as this is,

Come lend me the aids of thy hands and thy feet,
Though the first be pedantic, the other not sweet,
Yet both are so restless in peregrination,
They'll help both my journey, and eke my relation.
"Twas now the most beautiful time of the year,
The days were now long, and the sky was now clear,
And May, that fair lady of splendid renown,
Had dressed herself fine, in her flowered tabby gown,
When about some two hours and an half after noon,