Then here I'll sit, and sigh my lost love's folly,

And learn to affect an holy melancholy;

And if contentment be a stranger then, I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven again."

The name of Raleigh, and the connexion of his supposed signature with the Reliquiæ, has led us somewhat out of our chronology; but, indeed, it is not easy to follow a strict order in this respect, where there is a close succession of poets whose lives overlap each other, and whose literary eras do not always correspond in the rela tive periods of their natural existence. Retracing our steps, we shall make a quotation from Daniel, who died in 1619, a writer who is always sensible and sound, often pathetic, and sometimes poetical. His well-known dialogue between Ulysses and the Siren, which seems nearest to our purpose, is smoothly versified, and contains, under the disguise of fable, a good deal of wholesome philosophy; yet it holds hut an inferior place in his compositions, compared with his Musophilus, the best passages of his Civil Wars, or the happiest of his Sonnets.

SIREN.

"Well, well, Ulysses, then I see
I shall not have thee here:
And therefore I will come to thee,
And take my fortune there.
I must be won that cannot win,
Yet lost were I not won:
For beauty hath created been
To undo or be undone."

We know not if we are quite justified in embracing within our plan the elegant song from the Nice Valour of Beaumont and Fletcher, which must have afforded the germ to Milton's Penseroso. If we are exceeding our limits, let the liquid numbers, tender images, and apt expressions of this little composition plead our apology.

"Hence all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly;
There's nought in this life sweet,
If men were wise to see't,
But only melancholy,
Oh, sweetest melancholy.

"Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes; A sigh that, piercing, mortifies;

A look that's fastened to the ground;
A tongue chained up without a sound.

"Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves;
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls.

A midnight bell, a parting groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon.
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy
valley;

Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melan

choly."

An attempt of the present kind would be very incomplete, if we omitted from our selection those two noble lyrics of Shirley's which preserved his memory at a time when the merits of his excellent dramas were forgotten. They have much dignity, and some delicacy of thought; the versification is pleasing and suitable, and the diction generally good and sometimes elegant.

FROM CUPID AND DEATH." A MASQUE.

"Victorious men of earth, no more
Proclaim how wide your empires are;
Though you bind in every shore,
And your triumphs reach as far
As night or day;

Yet you, proud monarchs, must obey

"Within their buds let roses sleep,

And virgin lilies on their stem, Fill sighs from lovers glide, and creep Into their leaves to open them.

"I' th' centre of my ground, compose Of bays and yew my summer room, Which may, so oft as I repose,

Present my arbour, and my tomb.

"No birds shall live within my pale

To charm me with their shames of art, Unless some wandering nightingale

Come here to sing and break her heart; "Upon whose death I'll try to write

An epitaph in some funeral stone,
So sad and true, it may invite
Myself to die, and prove mine own."

Among the poems of Francis Beaumont, are to be found some pleasing and well known lines on the Life of Man, which are also attributed to Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, a poet of some merit, but with a strong tendency to conceits, such as would well entitle him to the paternity of one of the ideas in these verses, representing the light of man's life as a loan of money called in and paid up on a very short notice.

THE LIFE OF MAN.

"Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood-
E'en such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies,
The spring entombed in autumn lies,
The dew's dried up, the star is shot,
The flight is past,-and man forgot."

These lines seem to have suggested another and more expanded form of the same idea, which has also considerable sweetness. The piece we now refer to is attributed by Mr Ellis to Simon Wastell, and is stated to be extracted from an edition of his Microbiblion, published in 1629. They are commonly, however, as signed to Quarles, and are printed in some editions of his Argalus and Parthenia, with the Virgilian vindication of his right to them: "Hos ego versiculos feci." We should be sorry to think that the pious author of the Emblems and Divine Fancies had in this respect preferred a dishonest claim.

ON MAN'S MORTALITY.
"Like as the damask rose you see,
Or like the blossom on the tree,
Or like the dainty flower of May,
Or like the morning to the day,
Or like the sun, or like the shade,
Or like the gourd which Jonas had-
Even such is man, whose thread is spun,
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done.
The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth,
The sun sets, the shadow flies,
The gourd consumes, -and man he dies.
"Like to the grass that's newly sprung,
Or like a tale that's new begun,
Or like the bird that's here to-day,
Or like the pearled dew of May,
Or like an hour, or like a span,
Or like the singing of a swan-
Is here, now there, in life and death.
Even such is man, who lives by breath,
The grass withers, the tale is ended,

The bird is flown, the dew's ascended,
The hour is short, the span not long,
The swan's near death,-man's life is

done!"

of Quarles, and of writers who greatThe other and more authentic pieces would lead us into another field which ly surpass him in his own department, we have all along purposely avoided, and which deserves to be considered separately, and in a more solemn and reverent tone than is due to mere morality.

Having brought down our review of miscellaneous moral poetry to the reign of Charles I., we shall not pursue the subject further, or enter on a period when so great a change was brought about, in taste as well as in manners and opinions, and which belongs in its character more nearly to the modern than to the early age of our literature. In what we have done we are conscious that we must have made many omissions, and we may have bestowed undue importance on some compositions or topics of inferior interest. Yet, altogether, we feel that we have brought into a condensed form a great deal of true English poetry of a peculiar and valuable class, closely allied, as we believe, with the best virtues of the national character, and which, in various ways, has helped to cultivate a style of native thought and expression, capable of becoming the vehicle of wisdom and virtue among the less learned classes to a extent even greater perhaps than we have vet witnessed.

I HAVE a great respect for old family servants-a sentiment to which I adhere the more strongly from the circumstance of the character being somewhat a rare one in these days of incessant change and upstart assumption, when the " March of Mind," not content with playing all sorts of odd pranks in the squire's drawing-room, has revolutionized even his kitchen, implanting ambitious ideas there, fatal to those humble, kindly, and contented feelings which made up the idiosyncrasy of the veteran family domestic. Throughout the various grades of the community, all now is pretension and a struggle for superiority; and the High Life below Stairs, which, in Garrick's time, was considered such a capital extravaganza, is no longer a broad farce, but a familar matter of fact, of daily nay, of hourly-occurrence.

Occasionally, however, one meets with a servant of the consistent, unsophisticated old school, who was born before society had put itself under the doubtful tuition of the Schoolmaster; and such a one is my friend's butler, to whom I have already once or twice cursorily alluded. This primitive veteran is a fine specimen of a class of domestics, who, if innovation proceeds many years longer at its present startling rate, will soon be found only in the pages of Shakspeare, Sterne, Scott, Clery, and Irving. He has lived in my friend's family for the best part of half a century; and talks of the different members of it, and their various marriages and intermarriages, with as much affectionate earnestness as if they were all his own blood-relations. He dates, in fact, from a christening, a wedding, or a death, which serve him as guide-posts, by whose aid memory is enabled to travel back through a long course of years. In his appearance, he reminds me of Shakspeare's "Old Adam," for he has a ruddy, open countenance, beaming with cheerfulness and good-nature; milk-white hairs scattered thinly about his temples; and a stout, well-knit frame,

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXXI,

which is but just beginning to exhibit the wintry impress of decided age. Next to his master and mistress, he is the individual of the greatest importance in the establishment. His word is law with the rest of his fellow servants, who, while they respect his manly, straightforward simplicity of character, stand not a little in awe of him, knowing well that he is not one of their sort; the tie that binds him to his master being less one of self-interest, than of esteem and gratitude.

With this kindly-natured old fellow, I indulged in many an agreeable gossip, which greatly contributed to enliven the solitude in which I lived. He soon became used to my habits, and whenever he heard me pacing up and down the Picture Gallery, or rambling about the lawn behind the house, would take for granted he might approach without fear of intrusion. What I chiefly admired in him was, his unobtrusive independence of spirit. His manner was deferential without being servile, and he had the rare tact to time his garrulity, and know exactly when he had said enough.

When tired of chatting with this old man who, in addition to his other acceptable qualifications, was a living chronicle of all the "few and far between" memorabilia of the district, and told me divers curious anecdotes respecting the family portraits in the Picture Gallery, it was my frequent custom to retire into the library, a narrow, bow-windowed, oak-pannelled room, which ran the whole length of the building, where I spent many a pleasant hour; for I am exceedingly fond of reading (though, alas! my studies have ever been of a most desultory, unprofitable kind), and feel the full force of the panegyrics which Cicero, and Milton, and Wordsworth -the two former in emphatic prose, and the latter in as emphatic verse→→ have pronounced upon books. My friend's library was abundantly stored with the choicest ancient and modern works; and it was here that I first made acquaintance with Buchanan's

X