While some their eggs in ranker carnage lay,
And to their young adapt the future prey.
Meantime the Sun his fost'ring warmth be-
queaths,

Each tepid air its motive influence breathes,
Mysterious springs the wavering life supply,
And quick'ning births unconscious motion try;
Mature, their slender fences they disown,
And break at once into a world unknown.

All by their dam's prophetic care receive
Whate'er peculiar indigence can crave:
Profuse at hand the plenteous table's spread,
And various appetites are aptly fed.

Nor less each organ suits each place of birth,
Finn'd in the flood, or reptile o'er the earth;
Each organ, apt to each precarious state,
As for eternity design'd complete.

Thus nursed, these inconsiderate wretches grow,
Take all as due, still thoughtless that they owe.
When lo! strange tidings prompt each secret
breast,

And whisper wonders not to be express'd;
Each owns his error in his later cares,
And for the new unthought-of world prepares :
New views, new tastes, new judgments are ac-
quired,

And all now loathe delights so late admired.
In confidence the solemn shroud they weave,
Or build the tomb, or dig the deadly grave;

Intrepid there resign their parting breath,
And give their former shape the spoils of death;
But reconceived as in a second womb,
Through metamorphoses, new forms assume:
On death their true exalted life depends,
Commencing there, where seemingly it ends.

The fullness now of circling time arrives;
Each from the long, the mortal sleep revives;
The tombs pour forth their renovated dead,
And, like a dream, all former scenes are fled.
But oh! what terms expressive may relate
The change, the splendour of their new-form'd
state?

Their texture nor composed of filmy skin,
Of cumbrous flesh without, or bone within,
But something than corporeal more refined,
And agile as their blithe informing mind.
In every eye ten thousand brilliants blaze,
And living pearls the vast horizon gaze;
Gemm'd o'er their heads the mines of India gleam,
And Heaven's own wardrobe has array'd their

frame;

Each spangled back bright sprinkling specks adorn,

Each plume imbibes the rosy tinctured morn; Spread on each wing the florid seasons glow, Shaded and verged with the celestial bow, Where colours blend an ever varying dye, And wanton in their gay exchanges vie.

THIS worthy and poetical quaker was the son of a draper, in London, and was born in the borough of Southwark. His father retired to Amwell, in Hertfordshire, when our poet was only ten years old; and this removal, together with the circumstance of his never having been inoculated for the small-pox, proved an unfortunate impediment to his education. He was put to a day-school, in the neighbouring town of Ware, where not much instruction was to be had; and from that little he was called away, upon the first alarm of infection. Such indeed was his constant apprehension of the disease, that he lived for twenty years within twenty miles of London without visiting it more than once. About the age of seventeen, however, he betook himself to reading. His family, from their cast of opinions and society, were not likely to abound either in books or conversation relating to literature; but he happened to form an acquaintance and friendship with a neighbour of the name of Frogley, a master bricklayer, who, though an uneducated man, was an admirer of poetry, and by his intercourse with this friend he strengthened his literary propensity. His first poetical essays were transmitted to the Gentleman's Magazine. In his thirtieth year he published four elegies, which were favourably received. His poems,

entitled, "The Garden," and "Amwell," and his volume of collected poetical pieces, appeared after considerable intervals; and his "Critical Essays on the English Poets," two years after his death. These, with his "Remarks on the Poems of Rowley," are all that can be called his literary productions. He published also two political tracts, in answer to Dr. Johnson's "Patriot," and "False Alarm." His critical essays contain some judicious remarks on Denham and Dyer; but his verbal strictures on Collins and Goldsmith discover a miserable insensibility to the soul of those poets. His own verses are chiefly interesting, where they breathe the pacific principles of the quaker; while his personal character engages respect, from exhibiting a public spirit and liberal taste beyond the habits of his brethHe was well informed in the laws of his country; and, though prevented by his tenets from becoming a magistrate, he made himself useful to the inhabitants of Amwell, by his offices of arbitration, and by promoting schemes of local improvement. He was constant in his attendance at turnpike meetings, navigation trusts, and commissions of land-tax. Ware and Hertford were indebted to him for the plan of opening a spacious road between those two towns. His treatises on the highway and parochial laws were

ren.

the result of long and laudable attention to those subjects.

His verses, and his amiable character, gained him by degrees a large circle of literary acquaintance, which included Dr. Johnson, Sir William Jones, Mrs. Montague, and many other distinguished individuals; and having submitted to inoculation, in his thirty-sixth year, he was from that period more frequently in London. In his retirement he was fond of gardening; and, in

amusing himself with the improvement of his grounds, had excavated a grotto in the side of a hill, which his biographer, Mr. Hoole, writing in 1785, says, was still shown as a curiosity in that part of the country. He was twice married. His first wife was the daughter of his friend Frogley. He died at a house in Radcliff, of a putrid fever, and was interred there in the burying ground of the friends.*

ODE ON HEARING THE DRUM.

I HATE that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To thoughtless youth it pleasure yields,
And lures from cities and from fields,
To sell their liberty for charms
Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms;
And when ambition's voice commands,

To march, and fight, and fall, in foreign lands.

I hate that drum's discordant sound,
Parading round, and round, and round:
To me it talks of ravaged plains,
And burning towns and ruin'd swains,
And mangled limbs, and dying groans,
And widows' tears, and orphans' moans;
And all that misery's hand bestows,
To fill the catalogue of human woes.

ODE ON PRIVATEERING.

How custom steels the human breast
To deeds that nature's thoughts detest!
How custom consecrates to fame
What reason else would give to shame!
Fair spring supplies the favouring gale,
The naval plunderer spreads his sail,
And ploughing wide the watery way,
Explores with anxious eyes his prey.

The man he never saw before,
The man who him no quarrel bore,
He meets, and avarice prompts the fight;
And rage enjoys the dreadful sight
Of decks with streaming crimson dyed,
And wretches struggling in the tide,
Or 'midst th' explosion's horrid glare,
Dispersed with quivering limbs in air.

The merchant now on foreign shores
His captured wealth in vain deplores;
Quits his fair home, oh mournful change!
For the dark prison's scanty range;

* In the life of that good man, Scott of Amwell, is inserted a sort of last dying speech and confession, which the Quakers published after his death. This precious paper requires some comment. Scott's life had not merely been innocent, but eminently useful. He was esteemed regular and moral in his conduct," says this very document; "nevertheless," it adds, "there is reason to believe he frequently experienced the conviction of the spirit of truth for not faithfully following the Lord." Whether any heavier offence can be proved against him

By plenty's hand so lately fed, Depends on casual alms for bread; And with a father's anguish torn, Sees his poor offspring left forlorn.

And yet, such man's misjudging mind,
For all this injury to his kind,
The prosperous robber's native plain
Shall bid him welcome home again;
His name the song of every street,
His acts the theme of all we meet,
And oft the artist's skill shall place
To public view his pictured face!

If glory thus be earned, for me
My object glory ne'er shall be;
No, first in Cambria's loneliest dale
Be mine to hear the shepherd's tale!
No, first on Scotia's bleakest hill
Be mine the stubborn soil to till!
Remote from wealth to dwell alone,
And die to guilty praise unknown!

THE TEMPESTUOUS EVENING.
AN ODE.

THERE'S grandeur in this sounding storm,
That drives the hurrying clouds along,
That on each other seem to throng,
And mix in many a varied form;
While, bursting now and then between,
The moon's dim misty orb is seen,
And casts faint glimpses on the green.

Beneath the blast the forests bend,
And thick the branchy ruin lies,
And wide the shower of foliage flies;
The lake's black waves in tumult blend,
Revolving o'er and o'er and o'er,
And foaming on the rocky shore,
Whose caverns echo to their roar.

by the society than that of having styled himself Esquire in one of his title-pages, and used such heathen words as December and May in his poems, instead of twelfth month and fifth month, we know not; but when he was dying, at a vigorous age, of a typhus fever, he was "brought down," says this quaker-process, "as from the clifts of the rocks and the heights of the hills into the valley of deep humiliation."-See Quar. Rev. vol. xi p. 500.]

The sight sublime enrapts my thought,
And swift along the past it strays,
And much of strange event surveys,
What history's faithful tongue has taught,
Or fancy form'd, whose plastic skill
The page with fabled change can fill
Of ill to good, or good to ill.

But can my soul the scene enjoy,
That rends another's breast with pain?
Oh hapless he, who, near the main,
Now sees its billowy rage destroy!
Beholds the foundering bark descend,
Nor knows but what its fate may end
The moments of his dearest friend!

GEORGE ALEXANDER STEVENS was born in Holborn. He was for many years a strolling player, and was afterward engaged at Covent Garden theatre. His powers as an actor were very indifferent; and he had long lived in necessitous circumstances, when he had recourse to a plan which brought him affluence—this was, delivering his Lecture on Heads, a medley of wit and nonsense, to which no other performance than his own could give comic effect. The lecture was originally designed for Shutter; who, however, wholly failed in his delivery of it. When Stevens gave it himself, it immediately became popular; he repeated it with success in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland, and, crossing the Atlantic, found equal favour among the Calvinists of Boston, and the Quakers of Philadelphia. On his return to England he attempted to give novelty to the exhibition by a supplementary lecture on portraits and whole lengths; but the supplement had no success. 1773 he appeared again on the Haymarket stage, in a piece of his own composing, "The Trip to Portsmouth." He afterward resumed his tour of lectures on heads, till finding his own head

In

worn out by dissipation, he sold the property of the composition to Lee Lewis, the comedian; and closed a life of intemperance in a state of idiotism.

If Fletcher of Salton's maxim be true, that the popular songs of a country are of more importance than its laws," Stevens must be regarded as an important criminal in literature. But the songs of a country rather record, than influence, the state of popular morality. Stevens celebrated hard drinking, because it was the fashion; and his songs are now seldom vociferated, because that fashion is gone by. George was a leading member of all the great bacchanalian clubs of his day; the Choice Spirits, Comus' Court, and others, of similar importance and utility. Before the scheme of his lecture brought him a fortune, he had frequently to do penance in jail for the debts of the tavern; and, on one of those occasions, wrote a poem, entitled "Religion," expressing a penitence for his past life, which was probably sincere, while his confinement lasted. He was also author of "Tom Fool," a novel; "The Birthday of Folly," a satire; and several dramatic pieces of slender consequence.*

Quis ineptæ Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?-JUVENAL. THOUGH grief and fondness in my breast rebel, When injured Thales bids the town farewell;

[*" London is one of those few imitations," says Gray, "that have all the ease and all the spirit of an original." "Mr. Johnson's London," says Goldsmith, "is the best imitation of the original that has appeared in our language; being possessed of all the force and satirical resentment of Juvenal. Imitation gives us a much truer idea of the ancients than ever translation could do."

But The Vanity of Human Wishes" is a better poem. Sir Walter Scott speaks of it as a satire, "the deep and pathetic morality of which has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental." "Tis a grand poem," writes Byron.-"and so true!-true as the 10th of Juvenal himself; all the examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet. I do not so much admire the opening."

His Drury Lane Prologue is the perfection of its kind; and his lines on Levett breathe an air of constrained com

plaint and forceful tenderness. His pathos is too austere, but it is very fine.]

It Johnson's London was published in May 1738, and it is remarkable that it came out on the same morning with Pope's satire entitled 1738, so that England had at once its Juvenal and Horace as poetical monitors.-BOSWELL.]

[That the "injured Thales" of Johnson's London was the poet Savage, (as is generally understood,) has been questioned by Boswell, and his acute editor Mr. Croker, we think without much show of reason.

"The event of Savage's retirement," says Sir John Hawkins, "is antedated in the poem of London; but in every particular, except the difference of a year, what is there said of the departure of Thales must be understood of Savage, and looked upon as true history."

"This conjecture," writes Boswell, is, I believe, entirely groundless. I have been assured that Johnson said he was not so much as acquainted with Savage when he wrote his London. If the departure mentioned in it was the departure of Savage, the event was not antedated but

Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend,
I praise the hermit, but regret the friend,
Who now resolves, from vice and London far,
To breathe in distant fields a purer air;
And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore,
Give to St. David one true Briton more.

For who would leave, unbribed, Hibernia's land, Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?

foreseen; for London was published in May 1738, and Savage did not set out for Wales till July 1739.”

"Notwithstanding," says Mr. Croker, "Mr. Boswell's proofs, and Dr. Johnson's own [accredited?] assertion, the identity of Savage and Thales has been repeated by all the biographers, and has obtained general vogue. It may therefore be worth while to add, that Johnson's residence at Greenwich (which, as it was the scene of his fancied parting from Thales, is currently taken to have been that of his real separation from Savage) occurred two years before the latter event; and at that time it does not appear that Johnson was so much as acquainted with Savage or even with Cave, at whose house he first met Savage. Again, Johnson distinctly tells us, in his Life of Savage, that the latter took his departure for Wales, not by embarking at Greenwich, but by the Bristol stage-coach; and, finally and decisively, Johnson, if Thales had been Savage, could never have admitted into his poem two lines which seem to point so forcibly at the drunken fray, when Savage stabbed a Mr. Sinclair, for which he was convicted of murder: 1

Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast,
Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest.

There is, certainly, a curious coincidence between some points of the characters of Thales and Savage; but it seems equally certain that the coincidence was fortuitous. Mr. Murphy endeavours to reconcile the difficulties by supposing that Savage's retirement was in contemplation eighteen months before it was carried into effect: but even if this were true, (which may well be doubted,) it would not alter the facts-that London was written before Johnson knew Savage; and that one of the severest strokes of the satire touched Savage's sorest point."

Johnson left Lichfield for London, March 2d, 1737; in the July of the same year he lived in Church-street, Greenwich, and sought by letter the notice of Cave. In March 1738 appeared his ode "Ad Urbanum;" in April 1738 he

There none are swept by sudden fate away,
But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay;
Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead.

While Thales waits the wherry that contains
Of dissipated wealth the small remains,
On Thames's banks, in silent thought we stood,
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood:
Struck with the seat that gave Eliza* birth,
We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth;
In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew,
And call Britannia's glories back to view;
Behold her cross triumphant on the main,
The guard of commerce, and the dread of Spain,
Ere masquerades debauch'd, excise oppress'd,
Or English honour grew a standing jest.

A transient calm the happy scenes bestow, And for a moment lull the sense of woe. At length awaking, with contemptuous frown, Indignant Thales eyes the neighbouring town: "Since worth," he cries, "in these degenerate days,

Wants e'en the cheap reward of empty praise;
In those cursed walls, devote to vice and gain,
Since unrewarded science toils in vain;
Since hope but soothes to double my distress,
And every moment leaves my little less;
While yet my steady steps no staff sustains,
And life still vigorous revels in my veins;
Grant me, kind Heaven, to find some happier place,
Where honesty and sense are no disgrace;

turned and printed an epigram in praise of Savage: and in May 1738, published his noble imitation of Juvenal's third satire. Savage left London for Swansea in the July of the succeeding year.

"Johnson has marked," says Boswell, "upon his corrected copy of the first edition of "London," Written in 1738;" and, as it was published in the month of May in that year, it is evident that much time was not employed in preparing it for the press." "Part of the beauty of the performance," says Johnson to Cave, ("if any beauty be allowed it) consists in the adaptation of Juvenal's sentiments to modern facts and persons." This is curious, and seems to justify the appropriation of Thales to Savage.

Boswell's attempt to overthrow the statement of his rival Hawkins was soon forgotten by himself. He had been assured that Johnson was unacquainted with Savage in May 1738, yet some forty pages farther on he can print an encomium on Savage from the Gentleman's Magazine for April 1838, which he had been assured was written by Johnson, and thus give his former statement the lie in a silent way. "How highly," writes Boswell," Johnson admired him [Savage] for that knowledge which he himself so much cultivated, and what kindness he entertained for him, appears from the following lines in the Gentleman's Magazine for April 1738, which I am assured were written by Johnson:

Ad Ricardum Savage, Arm. Humani Generis Amatorem.
Humani studium generis cui pectore fervet,
O colat humanum te foveatque genus!"
This was not likely to have come from the pen of Johnson,
(if Johnson's it is.) had he been unacquainted with Savage.

And where did Mr. Croker learn that Johnson met Savage for the first time at the house of Cave? A literary adventurer, without a penny in his pocket, could not well have been a month in London before he fell into the society of Savage. Thomson's first want in London was a pair of shoes, his first London acquaintance the wretched Savage.

But what if, after all, Mr. Murphy's view of the subject

Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play,
Some peaceful vale with Nature's painting gay;
Where once the harass'd Briton found repose,
And safe in poverty defied his foes;

Some secret cell, ye powers indulgent, give,
Let- -live here, for has learn'd to live.
Here let those reign whom pensions can incite
To vote a patriot black, a courtier white;
Explain their country's dear-bought rights away,
And plead for pirates in the face of day.†
With slavish tenets taint our poison'd youth,
And lend a lie the confidence of truth.
Let such raise palaces, and manors buy,
Collect a tax, or farm a lottery;
With warbling eunuchs fill a licensed stage,‡
And lull to servitude a thoughtless age.

"Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold ?

[gold! What check restrain your thirst of power and Behold rebellious Virtue quite o'erthrown, Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives, your own, To such a groaning nation's spoils are given, When public crimes inflame the wrath of Heaven: But what, my friend, what hope remains for me, Who start at theft, and blush at perjury? Who scarce forbear, though Britain's court he To pluck a titled poet's borrow'd wing; [sing, A statesman's logic unconvinced can hear, And dare to slumber o'er the Gazetteer:§ Despise a fool in half his pension dress'd, And strive in vain to laugh at H―y's jest. "Others, with softer smiles and subtler art, Can sap the principles, or taint the heart; With more address a lover's note convey, Or bribe a virgin's innocence away.

is the correct one? "Savage's distress," says Johnson, "was now say early in 1738] publicly known, and his friends therefore thought it proper to concert some measures for his relief.... The scheme proposed for his happy and independent subsistence was, that he should retire into Wales and receive an allowance of fifty pounds a year, to be raised by a subscription..... This offer Mr. Savage gladly accepted..... While this scheme was ripening his friends directed him to take a lodging in the liberties of the Fleet, that he might be secure from his creditors, and sent him every Monday a guinea..... After many alterations and delays, a subscription was at length raised, and he left London in July 1739, having taken leave, with great tenderness, of his friends, and parted from the author of this narrative with tears in his eyes."

There was therefore a considerable interval between the period when the scheme of Savage's retirement to Swansea was first proposed to him, and his setting off in July 1739, by the coach for the shores of Wales!

Whoever Juvenal's Umbritius was, the Thales of Johnson's imitation was poor Savage; and let us notice here the propriety of Johnson's laying the scene of Savage's departure from Greenwich. There is a note before us from Savage to Birch, dated "Greenwich, May 14th, 1735," wherein he says, "I have been here some days for the benefit of the air." There is no necessity therefore to bother oneself in this inquiry with the date of Johnson's residence at Greenwich.

And what is there to disprove the fact that Thales was Savage in his departing by coach from London, and not, as the poem has it, by boat from Greenwich? Mr. King was the fellow-student, not the fellow-shepherd of Milton; yet that he was the Lycidas of the poet who will doubt? To our thinking the coincidence is too close to be accidental, too particular to be unmeant.]

* Queen Elizabeth, born at Greenwich.

The encroachments of the Spaniards had been palliated in both houses of parliament.

The licensing act had then lately passed.

A paper which at that time contained apologies for the court.