How sweet was the strain that enliven'd the spirit, Ah! may he in love be more happy than we; How Love can alone make it blissful to live. gay is the circle of friends round a table, Where stately Kilgarran* o'erhangs the brown dale, Where none are unwilling, and few are unable, To sing a wild song, or repeat a wild tale! Yet weak is our vaunt, while something we want, Love can alone make it blissful to live. No longer then pore over dark gothic pages, To cull a rude gibberish from Statham or Brooke ; Love can alone make it blissful to live. Admit that our labors were crown'd with full measure, * A ruin of a castle on the banks of the Tivey. + Seat of Lord Dinevau's near Landilo, in Carmarthen. Seat of § Seat of Thomas Lloyd, Esq. near Cardigan. Yet Yet weak is our vaunt, while something we want, Love can alone make it blissful to live. Or say, that preferring fair Thames to fair Tivy, Yet weak is our vaunt, while something we want, Love can alone make it blissful to live." In the beginning of 1783 Mr. Jones published his Translation of the Seven Arabian Poems which he had finished in 1781. The translator observes, "that these poems exhibit an exact picture of the virtues and vices of the Arabs in the age of the Seven Poets, their wisdom and their folly, and shew what may be constantly expected from men of open hearts, and boiling passions, with no law to controul, and little religion to restrain them." "The period was now arrived," continues Lord Teignmouth, "when Mr. Jones had the happiness to gain the accomplishment of his most anxious wishes. In March 1783, during the administration of Lord Shelburne, he was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, at Bengal, on which occasion the honour of knighthood was conferred upon him; and, in the April following, he married Anna Maria Shipley, the eldest daughter of the Bishop of St. Asaph." For his appointment to India, Mr. Jones was indebted to the friendship of Lord Ashburton. VOL. IV. N Sir Sir William Jones embarked for India in the Crocodile frigate, and in April 1783 left his native country, to which he was never to return, with the unavailing regret and affectionate wishes of his numerous friends and admirers. [To be continued.] ART. XXI. MAURICE MORGAN. 1802, March 28, died at Knightsbridge, aged 76, Maurice Morgan, Esq. Commissioner of the HackneyCoach Office, formerly Private Secretary to Lord Shelburne, author of An Essay on the Character of Falstaff, and distinguished for his extensive knowledge. Dr. Symmons, in his Life of Milton, lately published, has introduced the following eloquent memorial of this author. Having cited some passages from his Essay, which he says, "forms a more honourable monument to the memory of Shakspeare, than any, which has been reared to him by the united labours of his commentators, he goes on thus: "With the name of Maurice Morgan, who has fondled my infancy in his arms, who was the friend of my youth, who expanded the Jiberality of my opening heart, and first taught me to think, and to judge; with this interesting name, so many sadly-pleasing recollections are associated, that I cannot dismiss it without reluctance. He was my friend; but he was the friend also of his species. The embrace of his mind was ample; that of his benevolence was unbounded. With great rectitude of understanding he possessed a fancy that was always creative and playful. On every subject, for on every subject he thought acutely and deeply, his ideas were original and striking. Even when he was in error, he continued to be specious and to please: and he never failed of your applause, though he might sometimes of your assent. When your judgment coyly held back, your imagination yielded to his seductive addresses; and you wished him to be right, when you were forced to pronounce that he was wrong. This is spoken only of those webs, which his fancy perpetually spun, and dipped in the rainbow: his heart was always in the right. With a mind of too ine a texture for business, too theoretical and abstract o be executive, he discharged with honour the office of Under Secretary of State, when the present Marquis of Lansdown was for the first time in power; and he was subsequently sent by that nobleman across the Atlantic, as the intended legislator of Canada. His public and his private life were impelled by the same principles to the same object;— by the love of liberty and virtue to the happiness of man. If his solicitous and enlightened representations had experienced attention, the temporary and the abiding evils of the American contest would not have existed; and the mother and her offspring would still have been supported and supporting with their mutual embrace. From a long intercourse with the world he acquired no suspicion, no narrowness, no hardness, no moroseness. With the simplicity and candour, he retained to the last the cheerfulness and the sensibility, of childhood. The tale of distress, which he never staid to investigate, passed immediately through his open ear into his responsive heart; and his fortune, small as his disinterestedness had suffered it to remain, was instantly communicated to relieve. His humanity comprehended the whole animated creation, and nothing could break the tenor of his temper but the spectacle of oppression or cruelty. His failings (and the most favoured of our poor species are not without failings) were few, and untinctured with malignity. High as he was placed by Nature, he was not above the littleness of vanity; and kindly as were the elements blended in him, his manner would sometimes betray that contempt of others, which the wisest are, perhaps, the least prone to entertain, and which the best are the most studious to conceal. Though he courted praise, and was not nice respecting the hand, which tendered it, or the form in which it came, yet has he refused it in the most honourable shape, and when offered to him by the public. He has been importuned in vain to give a second edition of his Essay on Falstaff: and his repeated injunctions have impelled his executrix to an indiscriminate destruction of his papers, some of which, in the walks of politics, metaphysics, and criticism, would have planted a permanent laurel on his grave. "Such were his frailties and inconsistencies, the objects only of a doubtful smile: but his virtues and his talents made him the delight of the social, the instruction or the comfort of the solitary hour. "Though he had been accustomed to contemplate the awful crisis of death with more terror than belonged to his innocent life, or to his generally intrepid breast, he met the consummation without alarm, and expired with as much serenity as he had lived. This event happened at his house in Knightsbridge, in the 77th year of his age, on the 28th of March, 1802. Xaipe! Vale! "I shal |