piety was as unaffected as it was deep, and "his comparatively short life was, "says his biographer, "till the day of his death like one unbroken track of light."

Heber is best known by his hymns. Some of them are the best in our language, as his missionary hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains''; and that beginning thus, "Brightest and best of the Sons of the Morning." The "Lines written to a March," show his mastery over a livelier kind of verse.

"I see them on their winding way,

About their ranks the moonbeams play."

This song was once highly popular, but like many another fine old song, it has been superseded by less meritorious productions.

James Grahame, born in Glasgow, 1765, and dying in 1811, is placed among the minor poets of this period. He was a curate in the Church of England, until ill health obliged him to resign his position. Of the several works that he published, "The Sabbath" is the best. This pleasing anecdote is related in connection with its publication: "Grahame had not prefixed his name to the work, nor acquainted his family with the secret of its composition, and taking a copy of the volume home with him one day, he left it on the table. His wife began reading it while the sensitive author walked up and down the room; and at length she broke out into praise of the poem, adding, Ah, James, if you could but produce a poem like this!' The joyful acknowledgment of its authorship was then made."

Grahame is not a forceful poet. Like Cowper, he excels in the power of close and happy observation; but he has no humor or satire to enliven his verse, which is, on

the whole, rather dull and prosaic, though faithful in description. His poem is recommended to the Scotsman by its distinct and accurate portrayal of the ordinary features of a Scottish landscape; and its prevailing tone of pious trust in God commends it to all.

Charles Wolfe, a Dublin clergyman, was born in 1791, and died in 1823. He gained literary immortality by one short, perfect poem, and that copied with some closeness from a prose account of the incident. His ode entitled "The Burial of Sir John Moore " was anonymously published in an Irish newspaper, in 1817, and was ascribed to various authors. Shelley considered it not unlike a first draught of Campbell. In 1841 the poem was claimed by a Scottish student and teacher. "Fame, like wealth, has its covetous and unprincipled pursuers." Wolfe's right is now, however, established beyond any further question or controversy. Wolfe's incessant attention to his duties in a wild and scattered parish hurried him to an untimely grave.

Though far less popularly known than the ode, that little song which Wolfe composed to a certain Irish melody, when it is said, "after singing the air over and over, he had burst into a flood of tears," is full of the sweetest pathos, as may be seen by this fragment:

"If thou wouldst stay e'en as thou art,

All cold, and all serene,

I still might press thy silent heart,
And where thy smiles have been!
While e'en thy chill bleak corse I have,
Thou seemest still mine own;
But there I lay thee in thy grave —
And I am now alone!

"I do not think where'er thou art,

Thou hast forgotten me;

And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart
In thinking too of thee:

Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of light ne'er seen before,

As fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore!"

Wolfe is the author of that once popular but now almost obsolete song, "Go, Forget Me." His versification is melody itself.

In 1812 the famous " Rejected Addresses - the joint production of the witty brothers, James and Horace Smith was given to the world. The directors of the Drury Lane Theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken at the opening of the new edifice. A casual hint from the secretary of the theatre suggested to them the composition of a series of humorous addresses, professedly composed by the principal authors of the day. They were jointly engaged for six weeks in the work, which was ready by the opening of the theatre.

Its success was almost unexampled. Eighteen editions have been sold; and the copyright, after the sixteenth edition, sold for one hundred and thirty pounds. The articles written by James Smith are some of them inimitable. The parodies on Cobbett and Crabbe are most praised. Of Horace Smith's parodies, that of Walter Scott is thought to be most felicitous. A very amusing one is that on Wordsworth, noticed in the chapter on that poet.

James Smith was a fascinating companion, a professed joker and diner out; of extensive information and refined manners, joined to an inexhaustible fund of liveliness and humor, and a happy, uniform temper. He was a true lover of London, and used to quote Dr. Johnson's dogma, "Sir,

the man that is tired of London is tired of existence." Lady Blessington has said of him, "If James Smith were not a witty man, he would still be a great man."

The "Address to the Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition" is one of Horace Smith's best productions. It is too long to quote entire; but here are some of its best stanzas:

"And thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)

In Thebes's streets, three thousand years ago,

When the Memnonium was in all its glory,

And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous!

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou 'rt standing on thy legs above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon.

Not like thin ghosts, or disembodied creatures,

But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

"Tell us

for doubtless thou canst recollect

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?

Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?

Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden

By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade,
Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest - if so, my struggles

Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

"Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,

Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;

Or dropped a half-penny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,

"Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost forever?
Oh! let us keep the soul embalmed and pure

In living virtue, that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom."

Horace Smith was a stockbroker, and made a fortune at his business. Shelley said of him: "Is it not odd that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker? And he writes poetry too, and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous!" Says Leigh Hunt: "A finer nature than Horace Smith's, except in the single instance of Shelley, I never met with in man." Shelley has thus summed up his merits in verse:

"Wit and sense,

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in Horace Smith."

Nature unhappily broke the die after Horace Smith, and now produces stockbrokers of quite another mould.

James Montgomery, a religious poet, born in 1771, and dying in 1854, was with a large class of readers one of the most acceptable poets of his time. His father was a Moravian missionary, and the poet was educated at a Moravian school, but declined the honor of being a priest; and after being grocer's apprentice, and shop-boy, he carried his early poems to London, but failing to obtain a publisher, took a situation in a newspaper office as clerk, and subsequently, with the aid of his friends, established a weekly journal which he conducted with marked ability,