And who those lovers, who with rapture view,
And, in fair nature, love each other too?
MYRA! but listen to thy poet yet,
Thou wilt not question then who, this sunset,
Talked the heart's language to the ear and eye,
Or who the youth who strung these pearls of poesy.

1.
'Tis sweet to be bosom’d with Nature and Love,

When the soul sees but Beauty, hears Music the best ; As pure as the blue's stainless bosom above,

As the song of the sphere everlastingly blest! To trace in the hues of the morn and the eve,

The moods of the mind, which the Muses inherit, In the flowers, and the wonders of Nature, perceive

The mystical semblance of passion and spirit.

2. 'Twere sweet, for a while on her beauty to gaze,

Her visible frame, with the eye that we see; And sweet, but to list to her modulate maze,

With the ear of the flesh, -and the spirit be free: But sweeter, eternally sweet, 'tis to prove,

In the blood, and the heart, and the soul, that we feel; And, oh, sweeter! in eloquent numbers to love, The feelings of Virtue and Love to reveal !

3. 0, sweeter, eternally sweet, 'tis to sing,

That Beauty, that's scatter'd o'er earth, sea, and sky,— The glory of Summer-the grace of the Spring

In thy form are embodied, enthroned in thine eye ! 'Tis rapture to know that my Iphigen hears,

The song of a harp she is sure to approve, That her smiles will reward me, and sometimes her tears,

While Fancy is bathed in the visions of Love!

XIII.
The Spring, the Summer, Autumn, Winter drear,
But twice seven times had ruled the varied year,
Since dawned on infant Lausus' dazzled sight,
The undiscerning, unaccustomed light.
But when his mind increased with strengthening time,
Then it let in the lovely and sublime :
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, saw with joy
At Nature's shrine, her truest votary..
Smit with her beauties, her he ever woo'd,
Felt through his veins, and in his heart's best blood.
Thus was the soul of Lausus greatly framed,
And by Apollo's ardent zeal inflamed,

Burning intensely, gloriously bright,
That makes e'en nature's fiercest wrath delight.
His Mother also taught him how to sing,
And tune the apt and many-voiced string ;
For not unknown to her the sacred art,
By dulcet sounds, to fascinate the heart.
Thus formed by Genius, and Instruction too,
No charm of genuine nature pass’d his view ;
While Fancy peopled hill, and vocal bower,
With airy shape, and visionary power;
And, like an eagle towering in his pride,
Oft would he scale the steep tremendous Ide:
The seat of prospect was that pleasant hill,
Unwearied, whence the eye may wander, till
The skirts of evening veil the lovely view,-
Glad

may it measure then the conclave blue,
Where, broidered o'er her dusky mantle's fold,
Many a rich cloud varies, rose, and gold;
And there he wont bis thoughtful hours to guile,
Of day's first meeting, or last parting, smile :
Nor there alone,-but down the valley green,
The pathless copse, and every desart scene,
He loved to stray; and, 'mid the forest lone,
List the hoarse oaks, that, with a hoarser tone,
Nod to the blast; and to the waterfalls ;
And the wind whistling through old ivied balls ;
Or in sequestered nooks of hazel sit,
Lost in a wild and melancholy fit ;
And through the sunshine and the shower, descry
The painted rainbow arch the dewy sky:
Each mild and rugged charm to him was dear,
Each soft or harsh sound rapture to his ear:
While he beheld her, Nature did rejoice,
Or listened to her lone romantic voice.
The willing Genius of the shaggy dell
Wreathed the old roots with blossom, leaf, and bell,
And eke his brow with rosy chaplet dight,
And plied his labour with renewed delight.
Each nymph glad hailed her woods, and, with a song,
Wooed him within her haunts his roam prolong.
On the green summit of each breezy steep,
Whose delved side wide opened, long and deep,
Invisible Echo loved to list his strain,
And many a time to answer it again;
And, from each sedgy brook, and pebbled spring,
The pearl-crowned Naiads, wilely beckoning,
Rose, while he praised their waves, to aid his shell,
With many an airy lay, and whispered spell;
And Fancy joyed to bring her shadowy train,
Half-seen, to dance upon the flowery plain,

To aërial measures, with light fairy tread,
Bending not the unprinted violet's head*:
And oft the spirit of the midnight storm
Would bow attentive his terrific form,
As he addressed, with wild and awful strain,
Him, 'mid bis gloom, and blasts, and spectral in ;
While the vexed deep was howling, and the waves
Became the wreck of navies, and men's graves;
And oft his song would hush the surge to peace,
And the glad sunbeam tremble on the seas.

XIV.
Could love be absent from that kindling breast,
Which

every other extacy confessed ?
It could not be ;-and late the Muse hath told
That Love did there his fairest kingdom hold.,
To the poetic flame he joined his fire,
And added unto Nature fresh desire :
More verdant made the fields, the flowers more gay,
Their hues more variant, and more bright the day;
Sweeter the song of birds,—the softer rill
More pleasant, as it purls beneath the shadowy hill,
At evening, or at morning-tide, when all is calm and still.

The author is indebted to Warton's 5th Ode for some of the ideas and imagery, in the preceding description of the poetical character of Lausus. The reader may discover the extent of his obligations, by reference to the Ode itself.

END OF CANTO SECOND.

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ON THE

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS

OF THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Most nations are fond of aspiring to the ideal honour of early origin; and, in the maintenance of their claims, too frequently display "little else but vanity. In the absence of moral and intellectual worth, it is with nations as with individuals; they pride themselves in ancestry, or any other adventitious good. Our estimation of character should be regulated by what a 'man is, and not by what he was : the same remark will apply to men in a congregated state. What availed it that the modern Greeks, so long the vassals of Turkish tyranny, descended from the most intellectual race that ever peopled the world ? May the hopes which their recent exertions have excited be abundantly realized! What can it profit the Italians, that the Romans were the dread or envy of their contemporaries? We, as a nation, were we ever so inclined, cannot boast of very early origin; happily, however, if the present, rather than the past, be the period for the estimation of national excellence, we have every thing to hope, and nothing to fear, from the comparison.

The state of a language must naturally correspond with the mental condition of the people who speak it. National language is a collection of verbal signs, which, when arranged, become the indexes of a particular people's ideas ; and, in proportion as these become enlarged, enriched, and refined, the language they speak will become free, copious, and harmonious, the reverse must follow, should the mental progress of any country unhappily retrograde: when ideas cease to occupy the mind, the terms by which they were expressed must become obsolete.

The origin of the English Language is confessedly Saxon. This is demonstrable, from a review of the great majority of words which compose it, as well as from an examination of its structure; and it is abundantly corroborated by historical fact.

Mr. Turner, in his excellent history of the Anglo-Saxons, has observed, that not more than one-fifth of the original language has become obsolete, or, in other words, that fourfifths constitute our present language; and this he has proved, by taking a variety of passages from some of our most celebrated authors, and marking the Saxon words in italics. The passages alluded to are borrowed from Shakspeare, Milton, Cowley, the Translators of the Sacred Scriptures, Thomson, Addison, Spencer, Locke, Pope, Young, Swift, Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, and Johnson.

We subjoin an example or two, as illustrative of his general principle :

“ SHAKSPEARE.
“ To be, or not to be,--that is the question ;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep;
No more! and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks

The flesh is heir to! 'twere a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; to sleep;
To sleep? perchance to dream."

"MILTON.
“ With thee conversing, I forget all time;

All seasons, and their change; all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds: pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers ; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild ; then silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the genis of heaven, her starry train.”

Cow LEY.
“ Mark that swift arrow! how it cuts the air, --

How it outruns the following eye!

Use all precautions now, and try
If thou oanst call it back, or stay it there,

That way it went; but thou shalt find

No track is left behind.
Fool! 'tis thy life, and the fond archer thou,

Of all the time thou'st shot away,

I'll bid thee fetch but yesterday,
And it shall be too hard a task to do.”

Dr. Hickes has observed, that, of the fifty-eight words which compose the Lord's Prayer, not more than three of them are of Gallo-Norman introduction.

Besides this kind of verbal proof, we may add, from whatever foreign sources additions to our language have been made, they have no effect on its structure. With very few exceptions, such additions have at once conformed to all the previously-established rules of formation and construction ; so that the whole genius and structure of the language have remained completely Saxon. The exceptions, to which we refer, consist of a few idiomatic forms of expression, and of those nouns derived from the learned languages, which form their plurals, not according to the English usage, but as in their primitive state ; and, as they are not numerous, it may not be tedious to name them :--Antithesis, apparatus, appendix, arcanum, automaton, axis, basis, calx, cherub, crisis, criterion, datum, diæresis, ellipsis, emphasis, effluvium, encomium, erratum, genius, genus, hiatus, hypothesis, index, lamina, magus, medium, memorandum, metamorphosis, phenomenon, radius, seraph, series, species, stamen, stratum, and