Which drown them in a briny flood. My Muse, pronounce aloud, there's nothing good, II. Not boundless heaps of its admired clay, When spread in our frail virtue's way: That for the golden apple will not lose the race. Join'd in one mass, can bribe sufficient be, Or purchase for the mind's relief One moment's sweet repose, when restless made by grief, When some the price of what they dearest love Are masters of, and hold it in their hand, To part with it their hearts they can't command: Wise fools, to do them right, we these must hold, IV. But, oh, the laurell'd fool! that doats on fame, Of what he does, what others say, Or calm a stormy breast, Which asks a music soft and still. 'Twas not Amalek's vanquish'd cry, Nor Israel's shouts of victory, That could in Saul the rising passion lay; 'Twas the soft strains of David's lyre the evil spirit chased away VI. Is there that earth by human foot ne'er press'd? That air which never yet by human breast Respired, did life supply? Oh! thither let me fly! Where from the world at such a distance set, All that's past, present, and to come, I may forget; The lover's sighs, and the afflicted's tears, The grating noise of private jars, The word, the look that may deceive. EDMUND WALLER. 1605-1687. EDMUND WALLER hardly deserves a place among the best names in Eng lish literature, either as a poet or as a man; and in giving him a small space here, I yield my own judgment to that of Dryden and Pope. He was born in 1605, studied at Cambridge, and was admitted into parliament as early as his eighteenth year. In political life he was a mere time-server, veering from the king to the parliament, and from the parliament to the king, as each might happen for the time to possess the ascendency. As a member of parliament he at first took the popular side, but soon after he joined in a plot to let the king's forces into the city, for which he was tried and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of £10,000, and it is said that he spent three times that sum in bribes. He acquired the means to do this from hav. ing married in 1630 a rich heiress of London, who died the same year. After his release from prison he went to France, where it is said he lived on the proceeds of his wife's jewels which he took with him. At the Restoration he returned, and wrote a congratulatory address to Charles II., as he had before done to Cromwell; and when the monarch frankly told him how inferior the verses in his own praise were to those addressed to his predecessor, the hol low-hearted, selfish sycophant replied, "Poets, sire, succeed better in fiction than in truth." Of his conduct when in parliament, Bishop Burnet says, "He never laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, though a witty man." On the accession of James II., though eighty years of age, he was elected representative for a borough in Cornwall; but he did not live to witness the glorious Revolution, having died the year before, October 21, 1687. As a poet, Waller is certainly "smooth," as Pope styles him, and compara tively destitute of that affectation which characterizes most of his contemporaries. "If he rarely sinks, he never rises very high; and we find much good sense and selection, much skill in the mechanism of language and metre, without ardor and without imagination. In his amorous poetry he has little passion or sensibility; but he is never free and petulant, never tedious, and never absurd. His praise consists much in negations." The following is a portion of what I deem his best piece, his Eulogy on Cromwell. "Of these lines," says Dr. Johnson, "some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical." 1 Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," ii. 372, Harper's edition A PANEGYRIC TO MY LORD PROTECTOR While with a strong, and yet a gentle hand, Let partial spirits still aloud complain; Things of the noblest kind our own soil breeds; Your never-failing sword made war to cease; Less pleasure take brave minds in battles won, To pardon, willing; and to punish, loath; You strike with one hand, but you heal with both. Oft have we wonder'd, how you hid in peace Your private life did a just pattern give. Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you; Changed like the world's great scene! when, without noise, Had you, some ages past, this race of glory Run, with amazement we should read your story: But living virtue, all achievements past, * Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, Here in low strains your milder deeds we sing; To crown your head: while you in triumph ride Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence and bow. Of his shorter pieces, the following has been pronounced "one of the most graceful poems of an age from which a taste for the highest poetry was fast vanishing." Go, lovely rose ! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired: Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare How small a part of time they share Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style, I name thee not, lest so despised a name That mingles all my brown with sober gray, And guides the progress of the soul to God.-CowPER. WITH what pleasure do we turn from the character of Waller, to tha never in-be-forgotten and ever-to-be-revered name-John Bunyan, the poor "tinker of Bedford." If there was danger in Cowper's time of "moving a sneer" at the mention of his name, there is none now; for it is doubtful whether, within the last fifty years, more editions have been published of any one book in the English language, the Bible excepted, than of Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan was born in the village of Elston, near Bedford, in the year 1628. His father was a brazier or tinker, and the son was brought up to the same trade. Though his parents were extremely poor, they put him to the best school they could afford, and thus he learned to read and write. He says of himself, that he was early thrown among vile companions, and initiated into profaneness, lying, and all sorts of boyish vice and ungodliness. Thus plainly he speaks of himself in view of his early sins, but it is just to say that to drinking and to licentiousness in its grossest forms, he was never addicted. He married very early, at the age of nineteen. My mercy was," he says, "to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly." Who can tell the happy influence that this connection exerted over him? And how vastiy would the sum of human happiness be increased, if, in choosing a companion for life, moral and religious character were regarded more, and worldly circumstances less. Soon after this, Bunyan left off his profanity, and began to think more seriously. "My neighbors were amazed," he says, "at this my great conversion from prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life: they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of me." Flattered by these commendations, and proud of his imagined godliness, he concluded that the Almighty "could not choose but be now pleased with him. Yea, to relate it in mine own way, I thought no man in England could please God bet ter than I." He was awakened from this self-righteous delusion by accidentally overhearing the discourse of three or four poor women, who were sitting at a door in the sun, in one of the streets of Bedford, "talking about the things of God." What especially struck him was, that they conversed about matters of religion "as if joy did make them speak," and "as if they had found a new world." He was most deeply impressed by this, and carried the words of these poor women with him wherever he went. His spiritual conflict was long, and attended with many and sore temptations; but God heard his prayer; 1 his views of truth became clear, and in 1653, when twenty-five years 1 1 “O Lord, I am a fool, and not able to know the truth from error; Lord, leave me not to my own blindness. Lord, I lay my soul only at thy feet; let me not be deceived, I humbly beseech thee." Such a prayer was never made in vain, |