Which drown them in a briny flood.

My Muse, pronounce aloud, there's nothing good,
Nought that the world can show,
Nought that it can bestow.

II.

Not boundless heaps of its admired clay,
Ah! too successful to betray,

When spread in our frail virtue's way:
For few do run with so resolved a pace,

That for the golden apple will not lose the race.
And yet not all the gold the vain would spend,
Or greedy avarice would wish to save,
Which on the earth refulgent beams doth send,
Or in the sea has found a grave,

Join'd in one mass, can bribe sufficient be,
The body from a stern disease to free,

Or purchase for the mind's relief

One moment's sweet repose, when restless made by grief,
But what may laughter more than pity move:

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:
But choose to miss, what miss'd does them torment,
And that to hug affords them no content.

Wise fools, to do them right, we these must hold,
Who Love depose, and homage pay to Gold.

IV.

But, oh, the laurell'd fool! that doats on fame,
Whose hope 's applause, whose fear 's to want a name,
Who can accept for pay

Of what he does, what others say,
Exposes now to hostile arms his breast,
To toilsome study then betrays his rest;
Now to his soul denies a just content,
Then forces on it what it does resent;
And all for praise of fools! for such are those,
Which most of the admiring crowd compose.
O famish'd soul, which such thin food can feed!
O wretched labor, crown'd with such a meed!
Too loud, O Fame! thy trumpet is, too shrill
To lull a mind to rest,

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,
Whate'er may wound my eyes or ears;

The grating noise of private jars,
The horrid sound of public wars,
Of babbling fame the idle stories,
The short-lived triumph's noisy glories,
The curious nets the subtle weave,

The word, the look that may deceive.
No mundane care shall more affect my breast,
My profound peace shake or molest:
But stupor, like to death, my senses bind,
That so I may anticipate that rest
Which only in my grave I hope to find.

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,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command;
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe,
Make us unite, and make us conquer too:

Let partial spirits still aloud complain;
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign;
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.
Above the waves as Neptune show'd his face
To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us, represt.
Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious state;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.
The sea's our own: and now, all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet:
Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.
Heaven (that hath placed this island to give aw,
To balance Europe, and her states to awe)
In this conjunction doth on Britain smile;
The greatest Leader, and the greatest Isle!
Hither the oppressed shall henceforth resort,
Justice to crave, and succor, at your Court;
And then your Highness, not for ours alone,
But for the world's Protector shall be known.

Things of the noblest kind our own soil breeds;
Stout are our men, and warlike are our steeds:
Rome, though her eagle through the world had flown,
Could never make this island all her own.

Your never-failing sword made war to cease;
And now you heal us with the acts of peace:
Our minds with bounty and with awe engage,
Invite affection, and restrain our rage.

Less pleasure take brave minds in battles won,
Than in restoring such as are undone:
Tigers have courage, and the rugged bear,
But man alone can whom he conquers, spare.

To pardon, willing; and to punish, loath;

You strike with one hand, but you heal with both.
Lifting up all that prostrate lie, you grieve
You cannot make the dead again to live.

Oft have we wonder'd, how you hid in peace
A mind proportion'd to such things as these;
How such a ruling spirit you could restrain,
And practise first over yourself to reign.

Your private life did a just pattern give.
How fathers, husbands, pious sons, should live;
Born to command, your Princely virtues slept,
Like humble David's, while the flock he kept.
But when your troubled country call'd you forth,
Your flaming courage and your matchless worth,
Dazzling the eyes of all that did pretend,
The fierce contention gave a prosperous end.
Still as you rise, the state, exalted too,

Finds no distemper while 'tis changed by you;

Changed like the world's great scene! when, without noise,
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.

Had you, some ages past, this race of glory

Run, with amazement we should read your story:

But living virtue, all achievements past,
Meets envy still to grapple with at last.

*

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a Muse:

Here in low strains your milder deeds we sing;
But there, my Lord! we'll bays and olive bring

To crown your head: while you in triumph ride
O'er vanquish'd nations, and the sea beside:
While all your neighbor-princes unto you,

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
May read in thee,

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;

Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style,
May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
Witty, and well employ'd, and, like thy Lord,
Speaking in parables his slighted word;

I name thee not, lest so despised a name
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame;
Yet e'en in transitory life's late day,

That mingles all my brown with sober gray,
Revere the man, whose pilgrim marks the road,

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,