And through the glimmering forest shade,
Where the unshorn grass is white
With the unruffled streams of light,
Poured by the cloudless summer moon,
We hear the footsteps of a Maid,
Wondering half, and half afraid.
Sweet Bard! on whose poetic Spring*
Milton's Muse, with charmed wing,
Brooded at morning time, and drew
Pure draughts of that enchanted dew.

Poet of Paradise! when Grief
Withered the verdure of the leaf
That in thy Fancy's Garden grew,
And thou wast fall'n on evil times,t
With fears and darkness compassed round,—
The music of those pleasant chimes,
The long-drawn sweetness of those rhymes,
Through thy rejoicing bosom wound,
With melting harmony of sound!
Oh, never call them evil days,

When thy young Muse with vernal rays
Empurpled all the ground.

Kindled by her Elysian light,

The cloud that dimmed thy spirit's sight

Turned out its silver lining on the night;

Those readers who have been accustomed to attach much importance to the decisions of Schlegel, in his Lectures upon Dramatic Poetry, will feel, perhaps, some surprise at his opinion of the Faithful Shepherdess. "Fletcher," he says, "wished also to be

classical for once, and did violence to his natural talent. Perhaps, he had the intention of surpassing Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream: but the composition which he has ushered into the world is as heavy as that of the other was easy and aerial. The piece is overcharged with mythology and rural paintings, is untheatrical, and so far from the genuine ideality of the pastoral world, that it even contains the greatest vulgarities," To say that the Faithful Shepherdess is imperfect and deformed by many errors, is no very great deduction from the merits of the composition. Schlegel was an eloquent, a sagacious, and often (my experience warrants me in asserting) a very superficial critic. He remarks of Davenant, for example, that "of all his works, nothing has escaped a merited oblivion !"-where is Gondibert?

It was the poet's pathetic complaint, that he had fallen upon evil days; yet it may be permitted us to believe, that, even under his severest afflictions, the early poetry and romance of his youth retained their charms; and that Comus and L'Allegro often shed their beautiful light upon his memory.

This line forms part of a very exquisite description in Comus. The lady, unable to discover her path in the darkness of the night, is at length delighted with a glimpse of the moon

Was I deceived? or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn out her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

In Sidney's Arcadia, a work (however fatiguing it may be as a whole) illuminated by beams of pure poetry, a similar scene occurs, which I am inclined to rate much higher than

And pure-eyed Faith, and sister fair,
White-handed Hope-thrice blessed pair
Of angels,-lighted up the gloom,
Making an Eden of thy darkened room.

JUVENAL.

Each conscious cheek grew red, and a cold trembling
Freezed the chill soul, while every guilty breast
Stood, fearful of dissection, as afraid

To be anatomized by skilful hand.

Would thou wast living at this hour,*
Immortal Poet! with thy whip of steel

Scourging the blood out of the dissolute age,
Until the fainting Sybarite should reel,
E'en in the odorous twilight of his bower,
Beneath the fury of thy noble rage!

Randolph.

The world hath need of thee! Oh, might that Bow,

Which sounded once upon the Despot's ear,
Scatter again, with angry twang of fear,

Its arrowy storm upon the shrinking foe!

Rome's sternest painter and her best! not thine

To woo the Muse beneath a Cynthia's eye,

Or flatter vice, or daub iniquity,t

than Warton: "Going a little aside into the wood, where many times before she had delighted to walk, her eyes were saluted with a tuft of trees, so close set together, as with the shade the moon gave through it, might breed a fearful kind of devotion to look upon it." This picture wants the exquisite finish and romance of Milton, but the mysterious awe of the moon-lighted solitude is highly picturesque and poetical. Having referred to Comus, I may mention a beauty in this poem which has escaped, I believe, all the commentators. Where the spirit is teaching the brothers with what weapons to "quell the might of hellish charms," he tells of a certain shepherd lad,—

Of small regard to see to, yet well-skilled
In every virtuous plant and healing herb,

Who revealed to him the qualities of simples:

Among the rest, a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he culled me out;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil;
Unknown, and-like estemeed, and toe dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon:
And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly,

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.
He called it Hæmony, and gave it me,

And bade me keep it as of sov'ran use

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
Or ghastly furies' apparition.

Hæmony is a name compounded of aipa, 'blood; ovos, wine.' It is plain that the reference is to the Eucharist, and by a figure to Christianity. When this is understood, the whole passage acquires a new and peculiar allegorical beauty. This criticism, it is but just to say, was received from an intimate friend of the late Mr. Coleridge, from whom he heard it. * See Wordsworth's Sonnet upon Milton.

† This line is borrowed from a passage in Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of his Humour, which deserves quotation, not only for its own merits, but as containing, in

the

Trampling beneath the thunder of thy line
Sin's Giant-head, as with a foot divine!
But who shall blast the Titan-Power of Crime?
Rise once again, thou poet of all time;
Pour thy fierce spirit through the trumpet's lips,
Lighting the moral blackness of eclipse
Before the beams of thy Promethean flame,-
The Sword of Satire wakens at thy name!

The world hath need of thee! thy silken string
Bard of the Sabine Farm !* is all in vain,
Though joyous Pleasure, with her painted wing,
Floats, Cleopatra-like, along thy strain,
And all the Graces, with voluptuous smile,
The melting gazers' tranced heart beguile.
In vain, in vain, thy laughing Muse might hurl
The glittering arrows from her Bow of Pearl,
Her quiver at her back; while, half-reclined
In sportive ease beneath the myrtle bower,
Fancy, the bosom's Hebe, from each flower
Pours her ambrosial nectar on the mind.t

the opinion of a very excellent critic, the essential spirit of the Old Greek Comedy; although I cannot agree with him in considering Jonson-stately, learned, severe-to be our English Aristophanes :

Away!

Who is so impatient of this impious world,
That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue?
Who can behold such prodigies as these

And have his lips sealed up? Not I; my soul
Was never ground into such oily colours

To flatter vice and daub iniquity;

But with an armed and resolved hand

I'll strip the ragged follies of the time,
Naked as at their birth.

This is Comedy raising her voice to a tragic elevation.

* Horace,

+ No translation, however animated, no criticism, however discriminating, can convey to the reader so clear a notion of Juvenal's manner as Johnson's noble imitation, There the tide of virtuous indignation swells almost to an equal height; and all the patriot beams in the eyes of the poet. When contrasted with Horace, his peculiar characteristics stand prominently forward. Horace, the satirist of the tastes and elegan cies of life, employs the light and glittering weapons of ridicule; he attacks the giant with the delicate edge of irony. Juvenal, on the other hand, "seized the Sword of Satire, and rushing from the palace to the tavern, and from the gates of Rome to the boundaries of the empire, struck, without distinction, every one who deviated from the course of nature or the paths of honour." Horace shot at each passing Vice or Folly from the loopholes of his retreat, while the satires of Juvenal are the anatomy of Roman licentiousness, in which, to borrow a phrase from the poet Randolph, each artery, nerve, and vein of public sin are bared to the public gaze and public scorn. It is no longer, says Dusaulx, a poet, like Horace, fickle, pliant, and fortified by that indifference so falsely called philosophical, who amused himself with bantering vice, or at most with upbraiding a few errors of little consequence, in a style flowing as indolence or pleasure directed; but a stern and incorruptible censor, an inflamed and impetuous poet, who sometimes rises with his subject to the noblest height of tragedy. After all, the most energetic satire can not accomplish much :

It

ARISTOPHANES.

Welcome Joy and Feast,
Midnight Shout and Revelry,
Tipsy Dance, and Jollity.

Rigour now is gone to bed,

And Advice with scrupulous head.
Strict Age and Sour Severity,

With their grave saws, in slumber lie.

Comus.

Painter of Mirth and wanton Fun!
Yet oft before thy gaze would run*
Gleams of the true poetic Sun,
And the bold Spirit of thy Lyre
Brought down from heaven the living fire,

Kindling the vision, till thy eye
Glowed with its radiant majesty.
Beloved of Plato! in thy breast
He said the Graces well might rest,
Or on thy lips. To thee were known
Each tuneful pause, each melting tone:

It may correct a foible, may chastise
The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress,
Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch:
But where are its sublimer trophies found?
What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed
By rigour, or whom laughed into reform ?

Alas! Leviathan is not so tamed.

Laughed at, he laughs again; and stricken hard,

Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales,

That fear no discipline of human hands.

Such was the opinion of the Poet of the Task, when he declared the Pulpit to be the

Support and ornament of Virtue's cause.

But we are to remember that Juvenal lived in a very different age.

• It is to be deeply regretted, for the sake of literature, that Aristophanes should have chastised vice "by an open exposure of its turpitude; offending the ear, while he aims to mend the heart." Yet one of the most eloquent, devoted, and learned Fathers of the church slept with his comedies under his pillow; I allude to Chrysostom, whom Coleridge called the Jeremy Taylor of that age. Undoubtedly, the poet indicates, even in the most extravagant effusions of his fancy, a vein of deep and earnest feeling; his wildest pictures are recommended by something of Hogarthian sentiment; and he must have possessed no common endowments of mind and disposition, who was admitted to the society of Socrates and Plato. By the Master of the Academy, he was held in the highest esteem, and he declared that the Graces might find a home in his bosomUt templum Xaçıris, quod non labatur, haberent, invenere tuum pectus, Aristophanes — (Scaliger er Platone). To appreciate his style, we must fully comprehend the state of the popular feeling, and the character of his auditors. Schlegel, with a daring felicity, calls his Comedies, the drunkenness of poetry, the Bacchanalia of fun. His language is a model of pure unadulterated Attic; the well of Greek undefiled; it is unrivalled for richness, sweetness, and flexibility; at one time rioting with all the abandonment of farce; at another, swelling into the lofty dignity of the Dithyarmbic; then melting into the delicious strains of lyric fancy. Like Eschylus, he could tread the stage with a brazen cothurnus. But his diction is the crowning charm of his genius; the face of the Comic Muse, in all its varying play and expression, is seen through this admirable Masque. And here our language has been found wanting; neither the learned ingenuity of Cumberland, nor the happy adaptations of Mitchell, have succeeded in giving to the English reader an adequate idea of the original.

Now urging the impetuous flood along,
Now blazing with the patriot's ire,
Leading the crowned triumphant throng;
Or singing sweetly with the choir,
The nightingale of song!

Touched by thy pencil's magic light,
The landscape beams upon the sight,
The verdant olive glens unfold

Their leafy shades and coverts green,
Bright with the Morning's plumes of gold;
And through the rustling leaves are seen
Galleys upon the waters riding,

With flashing prow the waves dividing.
And then a change comes o'er the dream,
And sparkling in the sunny beam,
From peaked Olympus' snowy crest,
Clouds of beauty float along,
Tinging with richest hues thy song;
Or weave the mystic dance by turns ;
Or stooping fill their radiant urns
At thy seven mouths, mysterious Nile.*
And then the Fancy's sweetest smile
Plays lightly on thy page;

Or Virtue o'er the recreant Age

With fiery indignation rides,

While "Laughter, holding both his sides,"
Looks gaily on, or leagued with Folly

Pelts thee with flowers-Melancholy !

• I allude to the Chorus in the comedy of the Clouds. Aristophanes sketched a landscape with great spirit,

THE HINDU PUNCHAYET.

"THE Punchayet can scarcely, in its native shape, be said to bear any distinct analogy to a jury, being, in fact, merely a body of men, to whom a cause is generally referred. They are not bound to decide; there is no issue given them to try; they are under no direction, and are left to scramble out of their case as they can. I believe the native collectors use it extensively to adjust various disputes between the village-communities and the different members of such communities. The collectors, too, frequently have recourse to it in the determination of questions of private right, when making settlements; and one officer in particular, with whom I have had much communication, and who is singularly well acquainted with the natives of the country where he has been (Mr. W. Fraser), systematically employed it to a great extent in settling the boundarydisputes between villages, preparatory to the survey of the Delhi territory and the districts immediately adjoining; and he stated that he had found the plan very successful. His scheme was partly on the principle of a jury, and partly on that of the punchayet; that is to say, the members were generally chosen on the nomination of the parties; but they were required to decide without delay; the matter in dispute was brought to a distinct issue, and the whole proceedings were regularly recorded by a government-clerk, who was deputed for the purpose, with instructions to follow a prescribed course. The disputes were generally between (what I may call republican) communities of yeomen cultivating their own fields, for the possession of land, generally of little value, but very eagerly contested by the people. The head-men of the contending villages, acting for and in presence of the whole body, were required to nominate six on each side, making in the whole twelve. The right of challenge was freely allowed; and the jury (so to term it) was required to be unanimous. Mr. Fraser's reason for having so many as twelve was, as he said, chiefly that they might, by their number and weight, be placed above the reach of intimidation or danger from the vengeance of those against whom they might decide; and it was with the same view, also, with that of putting down party-spirit, he required unanimity.”—Mr. Holt Mackenzie.