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Or veteran oak, like those remember'd well,
Or breeze or echo, or some wild-flower's smell
(For, who can say what small and fairy ties
The memory flings o'er pleasure as it flies!)
Reminds my heart of many a sylvan dream
I once indulged by Trent's inspiring stream;
Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights
On Donington's green lawns and breezy heights!

Whether I trace the tranquil moments o'er
When I have seen thee cull the blooms of lore,
With him, the polished warrior, by thy side,
A sister's idol and a nation's pride!
When thou hast read of heroes, trophied high
In ancient fame, and I have seen thine eye
Turn to the living hero, while it read,

For pure and brightening comments on the dead!
Or whether memory to my mind recals
The festal grandeur of those lordly halls,
When guests have met around the sparkling board,
And welcome warm'd the cup that luxury pour'd;
When the bright future star of England's throne
With magic smile hath o'er the banquet shone,
Winning respect, nor claiming what he won,
But tempering greatness, like an evening sun
Whose light the eye can tranquilly admire,
Glorious but mild, all softness yet all fire!
Whatever hue my recollections take,
Even the regret, the very pain they wake
Is dear and exquisite !-but oh! no more-
Lady! adieu-my heart has linger'd o'er
These vanish'd times, till all that round me lies,
Stream, banks, and bowers, have faded on my eyes!

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Her sails are full, though the wind is still, And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung!

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are toss'd!

Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the church-yard dew!

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furl'd,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on--oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE.' ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND, OCTOBER 1804.

Νόστου προφασις γλυκερου.
PINDAR. Pyth. 4.

WITH triumph this morning, oh Boston! I hail The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail, For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee, To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free, And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand❜ Is the last I shall tread of American land.

Well-peace to the land! may the people at length, Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is strength; That though man have the wings of the fetterless wind, Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind,

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax. and I had been so spoiled by the very splendid hospitality with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston had treated me, that I was but ill prepared to encounter the miseries of a Canadian ship. The weather, however, was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy of my friend Douglas, and, at the same time, do injustice to my own feelings of gratitude, d.d I attempt to say how much I owe to him.

Sir John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova-Scotia, very kindly allowed me to accompany him on his visit to the college which they have lately established at Windsor, about forty miles from Halifax, and I was indeed most pleasantly surprised by the beauty and fertility of the country which opened upon us after the bleak and rocky wilderness by which Halifax is surrounded. I was told that, in travelling onwards, we should find the soil and the scenery improve, and it gave me much pleasure to know that the worthy Governor has by no means such an inamabile regnum » as I was, at first sight, inclined to believe.

Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom,
Nor virtue's aroma its pathway perfume,
Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight,
That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight!

Farewell to the few I have left with regret,
May they sometimes recal, what I cannot forget,
That communion of heart and that parley of soul,
Which has lengthen'd our nights and illumined our
bowl,

When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien

Of some bard I had known, or some chief I had seen,
Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored,
Whose name often hallow'd the juice of their board!
And still as, with sympathy humble but true,

I told them each luminous trait that I knew,
They have listen'd, and sigh'd that the powerful stream
Of America's empire should pass, like a dream,
Without leaving one fragment of genius, to say
How sublime was the tide which had vanish'd away!
Farewell to the few-though we never may meet
On this planet again, it is soothing and sweet
To think that, whenever my song or my name

Shall recur to their ear, they 'll recal me the same

I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and blest,

Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow depress'd!

But, DOUGLAS! while thus I endear to my mind

The elect of the land we shall soon leave behind,
I can read in the weather-wise glance of thine eye,
As it follows the rack flitting over the sky,

That the faint coming breeze will be fair for our flight,
And shall steal us away ere the falling of night.
Dear DOUGLAS, thou knowest, with thee by my side,
With thy friendship to soothe me, thy courage to guide,
There's not a bleak isle in those summerless seas,
Where the day comes in darkness, or shines but to
freeze,

Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore,

That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore!
Oh! think then how happy I follow thee now,
When hope smooths the billowy path of our prow,
And each prosperous sigh of the west-springing wind
Takes me nearer the home where my heart is enshrined;
Where the smile of a father shall meet me again,
And the tears of a mother turn bliss into pain;
Where the kind voice of sisters shall steal to my heart,
And ask it, in sighs, how we ever could part!-

But see! the bent top-sails are ready to swellTo the boat-I am with thee-Columbia, farewell!

TO LADY H

ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

Tunnebrige est à la même distance de Londres que Fontainebleau l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beau et de galant dans l'un et dans l'autre sexe s'y rassemble au temps des eaux. La compagnie," etc. etc.-See Mémoires de Grammont, seconde partie, chap. iii.

TUNBRIDGE-WELLS, August, 1805. WHEN Grammont graced these happy springs, And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles,

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BUT, whither have these gentle ones,
The rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,
Led my truant brains a dancing?

Instead of wise encomiastics
Upon the Doctors and Scholastics,

I promised that I would give the remainder of this poem, but, as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning which it contains, they shall have no more of it. With a view, however, to the edification of these gentlemen, I have prevailed on an industrious friend of mine, who has read a great number of unnecessary books, to illuminate the extract with a little of his precious eradition.

Polymaths, and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and all their sisters,
The instant I have got the whim in,
Off I fly with nuns and women,
Like epic poets, ne'er at ease
Until I've stolen in medias res!
So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down, in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heap'd around him,-
Mamurra' stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus! 2
When lo! while all that 's learn'd and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,
And through the window of his study
Beholds a virgin, fair and ruddy,

With

him as

eyes as brightly turned upon The angel's 3 were on Hieronymus, Saying, 't was just as sweet to kiss her-oh!

Far more sweet than reading Cicero!
Quick fly the folios, widely scatter'd,
Old Homer's laurell'd brow is batter'd,
And Sappho's skin to Tully's leather,
All are confused and toss'd together!
Raptured he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman! for thy lovelier page :
Sweet book! unlike the books of art,
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom, the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume! 4
But, to begin my subject rhyme-
'T was just about this devilish time,

1 Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father. Nulla de re unquam praterquam de patre dubitavit.—In vit. He was very learned-. Là dedans (that is, in his head, when it was opened) le Punique hearte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque l'Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence du Latin avec le Grec, etc.-See l'His toire de Montmaur, tom. ii, page 91.

2 Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus. # Philippus Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi,» says Stadelius de circumforanea Literatorum vanitate.-He used to fight the devil every night with a broad-sword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (See OPORIN. Vit. apud Christian. Gryph. Vit. Select, quorundam Eruditissimorum, etc.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen. My very beard (says be in his Paragrænum) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna.

The angel who scolded St Jerom for reading Cicero, as GRATIAN tells the story, in his concordantia discordantium Caxonum, and says that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classics, . Episcopus Gentilium libros non legat.»-Distinc. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying-besides, angels have got no tongues, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenes assures us: Ovy dis quid TAWIA, ούτως εκείνοις ή γλώττα ουδ' αν οργανα τις των pawns ayyshots.-CLEM. ALEXAND. Stromat. Now, how an angel could scold without a tongue, I shall leave the angelic Mrs to determine.

4 The idea of the Rabbins about the origin of woman is singular. They think that man was originally formed with a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off this appendage behind, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordinary supposition the following reflection is founded:--

If such is the tie between women and men.
The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf,
For he takes to his tail, like an idiot, again,
And be makes a deplorable ape of himself.
Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail,
Every husband remembers the original plan,
And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,
Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can.

When scarce there happen'd any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,

A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,

Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her,
A branch of Dagon's family

(Which Dagon, whether He or She,
Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referr'd to Scaliger et cæteris),
Finding that, in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic mannikin,
A doctor, quite as learn'd and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,
Lully, Hales irrefragabilis,

Or

any doctor of the rabble is!
In languages, the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babel sots;
He chatter'd more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and Priest included;
Priest and holy Sanhedrim
Were one-and-seventy fools to him!
But chief the learned demon felt a

Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,

That, all for Greek and learning's glory, 4

He nightly tippled « Græco more,»
And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends,

From whence your sholars, when they want tick,
Say, to be At-tick 's to be on tick!

1 SCALIGER, de Emondat. Tempor.--Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians husbandry.-See JACQUES GAFFAREL'S CLriosités inouies, chap. 1. He says he thinks this story of the seamonster carries little show of probability with it.

I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boethius attributed to Thomas Aquinas be really the work of this angelic Doctor. There are some bold assertions hazarded in it for instance, he says that Plato kept school in a town called Academia, and that Alcibiades was a very beautiful woman whom some of Aristotle's pupils fell in love with: Alcibindes mulier fuit pulcherrima, quam videntes quidam discipuli Aristotelis, etc.-See FREYTAG. Adparat. Literar. art. 86. tom. 1.

The following compliment was paid to Laurentius Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language:

Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit,
Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui.

Since Val arrived in Pluto's shade,

His nouns and pronouns all so pat in,
Pluto himself would be afraid

To ask even what's o'clock in Latin!

These lines may be found in the Actorum Censio of DU VERDIER (page 29), an excellent critic, if he could have either felt or understood any one of the works which he criticises.

4 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet he vulga enough to laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. Master Joachim (says he) has sent me some dates and some raisins, and has also written me two letters in Greek. As soon as I am recovered, I shall answer them in Turkish, that he too may have the pleasure of reading what he does not understand.-— « Græca sunt, legi non possunt is the ignorant spee h attributed to Accursius, but very unjustly-far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy juris-consult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. Possess, expressly says, Græcæ literæ possunt intelligi et legi,s (Vide Nov, Libror, Rarior. Codection, ¦ Fasciculi IV.)-Scipio Carteromachus seems to think that there is no salvation out of the pale of Greek literature: Via prima salutis Graia pandetur ab urbe. And the zeal of Laurentius Rhodomannus cannot be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, per reipublice decus et emolumentum, to study the Greek language. No must we forget Phavorinus, the excellent Bishop of No era, who, careless of all the usual commendations of a Christian, required no farther eulogium on his tomb iban « Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer."

In logics, he was quite Ho Panu!1
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,

That though you were the learned Stagyrite,
At once upon the hip he had you right!
Sometimes indeed his speculations
Were view'd as dangerous innovations.

As thus-the Doctor's house did harbour a
Sweet blooming girl, whose name was Barbara :
Oft, when his heart was in a merry key,

He taught this maid his esoterica,
And sometimes, as a cure for hectics,
Would lecture her in dialectics.
How far their zeal let him and her go
Before they came to sealing Ergo,

Or how they placed the medius terminus,
Our chronicles do not determine us;
But so it was-by some confusion

In this their logical prælusion,
The Doctor wholly spoil'd, they say,
The figure of young Barbara;
And thus, by many a snare sophistic,
And enthymene paralogistic,
Beguiled a maid, who could not give,
To save her life, a negative. 3
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that amongst the spheres
(Which most of all, as he averr'd it,
He dearly loved, cause no one heard it),
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,
And find, by Euclid's corollaria,
The ratios of a jig or aria.

But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orphenses and Saint Cecilias,

He own'd he thought them much surpass'd
By that redoubted Hyaloclast, 4
Who still contrived, by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a bottle!

Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he,
On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
Like that great little man Albertus,

10 Пx. -- The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek in a stanza would serve as ballast to the most light o' love" verses. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θέμις εςιν in hac regione μενοντι
Αξιον ab nostris επιδευτα esse καμηνας.

RONSARD, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His Cière Ent techie, in addressing his mistress, is admirable, and can be only matched by COWLEY's Antiperistasis.

The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara belongs. together with Gelarent, Darii, and Ferio.

3 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives.-The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which MesCRENIUS gives in a note upon bis Essays de Charlataneria Eruditor m. In the Niptice Peri patetica of Caspar Barlaus, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony, CRAMBE's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinus Scriblerus, is borrowed chi-fly from the Nupthe Peripatetica of BARLKUS.

4 Or Glass-Breaker.-Monnories bas given an traordinary man, in a work published 1682. fracto, etc.

account of this exDe vitreo crypho

Wherein he show'd the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,
If boy the baby chance to be,
He cries OA!-if girl, OE!-
They are, says he, exceeding fair hints
Respecting their first sinful parents;

Oh Eve! exclaimeth little madam, While little master cries Oh Adam!*

In point of science astronomical,
It seemed to him extremely comical
That, once a year, the frolic sun
Should call at Virgo's house for fun,
And stop a month and blaze around her,
Yet leave her Virgo, as he found her!
But't was in Optics and Dioptrics,
Our demon play'd his first and top tricks :
He held that sunshine passes quicker
Through wine than any other liquor;
That glasses are the best utensils
To catch the eye's bewilder'd pencils;
And, though he saw no great objection
To steady light and pure reflection,
He thought the aberrating rays
Which play about a bumper's blaze,

Were by the Doctors looked, in common, ou,
As a more rare and rich phenomenon!
He wisely said that the sensorium

Is for the eyes a great emporium,

To which these noted picture stealers

Send all they can and meet with dealers.
In many an optical proceeding,

The brain, he said, show'd great good-breeding;
For instance, when we ogle women
(A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in),
Although the dears are apt to get in a
Strange position on the retina,
Yet instantly the modest brain
Doth set them on their legs again!"

Our doctor thus with stuff'd sufficiency.
Of all omnigenous omnisciency,
Began (as who would not begin
That had, like him, so much within ?)
To let it out in books of all sorts,
Folios, quartos, large and small sorts;
Poems, so very deep and sensible,
That they were quite incomprehensible; 3
Prose which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,

'This is translated almost literally from a passage in Albertus de Secretis, etc.-I have not the book by me, or I would transcribe the words.

Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, not withstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium.

1 Under this description, I believe, « the Devil among the Scholars may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which neither they nor himself could interpret. See! the Eloge Historique de M. de Leibnitz, l'Europe Savante. People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find CICERO thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion, ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo, -Lib. 2, epist. 4. And we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read ARISTOTLE'S Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them.-NICOLAS MOSSA in Vit. Avicen.

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*

The tatter'd rags of
every vest,
In which the Greeks and Romans dress'd,
And o'er her figure, swoln and antic,
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those who saw the fits she had,
Declared unhappy Prose was mad!
Epics he wrote and scores of rebusses,
All as neat as old Turnebus's;
Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 't were tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow me;

Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No-nor the hoary Trismegistus

(Whose writings all, thank Heaven! have miss'd us), E'er fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

As this great porcus literarum !>

FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL.'
TO G. M. ESQ.

FROM FREDERICKSBURGH, VIRGINIA, JUNE 2.
DEAR George! though every bone is aching,
After the shaking

I've had this week, over ruts and ridges,3
And bridges

Made of a few uneasy planks, 4

In open ranks,

Like old women's teeth, all loosely thrown
Over rivers of mud, whose names alone
Would make the knees of stoutest man knock,
Rappahannock,

Occoquan-the Heavens may harbour us!
Who ever heard of names so barbarous !

These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it too allusive and too personal for publication.

Having remained about a week at NewYork, where I saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake (the only things that particularly awakened my attention), I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, Richmond, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr Wickham, one of their celebrated legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do honour to the most cultivated societies. Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Rihmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Federalists.

3 What Mr Weld says of the continual necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side, then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds! Now, gentlemen, to the right;' upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. Now, gentlemen, to the left; and so on."-WELD's Travels, letter 3.

4 Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety: and, as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet (as Sale tells us) was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of Paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely.

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