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Their Bank, their traffic; their Exchange, their bart'ring:
To see their antique hats with formal beak;

Their broad-sleeved mantles, and their unbrimm'd bonnets:
It doth one good to mark their uncouth jabb'ring;
Their gravity; their port; their sage advice
On public questions; yea, it doth one good
To see their senate balloting on each thing;

In every port their gondolas afloat;

Their dames; their masquing, and their lonely living.
But the best sight of all is to behold

When these old wittols go to wed the sea,

Whose spouses they are, and the Turk her leman.

The 151st sonnet, To Courtiers, is another that is remarkable for its mixture of sprightliness, drollery, and caustic humour. England came in for a large portion of his gall. At f. 189, is a poem called Execration sur l'Angleterre; but in his Regrets (sonnet 162) it appears that he had been softened towards this country.

Of his Voeux Rustiques, imitated from the Latin of Navagero, the following is no unfavourable speci

men.

D'un Vanneur de blé aux vents.
A vous trouppe legere,
Qui d'aile passagere
Par le monde volez,
Et d'un sifflant murmure
L'ombrageuse verdure
Doucement esbranlez,
J'offre ces violettes,

Ces lis et ses fleurettes,
Et ces roses icy

Ces vermeillettes roses,

Tout freschement éclauses,
Et ces oeillets aussi.

De vostre douce haleine

Evantez ceste pleine,

Evantez ce sejour :
Cependant que j'ahanne
A mon blé, que je vanne
A la chaleur du jour.

F. 444.

The original is in the taste of the Greek ἐπιγράμματα, of which no one

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Voi l'arsura temprate omai che l'onde
E l'aria e i campi d'ogn' intorno accende
E mostra le sue forze ad ogni parte:
Ei mentre a ventilar le biade attende,
E rocamente al suon Eco risponde,
Scacciate voi le paglie a parte a parte.
Componimenti Lirici scelti da
T.J. Mathias, T. iii. p. 249.

I wish I had something worthier to be put by the side of these, than the attempt which is here offered to my reader.

Ye airs! sweet airs, that through the naked sky
Fan your aurelian wings in wanton play;

Or shedding quiet slumber, as ye fly,

'Mid the dim forest murmuring urge your way;

To you these garlands, and this basket high

Pil'd up with lily-bells and roses gay,

And fragrant violets of purplest dye,
Icon, all fainting in the noontide ray,

Scatters, a votive offering to your power:

And O! as ye receive the balmy spoil,

Temper the inclement beam; and while his flail
He plies unceasing through the sultry hour,
Hoarse Echo answering ever to his toil,
Dispel the parted chaff with brisker gale.

But to return to Bellay. His epitaphs on a little dog, on a cat, and on the Abbé Bonnet, are exquisitely droll and fantastic.

In his hymn De la Surdité, a whimsical encomium on Deafness, addressed to his friend Ronsard, there is some very striking imagery.

Je te salue O saincte et alme surdité,
Qui pour trone et palais de ta grand' majesté
T'es cavé bien avant sous une roche dure,
Un antre tapissé de mousse et de verdure;
Faisant d'un fort hallier son effroyable tour,
Où les cheutes du Nil tempestent à l'entour.
Là se voit le silence assis à la main dextre,
Le doigt dessus la levre, assise à la senestre
Est la melancolie au sourçil enfonsé :
L'estude tenant l'oeil sur le livre abbaissé
Se sied un peu plus bas, l'Ame imaginative,
Les yeux levez au ciel, se tient contemplative
Debout devant ta face; et là dedans le rond
D'un grand miroir d'acier te fait voir jusqu'au fond
Tout ce qui est au ciel, sur la terre, et sous l'onde,
Et ce qui est caché sous la terre profonde;

Le grave Jugement dort dessus ton giron,

Et les Discours ailez volent a l'environ. (F. 501.)
Hail to thee, Deafness, boon and holy power,
Thou that hast scoop'd thee out an ample bower
Within a hard rock where thy throne is seen,
Hung round with tapestry of mossy green.
The stony tower, embattled, guards thy state,
And Nile's steep falls are thundering at the gate.
There Silence on thy right hand still doth sit,
His finger on his lips; and in a fit
Of tranced sorrow, Melancholy lost,
Upon thy left, like a for-pined ghost.
A little lower, Study bends his look
For ever glew'd upon his wide-spread book.
Before thee, rapt Imagination stands,

With brow to heaven uplifted, while her hands
Present to thee a mirror of broad steel,
That in its depth all wonders doth reveal,
Of sky and air, and earth, and the wide ocean;
All things that are, whether in rest or motion.
Grave Judgment on thy lap, in sleep profound
Is laid; and winged words flit hovering round.
His advice to the young king,
Francis the Second, on his accession
to the crown, is remarkable for its
freedom. The poets of those times
seem to have kept firm hold on one
of the most valuable privileges of
their profession, and not to have sunk

the monitor in the courtier. Of the
poems which Spenser translated from
Bellay, the following Sonnet is ren-
dered with a fidelity that has not
in the least injured its spirit. I have
selected it as the best of those which
he has taken.

Sur la croppe d'un mont je vis une fabrique
De cent brasses de haut: cent colonnes d'un rond,
Toutes de diamans ornoyent le brave front,
Et la facon de l'œuvre estoit à la Dorique,
La muraille n'estoit de marbre ni de brique,
Mais d'un luisant cristal, qui du sommet au fond,
Elançoit mile rais de son ventre profond,
Sur cent degrez dorez du plus fin or d'Afrique.
D'or estoit le lambris, et le sommet encor
Reluisoit escaillé de grandes lames d'or:
Le pavé fut de jaspe, et d'esmauraude fine.
O vanité du monde! un soudain tremblement
Faisant crouler du mont la plus basse racine,
Renverse ce beau lieu depuis le fondement.

(Edit. Rouen, 1597, fo. 391.)

On high hill's top I saw a stately frame,
An hundred cubits high by just assize,
With hundred pillars fronting fair the same,
All wrought with diamond, after Dorick wise;
Nor brick nor marble was the wall to view,.
But shining crystal, which from top to base
Out of her womb a thousand rayons threw,
One hundred steps of Afric gold's enchase:
Gold was the parget; and the ceiling bright
Did shine all scaly, with great plates of gold;
The floor of jasp and emerald was dight.

O! world's vainness! whiles thus I did behold, An earthquake shook the hill from lowest seat, And overthrew this frame with ruine great.

Joachim du Bellay, descended from one of the noblest families in Anjou, was born at Liré, a village eight miles from Angers, in the year 1524. The facility and sweetness with which he wrote gained him the appellation of the French Ovid. He was highly esteemed by Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, and by Henry the Second, who granted him a considerable pension. He passed some years in Italy, whither he went in the suite of his kinsman, Cardinal du Bellay. We have seen how ill he was pleased

(The Visions of Bellay, 2.)

with that country, and yet how much he learned from it. Another of his family, Eustache du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, obtained for him in 1555, a canonry in his church. He was carried off at an early age by a fit of apoplexy, in January, 1560; and was buried in the church of Notre Dame.

Many epitaphs were made for him, in which he was called Pater Elegantiarum ; Pater Omnium Leporum.

He wrote Latin Poems that are not so much esteemed as his French.

THE GREEN-ROOM.

THE LETTERS OF EDWARD HERBERT,
No. III.

To Russell Powell, Esq.

My dear Russell,-It was my intention to have addressed this letter to your sister; but as I am apprehensive that the subject of it would prove but uninteresting to her, and as I know your passion for theatrical matters, I shall devote this sheet to you, and write to her anon upon some topic more pleasant and suitable to female' curiosity. You will find that my letters contain a sort of narrative, broken into chapters as the post requires, so that I need not be wasting my time upon repeated prefaces. Having introduced you to my friends, the Mortons, I have only now to relate whatever occurs, that may prove entertaining. And so I proceed.

The stocking of Prudence Morton is, as I have hinted, subject " to all

the skiey influences" in its colourbut setting this aside, she is naturally a kind-hearted and pleasant girl. I called one morning at the house of my friends, and was announced to Prudence only (her sister and her aunt being busied elsewhere)-she was sitting in state, over a little pinklined and cotton-furnished box, and playing at needle and thread with a bit of muslin scarcely large enough to have made a tippet for a fly-a volume of Southey's Roderick was open on one side of her work-box. She received me with a little momentary disappointment, as though she had hoped for some one of a wider fame; but her natural kindness triumphed over her artificial manner, and in three minutes she laid aside her parody on work, pushed the little

thread-closet towards the middle of the table, descended from her blue throne of state, and began to converse with me unaffectedly and amusingly, though still with something of her customary flightiness. She did not load the great guns of her visiting and company powers, and destroy me with her elegant vehemence, but chatted like a girl in a parlour, with ease, playfulness, and spirit, and was content to discourse without aiming at effects. On my asking her whether she had seen Mr. Kean (with whom she was intimate, as I have before hinted, and of whose fame she was extremely chary), she turned her chair towards me, and said, "Seen him! Yes! the clever creature! He kindly called the other morning to ask how we were, and we had a delightful theatrical conversation. Not that I dislike Macready —but I never saw any picture so expressive as the fine countenance of Kean, when he is addressing you on dramatic subjects. Don't you think so? But oh! true-you never saw him in a room-you should go to the Green-Room with Tom, for he has the entré at all the houses-I wonder why they call it a Green-Room-for Tom says it is not green." This hint of the Green-Room was enough for me, and I picked it out of the tangled threads of Prudence's discourse, and made use of it. I found that Tom, in the leisure of his industrious idleness, passed many an hour at the theatres, and that his acquaintance with the performers secured him free ingress and egress at all seasonable times, as the leases specify, to and from the theatrical premises. I begged Prudence to arrange for my accompanying Tom some morning or evening, which she cheerfully undertook to do. And, indeed, so earnest was she on this subject, that she promised, if possible, to pack up her brother, and send him to me at the breakfast hour on the following morn ing. At this moment, Mrs. Morton and Agnes came in from a walk, and our conversation became general. I sat chatting upon pleasant little scandals, until within half an hour of dinner; and then Mr. Morton, who had returned from the City, true as the dial, would have me stay the day, as he had an inclination to try a rubber VOL. V.

after tea. The hours passed cheerfully-we made up a table-but without Prudence and Tom, as usual. The first was finishing the Bride of Lammermuir, with as many tears in her eyes as I had trumps in my hand; and Tom was plaiting a whipthong, and whistling a Yorkshire tune out of time, and with many dreary pauses between. The thong was tied to the chair-rail, and he worked away like a saddler,-pretending at the same time to read Fearne on Contingent Remainders, which lay open (at the index) in his lap. Mrs. Morton revoked in the first deal, which made us all serious, until I trumped the best club, and by my bad play restored the cheerfulness of the table. Tom promised at the door, as he let me out, to be with me in the morning after breakfast; for Prudence had told him what I wished-but he begged me at the same time to give up" that union of the black handkerchief and buff waistcoat," which he protested was quite gothic.

Tom was with me at the stirring of my second cup of cocoa, and burst into my room as though he "would have told me half my Troy was burnt." I poured him out a cup of my patent beverage, which he would not taste, and pushed a chair towards him, which he as carelessly kicked away. All breakfast-time he was fretting me, and strutting his hour, about my best Brussels carpet, with his muddy buskin. Speeches from various plays were mouthed by him in a most tragic fury, and he turned to me at the conclusion of each separate passage, with a request that I would tell him "where that was;" I guessed awry, and so pestered him. He raved about as Octavian; and I arose, intreating him to sit down; when he immediately saddened into Jaffier, and threw himself on my Belvidera neck with all his weight. I had scarcely set him upright, and relieved myself from the oppressive pathos of this embrace, when he fenced at me with his fingers, and put in some mortal thrusts about the region of my waistcoat pocket. I half offended him by expressing doubts of his grace at this amusement-when he doubled up his affronted fingers, started into another

T

attitude, and, with a quickness which I could not counteract, snatched a smart hit upon my chest bone, that staggered me up against my own breakfast table, convulsed the whole family of the tea-things, and made my milk-jug shed some natural tears. My awkwardness, and abrupt flight from the visitation of his knuckles, perfectly restored his good humour and his confidence and he relapsed into a theatrical conversation. "I'll tell you what, Edward, you bury yourself here in this gothic spot, without having a notion of life-why an Abbey statue has ten times the nous about him, not barring Sir Cloudesley Shovel. If, instead of sitting here in your poor's box, (I hate the Albany-it's so like a genteel King's Bench!) with as little to do as a money-taker after a charity sermon, you were to doff that morning gown, and accompany me to a rehearsal of -'s play; I would engage you will say to me, Tom Morton, I thank you for breaking my monumental existence, and will hereafter follow wherever you shall choose to lead. Why you are like the man in the Arabian Nights, with a marble moiety." And with this my young gentleman ran lightly through the figure of a quadrille-dos-à-dos-ing it with an arm chair, and concluding with a harlequin-roll of his head in its loose socket, and with a "Well, Edward, what say you?" "My dear fellow," said I, "if you will introduce me to the real interior of a London theatre, nothing will give me greater pleasure, and I will be out of my shell in two seconds; you know that I am anxious to see all the lions-and surely one of them must be kept behind the scenes of a metropolitan theatre." Tom, with no allowance for metaphor, only informed me that Kean once kept one, but that it was since dead! I rang my bell; my table was immediately cleared, and in a few minutes I was fitted with bright boots, like Dan in John Bull, to accompany my heedless guide on his proposed walk. He dragged me into Piccadilly, at as rapid a rate as though we were going off by the Bath mail, and heard the carts horning their way up to the White Horse Cellar; but he did not so hastily pass the print-shop at the corner of

Sackville-street; for there, as he assured me, was a portrait of old Fewterel worth looking at; and there, sure enough, was an awkward sprawling animal, painted as formidably as warlike man could desire. As we eagerly trod the pavement, Tom assuring me that the rehearsal must have begun some time back, I made inquiries of him as to his power, and the propriety, of introducing me, which he begged me to be perfectly easy about, muttering something about settling any door-keeper. We were soon at the stage door of Covent Garden theatre.

The porter permitted him to pass; and as he had firm hold of my arm, I was suffered to pass also, though I own I looked upon myself as an impertinent intruder, and could have been pleased to escape from the suspicious gaze of passing actors, actresses, musicians, servants, and the long living et cetera of a playhouse. One tall serious gentleman, in a well-shaped, but aged and napless hat, and in a coat that had evidently not been made without seams, passed me with a proud tragedy step and an inquiring stare, that made me quail within myself, and feel as if I was about to play Tom Thumb, to his Lord Grizzle. Another, a young lady, gaily pelissed, nodded familiarly to Tom, and looked curiously at me, taking me, as I conceived, for some unwarrantable personage that had no business in that part of the house. Some viewed me with wonder, others with disregard, or so I read their looks, as they passed to and fro on the stone staircase that led from the entrance to the stage. But in spite of my feelings, Tom dragged me on to the boards, as they are termed, which I now trod for the first time in my life, and not much to my satisfaction, as I determined it. The first act of Tom's ascension to this Covent Garden throne, was to confer with Mr. one of the great tragedians of that magnificent theatre, and arrange for my seeing the house, as it is termed. This gentleman, in a true Coriolanus key, ordered forth one of the red coat men, as he called them, and gave him directions to escort me on the view. We accordingly began our voyage of discovery-the servant preceding us

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