like a consul in the garments of triumph; and his demeanour gave evidence of an uncontroled spirit, originating in the consciousness of unlimited erudition, and of a high place in the august temple of English hierarchy. But Drayton, though not a leviathan in literature, was a charming poet in the natural age of English verse, when Chau cer was read; when Spenser was honoured; when Shakespeare lived; and when Sidney played at tournament and told the tales of Ar cadia. Burton has highly praised him, and the learned Selden has written notes on the Polyolbion. I am afraid, that we do not ponder enough on the poetick pages of English bards, who wrote curious ly, but most pleasantly, when England was young in letters. We do not drink at the fountain, where the water is purest; we do not climb to the top of the tree, where the fruit is the fairest; we do not ascend to the summit of the hill, where the prospect is widest and the air most sweet; but our indolence makes us grovel below; we gather a few fruits, which are shrivelled; and we suck in tainted water, which had corrupted in its course, and gives no nourishment.

SHAKESPEARE'S MULBERRY TREE. ONE Gastrell cut down the mulberry tree, which Shakespeare planted in his own garden at Stratford. This was profanation indeed. The legends of the Catholick church tell wonderful stories about bits of the coffin of Joseph of Arimathea, and the house of the Virgin Mary at Loretta. What miracles might not the chips of the mulberry tree have performed on the devout minds of the worshippers of Shakespeare! Such is the power of association, that, in very flexible fancies, we Vol. III. No. 2. I

may easily believe, that the most beautiful thoughts would have been produced on so enthnsiastick a subject. We might have had from bards of purity and poetry odes equal to "the dove" of Anacreon, and sonnets superiour to "the laurel" of Petrarch. Gastrell will hereafter receive no mercy from the lovers of Shakespeare, and he will and ought to be a mark for the archers, a fit subject for the keenest shafts of the satyrist. The classical traveller visits the Tusculan villa of Cicero, and no longer finds a record or tradition of the spreading plane tree, in the cool shade of which Crassus and Antonius discoursed "de oratore." In like manner, when the pilgrim and poet, after a revolution of more than eighteen hundred years, shall inquire for the garden of Shakespeare, though he will find no vestige and hear no curious tale of the mulberry tree, yet his righteous indignation will rejoice at the reflection, that perpetual shame rests on the name of Gastrell, who unfeelingly destroyed in full luxuriance the hallowed object of Shakespeare's cultivation. No peace shall rest on his tomb. No one shall boast a lineage from the Goth. Whenever, in coming years, the jubilee of Shakespeare shall be kept with pageantry and pomp, with revelry and song on the banks of the Avon, the names of those, who love the poet, shall be received with welcome and greeting, but no blessing of pleasant remembrance shall descend on the memory of Gastrell, and his name shall not mar the feast-time and merry holiday of poetry and her worshippers.

LOVE AND CHIVALRY.

I NEVER believed in the exist ence of a golden age, when shepherds piped under trees, and whem

love was as pure as the water of the brook; but I have sometimes imagined, in the reverie of romance, that I should like to have lived in the feudal ages, " when all the men were brave, and all the women were chaste." The times of Arthur and the knights, of Charlemagne and the peers, of the VirginQueen,with her flower of chival ry, have delighted my mind, and entranced my imagination. Love and courage then gave kisses of union, and every baron of virtue might then fight for a lady of love. Escutcheons, blazoned with the heraldry of honour and purity, and on the same brass-glittering shield were seen, and in curious courte sy, doves, the emblems of love, and lions, the pictures of bravery. The virgins of the imperial court were noble in lineage, renowned for their beauty, and beyond the praise of poetry for their virtue. The gallant knights and proud nobility were famous for their deeds of conquest in defence of honour and the ladies. In the time of chivalry, purity was the glory of the women, and beauty was the sister of purity. Then was the period of real love, then there was a true language to tell the conceptions of congenial souls; but gentlemen and peers exist no longer, and where are the damsels of the castle, where are the fair ladies of the court? In the room of chivalry, there is interestedness, there is falsehood, baseness, infamy. When a man now talks love to a girl, he is thinking of her land and her gold; he now seeks to grasp her wealth, or gratify his lust. But the men are not solely to blame. The women are not pure; they are not lovely; they have affectation of sentiment, and they have falseness of heart. It is a miserable age, when contracts of marriage are deeds of bargain and

sale; when love is prostituted to venality; when the awful obliga tions of the matrimonial rite, mu tually given and received in the presence of a christian minister and assembly, are nothing but legalizations of wrong and indentures of infamy. Oh, it is a miserable age. There was a time, when the armour of a hero was the record of his greatness, and the pledge of his success in gaining the hallowed heart of the baron's daughter. If the helmet waved with the white feather of conquest and constancy; if the shield was sculptured by the order of the sovereign with the atchievements of honourable war, the knight never sued in vain ; if the heart of the female did not acknowledge another knight, not brighter in arms, not purer in affection, but a more legitimate lover, because fortunately he was first. This was noble, high minded, and full of generosity. But in these degenerated days of miserable pelf, men and women change their minds about love and marriage, as about houses and carriages. The first never buy a wife, and the second never entrap a husband, till wealth is accumulated into coffers, or till lust riots within, and calls aloud for revelry. I am not melancholy or mad. I look on the world with pleasure, and on my past days with joyfulness, but I cannot cry huzza to a state of society, where wealth in matrimony is the first, and the second, and the third requisite. When a man “has made a good match," he is to be pitied, for his years will be miserable; when a girl is "well settled,” she is doomed to sorrow, for her heart knows no companion. Oh, that the days are gone, which were hallowed by the purity of the vir gins of Lowerstein, and brightened with the glory of the barons of Hohenzollern.

where day after day, and year after year, they are habituated to poetical composition by every artifice of emulation, and every advantage of precept and example, so few should attain the rank of genuine poets, while Burns in a claybuilt hovel, amid the labours of the plough and the flail, under the anxiety of procuring his daily bread, with little instruction and few books, and surrounded only by the humblest society, felt an irresistible impulse to poetry, which surmounted every obstacle, and reached a felicity of expression, a force of sentiment, and a richness of imagery scarce ever rivalled by an union of ability, education, practice, and laborious effort? Thinking therefore that poetical talent is a bent impressed by the hand of Nature, I cannot give the greatest weight to subsequent artificial circumstances; but yet I must admit that in the case of Burns they were so unfavourable, that no common natural genius could have overcome them. On the contrary, there were some points in the history of Burns more propitious to the bolder features of poetry, than in that of Cowper. He wrote in the season of youth, when all the passions were at their height; his life was less uniform, and his station was more likely to encourage energy and enthusiasm, than the more polished and more insipid ranks, to which the other belonged. In the circles of fashion, fire and impetuosity are deemed vulgar; and with the roughnesses of the human character all its force is too often smoothed away. An early intercourse with the upper mobility is too apt to damp all the generous emotions, and make one ashamed of romantick hopes and sublime conceptions. From

blights of this kind the early situation of Burns protected him. The heaths and mountains of Scotland, among which he lived, braced his nerves with vigour, and cherished the bold and striking colours of his mind.

But it seems to me vain and idle to speculate upon education and outward circumstances, as the causes or promoters of poetical genius. It is the inspiring breath of Nature alone, which gives the powers of the genuine bard, and creates a ruling propensity, and a peculiar cast of character, which will rise above every impediment, but can be substituted by neither art nor labour. To write mellifluous verses in language, which may seem to the eye and the ear adorned with both imagery and elegance, may be a faculty neither unattainable, nor even uncommon. But to give that soul, that predom. inance of thought, that illuminated tone of a living spirit, which spring in so inexplicable a manner from the chords of the real lyre, is beyond the reach of mere human arrangement, without the innate and very rare gift of the Muse. That gift has regard neither to rank, station, nor riches. It shone over the cradles of Surry, and Buckhurst, amid the splendour of palaces, and the lustre of coronets; it shone over those of Milton, and Cowley, and Dryden, and Gray, and Collins, amid scenes of frugal and unostentatious competence and mediocrity; it shone over that of Burns, in the thatched hovel, the chill abode of comfortless penury and humble labour.

If there be any who doubt whether, in the exercise of this gift, Burns contributed to his own happiness, let them hear the testimony of himself. "Poesy," says