When 'mid Iona's wrecks meanwhile

O'er sculptured graves I trod,
Where Time had strewn each mouldering aisle
O'er saints and kings that reared the pile,

I hailed the eternal God :
Yet, Staffa, more I felt His presence in thy cave

Than where Iona's cross rose o'er the western wave. Mr. Sotheby's translation of the “Iliad' was published in 1831, and was generally esteemed spirited and faithful. The ‘Odyssey' he completed in the following year. He died on the 30th of December 1833. The original poetical productions of Mr. Sotheby have not been reprinted; his translations are the chief source of his reputation. Wieland, it is said, was charmed with the genius of his translator; and the rich beauty of diction in the 'Oberon,' and its facility of versification, notwithstanding the restraints imposed by a difficult measure, were eulogised by the critics. In his tragedies, Mr. Sotheby displays considerable warmth of passion and figurative language, but his plots are ill constructed. Byron said of Mr. Sotheby, that he imitated everybody, and occasionally surpassed his models. Approach of Saul and his Guards against the Philistines

Hark! hark! the clash and clang
Of shaken cymbals cadencing the pace
Of marshal movement regular; the swell
Sonorous of the brazen trump of war;
Shrill twang of harps, soothed by melodious chime
Of beat on sily r bars; and sweet, in pause
Of harsher instrument, continuous flow
Of breath, through flutes, in symphony with song,
Choirs, whose matched voices filled the air afar
With jubilee and chant of triumph hymn;
And ever and anon irregular burst
Of loudest acclamation to each host
Saul's stately advance proclaimed. Before him youths
In robes succinct for swiftness; oft they struck
Their staves against the ground, and warned the throng
Backward to distant homage. Next, his strength
Of chariots rolled with each an armed band;
Earth groaned afar beneath their iron wheels :
Part armed with scythe for battle, part adorned
For triumph. Nor there wanting a led train
Of steeds in rich caparison, for show
Of solemn entry. Round about the king,
Warriors, his watch and ward, from every tribe
Drawn out. Of these a thousand each selects
Of size and comeliness above their peers,
Pride of their race. Radiant their armour: some
In silver cased, scale over scale, that played
All pliant to the litheness of the limb:
Some mailed in twisted gold, link within link
Flexibly ringed and fitted, that the eye
Beneath the yielding panoply pursued,
When act of war the strengih of man provoked,
The motion of the muscles, as they worked
In rise and fall. On each left thigh a sword
Swurg in the 'broidered baldric; each right hand
Grasped a long-shadowing spear. Like them, their chiefs

Arrayed; save on their shields of solid ore,
And on their helm, the graver's toil had wrought
Its subtlety in rich device of war;
And o'er their mail, a robe, Punicean dye,
Gracefully played ; where the winged shuttle, shot
By cunning of Sidonian virgins, wove
Broidure of many-coloured figures rare.
Bright glowed the sun, and bright the burnished mail
Of thousands, ranged, whose pace to song kept time;
And bright the glare of spears, and gleam of crests,
And flaunt of banners flashing to and fro
The noonday beam. Beneath their coming, earth
Wide glittered. Seen afar, amidst the pomp,
Gorgeously mailed, but more by pride of port
Known, and superior stature, than rich trim
Of war and regal ornament, the king,
Throned in triumphal car, with trophies graced,
Stood eminent. The lifting of his lance
Shone like a sunbeam. O'er his armour flowed
A robe, imperial mantle, thickly starred
With blaze of orient gems; the clasp that bound
Its gathered folds his ample chest athwart,
Sapphire; and o'er his casque where rubies burned,
A cherub flamed and waved his wings in gold.

EDWARD, LORD THURLOW. EDWARD HOVELL THURLOW, Lord Thurlow (1781–1829), published several small volumes of poetry: 'Select Poems' (1821); 'Poems on Several Occasions;' ‘Angelica, or the Fate of Proteus; 'Arcita and Palamon, after Chaucer;' &c. Amidst much affectation and bad taste, there is real poetry in the works of this nobleman. He was a source of ridicule and sarcasm to wits and reviewers—including Moore and Byron-and not undeservedly; yet in pieces like the following, there is a freshness of fancy and feeling, and a richness of expression, that resembles Herrick or Moore:

Song to May.
May ! queen of blossoms,

Thou hast thy miglity herds,
And fulfilling flowers,

Tame, and free livers ;
With what pretty music

Doubt not, thy music too
Shall we charm the hours ?

In the deep rivers ;
Wilt thou have pipe and reed,

And the whole plumy flight, Blown in the open mead ?

Warbling the day and night-
Or to the lute give heed

Up at the gates of light,
In the green bowers ?

See, the lark quivers !
Thou hast no need of us,

When with the jacinth
Or pipe or wire,

Coy fountains are tressed;
That hast the golden bee

And for the mournful bird
Ripened with fire;

Greenwoods are dressed,
And many thousand more

That did for Tereus pine; Songsters that thee adore,

Then shall our songs be thine,
Filling earth's grassy floor

To whom our hearts incline:
With new desire.

May, be thou blest !

Sonnets.
The Summer, the divinest Summer burns,

The skies are bright wit azure and with gold;

The mavis, and the nightingale, by turns,

Amid the woods a soft enchantment hold:
The flowering woods, with glory and delight,

Their tender leaves unto the air have spread ;
The wanton air, amid their alleys bright,

Doth softly fly, and a light fragrance shed:
The nymphs within the silver fountains play,

The angels on the golden banks recline,
Wherein great Flora, in her bright array,

Hath sprinkled her ambrosial sweets divine.
Or, else, I gazed upon that beauteous face

ace.
O Moon, that shinest on this heathy wild,

And light'st the hill of Hastings with thy ray,
How am I with thy sad delight beguiled,

How hold with fond imagination play!
By thy broad taper I call up the time

When Harold on the bleeding verdure lay,
Though great in glory, overstained with crime,

And fallen by his fate from kingly sway!
On bleeding knights, and on war-broken arms,

Torn banners and the dying steeds you shone,
When this fair England, and her peerless charms,

And all, but honour, to the foe were gone!
Here died the king, whom his brave subjects chose,

But, dying, lay amid his Norman foes ! Charles Lamb, in a communication to the ‘London Magazine,' says of Lord Thurlow: 'A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack of matter and circumstance, is, I think one reason of the coldness with which the public has received the poetry of a nobleman now living; which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is entitled to something better than neglect. I will venture to copy one of his sonnets in this place, which for quiet sweetness, and unaffected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language.' To a Bird that haunted the Waters of Lacken in the Winter

O melancholy bird, a winter's day
Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To patience, which all evil can allay,
God has appointed thee the fish thy prey ;
And given thyself a lesson to the fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart.
He who has not enough, for these, to spare
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,
And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part.

THOMAS MOORE.

A rare union of wit and sensibility, of brilliant fancy and of varied and diligent study, is exemplified in the poetical works of THOMAS

MOORE. Mr. Moore was a native of Dublin, born on the 28th of May 1779. He early began to rhyme, and a sonnet to his schoolmaster, Mr. Samuel Whyte, written in nis fourteenth year, was published in a Dublin magazine, * to which he contributed other pieces. The parents of our poet were Roman Catholics, a body then proscribed and depressed by penal enactments, and they seem to have been of the number who, to use his own words, hailed the first dazzling outbreak of the French Revolution as a signal to the slave, wherever suffering, that the day of his deliverance was near at hand. The poet states that in 1792 he was taken by his father to one of the dinners given in honour of that great event, and sat upon the knee of the chairman while the following toast was enthusiastically sent round: ‘May the breezes from France fan our Irish Oak into verdure.' Parliament having, in 1793, opened the university to Catholics, young Moore was sent to college, and distinguished himself by his classical acquirements. In 1799, he proceeded to London to study law in the Middle Temple, and publish by subcription a translation of Anacreon. The latter appeared in the following year, dedicated to the Prince of Wales. At a subsequent period Mr. Moore was among the keenest satirists of this prince, for which he has been accused of ingratitude; but he states himself that the whole amount of his obligations to his royal highness was the honour of dining twice at Carlton House, and being admitted to a great fete given by the prince in 1811 on his being made regent. In 1801, Moore ventured on a volume of original verse, put forth under the assumed name of • Thomas Little’-an allusion to his diminutive stature. In these pieces the warmth of the young poet's feelings and imagination led him to trespass on delicacy and decorum. He had the good sense to be ashamed of these amatory juvenilia, and genius enough to redeem the fault. His offence did not stand in the way of his preferment. In 1803 Mr. Moore obtained an official situation at Bermuda, the duties of which were discharged by a deputy; and this subordinate proving unfaithful, the poet suffered pecuniary losses and great embarrassment. Its first effect however, was two volumes of poetry, a series of 'Odes and Epistles,' published in 1806, and written during an absence of fourteen months from Europe, while the author visited Bermuda. The descriptive sketches in this work are remarkable for their fidelity, no less than their poetical beauty. The style of Moore was now formed, and in all his writings there was nothing finer than the opening epistle to Lord Strangford, written on board ship by moonlight:

Mr. Whyte was also the teacher of Sheridan, and it is curious to learn that, after about a year's trial. Sherry was pronounced, both by tutor and parent, to be an incorri. gible dunce! "At the time.' says Mr. Moore, when I first began to attend his school. Mr. Whyte still continued to the no small alarm of many parents, to encourage a taste for acting among his pupils. In this line I was long his favourite shou-scholar; and among the play-bills introduced in bis volume, to illustrate the occasions of his own prologues and epilogues, there is one of a play got up in the year 1790, at Lady Borrowes's private theatre in Dublin. where. among the items of the evening's entertainment, is “An Epilogue, A Squeeze to St. Paul's, Master Moore."

A Moonlight Scene at Sea. Sweet moon! if, like Crotona's sage, And lights them with consoling, gleam, By any spell my hand could dare

And smiles them into tranquil sleep. To make thy disk its ample page,

Oh! such a blessed night as this And write my thougats, my wishes I often think, if friends were near, there;

How should we feel, and gaze with bliss How many a friend, whose careless eye Upon the moon-bright scenery here ! Now wanders o'er that starry sky, The sea is like a silvery lake, Should smile, upon thy orb to meet

And o'er its calm the vessel glides The recollection kind and sweet,

Gently, as if it feared to wake The reveries of fond regret,

The slumber of the silent tides! The promise never to forget,

The only envious cloud that lowers, And all my heart and soul would send Hath hung its shade on Pico's height, To many a dear-loved, distant friend. . Where dimly 'mid the dusk he towers, Even now, delusive hope will steal

And, scowling at this heaven of light, Amid the dark regrets I feel,

Exults to see the infant storm
Soothing, as yonder placid beam

Cling darkly round his giant form!
Pursues the murmurers of the deep,
The following was also produced during the voyage:

Canadian Boat Song.
Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time;
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn,
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast;
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to curl ;
But when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
Utawa's tide! this trembling moon
Shall see us float over thy surges soon:
Saint of this green isle ! hear our prayers,
Oh! grant us cool heavens, and favouring airs !
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The rapids are near, and the daylight's past. Mr. Moore now became a satirist, attempting first the grave serious style, in which he failed, but succeeding beyond almost any other poet in light satire, verses on the topics of the day, lively and pungent, with abundance of humorous and witty illustration. The man of the world, the scholar, and the poetical artist are happily blended in his satirical productions, with a rich and playful fancy. His * Twopenny Postbag,' •The Fudge Family in Paris,' • Fables for the Holy Alliance,' and numerous small pieces written for the newspapers, to serve the cause of the Whig or Liberal party, are not excelled in their own peculiar walk by any satirical composition in the language. It is difficult to select a specimen of these; but the following contains a proportion of the wit and poignancy distributed over all

. It appeared at a time when an abundance of mawkish reminiscences and memoirs had been showered from the press.