It happen'd once upon a time, When all his works were in their prime, A methodist no more he'll be, The protestants serve best for he. And thus address'd the rev'rend man : O that it were your bounteous will And keeps it with dissembled grace. * It has been urged, and for an obvious reason, that the Poems acknowledged by Chatterton to be of his own composition, are of a cast much inferior to those which he produced as written by Rowley. If this be true, we should remember that Chatterton lavished all his powers on the counterfeit Rowley with whom he intended to astonish or to deceive the world, and that his Miscellanies were the temporary projeny of indigence, inconvenience, and distraction. That the former pieces, were composed, with one uniform object in view, in a state of leisure and repose, through the course of nearly one year and a half; and the latter, amidst the want of common necessaries, in disquietude and in dissipation, at the call of bookseller, and often on occasional topics, within four months. But I do not grant this boasted inequality. If there is any, at least the same hand appears in both. The acknowledged poems contain many strokes of uncommon spirit and imagination, and such as would mark any boy of seventeen for a genius. Let me add, that both collections contain an imagery of the same sort. His first poetical production when he was aged only eleven years and five months, is a satire on some Methodist, such a one as it was easy to find at Bristol, and is entitled "Apostate Will." It has a degree of humour and an ease of versification which are astonishing in such a child.-WARTON. NARVA AND MORED, AN AFRICAN ECLOGUE. Recite the loves of Narva and Mored The priest of Chalma's triple idol said. High from the ground the youthful warriors sprung, Loud on the concave shell the lances rung: • In a letter to his friend Cary, dated London, July 1, 1770, Chatterton tells him, "In the last London magazine, and in that which comes out to-day, are the only two pieces of mine I have the vanity to call poetry." These were the two African Eclogues, published in his Miscellanies. I am sorry I cannot unite with the author in the commendation of these pieces; but Chatterton, as well as Milton, seems to have been incapable of estimating rightly the respective merits of his own productions. They are unconnected and unequal, though it must be confessed, that they contain some excellent lines; the following occur almost at the beginning of the first eclogue, and are animated, expressive and harmonious: High from the ground the youthful warriors sprung, In all the mystic mazes of the dance, The youths of Banny's burning sands advance, And rides upon the pinions of the wind. Of the correctness of the following simile in the second eclogue, I shall not determine; but the liveliness of the description evinces a most vigorous imagination: On Tiber's banks, close rank'd, a warring train, See in the gilding of her watery robe, In all the mystic mazes of the dance, The youths of Banny's burning sands advance, And rides upon the pinions of the wind; Ascends the mountain's brow, and measures round The guardian god of Afric and the isles, Where ginger's aromatic, matted root, Creep through the mead, and up the mountains shoot. Three times the virgin, swimming on the breeze, Swift as the elk they pour along the plain; They course around, and lengthen as they go. Like the long chain of rocks, whose summits rise, Upon whose top the black'ning tempest lours, The flying terrors of the war advance, And round the sacred oak, repeat the dance. Sudden beneath Toddida's whilstling brink, The circling billows in wild eddies sink, Explores the palaces on Zira's coast, Where howls the war-song of the chieftain's ghost; Where the artificer in realms below, Gilds the rich lance, or beautifies the bow; From the young palm-tree spins the useful twine, Like the loud eddies of Toddida's sea, The warriors circle the mysterious tree : 'Till spent with exercise they spread around PRIESTESS. Far from the burning sands of Calabar; Ripen'd in ages, wither'd in an hour. Bred to the service of the godhead's throne, And living but to serve his God alone, Narva was beauteous as the opening day When on the spangling waves the sunbeams play, |