ALONZO D'ERCILLA. THIS celebrated warrior was an enthusiastic admirer of fine landscapes. During the time when he was, with a small force under his command, in Chii, he was engaged in a war with the inhabitants of Auracauna, a ferocious tribe of America. Amid the toils and dangers which he encountered in this dreadful warfare, he composed a poem, which has been considered as honourable to the literature of his country. On the midnight watch, stretched on a rock, or reclining near an impetuous torrent, he conceived ideas which astonished his countrymen, and for himself established an immortal fame in the annals of Spanish literature. METASTASIO. ALTHOUGH the biographer of the Abate Metastasio has neglected to notice the circumstance, it is not to be questioned but that the magnificent works of nature and art in the neighbourhood of Naples, contributed, in no small degree, to overcome the resolution of that elegant man, when he had bade, as he thought, an eternal farewell to poetry. He had wasted his fortune in unprofitable yet uncriminal dissipation, and had put himself under the care of the celebrated Advocate Palietti of Naples, with the firm resolution of resuming a profession he had long neglected. For some time, he exercised the greatest tyranny over his own inclinations, till, by the earnest entreaties of the Countess of Althan, he was persuaded to write an Epithalamium on the marriage of the Marquess Pignatelli; to this succeeded the drama of "Endymion," "The Gardens of the Hesperides," and "Angelica ;" until, captivated by this irresistible recall to poetry, and animated by the lovely scenes by which the Bay of Naples is embellished, he again forsook the law, and gave himself up to his favourite amusement. WINSTANLEY AND MILTON. WINSTANLEY, author of "The British Worthies," and "The Lives of the English Poets," was contemporary with Milton, and in one of his works, gives an account of that great Poet. It should appear that Winstanley was attached to the Royal party; and this circumstance will account for the malevolence displayed in the following passage. After allowing some little merit to that greatest of all poems, "Paradise Lost," he proceeds, and says of the Author: "But his fame is got out like the snuff of a candle, and will continue to stink to all posterity, for having so infamously belied that glorious martyr and king, Charles I." ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX. COXETER says, in his MSS., according to Warton, that he had seen one of Ovid's Epistles translated by this celebrated and unfortunate Nobleman. This piece, however, like many others which Coxeter has noticed, is not now known to exist. Some of his Sonnets, and other trifling productions, are to be found among the Ashmolean and Sloanean MSS., but they are said by Warton to have no marks of poetic genius. The following stanzas are quoted by Mr. Collier, in his "Poetical Decameron," from a beautiful Song attributed to him, in Dowland's "Musical Banquet, 1610." "Change thy mind since she doth change, Thy untruth cannot seem strange When her falsehood doth excuse thee. Jove is dead and thou art free, She doth live, but dead to thee. Die! but yet, before thou die, Make her know what she has gotten; She in whom my hopes did lie, Now is chang'd, I quite forgotten. "But if Essex was no great poet himself," says Warton," few noblemen of his age were more courted by poets. From Spenser to the lowest rhymer, he was the subject of numerous sonnets or popular ballads. I could produce evidence to prove, that he scarce ever went out of England, or even left London, on the most frivolous enterprize, without a pastoral in his praise, or a panegyric in metre, which were sold and sung in the streets. This is a light in which Lord Essex is seldom viewed. I know not if the Queen's fatal partiality, or his own inherent attractions, his love of literature, his heroism, integrity, and generosity, qualities which abundantly overbalance his presumption, vanity, and impetuosity, had the greater share in dictating these praises. If adulation were any where justifiable, it must be when paid to the man who endeavoured to save Spenser from starving in the streets of Dublin, and who buried him in Westminster Abbey with becoming solemnity. "Spenser was persecuted by Burleigh, because he was patronized by Essex." POPE AND WARBURTON. be AMONG other instances of adroitness, may mentioned the management of Dr. Warburton, as defender of Pope's " Essay on Man” against the objections of Crousaz. The censures of this learned foreigner, many of them well-founded and unanswerable, were directed against the first edition of that pleasing poem; but in his defence of the Poet, the Ecclesiastic quoted succeeding impressions, in which Pope had seen and corrected many of his errors. The whole passed off undetected; the anxieties of Pope, irritable and alive all over, were gradually soothed; the clergy were pacified; and |