lation, went abroad throughout the universe in search of a universal cause, or dived into the abysses of thought for an universal reason, the poets took to themselves the deserted realm of symbols, and began to gather shells, without caring what fish may heretofore have tabernacled therein. Poets became courtiers; and, as the increase of cities had rendered the dwellers in towns comparatively ignorant of the aspects of nature, and unacquainted with the manners of the rustics, a new class of describers arose, who, sallying from the town, surveyed the country with that curiosity which unusual things alone excite, and betrayed their real ignorance by the ostentatious accuracy of their knowledge. Rural or pastoral poetry is in fact the youngest of all the Grecian muses-a sort of posthumous child, born out of time, and nurtured, not in "Sicilian plains or vales of Arcady," but in the court of the Ptolemies.

It has often been asserted that rural customs are permanent as the hills and and streams, while city fashions vary with the mutable works of man. To this assumption Theocritus would seem to form a strong objection. No corner of the earth now hides a peasantry in ought akin to the swains of Theocritus, while his sight-seeing city gossips, in the feast of Adonis, are as much creatures of to-day as if King William's coronation had set them agadding, instead of "The love to be of Thamnouz yearly wounded." But, in all probability, he accommodated his scale of imitation to the measure of intelligence in his audience. He wrote for the town, for people who were willing to believe that shepherds and shepherdesses talked poetry extempore for kids and maple bowls, and sat piping at noon beneath the silvery poplar shade-by the way, the poplar is the last tree we should choose to make love under in a hot day, since, of all others, the reviled and calumniated larch not excepted, it yields the least shade and concealment-but, perhaps, it was otherwise in cornbearing Sicily, when goatherds hid themselves for fear of Pan, what time harsh choler smarted in his godship's nose. But it would never have anwered to pastoralize the prattle which was heard in the streets and forums of yracuse and Alexandria. Yet, though he shepherds of Theocritus do not alk or act like keepers of real live

sheep, and used to be considered rather as figures introduced into a landscape, than as characters composing an historical picture, yet is he as instructive as delightful. The whole external aspect of ancient country life, with its memorial rites, superstitions, garb, and gesture-all that a watchful eye would have seen-the outward and visible signs to which poetry should supply the inward grace and spirit, are depicted in his page. His genius was in the highest degree graphic and pictorial-his knowledge was "the harvest of a quiet eye," not, like that of Burns, the fruit of a feeling experience. It would be difficult to find a more striking image than that of giant Polyphemus, scated on a rock, and viewing his huge reflection in the calm sea -fit looking-glass for a man-moun'tain: as exquisite in its way, and as true a picture, is the infant Hercules, rocked to sleep in the hollow of a shield.

Yet, though the scenery of Theocritus is finely drawn and vividly coloured, it is for the most part made up of the commonplaces of nature. You seldom meet with those discriminative touches which refer a description to its original source. He is a generic, not a specific-far less an individualizing describer. A fountain with him is any fountain-a shady bank is what all shady banks are or should be. He was content to characterise the country by marks which all would recognise. He does not lead you into his own favourite nooks, and make you observe the peculiar turns and indentations of the rivulet— the unique intertexture of the branches

the happy compositions of trunks, and how the grey shining hazles form a middle tint between the dark-rinded oak and the silvery birch. Seldom does he appear to have written with any particular locality before his mental vision in this respect being far more vague than Homer, who alludes to places with the unconscious accuracy of habitual acquaintance. And this reflection brings us back to our starting post, and suggests the question

What mode of description is to be regarded as most truly poetical? We answer, not that which endeavours, by repeated touches, to paint upon the surface of fancy, but that which, impregnating and blending with the imagination, causes it to conceive appropriate images of itself. For instance:-Most persons have read the

HAVE you ever entered, all alone, the shadows of some dilapidated old burialplace, and in a nook made beautiful by wild briars and a flowering thorn, beheld the stone image of some longforgotten worthy lying on his grave? -some knight who perhaps had fought in Palestine-or some holy man, who, in the Abbey-now almost gone-had led a long, still life of prayer? The moment you knew that you were standing among the dwellings of the dead, how impressive became the ruins! Did not that stone image wax more and more life-like in its repose? and, as you kept your eyes fixed on the features Time had not had the heart to obliterate, seemed not your soul to hear the echoes of the Miserere sung by the brethren?

So looks Christopher-on his couch in his ALCOVE. He is taking his siesta-and the faint shadows you see coming and going across his face are dreams. 'Tis a pensive dormitory, and hangs undisturbed in its spiritual region as a sabbath cloud on the sky of the Longest Day.

What think you of OUR FATHER, alongside of the Pedlar in the Excur

sion?

"Amid the gloom, Spread by a brotherhood of lofty elms, Appeared a roofless hut; four naked walls That stared upon each other! I looked round,

And to my wish and to my hope espied
Him whom I sought; a man of reverend age,
But stout and hale, for travel unimpaired.
There was he seen upon the cottage bench,
Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side."

Alas! "stout and hale," are words that could not be applied, without cruel mocking, to that figure. "Recumbent in the shade," unquestionably he is yet "recumbent" is a clumsy word for such quietude-and, recurring to our former image, we say

side" but "Satan's dread," THE CRUTCH! Wordsworth tells us over again that the pedlar—

"With no appendage but a staff, The prized memorial of relinquished toils, Upon the cottage-bench reposed his limbs, Screened from the sur."

On his couch, in his Alcove, Chrisnot his limbs topher is reposing alone but his very soul. THE CRUTCH is, indeed, both de jure and de facto, the prized memorial of toils -but, thank Heaven, not relinquished toils and then how characteristic of this dear merciless old man-hardly distinguishable among the fringed draperies of his canopy, the dependent and independent KNOUT.

Was the Pedlar absolutely asleep? We shrewdly suspect not-'twas but a doze. "Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep" "Upon that cottagebench reposed his limbs "-induce us to lean to the opinion that he was but on the border of the Land of Nod. with that minute particularity so Nay, the poet gets more explicit, and charming in poetical description, finally informs us that

"Supine the wanderer lay, His eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut, The shadows of the breezy elms above, Dappling his face."

It would appear, then, on an impartial consideration of all the cir cumstances of the case, that the "man of reverend age," though "recumbent" and "supine" upon the "cottage bench," "as if asleep," and "his eyes, as if in drowsiness, half shut," was in a mood between sleeping and waking; and this creed is corroborated by the following assertion:

"He had not heard the sound

Of my approaching steps, and in the shade Unnoticed did I stand, some minutes' space.

At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat Was moist with water-drops, as if the

brim

Had newly scooped a running stream." He rose; and so do We, for probably by this time you may have discovered that we have been describing Ourselves in our siesta or mid-day snooze-as we have seen and venerated our mysterious double in a dream.

We are in the blandest of all pos

sible humours, and would not kill a kleg. What could have provoked us to worry Barry Cornwall as we worried him some two Cheshire cheeses ago? His edition of Ben Jonson is an honour to the literature of Great and Little Britain. Oh! that we should have suffered jealousy so to contract and embitter our magnanimous and sweet-blooded breast!-will he let us kneel, and kiss his lily hand? Will he admit a deputation from Scotland into his august presence - headed by Christopher North-with the freedom of the kingdom in this mull-this ram's horn? And will he accompany us back to the Highlands, mount the kilt, and in the Forest of Glenetive chase with us the flying deer?

Oh! he is a great-hearted creature, after all. Ben Jonson died in 1637and Barry, the biographer, says finely, "The Plays, the Masques, the Poems, are all ended! The buzy spirit, the bold, masculine intellect, the brain full of learning, "that showered their beauties on us, like the Hours," are still, and can give utterance no more! The jealousies and heart-burnings-the troubles of poverty and pain-are all at rest! The treasurer has made his last payment. Nothing is wanted now for the old poet save a little earth for his body -a little charity for his name!" A few years before his death, Ben had fallen into great poverty-the year after the royal grant of an increased pension (increased from a hundred merks to a hundred pounds), in consequence of a quarrel with Inigo Jones, he fell into disgrace at Court. It is probable the pension was not paid-a poor creature, called our Aurelian Townsend, was employed in his stead to design and conduct the Masque-and the Court of Aldermen withdrew their pension of a hundred nobles, or some five-and-thirty pounds. Ben, in a letter to his noble patron, Lord Newcastle, said that the people of the city had taken away their "Chanderly pension." Barry, "with a hand open as day," is ready "with a little charity for his name. "We regret," says he, "that he should have used this term, inasmuch as it sounds something like ingratitude; but it was written, we have no doubt, in a mere burst of indignation, and was repented of at leisure. Ben was a warm hearted man, and would not, in his cooler moments, we think, have requited his

friends after this unseemly fashion." His friends!

Deserted at his utmost need,

By those his former bounty fed; for he was prodigal of the glorious gifts nature had lavished upon him, and his genius had glorified the city, Father Ben behaved like himself, we think, in giving vent to his scorn. The Court of Aldermen were a cruel crew to leave him-in palsied old age without a crust. "Chanderly" means beggarly-and something more

and 'twas the right epithet. It does not "sound something like ingratitude;" and Ben knew his own worth too well ever to repent having spoken a blasting truth. Did the Court of Aldermen repent of leaving the first man of his time to drink the cup of penury to the dregs?-of "requiting their friend after that unseemly fashion?" They had no right to withdraw their pension-by doing so, under such circumstances, to such a man, they not only cancelled all obligation to gratitude, but made it a duty to himself to brand their conduct as the vilest of the vile.

But Barry makes immortal amends for this accusation of ingratitude, by the noble sentence which concludes his Memoir of the Life and Writings of Ben Jonson. “There are some authors whose renown we are more inclined to covet, perhaps; but there is not one whose manliness and sincerity of purpose we more respect, OR WHOM WE WOULD HAVE ADMITTED!!! TO OUR HOUSE!!! as a friend and fireside companion, in preference to BEN JONSON." Imagination figures the boy in green livery showing him into the room illuminated by the argand lamp celebrated by Hazlitt.

We must fulfill our promise-some month or other soon-of an article on the Masques. But let us now cheer OUR ALCOVE by reciting the cordial lines to Penshurst-then belonging to Robert Sidney, father of Sir Philip, who was knighted for his gallantry at the battle of Zutphen, advanced to the dignity of Baron Sidney of Penshurst by James, created Viscount Lisle in 1605, and finally, in 1618, promoted to the earldom of Leicester. "He is not flattered," says Gifford, "in these pleasing lines, for his character was truly excellent." The same judicious critic remarks that some of the