Why should such things my mind employ,
Which give no joys, no cares destroy?
Oh! let me rather learn to drain
The goblet, balm of every pain!
Oh! let me loiter golden hours
In Venus' amaranthine bowers!
My locks with hoary whiteness shine-
Then bring me water, pour me wine-
I'll drown all care, I'll chase all thought,
For human life, alas! is short :-
Soon must I Pluto's realms explore,
And taste of wine and love no more!

One must pity the hoary-headed sinner. Alas! he knew not the consolations of the spring-water system! Spring-water! the refrigerator of the blood, the sworn enemy of the blue-devils!

But not only doth he confess his captivity to Bacchus, but complaineth likewise of the dominion of love.

IV.

Some may their strains on Thebes employ,

Or sing the fatal wars of Troy ;

But me no other scheme can move,

Than my captivity to Love.

Nor fleet, nor army conquered me,—

'Twas Love's insidious archery,

Who in malicious ambush lies,

And throws his darts from Beauty's eyes.

Yet hear how this victorious archer could, at another time, justify his conquests and soothe his victims:

Love, with hyacinthine stem,
Compelled me once to follow him :
O'er hill and dell our way we took,
Through tangled brake and dashing brook;
At length a serpent, cruel thing!
Pierced me with its venomed sting ;-
My heart throbbed high-my colour fled-
I with affright was almost dead!
But Cupid, with his tender wings,
Around my head soft zephyrs flings,
And says, with arch, enticing smiles,
“Resist not, then, Love's potent wiles."

No one, I should imagine, will dispute the poet's refined judgment and exquisite taste in beauty, after he shall have read the following description of

it.

VI.

his mistress. If the painter were as skilful in his department as the poet in his, what an enchanting picture must they have produced between them!

Best of painters, skilled to trace
With rosy art each living grace,
While I describe do thou portray
The lass I love, that's far away.
Paint first her hair with pencil truc,
So glossy, of so jet a hue!

• With the Vatican MS. I read godins xoigavs sxing, not Poding, as Stephanus has The epithet "rosy" was applied by the ancients almost indiscriminately to any thing remarkably pleasing and agreeable. So goda μsignzag, literally, "You have spoken roses."-Suid. ex Aristoph.

And, if thine art so much can dare,
Depict the breathing odours there:
Then her raven locks below,
Paint the ivory of her brow.
Let her eye-brows archly bend,
Seem to approach, but not to blend,
And the lashes of her eye
Rival blackest ebony.

To pourtray her eye's bright gaze,
Snatch from fire its utmost blaze;
Let them, like Minerva's, be
Blue in lustrous witchery;
And, like Cythera's, let them seem
To melt and languish as they gleam.
To paint her lovely cheek and nose,
Blend with milk the blushing rose :
Let her lips (oh, tempting sight!)
A kiss persuasively invite;
While the lovely graces deck
Her tender chin and marble neck.
The rest let gauze of azure hue
Partly hide from curious view,
Partly to the eye declare*

How fine her form, her limbs how fair.

You will find this piece well imitated in the Guardian (No. 168), with this exception, that the nose is omitted, which, it has been well remarked, renders the picture incomplete, and the

VII.

translation imperfect. Our poet's good taste in the arts also is admirable, as his directions to his silversmith for making a wine-bowl do indubitably testify.

Vulcan, make a bowl for me;
Let it of pure silver be.

Chase it not with splendid arms—
What have I with war's alarms?
Let it wide and deep extend,
With a graceful flowing bend:
Grave thereon no glittering star,
Nor the brilliant northern car;
Let not there Orion be,
Stern, ill-boding deity !+
What care I for Pleiads bright,
Or Boötes' fulgent light?

Make for me a tender vine,

The boughs with luscious grapes entwine;
Let Cupid and Bathyllus there,
Lovely youths with golden hair,
And ruddy Bacchus, all combine
To tread the clusters of the vine.

But here is another ode, which is an especial favourite with myself, whatever it may be with other folks.

It

is said of Dr. Parr, that whenever he
read the Satire of Horace beginning
"Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum,"

"Let sweet concealment's magic art
Your mazy bounds invest;

And while the sight unveils a part,

Let Fancy paint the rest."

Shenstone.

+ Orion was supposed to portend storms and shipwreck to mariners. See Hor. carm. i. xxviii, and the notes thereon. Virgil calls it "nimbosus Orion." En, i. 539.

he could not refrain from an immoderate fit of laughter, although no one else could ever discover in what its great facetiousness consisted. But I do not think that my partiality for the

VIII.

following ode is any such monomania; for the whole is so unique, natural, and witty, that it must highly raise one's opinion of Anacreon's refinement and ingenuity.

Vulcan, the spouse of Venus, once did frame
Of finest iron, and with Lemnian flame,
Love's darts with honey Venus smeared them o'er,
But Love did bitter gall upon the weapons pour;
With quivering spear in hand, Mars from the fight
Returning, scorns the puny weapon's might.
But Love exclaimed, "Brave is the little dart,
And thou thyself shalt know its bitter smart."
Then flew the shaft, and pierced the hero's breast
(Venus in vain triumphant smiles repressed,)
Mars groaning cried, "Ah, me! the dart remove!
Oh! I confess its power!" No, keep it," answers Love.

The reader may see from these few specimens, even through the medium of (we fear) a horrid translation, the sweetness and grace of Anacreon's muse. His poems bloom with a liveliness and gaiety that is enhanced by the sombre and melancholy reveries in which, even among his mirthful productions, he sometimes indulges, and which he in vain endeavours to dissipate by the excitements of revelry. But, at the same time, his muse is clad in nature's own simplicity; disdaining the trappings of art, she discloses more fully that native grace and loveliness which would be concealed or disfigured

;

by exterior ornament. Anacreon is almost always tender and elegant, sometimes lofty, always ingenious. He has been reproached for sensuality and libertinism, but the reprehension is undeserved. It is true, indeed, that outrageous indecencies have been discovered by certain eagle-eyed critics, where it would puzzle a pure-minded and unprejudiced man to find the least approach even to indelicacy. For instance, the following elegant and innocent little ode, inscribed to Bathyllus, is adduced as proof of his παιδεραστια ! Monstrous absurdity!

IX.

Bathyllus, sit beneath the shade,
By the embowering branches made
Of this green tree, so passing fair,
Which waves its soft locks in the air,
In harmonious whispers sighing;
While the gentle stream, replying
To the music, murmurs by
With Persuasion's melody.
Oh! none beholding such a scene
Could
pass unheeded by, I ween!

This reminds me of a beautiful passage in an ode of Horace, carm. ii. iii. 8-16, addressed to Dellius:

Where lofty pines unite

With silvery poplars, in a shade benign
Of twisted branches, and the wavelets bright
In devious channel twine,

Bring unguents rare and wine,

And the sweet flow'rets of the short-lived rose,
While Youth, and Fortune, and the thread divine
Of Fate permit repose.

Upon this passage a similar charge of indecency might, with as much propriety, be founded against Horace, VOL. XIV.

were not the other parts of the ode so entirely at variance with such a ridiculous opinion.

M

THE village of Selworth is decidedly one of the prettiest spots in England. It stands at some distance from the high road, on the bank of a beautiful stream, a tributary to the noble river on which, some ten miles nearer to the metropolis, is situated the flourishing town of D―. There it was that I first saw the light, and there I trust my body shall at length_repose in peace beneath the fresh green sod of the old churchyard. I am, by profession, a portrait painter. My father was a respectable yeoman of Selworth, and intended that I, his only child, should inherit his fields, and pass my time in their cultivation. Fate decreed otherwise. My father, by unavoidable misfortune, was deprived of the bulk of his property, and the reverse in his affairs broke his heart. My mother survived, a sorrowful and saddened woman; but she struggled to live for my sake. I had no taste for rural pursuits, and that gentle mother never urged me to follow a walk of life which was distasteful to me. We had a pittance left, a trifling one, but it kept us above parochial charity, and enabled us to live in the small cottage, in which I am now writing. Ah! what a difference between the moonlight memories, the softened and subdued feelings which float over my mind, "like twilight and like dew," as I sit alone in my little chamber, and trace this faint sketch of my life, and the impetuous swelling of the heart, the feverish longings, the gorgeous dreams, which were mine, when, in the ardent days of boyhood, I paced this very room, and, in the vague and undefined visions of my hopes, saw a future before me, ever-changing, but ever-glorious! Am I, in truth, the same being? Have I the same heart, the same pulse? Is the Edmund Ashley of sixty-five one with the Edmund Ashley of sixteen? Even so. The same motive is here, but chastened and subdued. Does not this heart still gush over with unutterable tenderness when I listen to the low sweet breath of the wind, or the sweeter music of woman's voice? Does not mine eye still kindle, when I behold the relics of those master hands, which, though they have long mingled with the dust, have left in the marble or the canvas a pledge of the immortality of the soul which guided them? It is thus yet there is a change. I have lost and I have gained-something is added, and something has been taken away. The pulse throbs not so uncontrollably-the mind is not so entranced in its rapturous delight. I still gaze and admire, but I can also examine and criticize. I can praise as well as idolize now.

The noontide of my life, with its feverish heat and its passionate aspirations, has passed away, but its light still lingers on my mind, and the star of a better hope has arisen, and the quiet dew of heavenly peace has fallen on my spirit. I have said I am a painter. I am proud to avow it, though my name be not of those which shall win an immortality on earth. For though the captains of his army know him not-though his name shall pass away, whilst theirs shall be echoed from age to age, the private soldier may bear a heart as loyal as his general's and so have I been faithful in the ranks, and proud of the banner under which I have toiled. My hand may have failed me often-my heart never. None of the mighty masters of the pencil can have revelled in more delicious dreams, or held more rapturous converse with the ideal. My failures have been in person, not in enthusiasm.

My life may be called an uneventful one. I have never experienced the lowest depths of poverty, or known the temptations of riches. My mother's small income became mine after her decease, and my own exertions have always secured me a moderate competence. I have no tale of romantic passion to record, and yet I have loved, and that tenderly and truly. This feeling was awakened very in early youth, and it was one of my enthusiasms. She I loved is