How true, how loving--tell that proving hour
When Death shall lay his clay-cold hand on Power;
Yea, even before hath ceased the death-bed knell,
Let many a kingly couch, deserted, tell.”

This is a solemn preparation-mirth and jest are already gone-the cold hand the "clay-cold hand" of death has set his seal to a stern hard truth. You sit uneasy as at a phantasmagoria. The magician draws the curtain-and behuld a picture to strike self-love and vanity aghast.

"The closing hour hath passed, which, soon or late,
Must pass o'er all; a monarch lies in state;
In lonely state; for love hath gone, and sorrow,
To plan the crowning pageant for to-morrow.
Now, let thy fancy pierce yon glimmering room,
That coffin's only guard one sordid groom;
Mark how, the prowling night-rat scarce forbid,
The varlet snores beside the ready lid.

And what his dreams? Are they of kingly fame,
A weeping people, and a world's acclaim?
Ah, no! he dreams of some contested grace,
Trapping or plume, his perquisite of place:
Mutters his greedy discontent, half loud,

And gropes, with sleep-tied hand, to clutch the shroud!"

That is a fine conclusion—yet is not all concluded yet.

"Yet, e'en for him, deserted thus who dies,
Ere long shall statues gleam; shall columns rise;
And epitaphs Servility shall bring;
Who lauds dead Kingship, flatters living King."

Mr. Kenyon is a scholar, and who that is one will not occasionally engraft the scenic characters of the Roman satirists into descriptions of modern manners, proving too, by their admirable filling in, that human nature is not materially changed, though we are walking, dr learning to walk, on the stilts of scientific perfection? The fol

lowing contrast between olden times
and modern times, the quiet content
of our more simple forefathers, and the
ever restless, ambitious, audacious
and paltry interference of every body,
every where, is, we think, more happy
than any attempt of the kind we have
seen; and the versification is admira.
bly simple and forcible.

A.-"The smoke, the riches and the strifes of Rome
Right glad I quit; come, rural blisses! come.
To sweet retreats, unostentatious bowers,
We wend us now; to fields, and farms, and flowers!
'God made the country, and man made the town,'
Or true or false, so Cowper wrote it down;
And fields, I ween, might boast a purer race,
Ere change of manners grew on change of place,
While yet broad Trent and Cambrian mountains bold
Were real barriers, guarding habits old.

Then if the goodman, or the goodman's wife,
Sighed sore to view the far-famed city's strife,
Soon the rough waggon stage and quagmire road
Stirred fond remembrance of the old abode.
E'en when amid the mighty city set,
E'en there they gazed, less wonder than regret,
Till, back returning from the great event,
Their life's one pride, they died-at home-content.

"For such dull bliss our age hath too much wit;
Home, now no resting-place, but place to quit.
In endless change we live; in change we die;
Found scarcely one, of all life's flitters by,
The turf to tenant where his fathers lie.

M

For ancient village lane, irriguous, deep,

Through moss and wreathing roots that lo ved to creep;
For church-way paths, through meadows wandering free;
Sweet records of an old civility;

By many a faded generation trod,

Who simply sought their father's house of God,
There, where it rose, with old grey tower serene,
From forth the elm-trees on the village-green,
Ere town and country yet were clustered thick
With trim new-fangled chapels of red brick;
For these-fork forth new roads, like branching veins,
And strong through cach the living current strains,
Till every pulse from fever'd city's heart
Fires with fierce throb the realm's extremest part.
When shall I see the country once again?"
Thus sighed the Latian bard his ancient strain;
But we-his silvan longings should we share-
Must ask not when we shall behold, but where.
For now, as travels on mid wigwamed hills
The civilizing power that taints or kills,
Along each British valley's sweet approach
Whirls in the city with the whirling coach;
Cigars and waltzes; latest caps; last news

Of Crockford's-Almack's-justice-rooms, and stews,
And controversial preachers, and French shoes.
Its vices roused, its roughness ill smoothed down,
Each village now would ape the lordly town;
Rustic' mere term for what no longer is,
And all the land one vast metropolis."

Thus does our author raise the hurricane of the mind, that, luckily, is "vox et præterea nihil," or away would go with a sweep of the whirlwind the "clustered" abominations of "red brick"-the Pretence and the Pretension-the Hypocrisies and the Hypocrites "like dust before the wind, and the angel scattering them." Then tranquillity would come again, and retrieve the

and principles that modern statesmen have the audacity to lay down, as if there was no fixed basis of morality on which to raise political structures. For example, what lying fiend was in the heart of the statesman who could unblushingly proclaim, as a political axiom, that if a Government, by removing the pressure of prejudicial laws, enabled any party to make more of their property than they could do under existing circumstances, the more "Sweet records of an old civility." that would be made, the over and above But we are check'd-and, in our zeal, what was now made, would not belong "know not what spirit we are of." to the possessor of the property, but Man is, indeed, unfit to have the chain to the Government? We do not preloosened that binds him to matter, con- tend to give the words, but certainly fines him to narrow spots. Were we the sense of a British Minister's proillimitable spirits, with powers illimita- position. And where was British moble, and Will Action, what a world of ral spirit? Did the Senate calmly hear confusion all would be! But even the it? It did-the Reformed Senate, and mental storm is soon quelled. Limit- Satire is dumb. Where lives the Saed as our sphere of action is, it might be all evil, were Will of long duration. But no further unintelligible prosing. Mr. Kenyon takes the reader to the Courts of Law and to the Senate; but we think too summarily dismisses the black sheep of Law and Patriotism. He is, however, never weak; and we regret that the force which he is capable of exerting is not more directed to expose the hollow political maxims

tirist who is to write "The Reform, a Satire?" There is not such a subject. Mr. Kenyon will not try it. He circumscribes his power; he shuns personality. Though public actors play their tricks before him, he walks away, and dresses up sticks and straws for human figures, and whirls them about and rails at them nobly; but he will not boldly brand the right forehead, nor burn too near an effigy. And,

perhaps, he has not the searching knowledge of political events, and characters which such a noble, such a moral task would require. Retribu

tive justice is at work; but it wants its powerful historian-the Age's Satirist. Our author evidently turns in disgust from such a banquet.

"Sick to the core of thin or deep Pretence,
The attack, false motived, or as false defence;
Of furious partisan, and dirty job,

And bribing candidate, and greedy mob;
Sick of great names, where with all Europe rings,
Of peoples sick, and ministers, and kings,
In soul I turn to scenes beloved of yore,
And fret for Greeks and Catholics no more.

"Granta! beneath whose mildly-cloistering bowers
Swift years I passed, made up of idlest hours;
Ere yet on hearts, in flowing frankness bold,
Unfeeling Time had fixed his freezing hold;
For still this praise be thine, gone spirit of youth!
Thy very vices had their touch of truth-
Granta! for thee though wreath I never won,
Granta! receive again thy world-tired son;
Pleased, as of old, by thy calm stream to stray,

And where youth smoothly sped, dream age away."

These are beautiful lines, and full of feeling. The character of the unprincipled student is powerfully drawn; his well-timed assumptions of virtue, and just the degrees of it that may not at any one time shock society, but such as with facility may let him drop into the consummate hypocrite, are nicely marked in the picture. We cannot forbear quoting the latter lines of the cha

racter.

"E'en when the bishop's mild ordaining hand
Had stricter rule imposed with gown and band,
Our deacon yet of strictness little smacked,
Nor made he vast pretence to what he lacked.

"But when his lot befel to settle down,

A well-paid curate in a thriving town,
Where Mammon and Devotion, each a pride,
Twixt prayer and pelf the ambitious crowd divide,
To his clear interests never quite a dunce,

A change came o'er the outward man at once.
You know him now by somewhat straighter hair,
And a strained look of sanctimonious care,

Which, as must seem, no worldly thought distracts;
And a huge quarto pocket, stuffed with tracts;
And sermon sour; and week-day talk austere ;
Save when he holds some female follower's ear.
Such gifts to rich preferment needs must come,
Or win a trusting wife with-half a plum."

We do not quite discover the truth in the next character introduced-the gif ed Hiero. The blighted promise is poetically and delicately expressed.

"So some sweet forest plant, born for the shade,

To richer soil, or sunnier skies conveyed,
Though there with stem to worthless stature grown,
Offends with a coarse blossom-not its own."

We have intimated that Mr. Kenyon, though having full power to use the lash, is too sparing. If he could persuade himself that a stronger satiric boldness is, as we really believe it to

be, a moral virtue, and would fling the entire wrath and energy of his mad into a new subject, we think he migh do the world a benefit. The SatirePart the First, Pretence-of which we

have given specimens, may (and we think the reader will agree with us) delight the scholar, and somewhat more than amuse the general reader, but wants the closeness, and-why be ashamed to say it?-the personality, to benefit mankind, by making the vices portraits. But then he must have written anonymously-and why not? Horace tells us that, when his father wished him to avoid a vice, he pointed out its personification in a living character; and, without doubt, that

is the way to be truly forcible. We would not advocate the relinquishing forbearance in matters of private life. But public characters-what the arena of politics or courts of law make notorious-all this is public property; and for legitimate use of satire there is enough for many hands. We believe Mr. Kenyon to be very sincere in the lines which conclude this first part of Pretence, for his very satire is the offspring of amiability.

"In my own doing's spite,

Little love I the satire which I write.
Harsh drugs, though given but to drive ailments out,
Will sometimes in the giver wake a doubt.
And this the Satirist still must take in trust,
E'en those hate him who own his satire just."

The second part of Pretence, but for a few lines, might have borne another title. It is decidedly less satiric, and may be termed, Rambling Thoughts in a Library. Critical review of any particular books, ancient or modern, is scarcely to be found in it. There is little of keen ridicule in it. All is even rather grave, of a reflective cast, and, perhaps, more indicative of the author's taste and feelings than the former. He is one of those who live much in a world of their own, and who are not always well pleased to be forced out of it. And when they are, they find themselves, with jarring elements within them, not very fit for either. They are not angels that drive them out of their paradise, and they bear their discomforts with less composure, as with less respect for the agents that expel them. Hence amiability itself becomes satiric. All poets feel sensibly the incompatibility of things without and things within. Poetry, like "true-love, never did run smooth"-if it did it might stagnatebe dull-the interruptions make the waters musical and sweet, so the checks the world gives to poetical minds keep the passion alive, and they return, as they are allowed, with per

petual courtship, to that beautiful vision, which is the more loved, as it may not be theirs all the days of their lives. Yet it is the poet's world, made of this world's materials, wonderfully worked upon by a combining, a selecting, and, to a far extent, a creating genius; and if it be a world that man is gifted to make, it is a real one; and many a time does it reflect a brightness of its own on that world which, though scarcely more real, is common to all, and gilds the path of life with the glory of exalted virtue and noble thought. Thought! it is indeed not tangible to the hand like household stuff-but is it not real? To deny it would be to deny reality to the soul, and to remove responsibility from man. He who has seen, and touched, and heard, though the organs were dead, would hear, and see, and touch; for the power of sensation is not in them, but once communicated, through them, to exist in independent vigour. So it is that we recall, and dream; and memory and genius, though invisible, are the living spirits of the heart and mind, and make up the better reality of life. And does not Mr Kenyon so think? Doubtless he does.

Genius, memory, and affection were all at work in the composition of the following true and touching lines.

VOL. XLIV.

67

"Who has not loved, erewhile, to pause and look
On childhood's record in some old school-book,
Name or grim portrait scrawled in ink-agen
Awakening memories, which had slept till then?
What if the spirit shrunk in sudden grief,
When the eye lights on some remembered leaf,
With parent, or beloved friend, once read,
The, now, for-ever-parted-or the dead!
Though for brief space the stroke be still severe,
Not long we shun the line that wakes the tear,
But, stealing back to that love-hallowed page,
With its own balsam its own wound assuage."

And where is friendship like the poet's friendship? It cherisheth the living and the dead-loving not less the present, conversing with the past. To him indeed there is no death that takes away; does he not take Piscator with him to the brooks, and what friend he pleases of all those said to be defunct, in his daily walks? He

66

forgets his morning visitors, his idlers and loungers, and sends his compliments into the library to Horace or Virgil, or Homer, or Milton, or Shak. speare, according to the vein he would be in, and begs their arm to the forest or the field, the glen or the mountain. Nay, see if it be not so.

Now-doubly sweet such refuge found with books!
To stray with mild Piscator up the brooks;

With Cowley muse beneath the greenwood tree,
Or taste old Fuller's wise simplicity,

As if his Worthies, though removed their span,
Smack yet too strongly of the living man,
Then backward turn to question Homer o'er,
Or dream of storied ages, rolled before;
Faint-glimmering now like far-off beacon light

O'er misty ocean scarcely read aright."

Now, then, has he a touch of the incompatibilities, and a vein of satire blends with his high aspirations, and admiration of gifted powers, in whatsoever exercised-and the "material world" is whipped till the top spin, and all that are on it are giddy, mazed, and foolish.

"To us the mere material world is all;

Our pride; our tax; our pleasure and our thrall.
Science, whom scarce the circling spheres may fold,
Chained to a desk we hire to scheme for gold;
Drag from its heights Imagination down,
To please, for daily bread, the modish town;
And daintiest Art, the dreaming child of grace,
Wake from her dream to paint some idiot face.
Virtue herself, born guest of Heaven's high roof,
Gift of the Godhead; gift at once and proof;
E'en her, blind bigots of our planet birth,
E'en her, we fain would fetter down to earth;
Just mark where Bat-Expedience flits at height,
And meanly, there, would bound her eagle-flight.

From such a world, all touch, all ear, all eye,
What marvel, then, if proud abstraction fly;
Amid Hercynian shades pursue his theme,
And leave the land of Locke to gold and steam?

But thou art not of those who, hence and thence,
Glean for low ends their pic-nic scraps of sense;
A lofty thinker, proud thy thirst to slake

At truth's well-head, unbribed, for truth's own sake;
Or art thou of the race still more unfit

To wrestle with the clans of worldly wit;

One, whom ere yet thy youngling thought could reach