is this:-It was agreed by a party dining at a tavern in Bermuda, of which place, it is said, that no native knows what is metre or rhyme, that every one should try to redeem the credit of the country, and that the worst poet of them should pay the reckoning. The palm of demerit was obtained by this couplet:

'Here she comes, and walks along,

A faithful friend is hard to find.'

I know not whence my father got the lines descriptive of the landing of Æneas,

' And so, without any more ands and ifs,
He jumped from off the rocks on to the cliffs.'

or who proposed the amended reading,
'And so without any more ifs and ands,
He jumped from the cliffs on to the sands." "

POETRY AND PREACHING.

In the earlier ages of English poetry, the minstrels were often more amply paid than the clergy; for in these, as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to be pleased than instructed. During many of the years of the reign of Henry the Sixth, particularly in

the year 1430, at the annual feast of the fraternity of the Holie Crosse, at Abingdon, a town in Berkshire, twelve priests each received fourpence, for singing a dirge; and the same number of minstrels were rewarded each with two shillings and four-pence, beside diet and horsemeat. Some of these minstrels came only from Maydenhithe, or Maidenhead, a town at no great distance, in the same county.

In the year 1441, eight priests were hired from Coventry, to assist in celebrating a yearly obit in the church of the neighbouring Priory of Maxtoke; as were six minstrels, called Mimi, belonging to the family of Lord Clinton, who lived in the adjoining Castle of Maxtoke, to sing, harp, and play in the hall of the Monastery, during the extraordinary refection allowed to the Monks, on that anniversary:-two shillings were given to the priests, and four to the minstrels; and the latter are said to have supped in camera pictâ, or the painted chamber of the Convent, with the Sub-prior; on which occasion, the Chamberlain furnished eight massy tapers of wax.

That the gratuities allowed to priests, even if learned, for their labours, in the same age of

devotion, were extremely slender, may be collected from other expenses of this Priory. In the same year, the Prior gives only sixpence for a sermon, to a doctor prædicans, or an itinerant doctor in theology of one of the mendicant orders, who went about preaching to the Religious Houses.

WARTON.

SANAZARIUS

wrote the following beautiful lines on the City of Venice, for which he was rewarded with six thousand gold crowns:—

"Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis

Stare urbem, et toti ponere jura mari,
Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantum vis Jupiter arces
Objice et alta tui monia Martis ait.

Si Pelago Tibrim præfers, urbem aspice utramque,
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse Deôs."

TRANSLATION.

"When Ocean's powerful god saw Venice stand
In its vast gulph, and all the sea command,

" Now, Jove, oppose to me,' he, proud, exclaim'd,
Thy towers, and Mars's walls, in story fam'd;
If thou prefer thy Tiber to the Main,
A faithful survey for each city gain :

Rome, you must own, that feeble mortals made,
Whilst Venice shows the God's almighty aid."

cr

MILTON'S "COMUS," AND CAMPION'S MEMORA

BLE MASK."

THE mask of "Comus" was composed to celebrate the creation of Charles I. as Prince of Wales. A scene in this mask presented both the castle and town of Ludlow; which proves, that although our small public theatres had not exhibited any of the scenical illusions which, long afterwards, Sir William D'Avenant introduced, these scenical effects existed, in great perfection, in the masks. The minute description introduced by Thomas Campion in his "Memorable Mask," as it is called, will convince us, that the scenery must have been exquisite and fanciful; and that the poet was always a watchful and anxious partner with the mechanist, with whom he sometimes, however, quarelled. The subject of this very rare mask was "The Night and the Hours." It would be tedious to describe the first scene with the fondness with which the poet has dwelt on it. It was a double valley; one side was shadowed with dark clouds; the other, a green vale, with trees, and nine golden ones of fifteen feet high; from which grove, towards the state or seat of the King, was a broad descent to the dancing

place. The bower of Flora was on their right, the house of Night on the left; between them a hill, hanging, like a cliff, over the grove. The bower of Flora was spacious, garnished with flowers and flowery branches, with lights among them; the house of Night, ample and stately, with black columns studded with golden stars; while about it were placed, on wires, artificial bats and owls, continually moving, As soon as the King entered the great hall, the hautboys were heard from the top of the hill and from the wood, till Flora and Zephyrus were seen busily gathering flowers from the bower, throwing them into baskets which two Silvans held, attired in "changeable taffety." The burthen of their song is charming.

"Now hath Flora robb'd her bowers
To befriend this place with flowers:-
Strew about! strew about!

Divers, divers flowers affect

For some private dear respect:

Strew about! strew about!"

We cannot quit this mask, of which collectors know the rarity, without preserving one of those Doric delicacies, of which, perhaps, we