Oh, the cunning wiles that creep

In thy little heart asleep!

When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful light shall break.

The standard Life of Blake is Gilchrist's (2nd ed. 1880), which contains a supplementary chapter and notes by D. G. Rossetti ; and the best study of his work is Mr Swinburne's Critical Essay (1868). His works have been edited by Ellis and Yeats (1893), and his poems, with Memoir by W. M. Rossetti, are in the Aldine Series. The Life by Story (1893) and R. Garnett's Portfolio article (1895) should be consulted.

JAMES DOUGLAS.

canon

William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), 'the restorer of natural poetry,' born at King's Sutton vicarage, Northamptonshire, was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1804 became rector of Bremhill in Wiltshire and a prebendary of Salisbury (from 1828 a residentiary). His first publication was a little volume of Fourteen Sonnets published anonymously at Bath in 1789, to which additions were made from time to time, and which in 1805 had reached a ninth edition. Meanwhile he had not been idle; other poetical works were Coombe Ellen and St Michael's Mount (1798), The Battle of the Nile (1799), The Sorrows of Switzerland (1801), The Spirit of Discovery (1805), The Missionary of the Andes (1815), Days Departed (1828), St John in Patmos (1833), and The Village Verse Book (1837). None of these can be said to have been popular, though all contain passages of fine descriptive and meditative verse. The 1789 sonnets had the extraordinary distinction of doing Coleridge's heart more good than all the other books he ever read excepting the Bible,' in serving the metaphysician -then only seventeen-as an authentic revelation of the poetic spirit, and deepening his aversion to the poetic theories and artificial didacticism of Pope's imitators and successors. Coleridge in his sonnet to Bowles thanks him

For those soft strains

Whose sadness soothes me like the murmuring Of wild bees in the sunny showers of spring; and praises their 'mild and manliest melancholy' as having relieved the 'thought-bewildered man' torn by the mightier throes of mind.' It was fortunate for Bowles's fame-as it was for Crabbe'sthat he began to publish when there was in England a signal dearth of true poetry, and that his best work was before the world ere the great poetic revival found its greater exponents. Now we find in the sonnets grace and tenderness, a gentle melancholy, a sweet and native simplicity sufficient to distinguish their author from his contemporaries, but not enough of power, passion, or magic to lead a movement or mark an epoch. But when in his edition of Pope (1806) he criticised, severely and somewhat unjustly, his character, and attacked his claim to be ranked amongst the great poets-Pope was only at the head of the second rank, he said -he initiated a long-continued and bitter controversy that had a profound historic significance and

sarcasms

influence. Bowles insisted that images for what is beautiful and sublime in nature are as such nobler and more expressive and more poetical than images derived from art. As usual in such controversies, each party vehemently affirmed facts that their opponents did not deny explicitly or implicitly. Thus Campbell retorted on Bowles, what he did not really dispute, that an exquisite description of artificial objects and manners may be equally characteristic of genius with the disciple of external nature. He further protested against preRaphaelite elaboration of detail in description'every rock, every leaf, every diversity of hue in nature's variety'-which Bowles actually did demand. Byron became the most fervid and thorough-going defender of Pope; his stinging at Bowles's expense-'Stick to thy sonnets, Bowles-at least they pay'-were more effective than his serious arguments; and Bowles, an absent-minded, eccentric, amiable, musicianly High-Church divine, was no match in the arts of effective polemics for Byron. But, contrary to what might have been expected from his poetry, Bowles was both vehement and fierce in the great controversy, defending his contention in a series of 'letters' or pamphlets-to Campbell, Byron, Roscoe, a 'Quarterly Reviewer,' and the public. Bowles was no mean antiquary, and wrote a parochial history, the annals of an abbey, and other historical and antiquarian researches; and besides a Life of Bishop Ken and some sermons, he published occasional pamphlets on education, the poor-laws, and Church politics. The first three specimens are from the Sonnets, which in the later editions were some of them a good deal altered in wording; the fourth is from the opening of the Missionary; the sixth from the Spirit of Discovery; the seventh from Childe Harold's last Pilgrimage; the last two from the Miscellaneous Poems ultimately appended to the Sonnets.

The Influence of Time on Grief.

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay
Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence,
Lulling to sad repose the weary sense,
The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away;
On thee I rest my only hope at last,

And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,
I may look back on every sorrow past,
And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile :
As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,
Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower
Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while :
Yet, ah! how much must that poor heart endure
Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure.

Hope.

As one who, long by wasting sickness worn,
Weary has watched the lingering night, and heard,
Heartless, the carol of the matin bird
Salute his lonely porch, now first at morn

Goes forth, leaving his melancholy bed;

He the green slope and level meadow views,
Delightful bathed in slow-ascending dews;

Or marks the clouds that o'er the mountain's head,
In varying forms fantastic wander white;

Or turns his ear to every random song
Heard the green river's winding marge along,
The whilst each sense is steeped in still delight:
So o'er my breast young summer's breath I feel,

Sweet Hope! thy fragrance pure and healing incense steal.

Bamborough Castle.

Ye holy towers that shade the wave-worn steep,
Long may ye rear your aged brows sublime,
Though hurrying silent by, relentless time
Assail you, and the winds of winter sweep
Round your dark battlements; for far from halls
Of Pride, here Charity hath fixed her seat ;
Oft listening tearful when the wild winds beat
With hollow bodings round your ancient walls;
And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour

Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high,
Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower,
And turns her ear to each expiring cry,
Blest if her aid some fainting wretch may save,
And snatch him cold and speechless from the wave.

In South America.

Beneath aërial cliffs and glittering snows,
The rush-roof of an aged warrior rose,
Chief of the mountain tribes; high overhead,
The Andes, wild and desolate, were spread,
Where cold Sierras shot their icy spires,
And Chillan trailed its smoke and mouldering fires.
A glen beneath a lonely spot of rest-
Hung, scarce discovered, like an eagle's nest.

Summer was in its prime; the parrot flocks
Darkened the passing sunshine on the rocks;
The chrysomel and purple butterfly

Amid the clear blue light are wandering by;
The humming-bird along the myrtle bowers,
With twinkling wing is spinning o'er the flowers;
The woodpecker is heard with busy bill,
The mock-bird sings-and all beside is still.
And look! the cataract that bursts so high,
As not to mar the deep tranquillity,
The tumult of its dashing fall suspends,
And, stealing drop by drop, in mist descends;
Through whose illumined spray and sprinkling dews,
Shine to the adverse sun the broken rainbow hues.
Chequering with partial shade the beams of noon,
And arching the gray rock with wild festoon,
Here, its gay network and fantastic twine
The purple cogul threads from pine to pine,
And oft, as the fresh airs of morning breathe,
Dips its long tendrils in the stream beneath.
There, through the trunks with moss and lichens white,
The sunshine darts its interrupted light,
And 'mid the cedar's darksome bough, illumes,
With instant touch, the lori's scarlet plumes.

Winter Evening at Home.

Fair Moon! that at the chilly day's decline
Of sharp December, through my cottage pane
Dost lovely look, smiling, though in thy wane ;
In thought, to scenes serene and still as thine,

Wanders my heart, whilst I by turns survey Thee slowly wheeling on thy evening way; And this my fire, whose dim, unequal light,

Just glimmering, bids each shadowy image fall Sombrous and strange upon the darkening wall, Ere the clear tapers chase the deepening night! Yet thy still orb, seen through the freezing haze, Shines calm and clear without; and whilst I gaze, I think around me in this twilight gloom, I but remark mortality's sad doom;

Whilst hope and joy, cloudless and soft, appear, In the sweet beam that lights thy distant sphere.

The Andes.

Andes sweeping the horizon's tract, Mightiest of mountains! whose eternal snows Feel not the nearer sun; whose umbrage chills The murmuring ocean; whose volcanic fires A thousand nations view, hung like the moon High in the middle waste of heaven.

From 'Byron's Death.'

So ends Childe Harold his last pilgrimage!
Ends in the region, in that land renowned,
Whose mighty genius lives in Glory's page,
And in the Muses' consecrated ground;

His pale cheek fading where his brows were bound
With their unfading wreath! I will not call
The nymphs from Pindus' piny shades profound,
But strew some flowers upon thy sable pall,
And follow to the grave a Briton's funeral.

Sun-dial in the Churchyard of Bremhill.

So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time; and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer vapour steal away.

And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past),
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,

Nor thought it fled, how certain and how fast? Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept, Noting each hour, o'er mouldering stones beneath; The pastor and his flock alike have slept,

And dust to dust' proclaimed the stride of death. Another race succeeds, and counts the hour,

Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile,
As hope, and youth, and life were in our power;
So smiling, and so perishing the while.

I heard the village-bells, with gladsome sound,
When to these scenes a stranger I drew near,
Proclaim the tidings of the village round,

While memory wept upon the good man's bier.
Even so, when I am dead, shall the same bells

Ring merrily when my brief days are gone; While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells, And strangers gaze upon thy humble stone!

Enough, if we may wait in calm content

The hour that bears us to the silent sod; Blameless improve the time that Heaven has lent, And leave the issue to thy will, O God.

The good man of the fifth verse was Mr Bowles's predecessor in the living at Bremhill.

Samuel Rogers

was born at the suburban village of Stoke Newington, on the 30th of July 1763. His father, a City banker, was a Whig and Dissenter; his mother was a great-granddaughter of Philip Henry. After a careful private education, at sixteen or seventeen he entered the bank, in 1784 was admitted to partnership, and on his father's death in 1793 became head of the firm. His taste for literature and for literary society awoke early; once with a friend he went to call on Dr Johnson in Bolt Court, but his courage failed him when his hand was already on the knocker. In 1781 he contributed eight short essays to the Gentleman's Magazine; next year a comic opera (never acted); and in 1786, the year that witnessed the advent of Burns, an Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems. In 1792 he produced The Pleasures of Memory; in 1798 his Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems; in 1812 the fragmentary Voyage of Columbus; and in 1814 Jacqueline, bound up with Byron's Lara. In 1819 appeared Human Life, and in 1822 the first part of Italy, a descriptive poem in blank verse. Rogers, a true poet if not a great one, had little originality or power or passion, but had exquisite taste and much sweetness, grace, and tenderness; all his work proves that he was a careful and fastidious writer. In his Table-Talk, published by Dyce, he gives details: 'I was engaged on the Pleasures of Memory for nine years; on Human Life for nearly the same space of time; and Italy was not completed in less than sixteen years.'

the greater of his younger contemporaries made their mark; but though Byron regarded him as a pillar of good taste in contrast to the Lake poets, some of his late poems show that he too was touched with the new spirit. His collected poems were published in various forms-one of them brought out at a cost of £15,000 (2 vols. 1830-34), with 114 vignette engravings by Stothard and Turner. The wealthy banker was well able to cultivate his favourite tastes; to enrich his

Not unnaturally we find deeper feelings and greater wealth of experience in Human Life than in the earlier Pleasures of Memory; and Italy gives delightful glimpses of Italian life and scenery and tradition. The Pleasures of Memory had passed through fifteen editions before 1806; Rogers had his vogue and was famous before

house at 22 St James's Place with some of the finest and rarest pictures, busts, books, gems, and other articles of virtu; and to entertain his friends with a generous though unostentatious hospitality. His conversation overflowed with shrewd observation, pungent criticism, and personal anecdote, rather

too often spiced with sarcasm. He soothed the last hours of Sheridan, and his generosity was largely exerted on behalf of suffering or unfriended talent. Genius languishing for want of patronage,' recorded Dyce, 'was sure to find in Mr Rogers a generous patron. His purse was ever open to

the distressed of the prompt assistance which he rendered in the hour of need to various well-known individuals there is ample record; but of his many acts of kindness and charity to the wholly obscure there is no memorial-at least on earth. . . . When more than ninety, and a close prisoner to his chair, he still delighted to watch the changing colours of the evening sky, to repeat passages of his favourite poets, or to dwell on the merits of the great painters whose works adorned his walls. By slow decay, and without any suffering, he died in St James's Place, 18th December 1855.' Five years before he had declined the laureateship. His art collections fetched £50,000, and three of his pictures-a Titian, a Guido, and a Giorgione-he bequeathed to the National Gallery.

It was as a man of taste and letters, as a patron

of artists and authors, and as the friend of almost every illustrious man that graced our annals for half a century and more that Rogers chiefly engaged the public attention. At his celebrated breakfast-parties persons of almost all classes and pursuits were found. He made the morning meal famous as a literary rallying-point; and during the London season there was scarcely a day that did not see from four to six guests at the hospitable board in St James's Place. Discussions as to books or pictures; anecdotes of the great of old; racy sayings of Sheridan, Erskine, or Horne Tooke; social traits of Fox; apt quotations or fine passages read aloud; incidents of foreign travel recounted, charmed the hours till midday. Many of his own pointed sayings circulated in society and got into print. Some one said that Gally Knight was getting deaf: 'It is from want of practice,' remarked Rogers, Mr Knight being a great speaker and bad listener. Lord Dudley (Ward) had been free in his criticisms on Rogers, who retaliated with an epigrammatic couplet:

Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it; He has a heart-he gets his speeches by it. When he tried to extort a confession from his neighbour, Sir Philip Francis, that he was the author of Junius, Francis gave a surly rebuff; whereupon Rogers concluded that if he was not Junius, he was at least Brutus. The gifts of the gods to himself he thus enumerated :

Nature denied him much,

But gave him at his birth what most he values:
A passionate love for music, sculpture, painting,
For poetry, the language of the gods,
For all things here, or grand or beautiful,
A setting sun, a lake amoung the mountains,
The light of an ingenuous countenance,
And, what transcends them all, a noble action.

(From Italy.)

From The Pleasures of Memory.'
Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,
With magic tints to harmonise the scene.
Stilled is the hum that through the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols closed the busy day.
Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more
With treasured tales and legendary lore.
All, all are fled; nor mirth nor music flows
To chase the dreams of innocent repose.
All, all are fled; yet still I linger here!
What secret charms this silent spot endear?

Mark yon old mansion frowning through the trees,
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze.
That casement, arched with ivy's brownest shade,
First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed.
The mouldering gateway strews the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport,
When all things pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.
Childhood's loved group revisits every scene,
The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green!

Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live!
Clothed with far softer hues than light can give.
Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below,
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know;
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm,
When Nature fades and life forgets to charm ;
Thee would the Muse invoke !—to thee belong
The sage's precept and the poet's song.
What softened views thy magic glass reveals,
When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals!
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,
Long on the wave reflected lustres play;
Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned,
Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind.
The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray,
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay.
Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn,
Quickening my truant feet across the lawn :
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air
When the slow dial gave a pause to care.
Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear,
Some little friendship formed and cherished here;
And not the lightest leaf but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams.

Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed
The gipsy's fagot—there we stood and gazed ;
Gazed on her sunburnt face with silent awe,
Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw;
Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er;
The drowsy brood that on her back she bore,
Imps in the barn with mousing owlets bred,
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed ;
Whose dark eyes flashed through locks of blackest shade,
When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bayed:
And heroes fled the sibyl's muttered call,
Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall.
As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew,

And traced the line of life with searching view,
How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears,
To learn the colour of my future years!

Ah, then, what honest triumph flushed my breast ;
This truth once known-to bless is to be blest!
We led the bending beggar on his way-
Bare were his feet, his tresses silver-gray-
Soothed the keen pangs his aged spirit felt,
And on his tale with mute attention dwelt :
As in his scrip we dropt our little store,
And sighed to think that little was no more,
He breathed his prayer, 'Long may such goodness live!'
'Twas all he gave-'twas all he had to give.

The adventurous boy that asks his little share,
And hies from home with many a gossip's prayer,
Turns on the neighbouring hill, once more to see
The dear abode of peace and privacy;
And as he turns, the thatch among the trees,
The smoke's blue wreaths ascending with the breeze,
The village-common spotted white with sheep,
The churchyard yews round which his fathers sleep;
All rouse Reflection's sadly pleasing train,
And oft he looks and weeps, and looks again.
So, when the mild Tupia dared explore
Arts yet untaught, and worlds unknown before,
And, with the sons of Science, wooed the gale
That, rising, swelled their strange expanse of sail;
So, when he breathed his firm yet fond adieu,
Borne from his leafy hut, his carved canoe,

And all his soul best loved-such tears he shed,
While each soft scene of summer-beauty fled.
Long o'er the wave a wistful look he cast,
Long watched the streaming signal from the mast,
Till Twilight's dewy tints deceived his eye,
And fairy forests fringed the evening sky.

So Scotia's queen, as slowly dawned the day,
Rose on her couch, and gazed her soul away.
Her eyes had blessed the beacon's glimmering height,
That faintly tipped the feathery surge with light:
But now the morn with orient hues portrayed
Each castled cliff and brown monastic shade:
All touched the talisman's resistless spring,

And lo, what busy tribes were instant on the wing!
Thus kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer-clouds flash forth electric fire.
And hence this spot gives back the joys of youth,
Warm as the life, and with the mirror's truth.
Hence home-felt pleasure prompts the patriot's sigh;
This makes him wish to live, and dare to die.
For this young Foscari, whose hapless fate
Venice should blush to hear the Muse relate,
When exile wore his blooming years away,
To sorrow's long soliloquies a prey,
When reason, justice, vainly urged his cause,
For this he roused her sanguinary laws;

Glad to return, though hope could grant no more,
And chains and torture hailed him to the shore.

And hence the charm historic scenes impart ;
Hence Tiber awes, and Avon melts the heart.
Aerial forms in Tempe's classic vale

Glance through the gloom and whisper in the gale;
In wild Vaucluse with love and Laura dwell,
And watch and weep in Eloisa's cell.

'Twas ever thus. Young Ammon, when he sought
Where Ilium stood, and where Pelides fought,
Sat at the helm himself. No meaner hand

Steered through the waves, and when he struck the land,
Such in his soul the ardour to explore,
Pelides-like, he leaped the first ashore.
'Twas ever thus. As now at Virgil's tomb

Archimedes

We bless the shade, and bid the verdure bloom :
So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of Time,
On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime;
When at his feet in honoured dust disclosed,
The immortal sage of Syracuse reposed.
And as he long in sweet delusion hung
Where once a Plato taught, a Pindar sung;
Who now but meets him musing, when he roves
His ruined Tusculan's romantic groves?
In Rome's great Forum, who but hears him roll
His moral thunders o'er the subject soul? . . .
Hail, Memory, hail in thy exhaustless mine
From age to age unnumbered treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!
Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone;
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air, Hope's summer-visions die,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;

And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!

Tupia, a Tahitian brought off by Captain Cook in 1769.
From 'Human Lie.'

The lark has sung his carol in the sky,
The bees have hummed their noontide harmony;
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn hall the jests resound;
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years, and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.
Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin;
The ale, now brewed, in floods of amber shine;
And basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
"Twas on her knees he sat so oft and smiled.'
And soon again shall music swell the breeze;
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees
Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung,
And violets scattered round; and old and young,
In every cottage-porch with garlands green,
Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene,
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side,
Moves in her virgin veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas! nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weeping heard where only joy has been;
When, by his children borne, and from his door,
Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before.
And such is human life; so gliding on,

It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full, methinks, of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening fire;
As any sung of old, in hall or bower,
To minstrel-harps at midnight's witching hour!...
The day arrives, the moment wished and feared;
The child is born, by many a pang endeared,
And now the mother's ear has caught his cry;
O grant the cherub to her asking eye!
He comes-she clasps him. To her bosom pressed,
He drinks the balm of life, and drops to rest.

Her by her smile how soon the stranger knows!
How soon by his the glad discovery shews!
As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy,
What answering looks of sympathy and joy!
He walks, he speaks. In many a broken word
His wants, his wishes, and his griefs are heard.
And ever, ever to her lap he flies,

When rosy Sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
Locked in her arms, his arms across her flung
(That name most dear for ever on his tongue),
As with soft accents round her neck he clings,
And, cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings,
How blest to feel the beatings of his heart,
Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart ;