exceeding great reward; it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude, and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."

"Poetry," says Shelley, "lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar. It reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it co-exists. The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause."

EXERCISE 1.-Define :-Epic, drama, solitude, imagination, enchantments, brevity, deficient, innate, species, contemplated, memorials.

EXERCISE 2.-Name those poets who may be taken as types of the chief characteristics of poetry.

MISCELLANEOUS.

The following short extracts are given as suitable specimens of our earlier writers, to be committed to memory, and also form good exercises in paraphrasing.

Odour, a scent.

Canker-blooms, diseased blos

soms.

Perfume, a sweet odour or scent.
Masked, hidden as by a mask.
Unwooed, not sought for.

Tincture, an extract of the finest parts.

Intent, a purpose or meaning. Mystic, having a generally unknown meaning.

Distil, to obtain the spirit from.
Nymph, a goddess of the woods

or waters.

Signify, to mean.

Express, to give the meaning.

SHAKSPEARE. SONNET 54.

Oн how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which Truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses;
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their maskèd buds discloses ;
But, for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made;
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade

my verse distils your truth.

BEN JONSON. LIVED 1574 TO 1637.

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, that doth make man better be,

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bold, and sear.

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May;

Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light!
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. "PHILASTER." Act i., Scene 2.

Philaster.

I have a boy :

Sent by the gods, I hope, to this intent,

Not yet seen in the court. Hunting the buck,
I found him sitting by a fountain's side,
Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst,
And paid the nymph again as much in tears.
A garland lay him by, made by himself
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay,
Stuck in that mystic order that the rareness
Delighted me. But ever when he turned
His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep,
As if he meant to make 'em grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story.
He told me, that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,

Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs,
Which did not stop their courses; and the sun,
Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light.
Then took he up his garland, and did show
What every flower, as country people hold,
Did signify; and how all, order'd thus,

Express'd his grief; and, to my thoughts, did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art

That could be wish'd: so that, methought, I could
Have studied it. I gladly entertain'd him,
Who was (as) glad to follow; and have got
The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy,
That ever master kept.

Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.