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to your own imaginations, amongst my relations-the worst of damnations; but there will come an hour of deliverance, till when may my mother be merciful to you; so I commit you to what shall ensue, woman to woman, wife to mother, in hopes of a future appearance in glory. The small share I could spare you out of my pocket, I have sent as a debt to Mrs. Rowse. Within a week or ten days I will return you more: pray, write as often as you have leisure to your

ROCHESTER.

I hope, Charles, when you receive this, and know that I have sent this gentleman to be your tutor, you will be very glad to see I take such care of you, and be very grateful, which is best shown in being obedient and diligent. You are now grown big enough to be a man, and you can be wise enough; for the way to be truly wise is to serve God, learn your book, and observe the instructions of your parents first, and next your tutor, to whom I have entirely resigned you for this seven years, and, according as you employ that time, you are to be happy or unhappy forever; but I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to think you will never deceive me; dear child, learn your book and be obedient, and you shall see what a father I will be to you. You shall want no pleasure while you are good, and that you may be so are my constant prayers.

ROCHESTER.

JOHN SHEFFIELD, Duke of Buckingham, was descended from a long series of illustrious ancestors, and was born in 1649. His father, the Earl of Mulgrave, died in 1658, when Sheffield was only nine years of age; and the young lord was placed under the care of a governor to be brought up and educated. He, however, was so little satisfied with this arrangement, that he soon relieved his tutor of his charge, and at an age not exceeding twelve years, resolved to educate himself. Such a purpose formed at so early an age, is, in itself, extraordinary; and being successfully prosecuted, it imparts a lesson of sound instruction. Through his own personal efforts, Sheffield early became an accomplished scholar; and his literary acquisitions are the more wonderful, as they were made during the tumult of a military life, or the gayety of a court. He accompanied Prince Rupert, as a volunteer, in the second Dutch war; and in order to become an accomplished soldier he afterward served a campaign in the French army, under Marshal Turenne. Having signalized himself in various commands abroad, Sheffield, on his return to England, was made one of the lords of the bed-chamber to Charles the Second; and on the accession of James the Second to the crown, he became a member of that monarch's privy council. He, however, acquiesced in the Revolution, and was afterward a member of the cabinet council of William and Mary, with an annual pension of three thousand pounds. Sheffield was a distinguished favorite with Queen Anne, who, after she ascended the throne, heaped favors upon him with a very lavish hand. Opposed to the accession of George the First, he continued actively engaged in public affairs till his death, which occurred on the twenty-fourth of February, 1721.

Sheffield was the author of several poems, among which are an Essay on Satire, and an Essay on Poetry, the latter of which should, perhaps, be regarded as his principal performance. It is written in the heroic couplet,

and in all probability suggested Pope's 'Essay on Criticism.' It is of the style and order of merit of Denham and Roscommon-plain, perspicuous, and sensible, but contains little of true poetry. We subjoin the following

extract:

Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief master-piece is writing well;
No writing lifts exalted man so high,
As sacred and soul-moving poesy:
No kind of work requires so nice a touch,
And if well finish'd, nothing shines so much.
But heaven forbid we should be so profane
To grace the vulgar with that noble name.
'Tis not a flash of fancy, which, sometimes
Dazzling our minds, sets off the slightest rhymes;
Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done:
True wit is everlasting like the sun,

Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retir'd,

Breaks out again, and is by all admir'd.

Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound
Which not the nicest ear with harshness wound,
Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts;
And all in vain these superficial parts
Contribute to the structure of the whole;
Without a genius, too, for that's the soul:
A spirit which inspires the work throughout,
As that of nature moves the world about;
A flame that glows amidst conceptions fit,
Even something of divine, and more than wit ;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown,
Describing all men, but describ'd by none.
Where dost thou dwell? what caverns of the brain
Can such a vast and mighty thing contain?
When I at vacant hours in vain thy absence mourn,
O where dost thou retire? and why dost thou return,
Sometimes with powerful charms, to hurry me away
From pleasures of the night and business of the day?
Ev'n now too far transported, I am fain

To check thy course, and use the needful rein,
As all is dullness when the fancy's bad,

So without judgment fancy is but mad:
And judgment has a boundless influence,

Not only in the choice of words or sense,

But on the world, on manners, and on men:

Fancy is but the feather of the pen;

Reason is that substantial useful part

Which gains the head, while t' other wins the heart.

From the noble poets who have thus far occupied our attention during the present remarks, we proceed to notice Prior, Pomfret, and Swift, by whom we shall be fairly introduced to the literary age of Queen Anne.

MATTHEW PRIOR belongs to that extraordinary class of men whose menta

energy is sufficient to triumph over the disadvantages of an obscure origin, and finally to rise to eminence. He was the son of a joiner, and was born at Wimborne, in Middlesex, on the twenty-first of July, 1664. His father, at his death, which occurred during the childhood of the future poet and statesman, left him in the care of an uncle who was a vintner, near Charing Cross, and who discharged the trust reposed in him with a tenderness truly paternal. At a proper age he sent him to Westminster school, then under the care of the celebrated Dr. Busby; but not being in circumstances to extend his education beyond that of the school, he took him, after he had become well advanced in literature, to his own home to aid him in the business of the inn. Here he was accidentally found by the Earl of Dorset, that celebrated patron of genius, reading Horace; and with his proficiency the nobleman was so much delighted, that he at once undertook the care, and assumed the expense, of his academical education. Prior, in the eighteenth year of his age, entered St. John's College, Cambridge. and soon became distinguished for his classical attainments. He was made a bachelor of arts in 1686, and soon after produced, in conjunction with Charles Montague, the City Mouse and Country Mouse, in ridicule of Dryden's 'Hind and Panther.' The Earl of Dorset did not, as is too often the case, forget the poet that he had snatched from obscurity; but invited him to London, and obtained for him an appointment as secretary to the Earl of Berkeley, ambassador to the Hague. In this capacity he had the good fortune to obtain the approbation of King William, who appointed him one of the gentlemen of his bed-chamber. In 1697, Prior was appointed secretary to the embassy on the treaty of Ryswick, at the conclusion of which he was presented with a considerable amount of money by the lords justices. During the following year he was sent ambassador to the court of Versailles; and after some other temporary honors and appointments, was made a commissioner of trade. In 1701, Prior entered the House of Commons as representative for the borough of East-Grimstead, and abandoning his former friends, the Whigs, joined the Tories in impeaching Lord Somers. This came with a peculiarly bad grace from Prior; for the charge against Somers was, that he had advised the partition treaty, in which treaty the poet himself had acted as agent.. He evinced his patriotism, however, by afterward celebrating, in verse, the battles of Blenheim and Ramillies. When the Whig government was at length overturned, Prior became attached to Harley's administration, and went with Lord Bolingbroke to France, in 1711, to negotiate a treaty of peace. He lived in Paris in great splendor, was a favorite of the French monarch, and enjoyed all the honors of ambassador.

Prior returned to London in 1715, and the Whigs being again in office, he was committed to prison on a charge of high treason. The accusation against him was, that he had held clandestine conferences with the French plenipotentiary, though, as he justly replied, no treaty was ever made without private interviews and preliminaries. The Whigs were indignant at the dis

graceful treaty of Utrecht; but Prior only shared in the culpability of the government. The able but profligate Bolingbroke was the master-spirit that prompted the humiliating concession to France. After being kept in confinement during two tedious years, the poet was at length released without even the form of a trial. He had, in the interval, written his poem of Alma; and being now left without any other support than that which he derived from his fellowship of St. John's College, he continued his studies, and produced his Solomon, the most elaborate of his works. He had also recourse to the publication of a collected edition of his poems, from which he realized the handsome sum of four thousand pounds. An equal amount was presented to him by the Earl of Oxford, and his old age was thus amply provided for. He was now ambitious only of comfort and private enjoyment. These, however, he did not long possess; as his death, which occurred on the eighteenth of September, 1721, soon followed his retirement.

The works of Prior embrace odes, songs, epistles, epigrams, and tales, and exhibit a great variety of style and subject. His largest poem, 'Solomon,' is of a serious character, and was regarded by the author as his best production. It is certainly the most moral, and perhaps the most correctly written; but the tales and lighter pieces of Prior, are, in our judgment, his happiest efforts. In these he displays that 'charming ease' with which he embellishes all his poems, added to the lively illustration and colloquial humor of his great model, Horace. No poet, perhaps, ever possessed, in greater perfection, the art of graceful and fluent versification, than Prior. His narratives flow on like a clear stream, without a single fall, and interest us by their perpetual good-humor and vivacity, even when they wander into metaphysics, as in 'Alma,' or into licentiousness, as in his Tales. His expression is choice and studied, abounding in classical allusions and images, but without any air of pedantry or constraint. Like Swift, he loved to versify the common occurrences of life, and relate his personal feelings and adventures; but he had none of the dean's bitterness or misanthropy, and employed no stronger weapons of satire than raillery and arch allusion. He sported on the surface of existence, noting its foibles, its pleasures, and its eccentricities, but without the power of penetrating into its recesses, or evoking the higher passions of our nature. He was the most natural of artificial poets--a seeming paradox, yet as true as the old maxim, that 'the perfection of art is the concealment of art.' The following specimens sufficiently exemplify all the peculiar characteristics of this author to which wa have alluded :

THE GARLAND.

The pride of every grove I chose,
The violet sweet and lily fair,
The dappled pink and blushing rose,
To deck my charming Chloe's hair.

At morn the nymph vouchsaf'd to place
Upon her brow the various wreath;
The flowers less blooming than her face,
The scent less fragrant than her breath.

The flowers she wore along the day,
And every nymph and shepherd said,
That in her head they look'd more gay
Than glowing in their native bed.

Undress'd at evening, when she found
Their odours lost, their colours past,
She chang'd her look, and on the ground
Her garland and her eyes she cast.

That eye dropp'd sense distinct and clear,
As any muse's tongue could speak,
When from its lid a pearly tear

Ran trickling down her beauteous cheek.

Dissembling what I knew too well,
My love, my life, said I, explain
This change of humour; prithee tell-
That falling tear-what does it mean?

She sigh'd, she smil'd; and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely mor'list said,
See, friend, in some few fleeting hours,
See yonder, what a change is made.

Ab me! the blooming pride of May
And that of beauty are but one;
At morn both flourish bright and gay,
Both fade at evening, pale, and gone.

AN EPITAPH.

Interr'd beneath this marble stone,
Lie sauntering Jack and idle Joan.
While rolling threescore years and one
Did round this globe their courses run;
If human things went ill or well,

If changing empires rose or fell,

The morning past, the evening came,

And found this couple just the same.

They walk'd and ate, good folks: What then?

Why, then they walk'd and ate again;

They soundly slept the night away;

They did just nothing all the day.
Nor sister either had nor brother;

They seem'd just tallied for each other.
Their Moral and Economy

Most perfectly they made agree;
Each virtue kept its proper bound,
Nor trespass'd on the other's ground.
Nor fame nor censure they regarded;
They neither punish'd nor rewarded.

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