The disappointed foe, deliverance found O evenings worthy of the gods! exclaimed Come Evening, once again, season of peace; On bird and beast, the other charged for man To books, to music, or the poet's toil; To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit; Or twining silken threads round ivory reels, When they command whom man was born to please, The Rev. THOMAS Moss, a very worthy contemporary of Cowper, and minister of Brierly Hill, and of Trentham, in Straffordshire, published, in 1762, a collection of miscellaneous poems, forming a thin quarto volume. One of these poems, The Beggar, contains much pathetic and natural sentiment, finely expressed. It was copied by Dodsley into the 'Annual Register,' and thence it has been transferred into almost every collection of fugitive poems since made. Moss died in 1808, but at what age is unknown. THE BEGGAR. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man! Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span, Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store. These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak, And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek, Yon house, erected on the rising ground, (Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor! Oh! take me to your hospitable dome, Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold! Should I reveal the sources of my grief, If soft humanity e'er touched your breast, Heaven sends misfortunes-why should we repine? The child of sorrow, and of misery. A little farm was my paternal lot, Then, like the lark, I sprightly hailed the morn; My daughter-once the comfort.of my age! My tender wife-sweet soother of my care! And left the world to wretchedness and me. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man! Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door, Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store. Mickle, Beattie, Macpherson, Bruce, Logan, and Burns, will complete the list of British poets embraced in the original design of these lectures. WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, a poet of taste and elegance, but of no great originality of genius, is chiefly celebrated for his translation of 'The Lusiad' of Camoens, the most distinguished poet of Portugal. Mickle was the son of the minister of Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, where he was born, on the twenty-ninth of September, 1734. He was instructed by his father, a very accomplished scholar, and one of Bale's translators, until the thirteenth year of his age, when he entered the High-school of Edinburgh, and there remained till he had completed his studies. At this time his aunt owned a large brewery in Edinburgh, and in the brewing business Mickle entered with her, first as a conductor of the establishment, and afterwards as a partner. He was, however, unsuccessful, and therefore, in 1764, went to London in search of literary distinction. Lord Littleton noticed and encouraged his poetical efforts, and Mickle was buoyed up with dreams of patronage and celebrity; but two years of destitution dispelled this vision, and the poet was glad to accept the situation of corrector of the Clarendon press, at Oxford. Soon after Mickle's settlement at Oxford, he published Pollio, an elegy, and The Concubine, a moral poem, after the manner of Spenser, with whose writings he had become familiar while pursuing his studies at Edinburgh. He adopted the obsolete phraseology of Spenser, which Thomson had almost wholly discarded in his 'Castle of Indolence,' and which doubtless proved an impediment to the success of the work. The first stanza of this poem has been quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in illustration of the remark made by him, that Mickle,' with a vein of great facility, united a power of verbal melody, which might have been envied by bards of much greater renown.' The stanza is as follows: Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale, Even now, with baliny sweetness, breathes the gale, Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake, And Evening comes with locks bedropped with dew; On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake The withered rye-grass and the harebell blue, And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew. This poem was published anonymously, and was so successful as to pass through three editions in a single year. In 1771, Mickle, having acquired a thorough knowledge of the Portuguese language, published the first canto of his great translation, which was completed four years after; and being supported by a long list of subscribers, was highly advantageous, both to his fame and his fortune. In 1779, he went out to Portugal as secretary to Commodore Johnstone, and was received with much distinction in Lisbon by the countrymen of Camoens. On the return of the expedition, he was appointed joint agent for the distribution of the prizes. His own share was considerable; and having received some money by his marriage with a lady whom he had known in his obscure sojourn at Oxford, his latter days were spent in ease and leisure. He died at Forrest Hill, near Oxford, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1789. Of Mickle's original poems, the most popular is his ballad of Cumnor Hall; and to this work additional celebrity is attached by its having suggested to Sir Walter Scott the groundwork of his romance of Kenilworth. Of Mickle's tenderness and pathos the strongest proof is afforded by the following Scottish song, delineating humble matrimonial happiness and affection: Sae true his words, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air! His very foot has music in't And will I see his face again? I'm downright dizzy with the thought, In troth I'm like to greet. Then there are the two lines-a happy Epicurean fancy, but elevated by the situation and the faithful love of the speaker-which Burns says 'are worthy of the first poet': The present moment is our ain, The neist we never saw. As Mickle's fame, however, rests almost exclusively on his translation of 'The Lusiad,' we shall select our principal extract from that work: THE SPIRIT OF THE CAPE. Now prosperous gales the bending canvass swelled; Or through forbidden climes adventurous strayed, Have we the secrets of the deep surveyed, Which these wild solitudes of seas and sky Were doomed to hide from man's unhallowed eye? Whate'er this prodigy, it threatens more Than midnight tempest and the mingled roar, When sea and sky combine to rock the marble shore. I spoke, when rising through the darkened air, Appalled we saw a hideous phantom glare; Writhing to speak, his sable lips disclose, Through these my waves advance your fearless prows, And all the storms that own my sovereign sway, Who 'mid surrounding rocks and shelves explore Ye sons of Lusus, who, with eyes profane, Have passed the bounds which jealous Nature drew, A naked corse, wide floating o'er the tide * JAMES BEATTIE was the son of a small farmer and shopkeeper, at Laurencekirk, in Kincardshire, and was born on the twenty-fifth of October, 1735. His father died while he was a child, but an older brother, who perceived indications of talent in the boy, assisted him in obtaining a good education; and in his fourteenth year he was admitted into Marischal College, Aberdeen. Having closed his studies at the university, Beattie, in the |