a sort of melancholy pride and satisfaction in writing epitaphs on his friends. Hayley prepared Memoirs of his own life (2 vols. 4to, 1823), which he disposed of to a publisher on condition of his receiving an annuity for the rest of his life; this he enjoyed for eight years.

Inscription on the Tomb of Cowper.
Ye who with warmth the public triumph feel
Of talents dignified by sacred zeal,
Here, to devotion's bard devoutly just,
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust!
England, exulting in his spotless fame,

Ranks with her dearest sons his favourite name.
Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise
So clear a title to affection's praise :
His highest honours to the heart belong;
His virtues formed the magic of his song.

On the Tomb of Mrs Unwin. Trusting in God with all her heart and mind, This woman proved magnanimously kind; Endured affliction's desolating hail, And watched a poet through misfortune's vale. Her spotless dust angelic guards defend ! It is the dust of Unwin, Cowper's friend. That single title in itself is fame,

For all who read his verse revere her name.

From To a Mother, on her Death.' O thou fond spirit, who with pride hast smiled, And frowned with fear on thy poetic child, Pleased, yet alarmed, when in his boyish time He sighed in numbers or he laughed in rhyme; While thy kind cautions warned him to beware Of Penury, the bard's perpetual snare; Marking the early temper of his soul, Careless of wealth, nor fit for base control! Thou tender saint, to whom he owes much more Than ever child to parent owed before; In life's first season, when the fever's flame Shrunk to deformity his shrivelled frame, And turned each fairer image in his brain To blank confusion and her crazy train, 'Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years, To bathe thy idiot orphan in thy tears; Day after day, and night succeeding night, To turn incessant to the hideous sight, And frequent watch, if haply at thy view Departed reason might not dawn anew ; Though medicinal art, with pitying care, Could lend no aid to save thee from despair, Thy fond maternal heart adhered to hope and Nor prayed in vain; thy child from powers above Received the sense to feel and bless thy love. O might he thence receive the happy skill, And force proportioned to his ardent will, With truth's unfading radiance to emblaze Thy virtues, worthy of immortal praise ! Nature, who decked thy form with beauty's flowers, Exhausted on thy soul her finer powers; Taught it with all her energy to feel Love's melting softness, friendship's fervid zeal, The generous purpose and the active thought, With charity's diffusive spirit fraught. There all the best of mental gifts she placed,

prayer:

Vigour of judgment, purity of taste,
Superior parts without their spleenful leaven,
Kindness to earth, and confidence in heaven.
While my fond thoughts o'er all thy merits roll,
Thy praise thus gushes from my filial soul.

Sir William Jones (1746-94) earned his laurels rather as an Oriental scholar and judge, an enlightened lawyer and patriot, than as a poet. But by his mastery of an extraordinary wealth of Oriental lore he greatly widened the literary horizon of England and all European nations; he had himself exceptional skill and ease in expounding his favourite subjects; and his verse translations from Eastern tongues were in many ways memorable. Born in London, the son of an eminent mathematician, in 1753 he was sent to Harrow, where to Latin and Greek he added some knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew. Entered of University College, Oxford, in 1764, he assiduously read the Greek poets and historians, and pursued Oriental studies under the tuition of a native of Aleppo. In his nineteenth year he was made private tutor to Lord Althorp, afterwards Earl Spencer; and a fellowship at Oxford relieved the young scholar from pecuniary straits. In 1768 the king of Denmark visited England, and brought with him a Persian manuscript of the life of Nadir Shah, which Jones translated into French. In 1769 he accompanied his noble pupil to the Continent. Next year, entered a student of the Temple, he applied himself with his characteristic ardour to his new profession. He also wrote a Persian grammar, a French Traité (1770), a French Dissertation (1771), and Latin Commentaria (1774), all on Oriental poetry, and some translations, and was made F.R.S.; but finding that jurisprudence was a jealous mistress, he devoted himself for some years exclusively to his legal studies, practised at the Bar, and was appointed one of the Commissioners of Bankrupts. In 1778 he published a translation of the speeches of Isæus, and several treatises on law. He strongly opposed the American war and the slave-trade, and in 1781 he published his famous Alcaic ode. Appointed one of the judges of the supreme court at Fort William in Bengal and knighted in his thirty-seventh year, he embarked for India (1783), never to return. In the intervals of leisure from his judicial labours he worked at all manner of scientific and literary subjects, and established the Bengal Asiatic Society. His contributions to the transactions of this society on Asiatic philology, ethnology, and chronology are epoch-making. Ultimately he was able to read in twenty-eight languages. He was the first English scholar to master Sanskrit; and it was he who first emphasised its close resemblance to Greek and Latin, becoming thus one of the founders of comparative philology. He translated from the Hitopadesa and from the Sakuntala, and made versions of Hindu hymns and of parts of the Vedas. He engaged to compile a digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws; and in 1794, to

secure for the natives of India the administration of justice by their own laws, he translated the Ordinances of Menu, the Hindu Justinian.

An Ode in Imitation of Alcæus.

What constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No; men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued

In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;

Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain :
These constitute a state,

And sovereign Law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill;
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Discretion like a vapour sinks,

And e'en the all-dazzling Crown

Hides her faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

Such was this heaven-loved isle,

Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore!
No more shall Freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish, and be men no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards which decorate the brave 'Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

A Persian Song of Hafiz.

Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,
And bid these arms thy neck infold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bocara's haunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.

Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them their Eden cannot shew
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay.

Oh when these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display,
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As Tartars seize their destined prey.

In vain with love our bosoms glow :
Can all our tears, can all our sighs,
New lustre to those charms impart ?
Can cheeks, where living roses blow,
Where nature spreads her richest dyes,
Require the borrowed gloss of art?

Bokhara's

Speak not of fate: ah, change the theme,
And talk of odours, talk of wine,
Talk of the flowers that round us bloom:
'Tis all a cloud, 'tis all a dream;
To love and joy thy thoughts confine,
Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom.
Beauty has such resistless power,
That even the chaste Egyptian dame
Sighed for the blooming Hebrew boy:
For her how fatal was the hour,
When to the banks of Nilus came
A youth so lovely and so coy!

But ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear
(Youth should attend when those advise
Whom long experience renders sage):
While music charms the ravished ear,
While sparkling cups delight our eyes,
Be gay, and scorn the frowns of age.

What cruel answer have I heard?
And yet, by Heaven, I love thee still:
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?
Yet say, how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fill,
Which nought but drops of honey sip?

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung:
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say;
But oh far sweeter, if they please
The nymph for whom these notes are sung!

Quatrain from the Persian.

On parent knees a naked new-born child Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled ; So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep,

Calm thou may'st smile while all around thee weep. His works, with a Life by Lord Teignmouth, were published in nine volumes (1799-1804).

William Crowe (1745-1829) was born at Midgham, Berks, the son of a carpenter, and brought up at Winchester, where in 1758 he was admitted upon the foundation as a poor scholar. He passed in 1765 to New College, Oxford, and was elected Fellow in 1767. A sturdy, eccentric Whig, he rose to be Public Orator, holding at the same time the valuable rectory of Alton Barnes in Wiltshire. Crowe was author of Lewesdon Hill (1788), a descriptive poem in blank verse, and of various other pieces, collected in 1827. There is true poetry in his works, though they have never been popular.

Wreck of the 'Halsewell,' East Indiaman.
See how the sun, here clouded, afar off
Pours down the golden radiance of his light
Upon the enridged sea; where the black ship
Sails on the phosphor-seeming waves.
So fair,
But falsely flattering, was yon surface calm,
When forth for India sailed, in evil time,
That vessel, whose disastrous fate, when told,
Filled every breast with horror, and each eye
With piteous tears, so cruel was the loss.

Mehinks I see her, as, by the wintry storm
Shattered and driven along past yonder isle,
She strove, her latest hope, by strength or art,
To gain the port within it, or at worst,
To shun that harbourless and hollow coast
From Portland eastward to the promontory
Where still St Alban's high-built chapel stands.
But art nor strength avail her-
-on she drives

In storm and darkness to the fatal coast;
And there 'mong rocks and high o'erhanging cliffs
Dashed piteously, with all her precious freight,
Was lost, by Neptune's wild and foamy jaws
Swallowed up quick! The richest-laden ship
Of spicy Ternate, or that annual sent
To the Philippines o'er the southern main
From Acapulco, carrying massy gold,

Were poor to this; freighted with hopeful youth,
And beauty and high courage undismayed
By mortal terrors, and paternal love,
Strong and unconquerable even in death—
Alas, they perished all, all in one hour!

The Halsewell (Captain Pierce) was wrecked in January 1786, having struck on the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of Purbeck. All the passengers perished; but out of two hundred and forty souls on board, seventy-four were saved.

The Miseries of War.

If the stroke of war

Fell certain on the guilty head, none else;
If they that make the cause might taste th' effect,
And drink themselves the bitter cup they mix,
Then might the bard, though child of peace, delight
To twine fresh wreaths around the conqueror's brow,
Or haply strike his high-toned harp, to swell
The trumpet's martial sound, and bid them on
Whom justice arms for vengeance. But alas!
That undistinguishing and deathful storm
Beats heavier on th' exposed innocent;
And they that stir its fury, while it raves
Stand at safe distance, send their mandate forth
Unto the mortal ministers that wait

To do their bidding.-Oh, who then regards
The widow's tears, the friendless orphan's cry,
And famine, and the ghastly train of woes
That follow at the dogged heels of war?
They, in the pomp and pride of victory
Rejoicing o'er the desolated earth,
As at an altar wet with human blood,
And flaming with the fire of cities burnt,

Sing their mad hymns of triumph-hymns to God,
O'er the destruction of his gracious works!
Hymns to the Father o'er his slaughtered sons.

Thomas Moss, perpetual curate of Brierly Hill in Staffordshire, who died in 1808, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and besides some sermons and a blank-verse poem On the Imperfection of Human Enjoyments (1783), published a small collection of Poems on Several Occasions (1769), one of which 'The Beggar Man'-was long a popular favourite :

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,
These hoary locks proclaim my lengthened years;
And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek
Has been the channel to a stream of tears.

Yon house, erected on the rising ground,
With tempting aspect drew me from my road,
For plenty there a residence has found,
And grandeur a magnificent abode.

(Hard is the fate of the infirm and poor!)
Here craving for a morsel of their bread,
A pampered menial forced me from the door,
To seek a shelter in a humbler shed.

Oh! take me to your hospitable dome,

Keen blows the wind, and piercing is the cold! Short is my passage to the friendly tomb, For I am poor, and miserably old.

Should I reveal the source of every grief,

If soft humanity e'er touched your breast, Your hands would not withhold the kind relief, And tears of pity could not be repressed. Heaven sends misfortunes-why should we repine? 'Tis Heaven has brought me to the state you see: And your condition may be soon like mine, The child of sorrow, and of misery.

A little farm was my paternal lot,

Then, like the lark, I sprightly hailed the morn; But ah! oppression forced me from my cot:

My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.

My daughter-once the comfort of my age!
Lured by a villain from her native home,
Is cast, abandoned, on the world's wide stage,
And doomed in scanty poverty to roam.

My tender wife- -sweet soother of my care!

Struck with sad anguish at the stern decree, Fell-lingering fell, a victim to despair,

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, Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span ;

Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

Song from 'The Shamrock' (Dublin, 1772).
Belinda's sparkling eyes and wit

Do various passions raise ;
And, like the lightning, yield a bright
But momentary blaze.

Eliza's milder, gentler sway,

Her conquests fairly won,
Shall last till life and time decay,
Eternal as the sun.

Thus the wild flood, with deafening roar,
Bursts dreadful from on high;
But soon its empty rage is o'er,

And leaves the channel dry;

While the pure stream, which still and slow
Its gentler current brings,
Through every change of time shall flow,
With unexhausted springs.

Dr John Moore (1729-1802), author of Zeluco, was born at Stirling, son of a minister of the town, who died in 1737, leaving seven children to the care of his widow; and she thereupon removed to Glasgow, where her relations had property. After the usual education at the grammar-school and university, John began the study of medicine and surgery under Mr Gordon, the same surgeon to whom Smollett had been apprenticed. In his nineteenth year he accompanied the Duke of Argyll's regiment abroad, and served in the military hospitals at Maestricht. Thence he went to Flushing and Breda, and at the close of hostilities he accompanied General Braddock to England. Soon afterwards he became household surgeon to the Earl of Albemarle, British ambassador at the court of Versailles. In 1751 his old master invited him to become a partner in his business in Glasgow, and Moore, who had been two years in Paris, accepted the invitation. He practised in Glasgow with great success, married in 1757, and became the father of a daughter and five sons, the eldest the hero of Corunna. In 1772 he travelled with the young Duke of Hamilton on the Continent, spending five years in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; on his return in 1778 he removed his family to London, and commenced physician there.

In 1779 he published A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany, which was well received. In 1781 appeared his View of Society and Manners in Italy; in 1786, Medical Sketches; and, in the same year, Zeluco: Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic, selected to prove that, in spite of the gayest and most prosperous appearances, inward misery always accompanies vice. The hero (possibly suggested by Smollett's Count Fathom) is the only son of a noble family in Sicily, spoiled by maternal indulgence, and at length rioting in every prodigality and vice. The scene of the novel is laid chiefly in Italy; and Moore's familiarity with foreign manners enabled him to give his narrative many novel and vivid side-lights. Zeluco serves in the Spanish army, and becomes a slave-owner in the West Indies, so that Moore has an opportunity of condemning slavery; he gives touching pictures of the sufferings of the negroes and of their attachment to their masters; and the death of Hanno, the generous slave, is one of Moore's most masterly delineations.

Moore visited Scotland in the summer of 1786, and next year took a warm interest in the genius and fortunes of Burns. It is to him that we owe the precious Autobiography of the poet; and in their correspondence the extraordinary gifts of the peasant-bard show to advantage. In 1792 Moore accompanied the Earl of Lauderdale to Paris, and witnessed some of the excesses of the French Revolution; of this tour the record was published as A Journal during a Residence in France (2 vols.

1793–94), and was followed in 1795 by A Viev, of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution, a valuable work which was utilised both by Scott and Carlyle. In 1796 Moore produced a second novel, Edward: Various Views of Human Nature, taken from Life and Manners, chiefly in England. As Zeluco was a model of villainy, Edward is a model of virtue, but is unhappily less interesting than his antitype. In 1797 Moore furnished a life of his friend Smollett for a collective edition of his works. In 1800 appeared Mordaunt : Sketches of Life, Character, and Manners in Various Countries, including the Memoirs of a French Lady of Quality, an insipid novel without much plot or incident, told in letters partly dated from the Continent and partly from England.

In the following extract from Zeluco, two Scotch servants in Italy, dining (and drinking) in the absence of their masters, have a dispute, followed by a duel and a reconciliation. Duncan Targe was a hot Highlander, who had been out in the Forty-five; George Buchanan had been born and educated among the Whigs of the west of Scotland. Scots Abroad.

Buchanan filled a bumper, and gave for the toast, 'The Land of Cakes!'

This immediately dispersed the cloud which began to gather on the other's brow.

Targe drank the toast with enthusiasm, saying: 'May the Almighty pour his blessings on every hill and valley in it! That is the worst wish, Mr Buchanan, that I shall ever wish to that land.'

'It would delight your heart to behold the flourishing condition it is now in,' replied Buchanan; 'it was fast improving when I left it, and I have been credibly informed since that it is now a perfect garden.'

'I am very happy to hear it,' said Targe. 'Indeed,' added Buchanan, it has been in a state of rapid improvement ever since the Union.'

'Confound the Union!' cried Targe; it would have improved much faster without it.'

I am not quite clear on that point, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan. 'Depend upon it,' replied Targe, the Union was the worst treaty that Scotland ever made.'

'I shall admit,' said Buchanan, 'that she might have made a better; but, bad as it is, our country reaps some advantage from it.'

All the advantages are on the side of England.' 'What do you think, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan, 'of the increase of trade since the Union, and the riches which have flowed into the Lowlands of Scotland from that quarter?'

'Think!' cried Targe; 'why, I think they have done a great deal of mischief to the Lowlands of Scotland.'

pass as yet, Mr Targe: your friend the sergeant assuredly exaggerates.'

'I hope he does,' replied Targe. But you must acknowledge,' continued he, 'that, by the Union, Scotland has lost her existence as an independent state; her name is swallowed up in that of England. Only read the English newspapers; they mention England, as if it were the name of the whole island. They talk of the English army, the English fleet, the English everything. They never mention Scotland, except when one of our countrymen happens to get an office under government; we are then told, with some stale gibe, that the person is a Scotchman; or, which happens still more rarely, when any of them are condemned to die at Tyburn, particular care is taken to inform the public that the criminal is originally from Scotland! But if fifty Englishmen get places, or are hanged, in one year, no remarks are made.' 'No,' said Buchanan; 'in that case it is passed over as a thing of course.'

The conversation then taking another turn, Targe, who was a great genealogist, descanted on the antiquity of certain gentlemen's families in the Highlands; which, he asserted, were far more honourable than most of the noble families either in Scotland or England. Is it not shameful,' added he, 'that a parcel of mushroom lords, mere sprouts from the dunghills of law or commerce, the grandsons of grocers and attorneys, should take the pass of gentlemen of the oldest families in Europe?'

'Why, as for that matter,' replied Buchanan, 'provided the grandsons of grocers or attorneys are deserving citizens, I do not perceive why they should be excluded from the king's favour more than other men.'

'But some of them never drew a sword in defence of either their king or country,' rejoined Targe.

Assuredly,' said Buchanan, men may deserve honour and pre-eminence by other means than by drawing their swords.' [He then instances his celebrated namesake, George Buchanan, whom he praises warmly as having been the best Latin scholar in Europe; while Targe upbraids him for want of honesty.]

'In what did he ever shew any want of honesty?' said Buchanan.

In calumniating and endeavouring to blacken the reputation of his rightful sovereign, Mary, Queen of Scots,' replied Targe, the most beautiful and accomplished princess that ever sat on a throne.'

I have nothing to say either against her beauty or her accomplishments,' resumed Buchanan; but surely, Mr Targe, you must acknowledge that she was a ?'

Have a care what you say, sir!' interrupted Targe; 'I'll permit no man that ever wore breeches to speak disrespectfully of that unfortunate queen!'

'No man that ever wore either breeches or a philabeg,' replied Buchanan, shall prevent me from speaking the truth when I see occasion.'

Speak as much truth as you please, sir,' rejoined Targe; but I declare that no man shall calumniate the memory of that beautiful and unfortunate princess in my presence while I can wield a claymore.'

'If you should wield fifty claymores, you cannot deny that she was a Papist!' said Buchanan.

'Well, sir,' cried Targe, 'what then? She was, like other people, of the religion in which she was bred.'

'I do not know where you may have been bred, Mr Targe,' said Buchanan; 'for aught I know, you may be an adherent to the worship of the Scarlet Lady yourself.

Unless that is the case, you ought not to interest yourself in the reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots.'

'I fear you are too nearly related to the false slanderer whose name you bear!' said Targe.

'I glory in the name, and should think myself greatly obliged to any man who could prove my relation to the great George Buchanan!' cried the other.

'He was nothing but a disloyal calumniator,' cried Targe, who attempted to support falsehoods by forgeries, which, I thank Heaven, are now fully detected!'

'You are thankful for a very small mercy,' resumed Buchanan; but since you provoke me to it, I will tell you, in plain English, that your bonny Queen Mary was the strumpet of Bothwell, and the murderer of her

husband!'

No sooner had he uttered the last sentence than Targe flew at him like a tiger, and they were separated with difficulty by Mr N- -'s groom, who was in the adjoining chamber, and had heard the altercation.

'I insist on your giving me satisfaction, or retracting what you have said against the beautiful Queen of Scotland!' cried Targe.

'As for retracting what I have said,' replied Buchanan, 'that is no habit of mine; but with regard to giving you satisfaction, I am ready for that to the best of my ability; for let me tell you, sir, though I am not a Highlandman, I am a Scotchman as well as yourself, and not entirely ignorant of the use of the claymore; so name your hour, and I will meet you to-morrow morning.'

'Why not directly?' cried Targe; 'there is nobody in the garden to interrupt us.'

'I should have chosen to have settled some things first; but since you are in such a hurry, I will not balk you. I will step home for my sword and be with you directly,' said Buchanan.

The groom interposed, and endeavoured to reconcile the two enraged Scots, but without success. Buchanan soon arrived with his sword, and they retired to a private spot in the garden. The groom next tried to persuade them to decide their difference by fair boxing. This was rejected by both the champions as a mode of fighting unbecoming gentlemen. The groom asserted that the best gentlemen in England sometimes fought in that manner, and gave as an instance a boxing-match, of which he himself had been a witness, between Lord G.'s gentleman and a gentleman-farmer at York races about the price of a mare.

'But our quarrel,' said Targe, 'is about the reputation of a queen.'

That, for certain,' replied the groom, makes a

difference.'

Buchanan unsheathed his sword.

'Are you ready, sir?' cried Targe.

'That I am. Come on, sir,' said Buchanan; and the Lord be with the righteous.'

'Amen!' cried Targe; and the conflict began.

Both the combatants understood the weapon they fought with, and each parried his adversary's blows with such dexterity that no blood was shed for some time. At length Targe, making a feint at Buchanan's head, gave him suddenly a severe wound in the thigh.

'I hope you are now sensible of your error?' said Targe, dropping his point.

'I am of the same opinion I was!' cried Buchanan; 'so keep your guard.' So saying, he advanced more briskly than ever upon Targe, who, after warding off