On a rich enchanted bed
She pillow'd his majestic head;
O'er his brow with whispers bland
Thrice she waved an opiate wand;
And to soft music's airy sound,
Her magic curtains closed around.
There, renew'd the vital spring,
Again he reigns a mighty king;
And many a fair and fragrant clime,
Blooming in immortal prime,
By gales of Eden ever fann'd,
Owns the monarch's high command:
Thence to Britain shall return
(If right prophetic rolls I learn),
Borne on Victory's spreading plume,
His ancient sceptre to resume;
Once more, in old heroic pride,
His barbed courser to bestride;
His knightly table to restore,

And brave the tournaments of yore.'
"They ceas'd: when on the tuneful
stage

Advanc'd a bard, of aspect sage;
His silver tresses, thin besprent,
To age a graceful reverence lent;
His beard, all white as spangles frore
That clothe Plinlimmon's forests hoar,
Down to his harp descending flow'd;
With Time's faint rose his features
glow'd;

His eyes diffus'd a soften'd fire,
And thus he wak'd the warbling wire.
"Listen, Henry, to my read!
Not from fairy realms I lead
Bright-rob'd Tradition, to relate
In forged colours Arthur's fate;
Though much of old romantic lore
On the high theme I keep in store:
But boastful Fiction should be dumb,
Where Truth the strain might best be-

come.

If thine ear may still be won

With songs of Uther's glorious son,
Henry, I a tale unfold,

Never yet in rhyme enroll'd,
Nor sung nor harp'd in hall or bower;
Which in my youth's full early flower,
A minstrel, sprung of Cornish line,
Who spoke of kings from old Locrine,
Taught me to chant, one vernal dawn,
Deep in a cliff-encircled lawn,
What time the glistening vapours fled
From cloud-envelop'd Clyder's head;
And on its sides the torrents gray
Shone to the morning's orient ray.
"When Arthur bowed his haughty
crest,

No princess, veiled in azure vest,
Snatched him, by Merlin's potent spell,
In groves of golden bliss to dwell;
Where, crowned with wreaths of misletoe,
Slaughter'd kings in glory go:
But when he fell, with winged speed,
His champions, on a milk-white steed,
From the battle's hurricane,
Bore him to Joseph's towered fane,

In the fair vale of Avalon :
There, with chanted orison,
And the long blaze of tapers clear,
The stoled fathers met the bier;
Through the dim iles, in order dread
Of martial wo, the chief they led,
And deep entombed in holy ground,
Before the altar's solemn bound.
Around no dusky banners wave,
No mouldering trophies mark the grave:
Away the ruthless Dane has torn

Each trace that Time's slow touch had

worn;

And long, o'er the neglected stone,
Oblivion's veil its shade has thrown:
The faded tomb, with honour due,
'Tis thine, O Henry, to renew!
Thither, when conquest has restor'd
Yon recreant isle, and sheath'd the sword,
When Peace with palm has crown'd thy

brows,

Haste thee, to pay thy pilgrim vows.
There, observant of my lore,

The pavement's hallowed depth explore;
And thrice a fathom underneath

Dive into the vaults of Death.
There shall thine eye, with wild amaze,
On his gigantic stature gaze;
There shalt thou find the monarch laid,
All in warrior-weeds array'd;
Wearing in death his helmet-crown,
And weapons huge of old renown.
Martial prince, 'tis thine to save
From dark oblivion Arthur's grave!
So may thy ships securely stem
The western frith: thy diadem
Shine victorious in the van,
Nor heed the slings of Ulster's clan :
Thy Norman pike-men win their way
Up the dun rocks of Harald's bay:
And from the steeps of rough Kildare
Thy prancing hoofs the falcon scare :
So may thy bow's unerring yew
Its shafts in Roderic's heart imbrew.'
"Amid the pealing symphony
The spiced goblets mantled high ;
With passions new the song impressed
The listening king's impatient breast:
Flash the keen lightnings from his eyes;
He scorns awhile his bold emprise ;
E'en now he seems, with eager pace,
The consecrated floor to trace,
And ope, from its tremendous gloom,
The treasure of the wondrous tomb :
E'en now he burns in thought to rear
From its dark bed, the ponderous spear,
Rough with the gore of Pictish kings:
E'en now fond hope his fancy wings,
To poise the monarch's massy blade,
Of magic-tempered metal made;
And drag to day the stinted shield
That felt the storm of Camlan's field.
O'er the sepulchre profound

E'en now, with arching sculpture crown'd,
He plans the chantry's choral shrine,
The daily dirge, and rites divine."

These two Odes work on our imagination more powerfully than " The Bard" of Gray. To us they appear to be more poetical, and you may laugh at us for saying so, as sardonically as your face will permit. "Was ne'er prophetic sound so full of woe," cannot with any truth be said of the rhetorical style of that Ode-and we should not have suspected from the stately composure of his speech, occasionally corrugated with affected vehemence, that with haggard eyes the Prophet stood on a rock. Yet it was on some occasion during the current year that we heard some simple soul like ourself called over the coals for the heresy we now have been guilty of, by some truculent critic who seemed to think his own character involved, heaven knows how, in the lyrical genius of Gray.

By the way, Thomas Warton has, in our opinion, described Abbeys and Cathedrals, within and without, much better than Walter Scott.

"If thou wouldst view fair Melrose

aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and

die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's

grave,

Then go but go alone the while—
Then view St David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear,
Was never scene so sad and fair."

The second couplet has no business there and forcibly brings before us an image which should have been totally excluded from the picture. Omit these two lines and you will at once feel how the effect is deepened of the night vision. Besides, they are in themselves bad for daylight did never yet "gild ruins grey"—much less "flout" them-and these are, moreover, ugly words. The next four lines are excellent; though to our ear and eye, in so short a passage, so many monosyllabic epithets sound and look oddly" fair," " pale," "gay," 66 grey," ," "black," "cold." The but

tresses are alternately in light and in shadow-and the Last Minstrel says "alternately they seem of ebon and ivory." That is pure nonsense. They seemed to be of stone. The change of substance is the reverse of a process of imagination-for it destroys the shadowy beauty given to the edifice by moonlight, substituting in its place something to the last degree fantastic

say at once ridiculous. We doubt the truth of "silver edges the imagery and the scrolls," but you may like be cause you understand it. The silver as well as the ebon and the ivory had been far better away. But the fatal fault-and it is to us an astounding one

is, "And the owlet hoots o'er the dead man's grave." That line not only disturbs but destroys the spirit pervading-or intended to pervade the des cription that of stillness-sadnessbeauty-peace-" Was never scene so sad and fair!". "Then view St David's ruined pile" is a needless repetition and comes in very awkwardly after "ruined central tower," -nor is that an inconsiderable blemish in such a picture. "Soothly swear" seems to us rather silly-but if you admire it we shall try to do so too-and 'tis but a trifle. Some of our other objections to this far-famed description are radical and vitaland it will be easier for you to rebuild Melrose Abbey than set them aside. We are told that

"Short halt did Deloraine make there; Little reck'd he of the scene so fair;" from which the reader might well have supposed that the Abbey was then in ruins. The moss-trooper and monk proceed together to the Wizard's Tomb; and the Minstrel describes the interior of the Abbey. "By a steel-clenched postern door, They enter'd now the chancel tall; The darken'd roof rose high aloof On pillars lofty and light and small: The key-stone that lock'd each ribbed aisle

Was a fleur-de-lys, or a quatre-feuille ; The corbells were carved grotesque and

introduced here between the lines about the monk gazing on the streamers in the north, and those about the dying lamps burning before the tomb of the Douglass. In themselves they are unpoetical-and they are illwritten. The roof of the "tall" chancel rises "high" on "lofty" pillars!! Then mark how the Minstrel returns to the pillars to re-describe them and how he spoils the effect-such as it is-of his own picture. "The pillars were lofty and light and small," is well-but who can bear to be told after that, that they "Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands

had bound!"

Sir Walter says in a note, that it is impossible to conceive a more beautiful specimen of the lightness and elegance of Gothic architecture, when in its purity, than the eastern window of Melrose Abbey, and alludes to Sir James Hall's ingenious idea, that the Gothic order, through its various forms and cunningly eccentric ornaments, may be traced to an architectural imitation of wicker-work, of which, as we learn from some of the legends,

the earliest Christian churches were constructed. Possibly. But that affords no justification of such a description as this, natural or not in itself-poetical or prosaic; for it is utterly destructive of the solemn the awful feelings which it was the aim of the Minstrel to awaken and to sustain. He had just said,

66
"O fading honours of the dead!
O high ambition lowly laid!"

And this fanciful or rather fantastic

affair of the Fairies must, at such a juncture, be offensive to every reader who accompanies Doleraine and his guide in a state of any emotion. 'Tis a prettiness worthy but of a lady's Album.

With the exception of Cibber, the Poets Laureate of England have all been respectable-some have beenone is now-illustrious. Warton wore the laurel gracefully; and some of his odes-classical in conception and execution are delightful reading to this day. Dr Mant says well, "Sure I am that he has executed the office with variety to a hackneyed argument by surprising ability; that he has given the happiest selection and adaptation of collateral topics; and has shown how a poet may celebrate his sovereign, not with the fulsome adulation of an Augustan courtier, or the base prostration of an Oriental slave, but with the genuine spirit and erect front of an Englishman." "The Probationary odes," witty as they were, are now forgotten; and Warton's are not remembered. We believe the rogues printed the Laureate's first ode, which was rather a rum concern, among the Probationary; and sent him a copy with an editorial letter expressing their gratitude to him, for having set "the example of a Joke""an inimitable effort of luxuriant humour." Dr Joseph says, that his brother" of all men felt the least, and least deserved to feel, the force of the Probationary odes, written on his appointment to the office; and that he always heartily joined in the laugh, and applauded the exquisite wit and humour that appeared in many of those original satires."

Laureates do not

like to be laughed at, more than other office-bearing men-but Warton had more humour and as much wit as the Set-and, on this occasion, rub

bing his elbow, merely chuckled, "black-letter dogs, Sir.' Not a wit of them all could have written these

Two odes.

FOR THE NEW year, 1787.

"In rough magnificence array'd,
When ancient Chivalry display'd
The pomp of her heroic games;
And crested chiefs, and tissued dames,
Assembled, at the clarion's call,

In some proud castle's high-arch'd hall,