At fife's or lyre's or tabor's sound

'Twas pleasant, and I loosen'd from my neck The pipe you gave me, and began to play.

The dance of youth, O Southey, runs not round
But closes at the bottom of the room

Amid the falling dust and deepening gloom,

Where the weary sit them down,

And Beauty too unbraids, and waits a lovelier crown.

We hurry to the river we must cross,

And swifter downward every footstep wends; Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss

Of half their faculties and half their friends! When we are come to it, the stream

Is not so dreary as they deem

Who look on it from haunts too dear;

The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its chilling air.

No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven

To poet sage or hero given :

No heart more tender, none more just
To that He largely placed in trust:
Therefore shalt thou, whatever date
Of years be thine, with soul elate
Rise up before the eternal throne,

And hear in God's own voice 'Well done.'
Not, were that submarine
Gem-lighted city mine,

Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand,
Above the royal gleam of blazonry shall stand;
Not, were all Syracuse

Pour'd forth before my muse,

With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's lyre
Brightening the path with more than solar fire,
Could I, as would beseem, requite the praise
Showered upon my low head from thy most lofty lays.

O that I ne'er had learnt the tuneful art!

It always brings us enemies or love. Well, I was playing, when above the waves Some swimmer's head methought I saw ascend; I, sitting still, survey'd it with my pipe Awkwardly held before my lips half-closed. Gebir! it was a Nymph! a Nymph divine! I cannot wait describing how she came, How I was sitting, how she first assumed The Sailor; of what happen'd there remains Enough to say, and too much to forget. The sweet deceiver stepp'd upon this bank Before I was aware; for with surprise Moments fly rapid as with love itself. Stooping to tune afresh the hoarsen'd reed, I heard a rustling, and where that arose My glance first lighted on her nimble feet. Her feet resembled those long shells explored By him who to befriend his steed's dim sight Would blow the pungent powder in the eye. Her eyes too! O immortal gods! her eyes Resembled what could they resemble? what Ever resemble those? Even her attire Was not of wonted woof nor vulgar art: Her mantle show'd the yellow samphire-pod, Her girdle the dove-colour'd wave serene. 'Shepherd,' said she, and will you wrestle now, And with the sailor's hardier race engage?' I was rejoiced to hear it, and contrived How to keep up contention: could I fail By pressing not too strongly, yet to press? 'Whether a shepherd, as indeed you seem, Or whether of the hardier race you boast, I am not daunted; no; I will engage.' 'But first,' said she, 'what wager will you lay?' 'A sheep,' I answered: 'add whate'er you will.' 'I cannot,' she replied, 'make that return: Our hided vessels in their pitchy round Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep. But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one and it awakens, then apply Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. And I have others given me by the nymphs, Of sweeter sound than any pipe you have; But we, by Neptune ! for no pipe contend; This time a sheep I win, a pipe the next.' Now came she forward eager to engage, But first her dress, her bosom then survey'd, And heaved it, doubting if she could deceive. Her bosom seem'd, enclosed in haze like heaven, To baffle touch, and rose forth undefined: Above her knee she drew the robe succinct, Above her breast, and just below her arms. 'This will preserve my breath when tightly bound, If struggle and equal strength should so constrain.' Thus, pulling hard to fasten it, she spake, And, rushing at me, closed: I thrill'd throughout And seem'd to lessen and shrink up with cold. Again with violent impulse gush'd my blood,

And hearing nought external, thus absorb'd,
I heard it, rushing through each turbid vein,
Shake my unsteady swimming sight in air.
Yet with unyielding though uncertain arms
I clung around her neck; the vest beneath
Rustled against our slippery limbs entwined:
Often mine springing with eluded force
Started aside and trembled till replaced :
And when I most succeeded, as I thought,
My bosom and my throat felt so compress'd
That life was almost quivering on my lips.
Yet nothing was there painful: these are signs
Of secret arts and not of human might;
What arts I cannot tell; I only know
My eyes grew dizzy and my strength decay'd;
I was indeed o'ercome-with what regret,
And more, with what confusion, when I reach'd
The fold, and yielding up the sheep, she cried,
'This pays a shepherd to a conquering maid.'
She smiled, and more of pleasure than disdain
Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip,
And eyes that languish'd, lengthening, just like love.
(From Gebir.)

Hannibal and the Dying Roman.
Surgeon. Hardly an hour of life is left.
Marcellus. I must die then! The gods be praised!
The commander of a Roman army is no captive.
Hannibal (to the Surgeon). Could not he bear a sea-
voyage? Extract the arrow.

Surgeon. He expires that moment.
Marcellus. It pains me : extract it.

Hannibal. Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your countenance, and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemy in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no captive.

(To the Surgeon.) Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is there nothing to alleviate

and allay it?

Marcellus. Hannibal, give me thy hand-thou hast found it and brought it me, compassion.

(To the Surgeon.) Go, friend; others want thy aid; several fell around me.

Hannibal. Recommend to your country, O Marcellus, while time permits it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing the Senate of my superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet is ready: let me take off this ring-try to write, to sign it at least. O! what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and even to smile!

Marcellus. Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would Minos say to me, 'Marcellus, is this thy writing?'

Rome loses one man she hath lost many such, and she still hath many left.

Hannibal. Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I confess in shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately too the nearer posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Numidians are so in revenge; the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other, learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the common good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of their country, after so Jong an absence.

Marcellus. Hannibal, thou art not dying. Hannibal. What then? What mean you? Marcellus. That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet to apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is nothing to me. Mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation? or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole fault, less plenary than thy adversary's?

I have spoken too much: let me rest: this mantle oppresses me.

Hannibal. I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under, and then replace the ring. Marcellus. Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation of the most helpless! Let that ring and the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy prosperous (Heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other country), it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then the most conscious that it may befall us. There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either.

Hannibal. What?

Marcellus. This body.

Hannibal. Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready.

Marcellus. I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other senses are in confusion. I would have said, This body, when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice than of mine; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety of my family.

Hannibal. You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not visible till now.

Marcellus. Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes.

Hannibal. Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the conquered fly together.

Marcellus. Hast thou any prisoners from my escort? Hannibal. A few dying lie about-and let them liethey are Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among them—he appeared a Roman-a youth who turned back, though wounded. They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with lordly ease.

Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your thoughts?

Marcellus. I have suppressed it long enough. My son-my beloved son !

Hannibal. Where is he? Can it be? Was he with

you?

Marcellus. He would have shared my fate-and has

not.

Gods of my country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpassingly beneficent, I render you, for the last time, thanks. (From Imaginary Conversations.)

Chatham and Chesterfield.

Chesterfield. It is true, my lord, we have not always been of the same opinion, or, to use a better, truer, and more significant expression, of the same side in politics; yet I never heard a sentence from your lordship which I did not listen to with deep attention. I understand that you have written some pieces of admonition and advice to a young relative; they are mentioned as being truly excellent; I wish I could have profited by them when I was composing mine on a similar occasion.

Chatham. My lord, you certainly would not have done it, even supposing they contained, which I am far from believing, any topics that could have escaped your penetrating view of manners and morals; for your lordship and I set out diversely from the very threshold. Let us, then, rather hope that what we have written, with an equally good intention, may produce its due effect; which indeed, I am afraid, may be almost as doubtful, if we consider how ineffectual were the cares and exhortations, and even the daily example and high renown, of the most zealous and prudent men on the life and conduct of their children and disciples. Let us, however, hope the best rather than fear the worst, and believe that there never was a right thing done or a wise one spoken in vain, although the fruit of them may not spring up in the place designated or at the time expected.

Chesterfield. Pray, if I am not taking too great a freedom, give me the outline of your plan.

Chatham. Willingly, my lord; but since a greater man than either of us has laid down a more comprehensive one, containing all I could bring forward, would it not be preferable to consult it? I differ in nothing from Locke, unless it be that I would recommend the lighter as well as the graver part of the ancient classics, and the constant practice of imitating them in early youth. This is no change in the system, and no larger an addition than a woodbine to a sacred grove.

Chesterfield. I do not admire Mr Locke.

Chatham. Nor I-he is too simply grand for admiration-I contemplate and revere him. Equally deep and clear, he is both philosophically and grammatically the most elegant of English writers.

Chesterfield. If I expressed by any motion of limb or feature my surprise at this remark, your lordship, I hope, will pardon me a slight and involuntary transgression of my own precept. I must entreat you, before we move a step further in our inquiry, to inform me whether I am really to consider him in style the most elegant of our prose authors.

Chatham. Your lordship is capable of forming an opinion on this point certainly no less correct than mine.

Chesterfield. Pray assist me.

Chatham. Education and grammar are surely the two driest of all subjects on which a conversation can turn; yet if the ground is not promiscuously sown, if what ought to be clear is not covered, if what ought to be

covered is not bare, and, above all, if the plants are choice ones, we may spend a few moments on it not unpleasantly. It appears, then, to me that elegance in prose composition is mainly this: a just admission of topics and of words; neither too many nor too tew of either; enough of sweetness in the sound to induce us to enter and sit still; enough of illustration and reflection to change the posture of our minds when they would tire; and enough of sound matter in the complex to repay us for our attendance. I could perhaps be more logical in my definition and more concise; but am I at all erroneous?

Chesterfield. I see not that you are.

Chatham. My ear is well satisfied with Locke: I find nothing idle or redundant in him.

Chesterfield. But in the opinion of you graver men would not some of his principles lead too far?

Chatham. The danger is, that few will be led by them far enough: most who begin with him stop short, and, pretending to find pebbles in their shoes, throw themselves down upon the ground, and complain of their guide.

Chesterfield. What, then, can be the reason why Plato, so much less intelligible, is so much more quoted and applauded?

Chatham. The difficulties we never try are no difficulties to us. Those who are upon the summit of a mountain know in some measure its altitude, by comparing it with all objects around; but those who stand at the bottom, and never mounted it, can compare it with few only, and with those imperfectly. Until a short time ago, I could have conversed more fluently about Plato than I can at present; I had read all the titles to his dialogues, and several scraps of commentary; these I have now forgotten, and am indebted to long attacks of the gout for what I have acquired instead.

Chesterfield. A very severe schoolmaster! I hope he allows a long vacation.

Chatham. Severe he is indeed, and although he sets no example of regularity, he exacts few observances, and teaches many things. Without him I should have had less patience, less learning, less reflection, less leisure ; in short, less of everything but of sleep.

Chesterfield. Locke, from a deficiency of fancy, is not likely to attract so many listeners as Plato.

Chatham. And yet occasionally his language is both metaphorical and rich in images. In fact all our great philosophers have also this property in a wonderful degree. Not to speak of the devotional, in whose writings one might expect it, we find it abundantly in Bacon, not sparingly in Hobbes, the next to him in range of inquiry and potency of intellect. And what would you think, my lord, if you discovered in the records of Newton a sentence in the spirit of Shakespeare?

Chesterfield. I should look upon it as upon a wonder, not to say a miracle: Newton, like Barrow, had no feeling or respect for poetry.

Chatham. His words are these: 'I don't know what I may seem to the world; but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before me.'

Chesterfield. Surely nature, who had given him the volumes of her greater mysteries to unseal; who had

bent over him and taken his hand, and taught him to decipher the characters of her sacred language; who had lifted up before him her glorious veil, higher than ever yet for mortal, that she might impress her features and her fondness on his heart, threw it back wholly at these words, and gazed upon him with as much admiration as ever he had gazed upon her.

(From Imaginary Conversations.)

William Penn and Lord Peterborough. Peterborough. The worst objection I myself could ever find against the theatre is, that I lose in it my original idea of such men as Cæsar and Coriolanus, and, where the loss affects me more deeply, of Juliet and Desdemona. Alexander was a fool to wish for a second world to conquer: but no man is a fool who wishes for the enjoyment of two-the real and the ideal: nor is it anything short of a misfortune, I had almost said of a calamity, to confound them. This is done by the stage; it is likewise done by engravings in books, which have a great effect in weakening the imagination, and are serviceable only to those who have none, and who read negligently and idly. I should be sorry if the most ingenious print in the world were to cover the first impression left on my mind of such characters as Don Quixote and Sancho: yet probably a very indifferent one might do it; for we cannot master our fancies, nor give them at will a greater or less tenacity, a greater or less promptitude in coming and recurring. You Friends are no less adverse to representation by painting than by acting.

Penn. We do not educate our youth to such professions and practices. Thou, I conceive, art unconcerned and disinterested in this matter.

Peterborough. Nearly, but not quite. I am ignorant of the art, and prefer that branch of it which to many seems the lowest; I mean portraiture. I can find flowers in my garden, landscapes in my rides, the works of saints in the Bible, of great statesmen and captains in the historians, and of those who with equal advantages had been the same, in the Newgate Calendar. The best representation of them can only give me a high opinion of the painter's abilities fixed on a point of time. But when I look on a family picture by Vandyke; when I contemplate the elegant and happy father in the midst of his blooming progeny, and the partner of his fortunes and his joy beside him, I am affected very differently, and much more. He who there stands meditating for them some delightful scheme of pleasure or aggrandisement, has bowed his head to calamity, perhaps even to the block. Those roses gathered from the parterre behind; those taper fingers negligently holding them; that hair, the softness of which seems unable to support the riot of its ringlets, are moved away from earth, amid the tears and aching hearts of the very boys and girls who again are looking at me with such unconcern.

Faithfullest recorder of domestic bliss, perpetuator of youth and beauty, vanquisher of time, leading in triumph the Hours and Seasons, the painter here bestows on me the richest treasures of his enchanting art.

(From Imaginary Conversations.)

Aspasia at the Theatre.

How fortunate to have arrived at Athens, at dawn, on the twelfth of Elaphebolion. On this day began the

festivals of Bacchus, and the theatre is thrown open at sunrise.

What a theatre! What an elevation! What a prospect of city and port, of land and water, of porticoes and temples, of men and heroes, of demi-gods and gods!

It was indeed my wish and intention, when I left Ionia, to be present at the first of the Dionysiacs; but how rarely are wishes and intentions so accomplished, even when winds and waters do not interfere!

I will now tell you all. No time was to be lost, so I hastened on shore in the dress of an Athenian boy, who came over with his mother from Lemnos. In the giddiness of youth he forgot to tell me that, not being yet eighteen years old, he could not be admitted, and he left me on the steps. My heart sank within me, so many young men stared and whispered; yet never was stranger treated with more civility. Crowded as the theatre was (for the tragedy had begun), every one made room for me. When they were seated, and I too, I looked toward the stage; and behold there lay before me, but afar off, bound upon a rock, a more majestic form, and bearing a countenance more heroic, I should rather say more divine, than ever my imagination had conceived. I know not how long it was before I discovered that as many eyes were directed toward me as toward the competitor of the gods. I was neither flattered by it nor abashed. Every wish, hope, sigh, sensation, was successively with the champion of the human race, with his antagonist Zeus, and his creator Eschylus. How often, O Cleone, have we throbbed with his injuries! how often hath his vulture torn our breasts! how often have we thrown our arms round each other's neck, and half-renounced the religion of our fathers! Even your image, inseparable at other times, came not across me then: Prometheus stood between us. He had resisted in silence and disdain the cruellest tortures that Almightiness could inflict and now arose the Nymphs of Ocean, which heaved its vast waves before us; and now they descended with open arms and sweet benign countenances, and spake with pity; and the insurgent heart was mollified and quelled.

(From Pericles and Aspasia.)

The standard Life of Landor is by John Forster (2 vols. 1869), and there is an admirable sketch by Mr Sidney Colvin in the English Men of Letters' series (1881); to him also we owe Selections from Landor (1882). Stephen Wheeler's Letters and Unpublished Writings of Landor (2 vols. 1897-99) includes a bibliography; and reference may be made to Evans's Landor, a Critical Study (1892), and to essays by Lord Houghton, Mrs Lynn Linton (Fraser's Magazine, July 1870), and Mr Swinburne.-Landor's youngest brother, Robert Eyres Landor (1781-1869), studied at Oxford, for forty years was a model clergyman in Worcestershire, but wrote several tragedies and poems. Landor's grandson, A. H. Savage Landor, became known as a traveller amongst the ainos of Japan, and in Tibet (1893-98).

Edwin Atherstone (1788-1872) was born at Nottingham, and died at Bath. He was a friend of the painter Martin, and wrote Martinesque epics and romances, among them The Last Days of Herculaneum (1821), The Fall of Nineveh (in thirty books, 1828–68), and Israel in Egypt (1861), his chief poem; and the historical romances The Sea-Kings in England (1830) and The Handwriting on the Wall (1858). Though praised by contemporary critics for vigour, power, splendid diction, and truly poetical feeling, they are one and all completely forgotten.

James Henry Leigh Hunt, poet and essayist, was born at Southgate in Middlesex, 19th October 1784. His father, a West Indian, who at the time of the American war espoused the British interest with so much warmth that he had to leave the New World and seek a subsistence in the Old, took orders in the Church of England, and was for some time tutor to the nephew of Lord Chandos, near Southgate. His son-named after another pupil, Mr Leigh-was educated at Christ's Hospital till his fifteenth year. I was then,' he says, 'first deputy Grecian; and had the honour of going out of the school in the same rank, at the same age, and for the same reason as my friend Charles Lamb. The reason was, that I hesitated in my speech. It was understood that a Grecian was bound to deliver a public speech before he left school, and to go into the Church afterwards; and as I could do neither of these things, a Grecian I could not be.' Leigh was then a poet, and his father collected his verses, and published them with a large list of subscribers under the appropriate title of Juvenilia in 1801. He has himself described this volume as a heap of imitations, some of them clever enough for a youth of sixteen, but absolutely worthless in every other respect. In 1805 his brother John started a paper called The News, and the poet went to live with him, and write the theatrical criticisms in it. Three years afterwards they established The Examiner, a weekly journal conducted with great ability. Then, as throughout his life, Hunt was a stout Radical; but unfortunately he ventured some violent strictures on the Prince- Regent, terming him 'a fat Adonis of fifty,' with other personalities, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1813. His captivity was not without its bright side. He had much of the public sympathy, and his friends-Byron and Moore among them were attentive in their visits. One of his two rooms on the 'ground-floor' he converted into a picturesque and poetical study: I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling coloured with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds; and when my bookcases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. I took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise on issuing from the Borough, and passing through the avenues of a jail, was dramatic. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy tale. But I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a little yard outside railed off from another belonging to the neighbouring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a

thick bed of earth from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass-plot. The earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple-tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my flowers, they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from Derbyshire [Mr Moore] told me he had seen no such heart's - ease. I bought the Parnaso Italiano while in prison, and used often to think of a passage in it, while looking at this miniature piece of horticulture :

Here I wrote and read in fine weather, sometimes under an awning. In autumn my trellises were hung with scarlet-runners, which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes in my arm-chair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off. But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning. A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison. The latter was only for vegetables, but it contained a cherrytree, which I twice saw in blossom.'

The poet was not so well fitted to battle with the world or apply himself to worldly business as to dress his garden and nurse poetical fancies. He fell into difficulties, from which he was never afterwards wholly free. His habits were careless and unbusiness-like; he was too facile a borrower,