THE SATYR'S SPEECH, FROM THE "FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS.'

Thorough yon same bending plain,

That flings his arms down to the main,
And thro' these thick woods have I run
Whose bottom never kissed the sun,
Since the lusty Spring began.
All to please,my master Pan,
Have I trotted without rest
To get him fruit; for at a feast
He entertains this coming night
His paramour, the Syrinx bright.
But behold, a fairer sight!
By that heavenly form of thine,
Brightest fair, thou art divine;
Sprung from great immortal race
Of the gods; for in thy face
Shines more awful majesty,
Than dull weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold
And live! Therefore on this mold
Lowly do I bend my knee

In worship of thy deity.

Deign it, goddess, from my hand
To receive whate'er this land
From her fertile womb doth send
Of her choice fruits; and but lend
Belief to that the satyr tells :
Fairer by the famous wells
To this present day ne'er grew,
Never better nor more true.

Here be grapes, whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good;

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown

Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em!

Deign, oh! fairest fair, to take 'em!

For these black-eyed Dryope

Hath oftentimes commanded me

With my clasped knee to climb:

See, how well the lusty time

Hath decked their rising cheeks in red,

Such as on your lips is spread.

Here be berries for a queen,

Some be red, some be green;

These are of that luscious meat

The great god Pan himself doth eat:

All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain, or the field

E

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong;
'Till when humbly leave I take,

Lest the great Pan do awake,

That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.

I must go, I must-run,

Swifter than the fiery sun.

The charming pastoral from whence this beautiful speech is taken, was irrevocably condemned in the theater on the first and only night of representation; which catastrophe, added to a similar one that befell Congreve's best comedy," The Way of the World," both authors being at the time in the very flood-tide of popularity, has been an unspeakable comfort to unsuccessful dramatists ever since. I recall it chiefly to mention the hearty spirit with which two of the most eminent of Fletcher's friendly rivals came to the rescue with laudatory verses. The circumstance does so much honor to all parties, and some of the lines are so good, that I can not help quoting them; George Chapman says that the poem

Renews the golden world, and holds through all
The holy laws of homely Pastoral;

Where flowers and founts and nymphs and semi-gods
And all the graces find their old abodes;
Where forests flourish but in endless verse,
And meadows, nothing fit for purchasers:
This iron age

(Think of that in the days of James the First!)

This iron age that eats itself will never

Bite at your golden world, that others ever
Loved as itself.

Ben Jonson, first characterizing the audience after a fashion by no means complimentary, says that the play failed because it wanted the laxity of moral and of language which they expected and desired. He continues :—

I that am glad thy innocence was thy guilt,
And wish that all the muses' blood were spilt
In such a martyrdom, to vex their eyes,
Do crown thy murdered poem, which shall rise

A glorified work to time, when fire

Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.

For the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, that mine of superb and regal poetry, I have no room now. They must remain untouched.

IX.

FASHIONABLE POETS.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

It is now nearly thirty years ago that two youths appeared at Cambridge, of such literary and poetical promise as the University had not known since the days of Gray. What is rarer still, the promise was kept. One of these "marvelous boys" turned out a man of world-wide renown-the spirited poet, the splendid orator, the brilliant historian, the delightful essayist,—in a word, Thomas Babington Macaulay, now, I suppose, incontestably our greatest living writer. The other was the subject of this paper.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (I wish it had pleased his godfathers and godmothers to bestow upon him a plain English Christian name, and spare him and me the vulgar abomination of this conglomeration of inharmonious sounds!) Winthrop Mackworth Praed was born in London, in the beginning of this century, of parents belonging to the great banking-house, which still remains in the family. Sent early to Eton, he, while yet a school-boy, followed the example of Canning, who appears to have been the object of his emulation in more points than one, and in conjunction with Mr. Moultrie set up a paper ealled the "Etonian," to which he was the principal contributor, and which was so successful that it went through four editions, and established for the chief writer a high reputation for precocious talent. At Cambridge this reputation was more than sustained. He was the pride and glory of Trinity, and left college with an almost unprecedented number of prizes, for Greek ode and Latin epigram. Even the greater world of London, where University fame so often melts away and is seen no more, was equally favorable to Mr. Praed. He and his friendly rival, Mr. Macaulay, gave their valuable assistance to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," and every fresh article made its impression. He wrote also in the "New

Monthly," and in the annuals, then seen on every table, with still increasing brilliancy; contributed pungent political satire to other journals, and finally entered Parliament with such hopes and expectations as his talents might well warrant, but which have seldom been excited by an untried member.

In the House of Commons he did quite enough to justify the warmest anticipations of his friends, and to earn for himself the name of "a rising man," that most auspicious of all names to a political aspirant.

What he might have become had life been spared it were now vain to conjecture. He married happily; he died young. Light, lively, brilliant, the darling of every society that he entered, he was yet most beloved by those who knew him best. To me it seems that had he outlived the impetuosity of youth, he would have become something higher and better than a political partisan, however clever, or a fashionable poet, however elegant. There was through all his poetry-and it is its deepest although not its most obvious charm-a love of the genuine and the true, a scorn for the false and the pretending, which is the foundation of all that is really good in eloquence as well as in poetry, in conduct and in character, as well as in art. The germ of the patriot and the statesman is to be found in the love of truth and the hatred of pretense; and never were they more developed than in the poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed.

That these poems are the most graceful and finished verses of society that can be found in our language, it is impossible to doubt. At present they are so scarce, that the volume from which I transcribe the greater part of the following extracts is an American collection, procured with considerable difficulty and delay from the United States. Others of the poems are taken from his own manuscripts, most kindly lent to. me by one of his nearest connections, whom I am happy enough to call my friend; and one or two of the charades I have copied from the "Penny Magazine” of the author's early friend, Mr. Charles Knight, where they are strangely enough called enigmas.

THE VICAR.

Some years ago, ere Time and Taste
Had turned. our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,