praised for his best work, but a very genuine poet as well as a humourist, might very properly have filled more room than he does.

LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859), perhaps too much lauded in his lifetime, and certainly far too hardly criticised later, is now settling into the place, a very high one, which he will henceforward occupy in English literature. The "Armada," originally contributed to Knight's short-lived magazine, was made accessible to the general public by being added to the 1848 edition of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," which appeared first in 1842. "Naseby," an early work, became generally known in 1860, along with the fine poem which was the result of its author's defeat at Edinburgh in 1847, and with the "Epitaph on a Jacobite," perhaps the best thing he ever wrote.

PART I

SAMUEL ROGERS. 1763-1855

THE SASSO DI DANTE

On that ancient seat,

The seat of stone that runs along the wall,
South of the church, east of the belfry-tower,
(Thou canst not miss it) in the sultry time
Would Dante sit conversing, and with those
Who little thought that in his hand he held
The balance and assigned at his good pleasure
To each his place in the invisible world,
To some an upper region, some a lower;
Many a transgressor sent to his account,
Long ere in Florence numbered with the dead.

THE NIGHT AND DAY

Nor then forget that Chamber of the Dead
Where the gigantic shapes of Night and Day,
Turned into stone, rest everlastingly;

Yet still are breathing, and shed round at noon

A twofold influence-only to be felt-
A light, a darkness, mingling each with each;
Both and yet neither. There, from age to age,
Two Ghosts are sitting on their sepulchres.
That is the Duke Lorenzo-mark him well.
He meditates, his head upon his hand.
What from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls?
Is it a face, or but an eyeless skull?

'Tis lost in shade; yet, like the basilisk,

It fascinates, and is intolerable.

CAROLINA, LADY NAIRNE. 1766-1845

WOULD YOU BE YOUNG AGAIN?

Would you be young again?

So would not I—

One tear to memory giv'n,

Onward I'd hie,

Life's dark flood forded o'er,

All but at rest on shore,

Say, would you plunge once more,
With home so nigh?

If you might, would you now
Retrace your way?

Wander through thorny wilds,
Faint and astray?
Night's gloomy watches fled,
Morning all beaming red,

Hope's smiles around us shed,

Heavenward-away.

Where are they gone, of yore

My best delight?

Dear and more dear, tho' now
Hidden from sight.

Where they rejoice to be,
There is the land for me;

Fly, time, fly speedily;

Come life and light.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1770-1850

THE VIEW FROM FOX HOW

Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot,
Living with liberty on thee to gaze,

To watch while Morn first crowns thee with her rays,
Or when along thy breast serenely float

Evening's Angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note
Hath sounded (shame upon the Bard!) thy praise
For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought
Of glory lavished on our quiet days.

Bountiful son of Earth! when we are gone
From every object dear to mortal sight,
As soon we shall be, may these words attest

How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone

Thy visionary majesties of light,

How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest.

THE PILLAR OF TRAJAN

Where towers are crushed, and unforbidden weeds
O'er mutilated arches shed their seeds,

And temples, doomed to milder change, unfold
A new magnificence that vies with old;

Firm in its pristine majesty hath stood

A votive column, spared by fire and flood:-
:-
And, though the passions of man's fretful race
Have never ceased to eddy round its base,
Not injured more by touch of meddling hands
Than a lone obelisk, 'mid Nubian sands,