Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature,
Nor with the muse's laurel unbestowed.

Joseph, the elder brother of Thomas Warton, closely resembled him in character and attainments. He was born in 1722, and was the schoolfellow of Collins at Winchester. He was afterwards a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, and ordained on his father's curacy at Basingstoke. He was also rector of Tamworth. In 1766 he was appointed head-master of Winchester School, to which were subsequently added a prebend of St Paul's and of Winchester. He survived his brother ten years, dying in 1800. Dr Joseph Warton early appeared as a poet, but is considered inferior to his brother in the graphic and romantic style of composition at which he aimed. His ode To Fancy seems, however, to be equal to all but a few pieces of Thomas Warton's. He published an Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (vol. i. in 1756, vol. ii. 1782), and edited an edition of Pope's works (1797), which was the most complete then published. Warton was long intimate with Johnson, and a member of his literary club.

From the Ode to Fancy.

O parent of each lovely muse!
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide,
To offer at thy turf-built shrine
In golden cups no costly wine,
No murdered fatling of the flock,
But flowers and honey from the rock.

O nymph with loosely flowing hair,
With buskined leg, and bosom bare,
Thy waist with myrtle-girdle bound,
Thy brows with Indian feathers crowned,
Waving in thy snowy hand
An all-commanding magic wand,
Of power to bid fresh gardens grow
'Mid cheerless Lapland's barren snow,
Whose rapid wings thy flight convey
Through air, and over earth and sea,
While the various landscape lies
Conspicuous to thy piercing eyes!
O lover of the desert, hail !

Say in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain's side,
'Midst falls of water, you reside;
'Midst broken rocks a rugged scene,
With green and grassy dales between;
'Midst forests dark of aged oak,
Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke,
Where never human heart appeared,
Nor e'er one straw-roofed cot was reared,
Where Nature seemed to sit alone,
Majestic on a craggy throne;
Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell,
To thy unknown sequestered cell,
Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,
And on whose top a hawthorn blows,
Amid whose thickly-woven boughs
Some nightingale still builds her nest,
Each evening warbling thee to rest;
Then lay me by the haunted stream,
Wrapt in some wild poetic dream,
In converse while methinks I rove
With Spenser through a fairy grove;

A blind descriptive poet seems such an anomaly in nature, that the case of DR BLACKLOCK (17211791) has engaged the attention of the learned and curious in no ordinary degree. We read all concerning him with strong interest, except his poetry, for this is generally tame, languid, and commonplace. He was an amiable and excellent man, son of a Cumberland bricklayer, who had settled in the town of Annan, Dumfriesshire. When a child about six months old, he was totally deprived of sight by the small-pox; but his worthy father, assisted by his neighbours, amused his solitary boyhood by reading to him; and before he had reached the age of twenty, he was familiar with Spenser, Milton, Pope, and Addison. He was enthusiastically fond of poetry, particularly of the works of Thomson and Allan Ramsay. From these he must, in a great degree, have derived his images and impressions of nature and natural objects; but in after-life the classic poets were added to his store of intellectual enjoyment. His father was accidentally killed when the poet was about the age of nineteen; but some of his attempts at verse having been seen by Dr Stevenson, Edinburgh, that benevolent gentleman took their blind author to the Scottish metropolis, where he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 1746, he published a volume of his poems, which was reprinted with additions in 1754 and 1756. He was licensed in 1759, and through the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk, was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright. The parishioners, however, were opposed both to church patronage in the abstract, and to this exercise of it in favour of a blind man, and the poet relinquished the appointment on receiving in lieu of it a moderate annuity. He now resided in Edinburgh, and took boarders into his house. His family was a scene of peace and happiness. To his literary pursuits Blacklock added a taste for music, and played on the flute and flageolet. Latterly, he suffered from depression of spirits, and supposed that his imaginative powers were failing him; yet the generous ardour he evinced in 1786, in the case of Burns, shews no diminution of sensibility or taste. Besides his poems, Blacklock wrote some sermons and theological treatises, an article on Blindness for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and two dissertations, entitled Paraclesis; or Consolations deduced from Natural and Revealed Religion, one of them original, and the other translated from a work ascribed to Cicero.

Apart from the circumstances under which they were produced, the poems of Blacklock offer little room for or temptation to criticism. He has no new imagery, no commanding power of sentiment, reflection, or imagination. Still, he was a fluent and correct versifier, and his familiarity with the visible objects of nature-with trees, streams, the rocks, and sky, and even with different orders of flowers and plants-is a wonderful phenomenon in one blind from infancy. He could distinguish colours by touch; but this could only apply to objects at hand, not to the features of a landscape, or to the appearances of storm or sunshine, sunrise or sunset, or the variation in the seasons, all of which he has described. Images of this kind he had at will. Thus, he exclaims :

Ye vales, which to the raptured eye
Disclosed the flowery pride of May;
Ye circling hills, whose summits high

Blushed with the morning's earliest ray.

Or he paints flowers with artist-like precision:
Let long-lived pansies here their scents bestow,
The violet languish, and the roses glow;
In yellow glory let the crocus shine,
Narcissus here his love-sick head recline :
Here hyacinths in purple sweetness rise,
And tulips tinged with beauty's fairest dyes.

In a man to whom all external phenomena were, and had ever been, one 'universal blank,' this union of taste and memory was certainly remarkable. Poetical feeling he must have inherited from nature, which led him to take pleasure even from his infancy in descriptive poetry; and the language, expressions, and pictures thus imprinted on his mind by habitual acquaintance with the best authors, and in literary conversation, seem to have risen spontaneously in the moment of com position.

Terrors of a Guilty Conscience.

Cursed with unnumbered groundless fears,
How pale yon shivering wretch appears!
For him the daylight shines in vain,
For him the fields no joys contain;
Nature's whole charms to him are lost,
No more the woods their music boast;
No more the meads their vernal bloom,
No more the gales their rich perfume :
Impending mists deform the sky,
And beauty withers in his eye.
In hopes his terrors to elude,
By day he mingles with the crowd,
Yet finds his soul to fears a prey,
In busy crowds and open day.
If night his lonely walks surprise,
What horrid visions round him rise!
The blasted oak which meets his way,
Shewn by the meteor's sudden ray,
The midnight murderer's lone retreat
Felt heaven's avengeful bolt of late;
The clashing chain, the groan profound,
Loud from yon ruined tower resound;
And now the spot he seems to tread,
Where some self-slaughtered corse was laid;
He feels fixed earth beneath him bend,
Deep murmurs from her caves ascend;
Till all his soul, by fancy swayed,
Sees livid phantoms crowd the shade.

Ode to Aurora on Melissa's Birthday.

A compliment and tribute of affection to the tender assiduity of an excellent wife, which I have not anywhere seen more happily conceived or more elegantly expressed.' -Henry Mackenzie.

Of time and nature eldest born,
Emerge, thou rosy-fingered morn;

Emerge, in purest dress arrayed,
And chase from heaven night's envious shade,
That I once more may pleased survey,
And hail Melissa's natal day.

Of time and nature eldest born,
Emerge, thou rosy-fingered morn;
In order at the eastern gate
The hours to draw thy chariot wait;
Whilst Zephyr on his balmy wings,
Mild nature's fragrant tribute brings,
With odours sweet to strew thy way,
And grace the bland revolving day.

But, as thou lead'st the radiant sphere,
That gilds its birth and marks the year,
And as his stronger glories rise,
Diffused around the expanded skies,
Till clothed with beams serenely bright,
All heaven's vast concave flames with light;

So when, through life's protracted day,
Melissa still pursues her way,
Her virtues with thy splendour vie,
Increasing to the mental eye;
Though less conspicuous, not less dear,
Long may they Bion's prospect cheer;
So shall his heart no more repine,
Blessed with her rays, though robbed of thine.

JAMES BEATTIE.

JAMES BEATTIE was the son of a small farmer and shopkeeper at Laurencekirk, county of Kincardine, where he was born October 25, 1735. His father died while he was a child, but an elder brother, seeing signs of talent in the boy, assisted him in procuring a good education; and in his fourteenth year he obtained a bursary or exhibition (always indicating some proficiency in Latin) in Marischal College, Aberdeen. His habits and views were scholastic, and four years afterwards, Beattie was appointed schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun. He was now situated amidst interesting and romantic scenery, which increased his passion for nature and poetry. The scenes which he afterwards delineated in his Minstrel were, as Southey has justly remarked, those in which he had grown up, and the feelings and aspirations therein expressed were those of his own boyhood and youth. In 1758, he was elected usher of the grammar-school of Aberdeen; and in 1760, professor of moral philosophy and logic in Marischal College. About the same time, he published in London a collection of his poems, with some translations. One piece, Retirement, displays poetical feeling and taste; but the collection, as a whole, gave little indication of the Minstrel. The poems, without the translations, were reprinted in 1766, and a copy of verses on the Death of Churchill were added. The latter are mean and reprehensible in spirit. Beattie was a sincere lover of truth and virtue, but his ardour led him at times into intolerance, and he was too fond of courting the notice and approbation of the great. In 1770 the poet appeared as a metaphysician, by his Essay on Truth, in which good principles were advanced, though with an unphilosophical spirit, and in language which suffered greatly from comparison with that of his illustrious opponent, David Hume. Next year, Beattie appeared in his true character as a poet. The first part of the Minstrel was published, and was received with universal approbation. Honours flowed in on the fortunate author. He visited London, and was admitted to all its brilliant and distinguished circles. Goldsmith, Johnson, Garrick, and Reynolds were numbered among his friends. On a second visit in 1773, he had an interview with the king and queen, which resulted in a pension of £200 per annum. The university of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and Reynolds painted his portrait in an allegorical picture, in which Beattie was seen by the side of an angel pushing down Prejudice, Scepticism, and Folly ! Need we wonder that poor Goldsmith was envious of his brother-poet? To the honour of Beattie, it must be recorded, that he declined entering the Church of England, in which preferment was promised him. The second part of the Minstrel was published in 1774. Domestic circumstances marred the felicity of Beattie's otherwise happy and prosperous lot. His wife-the daughter

Dr Dun, Aberdeen-became insane, and was obliged to be confined in an asylum. He had two sons, both amiable and accomplished youths. The eldest lived till he was twenty-two, and was associated with his father in the professorship: he died in 1790, and the afflicted parent soothed his grief by writing his life, and publishing some specimens of his composition in prose and verse. The second son died in 1796, aged eighteen; and the only consolation of the now lonely poet was, that he could not have borne to see their 'elegant minds mangled with madness'-an allusion to the hereditary insanity of their mother. By nature, Beattie was a man of quick and tender sensibilities. A fine landscape, or music-in which he was a proficient-affected him even to tears. He had a sort of hysterical dread of meeting with his metaphysical opponents, which was an unmanly weakness. Such an organisation, physical and moral, was ill fitted to insure happiness or fortitude in adversity. When his second son died, he said he had done with the world. He ceased to correspond with his friends, or to continue his studies. Shattered by a long train of nervous complaints, in April 1799 the poet had a stroke of palsy, and after different returns of the same malady, which excluded him from all society, he died on the 18th of August 1803. His Life was written by his attached friend, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet; it was published in 1805, and ranks high among the biographies of literary personages.

In the early training of his eldest and beloved son, Dr Beattie adopted an expedient of a romantic and interesting description. His object was to give him the first idea of a Supreme Being; and his method, as Dr Porteous, bishop of London, remarked, had all the imagination of Rousseau, without his folly and extravagance.'

Imparting to a Boy the First Idea of a Supreme Being. 'He had,' says Beattie, 'reached his fifth (or sixth) ycar, knew the alphabet, and could read a little; but had received no particular information with respect to the author of his being, because I thought he could not yet understand such information, and because I had learned, from my own experience, that to be made to repeat words not understood, is extremely detrimental to the faculties of a young mind. In a corner of a little garden, without informing any person of the circumstance, I wrote in the mould, with my finger, the three initial letters of his name, and sowing garden cresses in

the furrows, covered up the seed, and smoothed the ground. Ten days after, he came running to me, and with astonishment in his countenance, told me that his name was growing in the garden. I smiled at the report, and seemed inclined to disregard it; but he insisted on my going to see what had happened. "Yes," said I carelessly, on coming to the place; "I see it is so; but there is nothing in this worth notice; it is mere chance;" and I went away. He followed me, and taking hold of my coat, said with some earnestness: "It could not be mere chance, for that somebody must have contrived matters so as to produce it." I pretend not to give his words or my own, for I have forgotten both, but I give the substance of what passed between us in such language as we both understood. "So you think," I said, "that what appears so regular as the letters of your name cannot be by chance?" "Yes," said he with firmness, "I think so. "Look at yourself," I replied, "and consider your hands and fingers, your legs and feet, and other

limbs; are they not regular in their appearance, and

useful to you?" He said they were. "Came you then hither," said I, "by chance?" "No," he answered; "that cannot be something must have made me." "And who is that something?" I asked. He said he did not know. (I took particular notice that he did not say, as Rousseau fancies a child in like circumstances would say, that his parents made him.) I had now gained the point I aimed at; and saw that his reason taught him-though he could not so express it-that what begins to be, must have a cause, and that what is formed with regularity, must have an intelligent cause. I therefore told him the name of the Great Being who made him and all the world, concerning whose adorable nature I gave him such information as I thought he could in some measure comprehend. The lesson affected him deeply, and he never forgot either it or the circum. stance that introduced it.'

The Minstrel, on which Beattie's fame now rests, is a didactic poem, in the Spenserian stanza, designed to 'trace the progress of a poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel.' The idea was suggested by Percy's preliminary Dissertation to his Reliques. The character of Edwin, the minstrel-in which Beattie embodied his own early feelings and poetical aspirations-is very finely drawn.

Opening of the Minstrel.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar;
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Has felt the influence of malignant star,
And waged with Fortune an eternal war;
Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown,
And Poverty's unconquerable bar,

In life's low vale remote has pined alone,
Then dropped into the grave, unpitied and unknown!

And yet the languor of inglorious days
Not equally oppressive is to all ;
Him, who ne'er listened to the voice of praise,
The silence of neglect can ne'er appal.
There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call,
Would shrink to hear the obstreperous trump of Fame;
Supremely blest, if to their portion fall

Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim Had he, whose simple tale these artless lines proclaim.

The rolls of fame I will not now explore;
Nor need I here describe, in learned lay,
How forth the Minstrel fared in days of yore,
Right glad of heart, though homely in array;

His waving locks and beard all hoary gray;
While from his bending shoulder, decent hung
His harp, the sole companion of his way,
Which to the whistling wind responsive rung:
And ever as he went some merry lay he sung.

Fret not thyself, thou glittering child of pride,
That a poor villager inspires my strain;
With thee let Pageantry and Power abide;
The gentle Muses haunt the sylvan reign;
Where through wild groves at eve the lonely swain
Enraptured roams, to gaze on Nature's charms.
They hate the sensual, and scorn the vain;
The parasite their influence never warms,

Nor him whose sordid soul the love of gold alarms.

Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,
Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.
Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,
While warbling larks on russet pinions float:
Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,
Where the gray linnets carol from the hill,
O let them ne'er, with artificial note,

To please a tyrant, strain the little bill,

But sing what Heaven inspires, and wander where they will.

Liberal, not lavish, is kind Nature's hand;
Nor was perfection made for man below.
Yet all her schemes with nicest art are planned,
Good counteracting ill, and gladness woe.
With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow,
If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arise;
There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow;
Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies,
And freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes.

Then grieve not thou, to whom the indulgent Muse
Vouchsafes a portion of celestial fire:
Nor blame the partial Fates, if they refuse
The imperial banquet and the rich attire.
Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre.
Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined ?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to Heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's grovelling crew for ever left behind.

Canst thou forego the pure ethereal soul,
In each fine sense so exquisitely keen,
On the dull couch of Luxury to loll,
Stung with disease, and stupefied with spleen;
Fain to implore the aid of Flattery's screen,
Even from thyself thy loathsome heart to hide-
The mansion then no more of joy serene-
Where fear, distrust, malevolence abide,

And impotent desire, and disappointed pride ?

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,

And all the dread magnificence of heaven,

And oft he traced the uplands to survey,
When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,
The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray,
And lake, dim-gleaming on the smoky lawn:
Far to the west the long, long vale withdrawn,
Where twilight loves to linger for a while;
And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn,
And villager abroad at early toil :

given?...

smile.

And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost-
What dreadful pleasure there to stand sublime,
Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast,
And view the enormous waste of vapour, tost
In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed!
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,

Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!

Even now his eyes with smiles of rapture glow, As on he wanders through the scenes of morn, Where the fresh flowers in living lustre blow, Where thousand pearls the dewy lawns adorn, A thousand notes of joy in every breeze are borne.

But who the melodies of morn can tell? The wild brook babbling down the mountain side; The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell; The pipe of early shepherd dim descried In the lone valley; echoing far and wide The clamorous horn along the cliffs above; The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide; The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love, And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.

The cottage-curs at early pilgrim bark; Crowned with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings; The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark ! Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings ; Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs; Slow tolls the village-clock the drowsy hour; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower, And shrill lark carols clear from her aërial tower.

And the dead foliage flies in many a shapeless flake.
Where now the rill, melodious, pure, and cool,
And meads, with life, and mirth, and beauty crowned ?
Ah! see, the unsightly slime, and sluggish pool,
Have all the solitary vale embrowned;
Fled each fair form, and mute each melting sound,
The raven croaks forlorn on naked spray.
And hark! the river, bursting every mound,
Down the vale thunders, and with wasteful sway
Uproots the grove, and rolls the shattered rocks away.

Yet such the destiny of all on earth:
So flourishes and fades majestic man.
Fair is the bud his vernal morn brings forth,
And fostering gales a while the nursling fan.
O smile, ye heavens, serene; ye mildews wan,
Ye blighting whirlwinds, spare his balmy prime,
Nor lessen of his life the little span.

Borne on the swift, though silent wings of Time,
Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime.

And be it so. Let those deplore their doom
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn;
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,
Can smile at Fate, and wonder how they mourn.

Shall Spring to these sad scenes no more return?
Is yonder wave the Sun's eternal bed?
Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn,
And Spring shall soon her vital influence shed,
Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead.

Shall I be left forgotten in the dust,
When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust,
Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury, and pain?
No: Heaven's immortal Spring shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,

Bright through the eternal year of Love's triumphant

reign.

Retirement.

When in the crimson cloud of even
The lingering light decays,
And Hesper on the front of heaven
His glittering gem displays;
Deep in the silent vale, unseen,
Beside a lulling stream,
A pensive youth, of placid mien,
Indulged this tender theme:

'Ye cliffs, in hoary grandeur piled
High o'er the glimmering dale;
Ye woods, along whose windings wild
Murmurs the solemn gale :
Where Melancholy strays forlorn,
And Woe retires to weep,
What time the wan moon's yellow horn
Gleams on the western deep :

'To you, ye wastes, whose artless charms
Ne'er drew Ambition's eye,
'Scaped a tumultuous world's alarms,
To your retreats I fly.

Deep in your most sequestered bower
Let me at last recline,
Where Solitude, mild, modest power,
Leans on her ivied shrine.

...

'Thy shades, thy silence now be mine,
Thy charms my only theme;
My haunt the hollow cliff, whose pine
Waves o'er the gloomy stream.
Whence the scared owl on pinions gray
Breaks from the rustling boughs,
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose.

'Oh, while to thee the woodland pours Its wildly warbling song,

And balmy from the bank of flowers
The zephyr breathes along;
Let no rude sound invade from far,
No vagrant foot be nigh,

No ray from Grandeur's gilded car
Flash on the startled eye.

'But if some pilgrim through the glade
Thy hallowed bowers explore,
O guard from harm his hoary head,
And listen to his lore;
For he of joys divine shall tell,
That wean from earthly woe,
And triumph o'er the mighty spell
That chains his heart below.

For me, no more the path invites Ambition loves to tread; No more I climb those toilsome heights, By guileful Hope misled;