To sickness still, and still to grief a prey, Health turns from me her rosy face away.

Just Heaven! what sin ere life begins to bloom,
Devotes my head untimely to the tomb?
Did e'er this hand against a brother's life
Drug the dire bowl, or point the murderous knife?
Did e'er this tongue the slanderer's tale proclaim,
Or madly violate my Maker's name?
Did e'er this heart betray a friend or foe,

Or know a thought but all the world might know?
As yet just started from the lists of time,
My growing years have scarcely told their prime;
Useless as yet through life I've idly run,
No pleasures tasted, and few duties done.
Ah, who, ere autumn's mellowing suns appear,
Would pluck the promise of the vernal year;
Or ere the grapes their purple hue betray,
Tear the crude cluster from the mourning spray?
Stern power of fate, whose ebon sceptre rules
The Stygian deserts and Cimmerian pools,
Forbear, nor rashly smite my youthful heart,
A victim yet unworthy of thy dart ;
Ah, stay till age shall blast my withering face,
Shake in my head, and falter in my pace;
Then aim the shaft, then meditate the blow,
And to the dead my willing shade shall go.
How weak is man to reason's judging eye!
Born in this moment, in the next we die;
Part mortal clay, and part ethereal fire,
Too proud to creep, too humble to aspire.
In vain our plans of happiness we raise,
Pain is our lot, and patience is our praise;
Wealth, lineage, honours, conquest, or a throne,
Are what the wise would fear to call their own.
Health is at best a vain precarious thing,
And fair-faced youth is ever on the wing;
'Tis like the stream beside whose watery bed
Some blooming plant exalts his flowery head;
Nursed by the wave the spreading branches rise,
Shade all the ground, and flourish to the skies ;
The waves the while beneath in secret flow,
And undermine the hollow bank below;
Wide and more wide the waters urge their way,
Bare all the roots, and on their fibres prey;
Too late the plant bewails his foolish pride,
And sinks untimely in the whelming tide.

But why repine? Does life deserve my sigh;
Few will lament my loss whene'er I die.
For those the wretches I despise or hate,

I neither envy nor regard their fate.
For me, whene'er all-conquering death shall spread
His wings around my unrepining head,

I care not; though this face be seen no more,
The world will pass as cheerful as before;
Bright as before the day-star will appear,
The fields as verdant, and the skies as clear;
Nor storms nor comets will my doom declare,
Nor signs on earth, nor portents in the air;
Unknown and silent will depart my breath,
Nor nature e'er take notice of my death.
Yet some there are-ere spent my vital days-
Within whose breasts my tomb I wish to raise.
Loved in my life, lamented in my end,

Their praise would crown me as their precepts mend:
To them may these fond lines my name endear,
Not from the Poet, but the Friend sincere.

Sir Gilbert Elliot (1722-77), author of Amynta, which Sir Walter Scott called 'the beautiful pastoral song,' was third baronet of Minto, and brother of Jean Elliot. Sir Gilbert was educated at Edinburgh and Leyden for the Scottish Bar; he was twenty years in Parliament as member successively for the counties of Selkirk and Roxburgh, and was distinguished as a speaker. He was in 1756 made a Lord of the Admiralty, in 1767 Keeper of the Signet in Scotland, and in 1770 Treasurer of the Navy. He died at Marseilles, whither he had gone for the recovery of his health, in 1777. He was the intimate friend of Home, author of Douglas, and David Hume, but disliked the sceptical tendency of Hume's philosophy; and it was he who kept Hume from publishing the Dialogues during his own lifetime.

Amynta.

My sheep I neglected, I broke my sheep-hook,
And all the gay haunts of my youth I forsook;
No more for Amynta fresh garlands I wove;
For ambition, I said, would soon cure me of love.
Oh, what had my youth with ambition to do?
Why left I Amynta? Why broke I my vow?
Oh, give me my sheep, and my sheep-hook restore,
And I'll wander from love and Amynta no more.
Through regions remote in vain do I rove,
And bid the wide ocean secure me from love!
O fool! to imagine that aught could subdue
A love so well-founded, a passion so true!
Alas! 'tis too late at thy fate to repine;
Poor shepherd, Amynta can never be thine :
Thy tears are all fruitless, thy wishes are vain,
The moments neglected return not again.

Christopher Smart, an unfortunate man of genius, was born 11th April 1722 at Shipbourne near Tunbridge, whither his father had migrated from Durham as steward to Viscount Vane. Through the influence of this nobleman, Christopher procured from the Duchess of Cleveland an allowance of £40 per annum. He was admitted to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1739, and elected a Fellow in 1745. At college Smart was remarkable for folly and extravagance, and his distinguished contemporary Gray prophesied truly that the result of his conduct would be a jail or bedlam. In 1747 he wrote a comedy called a Trip to Cambridge, or the Grateful Fair, which was acted in Pembroke College Hall. No remains of this play have been found, excepting a few songs and a mock-heroic soliloquy containing this:

Thus when a barber and a collier fight,
The barber beats the luckless collier white;
The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack,
And, big with vengeance, beats the barber black.
In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread,

And beats the collier and the barber red;
Black, red, and white, in various clouds are tossed,
And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost.
Having written several pieces for periodicals pub-
lished by Newbery, Smart became acquainted

with the bookseller's family, and married his stepdaughter, Anna Maria Carnan, in 1753. He now removed to London and endeavoured to subsist by his pen. The notorious 'Sir' John Hill-whose wars with the Royal Society, with Fielding, Garrick, and others, are well known; an apothecary, hackwriter, and scurrilous pamphleteer who closed his life by becoming a quack-doctor-having insidiously attacked Smart, the latter replied by a spirited satire entitled The Hilliad. Among his various tasks was metrical translations of the Fables of Phædrus and of the Psalms and the parables, with a prose translation of Horace. In 1756 he was one of the conductors of a monthly periodical called The Universal Visiter; and to assist him, Johnson -who sincerely sympathised, as Boswell records, with Smart's unhappy mental crises-contributed

a few essays. In 1763, as previously in 1751, the poor poet was confined in a madhouse. 'He has partly as much exercise,' said Johnson, 'as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him-also falling upon his knees and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.' During his confinement, it is said, writing materials were denied him, and Smart used to inscribe his poetical thoughts with charcoal on the walls of Bethlehem Hospital, or with a key on the wainscot. Obviously he could not have written down in this way the eighty-four six-line stanzas of the Song to David, composed during his saner intervals; the bulk of it presumably composed and carried in the memory. Smart was

afterwards released from his confinement; but debt and ill-fortune still pursued him. He was committed to the King's Bench prison for debt, and died there, after a short illness, 21st May 1771.

The Song to David is every way one of the most remarkable things in English poetry, and not merely, as it might in virtue of its origin and history be called, a 'curiosity of literature.' Even if it be not, as D. G. Rossetti said, 'the only great accomplished poem of the last [i.e. the eighteenth] century,' and though we do not quite agree with Mr Gosse in calling it 'a portent of beauty and originality, it is an amazing burst of devout imagination, in some passages attaining unmistakable splendour of thought and expression, marked by rich imagery, memorable phrasing, and majestic rhythms. Professor Palgrave and Mr Stopford Brooke are equally warm in commendation of the poem. Browning praised it in his Parleyings, and says it'stations Smart on either hand with Milton and with Keats.' There are evident traces in it of want of mental balance; but it is amazing to

know that though it was printed by Smart in 1763 it was omitted from his collected poems in 1791 as 'exhibiting [only ?] too melancholy proof of the estrangement of Smart's mind.' Anderson and Chalmers in their collections gave large extracts from Smart, but could not find a copy of the Song to quote from. It was reprinted in 1819 and 1827, and the whole of it was given in the first edition of this work (1843). It has since then been repeatedly printed, a recent editor being Mr Tutin (1898).

Song to David.

O thou, that sit'st upon a throne,
With harp of high, majestic tone,

To praise the King of kings:
And voice of heaven ascending swell,
Which, while its deeper notes excel,
Clear as a clarion rings:

To bless each valley, grove, and coast, And charm the cherubs to the post

Of gratitude in throngs;

To keep the days on Zion's Mount,
And send the year to his account,
With dances and with songs:

O servant of God's holiest charge,
The minister of praise at large,

Which thou may'st now receive; From thy blest mansion hail and hear, From topmost eminence appear

To this the wreath I weave.

Great, valiant, pious, good, and clean, Sublime, contemplative, serene,

Strong, constant, pleasant, wise! Bright effluence of exceeding grace; Best man! the swiftness and the race, The peril and the prize!

Great-from the lustre of his crown,
From Samuel's horn, and God's renown,
Which is the people's voice;

For all the host, from rear to van,
Applauded and embraced the man—
The man of God's own choice.
Valiant-the word, and up he rose ;
The fight-he triumphed o'er the foes
Whom God's just laws abhor;
And, armed in gallant faith, he took
Against the boaster, from the brook,
The weapons of the war.

Pious-magnificent and grand,
'Twas he the famous temple planned,
(The seraph in his soul):
Foremost to give the Lord his dues,
Foremost to bless the welcome news,
And foremost to condole.

Good-from Jehudah's genuine vein,
From God's best nature, good in grain,
His aspect and his heart:

To pity, to forgive, to save,
Witness En-gedi's conscious cave,

And Shimei's blunted dart.

Clean-if perpetual prayer be pure,
And love, which could itself inure
To fasting and to fear-

Clean in his gestures, hands, and feet,
To smite the lyre, the dance complete,
To play the sword and spear.

Sublime-invention ever young,
Of vast conception, towering tongue,
To God the eternal theme;
Notes from yon exaltations caught,
Unrivalled royalty of thought,

O'er meaner strains supreme.
Contemplative-on God to fix
His musings, and above the six

The Sabbath-day he blest;

'Twas then his thoughts self-conquest pruned, And heavenly melancholy tuned,

To bless and bear the rest.

Serene-to sow the seeds of peace,
Remembering when he watched the fleece.
How sweetly Kidron purled-
To further knowledge, silence vice,
And plant perpetual paradise,

When God had calmed the world.

Strong in the Lord, who could defy
Satan, and all his powers that lie
In sempiternal night;
And hell, and horror, and despair
Were as the lion and the bear

To his undaunted might.

Constant-in love to God, the Truth,
Age, manhood, infancy, and youth—
To Jonathan his friend
Constant beyond the verge of death;
And Ziba and Mephibosheth

His endless fame attend.

Pleasant-and various as the year;
Man, soul, and angel without peer,
Priest, champion, sage, and boy;

In armour or in ephod clad,
His pomp, his piety was glad;
Majestic was his joy.

Wise-in recovery from his fall,
Whence rose his eminence o'er all,
Of all the most reviled ;

The light of Israel in his ways,
Wise are his precepts, prayer, and praise,
And counsel to his child.

His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
For all the pangs that rage;
Blest light, still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michal of his bloom,
The Abishag of his age.

He sang of God-the mighty source
Of all things-the stupendous force
On which all strength depends;

From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, power, and enterprise
Commences, reigns, and ends.

Angels—their ministry and meed, Which to and fro with blessings speed,

Or with their citterns wait;

Where Michael, with his millions, bows, Where dwells the seraph and his spouse,

The cherub and her mate.

Of man-the semblance and effect
Of God and love-the saint elect
For infinite applause-

To rule the land, and briny broad,
To be laborious in his laud,

And heroes in his cause.

The world-the clustering spheres he made,
The glorious light, the soothing shade,
Dale, champaign, grove, and hill;

The multitudinous abyss,

Where secrecy remains in bliss,

And wisdom hides her skill.

Trees, plants, and flowers-of virtuous root; Gem yielding blossom, yielding fruit,

Choice gums and precious balm;
Bless ye the nosegay in the vale,
And with the sweetness of the gale
Enrich the thankful psalm.

Of fowl-e'en every beak and wing
Which cheer the winter, hail the spring,
That live in peace, or prey;
They that make music, or that mock,
The quail, the brave domestic cock,
The raven, swan, and jay.

Of fishes-every size and shape,
Which nature frames of light escape,

Devouring man to shun :

The shells are in the wealthy deep,
The shoals upon the surface leap,
And love the glancing sun.

Of beasts-the beaver plods his task;
While the sleek tigers roll and bask,

Nor yet the shades arouse ;

Her cave the mining coney scoops;
Where o'er the mead the mountain stoops,
The kids exult and browse.

Of gems-their virtue and their price,
Which, hid in earth from man's device,
Their darts of lustre sheath;
The jasper of the master's stamp,
The topaz blazing like a lamp,
Among the mines beneath.

Blest was the tenderness he felt,
When to his graceful harp he knelt,
And did for audience call;
When Satan with his hand he quelled,
And in serene suspense he held
The frantic throes of Saul.

His furious foes no more maligned
As he such melody divined,

And sense and soul detained;
Now striking strong, now soothing soft,

He sent the godly sounds aloft,

Or in delight refrained.

When up to heaven his thoughts he piled,
From fervent lips fair Michal smiled,

As blush to blush she stood;
And chose herself the queen, and gave
Her utmost from her heart-' so brave,
And plays his hymns so good.'

The pillars of the Lord are seven,

Which stand from earth to topmost heaven;
His wisdom drew the plan;
His Word accomplished the design,
From brightest gem to deepest mine,
From Christ enthroned to man.

O David, scholar of the Lord!
Such is thy science, whence reward,
And infinite degree;

O strength, O sweetness, lasting ripe ! God's harp thy symbol, and thy type The lion and the bee!

There is but One who ne'er rebelled, But One by passion unimpelled,

By pleasures unenticed;

He from himself his semblance sent, Grand object of his own content, And saw the God in Christ.

'Tell them, I Am,' Jehovah said
To Moses; while earth heard in dread,
And, smitten to the heart,

At once above, beneath, around,
All nature, without voice or sound,
Replied: O Lord, Thou Art.'. . .
Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,
And drops upon the leafy limes ;
Sweet Hermon's fragrant air :
Sweet is the lily's silver bell,
And sweet the wakeful tapers smell
That watch for early prayer.

Sweet the young nurse with love intense,
Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence;

Sweet when the lost arrive : Sweet the musician's ardour beats, While his vague mind 's in quest of sweets, The choicest flowers to hive.

Sweeter in all the strains of love
The language of thy turtle dove

Paired to thy swelling chord;
Sweeter with every grace endued
The glory of thy gratitude
Respired unto the Lord.

Strong is the horse upon his speed;
Strong in pursuit the rapid glede,

Which makes at once his game: Strong the tall ostrich on the ground; Strong thro' the turbulent profound

Shoots xiphias to his aim.

Strong is the lion-like a coal
His eyeball-like a bastion's mole
His chest against the foes;
Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail,
Strong against tide th' enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.

But stronger still, in earth and air,
And in the sea, the man of prayer;

And far beneath the tide;
And in the seat to faith assigned,
Where ask is have, where seek is find,
Where knock is open wide.

Glorious the sun in mid career;
Glorious th' assembled fires appear;

Glorious the comet's train:
Glorious the trumpet and alarm;
Glorious th' almighty stretched-out arm;
Glorious th' enraptured main :

Glorious the northern lights astream;
Glorious the song, when God 's the theme;
Glorious the thunder's roar :

Glorious hosanna from the den;
Glorious the catholic amen;

Glorious the martyr's gore:

Glorious-more glorious-is the crown
Of him that brought salvation down,
By meekness call'd thy Son;
Thou that stupendous truth believed,
And now the matchless deeds achieved,
Determined, dared, and done.

William Mason (1724-97), the friend and literary executor of Gray, long survived the association which did him so much honour, but he had appeared early as a poet. Born at Hull, the son of a clergyman, he took his B.A. from St John's College, Cambridge, in 1745, and was elected a Fellow of Pembroke through the influence of Gray, who had been attracted to him by his Musaus (1747), a lament for Pope in imitation of Lycidas. To his poem Isis (1748), an attack on the Jacobitism of Oxford, Thomas Warton replied in his Triumph of Isis. In 1753 appeared his tragedy of Elfrida, 'written,' as Southey said, 'on an artificial model, and in a gorgeous diction, because he thought Shakespeare had precluded all hope of excellence in any other form of drama.' Mason's model was the Greek drama, and he introduced into his play the classic accompaniment of the chorus. A second drama, Caractacus (1759), is of a higher cast than Elfrida: simpler in language, and of more sustained dignity in scenes, situations, and characters. Mason also wrote odes on Independence, Memory, Melancholy, and the Fall of Tyranny, in which his sonorous diction swells into extravagance and bombast. His longest poetical work is his English Garden, a descriptive poem in four books of blank verse (1772-82). He also indited odes to the naval officers of Great Britain, to the Honourable William Pitt, and in commemoration of the Revolution of 1688. Under the name of Malcolm Macgregor, he published in quite another vein A# Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight (1773), in which the taste for Chinese pagodas and Eastern bowers is cleverly ridiculed. Gray left him a legacy of £500, together with his books and manuscripts; and Mason in 1775 published his friend's poems with a memoir. In that memoir

he made a greater and more important innovation than he had done in his dramas; instead of presenting the continuous narrative in which the biographer alone is heard, he incorporated the poet's journals and letters in chronological order, thus making the subject of the memoir in some degree his own biographer. This plan was afterwards adopted by Boswell in his Life of Johnson. Mason became vicar of Aston in Yorkshire in 1754, and Canon of York in 1762. When politics ran high he took an active part on the side of the Whigs, but retained the respect of all parties. His poetry is lamentably lacking in simplicity, yet at times his rich diction has a fine effect. In his English Garden, though it is verbose and languid as a whole, there are some fine things. Gray quoted as 'superlative' from one of the odes: While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray.

Apostrophe to England.

In thy fair domain,

Yes, my loved Albion! many a glade is found,
The haunt of wood-gods only, where if Art
E'er dared to tread, 'twas with unsandalled foot,
Printless, as if the place were holy ground.

And there are scenes where, though she whilom trod,
Led by the worst of guides, fell Tyranny,
And ruthless superstition, we now trace
Her footsteps with delight, and pleased revere
What once had roused our hatred. But to Time,
Not her, the praise is due: his gradual touch
Has mouldered into beauty many a tower
Which, when it frowned with all its battlements,
Was only terrible; and many a fane
Monastic, which, when decked with all its spires,
Served but to feed some pampered abbot's pride,
And awe the unlettered vulgar.

(From The English Garden.)

Snowdon.

Mona on Snowdon calls:
Hear, thou king of mountains, hear;
Hark, she speaks from all her strings:
Hark, her loudest echo rings;
King of mountains, bend thine ear:
Send thy spirits, send them soon,
Now, when midnight and the moon

Meet upon thy front of snow;
See, their gold and ebon rod,
Where the sober sisters nod,
And greet in whispers sage and slow.
Snowdon, mark! 'tis magic's hour,
Now the muttered spell hath power;
Power to rend thy ribs of rock,

And burst thy base with thunder's shock:
But to thee no ruder spell

Shall Mona use, than those that dwell
In music's secret cells, and lie
Steeped in the stream of harmony.
Snowdon has heard the strain :
Hark, amid the wondering grove
Other harpings answer clear,
Other voices meet our ear,
Pinions flutter, shadows move,

Busy murmurs hum around,
Rustling vestments brush the ground;
Round and round, and round they go,

Through the twilight, through the shade,
Mount the oak's majestic head,
And gild the tufted misletoe.
Cease, ye glittering race of light,
Close your wings, and check your flight;
Here, arranged in order due;
Spread your robes of saffron hue;
For lo! with more than mortal fire,
Mighty Mador smites the lyre:
Hark, he sweeps the master-strings!

(From Caractacus.)

Epitaph on his Wife.

Take, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear :
Take that best gift which Heaven so lately gave:
To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care

Her faded form; she bowed to taste the wave,
And died! Does youth, does beauty, read the line?
Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm?
Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine;

Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.. Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;

Bid them in duty's sphere as meekly move; And if so fair, from vanity as free;

As firm in friendship, and as fond in love. Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die—

Twas e'en to thee-yet the dread path once trod, Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

And bids the pure in heart behold their God.

The last four lines, which form a worthy climax to the whole, were added by Gray.

George Campbell (1719-96), minister in Aberdeen and Principal of Marischal College, was a theologian and critic of vigorous intellect and various learning. His Dissertation on Miracles (1762), written in reply to Hume, was at the time greatly admired as a masterly piece of reasoning; and his Philosophy of Rhetoric, published in 1776, was praised (unreasonably) as perhaps the best book of the kind since Aristotle, but may yet be studied as an acute and well-written statement of

contemporary critical opinion. Other works were a Translation of the Four Gospels, some sermons, and a series of Lectures on Ecclesiastical History. Hume admitted the ingenuity of Campbell's reply to his thesis on the impossibility of proving a miracle. Hume's contention was that no testimony for any kind of miracle can ever amount to a probability, much less to a proof. Miracles can only be proved by testimony, and no testimony can be so strong as our own experience of the uniformity of nature. Campbell argued that testimony has a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience; and insisted that the earliest assent which is given to testimony by children, and which is previous to all experience, is in fact the most unlimited. The improbability of an event may be outweighed by slight direct evidence. His answer was divided into two parts: that miracles are capable of proof from testimony, religious miracles not less than others; and that the miracles on