"And who and what art thou?" the archangel said. "For that, you may consult my title-page," Replied this mighty shadow of a shade:

"If I have kept my secret half an age, I scarco shall tell it now."-" Canst thou upbraid," Continued Michael, "George Rex, or allego Aught further?" Junius answer'd, "You had better First ask him for his answer to my letter. LXXXIII.

"My charges upon record will outlast

The brass of both his epitaph and tomb." "Repent'st thou not," said Michael," of some past Exaggeration? something which may doom Thyself if false, as him if true? Thou wast Too bitter-is it not so? in thy gloom

Of passion?" "Passion!" cried the phantom dim, "I loved my country, and I hated him.

LXXXIV.

"What I have written, I have written let
The rest be on his head or mine!" So spoke
Old "nominis umbra ;" and, while speaking yet,
Away he melted in celestial smoke.

Then Sathan said to Michael, "Don't forget

To call George Washington, and John Horne Tooke, And Franklin :"-but at this time there was heard A cry for room, though not a phantom stirr'd. LXXXV.

At length, with jostling, elbowing, and the aid Of cherubim appointed to that post, The devil Asmodeus to the circle made His way, and look'd as if his journey cost Some trouble. When his burden down he laid, "What's this?" cried Michael; "why, 'tis not a ghost!"

"I know it," quoth the incubus; "but he Shall be one, if you leave the affair to me. LXXXVI.

"Confound the renegado! I have sprain'd

My left wing, he's so heavy; one would think
Some of his works about his neck were chain'd.
But to the point: while hovering o'er the brink
Of Skiddaw (where, as usual, it still rain'd),
I saw a taper far below me wink,
And, stooping, caught, this fellow at a libel-
No less on history than the holy bible.
LXXXVII.

"The former is the devil's scripture, and
The latter yours, good Michael; so the affair
Belongs to all of us, you understand.

I snatch'd him up just as you see him there,
And brought him off for sentence out of hand:
I've scarcely been ten minutes in the air-
At least a quarter it can hardly be:

I dare say that his wife is still at tea."
LXXXVIII.

Here Sathan said, "I know this man of old,
And have expected him for some time here;
A sillier fellow you will scarce behold,

Or more conceited in his petty sphere:
But surely it was not worth while to fold

Such trash below your wing, Asmodeus dear! We had the poor wretch safe (without being bored With carriage) coming of his own accord. LXXXIX.

"But since he's here, let's see what he has done." "Done!" cried Asmodeus, "he anticipates The very business you are now upon,

And scribbles as if head clerk to the Fates. Who knows to what his ribaldry may run,

When such an ass as this, like Balaam's, prates ?" "Let's hear," quoth Michael," what he has to say; You know we're bound to that in cvery way!"

XC.
Now the bard, glad to get an audience, which
By no means often was his case below,
Began to cough, and hawk, and hem, and pitch
His voice into that awful note of woe
To all unhappy hearers within reach

Of poets when the tide of rhyme's in flow;
But stuck fast with his first hexameter,
Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir.

XCI.

But ere the spavin'd dactyls could be spurr'd
Into recitative, in great dismay
Both cherubim and seraphim were heard

To murmur loudly through their long array;
And Michael rose ere he could get a word
Of all his founder'd verses under way,

XCVIII.

He had sung against all battles, and again
In their high praise and glory; he had call'd
Reviewing "the ungentle craft," and then
Become as base a critic as e'er crawl'd-
Fed, paid, and pamper'd by the very men

By whom his muse and morals had been maul'd.

A general bustle spread throughout the throng,
Which seem'd to hold all verse in detestation;
The angels had of course enough of song

When upon service; and the generation
Of ghosts had heard too much in life, not long
Before, to profit by a new occasion;

The monarch, mute till then, exclaim'd "What! what!
Pye come again? No more-no more of that!" ~
XCIII.

The tumult grew, an universal cough

Convulsed the skies, as during a debate, When Castlereagh has been up long enough

(Before he was first minister of state,

I mean the slaves hear now), some cried "off, off,"
As at a farce; till, grown quite desperate,
The bard Saint Peter pray'd to interpose
(Himself an author) only for his prose.

XCIV.

The varlet was not an ill-favour'd knave;
A good deal like a vulture in the face,
With a hook nose and a hawk's eye, which gave
A smart and sharper looking sort of grace
To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave,
Was by no means so ugly as his case;
But that indeed was hopeless as can be,
Quite a poetic felony," de se."

XCV.

Then Michael blew his trump, and still'd the noise
With one still greater, as is yet the mode
On earth besides; except some grumbling voice,
Which now and then will make a slight inroad
Upon decorous silence, few will twice-

Lift up their lungs when fairly overcrow'd;
And now the bard could plead his own bad cause,
With all the attitudes of self-applause.
XCVI.

He said (I only give the heads)-he said,
He meant no harm in scribbling; 't was his way
Upon all topics; 'twas, besides, his bread,

Of which he butter'd both sides; 't would delay
T'oo long the assembly (he was pleased to dread),
And take up rather more time than a day,
To name his works-he would but cite a few-
Wat Tyler-rhymes on Blenheim-Waterloo.
XCVII.

He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics, far and wide,
And then against them, bitterer than ever;
For pantisocracy he once had cried

Aloud, a scheme less moral than 't was clever;
Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin-

Had turn'd his coat-and would have turn'd his skin.

And more of both than any body knows.

II.

And tnou, oh Virgin! daughter, mother, bride, Of the same Lord, who gave to you each key Of heaven, and hell, and every thing beside,

The day thy Gabriel said, "All hail!" to thee, Since to thy servants pity's ne'er denied,

With flowing rhymes, a pleasant style and free, Be to my verses then benignly kind, And to the end illuminate my mind.

III.

"I was in the season when sad Philomel

Weeps with her sister, who remembers and Deplores the ancient woes which both befell, And makes the nymphs enamour'd, to the hand Of Phaeton by Phoebus loved so well

His car (but temper'd by his sire's command) Was given, and on the horizon's verge just now Appear'd, so that Tithonus scratch'd his brow;

IV.

When I prepared my bark first to obey,

As it should still obey, the helm, my mind,
And carry prose or rhyme, and this my lay

Of Charles the Emperor, whom you will find
By several pens already praised; but they
Who to diffuse his glory were inclined,
For all that I can see in prose or verse,
Have understood Charles badly-and wrote worse.
V.

Leonardo Aretino said already,

That if, like Pepin, Charles had had a writer Of genius quick, and diligently steady,.

No hero would in history look brighter; He in the cabinet being always ready,

And in the field a most victorious fighter,

Who for the Church and Christian faith had wrought, Certes far more than yet is said or thought.

VI.

'You still may see at Saint Liberatore,
The abbey no great way from Manopell,
Erected in the Abruzzi to his glory,
'Because of the great battle in which fell
A pagan king, according to the story,

And felon people whom Charles sent to hell: And there are bones so many, and so many, Near them Giusaffa's would seem few, if any.

VII.

But the world, blind and ignorant, don't prize
His virtues as I wish to see them: thou,
Florence, by his great bounty don't arise,

And hast, and may have, if thou wilt allow,
All proper customs and true courtesies:

Whate'er thou hast acquired from then till now, With knightly courage, treasure, or the lance, Is

sprung from out the noble blood of France.

VIII.

Twelve paladins had Charles, in court, of whom
The wirest and most famous was Orlando ;`
Him traitor Gan conducted to the tomb

In Roncesvalles, as the villain plann'd too,
While the horn rang so loud, and knell❜d the doom
Of their sad rout, though he did all knight can do,
And Dante in his comedy has given

To him a happy seat with Charles in heaven.

"And even at Aspramont thou didst begin
To let him know he was a gallant knight;
And by the fount did much the day to win;
But I know who that day had won the fight
If it had not for good Gherardo been:

The victory was Almonte's else; his sight
He kept upon the standard, and the laurels
In fact and fairness are his earning, Charles,
XIV.

"If thou rememberest being in Gascony,

When there advanced the nations out of Spain,
The Christian cause had suffered shamefully,

Had not his valour driven them back again.
Best speak the truth when there's a reason why:
Know then, oh cmperor! that all complain:
As for myself, I shall repass the mounts
O'er which I cross'd with two and sixty counts.
XV.

""Tis fit thy grandeur should dispense relief,
So that each here may have his proper part,
For the whole court is more or less in grief:
Perhaps thou deem'st this lad a Mars in heat?"
Orlando one day heard this speech in brief,
As by himself it chanced he sate apart:
Displeased he was with Gan because he said it,
But much more still that Charles should give him crudit.

XVI. And with the sword he would have murder'd Gan, But Oliver thrust in between the pair, And from his hand extracted Durlindan, And thus at length they separated were. Orlando, angry too with Carloman,

Wanted but little to have slain him there; Then forth alone from Paris went the chief, And burst and madden'd with disdain and grief. XVII.

From Ermellina, consort of the Dane,

He took Cortana, and then took Rondell, And on towards Brara prick'd him o'er the plain; And when she saw him coming, Aldabelle Stretch'd forth her arms to clasp her lord again: Orlando, in whose brain all was not well, As "Welcome my Orlando home," she said, Raised up his sword to smite her on the head. XVIII.

Like him a fury counsels;

his revenge

On Gan in that rash act he seem'd to take,
Which Aldabella thought extremely strange,
But soon Orlando found himself awake;
And his spouse took his bridle on this change,
And he dismounted from his horse, and spake
Of every thing which pass'd without demur,
And then reposed himself some days with her.
XIX.

Then full of wrath departed from the place,
And far as Pagan countries roam'd astray,
And while he rode, yet still at every pace

The traitor Gan-remember'd by the way;
And wandering on in error a long space,
An abbey which in a lone desert lay,
Midst glens obscure, and distant lands he found,
Which form'd the Christian's and the Pagan's bound.

XXIII.

"When hither to inhabit first we came

These mountains, albeit that they are obscure,
As you perceive, yet without fear or blame
They seem'd to promise an asylum sure:
From savage brutes alone, too fierce to tame,
'T was fit our quiet dwelling to secure ;
But now, if here we'd stay, we needs must guard
Against domestic beasts with watch and ward.
XXIV.

"These make us stand, in fact, upon the watch,
For late there have appear'd three giants rough;
What nation or what kingdom bore the batch
I know not, but they are all of savage stuff;
When force and malice with some genius match,

You know, they can do all-we are not enough:
And these so much our orisons derange,
I know not what to do till matters change.
XXV.

"Our ancient fathers living the desert in,
For just and holy works were duly fed;
Think not they lived on locusts sole, 't is certain
That manna was rain'd down from heaven instead ;
But here 't is fit we keep on the alert in

Our bounds, or taste the stones shower'd down for
bread,

From off yon mountain daily raining faster,
And flung by Passamont and Alabaster.
XXVI.

"The third, Morgante, 's savagest by far; he Plucks up pines, beeches, poplar-trees, and oaks, And flings them, our community to bury,

And all that I can do but more provokes." While thus they parley in the cemetery,

A stone from one of their gigantic strokes, Which nearly crush'd Rondell, came tumbling over, So that he took a long leap under cover.

Orlando bade them take care of Rondello,
And also made a breakfast of his own:
"Abbot," he said, "I want to find that fellow

Who flung at my good horse yon cornur-stone."
Said the abbot, "Let not my advice seem shallow,
As to a brother dear I speak alone ;

I would dissnade you, baron, from this strife,
As knowing sure that you will lose your life.
XXIX.

"That Passamont has in his hand three darts

Such slings, clubs, ballast-stones, that yield you must, You know that giants have much stouter hearts

Than us, with reason, in proportion just; If go you will, guard well against their arts, For these are very barbarous and robust." Orlando answer'd, "This I'll see, be sure, And walk the wild on foot to be secure."