Freneau (1752-1832) was of French descent, a native of New York. He graduated at Princeton, in the class of 1771. He wrote political satires, such as they were, on the Tories, which did good service in their day; and he was rewarded by Jefferson with an office. Early in the war he was captured by the British, and confined in one of the prison-ships in New York harbor. After the war he commanded a sailing-vessel, and got the title of Captain. He was an editor at times; but his newspaper speculations do not seem to have turned out profitably, and he died insolvent. He was prolific as a writer of verse, and there are several volumes of poems from his pen. He lived to the age of eighty, and perished during a snow-storm, in a bog-meadow, where he seems to have got lost, and which he had attempted to cross, near Freehold, New Jersey.

MAY TO APRIL.

Without your showers

I breed no flowers,

Each field a barren waste appears:

If you don't weep

My blossoms sleep,

They take such pleasure in your tears.

As your decay

Made room for May,

So I must part with all that's mine; My balmy breeze,

My blooming trees,

To torrid suns their sweets resign.

For April dead

My shades I spread,

William Roscoe.

Roscoe (1753-1831) brought out, in 1795, the work on which his fame chiefly rests, "The Life of Lorenzo de Medici." He was born near Liverpool, and received a common school education. He became a banker; but the house to which he belonged failed, and his private property was wrecked. Strictly honorable and scrupulous, he gave up even his books.

TO MY BOOKS.

ON BEING OBLIGED TO SELL MY LIBRARY.

As one who, destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, but hopes again erewhile
To share their converse, and enjoy their smile,
And tempers as he may affliction's dart:
Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art,
Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,

I now resign you; nor with fainting heart;
For, pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.

George Crabbe.

Of humble parentage, Crabbe (1754-1832), a native of Aldborough, Suffolk, was educated for the medical profession; but he left it for literature, and went to try his fortune in London. After various efforts to get into notice by his poetry, in a state of great destitution he wrote to Edmund Burke. Touched by his appeal, Burke made an appointment with him, looked at his poems, got a publisher for him, advanced him money, gave him a room at Beaconsfield, and suggested his entering the Church, which advice he adopted. After various changes he obtained the living of Trowbridge, in Wilts. In 1819

he published his "Tales of the Hall." Murray gave him £3000 for these and the copyright of his other poems. "Nature's sternest painter, yet the best," was the somewhat overstrained compliment bestowed by Lord Byron on Crabbe. The English poor-their woes, weaknesses, and sins-form his almost unvarying theme. The distinguishing feature of his poetry is the graphic minuteness of its descriptive passages. He knew how untrue and exaggerated are most of the pictures of rural life that figure in poetry, and he undertook to exhibit it in its naked reality. In his style he produces the poetical effect by language of the most naked simplicity almost utterly divested of the conventional ornaments of poetry. His chief works, which range in date from 1783 to 1818, are "The Village," "The Parish Register," "The Borough," "Tales in Verse," "Tales of the Hall." In his domestic circumstances Crabbe was fortunate. He married the lady of his choice, and had sons, one of whom wrote an admirable memoir of him. At threescore and ten the venerable poet was busy, cheerful, affectionate, and eager in charity and kind offices to the poor. He was a great lover of the sca, and his marine landscapes are fresh and striking.

THE SEA IN CALM AND STORM.
FROM "THE BOROUGH."

Various and vast, sublime in all its forms,
When lulled by zephyrs, or when roused by storms;
Its colors changing when from clouds and sun
Shades after shades upon the surface run;
Embrowned and horrid now, and now serene
In limpid blue and evanescent green;
And oft the foggy banks on ocean lie,

Lift the fair sail, and cheat the experienced eye!
Be it the summer noon: a sandy space
The ebbing tide has left upon its place;
Then just the hot and stony beach above,
Light, twinkling streams in bright confusion move;
(For, heated thus, the warmer air ascends,
And with the cooler in its fall contends.)
Then the broad bosom of the ocean keeps
An equal motion; swelling as it sleeps,
Then slowly sinking; curling to the strand,
Faint, lazy waves o'ercreep the ridgy sand,
Or tap the tarry boat with gentle blow,
And back return in silence, smooth and slow.
Ships in the calm seem anchored; for they glide
On the still sea, urged solely by the tide.

All where the eye delights, yet dreads, to roam The breaking billows cast the flying foam Upon the billows rising-all the deep Is restless change-the waves, so swelled and steep, Breaking and sinking; and the sunken swells, Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells: But nearer land you may the billows trace, As if contending in their watery chase; May watch the mightiest till the shoal they reach, Then break and hurry to their utmost stretch; Curled as they come, they strike with furious force, And then, reflowing, take their grating course, Raking the rounded flints, which ages past Rolled by their rage, and shall to ages last.

Far off, the petrel, in the troubled way, Swims with her brood, or flutters in the spray; She rises often, often drops again,

And sports at ease on the tempestuous main.

High o'er the restless deep, above the reach Of gunner's hope, vast flights of wild-ducks stretch; Far as the eye can glance on either side, In a broad space and level line they glide; All in their wedge-like figures from the north, Day after day, flight after flight, go forth.

Inshore their passage tribes of sea-gulls urge, And drop for prey within the sweeping surge; Oft in the rough, opposing blast they fly Far back, then turn, and all their force apply, While to the storm they give their weak, complain

ing cry;

Or clap the sleek white pinion to the breast, And in the restless ocean dip for rest.

THE PILGRIM'S WELCOME. Pilgrim, burdened with thy sin,

Come the way to Zion's gate;
There, till Mercy let thee in,

Knock and weep, and watch and wait.
Knock! He knows the sinner's cry:

Weep!-He loves the mourner's tears:
Watch!--for saving grace is nigh:
Wait!-till heavenly light appears.

Hark! it is the Bridegroom's voice!
Welcome, pilgrim, to thy rest!

Now within the gate rejoice,

Safe and sealed, and bought and blessed! Safe-from all the lures of vice,

Sealed-by signs the chosen know, Bought by love and life the price,

Blessed-the mighty debt to owe.

Holy pilgrim! what for thee

In a world like this remain ?
From thy guarded breast shall flee

Fear and shame, and doubt and pain.
Fear the hope of heaven shall fly,
Shame-from glory's view retire,
Doubt-in certain rapture die,
Pain-in endless bliss expire.

IT IS THE SOUL THAT SEES.
FROM "TALES IN VERSE."

It is the soul that sees; the outward eyes
Present the object, but the mind descries;
And thence delight, disgust, or cool indifference rise.
When minds are joyful, then we look around,
And what is seen is all on fairy ground;
Again, they sicken, and on every view
Cast their own dull and melancholy hue;
Or if, absorbed by their peculiar cares,
The vacant eye on viewless matter glares,
Our feelings still upon our views attend,
And their own natures to the objects lend.
Sorrow and joy are in their influence sure;
Long as the passion reigns the effects endure;
But Love in minds his various changes makes,
And clothes each object with the change he takes;
His light and shade on every view he throws,
And on each object what he feels bestows.

Joel Barlow.

AMERICAN.

Barlow (1754-1812) was a native of Reading, Conn. He entered Dartmouth College, but completed his education at Yale. During his vacations he served in the army, and was present at the battle of White Plains, where he showed much bravery. From college he turned to divinity, and qualified himself as a chaplain, in which capacity he served for some time. He left the Church and the army, and was admitted to the Bar in 1785. In 1788 he went to Europe, where he remained, most of the time in France, seventeen years. In Paris he made a fortune in some commercial speculations, and purchased the hotel of the Count Clermont de Tonnerre, where he lived in sumptuous style. In 1805 Barlow returned to the United States, and built a fine house in the District of Columbia, which he called Calorama. He was bitterly opposed by the Federalists; whose wrath he excited by a published letter in which he denounced Adams and Washington. In 1807 appeared "The Columbiad," Barlow's principal work, and the most costly that had yet appeared in America. It is dedicated to the author's intimate friend, Robert Fulton, the inventor

of the steamboat, and contains cleven engravings executed by eminent London artists. It is in the heroic rhymed measure, and recalls Pope and Darwin; but there is little in it worthy of survival as poetry. He did better in "The Hasty Pudding," which, though smoothly versified, is little more than an elaborate trifle. It was written in Savoy, and dedicated to Mrs. Washington. In 1809 he was appointed Minister to France. In October, 1812, Bonaparte, then on his Russian campaign, invited him to meet him at Wilna. His rapid journey across the Continent in severely cold weather brought on an inflammation of the lungs, to which he rapidly succumbed, dying, on his return to Paris, at a small village near Cracow, December 22d, 1812. His last poem, dictated during his last illness to his secretary, was a not very happy expression of his detestation of Napoleon. It was entitled "Advice to a Raven in Russia."

I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning incense, and my evening meal,
The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
Its substance mingled, married in with thine,
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.

Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic song
Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme,
No more thy awkward, unpoetic name
Should shun the muse, or prejudice thy fame;
But rising grateful to the accustomed ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms revere!
Assist me first with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks of time thy lineage and thy race;
Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore

(Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore), First gave thee to the world; her works of fame Have lived indeed, but lived without a name. Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days,

First learned with stones to crack the well-dried maize,

Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour:

The yellow flour, bestrewed and stirred with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.