Note 8. Stanza Ixii.

Eleven thousand maidenheads of bone,
The greatest number flesh bath ever known.

St Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in 1816, and may be so yet as much as ever.

Note 9. Stanza lxxxi.

Who butcher'd half the earth, and bullied 'other. India. America.

CANTO XI.

praising the « drapery» of an «untochered» but «pretty virginities» (like Mrs Anne Page) of the then day, which has now been some years yesterday:—she assured me that the thing was common in London; and as her own thousands, and blooming looks, and rich simplicity of array, put any suspicion in her own case out of the question, I confess I gave some credit to the allegation. If necessary, authorities might be cited, in which case I could quote both «drapery» and the wearers. Let us hope, however, that it is now obsolete.

Note 5. Stanza lx.

"Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.

« Divinæ particulam auræ.>>

Note 1. Stanza xix.

Who on a lark, with black-eyed Sal (his blowing),

So prime, so swell, so nutty, and so knowing? The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is a stanza of a song which was very popular, at least in my early days:

On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle,
In spite of each gallows old scout;

If you at the spelken can't hustle,

You'll be hobbled in making a Clout.

Then your blowing will was gallows haughty,
When she hears of your scaly mistake,
She'll surely tura snitch for the forty,

That her Jack may be regular weight..

If there be any gem'man so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esq., Professor of pugilism; who I trust still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplishments.

CANTO XII.

Note 1. Stanza xix.

Gives, with Greek truth, the good old Greek the lie. See MITFORD's Greece. « Græcia Verax.» His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues-learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in bis gullet,
Should have a book, and a small trout to pull it.

It would have taught him humanity at least. This sentimental savage, whom it is a mode to quote (amongst the novelists) to show their sympathy for innocent sports and old songs, teaches how to sew up frogs, and break their legs by way of experiment, in addition to the art of angling, the cruellest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. They may talk about the beauties of nature, but the angler merely thinks of his dish of fish; he has no leisure to take his eyes from off the streams, and a single bite is worth to him more than all the scenery around. Besides, some fish bite best on a rainy day. The whale, the shark, and the tunny fishery have somewhat of noble and perilous in them; even netfishing, trawling, etc. are more humane and useful-but angling!-No angler can be a good man.

<«< One of the best men I ever knew-as humane, delicate-minded, generous, and excellent a creature as any in the world-was an angler: true, he angled with painted flies, and would have been incapable of the extravagances of I. Walton.>>

The above addition was made by a friend in reading over the MS.« Audi alteram partem»-I leave it to counterbalance my own observation.

Note 2. Stanza xlviii.

Go to the coffee-house, and take another.

In SWIFT's or HORACE WALPOLE'S Letters I think it is mentioned that somebody regretting the loss of a friend, was answered by an universal Pylades: «When I lose one, I go to the Saint James's Coffee-house, and take another.>>

I recollect having heard an anecdote of the same kind. Sir W. D. was a great gamester. Coming in one day to the club of which he was a member, he was observed to look melancholy. «What is the matter, Sir William?» cried Hare, of facetious memory. «Ah!» replied Sir W. «I have just lost poor Lady D.»> « Lost! What atQuinze or Hazard?» was the consolatory rejoinder of the querist.

Note 3. Stanza lix.

And I refer you to wise Oxenstiern.

The famous Chancellor Oxenstiern said to his son, on the latter expressing his surprise upon the great effects arising from petty causes in the presumed mystery of politics: «< You see by this, my son, with how little wisdom the kingdoms of the world are governed.>>

CANTO XV.

Note 1. Stanza xviii.

And thou, Diviner still,

Whose lot it is by man to be mistaken.

As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say, that I mean, by « Diviner still,»> CHRIST. If ever

God was Man-or Man God-he was both. I never ar

raigned his creed, but the use-or abuse-made of it. Mr Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction Negro Slavery, and Mr Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified, that black men might be scourged? If so, he had better been born a Mulatto, to give both colours an equal chance of freedom, or at least salvation.

Note 2. Stanza xxxv.

When Rapp the Harmonist embargoed marriage

In his harmonious settlement.

This extraordinary and flourishing German colony in America does not entirely exclude matrimony, as the <«<Shakers» do; but lays such restrictions upon it as prevent more than a certain quantum of births within a certain number of years; which births (as Mr Hulme observes) generally arrive « in a little flock like those of a farmer's lambs, all within the same month perhaps.»> These Harmonists (so called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a remarkably flourishing, pious, and quiet people. See the various recent writers on America.

WHEN slow Disease with all her host of pains,
Chills the warm tide which flows along the veins;
When Health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing,
And flies with every changing gale of spring;
Not to the aching frame alone confined,
Unyielding pangs assail the drooping mind.
What grisly forms, the spectre train of woe,
Bid shuddering Nature shrink beneath the blow,
With Resignation wage relentless strife,
While Hope retires appall'd, and clings to life.
Yet less the pang, when, through the tedious hour,
Remembrance sheds around her genial power,
Calls back the vanish'd days to rapture given,
When love was bliss, and beauty form'd our heaven:
Or, dear to youth, portrays each childish scene,
Those fairy bowers, where all in turn have been.
As when, through clouds that pour the summer storm,
The orb of day unveils his distant form,
Gilds with faint beams the crystal dews of rain,
And dimly twinkles o'er the watery plain;
Thus, while the future dark and cheerless gleams,
The sun of memory, glowing through my dreams,
Though sunk the radiance of his former blaze,
To scenes far distant points his paler rays,
Still rules my senses with unbounded sway
The past confounding with the present day.

ODE

ΤΟ

THE ISLAND OF ST HELENA.

PEACE to thee, isle of the ocean!

Hail to thy breezes and billows! Where, rolling its tides in perpetual devotion, The white wave its plumy surf pillows! Rich shall the chaplet be history shall weave thee! Whose undying verdure shall bloom on thy brow, When nations that now in obscurity leave thee,

To the wand of oblivion alternately bow! Unchanged in thy glory-unstain'd in thy fameThe homage of ages shall hallow thy name!

Hail to the chief who reposes

On thee the rich weight of his glory!
When, fill'd to its limit, life's chronicle closes,
His deeds shall be sacred in story!
His prowess shall rank with the first of all ages,
And monarchs hereafter shall bow to his worth-
The
songs of the poets-the lessons of sages-
Shall hold him the wonder and grace of the earth.
The meteors of history before thee shall fall-
Eclipsed by thy splendour-thou meteor of Gaul!

Hygeian breezes shall fan thee-
Island of glory resplendent!

Pilgrims from nations far distant shall man thee-
Tribes, as thy waves independent!

On thy far gleaming strand the wanderer shall stay him
To snatch a brief glance at a spot so renown'd-
Each turf, and each stone, and each cliff, shall delay him
Where the step of thy exile hath hallow'd thy ground.
From him shalt thou borrow a lustre divine;
The wane of his sun was the rising of thine!

Whose were the hands that enslaved him?
Hands which had weakly withstood him-
Nations, which while they had oftentimes braved

him,

Never till now had subdued him!

Monarchs-who oft to his clemency stooping,

Received back their crowns from the plunder of warThe vanquisher vanquish'd-the eagle now droopingWould quench with their sternness the ray of his star! But cloth'd in new splendour thy glory appearsAnd rules the ascendant-the planet of years!

Pure be the heath of thy mountains! Rich be the green of thy pastures!

Limpid and lasting the streams of thy fountains!

Thine annals unstain'd by disasters!
Supreme in the ocean a rich altar swelling
Whose shrine shall be hail'd by the prayers of man-
kind-

Thy rock beach the rage of the tempest repelling-
The wide-wasting contest of wave and of wind-
Aloft on thy battlements long be unfurl'd
The eagle that decks thee-the pride of the world!

Fade shall the lily, now blooming

Where is the hand which can nurse it?

For no patriot vigour was there,

No arm to support the weak flower; Destruction pursued its dark herald-Despair, And wither'd its grace in an hour.

Yet there were who pretended to grieve,
There were who pretended to save;
Mere shallow empyrics who came to deceive-
To revel and sport on its grave.

Oh! thou land of the lily! in vain
Thou strugglest to raise its pale head!

Untimely mildews shall curse it.

Then shall the violet that blooms in the vallies

Impart to the gale its reviving perfume

Then, when the spirit of liberty rallies

To chant forth its anthems on tyranny's tomb, Wide Europe shall fear lest thy star should break forth, Eclipsing the pestilent orbs of the north!

The violet will bloom in its stead!

As thou scatterest thy leaf to the wind-
False emblem of innocence, stay-

And yield, as thou fadest, for the use of mankind,
This lesson to mark thy decay!

TO THE

LILY OF FRANCE.

Ere thou scatterest thy leaf to the wind,

False emblem of innocence, stay

And yield as thou fadest, for the use of mankind, The lesson that marks thy decay.

Thou wert fair as the beam of the morn,
And rich as the pride of the mine:

Thy charms are all faded, and hatred and scorn,
The curses of freedom, are thine.

Thou wert gay in the smiles of the world,
Thy shadow protection and power;

But now thy bright blossom is shrivell'd and curl'd—
The grace of thy country no more.

For corruption hath fed on thy leaf,

And bigotry weaken'd thy stem;

MADAME LAVALETTE.

Let Edinburgh critics o'erwhelm with their praises
Their Madame de Stael, and their famed L'Epinasse:
Like a meteor at best proud philosophy blazes,
And the fame of a wit is as brittle as glass:
But cheering's the beam, and unfading the splendour
Of thy torch, wedded love! and it never has yet
Shone with lustre more holy, more pure, or more tender
Than it sheds on the name of the fair LAVALETTE.

Then fill high the wine cup, e'en virtue shall bless it, And hallow the goblet which foams to her name; The warm lip of beauty shall piously press it,

And Hymen shall honour the pledge to her fame: To the health of the woman, who freedom and life too Has risk'd for her husband, we'll pay the just debt; And hail with applauses the heroine and wife too, The constant, the noble, the fair LAVALETTE.

Her foes have awarded, in impotent malice,

To their captive a doom which all Europe abhors,

The valley that gave thee thy birth

Shall weep for the hope of its soil;

The legions, that fought for thy beauty and worth, Shall hasten to share in thy spoil.

As a by-word, thy blossom shall be

A mock and a jest among men;

The proverb of slaves, and the sneer of the free, In city, and mountain, and glen.

Oh! It was Tyranny's pestilent gale

That scatter'd thy buds on the ground;

That threw the blood-stain on the virgin-white veil, And pierced thee with many a wound!

Then the puny leaf shook to the wind,
Thy stem gave its strength to the blast;
Thy full-bursting blossom its promise resign'd,
And fell to the storm as it pass'd.

While those who replaced them there blush for their

cause.

But in ages to come, when the blood-tarnish'd glory Of dukes, and of marshals, in darkness hath set, Hearts shall throb, eyes shall glisten, at reading the

story

Of the fond self-devotion of fair LAVALETTE.

ADIEU TO MALTA.

ADIEU the joys of La Valette:
Adieu sirocco, sun, and sweat;

Adieu thou palace, rarely enter'd;
Adieu ye mansions, where I've ventured;
Adieu ye cursed streets of stairs-
How surely he who mounts them swears;
Adieu ye merchants, often failing;
Adieu thou mob for ever railing:
Adieu ye packets without letters;
Adieu ye fools, who ape your betters;