But still more desperate th'attempt to mould
Verses in brass should equal thine of gold;
So that for ever my o'erweening skill

Had lost the hope, though it preserved the will.

Then with no books but thine my hands were fraught ;
Thee the sole boast of human kind I thought;
Thine image in all places, at all hours,

Hovering before me, raised my drooping powers.
Thy name I honour'd, thy abode revered,
Like holy temples to th'immortals rear'd,
Beholding Grecia's palm once more expand
Her sacred blossoms, foster'd by thy hand.
Briefly (if I may speak so bold a word)
Thou wert become mine idol: I adored,
And in my heart thine eloquence enshrined,
Like to the Gods or godlike of mankind.

True is, the blaze of that exceeding light,
Flash'd from thy glory on my aching sight,
Its feeble nerve o'erpowering by the ray,
Which less illumined than confused the way,
Had made me from thy train at last elope,
Scared from Parnassus; if, the youthful hope
To follow, thou hadst not inspired again,
Giving me back the courage thou had'st ta'en.

Thou chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss
Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross,
Who seeing me devoted to the Nine,

Didst hope some fruitage from those buds of mine;
Thou didst excite me after thee t'ascend

The Muses' sacred hill; nor only lend

Example, but inspirit me to reach

The far-off summit by thy friendly speech:
Clio, thou saidst, when first my breath I drew,
Had on my cradle cast a favouring view:
That if I look'd to shun the grasp of Death,
I should be daring, and expend my breath
On outspread volumes: so would fair renown,
By hard exertion won, at last my labours crown.

May gracious Heaven, O! honour of our age,
Make the conclusion answer thy presage:
Nor let it only for vain fortune stand
That I have seen thy visage-touch'd thy hand.

Meanwhile accept, if aught thou deign of ours,
These tears of anguish, which, instead of flowers,
Instead of hallow'd streams thine urn to lave,
We with all France are pouring on thy grave.

This warm and affectionate admiration of the two poets who then divided the homage of their countrymen, Ronsard and Desportes, does great credit to Bertaut. His hope of being easily able to imitate the sweetness of the latter, his failure in the attempt, his then turning to Ronsard as his model, the encouragement given to him by both, and the de

votedness and reverence with which he regarded every thing that related to men who in his estimation were of so great importance,-all this is told with an earnestness which makes it impossible to doubt its truth.

There is not one other of his sonnets in the first volume that is expressed with so much nature and grace as the following:-

Au Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon, au Nom des Habitans de Bourgucil.
Vous voyant habiter de terres désolees

Où tout est par le feu destruit et saccagé,
De soucis combatu, de perils assiegé,
Passant mesme les nuits de soin entremeslees;
Nous cueillons à regrets par ces fresches vallees
Les fruits delicieux dont leur flanc est chargé,
Et de ces beaux jardins ou Zephyre est logé,
Nous foulons à regrets les plaisantes allees.
Non qu'estant devenus de nous-mesme ennemis,
Nous ayons en horreurs les delices permis,
Dont entre tant de maux le bien nous daigne suivre;
Mais un public ennuy dedans l'ame nous poind,
Voyant que loin d'icy vous ne jouissez point

De l'aise et du repos ou vous nous faites vivre.

To my Lord the Cardinal of Bourbon, in the Name of the Inhabitants of Bourgueil.

Whilst we behold thee sojourn in a land,

Whose breast the track of livid fire hath scored,
Compass'd about with perils and the sword,
Nor e'en one tranquil night at thy command;
In these fresh valleys, with unwilling hand
We cull the fruits in bounteous plenty pour'd;
On these gay lawns, amidst the vernal hoard
Of scents and blossoms, unrejoicing stand:
Not that to sullen waywardness a prey,
We loathe the gifts allow'd us, by annoy
Untainted, midst the general misery;
But that, while thou, O Prince! art far away,
Public concern permits not to enjoy
That peace and quiet which we owe to thee.

At p. 238 of the first volume, is Timandre, Poeme, contenant une tragique Aventure. This tragical adventure, intended to show the ill effects of trusting in those who deal with familiar spirits, is related with much fluency of numbers, and a style remarkable for its familiarity and ease.

The second volume, which contains his love-poems, none but a lover could have patience to read to

the end. Like those of Desportes, or of our own Cowley, they present us with the idea of no living object. The fancied mistress seems to be nothing more than a web stretched out on the warp for the purpose of embroidering the poet's conceits; and of these, many are the mere sports of an idle ingenuity, which have no concern either with the imagination or the heart: such is the description of her hand :—

Quant à sa belle main, ceste vive merveille,
Qui de ma liberté rend l'Amour possesseur,
Elle se pourroit dire au monde sans pareille
Si Dieu l'eust condamnée à n'avoir point de soeur :
Mais pour mon double mal, elle nasquit gemelle,
D'un marbre qui mobile en dix branches se fend:
L'une exerce le vol, et l'autre le recele:

L'une commet le meurtre, et l'autre le defend.

V. 2. p. 5.

As to her beautiful hand, that living wonder, which renders Love the possessor of my freedom, it might be said to be without an equal in the world, if heaven had condemned it not to have a sister: but for my double misfortune it was born a twin, and both framed of a marble that is endowed with motion, and cleft into ten branches: the one is the committer of the theft, and the other its concealer; the one perpetrates the murder, and the other defends it.

The following stanzas will supply future commentators with a parallel passage to the well-known apothegm in Shakspeare:

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues

Men's wrongs alone in mind we bear;
Ingratitude is every where:

Their injuries we in metal grave,

And write their kindness in the wave.

Love can a proof of this supply,

Who mingles pleasure with his pain:

The good we pass in silence by,

And only of the ill complain.

A pretty conceit of Waller's is to be found in Bertaut.

That eagle's fate and mine are one,

Which on the shaft that made him die

Espy'd a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high. Waller.-To a Lady singing

Non, non, rien que notre manie
Ne tient sa puissance en vigueur :

Qui se plaint de sa tyrannie,

Se plaint d'avoir faute de coeur.

a Song of his composing.

Nous seuls brassons les amertumes

Dont il paist nos coeurs insensez;
Nous seuls empennons de nos plumes
Les traits dont il nous rend blessez.

Nostre oysiveté le fait naistre :
Nostre espoir l'allaite en naissant:
Nostre servage le rend maistre,
Et nostre foiblesse puissant.

He doth of us blind homage claim;
In madness we his vassals are;
And when his cruelty we blame,
The fault is in our own despair.
We only brew the bitter draughts
On which our witless heart he feeds;
And our own feathers wing the shafts
By which our wounded bosom bleeds.
Our sloth first brings the babe to light;
Our hopes his suckling nurses be:
Our weakness giveth him his might;
Our servitude his tyranny.

In one of his sonnets we have the same thought as in those stanzas of Shenstone, on which Johnson has pronounced that the mind which denies them its sympathy has no acquaintance with love or nature.

Je meurs me souvenant que sa bouche de basme,

D'un baiser redoublé qui me déroba l'ame,

En me disant adieu me pria du retour.

So sweetly she bade me adieu,

I thought that she bade me return.

The only poem in which I have observed anything like an attempt to describe the person of his Amarantha, is termed an Elegy (p. 66), where he introduces Love appearing to him, after he had forsworn his affection for Chloris, and resolved to secure himself from similar engagements by in addition to his usual weapons, the the study of astronomy. The God, bow and the quiver, has a roll of paper in one of his hands, and expostulates in a sarcastic vein with the rebel, on his intentions:

Et bien, jeune astrologue, à la fin ta pensée
Des liens amoureux s'est du tout délacée!
O le vaillant Hercule, il a rompu mes laqs
Pour soutenir le ciel et soulager Atlas !
C'est bien fait, persevere, use ainsi ta jeunesse,
T'amusant à compter, pour fuir la paresse,
Les estoilles du ciel, puis en fin quelque jour,
Estant viel et caduc, fuy les plaisirs d'amour.
Well, young astrologer, and thou hast broke
My bonds at last, and freed thee from the yoke!
The valiant Hercules! he bursts my net
To hold the heav'ns up, and for Atlas sweat.
"Tis well: perséver: be thy youth employ'd
Counting the stars, that so thou mayst avoid
The pains of sloth; then all thy vigour gone,
Avoid Love's pleasures, when old age creeps on.

The poet replies, that the ingratitude and cruelty of Chloris had made him resolute to persevere in the course he had taken. On this, Love seems to allow the justice of his plea; but argues that he is not to give over the chase, because the

prey has once escaped him; that the mariner, who has suffered shipwreck, again puts to sea; and the labourer, whose hopes of a harvest have failed, still continues to commit his seed to the earth: and, when Bertaut persists in his contumacy,

ends by unfolding the paper: this he was
presents him with a portrait of a new
mistress, which, as might be ex-
pected, he finds irresistible. Here
there is no want of sprightliness
either in the invention or the style;
but his materials are spun out some-
what too diffusely.

Jean Bertaut was born in 1552, at Caen in Normandy, a province where the poetry of France may be said to have originated under the auspices of its English sovereigns, or, to speak more properly, the Norman sovereigns of England; and which has since continued to support the honours it had so early acquired. He was the First Almoner to Queen Catherine de Medici. By Henry III.

made Private Secretary, Reader, and Councillor of State. Henry IV. who was induced partly by his arguments or persuasion to conform to the church establishment of France, gave him the Abbey of Aunay in 1594; and in 1606 appointed him Bishop of Sees in Normandy. Besides the poems already mentioned, he made a translation of the Second Book of the Eneid, inserted in the collection of his poems, and a translation or paraphrase of the Psalms into French verse, which is not among them, and which was perhaps not made till after he became a bishop. He died in 1611, at the age of fifty-nine.

PS. Friend Janus, who has bantered me so pleasantly on my scholarship,* may perhaps hope, that in arriving at Bertaut I have nearly reached the end of my obliquity. I hope the Printer did not put the word by mistake for obloquy, and the Editor kindly pass the opáλua sub silentio. Obliquity, however, it was printed; and I am willing to understand the word as applied to a kind of zodiac, through which I have been travelling, and of which I did indeed seem to myself nearly to have attained the limit, when certain other luminaries sprang up to invite me onwards. To drop the figure for a moment, and explain myself;-I had almost exhausted the materials derived from the old library in France, when another treasure of the same kind, in this country, was unexpectedly laid open to me by the kindness and liberality of its possessor. I must, therefore, entreat Janus, and in him all others who retain the hatred of the old Roman deity (after whom he was probably named) to the Gauls, that they will yet bear with me while I persevere a little longer in this Loxian course.

I have heard it said,-and they were no fools who said it,-that the romance of life was over, that the days of adventure were gone by; but how can this be, when so many volumes, quarto, octavo, and duodecimo, give the lie direct to the assertion? Every body now has his adventures; and they who cannot find monsters at home, contrive to make them in a twelvemonth's tour of the continent. There is no fatigue that a genuine tourist will not endure for the sake of talking of it afterwards,

and if he is not lucky enough to meet with any robbers, he is sure to hear of them, which answers his purpose every jot as well; nay, I once had a friend, who, having travelled a whole year to no purpose, flung himself in despair into the English river Thames, but by some singular acci dent swam to shore instead of sinking, and afterwards wrote a pretty account, a very pretty account indeed, of his drowning and subsequent recovery to life. For my own part, however, I have been more fortunate;