Best antidote! which "he who runs may read,”

Thy LIFE, the lucid comment on thy creed;

Thy refuge, the drear trust, some, comfort call!
That endless sleep ere long will mantle all!

Dost thou aspire, like a Satanic mind,
With vice to waste and desolate mankind!-
Toward every rude, and dark, and dismal deed,
To see them hurrying on with swifter speed?
To make them, from restraint and conscience free,
Stretch, fiend-like, at new heights of infamy?

Sunk, but not lost, from dreams of death arise! No longer tempt the patience of the skies!

200

205

Confess, with tears of blood, to frowning Heaven, 210
The foul perversion of His talents given !
Retrace thy footsteps! Ere the wish be vain,
Bring back the erring thousands in thy train!
Let none, at death, despairing, charge on thee
Their blasted peace, in shuddering agony!
Their prop, their heart's last solace, rent away,
That one long night might quench their "perfect day!”

Lest Shelley's fate be shine, or one more dread,
(Thy home associate, in one cradle bred!)
That Being who could raise his ghastly eye;
Encompassed by the blaze of Deity,

And utter, whilst his blood serenely flows,

215

220

"There is no God!"--whose terrors now he knows!
Lest in his wrath thy Maker's lifted hand
Brand thee, a spectacle to every land;

Or the portentous moment thou deplore,

When vengeance wakes, and mercy pleads no more;
Redeem the future! cleanse the Augean sty!
Learn better how to live! and how to die!

225

My brother, Amos Cottle, occasionally indulged his taste for poetry, which, had it been cultivated, would have placed him in a class highly respectable. Whilst in the command of many more elevated gifts, he possessed also, intuitively, a chaste vein of humour; a quality less common than many suppose, and in alliance with the subtilest wit. One slight confirmation of this will appear in the succeeding original and well-sustained fable, "The Sparrow and the Gudgeon ;" exhibiting, (unless a brother's partiality has betrayed his judgment) the ease and simplicity of Cowper, and more than the point, moral, and terseness of Gay. This fable, written in his youthful days, he rightly considered as a trifle; but it is a happy trifle, and a spirited sketch often discovers more genius than an elaborate picture.

THE SPARROW AND THE GUDGEON.

A FABLE.

By the late AMOS COTTLE, B. A. Mag. Col. Cam.

PROLEGOMENA.

(The scene is laid, the time no matter,

When birds and fish could talk and chatter.)

A SPARROW, at a river's brink,
Accustomed was each day to drink,
And still he chose the favourite spot,
Where chance had cast a Gudgeon's lot.
Oft meeting, they each other knew,
And by degrees acquaintance grew.

The Gudgeon musing marked his friend
From neighbouring bush and tree descend,
And oft admired, with envious eyes,
The ease with which he seemed to rise.
Cried he, "This Sparrow was, no doubt,”
(Logic he little cared about)

"A fish that found the method out

"Of roaming freely through the air,

"And why, if such, should I despair?
"To chace the fly, with joy supreme
"That sports upon the sunny stream:

From a Painting by Palmer (1787) in the Possession of Mr Cottle.