Sir Hector. Don't desire the boy to slacken gratitude, or indifferent about a man who not his sails in a chase of good-nature. Lady Di. Why, what is the fool in raptures for? he never saw Colonel Ormsby since the moment of his existence. Orson. No, mother; but I know that he is my uncle Brownlow's friend; that he has weathered my uncle from many a bitter blast, and is to be married to the sweet young lady my uncle lately brought us home from Bengal. Sir Hector. And has anybody carried the news to Zelinda? Lady Di. The Lady Zelinda, my dear; you know that her father was an Indian orurah, or nobleman of great authority! Orson. I sent Bussora aloft with the news, and the poor fellow was as much rejoiced as a man of war on short allowance would be in sight of the Downs. Sir Hector. I do love that Bussora, he's so faithful a creature, and has a heart as sound as a biscuit. Lady Di. I don't wonder that he's so great a favourite with his lady, for he's extremely intelligent, and would, I dare say, readily hazard his life in her service. Orson. Zounds! I'd stand a broadside for her myself at any time. only repeatedly saved her father's life in the commotions of the East, but, what was still more, preserved the ladies of his family? Sir Hector. Come, come, Ormsby is a noble fellow. Orson. As ever stepped from stem to stern, my uncle Brownlow says. Sir Hector. And Zelinda's father behaved nobly to him when his dead-lights were hung out. Lady Di. I suppose you mean by bequeathing him his only daughter in his last moments, who is mistress of so large a fortune. Sir Hector. Why, is not she an Acapulco vessel in herself, to say nothing of her being ballasted with rupees and pagodas? Lady Di. And could her father, who loved the English extremely, who married her mother an English woman, and who knew the colonel's worth so well, act more prudently, in the distracted state of his country, than in giving his child to a man who was not only able to protect her against all dangers, but calculated besides to make her an admirable husband? Sir Hector. Why, your brother tells me that Abdalla had none of his country superstition on board his mind. Orson. Wasn't he a heathen, father? Sir Hector. Yes, lad; but for all that he steered his course very sensibly, and knew that the chart of a good conscience would bring Sir Hector. D-- you, sirrah, do you swear? One would think that your ship was sinking, and that you expected every moment to be launched into the next world, you young rascal! Lady Di. Ay, this is your blessed system of a ship of any nation to safe moorings in what sea education. our Methodist boatswain calls the river of Jordan. Orson. Lord, father; boatswain says that the river runs by some town called the New Jerusalem, but I never could find either of them in the map. Sir Hector. Hark'ee, 'scapegrace, mind your hits, if you'd avoid a rope's-end; and remember to keep your wickedness under hatches till you come to years of discretion, you puppy. Lady Di. Mercy upon us! and is he then to let it appear above-board. Fine doctrine Lady Di. You may easily judge the libertruly, that our vices are to be excused in pro-ality of Abdalla's mind by the accomplishportion as we acquire consciousness of their ments of Zelinda. enormity. You should study my mode of expression, Sir Hector. Orson. Why, I meant no harm, tho' I've raised such a squall. Everybody loves Miss Zelinda, and many a heavy heart has it given me, since she cast anchor in this house, to see her so melancholy, poor soul! Sir Hector. She's a delightful girl, that's the truth of it, and I hope that the arrival of Ormsby will prevent the worms of her sorrow from eating into the planks of her constitution. Lady Di. Lord, my dear, do you think that a mind so delicate as hers can be destitute of Sir Hector. Why, she speaks English, French, and Italian. Lady Di. Like her vernacular tongue. Orson. Yes, she has a rare knack at her tongue, and I don't believe that there's ever a foreign merchantman in the whole Thames but she's able to hail in her own lingo. Sir Hector. Then she sings so sweetly. Orson. Yes, father; but she sings always mournful, like the mad negro that died in love for the ale-house girl at Portsmouth. Lady Di. Like the mad negro! Mercy upon me, what a thing am I a mother to! Sir Hector. Doesn't she dance charmingly, Di? Lady Di. Divinely!-I know but one woman in England who is her superior in that accomplishment. Lady Di. And you, Sir Hector, to stand by and see me treated in this manner. Sir Hector. Slip the cables, lad. This is damnable weather, and will speedily blow a hurricane. [Exit Sir Hector and Orson. Sir Hector. And she is no more to be compared to that woman in anything than one of the royal yachts to a bum-boat upon the Lady Di. The brutes the abominable Thames. brutes! No woman surely had ever such a Lady Di. I am always certain of a compli- husband, or such a son. But I deserve it all ment from you, Sir Hector. Orson. Lord, mother, sure it wasn't yourself that you were weighing up with Miss Zelinda? Lady Di. You odious sea-calf,-quit the room-quit the room, you detestable porpoise! Sir Hector. Who runs foul of politeness now, Di? Orson. We had best cut and run, father. for having the least connection with an element where the utmost the very best can arrive at is to be so many respectable Hottentots? My sufferings should teach ladies of beauty and birth not to throw their persons away. Yet I should not have been thrown away myself, if any lover had offered of a more eligible character than this barbarian here. JAMES DELACOUR. BORN 1709- DIED 1781. [James Delacour, or De la Court, as he some- | rhymes, and he preferred to spend his time in genial company rather than in visiting his parishioners. This soon led him to a love for the bottle; never, however, to such an abuse of it as might lead to actual degradation. Being no hypocrite, all his acts were open to the world. This seemed so eccentric to those around him that he soon began to be called "the mad parson." The graver kind of people began to avoid him, the lighter-headed sought his company "for the sake of the fun." In the end, as dissipation grew on him, his brain really became affected, and he imagined himself, like Socrates, accompanied by a familiar demon that enabled him to foretell the future. One or two lucky hits caused not only himself but a great number of the public to become convinced of his power, and though he made many mistakes, one success was sufficient to wipe away the memory of a hundred failures. Meanwhile his early love remained strong upon him, and in his character as a prophet he did not forget that he was also a poet. Verses flowed from his pen as regularly as when he was in the heyday of youth and mental vigour. Strange to say, these verses gave few signs of his derangement, if we except an occasional badly constructed line, possibly the result of carelessness as much as of anything else. times signed himself, was born in the county of Cork in the year 1709. He was second son of a gentleman of considerable means and descended from an old and highly respected family. His university education he received at Trinity College, but while there the writings of Pope made such an impression on him that the Muses of learning were too often neglected for those of poetry. While in his twentieth year he produced his first poem of importance, Abelard to Eloisa, a kind of answer to and imitation of Pope's Eloisa to Abelard. This poem was considered not unworthy of its subject, though of course inferior to its prototype. During the next year or two he produced a considerable number of sonnets and short pieces, which were well received; and in 1733 his principal work, The Prospect of Poetry. "This poem," says the writer of "Table | Talk" in The European Magazine, "though partly didactic, abounds in many beautiful descriptions of the proper subjects for poetry, ornamented with much classical taste, and above all polished to a degree of harmony which at once reached perfection." Thomson was so pleased with it that he addressed to him a commendatory set of verses. When the nine days' gossip over his poem had died out Delacour entered into holy orders, but here again his heart was not in his work. Instead of studying sermons he studied Towards the latter part of his life he was forced, for self-preservation sake, to sell what little property he had to his brother, by whom | The waves obey: so still a silence reigns, Delacour died in the year 1781, at the age of seventy-two, regretted by the poorer people, and spoken of as "one who hurt nobody but himself." He left behind him a considerable number of poems which have never seen the light.] That not a wrinkle curls the wat'ry plains; HOW LOVE WAS BORN. Here in the bower of beauty newly shorn, Then armed his hand with glittering sparks of fire, But who beside their learning were well bred." And tipt his shining arrows with desire: EUPHRATES. Like some smooth mirror see Euphrates glide A MOONLIT NIGHT. As on a moonlit night when Neptune calls, Such suit all tastes, on every tongue remain, To paint the passions, sparkling as they roll: To wind the springs that move the beating heart, THE POOR POET. Poor is an epithet to poets given, From some white clift, whose brow reflects the Nay, our own times examples may afford deep, He leads them forth, and bids the billows sleep; Of genius meeting in a duke or lord! Fam'd Dorset, Surrey, Halifax were earls, And Orrery and Chesterfield are pearls: And Congreve, though commissioner, had fire; Alas! 'tis wit itself has given the slur, Some have of wit, and some of wealth have store, ON SEEING A LADY AT AN OPPOSITE WINDOW. Whilst on forbidden fruit I gaze, And look my heart away, Behold my star of Venus blaze, And smile upon the day. Fair as the purple blushing hours That paint the morning's eye, Or cheek of evening after showers That fresh the western sky. I send a sigh with every glance, Hard fate not further to advance, So Moses from fair Pisgah's height The Land of Promise ey'd; Surveyed the regions of delight, He saw, came down, and dy'd. WILLIAM HAVARD. BORN 1710 DIED 1778. [William Havard, a clever actor as well as successful author, was born in Dublin in the year 1710. His father was a vintner in that city, and was in such a position as to give his son a university education. Young Havard was intended for a surgeon, and proceeded so far in his studies as to acquire the necessary diplomas. His heart, however, was not in the work, but inclined altogether to the stage, and before attempting to commence practice he left home for London. There he found a first engagement in Goodman's Fields Theatre, from which he moved afterwards to the Theatre Royal. His success as an actor was soon acknowledged, his chief characteristic being good sense, both in public and private. In 1733 appeared his first play, Scanderbeg, which at once made him as much esteemed as an author as he was already as an actor. The drama was to some extent founded on Lillo's Christian Hero, but in every respect surpassed the original. Though it was successful Havard seems to have been in no hurry to produce another, and it was only after an interval of nearly four years, and at the earnest solicitation of the manager of the company of Lincoln's Inn Fields that he took up his pen again. So soon as he consented to write a drama the manager, as Campbell recounts, "invited him to his house, took him up to one of its airiest apartments, and there locked him up for so many hours every day; . . . nor released him . . . till the unfortunate bard had repeated through the keyhole a certain number of new speeches in the progressive tragedy." King Charles the First, the drama produced under these strange circumstances, was a complete success, and, had Havard been a vain or an ambitious man, it might have been made the stepping-stone to a great career. As it was, however, he continued in his easygoing amiable way of life, and a period of seven years elapsed before the appearance of his third, and in some respects best drama, Regulus, in 1774. So far as the theatre-going public was concerned this play was not so successful as its predecessors, though far from being a failure. Several years again elapsed before his next and final play, a farce called The Elopement, appeared. This also was a success in one sense, but was played only at the author's benefit. After this Havard wrote no more, contenting himself with holding the almost unique position of a dramatist who has never produced a failure. Six years afterwards he began to feel him self growing old, and immediately decided on quitting the stage. At a benefit in his favour, and in which Garrick played, he took leave of the public in a formal epilogue written by himself, and delivered after the play of Zara. After this he lived nearly nine years, dying on the 20th February, 1778. He was buried in Covent Garden churchyard, and Garrick wrote an epitaph for him under the title of "A Tribute to the Memory of a Character long known and respected." Fielding had a high idea of Havard's talents as an actor, and declared that, "except Mr. Garrick I do not know that he hath any superior in tragedy at that house" (Covent Garden Theatre). Of Havard's dramas his first and least perfect work, Scanderbeg, is still acted occasionally in country theatres, but we believe we are safe in saying that the others are utterly neglected. They, however, deserved better treatment, being full of truly dramatic scenes, and in some places marked by writing of rather a high order. Regulus is a drama fit to rank with some of the best of Sheridan Knowles', and King Charles the First is certainly superior to anything on the same subject since attempted.] CHARLES I. IN PRISON.1 CHARLES (alone). What art thou, Life, so dearly lov'd by all? And to retain thee part with pomp and titles? Life's but a lengthened day not worth the waking for. Queen. Do not talk of death: The apprehension shakes my tender heart; Ages of love, I hope, are yet to come Ere that black hour arrives: such chilling thoughts Disgrace the lodging of that noble breast. King. What have I not to fear? Thus close confined, Will those men To-morrow forc'd to trial. Who insolently drag me to the bar Stop in the middle of their purpose? No. I feel I am-Oh do not weep, my queen, And have no wish on earth-but thee! 'tis there Has entered in thy shape to seize my heart. Queen. Be more yourself, my lord; let majesty Take root within thy heart, nor meanly bend Before ill-fortune's blast. King. O doubt me not! 'Tis only on the side where you are placed That I can know a fear. For Charles' self Let fierce encounter with the sword of danger Bring him to bloodiest proof; and if he shrinks, Despise him. Here I glory in my weakness. He is no man whom tenderness not melts, And love so soft as thine. Let us go in. And if kind Heav'n deigns me longer stay On this frail earth, I shall be only pleased Because I have thy presence here to crown me; But if it destines my immediate end (Hard as it is, my queen, to part with thee), I say farewell, and to the blow resign That strikes me here-to make me more divine. FAIRFAX AND CROMWELL. FAIRFAX (alone). 1 This and the following extract are from King Charles Why did I conquer-to repent of conquest? the First. Who, though I fought for liberty alone, |