Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,

He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

SONNET ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST.

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join;
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire :
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;

A different object do these eyes require:
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men:
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear:

To warm their little loves the birds complain :
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more, because I weep in vain.

SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune;
He had not the method of making a fortune :

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;
No very great wit, he believed in a God:

A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

IMPROMPTU, ON LORD HOLLAND'S SEAT AT KINGSGATE

Old, and abandoned by each venal friend,
Here Holland formed the pious resolution
To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.

On this congenial Spot he fixed his choice;
Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand;
Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice,

And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land.

Here reign the blustering North and blighting East,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;

Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.

Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled monast'ries delude our eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.

'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true,
Nor Mungo's, Rigby's, Bradshaw's friendship vain,
Far better scenes than these had blest our view,
And realized the beauties which we feign:

'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire,

Then had we seen proud London's hated walls; Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir,

And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's.'

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.

[BORN at Cambridge in 1715; educated at Winchester and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. His poems were collected in 1754, and again in 1774. He became Poet Laureate in 1758, and died in 1785, in London.]

William Whitehead, who must not be confused with his clever and disreputable namesake, Paul Whitehead, the poet of the orgies of Medmenham, succeeded Cibber in the laureateship when Gray declined that doubtful honour. He was the perpetual butt of the satire of Churchill, who, as Campbell says, 'completely killed his poetical character.' Indeed his poetry is for the most part tame and conventional enough; yet here and there he emerges from the ruck of Georgian poetasters and becomes noticeable. Variety, a Tale for Married People, which is too long for quotation, is an excellent story in verse-with a moral, of course, as a conte should have-told in a light and flowing style not unworthy of Gay. The Enthusiast, an Ode, is here given, because of the admirable way in which it epitomises the debate -it is a perennial debate, but the eighteenth century took one side and we take the other-between Nature and Society.

'O bards, that call to bank and glen,
Ye bid me go to Nature to be healed;
And lo! a purer fount is here revealed,
My lady-nature dwells in hearts of men :'

-when the modern poet writes in this way, we note him as breaking the poetical concert of our age. But the doctrine is one which the poets of Pope's century were for ever enforcing; even Cowper, antithesis to Pope as he was, enforced it; and this little ode of Whitehead's is so happy a rendering of their argument that it is worthy of being rescued from the oblivion which has almost overwhelmed its author.

EDITOR.

VOL. III

THE ENTHUSIAST. AN ODE.

Once I remember well the day,
'Twas ere the blooming sweets of May
Had lost their freshest hues,
When every flower and every hill
In every vale had drunk its fill
Of sunshine and of dews.

In short, 'twas that sweet season's prime
When spring gives up the reins of time
To summer's glowing hand,

And doubting mortals hardly know
By whose command the breezes blow
Which fan the smiling land.

'Twas then, beside a green-wood shade
Which clothed a lawn's aspiring head,
I urged my devious way,

With loitering steps regardless where,
So soft, so genial was the air,

So wondrous bright the day.

And now my eyes with transport rove
O'er all the blue expanse above,

Unbroken by a cloud!

And now beneath delighted pass,

Where winding through the deep-green grass

A full-brimmed river flowed.

I stop, I gaze, in accents rude,
To thee, serenest solitude,

Burst forth th' unbidden lay;

'Begone vile world! the learned, the wise,

The great, the busy, I despise,

And pity even the gay.

These, these are joys alone, I cry,
'Tis here, divine philosophy,

Thou deign'st to fix thy throne !
Here contemplation points the road
Through nature's charms to nature's God!
These, these are joys alone!

Adieu, ye vain low-thoughted cares,
Ye human hopes, and human fears,
Ye pleasures and ye pains!'
While thus I spake, over my soul
A philosophic calmness stole,
A stoic stillness reigns.

The tyrant passions all subside,
Fear, anger, pity, shame and pride,
No more my bosom move;

Yet still I felt, or seemed to feel
A kind of visionary zeal

Of universal love.

When lo a voice, a voice I hear!

'Twas Reason whispered in my ear

These monitory strains :

'What mean'st thou, man? wouldst thou unbind The ties which constitute thy kind,

The pleasures and the pains?

The same almighty power unseen,
Who spreads the gay or solemn scene
To contemplation's eye,

Fixed every movement of the soul,
Taught every wish its destined goal,
And quickened every joy.

He bids the tyrant passions rage,
He bids them war external wage,
And combat each his foe:
Till from dissensions concords rise,
And beauties from deformities,

And happiness from woe.