ings amidst the wreck and desolation of his fortunes at Abbotsford : The shade of youthful hope is there, With phantom honours by his side. They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love! Since lifeless to my heart ye prove! Mr Spencer translated the Leonora of Bürger with great success, and in a vein of similar excellence composed some original ballads, one of which, marked by simplicity and pathos, we subjoin: : Beth Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound. And still he blew a louder blast, Oh where does faithful Gêlert roam, So true, so brave-a lamb at home, 'Twas only at Llewelyn's board The faithful Gêlert fed; He watched, he served, he cheered his lord, And sentineled his bed. In sooth he was a peerless hound, The gift of royal John; But now no Gêlert could be found, And all the chase rode on. And now, as o'er the rocks and dells The gallant chidings rise, That day Llewelyn little loved The chase of hart and hare; And scant and small the booty proved, But, when he gained his castle-door, The hound all o'er was smeared with gore; Llewelyn gazed with fierce surprise; His favourite checked his joyful guise, He called his child-no voice replied- 'Hell-hound! my child's by thee devoured,' The frantic father cried; And to the hilt his vengeful sword Nor scathe had he, nor harm, nor dread, Lay a gaunt wolf, all torn and dead, Ah, what was then Llewelyn's pain! Vain, vain was all Llewelyn's wo; The frantic blow which laid thee low And now a gallant tomb they raise, There, never could the spearman pass, There, oft the tear-besprinkled grass And there he hung his horn and spear, In fancy's ear he oft would hear And, till great Snowden's rocks grow old, And cease the storm to brave, The consecrated spot shall hold Wife, Children, and Friends. When the black-lettered list to the gods was presented In vain surly Pluto maintained he was cheated, If the stock of our bliss is in stranger hands vested, Though valour still glows in his life's dying embers, How blessed was his home with-wife, children, and friends. The soldier, whose deeds live immortal in story, For one happy day with-wife, children, and friends. Though spice-breathing gales on his caravan hover, The day-spring of youth still unclouded by sorrow, But drear is the twilight of age, if it borrow No warmth from the smile of-wife, children, and friends. Let the breath of renown ever freshen and nourish The laurel which o'er the dead favourite bends; O'er me wave the willow, and long may it flourish, Bedewed with the tears of-wife, children, and friends. Let us drink, for my song, growing graver and graver, To subjects too solemn insensibly tends; Let us drink, pledge me high, love and virtue shall flavour The glass which I fill to-wife, children, and friends. Epitaph upon the Year 1806. "Tis gone, with its thorns and its roses! The year Eighteen Hundred and Six! Thy portion of sunshine and storm. That ever have shone on my heart! If thine was a gloom the completest That death's darkest cypress could throw, Thine, too, was a garland the sweetest That life in full blossom could show! One hand gave the balmy corrector Of ills which the other had brewedOne draught from thy chalice of nectar All taste of thy bitter subdued. 'Tis gone, with its thorns and its roses! With mine, tears more precious may mix To hallow this midnight which closes The year Eighteen Hundred and Six! Stanzas. When midnight o'er the moonless skies Her pall of transient death has spread, When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, And nought is wakeful but the dead: at the time of the American war, he espoused the British interest with so much warmth, that he had to leave the new world and seek a subsistence in the old. He took orders in the church of England, and was sometime tutor to the nephew of Lord Chandos, near Southgate. His son (who was named after his father's pupil, Mr Leigh) was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he continued till his fifteenth year. 'I was then,' he says, 'first deputy Grecian; and had the honour of going out of the school in the same rank, at the same age, and for the same reason as my friend Charles Lamb. The reason was, that I hesitated in my speech. It was understood that a Grecian was bound to deliver a public speech before he left school, and to go into the church afterwards; and as I could do neither of these things, a Grecian I could not be.' Leigh was then a poet, and his father collected his verses, and published them with a large list of subscribers. He has himself described this volume as a heap of imitations, some of them clever enough for a youth of sixteen, but absolutely worthless in every other respect. In 1805, Mr Hunt's brother set up a paper called the News, and the poet went to live with him, and write the theatrical criticisms in it. Three years afterwards, they established, in joint partnership, the Examiner, a weekly journal still conducted with distinguished ability. The poet was more literary than political in his tastes and lucubrations; but unfortunately he ventured some strictures on the prince regent, which were construed into a libel, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. The poet's captivity was not without its bright side. He had much of the public sympathy, and his friends (Byron and Moore being of the number) were attentive in their visits. One of his two rooms on the ground-floor' he converted into a picturesque and poetical study:-I papered the walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling coloured with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with Venetian blinds; and when my bookcases were set up, with their busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water. I took a pleasure, when a stranger knocked at the door, to see him come in and stare about him. The surprise on issuing from the borough, and passing through the avenues of a jail, was dramatic, Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room except in a fairy tale. But I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to the neighbouring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass plot. The earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple-tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. As to my flowers, they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from Derbyshire (Mr Moore) told me he had seen no such heart's-ease. I bought the "Parnaso Italiano" while in prison, and used often to think of a passage in it, while looking at this miniature piece of horticulture : My little garden, To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and wood, and meadow. Here I wrote and read in fine weather, sometimes under an awning. In autumn, my trellises were hung with scarlet runners, which added to the flowery investment. I used to shut my eyes in my arm-chair, and affect to think myself hundreds of miles off. But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning. A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison. The latter was only for vegetables, but it contained a cherry-tree, which I twice saw in blossom.'* This is so interesting a little picture, and so fine an example of making the most of adverse circumstances, that it should not be omitted in any life of Hunt. The poet, however, was not so well fitted to battle with the world, and apply himself steadily to worldly business, as he was to dress his garden and nurse his poetical fancies. He fell into difficulties, and has been contending with them ever since. On leaving prison he published his Story of Rimini, an Italian tale in verse, containing some exquisite lines and passages. He set up also a small weekly paper called the Indicator, on the plan of the periodical essayists, which was well received. He also gave to the world two small volumes of poetry, Foliage, and The Feast of the Poets. In 1822 Mr Hunt went to Italy to reside with Lord Byron, and to establish the Liberal, a crude and violent melange of poetry and politics, both in the extreme of liberalism. This connexion was productive of mutual disappointment and disgust. The 'Liberal' did not sell; Byron's titled and aristocratic friends cried out against so * Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, vol. ii. p. 258. plebeian a partnership; and Hunt found that the noble poet, to whom he was indebted in a pecuniary sense, was cold, sarcastic, and worldly-minded. Still more unfortunate was it that Hunt should afterwards have written the work, Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, in which his disappointed feelings found vent, and their expression was construed into ingratitude. His life has been spent in struggling with influences contrary to his nature and poetical temperament. The spirit of the poet, however, is still active and cheerful, as may be readily conceived from perusing the following set of blithe images in a poem written in December 1840, on the birth of the Princess Royal. Behold where thou dost lie, Heeding naught, remote on high! As if heaven had rained them wine; In 1840 Mr Hunt brought out a drama entitled A Legend of Florence, and in 1842 a narrative poem, The Palfrey. His poetry, generally, is marked by a profusion of imagery, of sprightly fancy, and animated description. Some quaintness and affectation in his style and manner fixed upon him the name of a Cockney poet; but his studies have lain chiefly in the elder writers, and he has imitated with success the lighter and more picturesque parts of Chaucer and Spenser. Boccaccio, and the gay Italian authors, appear also to have been among his favourites. His prose essays have been collected and published under the title of The Indicator and the Companion, a Miscellany for the Fields and the Fireside. They are deservedly popular-full of literary anecdote, poetical feeling, and fine sketches both of town and country life. The egotism of the author is undisguised; but in all Hunt's writings, his peculiar tastes and romantic fancy, his talk of books and flowers, and his love of the domestic virtues and charities (though he has too much imagination for his judgment in the serious matters of life), impart a particular interest and pleasure to his personal disclosures. [May Morning at Ravenna.] The sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze; 'Tis nature, full of spirits, waked and springing : And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay. Of expectation and a bustling crowd. [Funeral of the Lovers in Rimini."] The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees, The train, and now were entering the first street. And in their lifted hands the gushing sorrow rolled. To keep the window, when the train drew near; To T. L. H., Six Years Old, During a Sickness. Sleep breathes at last from out thee, And balmy rest about thee Smooths off the day's annoy. I sit me down, and think Thy sidelong pillowed meekness, The little trembling hand These, these are things that may demand Sorrows I've had severe ones, I will not think of now; But when thy fingers press Ah! first-born of thy mother, When life and hope were new, My light, where'er I go, To say 'He has departed'— "His voice his face'-' is gone;' To feel impatient-hearted, Yet feel we must bear on; Ah, I could not endure To whisper of such wo, Unless I felt this sleep insure That it will not be so. Yes, still he's fixed, and sleeping! Dirge. Blessed is the turf, serenely blessed, To breathe his idle whispers there! To the Grasshopper and the Cricket. Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warni little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass; Oh, sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth I had forgotten; and, alas! Such love for the green bower, I cannot rest elsewhere. JOHN CLARE. JOHN CLARE, one of the most truly uneducated of The Celebrated Canzone of Petrarch- Chiare, fresche, e English poets, and one of the best of our rural de dolce acque.' Nor in more calm abstracted bourne, scribers, was born at Helpstone, a village near Peterborough, in 1793. His parents were peasants -his father a helpless cripple and a pauper. John obtained some education by his own extra work as a ploughboy: from the labour of eight weeks he generally acquired as many pence as paid for a month's schooling. At thirteen years of age he met with Thomson's Seasons, and hoarded up a shilling to purchase a copy. At daybreak on a spring morning, he walked to the town of Stamford-six or seven miles off-to make the purchase, and had to wait some time till the shops were opened. This is a fine trait of boyish enthusiasm, and of the struggles of youthful genius. Returning to his native village with the precious purchase, as he walked through the beautiful scenery of Burghley Park, he composed his first piece of poetry, which he called the Morning Walk. This was soon followed by the Evening Walk, and some other pieces. A benevolent exciseman instructed the young poet in writing and arithmetic, and he continued his obscure but ardent devotions to his rural muse. 'Most of his poems,' says the writer of a memoir prefixed to his first volume, were composed under the immediate impression of his feelings in the fields or on the road sides. He could not trust his memory, and therefore he wrote them Slip from my travailed flesh, and from my bones out-down with a pencil on the spot, his hat serving him worn. Sprinkled and blushing through an amorous shower. Some to her hair paid dower, And seemed to dress the curls, Queen-like, with gold and pearls; Some, snowing, on her drapery stopped; Some on the earth, some on the water dropped; While others, fluttering from above, for a desk; and if it happened that he had no opportunity soon after of transcribing these imperfect memorials, he could seldom decipher them or recover his first thoughts. From this cause several of his poems are quite lost, and others exist only in fragments. Of those which he had committed to writing, especially his earlier pieces, many were destroyed from another circumstance, which shows how little he expected to please others with them: from a hole in the wall of his room where he stuffed his manuscripts, a piece of paper was often taken to hold the kettle with, or light the fire.' In 1817, Clare, while working at Bridge Casterton, in Rutlandshire, resolved on risking the publication of a volume. By hard working day and night, he got a pound saved, that he might have a prospectus printed. This was accordingly done, and a Collection of Original Trifles was announced to subscribers, the price not to exceed 3s. 6d. I distributed my papers,' he says; but as I could get at no way of pushing them into higher circles than those with whom I was acquainted, they consequently passed off as quietly as if they had been still in my possession, unprinted and unseen.' Only seven subscribers came forward! One of these prospectuses, however, led to an acquaintance with Mr Edward Drury, bookseller, Stamford, and through this gentleman Seemed wheeling round in pomp, and saying 'Here the poems were published by Messrs Taylor and reigns Love.' How often then I said, Inward, and filled with dread, 'Doubtless this creature came from Paradise!' For at her look the while, Her voice, and her sweet smile, And heavenly air, truth parted from mine eyes: So that, with long-drawn sighs, I said, as far from men, 'How came I here-and when?' Hessey, London, who purchased them from Clare for £20. The volume was brought out in January 1820, with an interesting well-written introduction, and bearing the title, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, by John Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant. The attention of the public was instantly awakened to the circumstances and the merits of Clare. The magazines and reviews were unanimous in his favour. "This interesting little volume,' said the Quarterly Review, 'bears indubit |