Like the music that fancy will oftentimes hear, To welcome, in bliss, the delights of In her dreams of delight, indistinctly the morn. more dear; So the whispers of melody-far, far Snowy-neck'd Maid! to thy couch I am creeping, Awake not! -awake not!-be gen tle my tread! In the quick, twinkling motion that I will cut me a lock from the beautiful Spring forward at once in a line of young beauties, And reveal, now and then, in the mirth of their dances, The visions of love in the light of their glances ; Whilst the timbrel, and tabor, and nightingale's song, Join Echo's wild melody all the night long. dore thee, Say not 'tis a crime that a mortal should love. Epigram. ON A YOUNG LADY SLEEPING. Thy writings, where satire and moral (From the New Monthly Magazine.) ADDRESSED TO MISS EDGEWORTH. We every-day Bards may "Anonymous" sign: That refuge-Miss Edgeworth-can never be thine: unite, Snowy-neck'd Maiden! how still are thy slumbers, How sweet are the visions that steal o'er thy rest! Must bring forth the name of their author to light. Thou sleep'st like a bird, when warbling numbers Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth, Have ceased, and its head hangs re. clined on its breast. The bad own their Edge and the good own their worth. Lo time fulfils the mandate of the skies, TEN different modes of rendering into English verse the three first And sacred Troy in smoking ruin lies! lines of the 3rd book of the Enæis. Postquam res Asia, Priamique evertere gentem, Immeritam visum superis, ceciditque superbum To the Editor of the Oxford Entertaining Miseellany. MR. EDITOR, And Troy's proud walls lay smoking ing the following Query, if you on the ground. When hostile gods o'erthrew the Phry- taining Miscellany; by doing gian state, Ilium, et omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troja. When Priam's line celestial vengeance found, Perhaps some of your ingenious Correspondents may feel disposed to satisfy my curiosity by answer will allow it a place in your Enter which, you will greatly oblige, Sir, Your well-wisher, A QUERIST. Oxford, June 12, 1824. Query. Whether a contempt And Priam's house submitted to its fate. When heav'n o'erthrew old Priam's perjur'd line, And Ilion's tow'rs-uprais'd by hands divine. When heav'n's dread Sire o'erwhelm'd the Phrygian throne, And Troy lay prostrate, all her glories gone. of fame, or a desire to be spoken When Troy, by heav'n's high synod well of, generally characterises MEMOIRS OF SHAKSPEARE. It seems to be a kind of respect due to the memory of excellent men, especially of those whom their wit and learning have made famous, to deliver some account of themselves, as well as their works, to posterity. For this reason, how fond do we see some people of discovering any little personal story of the great men of antiquity! their families, the common accidents of their lives, and even their shape, make, and features, have been the subject of critical inquiries. How trifling soever this curiosity may seem to be, it is certainly very natural; and we are hardly satisfied with an account of any remarkable unabated ardour by the people, and are still read with animation by the scholar. They interest the old and the young, the gallery and the pit, the people and the critic. At their representation the appetite is never palled-expectation never disappointed. The changes of fashion have not cast him into the shades; the variations of language have not rendered him obsolete. "Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, new; And panting time toil'd after him in vain; His powerful strokes presiding truth impress'd, person, till we have heard him And unresisted passion storm'd the breast." William Shakspeare was the son of Mr. John Shakspeare, and was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, in April, 1564. described even to the very clothes he wears. As for what relates to men of letters, the knowledge of an author may sometimes conduce to the better understanding his book; and though the works of His father, who was a considerable ficiency in that language. It is fallen into ill company, and awithout controversy, that in his mongst them, some, that made a works we scarce find traces of frequent practice of deer-stealing, any thing that looks like an imi-engaged him more than once in tation of the ancients. Whether robbing a park that belonged to Shakspeare may seem to many not to want a comment, yet we fancy some little account of this great man may not be thought uninteresting. If ever there was a man born for immortality, it was William Shakspeare. He was, indeed, "not for an age, but for all time." The author of thirty-six plays, of which not fewer than twenty-two are still favourites with the age; his dramas, after a lapse of two centuries, are still witnessed with dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a free school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but, the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further pro E his ignorance of the ancients were a disadvantage to him or no, may admit of a dispute: for, though the knowledge of them might have made him more correct, yet, it is not improbable, but that the regularity and deference for them, which would have attended that correctness, might have restrained some of that fire, impetuosity, and even beautiful extravagance, which we admire in Shakspeare. Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. It is at this time, and upon this accident, that he is said to have made his first acquaintance in the playhouse. He was received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank, but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer. Whatever the particular Upon his leaving school, he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and, in order to settle in the world after a family manner, he thought fit to times of his writing were, the marry while he was yet very people of his age, who began to young. His wife was the daugh-grow wonderfully fond of diversiter of one Hathaway, said to have ons of this kind, could not but be been a substantial yeoman in the highly pleased to see a genius neighbourhood of Stratford. In arise amongst them of so pleasurathis kind of settlement he conti- ble, so rich a vein, and so plentinued for some time, till an extra- fully capable of furnishing their vagance that he was guilty of favourite entertainments. Besides forced him both out of his coun- the advantages of his wit, he was try, and that way of living which in himself a good-natured man, of he had taken up; and though it great sweetness in his manners, seemed at first to be a blemish and a most agreeable companion; upon his good manners, and a so that it is no wonder, if, with misfortune to him, yet it happily so many good qualities, he made proved the occasion of exerting himself acquainted with the best one of the greatest geniuses that conversations of those times.ever was known in dramatic Queen Elizabeth had several of poetry. He had, by a misfortune his plays acted before her; and, common enough to young fellows, without doubt, gave him many |