Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote

And silent woods I wander, far from those

My former partners of the peopled scene,

With few associates, and not wishing more."

Thus he began; but soothed by the sweet freshness of nature, strengthened by her peace, enlightened to the pitch of true wisdom by her daily converse, spite of all his griefs and fears, he ended by describing himself, in one of the noblest passages of modern poetry, as the happy man.

"He is the happy man whose life c'en now

Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state,

Is pleased with it; and, were he free to choose,

Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground, like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,

Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from earth

She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,

And shows him glories yet to be revealed.

Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed,

And censured oft as useless. Silent streams

Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird

That flutters least is longest on the wing."-The Task, book vi.

Quitting these scenes in quest of health, both the poet and his dear friend Mary Unwin died at Dereham, in Suffolk; she in 1796, and he in 1800. "They were lovely in their lives, and in death they are not divided."

MRS. TIGHE, THE AUTHOR OF PSYCHE.

PERHAPS no writer of merit has been more neglected by her own friends than Mrs. Tighe. With every means of giving to the public a good memoir of her, I believe no such is in existence; at all events, I have not been able to find one. The following brief particulars have been furnished by a private hand: "Mrs. Tighe was born in Dublin in 1774. Her father, the Rev. William Blachford, was librarian of Marsh's library, St. Sepulchre, in that city. Her mother, Theodosia Tighe, was one of a family whose seat has been, and is, Rosanna, County Wicklow. In 1793, Miss Blachford, then but nineteen, married her cousin, Henry Tighe, of Woodstock, M. P. for Kilkenny in the Irish Parliament, and author of a County History of Kilkenny. Consumption was hereditary in Mrs. Tighe's family, and its fatal seeds ripened with her womanhood. She was constantly afflicted with its attendants, languor, depression, and want of appetite. With the profits of Psyche, which ran through four editions previous to her death, she built an addition to the Orphan Asylum in Wicklow, thence called the Psyche ward. She died on the 24th of March, 1810, and was buried at Woodstock, in Kilkenny, beneath a monument chiselled by Flaxman from the finest marble of Italy. Mrs. Hemans, Banim, and Moore, have done homage to her genius, or lamented over its eclipse. North, in the Noctes Ambrosianæ, with the assistance of Mr. Timothy Tickler, has paid her a very high compliment. But her abilities, her beauty, and her virtue, have not, as yet, been adequately pictured in any biographical notice of her that I have seen.

The 1813 edition of Psyche contains some affecting allusions to her, in the preface written by her husband, who soon after followed her to the grave."

How little is known of Mrs. Tighe, when so short an account is the best that a countryman of hers can furnish! and even in that there are serious errors. So far from her monument being of the finest marble of Italy, it is of a stone not finer than Portland stone, if so fine. So far from her husband soon following her to the grave, Mrs. Tighe died in 1810, and her husband was living at the time of Mrs. Hemans's visit to Woodstock in 1831. He must have survived her above twenty years. In Mrs. Hemans's own account of her visit to Woodstock, she speaks of it as the place where " Mrs. Tighe passed the latest years of her life, and near where she is buried;" yet in the same volume with Psyche, (1811 cdition, p. 306,) there is a "Sonnet, written at Woodstock, in the county of Kilkenny, the seat of William Tighe, June 30, 1809," i. e. but nine months before her death. For myself, I confess myself ignorant of the facts which might connect these strangely clashing accounts of a 'popular poetess, of a wealthy family, and who died little more than thirty years ago. I hoped to gain the necessary information on the spot, which I made a long journey to visit purposely. Why I did not, remains to tell.

The poem of Psyche was one which charmed me intensely at an early age. There was a tone of deep and tender feeling pervading it, which touched the youthful heart, and took possession of every sensibility. There was a tone of melancholy music in it, which seemed the regretful expression of the consciousness of a not far-off death. It was now well known that the young and beautiful poetess was dead. The life which she lived-crowned with every good and grace that God confers on the bright ones of the earth, on those who are to be living revelations of the heaven to which we are called, and to which they are hastening, youth, beauty, fortune, all glorified by the emanations of a transcendent mind-was snatched away, and there was a sad fascination thrown over both her fate and her work. The delicacy, the pathos, the subdued and purified yet intense passion of the poem, were all calculated to seize on the

kindred spirit of youth, and to make you in love with the writer. She came before the imagination in the combined witchery of brilliant genius, and the pure loveliness of a seraph, which had but touched upon the earth on some celestial mission, and was gone for ever. Her own Psyche, in the depth of her saddest hour, yearning for the restoration of the lost heaven and the lost heart, was not more tenderly beautiful to the imagination than herself. Such was the effect of the Psyche on the glowing, sensitive, yet immature mind. How much of this effect has in many cases been the result of the quick feelings and magnifying fancy of youth itself! We have returned to our idol in later years, and found it clay. But this is not the case with Psyche. After the lapse of many years, after the disenchanting effects of experience, after the enjoyment of a vast quantity of new poetry of a splendour and power such as no one age of the world ever before witnessed, we return to the poem of Mrs. Tighe, and still find it full of beauty. There is a graceful fluency of diction, a rich and deep harmony, that are the fitting vehicle of a story full of interest, and scenery full of enchantment. Spite of the incongruity of engrafting on a Grecian fable, the knight-errantry of the Middle Ages, and the allegory of still later days, we follow the deeply tried Psyche through all her ordeals with unabating zest. The radiant Island of Pleasure, the more radiant Divinity of Love, the fatal curiosity, the weeping and outcast Psyche wandering on through the forests and wildernesses of her earthly penance, the mysterious knight, the intrepid squire of the starry brow, are all sketched with the genuine pencil of poetry, and we follow the fortunes of the wanderers with ever-deepening entrancement. None but Spenser himself has excelled Mrs. Tighe in the field of allegory. Passion in the form of the lion subdued by the Knight; Psyche betrayed by Vanity and Flattery to Ambition; the Bower of Loose Delight; the attacks of Slander; the Castle of Suspicion; the Court of Spleen; the drear Island of Indifference; and the final triumph and apotheosis of the gentle soul,—are all vigorously conceived, and executed with a living distinctness. The pleasure with which she pursued her task is expressed in the graceful opening stanzas of the fifth canto.

"Delightful visions of my lonely hours!
Charm of my life and solace of my care!
Oh! would the muse but lend proportioned powers,
And give me language equal to declare
The wonders which she bids my fancy share,

When wrapt in her to other worlds I fly;
See angel forms unutterably fair,

And hear the inexpressive harmony

That seems to float in air, and warble through the sky.

"Might I the swiftly-glancing scenes recall!
Bright as the roseate clouds of summer eve,
The dreams which hold my soul in willing thrall,
And half my visionary days deceive,
Communicable shape might then receive,
And other hearts be ravished with the strain;
But scarce I seek the airy threads to weave,
When quick confusion mocks the fruitless pain,
And all the airy forms are vanished from my brain.
"Fond dreamer! meditate thine idle song!
But let thine idle song remain unknown;
The verse which cheers thy solitude, prolong;
What though it charm no moments but thy own,
Though thy loved Psyche smile for thee alone,
Still shall it yield thee pleasure, if not fame;
And when, escaped from tumult, thou hast flown

To thy dear silent hearth's enlivening flame,

Then shall the tranquil muse her happy votary claim !"

Moore has recorded his admiration of Psyche in a lyric of which these stanzas are not the least expressive.

Mrs. Hemans had always been much struck with the poetry of Mrs. Tighe. She imagined a similarity between the destiny of