And you, my alter'd mother, (grown above Great nature, which you read and reverenced here) This said, her soul into her breast retires; And trusts unanchor'd hope in fleeting streams: No more than Time himself is overta'en. She thinks, if ever anger in him sway, (The youthful warrior's most excused disease,) Such chance her tears shall calm, as showers allay The accidental rage of winds and seas. Thus to herself in day-dreams Birtha talks: The duke, (whose wounds of war are healthful grown,) To cure Love's wounds, seeks Birtha where she walks: Whose wandering soul seeks him to cure her own. Yet when her solitude he did invade, Shame (which in maids is unexperienced fear) Taught her to wish night's help to make more shade, And she had fled him now, but that he came Of his minor pieces, we have room but for the following beautiful SONG. The lark now leaves his watery nest, And, climbing, shakes his dewy wings; He takes this window for the east; And to implore your light, he sings,- The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, Who look for day before his mistress wakes. MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE. Died 1673. THIS lady was the daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and was born about the end of the reign of James the First. She early manifested a fondness for literary pursuits, and the greatest care was bestowed upon her education. Having been appointed one of the maids of honor to Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles the First, she attended her when she fled to France, during the civil commotions; and having met with the Marquis of Newcastle at Paris, she there became his wife in 1645. Her lord, soon after their marriage, went to Antwerp to reside, and found her a most faithful and affectionate companion of his long and honorable exile. At the Restoration they returned to England. "The labors of no modern authoress can be compared, as to quantity, with those of our indefatigable duchess, who has filled nearly twelve volumes, folio, with plays, poems, orations, philosophical discourses, &c. Her writings show that she possessed a mind of considerable power and activity, with much imagination, but not one particle of judgment or taste." MIRTH AND MELANCHOLY. As I was musing by myself alone, My thoughts brought several things to work upon: Here Melancholy stood in black array, And Mirth was all in colors fresh and gay. Mirth. Mirth laughing came, and running to me, flung I'll sing you songs, and please you every day, Invent new sports to pass the time away; I'll keep your heart, and guard it from that thief, Dull Melancholy, Care, or sadder Grief, And make your eyes with Mirth to overflow; With springing blood your cheeks soon fat shall grow; And all your spirits, like to birds in flight. Mirth shall digest your meat, and make you strong, Shall give you health, and your short days prolong; Refuse me not, but take me to your wife; For I shall make you happy all your life. But Melancholy, she will make you lean, Your cheeks shall hollow grow, your jaws be seen; 1 Pev. Alexander Dyce's "Specimens of British Poetesses." Read, also, a very excellent notice of her in Sir Egerton Brydges's "Imaginative Biography," in which he remarks, "that considerable as is the alloy of absurd passages in many of her grace's compositions, there are few of them in which there are not proofs of an active, thinking, original mind. Her imagination was quick, copious, and metimes ever. beautiful, yet her taste appears to have been not only uncultivated, but, perhaps, Originally defective She'll make you start at every noise you hear, Then Melancholy, with sad and sober face, But if she doth, can no affections hold; Mirth good for nothing is, like weeds doth grow, Or such plants as cause madness, reason's foe. Her face with laughter crumples on a heap, Which makes great wrinkles, and ploughs furrow's deep; Her mouth doth gape, teeth bare, like one that's dead; A palace 'tis, and of a great resort, It makes a noise, and gives a loud report, Beat down the house, and many kill'd thereby: Sit on the banks by which clear waters run; My music is the buzzing of a fly; I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass, To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low, Yet better loved the more that I am known; OF THE THEME OF LOVE O Love, how thou art tired out with rhyme! THE FUNERAL OF CALAMITY. Calamity was laid on Sorrow's hearse, FAB above all the poets of his own age, and, in learning, invention, ana sublimity, without an equal in the whole range of English literature, stands JOHN MILTON. He was born in London, December 9, 1608. His father. who was a scrivener, and who had suffered much for conscience' sake, doubtless infused into his son those principles of religious freedom which made him, in subsequent years, the bulwark of that holy cause in England. He was also early instructed in music, to which may doubtless be attributed that richness and harmony of his versification which distinguished him as much as his learning and imagination. His early education was conducted with great care. At sixteen he entered the University of Cambridge. After leav ing the university, where he was distinguished for his scholarship, he retired to the house of his father, who had relinquished business, and had purchased a small property at Horton in Buckinghamshire. Here he lived five years, devoting his time most assiduously to classical literature, inaking the wellknown remark that he "CARED NOT HOW LATE HE CAME INTO LIFE, ONLY THAT HE CAME FIT." While in the university he had written his grand "Hymn on the Nativity, any one verse of which was sufficient to show that a new and great light was about to rise on English poetry:" and there, at his father's, he wrote his "Comus," and "Lycidas," his "L'Allegro," and "Il Penseroso," and his "Arcades." In 1638 he went to Italy, the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classical shores. Here his society was courted by "the choicest Italian wits," and he visited Galileo,' then a prisoner in the Inquisition. On his return home, he opened a school in London, and devoted himself with great assiduity to the business of instruction. In the mean time, he entere into the religious disputes of the day, engaging in the controversy singie. handed against all the royalists and prelates; and though numbering among 1 "The Tuscan artist." Paradise Lost, book i. line 288. |