Lyric eccentricities of the ancients, Lyric poetry is a certain species of poetry usually sung to the lyre, and in which the boldest flights of imagination, and the greatest irregularities of expression were allowed. It is not easy to make children attend to an explanation of that which they fancy they already understand; nor is it easy, after they have heard praises lavished upon a poem, to make them perceive that parts of it are inaccurate.-Therefore to attempt to explain Gray's celebrated Bard, is a task much more difficult, than to explain an ordinary poem, which prejudice had neither extolled nor depreciated above or below its merit.

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,
Confusion on thy banners wait!

Though fanned by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowden's shaggy side,
He wound with toilsome march his long array;
Stout Gloc'ster stood aghast in speechless
trance,

To arms, cried Mortimer! and couch'd his quiv'ring lance."

As Edward the first, after having conquered the Welch, marched his victorious army with flying banners down the winding paths of the mountains in Wales, he was struck by the appearance of a Bard who had escaped his fury, and who, standing on a high rock that overhung the sea, uttered the following denunciation.

Ruthless king ruin shall seize you,

no armour, nor even thy virtues shall protect thee from the effect of the curses and the tears of this country, from those nightly fears which torment the guilty.*

These sounds affrighted Edward's army, the earl of Gloucester stood aghast, and Mortimer prepared for

combat.

Ruin seize thee.-These are simple words, but I find that they require explanation... ruin means destruction -I wish that ruin may seize thee. Ruthless. Without pity, or mercy,

* In an edition of Gray now before me, there are notes in this poem, which I shall use as I find them without troubling the reader by pointing out such as are my own, from those that I borrow.

from ruth-pity which is derived from

to rue, to pity.

Confusion on thy banners wait!

Banners are flags with coats of arms and emblems painted on them; they are carried in armies to direct the soldiers in their march, as they. can be seen at a distance above the heads of the troops. Confusion waiting on banners, is not a proper expression, confusion may disturb or destroy an army, but it is not poetical to say that it waits on an army.But wait, here means await-or watch for the defeat of thy armywhen an army is defeated, the persons who carry the banners frequently fly in confusion.

Helm and Hauberk.-Helmet, armour of brass or steel worn upon the

bead-Hauberk, armour to protect the body--such armour has various names, according to the materials of which it is made. Breast plate, cuirass, from cuir, french for leather part of armour which was was originally made of leather, and afterwards of brass or irou, a corslet-a coat of armour, a mail, or coat of mail, are all names for the armour worn upon the body; -mail was properly made like net work, so that the body could move more freely in it than it could in a solid case of iron-Hauberk was a coat of mail formed of rings of iron. or brass, linked in one another like the chain that forms the curb of a horse's bridle-which is at the same time strong, close, and pliable, or easily bent-it is properly here described as twisted mail. In French