POETS.

MATTHEW GREEN.

MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) was author of a poem, 'The Spleen,' which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling ‘Hudibras,' but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one.

The Spleen' was first published by Glover, the author of 'Leonidas,' himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of real poetry and music.' As 'The Spleen' is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line marked by italic, which is certainly one of the happiest and wisest things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare

Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.

Cures for Melancholy.

To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some hilly walks; all exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies;

Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen;
And kitten, if the humour hit,
Has harlequined away the fit.

Since mirth is good in this behalf,
At some particulars let us laugh.
If spleen-fogs rise at break of day,
I clear my evening with a play,
Or to some concert take my way.
The company, the shine of lights,
The scenes of humour, music's flights,
Adjust and set the soul to rights.

In rainy days keep double guard,
Or spleen will surely be too hard;
Which, like those fish by sailors met,
Fly highest while their wings are wet.
In such dull weather, so unfit
To enterprise a work of wit;
When clouds one yard of azure sky,
That's fit for simile, deny,

I dress my face with studious looks,
And shorten tedious hours with books.
But if dull fogs invade the head,
That memory minds not what is read,
I sit in window dry as ark,

And on the drowning world remark:
Or to some coffee-house I stray
For news, the manna of a day,
And from the hipped discourses gather,
That politics go by the weather.

Sometimes dress, with women sit,
And chat away the gloomy fit;
Quit the stiff garb of serious sense,
And wear a gay impertinence,
Nor think nor speak with any pains,
But lay on Fancy's neck the reins.

I never game, and rarely bet,
Am loath to lend or run in debt.
No Compter-writs me agitate;
Who moralising pass the gate,

And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding visits there,

And forces Folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.

This view, profusely when inclined,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience, joined with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.

Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their laboured end,

At once both wind and stream contend:
Success herein is seldom seen,

And zeal, when baffled, turns to spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent,
Grieves .ot at ills he can't prevent;
His skiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pulled against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd,
Sees unconcerned life's wager rowed,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.
Yet philosophic love of ease
I suffer not to prove disease,
But rise up in the virtuous cause
Of a free press and equal laws.

Contentment-A Wish.

Forced by soft violence of prayer,
The blithesome goddess soothes my care;
I feel the deity inspire,

And thus she models my desire:
Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid,
Annuity securely made,

A farm some twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own;
Two maids that never saw the town,
A serving-man not quite a clown,
A boy to help to tread the mow,
And drive, while t' other holds the plough;
A chief, of temper formed to please,
Fit to converse and keep the keys;
And better to preserve the peace,
Commissioned by the name of niece;
With understandings of a size,
To think their master very wise.
May Heaven-it's all I wish for-send
One genial room to treat a friend,
Where decent cupboard, little plate,
Display benevolence, not state.
And may my humble dwelling stand
Upou some chosen spot of land:
A pond before full to the brim,
Where cows may cool, and geese
swim;

And dreams, beneath the spreading beech,
Inspire, and docile fancy teach;
While soft as breezy breath of wind,
Impulses rustle through the mind:
Here Dryads, scorning Phoebus' ray,
While Pan melodious pipes away,
In measured motions frisk about,
Till old Silenus puts them out.
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green;

Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep,
Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep,
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear,
And poppy top-knots deck her hair.
And silver streams through meadows
stray,

And Naiads on the margin play,
And lesser nymphs on side of hills,
From plaything urns pour down the rills.
Thus sheltered free from care and strife,
May I enjoy a calm through life;
See faction safe in low degree,
As men at land see storms at sea,
And laugh at miserable elves,
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
may Cursed with such souls of base alloy,
As can possess, but not enjoy;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By avarice, sphincter of the heart;
Who wealth. hard-earned by guilty cares,
Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs;
May I, with look ungloomed by guile,
And wearing virtue's livery-smile,
Prone the distressed to relieve,
And little trespasses forgive;
With income not in Fortune's power,
And skill to make a busy hour;
With trips to town, life to amuse,
To purchase books, and hear the news,
To see old friends, brush off the clown,
And quicken taste at coming down,
Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage,
And slowly mellowing in age.
When fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain,
Perhaps to blossom soon again.

Behind, a green, like velvet neat,
Soft to the eye, and to the feet;
Where odorous plants in evening fair
Breathe all around ambrosial air;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground
Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned,
Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,
Who pay their quit-rents with a song;
With opening views of hill and dale,
Which sense and fancy do regale,
Where the half cirque, which vision

bounds

Like amphitheatre surrounds:
And woods impervious to the breeze,
Thick phalanx of embodied trees;
From hills through plains in dusk array,
Extended far, repel the day;
Here stillness, height, and solemn shade,
Invite, and contemplation aid:
Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
The dark decrees and will of fate.

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.

A series of six imitations of living authors was published in 1736 by ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE (1706-1760), which obtained great popularity, and are still unsurpassed. The nearest approach to them are the serious parodies in the 'Rejected Addresses.' Browne was an amiable, accomplished man. He sat in parliament for some time as member for Wenlock in Shropshire. He wrote a Latin poem, · De Animi Immortalitate,' in the style of Lucretius, and an English poem on the subject of 'Design and Beauty.' His imitations, however, are his happiest work. The subject of the whole is 'A Pipe of Tobacco,' and the first of the series is A New Year's Ode,' an imitation of Col. ley Cibber, beginning thus:

Recitativo.

Old battle-array, big with horror, is fled,

And olive-robed Peace again lifts up her hea
Sing, ye Muses, tobacco, the blessing of peace;
Was ever a nation so blessed as this?

Air.

When summer suns grow red with heat,
Tobacco tempers Phoebus' ire;

When wintry storms around us beat,
Tobacco cheers with gentle fire.
Yellow autumn, youthful spring,
In thy praises jointly sing.

Recitativo.

Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets,
Fraught with tobacco's balmy sweets;

Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power,
And Boreas is afraid to roar.

Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off:

Little tube of mighty power,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax and eye of fire;
And thy snowy taper waist

With my finger gently braced,
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper pressed,
And the sweetest biiss of blisses
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.

Thomson is the subject of the third imitation :

O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limped truth,

That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought,
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns;
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires

Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise,
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Pætotheke with pungent powers perfumed
Itself one tortoise, all, where shines imbibed

Each parent ray; then rudely rammed illume,
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds,
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires: I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm."

But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,

Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou

My Muse: oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrined,

Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.

This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's turgid style and diction employed on such a theme is highly ludicrous, the good-natured poet was offended with Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires,' which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than his ‘Night Thoughts,' not then written. Pope is thus imitated:

Blest leaf whose aromatic gales dispense
To templars, modesty, to parsons, sense;
So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine,
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content more solid than the smile of lords:
Rest to the weary, to the hungry, food,
The last kind refuge of the wise and good.
Inspired by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
Of Europe's peace, when other statesmen fail.
By thee protected, and thy sister beer,
Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid,
While supperless he plies the piddling trade.
What though to love and soft delights a foe,
By ladies hated, hated by the beau,

Yet social freedom long to courts unknown,
Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.
Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,
And let me taste thee unexcised by kings.

Swift concludes the series, but though Browne caught the manner of the dean, he also imitated his grossness.

SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS.

As a satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popularity during the latter part of the reign of George II. Lord Hervey. Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others, threw off political squibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. He was introduced into public life by Sir Robert Walpole, whom he warmly supported. He had come, on the death of his father, Mr. Hanbury, into parliament in 1733, having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather who was

no relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridicule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lampooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr. Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia." One verse of this truculent satire may be quoted:

But careful Heaven reserved her Grace

For one of the Milesian race

On stronger parts depending:
Nature, indeed, denies them sense,
But gives them legs and impudence,
That beats all understanding.

Pulteney, in 1742, succeeded in procuring the defeat and resignation of his rival Sir Robert Walpole, and was himself elevated to the peerage under the title of Earl of Bath. From this period he sank from popular favour into great contempt, and some of the bitterest of Williams's verses were levelled at him. In his poem of the Statesman,' he thus characterises the new peer:

When you touch on his lordship's high birth,
Speak Latin as if you were tipsy;

Say we are all but the sons of the earth,
Et genus non fecimus ipsi.

Proclaim him as rich as a Jew,

Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties,
You may say he is married, 'tis true,

Yet speak not a word of the countess.
Leave a blank here and there in each page,
To enrol the fair deeds of his youth;
When you mention the acts of his age,
Leave a blank for his honour and truth.

Say he made a great monarch change hands;
He spake-and the minister fell;

Say he made a great statesman of Sands-
Oh, that he had taught him to spell.

་

In another attack on the same parties, we have this pointed verse:

How Sands, in sense and person queer,

Jumped from a patriot to a peer

No mortal yet knows why;

How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame
For a Right Honourable name

To call his vixen by.

Such pasquinades, it must be confessed, are as personal and virulent as any of the subsequent political poetry of the Rolliad or Anti-Jacobin Review.' The following is a more careful specimen of Williams's character-painting. It is part of a sketch of General Churchill—a man not unlike Thackeray's Major Pendennis:

Croker: Lord Hervey's Memoirs