'I've seen it, sir, as well as you, And must again affirm it blue; At leisure I the beast surveyed Extended in the cooling shade.'

His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut, And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt.

"Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye.'
'Green!' cries the other in a fury:
'Why, sir, d'ye think I've lost my eyes?'
"Twere no great loss,' the friend replies;
'For if they always serve you thus,
You'll find 'em but of little use.'

So high at last the contest rose,
From words they almost came to blows:
When luckily came by a third;
To him the question they referred,
And begged he 'd tell them, if he knew,
Whether the thing was green or blue.

'Sirs,' cries the umpire, 'cease your pother;
The creature's neither one nor t'other.
I caught the animal last night,
And viewed it o'er by candlelight :
I marked it well; 'twas black as jet-
You stare-but, sirs, I've got it yet,
And can produce it.' Pray, sir, do;
I'll lay my life the thing is blue.’

'And I'll be sworn, that when you've seen The reptile, you'll pronounce him green.' 'Well, then, at once to ease the doubt,' Replies the man, 'I'll turn him out : And when before your eyes I've set him, If you don't find him black, I'll eat him.' He said; and full before their sight Produced the beast, and lo!-'twas white. Both stared; the man looked wondrous wise'My children,' the Chameleon cries (Then first the creature found a tongue),

'You all are right, and all are wrong:

When next you talk of what you view,

Think others see as well as you :
Nor wonder if you find that none
Prefers your eyesight to his own.'

Francis Fawkes (1721-77) translated Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus, Musæus, and Theocritus, and wrote pleasing original verses. Born at Warmsworth near Doncaster, and educated at Bury and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge, he was vicar of Orpington and rector of Hayes in Kent. He enjoyed the friendship of Johnson and Warton; Johnson acknowledged that 'Frank Fawkes had done the Odes of Anacreon very finely;' but, however classic in his tastes and studies, Fawkes relished a cup of English ale, as is shown by his praise of

The Brown Jug.

Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale (In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the vale)

Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old soul,
As e'er drank a bottle, or fathomed a bowl;

In bousing about 'twas his praise to excel,
And among jolly topers he bore off the bell.

It chanced as in dog-days he sat at his ease,
In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please,
With a friend and a pipe puffing sorrows away,
And with honest old stingo was soaking his clay,

His body when long in the ground it had lain,
And time into clay had resolved it again,

A potter found out in its covert so snug,

And with part of fat Toby he formed this brown jug;
Now sacred to friendship, and mirth, and mild ale,
So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the vale!

John Gambold (1711–71), bred at Oxford, came under Wesley's influence, and in 1742 resigned his living at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire to become a preacher, and ultimately a bishop, among the Moravian Brethren. He wrote religious and theological works, hymns, and poems. Erskine of Linlathen re-edited his works (1823), and an edition of his Poetical Works appeared in 1816. His principal poem was a dramatic piece (written 1740), in which he described himself in the character of Claudius, a Roman soldier.

The Mystery of Life.

So many years I've seen the sun,

And called these eyes and hands my own, A thousand little acts I've done,

And childhood have, and manhood known: O what is life! and this dull round

To tread, why was a spirit bound?

So many airy draughts and lines,

And warm excursions of the mind,
Have filled my soul with great designs,
While practice grovelled far behind :

O what is thought! and where withdraw
The glories which my fancy saw?

So many tender joys and woes

Have on my quivering soul had power;
Plain life with heightening passions rose,
The boast or burden of their hour:
O what is all we feel! why fled
Those pains and pleasures o'er my head?

So many human souls divine,

So at one interview displayed,
Some oft and freely mixed with mine,

In lasting bonds my heart have laid :
O what is friendship! why impressed
On my weak, wretched, dying breast?
So many wondrous gleams of light,

And gentle ardours from above,
Have made me sit, like seraph bright,
Some moments on a throne of love:
O what is virtue! why had I,
Who am so low, a taste so high?

Ere long, when sovereign wisdom wills,
My soul an unknown path shall tread,
And strangely leave, who strangely fills

This frame, and waft me to the dead:
O what is death! 'tis life's last shore,
Where vanities are vain no more;
Where all pursuits their goal obtain,
And life is all retouched again;
Where in their bright result shall rise
Thoughts, virtues, friendships, griefs, and joys.

James Hammond (1710–42), son of a Huntingdonshire squire, was educated at Westminster, became one of the friends of Frederick Prince of Wales, but did not shine in Parliament as member for Truro. According to the story, he fell deep in love with Miss Dashwood, a friend of Lady Bute, whose inexorable rejection of his suit inspired his once-admired love-elegies, condemned by Johnson though praised by Thomson and Chesterfield ; they are obvious imitations of Tibullus-smooth, tame, and frigid. In the following elegy Hammond imagines himself married to his Delia, and retired to the country:

Let others boast their heaps of shining gold,

And view their fields, with waving plenty crowned, Whom neighbouring foes in constant terror hold, And trumpets break their slumbers, never sound :

While calmly poor, I trifle life away,

Enjoy sweet leisure by my cheerful fire, No wanton hope my quiet shall betray,

But, cheaply blest, I'll scorn each vain desire.

With timely care I'll sow my little field,

And plant my orchard with its master's hand, Nor blush to spread the hay, the hook to wield, Or range my sheaves along the sunny land.

If late at dusk, while carelessly I roam,

I meet a strolling kid, or bleating lamb, Under my arm I'll bring the wanderer home, And not a little chide its thoughtless dam.

What joy to hear the tempest howl in vain, And clasp a fearful mistress to my breast! Or, lulled to slumber by the beating rain, Secure and happy, sink at last to rest!

Or, if the sun in flaming Leo ride,

By shady rivers indolently stray,
And with my Delia walking side by side,
Hear how they murmur as they glide away!

What joy to wind along the cool retreat,
To stop and gaze on Delia as I go!
To mingle sweet discourse with kisses sweet,
And teach my lovely scholar all I know!

Thus pleased at heart, and not with fancy's dream,
In silent happiness I rest unknown;
Content with what I am, not what I seem,
I live for Delia and myself alone.

Ah, foolish man, who thus of her possessed, Could float and wander with ambition's wind, And if his outward trappings spoke him blest, Not heed the sickness of his conscious mind!

With her I scorn the idle breath of praise,

Nor trust to happiness that 's not our own; The smile of fortune might suspicion raise, But here I know that I am loved alone.

Hers be the care of all my little train,

While I with tender indolence am blest, The favourite subject of her gentle reign, By love alone distinguished from the rest.

For her I'll yoke my oxen to the plough,
In gloomy forests tend my lonely flock;
For her a goat-herd.climb the mountain's brow,
And sleep extended on the naked rock.

Ah, what avails to press the stately bed,
And far from her 'midst tasteless grandeur weep,
By marble fountains lay the pensive head,
And, while they murmur, strive in vain to sleep?..

Beauty and worth in her alike contend,
To charm the fancy, and to fix the mind;
In her, my wife, my mistress, and my friend,
I taste the joys of sense and reason joined.
On her I'll gaze, when others' loves are o'er,
And dying press her with my clay-cold hand-
Thou weep'st already, as I were no more,
Nor can that gentle breast the thought withstand.
Oh, when I die, my latest moments spare,

Nor let thy grief with sharper torments kill; Wound not thy cheeks, nor hurt that flowing hairThough I am dead, my soul shall love thee still:

Oh, quit the room, oh, quit the deathful bed,
Or thou wilt die, so tender is thy heart;
Oh leave me, Delia, ere thou see me dead,
These weeping friends will do thy mournful part:
Let them, extended on the decent bier,

Convey the corse in melancholy state, Through all the village spread the tender tear, While pitying maids our wondrous loves relate. Richard West (1716-42), the friend of Gray and Walpole, was the only son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and a grandson of Bishop Burnet. Bred at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he wrote a number of fugitive poems and a lost drama. All his known poems are given in the Rev. D. C. Tovey's Gray and his Friends (1890), where many letters are printed for the first time, in addition to those in the Walpole and the Gray correspondence. The following is 'imitated' from Tibullus (iii. 5), the text differing in sundry minor points from the earlier form given by Tovey: Ad Amicos.

Yes, happy youths, on Camus' sedgy side,
You feel each joy that friendship can divide;
Each realm of science and of art explore,
And with the ancient blend the modern lore.
Studious alone to learn whate'er may tend
To raise the genius, or the heart to mend ;
Now pleased along the cloistered walk you rove,
And trace the verdant mazes of the grove,
Where social oft, and oft alone, ye choose
To catch the zephyr, and to court the muse.
Meantime at me-while all devoid of art
These lines give back the image of my heart-
At me the power that comes or soon or late,
Or aims, or seems to aim, the dart of fate;
From you remote, methinks alone I stand,
Like some sad exile in a desert land;
Around no friends their lenient care to join
In mutual warmth, and mix their heart with mine.
Or real pains, or those which fancy raise,
For ever blot the sunshine of my days;

To sickness still, and still to grief a prey, Health turns from me her rosy face away.

Just Heaven! what sin ere life begins to bloom,
Devotes my head untimely to the tomb?
Did e'er this hand against a brother's life

Drug the dire bowl, or point the murderous knife?
Did e'er this tongue the slanderer's tale proclaim,
Or madly violate my Maker's name?

Did e'er this heart betray a friend or foe,
Or know a thought but all the world might know?
As yet just started from the lists of time,
My growing years have scarcely told their prime;
Useless as yet through life I've idly run,
No pleasures tasted, and few duties done.
Ah, who, ere autumn's mellowing suns appear,
Would pluck the promise of the vernal year;
Or ere the grapes their purple hue betray,
Tear the crude cluster from the mourning spray?
Stern power of fate, whose ebon sceptre rules
The Stygian deserts and Cimmerian pools,
Forbear, nor rashly smite my youthful heart,
A victim yet unworthy of thy dart;
Ah, stay till age shall blast my withering face,
Shake in my head, and falter in my pace;
Then aim the shaft, then meditate the blow,
And to the dead my willing shade shall go.
How weak is man to reason's judging eye!
Born in this moment, in the next we die;
Part mortal clay, and part ethereal fire,
Too proud to creep, too humble to aspire.
In vain our plans of happiness we raise,
Pain is our lot, and patience is our praise;
Wealth, lineage, honours, conquest, or a throne,
Are what the wise would fear to call their own.
Health is at best a vain precarious thing,
And fair-faced youth is ever on the wing;
'Tis like the stream beside whose watery bed
Some blooming plant exalts his flowery head;
Nursed by the wave the spreading branches rise,
Shade all the ground, and flourish to the skies;
The waves the while beneath in secret flow,
And undermine the hollow bank below;
Wide and more wide the waters urge their way,
Bare all the roots, and on their fibres prey;
Too late the plant bewails his foolish pride,
And sinks untimely in the whelming tide.

But why repine? Does life deserve my sigh;
Few will lament my loss whene'er I die.
For those the wretches I despise or hate,

I neither envy nor regard their fate.

For me, whene'er all-conquering death shall spread
His wings around my unrepining head,

I care not; though this face be seen no more,
The world will pass as cheerful as before;
Bright as before the day-star will appear,
The fields as verdant, and the skies as clear;
Nor storms nor comets will my doom declare,
Nor signs on earth, nor portents in the air;
Unknown and silent will depart my breath,
Nor nature e'er take notice of my death.
Yet some there are-ere spent my vital days-
Within whose breasts my tomb I wish to raise.
Loved in my life, lamented in my end,

Their praise would crown me as their precepts mend:
To them may these fond lines my name endear,
Not from the Poet, but the Friend sincere.

Sir Gilbert Elliot (1722-77), author of Amynta, which Sir Walter Scott called 'the beautiful pastoral song,' was third baronet of Minto, and brother of Jean Elliot. Sir Gilbert was educated at Edinburgh and Leyden for the Scottish Bar; he was twenty years in Parliament as member successively for the counties of Selkirk and Roxburgh, and was distinguished as a speaker. He was in 1756 made a Lord of the Admiralty, in 1767 Keeper of the Signet in Scotland, and in 1770 Treasurer of the Navy. He died at Marseilles, whither he had gone for the recovery of his health, in 1777. He was the intimate friend of Home, author of Douglas, and David Hume, but disliked the sceptical tendency of Hume's philosophy; and it was he who kept Hume from publishing the Dialogues during his own lifetime.

Amynta.

My sheep I neglected, I broke my sheep-hook,
And all the gay haunts of my youth I forsook;
No more for Amynta fresh garlands I wove;
For ambition, I said, would soon cure me of love.
Oh, what had my youth with ambition to do?
Why left I Amynta? Why broke I my vow?
Oh, give me my sheep, and my sheep-hook restore,
And I'll wander from love and Amynta no more.
Through regions remote in vain do I rove,
And bid the wide ocean secure me from love!
O fool! to imagine that aught could subdue
A love so well-founded, a passion so true!
Alas! 'tis too late at thy fate to repine;
Poor shepherd, Amynta can never be thine :
Thy tears are all fruitless, thy wishes are vain,
The moments neglected return not again.

Christopher Smart, an unfortunate man of genius, was born 11th April 1722 at Shipbourne near Tunbridge, whither his father had migrated from Durham as steward to Viscount Vane. Through the influence of this nobleman, Christopher procured from the Duchess of Cleveland an allowance of £40 per annum. He was admitted to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1739, and elected a Fellow in 1745. At college Smart was remarkable for folly and extravagance, and his distinguished contemporary Gray prophesied truly that the result of his conduct would be a jail or bedlam. In 1747 he wrote a comedy called a Trip to Cambridge, or the Grateful Fair, which was acted in Pembroke College Hall. No remains of this play have been found, excepting a few songs and a mock-heroic soliloquy containing this :

Thus when a barber and a collier fight,
The barber beats the luckless collier white;
The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack,
And, big with vengeance, beats the barber black.
In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread,

And beats the collier and the barber red;
Black, red, and white, in various clouds are tossed,
And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost.
Having written several pieces for periodicals pub-
lished by Newbery, Smart became acquainted

with the bookseller's family, and married his stepdaughter, Anna Maria Carnan, in 1753. He now removed to London and endeavoured to subsist by his pen. The notorious 'Sir' John Hill-whose wars with the Royal Society, with Fielding, Garrick, and others, are well known; an apothecary, hackwriter, and scurrilous pamphleteer who closed his life by becoming a quack-doctor-having insidiously. attacked Smart, the latter replied by a spirited satire entitled The Hilliad. Among his various tasks was metrical translations of the Fables of Phædrus and of the Psalms and the parables, with a prose translation of Horace. In 1756 he was one of the conductors of a monthly periodical called The Universal Visiter; and to assist him, Johnson --who sincerely sympathised, as Boswell records, with Smart's unhappy mental crises-contributed a few essays. In 1763, as previously in 1751,

the poor poet was confined in a madhouse. 'He has partly as much exercise,' said Johnson, ‘as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him-also falling upon his knees and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.' During his confinement, it is said, writing materials were denied him, and Smart used to inscribe his poetical thoughts with charcoal on the walls of Bethlehem Hospital, or with a key on the wainscot. Obviously he could not have written down in this way the eighty-four six-line stanzas of the Song to David, composed during his saner intervals; the bulk of it presumably composed and carried in the memory. Smart was

afterwards released from his confinement; but debt and ill-fortune still pursued him. He was committed to the King's Bench prison for debt, and died there, after a short illness, 21st May 1771.

The Song to David is every way one of the most remarkable things in English poetry, and not merely, as it might in virtue of its origin and history be called, a 'curiosity of literature.' Even if it be not, as D. G. Rossetti said, 'the only great accomplished poem of the last [i.e. the eighteenth] century,' and though we do not quite agree with Mr Gosse in calling it ‘a portent of beauty and originality,' it is an amazing burst of devout imagination, in some passages attaining unmistakable splendour of thought and expression, marked by rich imagery, memorable phrasing, and majestic rhythms. Professor Palgrave and Mr Stopford Brooke are equally warm in commendation of the poem. Browning praised it in his Parleyings, and says it'stations Smart on either hand with Milton and with Keats.' There are evident traces in it of want of mental balance; but it is amazing to

know that though it was printed by Smart in 1763 it was omitted from his collected poems in 1791 as 'exhibiting [only ?] too melancholy proof of the estrangement of Smart's mind.' Anderson and Chalmers in their collections gave large extracts from Smart, but could not find a copy of the Song to quote from. It was reprinted in 1819 and 1827, and the whole of it was given in the first edition of this work (1843). It has since then been repeatedly printed, a recent editor being Mr Tutin (1898).

Song to David.

O thou, that sit'st upon a throne,
With harp of high, majestic tone,
To praise the King of kings:
And voice of heaven ascending swell,
Which, while its deeper notes excel,
Clear as a clarion rings:

To bless each valley, grove, and coast, And charm the cherubs to the post

Of gratitude in throngs;

To keep the days on Zion's Mount,
And send the year to his account,

With dances and with songs :

O servant of God's holiest charge,
The minister of praise at large,

Which thou may'st now receive; From thy blest mansion hail and hear, From topmost eminence appear

To this the wreath I weave.

Great, valiant, pious, good, and clean, Sublime, contemplative, serene,

Strong, constant, pleasant, wise! Bright effluence of exceeding grace ; Best man! the swiftness and the race, The peril and the prize!

Great-from the lustre of his crown,
From Samuel's horn, and God's renown,
Which is the people's voice;

For all the host, from rear to van,
Applauded and embraced the man—
The man of God's own choice.
Valiant-the word, and up he rose ;
The fight-he triumphed o'er the foes
Whom God's just laws abhor;
And, armed in gallant faith, he took
Against the boaster, from the brook,
The weapons of the war.

Pious-magnificent and grand,
'Twas he the famous temple planned,
(The seraph in his soul):
Foremost to give the Lord his dues,
Foremost to bless the welcome news,
And foremost to condole.

Good-from Jehudah's genuine vein,
From God's best nature, good in grain,
His aspect and his heart:
To pity, to forgive, to save,
Witness En-gedi's conscious cave,

And Shimei's blunted dart.

Clean-if perpetual prayer be pure,
And love, which could itself inure
To fasting and to fear-

Clean in his gestures, hands, and feet,
To smite the lyre, the dance complete,
To play the sword and spear.
Sublime-invention ever young,
Of vast conception, towering tongue,
To God the eternal theme;
Notes from yon exaltations caught,
Unrivalled royalty of thought,

O'er meaner strains supreme.

Contemplative-on God to fix
His musings, and above the six

The Sabbath-day he blest;

'Twas then his thoughts self-conquest pruned, And heavenly melancholy tuned,

To bless and bear the rest.

Serene-to sow the seeds of peace,
Remembering when he watched the fleece.
How sweetly Kidron purled-
To further knowledge, silence vice,
And plant perpetual paradise,

When God had calmed the world.

Strong in the Lord, who could defy
Satan, and all his powers that lie
In sempiternal night;

And hell, and horror, and despair
Were as the lion and the bear

To his undaunted might.

Constant-in love to God, the Truth,
Age, manhood, infancy, and youth—
To Jonathan his friend
Constant beyond the verge of death;
And Ziba and Mephibosheth

His endless fame attend.

Pleasant-and various as the year;
Man, soul, and angel without peer,
Priest, champion, sage, and boy;

In armour or in ephod clad,
His pomp, his piety was glad;
Majestic was his joy.

Wise-in recovery from his fall,
Whence rose his eminence o'er all,
Of all the most reviled ;

The light of Israel in his ways,

Wise are his precepts, prayer, and praise, And counsel to his child.

His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
For all the pangs that rage;

Blest light, still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michal of his bloom,
The Abishag of his age.

He sang of God-the mighty source

Of all things-the stupendous force
On which all strength depends;

From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes,
All period, power, and enterprise
Commences, reigns, and ends.

Angels-their ministry and meed, Which to and fro with blessings speed,

Or with their citterns wait;

Where Michael, with his millions, bows, Where dwells the seraph and his spouse,

The cherub and her mate.

Of man-the semblance and effect Of God and love-the saint elect

For infinite applause

To rule the land, and briny broad, To be laborious in his laud,

And heroes in his cause.

The world-the clustering spheres he made, The glorious light, the soothing shade,

Dale, champaign, grove, and hill;

The multitudinous abyss,

Where secrecy remains in bliss,

And wisdom hides her skill.

Trees, plants, and flowers-of virtuous root; Gem yielding blossom, yielding fruit,

Choice gums and precious balm ;
Bless ye the nosegay in the vale,
And with the sweetness of the gale
Enrich the thankful psalm.

Of fowl-e'en every beak and wing
Which cheer the winter, hail the spring,
That live in peace, or prey;
They that make music, or that mock,
The quail, the brave domestic cock,
The raven, swan, and jay.

Of fishes-every size and shape,
Which nature frames of light escape,

Devouring man to shun :

The shells are in the wealthy deep,
The shoals upon the surface leap,
And love the glancing sun.

Of beasts-the beaver plods his task;
While the sleek tigers roll and bask,

Nor yet the shades arouse ;

Her cave the mining coney scoops;
Where o'er the mead the mountain stoops,
The kids exult and browse.

Of gems-their virtue and their price,
Which, hid in earth from man's device,
Their darts of lustre sheath;
The jasper of the master's stamp,
The topaz blazing like a lamp,

Among the mines beneath.

Blest was the tenderness he felt,
When to his graceful harp he knelt,
And did for audience call;
When Satan with his hand he quelled,
And in serene suspense he held

The frantic throes of Saul.

His furious foes no more maligned
As he such melody divined,

And sense and soul detained;
Now striking strong, now soothing soft,

He sent the godly sounds aloft,

Or in delight refrained.