to swallow savoury food, would ever take his nauseous medicines, which he never could abide to hear, for he had great confidence in many of his prescriptions, especially a bolus of flower of brimstone and treacle for the cold, one of the few of his compounds I could ever take with any pleasure." In this way, said Mr. M'Waft, did that endless woman rain her words into my ear, till I began to fear that something like a gout would also take my head. At last I fell on a device, and, lying in bed, began to snore with great vehemence, as if I had been sound asleep, by which, for a time, I got rid of her; but being afraid to go on deck lest she should attack me again, I continued in bed, and soon after fell asleep in earnest. How long I had slept I know not, but when I awoke, there she was chattering to the steward, whom she instantly left the moment she saw my eye open, and was at me again. Never was there such a plague invented as that woman; she absolutely worked me into a state of despair, and I fled from her presence as from a serpent; but she would pursue me up and down, back and fore, till everybody aboard was like to die with laughing at us, and all the time she was as serious and polite as any gentlewoman could well be. that I might stand in need of a male protector; | wondered how he could expect sick folk, unable for what could I, a simple woman, do with the doctor's bottles and pots, pills, and other doses, to say nothing of his brazen pestle and mortar, which of itself was a thing of value, and might be coined, as I was told, into a firlot of farthings? not, however, that farthings are now much in circulation, the pennies and new bawbies have quite supplanted them, greatly, as I think, to the advantage of the poor folk, who now get the one or the other, where, in former days, they would have been thankful for a farthing; and yet, for all that, there is a visible increase in the number of beggarsa thing which I cannot understand and far less thankfulness on their part than of old, when alms were given with a scantier hand; but this, no doubt, comes of the spreading wickedness of the times. Don't you think so, sir? It's a mystery that I cannot fathom; for there was never a more evident passion for church-building than at present; but I doubt there is great truth in the old saying, "The nearer the kirk the farther from grace,' which was well exemplified in the case of Provost Pedigree of our town, a decent man in his externals, and he keepit a hardware shop; he was indeed a merchant of 'a' things,' from a needle and a thimble down to a rake and a spade. Poor man! he ran at last a ram-race, and was taken before the session; but I had always a jealousy of him, for he used to say very comical things to me in the doctor's lifetime, not that I gave him any encouragement farther than in the way of an innocent joke, for he was a jocose and jocular man; but he never got the better of that exploit with the session, and, dwining away, died the year following of a decay, a disease for which my dear deceased husband used to say no satisfactory remedy exists in nature, except gentle laxatives, before it has taken root. But although I have been the wife of a doctor, and spent the best part of my life in the smell of drugs, I cannot say that I approve of them, except in a case of necessity, where, to be sure, they must be taken, if we intend the doctor's skill to take effect upon us; but many a word, he and my dear deceased husband had about my taking of his pills, after my long affliction with the hypochondriacal affection, for I could never swallow them, but always gave them a check between the teeth, and their taste was so odious that I could not help spitting them out. It is indeed a great pity that the Faculty cannot make their nostrums more palatable; and I used to tell the doctor, when he was making up doses for his patients, that I When we got to London, I was terrified she would fasten herself on me there, and therefore, the moment we reached the wharf, I leaped on shore, and ran as fast as I could for shelter to a public-house, till the steward had des patched her in a hackney. Then I breathed at liberty-never was I so sensible of the blessing before, and I made all my acquaintance laugh very heartily at the story. But my trouble was not ended. Two nights after, went to see a tragedy, and was seated in sû excellent place, when I heard her tongue going among a number of ladies and gentlemen that were coming in. I was seized with a horror, and would have fled, but a friend that was with me held me fast; in that same moment she recognized me, and before I could draw my breath, she was at my side, and her tongue rattling in my lug. This was more than I could withstand, so I got up and left the playhouse. Shortly after I was invited to dinner, and, among other guests, in came that afflicting woman, for she was a friend of the family. O Lord! such an afternoon I suffered—but the worst was yet to happen. I went to St. James's to see the drawing-room on the birth-day, and among the crowd I fell in with her again, when, to make the matter complete, I found she had been separated from her friends. I am sure they had left her to shift for herself. She took hold of my arm as an old acquaintance, and humanity would not allow me to cast her off: but although I stayed till the end of the ceremonies, I saw nothing; I only heard the continual murmur of her words like the sound of a running river. When I got home to my lodging, I was just like a demented man; my head was bizzing like a bees' skep, and I could hear of nothing but the birr of that wearyful woman's tongue. It was terrible; and I took so ill that night, and felt such a loss o' appetite and lack of spirit the next day, that I was advised by a friend to take advice; and accordingly, in the London fashion, I went to a doctor's door to do so; but just as I put up my hand to the knocker, there within was the wearyful woman in the passage, talking away to the servantman. The moment I saw her I was seized with a terror, and ran off like one that has been bitten by a wud dog at the sight and Sound of running water. It is, indeed, not to be described what I suffered from that woman; and I met her so often, that I began to think she had been ordained to torment me; and the dread of her in consequence so worked upon me, that I grew frightened to leave my lodgings, and I walked the streets only from necessity, and then I was as a man hunted by an evil spirit. to London. But the worst of all was to come. I went out to dine with a friend that lives at a town they call Richmond, some six or eight miles from London, and there being a pleasant company, and me no in any terror of the wearyful woman, I sat wi' them as easy as you please, till the stage-coach was ready to take me back When the stage-coach came to the door, it was empty, and I got in; it was a wet night, and the wind blew strong, but, tozy wi' what I had gotten, I laid mysel' up in a corner, and soon fell fast asleep. I know not how long I had slumbered, but I was wakened by the coach stopping, and presently I heard the din of a tongue coming towards he coach. It was the wearyful woman; and >efore I had time to come to mysel', the door vas opened, and she was in, chatting away at ny side, the coach driving off. As it was dark, I resolved to say nothing, ut to sleep on, and never heed her. But we adna travelled half a mile, when a gentlenan's carriage going by with lamps, one of hem gleamed on my face, and the wearyful roman, with a great shout of gladness, disovered her victim. For a time, I verily thought that my soul would have leapt out at the crown of my head like a vapour; and when we got to a turn of the road where was a public-house, I cried to the coachman for Heaven's sake to let me out, and out I jumped. But O waes me! That deevil thought I was taken ill, and as I was a stranger, the moment I was out and in the house, out came she likewise, and came talking into the kitchen, into which I had ran, perspiring with vexation. At the sight, I ran back to the door, determined to prefer the wet and wind on the outside of the coach to the clatter within. But the coach was off, and far beyond call. I could have had the heart, I verily believe, to have quenched the breath of life in that wearyful woman; for when she found the coach was off without us, her alarm was a perfect frenzy, and she fastened on me worse than ever-I thought my heart would have broken. By-and-by came another coach, and we got into it. Fortunately two young London lads, clerks or siclike, were within. They endured her tongue for a time, but at last they whispered each other, and one of them giving me a nodge or sign, taught me to expect they would try to silence her. Accordingly the other broke suddenly out into an immoderate daft-like laugh that was really awful. The mistress paused for a minute, wondering what it could be at; anon, however, her tongue got under way, and off she went; presently again the younker gave another gaffaw, still more dreadful than the first. His companion, seeing the effect it produced on madam, said, 'Don't be apprehensive, he has only been for some time in a sort of deranged state; he is quite harmless, I can assure you." This had the desired effect, and from that moment till I got her safe off in a hackney-coach from where the stage stoppit, there was nae word out of her head; she was as quiet as pussy, and cowered in to me in terrification o' the madman breaking out. I thought it a soople trick o' the Londoners. In short, said Mr. M'Waft, though my adventures with the wearyful woman is a story now to laugh at, it was in its time nothing short of a calamity.-The Steamboat. EPIGRAM. Because I'm silent, for a fool Beau Clincher doth me take: I know he's one by surer rule, For I heard Clincher speak! DR. WALSH. THE SINGING LEAVES. A BALLAD. [James Russell Lowell, born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 22d February, 1819. Poet and essayist. He was admitted to the bar, but renounced law for letters. He was, at different periods, editor of the Atlantic Monthly Magazine and of the North American Review. In 1855 he succeeded the poet Longfellow as professor of belles-lettres in Harvard College. His most important works are: A Year's Life; A Legend of Brittany; Prometheus; The Vision of Sir Launjat: A Fable for Critics-a humorous review in verse of the most prominent American writers; The Biglow Papers, a series of political satires; Fireside Travels; Among my Books; My Study Windows; and Under the Willows. H. T. Tuckerman, one of the best of American critics, says of Professor Lowell: "He has written clever satires, good sonnets, and some long poems with fine descriptive passages. He reminds us often of Tennyson in the sentiment and construction of his verse. Imagination and philanthropy are the dominant elements in his writings."] I. "What fairings will ye that I bring?" Said the king to his daughters three; "For I to Vanity Fair am boun, Now say what shall they be?' Then up and spake the eldest daughter, Thereafter spake the second daughter, "For me bring silks that will stand alone, And a gold comb for my head." Then came the turn of the least daughter, "There came a bird this morning And sang 'neath my bower-eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 'Ask thou for the singing leaves."" Then the brow of the King swelled crimson With a flush of angry scorn: "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, And chosen as ye were born; "But she like a thing of peasant race, 1 See Casquet, vol i. p. 393. II. He mounted and rode three days and nights Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 'twas easy to buy the gems and the silk, Then deep in the greenwood rode he, O, if you have ever a singing leaf, But the trees all kept their counsel, Only the pattering aspen Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster, Then faltered to silence again. "O, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the singing leaves If they grow under the moon?" Then lightly turned him Walter the page, By the stirrup as he ran: "Now pledge ye me the truesome word "That you will give me the first, first thing And the first leaf, when it was opened, Sang: "I am Walter the page, And the songs I sing 'neath thy window Are my only heritage." And the second leaf sang: "But in the land My lute and I are lords of more minated poetry τέχνη μιμητική, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything: they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect. Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of And the third leaf sang: "Be mine! be mine!" himself and his contemporaries, that they fall And ever it Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, And said, "I am thine, thine, thine." BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D. Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the minds of men, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour: but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism had rightly deno below Donne in wit; but maintains that they surpass him in poetry. If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred, that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before. Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon. What they wanted, however, of the sublime they endeavoured to supply by hyperbole; their amplifications had no limits; they left not only reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined. Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth: if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and volubility of syllables. In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised either by recollection or inquiry; something already learned is to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment. This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very extensive and various knowledge; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his sentiments. When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony of our members. Milton tried the metaphysic style only in his lines upon Hobson the carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predeces sors, having as much sentiment and more music. Suckling neither improved versification nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it. Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have therefore col lected instances of the modes of writing by which this species of poets (for poets they wer called by themselves and their admirers) S eminently distinguished. As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus, Cowley on Knowledge: "The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew; That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic show. The very shade they cast did other lights outshine." |